Traders Of The Three Arcs - Space Truckers Unite!
A new take on a classic sci-fi game genre that deserves a rebirth. Fans of Escape Velocity know the surprising depth possible in 2D space.
Updating A Classic, If Niche, Genre
A game that has always been near and dear to my heart is Escape Velocity, a member of what some call the “space trucker” genre. It’s as much of an inspiration for my Bivrost Nine saga as the televised sci-fi series like Star Trek and Babylon Five that in turn strongly colored the game and genre.
The basic concept goes like this: the player starts out as the pilot-captain of a lowly shuttle more or less identical to the one from Star Trek, minus teleportation system and warp drive. Taking on passengers, cargo, or a weapon or two to hunt for pirates (unwise at the start, but possible), the player sets out to explore the galaxy one star system at a time. The truly dedicated may effectively conquer it.
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Now, conquest isn’t really that - if you choose to play as a pirate and defeat several waves of defense fleet ships you can exact a permanent tribute from a target world. Though once you’re capable of dominating Earth, you pretty much are galactic warlord. It takes a lot of firepower.
The Escape Velocity series is one of those that I strongly suspect isn’t a lot more popular solely because of the rush to embrace high resolution graphics over the past twenty-plus years. The latest Bethesda production, Starfield, allegedly (I always wait for game of the year editions to come out so mechanics are finalized) went there, but full-on 3D graphics fundamentally limit the other aspects of any game.
Outside of a select few projects, Bethesda’s being the best known, pretty much any title that involves a big map with lots of distinct locations has been ditched in favor of a more compact but continuous open world. That’s not really conducive to the sense of endless possibility you get with a map separated by what amount to portals, even if these can be implemented poorly.
The overall map of the galaxy in these games is deceptively simple. Jumping between star systems is natural, as who wants to endure long periods of boring travel where nothing is happening? Yet the framework allows for a sense of wide expanses populated by independent worlds where many people go about their lives detached from the broader universe.
Now that computing power and memory are orders of magnitude cheaper and more portable than they used to be, it’s possible to develop truly sprawling galaxies with incredible potential for raw exploration. As massive multiplayer online games have demonstrated, the ability to load a new environment can allow a radical shift in aesthetic that keeps established game systems fresh or inspire the player to try out new ones to tackle different types of challenges.
But not everyone enjoys multiplayer titles, and most are geared towards generating revenue through subscriptions. This is not a model everyone is comfortable with. Untapped is tremendous potential for gameplay-first titles which trade the spectacle of 3D worlds for crisp 2D spaces with room to get lost in. In other words, I’d like to realize the full potential of an older generation of games by letting them do what they did well while adding in a level of content depth and accessibility that wasn’t possible a quarter of a century ago.
I’ll admit, I find myself nostalgic for the days when a game or simulation embraced that almost mystical sense of distance that makes a journey across a map feel meaningful. That’s a guiding aesthetic behind Traders of the Three Arcs.
Games have been made that follow in the footsteps of Escape Velocity: the open source title Endless Sky swallowed a lot of my gaming hours at one point, and I’ve even considered building mods for it. But the trouble with open source projects, as with multiplayer online games, is that the mechanics will shift according to the interests of the current player base - I, being a bit old school, am most intrigued by gameplay that edges on simulation and seeks to fully explore a particular system. Chasing trends is not my thing.
So what follows is an overview of another simulation that I plan to make as I can: Traders of the Three Arcs. I’m not done with Unite the World, by any means, but with the basic outline published I want to take some time to develop content that gives a better sense of the actual gameplay side. Stuff like hypothetical after-action reports and such.
This blog isn’t about just one concept, so I’ll be switching up topics at times. As it’s the winter holiday season in the northern hemisphere, I figure it’s as good a time as any to publish content related to the world of my interstellar sci-fi fiction.
I’ve run my own small independent publishing company for six years now, and with nine titles available - Earthborn Rising is the latest, and can be read as a standalone if you or anyone you know is up for a story about a diplomatic outpost forced to rebel when fascists take over Earth’s democracy. Despite the timing, the plot has little in common with actual world events anywhere. It’s not an allegory, but a story about outside forces dividing a people as part of a much greater plot. Humans aren’t actually all that special in any of my fiction.
Traders of the Three Arcs benefits from the prior existence of a detailed landscape that I only need the right tools to express in the form of a fun sandbox style space trucker role-playing sim. But aside from sharing a world, it’s unrelated to the arc of my fiction. Obligatory holiday shopping season self-promotion complete, it’s on to the pitch for what I think will make a really cool space sim.
Traders of the Three Arcs - Brief
Pitch
Traders of the Three Arcs is a complex space-based role-playing simulation featuring realistic economic dynamics, epic space battles ranging in size from one on one duels to fleet engagements, and a galactic balance of power that dynamically shifts as the player completes missions. Of course, the player is under no compulsion to even get involved in politics: establishing an interstellar corporation, pirate band, or paramilitary fleet are all viable options. Get lost, join a faction, conquer, or merely wander - it’s up to you. Just be sure your vessel is equipped for the many hazards of Known Space.
Tagline
Finally free to roam the interstellar gate network - provided you make the mortgage and cover gate fees - how will you shape the galaxy? From shuttle captain to commander of an armada, at every step, the choice is yours.
Mechanics
Traders of the Three Arcs allows the player to explore Known Space at two levels: Ship and Away. Both give the player control over a primary avatar as well as accumulated allies that traverses a 2D world where the screen scrolls across the map.
In Ship mode, players can jump between star systems connected by defined links. These span a map covering thousands of light years, about a third of the Milky Way. Each star system contains one or more stellar objects that can be landed on, transitioning the player to Away mode.
Each planet boasts its own story and character, and be divided into two main areas: docking and exploration. Valuable resources and quest objectives will be obtained in the latter, where the player avatar can be joined by a larger team to cope with dangers. In the docking area the player can trade goods, obtain jobs, take on missions, and hire help while their ship is refueled and prepared for the next journey.
Both the ship, it’s crew, and capabilities of members of Away Teams are customizable, an essential aspect of the gameplay being to stay correctly outfitted to cope with local challenges. As missions are completed, the player’s reputation grows, unlocking tougher and more lucrative opportunities.
However missions will be optional, or related to stories the player chooses to participate in. A robust and dynamic economic system responsive to both player actions and shifts in an unfolding contest for power between rival interstellar empires allows for endless possibility. Boom and bust cycles in markets have to be carefully managed; establishing trade routes and subsidiary enterprises will eventually become useful for amassing funds, and these can be badly disrupted by unanticipated shocks.
Of course, if you can’t keep your ship from being attacked, boarded, and looted by the pirates, raiders, unscrupulous bounty hunters, confused government agents, and all the other hazards of interstellar travel, it won’t matter. Whether piloting a nimble strike frigate, lumbering cargo scow, or a warcruiser armed to the teeth with neutron beams, understanding how and especially when to fight will matter.
The same is true of ground battles, but a player can get by without planet-based exploration if they only have eyes for the stars. In space, trouble must be dealt with through speed, firepower, or bribery. Players with a sufficiently high reputation will find that petty hostiles leave them be: conversely, sooner or later anyone who accomplishes anything will attract bounty hunters.
Piloting spacecraft in a 2D system is as simple as having a button to add thrust, another to reverse it, and others to twist the ship’s trajectory left or right. The third dimension is artistically portrayed with animations around the vessel that show it maneuvering as if it were in 3D space. Additional features like afterburners, improved maneuvering and reverse thrusters, and other performance boosters can be activated to gain a temporary effect. Weapons are selected from banks and fired at the click of a button, with targeting of guided weapons handled similarly.
A neat thing about the space trucker genre is that the control scheme and underlying architecture need no reinvention. To land on a planet, a player slows to a stop and taps a button. Jumping to another star system can happen at a defined point or within a simple radius around a star, transit taking a fixed amount of time as a ship jumps out of normal space, through a channel in a different but intersecting dimension, and back into normal space again thousands of light years away.
Or you could come up with some imagined solution to the problems of faster-than-light travel in this universe. It doesn’t matter - in the real world, there’s either some kind of way to escape the bounds of physical reality and rapidly wind up somewhere else, or the laws of physics in this part of the cosmos are even weirder than we thought.
If you look out over the ocean from the beach, the sea looks vast and the waves are rolling at you. But slip out and catch the right current, and you can be dragged against your will halfway across the world. I expect before the first mariners left sight and returned alive they were told that the laws of the universe would always prohibit crossing the salty waters.
Within a star system, combat will require a ship captain to carefully balance shield strength, weapons output, and overall power reserves. The quality of the gear installed and the loadout on every ship in their personal fleet is up to the player; balancing limited space and mass to sustain a survival strategy is essential before every launch.
Shields are the primary layer of protection, blocking damage from most types of attack. Armor provides a second layer, absorbing a fraction of incoming damage, but unlike shields armor doesn’t recharge. Any damage that gets through accrues to a portion of the hull and key systems, like shield power, so players have to make quick decisions when under attack when it comes to continuing an engagement or running away.
The same basic system works in ground combat, with the main difference being that there players will usually have more cover to exploit. In star systems, asteroids and other ships are pretty much all you have. This means that venturing far from the center of a star system is always risky. Unarmed vessels in most can survive so long as they don’t stray far, but between criminal elements and xenophobic aliens just advanced enough to defend their home planets, caution is advised.
But it wouldn’t be a fun game if there weren’t all sorts of trouble to get into. In games of this kind, text-based interactions are standard, allowing for great storytelling to help add immersion and a sense of agency. With a fractured political landscape serving as backdrop, players can get involved in a conflict that reshapes the contours of the world - something else common to the space trucker genre.
It’s hard (though not impossible) to imagine a simulation based on roving bands of truckers using much the same structure. Set it in a post-apocalyptic scenario and the thing could be pretty fun… a design project for another day! Though the simulation aspect might seem light, a surprising amount of strategic depth can be involved in developing effective combat loadouts when traversing a map where very different technologies and tactics are employed.
I can’t really get into the details without zooming out to look at the broader world and the underlying story behind it. No worries, I’m not about to delve into deep history. But the Three Arcs, as a world, was built on the foundation of a thought experiment in alien perspectives. I prefer to imagine a galaxy that operates like an ecosystem, each species playing its own role.
Of course, to make things interesting each defines that a completely different way. Reconciling divisions that aren’t just tribal or ideological, but truly cognitive, is a fascinating challenge (to my mind). It’s something Tolkien’s work touches on to a degree little else I’ve ever read does, probably because of his deep interest as a scholar in linguistics and communication. When you get right down to it, we’re all aliens to each other on some level. Only communication bridges the gap.
With that said, I’ll now turn to a brief look at the overall world design. In fact, there is no single story that defines Traders of the Three Arcs, unlike the fiction series it shares a world with. The player won’t be trying to save the galaxy from an epic cosmic destroyer. Instead, they’re just working out how to pay the bills when the galaxy is in turmoil. But every action has natural consequences.
The World
The Bivrostverse is set in a portion of the Milky Way galaxy that I call The Three Arcs because of the distinct spirals that create bands of stars around the galactic core. Here’s a diagrammatic map I built to help keep track of my tangled plots - first without default borders, then with.
Earth Space is just a corner of the thing tucked away in part of the Second Arc. The player might or might not start there: playing as another species involves little more than a change in avatar and some species-specific references in dialog. Still, as I’ve got it mapped out in more detail than the rest of the map, it’s offers a nice close-up.
Taken as a whole, the vast spaces and infinite hidden corners of the Three Arcs made traversible by the interstellar jump network form a kind of ecosystem. Species which evolve down a path that enables the development of science and technology tend to lose most of the distinct characteristics that defined their natural ancestors. The majority have two legs and arms, though a notable minority worked out how to use robots or biomechanical augmentations to generate the same kind of flexibility.
Humans in the middle of the 22nd century are little different than the bulk of the species today. Evolved, as we all did, from an apelike ancestor, Humans will always exhibit classic apelike mammal characteristics, namely a tendency towards in-fighting and desire to accumulate resources. As with all species, however, gross generalizations fail to capture a high degree of regional and individual variation. Many Humans are xenophobic, but so are plenty of other species.
New on the interstellar stage, just a few generations of travel and colonization have taken Humans across the stars. Respected by some, loathed by others, the Earth Democratic Federation lags behind the Othren, Kayth, and Roavi in technological terms, but rivals the enterprising Gresch in economic matters and the ever-present Busharn in scenting opportunity. Human ships are utilitarian in design, relatively weak light scattering capabilities of their shields balanced by the crewed sections being encased in an angular shell set some distance from the hull. But Human ships come in astounding diversity, filling nearly any conceivable role.
Othren are a highly advanced and deeply ritualistic species that keeps the rest of Known Space at arms length. Deliberately cultivating a certain mystique, the Othren Nation is the least connected of any other major species to happenings in the rest of Known Space. Still, they maintain longstanding understandings with a number of species that allow Othren representatives on business to travel freely. Goods Othren do trade are prized, but access to their space is tightly restricted to all but very close partners. A distaste for unnatural technology like biological augmentations is prevalent among this nature-worshiping species.
Evolved from a creature resembling an otter on Earth, Othren are semi-aquatic marsupid mammalids, their lungs able to pull oxygen from fresh water. It is possible to mistake an Othren for a Human at a distance, but up close the larger build of the former and the thinness of their hair, not to mention a series of bony nubs that appear as they age, set them apart. Othren technology is prized and rarely shared, and harming the family member of any Othren is guaranteed to bring righteous fury on the offender. Othren ships are rarely seen in the hands of outsiders, but those which are tend to be lethal in any fight.
Kayth of the Imperium are notoriously aggressive, often violent, as like to evolved lions as Humans are chimpanzees. They are also proud of this, as they are to a fault in most matters. After a thousand years of picking fights with the Othren, the Imperium is satisfied to maintain a series of clients along the two old species’ mutual frontier and victimize the Roavi instead. As individually variable as any other species, Kayth society is nevertheless as rigid as it is based in perpetual conflict. Family-based alliances underpin a dynastic monarchy that sustains itself by dividing spoils gained in war.
This makes the Kayth Imperium a very unfortunate neighbor to have, though for the most part the Kayth way does not seek total domination, only demonstrated respect in certain situations. The specific nature of this in any given moment is highly variable, however. The Kayth actively conduct diplomacy abroad, and few scorn trading, even if highborn Kayth are expected to focus on other matters. A strong gender divide exists separating those who present as male and female in aesthetics, however in practical matters strength prevails regardless of identity. Kayth ship designs are powerful and agile, though defensive technology is barely superior to Human.
Roavi are a birdlike species, an evolved form of scavenger like raven or crow. Probably only capable of interstellar travel thanks to a Kayth invasion centuries ago, the Roavi rely heavily on biomechanical technology and drones to explore interstellar space. They walk about in large powered suits which house an array of useful tools, including weapons. Their long necks and much of their faces are exposed, but to breathe and communicate they wear an apparatus over a beak. This winds up giving them a natural ability to settle worlds others would overlook.
Divided into a network of distinct societies each following their own ways, the Roavi Confederation is less a government and more a loose alliance. Avid user of drones and digital technology, Roavi are adept at commerce and highly innovative but also deeply conservative and wary. Their ships tend to be large for their class, relying on drones more than stealth to survive. But the defensive capabilities of Roavi designs are not to be taken lightly. They have generations of experience fending off Kayth incursions when an emperor comes seeking spoils and glory.
Gresch of the Republic are masters of commerce, their interests reaching every corner of the Three Arcs. Allies to none but respectful of all, Gresch politics mainly strives to preserve the free flow of commerce. Large reptiles, Gresch prefer warmer and darker spaces than most, and this biological preference coupled to their prevalence has led to Gresch colonies and districts becoming centers for all species of similar predilection. Gresch are instinctive explorers, and among the first to have encountered Humans through their robotic assistants.
As a species, Gresch have a strong affinity for robotic technology, to the point that the highest end Groids, as they are called, are held as dear as family members. Gresch military technology is on par with Human, though the Republic licenses far fewer designs, several ancient conglomerates having long ago cornered the spaceship construction market. Gresch space is at the approximate center of the Three Arcs, and serves as a crossroads and grand bazaar.
Busharn are the one species even more commonly seen across the Three Arcs than the Gresch. Evolved from small burrowing mammals, even the largest Busharn is small compared to the average Human. Extremely communal, Busharn colonies will readily adopt the customs of their hosts in most outward matters. Wildly diverse, Busharn share a species-wide desire to find niches overlooked by other species and use these to embed themselves into the host society, small groups constantly leaving Busharn space to seek a new venture. There are few jobs they will not do.
Of the six species whose central governments, if the Collective can truly be called that, the Busharn boast the lowest level of technology. Their vessels are uniformly haphazard, expanded by simply adding new modules wherever convenient. Nevertheless, Busharn vessels are surprisingly efficient and inexpensive, and in large numbers they are extremely dangerous to defeat. One may fall, but there’s always another, and if Busharn are driven to rage, they simply keep on coming. Though their preference, if they must fight, is to hold a strong defense through force of numbers and firepower.
Together these are the “Big Six” interstellar species, somewhat analogous to the members of the United Nations Security Council of today when their representatives meet on Bivrost. Less prominent species like the Zaedu, Djinn, Scae, Merchants Guild, and multi-species organizations like Noble Expedition, and Xixa Followers all pursue their own agendas, the gas-based Djinn being incredibly powerful but disinterested in outside affairs while the Zaedu are an aquatic raiding people, like viking octopi. They along with a number of regional coalitions and alliances are middle-sized powers, able to hold their own in their areas of strength but unable to prosecute offensive campaigns for very long.
The Merchants Guild is of particular importance. Robots all, the Merchants Guild is a digital hive mind dedicated to maintaining the interstellar jump network. At each node an ignition apparatus allows vessels lacking the tremendous energy reserves required to tear apart the fabric of spacetime to freely travel. Gate credits are applied to the registered account for any vessel passing through that cannot generate its own breach into void space. Rates are set by the market - with some adjustments by the Merchants Guild.
It is also the Merchants Guild’s task to maintain the quarantine and vaccination protocols which prevent dangerous pathogens from traveling between star systems. Evading the Guild is possible, but not advisable, as ships banned from Guild infrastructure must rely on their own energy reserves or resort to piracy. That will lead to Merchants Guild stations and outposts attacking on sight, as will be the case if laws are violated in a political jurisdiction.
There are also plenty of species that stick to their corner of space or even planet. The beauty of a portal-based setup is that the limits are set by creativity and hardware. Though ensuring that there is enough gameplay is of course required: the simulation aspect lies mostly in testing different configurations and tactics - both in battle, and trade. The economic engine will have to be sophisticated, as will the AI, to prevent battles from turning into a simple shooting gallery.
There’s more that could be said about the Three Arcs and their history, of course - mechanics too. But I think this one covers the basics of the idea well enough. Plus, anyone can go try out the genre for themselves. It just needs some polish, and the ability to play on more platforms.
Parting Thoughts
One last plug: for anyone who likes ebooks who would like to read some sci-fi set in this world, over the next week Bivrost Nine, The Scae Resurgence, and Earthborn Rising are all on sale in the US and UK. Just a US dollar or UK pound each until next Thursday. Always appreciate new readers!
As for Traders of the Three Arcs, it’s actually something where, if I could justify devoting the time, I could actually build out a basic demonstrator using open source tools. While I’m not sure if Escape Velocity is easy to find or mod these days, Endless Sky is open source, so it’ll probably never die. While its implementation of the space trucker concept isn’t entirely to my taste when it comes to certain mechanics, it’s pretty neat that the original programmer created something anyone can modify then let other continue the work.
Well, that’s another project for the list. Just have to get hold of the funds to make it worthwhile. My own time is one thing, but marketing is a beast that takes a dedicated specialist or ten to tame. And if you can’t get people to play a sim, not much reason to make it, is there?