Some ideas:

  • Log entries found on the wreck reveal who killed them (Xenophobes, etc.).
  • Surviving crewmen tell the player what happened.
  • Under certain conditions, perhaps stations can send the player on a mission. E.g., a station killed by Xenophobes could task the player with hunting them down. This should be particularly true for key stations (Startons, CSC, etc.).
the_shrike 26 Aug 2016:

I'd suggest having this be semi-randomised so that there's degrees of detail:

-Some stuff should be enigmatic
-Some might give a few hints (particularly if we've never seen the things that killed it)
-Then moving up through the "Lone survivor" through to "Bunch of people who need help"

I'd also suggest some non-combat missions based around these: rescuing survivors (or selling them into slavery?) or contacting the local Militia station to ask for assistance, or even collecting or escorting supplies to repair or rebuild a destroyed station (obviously we do not get hired to rebuild things we've destroyed).

george moromisato 26 Aug 2016:

@the_shrike: Yes! Great ideas!

the_shrike 27 Aug 2016:

In the longer term, it would also be interesting if this applied to enemy stations. This might present some issues however (eg. Why don't the pirates just shoot the player who just wrecked their station and take their ship).

megas 27 Aug 2016:

That is a reason to (permanently) irradiate stations with the waste cannon or similar weapon, to kill off any survivors with lethal radiation.

johnbwatson 27 Aug 2016:

For the sake of backwards compatibility and greater ruggedness, it might be worth starting by generating text based on the weapon that killed the ship, and then using that if the ship/station that killed it did not have a custom message for the survivors to pass along. A fairly simple means of doing this would be to pair a string with each damage type and each WMD level, and attach them to shipwrecks.

For example, if a Wolfen is killed by a shot did laser damage and had WMD3, a player who docks at the wreck would see the message:

"[You are docked with the wreck of a Wolfen - class gunship.] [The (ship)'s hull is warped and burned through in many places][, and the armor is marred by deep, jarring dents.]"