Fed II Star newsletter - masthead The weekly newsletter for the Fed II game by ibgames

EARTHDATE: February 19, 2006

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ELIJAH'S PLANET DESIGN GUIDE

Or I Want to Build A Planet, Now What?

In the coming weeks I'll be offering planet reviews and interviews. The purpose will be to explore the planet design process with planet owners and to determine the outcome of their process. These reviews and interviews will be posted on other sites to help advertise Federation II. So, not only will this column enable you to get some in-game recognition for your work, but you'll help attract newbies to the game. (And they might have heard about you before ever setting foot (or equivalent) in the Meeting Spot!)

However, I feel it's only fair that you understand my point of view on planet design before I come and discuss your planet. While I'm fairly set in my opinions, my purpose is definitely not to embarrass you, tell you that your planet should suffer an apocalypse or insist that I'm right. Really, I just want to show off this great feature of Fed and your planet. Though, I probably will make friendly suggestions when I visit.

I post this column in advance of the review process so you can consider my opinion, make changes to your planet, or perhaps start building a planet. It is my true hope that these columns guide you in designing a spectacular planet that people will visit because of something other than your exchange prices.

Though I am an Industrialist, I have built several planets for Classic Fed, and have one in the preparation stages for this version. So, I'm going to recommend the method of design for your planets that I use on mine. Let me stress, this article is not just for Founders, but should be read and applied to those of the ranks preceding. (Financier is an excellent rank to begin the process of Planet Design as you have a lot of time on your hands; Founder is definitely a little late.)


What it Means to be a Planet Owner

Being a planet owner is not just about managing your slice of Interstellar economics, nor is it about bullying those who play a part in your planet's economic health. (Those poor abused Industrialists.) An important, and very unique, feature of being a Planet Owner is the ability to create your own world. Too often, this unique ability is not treated with the attention that it deserves. Building a good planet is not easy, it's not something that you can sit down and push out in an hour. It's something that must be planned. For the next few articles we'll talk about the planning stage of planetary design.


Concept

Planet design starts with a concept. You need to decide what kind of planet you want to design. You don't have to design a planet - you could have an asteroid like Brass or a space station like The Pearl, or you could combine two like Jessecka has done on Dryad. (She has both a space station and a planet.) This is a good first question to ask: space station, planet, asteroid, spaceship, or something else? What am I designing? I decided I wanted a planet. So then I went onto the next step, I had to consider what kind of planet I wanted.

Well, wait, I'm wrong, that's not the next question. The next question is far more important, and too often forgotten. The question? How will my planet fit into the overall storyline of the game?

Federation II has a storyline and your planet becomes a small detail in that storyline. Probably my biggest problem with planets in Federation right now is that they miss this detail. Some are wonderfully creative, but they either ignore the game history or get the game history wrong. To solve this, I highly recommend reading the Encyclopedia Galactic entries, specifically the one entitled "The Interregnum."

In particular, what I'm pointing at is not very long ago there was a period where we didn't have functioning Interstellar Links. So you have three distinct choices that will determine your planet's history, and perhaps theme.

  • Your planet was founded after the Interstellar Links re-opened, and thus has very little history. Great if you want unexplored jungles and new-colonies.
  • It was founded during the Link Blackout and is just now a part of the Galactic Community.
  • It was founded before and had lost contact with and now has been reunited with the Solar System. (If you're bringing back your planet from Classic Fed, you should consider what happened to it during the Link Blackout.)

Those are the three main options, although there are variants: it could be an ancient alien planet that has only just been visited by humans, it could be a brand new planet that has been deliberately designed to look ancient, and so on.

What did I decide? I decided the latter. Specifically, my planet would deal with what happens to one planet isolated from all others once its link went dead. Now, we're stepping away from the planet specifically and focusing on the story. Planning the story is extremely important - planets without stories seem flat.

So, looking at initial concepts like what kind of object I wanted to design, making a few early choices regarding its history, much of my planet has formed. Taking these few choices, I eventually came up with the following planetary history:

My planet began as a thriving resort hotel in the middle of natural beauty crafted to simulate the ecosystem and bio-diversity of Northern California. At the time, it was state of the art with a beautiful hotel. Specifically, it was a Leisure* Planet; thus highly dependent on other planets for resources.

Following the Link Blackout, the citizens of the planet along with the visitors had to find a way to survive, initially find food. This sent them back to Hunter and Gather status, at least through the first year where many died and then they progressed to an Agricultural* society.

When players visit my planet, they will stumble onto a society and world isolated from everything, set back to a very primitive life style, and seeing as many years have passed, a very new world as people begin to travel through the link again. Which presents another interesting concept to explore: how will this society conflict with the society we see in Sol?

Note that the planet's development is a part of my story. When my planet first comes online it will be Agricultural, so my planet is designed with that in mind. How does your planet's developmental rank determine your planet's theme? It should play at least some roll. Look at Sumatra and Venus, both resource planets that incorporate their development into their planet design. This is true throughout Sol and is something that we need to pay attention to.

This is all part of determining and planning an initial concept for your planet, and you'll see having the concept in place will help the rest of the planet follow. And let me stress, things that were initially planned are not locked in stone, I could definitely change or enhance my story as I see fit later on, but this is a good guide, a solid foundation to start my planet building process.

Next time, we explore these themes further.


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