I've been reading a lot of "realistic" sci-fi lately (by Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan, etc.) and all of them are "Armageddon" books. For example, my favorite book of all time now is "The Songs of Distant Earth" in which in the 1960's scientists discover that the sun is emitting far fewer neutrinos than it should. They predict that by 3600, the sun will flare up, killing all life in the solar system. Anyway, starting in the 22nd century, humans started sending "seedships" containing first human embryos and later DNA to resurrect humans on other extraterrestrial worlds. BTW, no ET intelligence has been discovered. Near the end, a ship called Magellan carries a million humans in stasis to Thalassa, the world that the book centers on, and later to their destination, Sagan Two. I was thinking that I could make some sort of "disaster" or "armageddon" plug-in with nasty things like black holes and asteroids and high-speed space debris, and you have to resurrect humans on other planets with only a quantum drive and your wits. Problem is, how do I make it interesting? Maybe a giant gravity wave could sweep through the EV galaxy, reducing each planet to mere 20th century technology, but I like the idea of the player working against time to design and build stasis and resurrection ships. I just don't know how to make it FUN. Any ideas? (pant, pant)

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Luca Rescigno
"I have nothing to fear but secret sauce"

Well, you could make a deep story line, with plenty of missions to do. Usually, if you have a good story line and plenty of missions, your plug will do alright.

Here are some suggestions:

You start out with the player only accessable to a few systems, due to the fact that everything has been wiped out. Mankind is on it's last string and the player must find new planets to colonize. He is given missions to explore the outer edges of the universe. After finding these planets, he must inform Earth, or whatever planet is left of them. Earth constructs a few transports ships and takes millions of people to these new planets. You could implement another race into this that tries to hinder mankind's expantion.

Here's a cool trick you could use on this plug:

Make two separate systems. Align them exactly over each other and make one appear after a certain mission has been completed. The old system will dissappear and the new system will cover up the old system. You can use this when you try to colonize a planet or by trying to destroy one. This technique was used in Clavios and Beyond for the time when a planet was blown up.

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-mnementh

Thanks a lot, I'll start working on it in Schmelta-V. Might even be worth uploading, unlike any of my other plug-in attempts.

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Luca Rescigno
"I have nothing to fear but secret sauce"