It's a big galaxy, and there's a lot to see there - and even on Earth life can be sustained in the most unusual places. I thought then that it might be interesting to have a thread where we can bat back and forth ideas of different places to dock at. While I can understand the nostalgia of planetary landings I never saw the appeal myself - it seems so thematically inappropriate, in a game of exploring the cosmos why are we in such a rush to chain ourselves back to gravity? - and there are still a lot of diversity out there in the void to find first. To get the ball rolling, here's one type that I have been thinking about recently:
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Promethean Station - Solar Refinery
The concept of the fuel scoop taken up not just to 11 but 11,000, a Solar Refinery is a station dedicated entirely to the harvesting of solar wind and its processing into fuel for a thirsty galaxy of Powerplay fleets and roving Commanders. These stations, like a mushroom crowned with an enormous Red Dwarf-style ramscoop float in the very corona of a star and greedily vacuum up its emissions. Prometheans are harsh, stripped-down environments with little in the way of comforts and consequently basic commodities are in high demand there, especially metals as the crew are in a constant battle to replace the crucial heat shielding being inexorably eroded away by the scouring particle gales blasted out by the relentless star. Luxury goods tend to be unwanted because they're just extra bulk in a bare functional place, although you may occasionally luck out with a brief demand by a beleaguered crew going stir-crazy to eat anything other than food cartridges.
Consequently visiting a Promethean Station can mean a big payday for miners and other traders in metal. However, what makes a solar refinery special and more just a place for everyone to flock to and make a quick buck is their difficult-to-reach location. Because they are literally in the star's atmosphere you must fly only within a very strict, narrow corridor, approaching the station in its dark-side shadow - if you stray out of this tight space in the later approach you best have heat-sinks primed because you're going to be instantly roasted. This is going to demand that Commanders pay attention to the way they fly and approach from a correct vector, rather than just throttling to the blue line and letting supercruise control handle the rest. Also because the stations only have finite space as there's only so much that can be enveloped within the heat shield's shadow and much of what is there is given over to maximising fuel refining, despite their constant need the demand for metal fluctuates as they just run out of space to store it. You can make a big profit out of Promethean but you then have to time your visit carefully, it isn't just an unlimited easy trade route.
There is also opportunity for special events around a Promethean solar refinery. Say for instance the refinery has been badly damaged by an unexpected solar flare. The shield is cracking, the fuel tanks are leaking and catching alight and the firefighting equipment is exhausted, and the station is literally disintegrating. An evacuation ship has arrived but since the station is damaged it's starting to wobble and the capital vessel can't approach it safely as the shadow-corridor keeps shifting. Commanders are thus called upon to fill the breach, playing an interdiction-like minigame as they follow shifting re-entry and exit vectors as they approach the station, pick up a load of evacuating crew and boost out again to stay in that critical - and increasingly drunkenly unstable - corridor. At the end of the event if you survive you get to sit in a higher orbit and watch the station explode spectacularly as the solar tides literally rend it asunder and flay it to the bone. For a week or so the station will be inaccessible - it will eventually be regenerated ("a new refinery towed into position") so people can visit it again but in the meantime everyone who took part in the evacuation gets a local rep boost depending on how many loads of crew they rescued, reduced proportionately if there were still any unfortunates left on the station who didn't have time to escape before it was destroyed - this is a way to make the "population size" statistic of a station relevant too.
I like the idea of such a station as it reinforces just how inimical and hostile an environment space can be, and make travel more than just uneventful timesink between two points of interest.
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What does everyone else think? Viable concept or ridiculously out-of-place? What other station types can we think of?
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Promethean Station - Solar Refinery
The concept of the fuel scoop taken up not just to 11 but 11,000, a Solar Refinery is a station dedicated entirely to the harvesting of solar wind and its processing into fuel for a thirsty galaxy of Powerplay fleets and roving Commanders. These stations, like a mushroom crowned with an enormous Red Dwarf-style ramscoop float in the very corona of a star and greedily vacuum up its emissions. Prometheans are harsh, stripped-down environments with little in the way of comforts and consequently basic commodities are in high demand there, especially metals as the crew are in a constant battle to replace the crucial heat shielding being inexorably eroded away by the scouring particle gales blasted out by the relentless star. Luxury goods tend to be unwanted because they're just extra bulk in a bare functional place, although you may occasionally luck out with a brief demand by a beleaguered crew going stir-crazy to eat anything other than food cartridges.
Consequently visiting a Promethean Station can mean a big payday for miners and other traders in metal. However, what makes a solar refinery special and more just a place for everyone to flock to and make a quick buck is their difficult-to-reach location. Because they are literally in the star's atmosphere you must fly only within a very strict, narrow corridor, approaching the station in its dark-side shadow - if you stray out of this tight space in the later approach you best have heat-sinks primed because you're going to be instantly roasted. This is going to demand that Commanders pay attention to the way they fly and approach from a correct vector, rather than just throttling to the blue line and letting supercruise control handle the rest. Also because the stations only have finite space as there's only so much that can be enveloped within the heat shield's shadow and much of what is there is given over to maximising fuel refining, despite their constant need the demand for metal fluctuates as they just run out of space to store it. You can make a big profit out of Promethean but you then have to time your visit carefully, it isn't just an unlimited easy trade route.
There is also opportunity for special events around a Promethean solar refinery. Say for instance the refinery has been badly damaged by an unexpected solar flare. The shield is cracking, the fuel tanks are leaking and catching alight and the firefighting equipment is exhausted, and the station is literally disintegrating. An evacuation ship has arrived but since the station is damaged it's starting to wobble and the capital vessel can't approach it safely as the shadow-corridor keeps shifting. Commanders are thus called upon to fill the breach, playing an interdiction-like minigame as they follow shifting re-entry and exit vectors as they approach the station, pick up a load of evacuating crew and boost out again to stay in that critical - and increasingly drunkenly unstable - corridor. At the end of the event if you survive you get to sit in a higher orbit and watch the station explode spectacularly as the solar tides literally rend it asunder and flay it to the bone. For a week or so the station will be inaccessible - it will eventually be regenerated ("a new refinery towed into position") so people can visit it again but in the meantime everyone who took part in the evacuation gets a local rep boost depending on how many loads of crew they rescued, reduced proportionately if there were still any unfortunates left on the station who didn't have time to escape before it was destroyed - this is a way to make the "population size" statistic of a station relevant too.
I like the idea of such a station as it reinforces just how inimical and hostile an environment space can be, and make travel more than just uneventful timesink between two points of interest.
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What does everyone else think? Viable concept or ridiculously out-of-place? What other station types can we think of?
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