Constellation Free (?)
Starfield is pretty restrictive in some ways:
- We're forced to become not-quite-human almost immediately
- We're forced to join Constellation
- We can only acquire the Watch, Scanning, and mind-control skills from Barrett
- We have to take Constellation members along for certain Artifacts
- We are only able to learn where some Artifacts are from Constellation
- We are trapped in the Tutorial questline.
How could these be different? Could mods help here? Should these
be cruelly distributed across different questlines, since the Constellation
line would be unavailable?
Objectives - during the Tutorial:
- Allow the player to escape early while still human.
- Allow the full Tutorial quest chain to be done without joining Constellation
- Allow "random" ship landings (at least one) and ground capture on Vectera
- Allow the player to be in the second Pirate attack on Vectera (w/o Barrett)
- Have fallbacks when the player does not join Constellation or gain the Watch
Objectives - after the Tutorial:
- Allow the player to gather Artifacts without being in Constellation
- Allow the player to gather Artifacts in a manner hostile to Constellation
The Tutorial
- ETA Provide an option to grab the Artifact with your hands versus using
a tool - of course you don't have a tool, so the option could be to
take off your helmet and use it to pry it off and cart it back to Lin,
fainting on arrival. This would change some dialogue slightly, but
still allow for the waking-up scene and asking if you remember anything
(chargen)
- This frees you to adventure as a human. I think this should restrict you
to Exit save/restore only. Hehehe. Just like if you manage to kill
yourself in the very start in that cave, dying ends your game. Human.
- If you bolt from the mine area, there should be a capturable ship somewhere
you can use to leave, leaving you potentially human and without guideposts
for what to do next.
There's a suitable landing area just southwest of the mine - really close,
I've seen a Starborn Guardian land there after the Starborn quest.
Coming back should pick up the same quest you left in the middle of.
- After wiping out the first wave of pirates on Vectera,
if you didn't feel up the Artifact,
Barrett should insist that since you dug it out, it was meant that you
really should be the first one to touch it.
- If you do, back to vanilla :-)
- If you don't, he gives you a way to contact him, starting a new
quest to meet him in the Eye, where you can
- (He has to be liberated from the Pirates first to meet him)
- Touch the Artifact (or not)
- Join Constellation (or not), gaining the Watch, back to vanilla
- Either way, ETA will join ALPHA back in Constellation
- In the case that you're on Vectera, but haven't joined Constellation
- Barrett should leave and you should stay and help pack crates
(intended for exporting ore tangentially collected, but now, evacuation)
brought by a Shuttle landing just after he leaves,
on the pad the Pirates used.
- The packing could be from crates in the area with shelves, which
gives multiple opportunities to change what crates and boxes are
visible in both places. Even better, send the player down to the
mine, only to hear engine launch noises as the character returns up the
elevator to greet the sound of a Pirate ship lifting off in:
- The second pirate attack, having landed on the larger pad, where they
- kill off some miners (like in vanilla)
- injure the Shuttle pilot
- capture Heller
- and leave you as the only pilot in good condition.
- The summary being that Heller and some miners had
taken the fight into the Pirate ship
(landed while you were in the mine),
and it had launched with the onboard fight undecided.
Some of its crew is still on the surface in combat with
the miners, the Shuttle pilot (already injured), and you,
some of the fighting being on top of the hab (including Lin).
- You render aid to the injured miners and the pilot,
who talks about how the Pirates are probably based on Kreet.
- Lin asks you to deal with Kreet, and look there for Heller
- The Shuttle pilot only offers you three destinations:
Kreet, Vectera, and New Atlantis (because Argos H/Q is there),
where the last is a one-way trip.
Post-Tutorial: Kreet and Vectera
- You fly the Shuttle to Kreet with the injured Pilot giving flying advice
instead of Vasco (or some other ship if you went to New Atlantis)
- When you land, the Frontier is noted near the Kreet base,
closer than where the Shuttle lands
(the local Pirates are unaware of its circumstances and only
recognize the ship - and when you show up, assume you came out of it)
- Vasco will not give the Frontier to you, since you're not a member,
but does relate that Barrett has been captured, and that the Pirates
had Heller already.
So you're stuck with the Shuttle.
Vasco offers to come assist you, with the excuse that it's what
Barrett would have done and dragged Vasco along anyway
- When you return, you discover Vectera in the mode where you can
enter the other hab and find the message from Barrett and Heller
- Lin asks you to rescue Heller (and Barrett) - like vanilla
- You can use the Shuttle for this or be dropped off in New Atlantis
Taking the Shuttle to New Atlantis
- In New Atlantis the Shuttle abandons you:
You'll have to earn credits for a ship,
or steal one of the ones that land near New Atlantis.
Post-Tutorial: Effects
- There are Shuttles between systems that are normally [inaccessible],
and have no pilots, but automatically transit worlds. Making these
be accessible, but fully disabling the pilot's chairs would provide
a way for a broke player to get somewhere else (probably exactly one "else").
- Example: The shuttle between Cydonia and Hopetown (IIRC)
- You don't have Frontier, so you have to obtain another ship.
- Enable ship landings in the main Vectera tile.
- If you don't have the Watch, then all the scanning functions should be
disabled, keeping only the sub-UI elements for the mind-control Skills.
You'd need to buy a scanner, or steal or loot a Watch from a Constellation
member
- Make Watches lootable and stealable
- Vendors should have a Scanner product with most of the same functionality,
say, by omitting the Range element in the display, having a slightly
less finessed, or less stable display
Post-Tutorial: Artifacts
- As a non-Constellation member, OR as a Constellation member,
there should always be an option to
steal all the artifacts from Constellation.
- To do it as a non-member, you're going to have to break in from the
tunnel into the Well
- So with the right timing you only have to evade Mateo and Noel,
if you avoid them, Constellation may not realize you're the culprit
- You might be able to get them to forgive you if you save Barrett or
something, should you want to recant your thievery later
- For specific Artifacts:
- CHI The above-mentioned burglary should also reveal that there's
an Artifact on Akila,
with a map stored in a bank there.
Said map should still be missing,
but a bank terminal (master), or persuade or bribing the teller,
should reveal Sam's father took it,
and that he lives in Akila, in a house subject to lockpicking.
(creating a way to join the Shaw Gang to find it would be a 2nd option)
- IOTA (Abandoned Mine) - there should be a note about its location,
Andreja would not have any certain knowledge about you, so this
quest could run normally,
where you end up with the Artifact and she leaves on her own
- OMICRON (Scavenger Burrows) - there should be note about its location,
and there are no special NPCs involved
- There should be other paths of notification about some of these Artifacts:
- BETA For Maoro being lost in space, talk to the bartender with that info
- NU Once the player knows about the Slayton employee selling an
Artifact to Stroud, one could find said employee at the
club while he's waiting to sell it
- And bug him about the case until he attempts to leave his chosen
spot to move to the meeting room (hoping security tell you to bug off)
- Mugging him or offering more money than Stroud is the obvious way
(or Manipulation to make him open the case?)
- Mugging Stroud after the meeting is another way.
- Explicitly making you take the role of the guy who normally stops
Stroud after the exchange is interesting - one assumes Stroud
didn't spend the money for a friendly guard without you, for example.
- The weirdest one would be if Slayton comes after both you and
Stroud even though you were independently trying to run off with
the Artifact, forcing coöperation. It's pretty easy to see
Stroud willing to go along with this.
- The information about the Artifact needs to come from somewhere,
potentially triggered by being in Slayton HQ and hearing a call for
someone to capture a thief trying to sell company property.
- The implication is that NU is expensive, probably
six figures, starship prices, but for game balance, should
be substantially smaller the final cash payout from the CF questline,
so probably ~100k, adjusted by Difficulty and Commerce
- Leaving the club would be much like the vanilla version, minus
the wife, Stroud's gun, and the elevator on demand,
the last of which simply means the elevators would need to be
moved by default.
- Without Stroud along, there's no obvious way to unlock the SAL-6830
- Leaving the planet with it should still trigger the Starborn Guardian
- LAMBDA The Nishina Artifact can be found normally
- PHI The Scow. Ideally you'd find out about this from the
guy who gives it to the Collector, but only if you've touched one
yourself and have a shared story to gain his interest.
But where would you meet him (or her)?
PHI is associated with Alien Reanimation, so it would be amusing
if he were a biologist, even if he never found the temple to have the
Power.
It's entirely possible for a science type to make a cast of
an object before selling it, and that could end up on a stand which
might detail to whom it was sold. Some options, then:
- Neon, The Emporium, cast of Artifact on stand, sale info of actual
item readable if acquired, pricey
- New Homestead, Bill Starsap, would be an interesting person
to have bought the cast from the actual finder, but it wouldn't
be in the museum itself
- There's probably some candidate NPC along Hadrian's Xeno questline
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