ADMIRAL APRIL: Captain, I’d like to introduce you to these new aliens we came across. They’re totally friendly.
ALIEN AMBASSADOR (looking like a human with a rubber appliance glued to his forehead, dressed in flowing robes): Hey, ‘sup Captain Sucker. Nice to meetcha.
CAPTAIN YOU: The pleasure is mine, Mister Alien. But my name is not “Sucker”, it’s _______.
ALIEN: It must be a glitch in your Universal Translator. In our language, “Sucker” is a term of great respect.
ADMIRAL APRIL: The ambassador has offered to collaborate on a new science outpost in a system that you may well find interesting.
CAPTAIN YOU: A collaboration?
ALIEN: Yes, we give you the coordinates, confirm the Federation has sent a ship, and then say “See you, Suckers!” Of course, in our language, we do you the highest honor. Your Universal Translator may need some adjusting.
CAPTAIN YOU: I see. And what, may I ask, is interesting about this system?
ADMIRAL APRIL: They have discovered a planet that is constantly bathed in deadly tetryon radiation, except in tetryon storms where it is worse. You will die instantly in the storm if you are unprotected. Also, the tetryon storms spit out mini black holes. And there is life on the planet that wants to kill you.
ALIEN: It is a planet for Suckers. Only Suckers can tame it, and the Federation is known throughout the quadrant for being the biggest Suckers around. (Alien bows deeply and makes a wet buzzing sound with its lips and tongue, then stands once more, wiping its mouth on the sleeve of its shiny robe). Of course, when I say Sucker, I am using a term of the greatest reverence in our language.
CAPTAIN YOU: Sir, what is my mission?
ADMIRAL APRIL: You are to travel to the site of the tetryon storm (which we are calling the Space Death Cyclone, or SDC), and set up an outpost. You will send down an away team consisting of engineers, scientists, security professionals and medical staff, and enough food and medical supplies to last them about a month. By the end of that month, they’d best be sending ores (both refined and unrefined), bio products, and science discoveries to paying customers in order to become a productive outpost and center of commerce in the sector.
CAPTAIN YOU: What happens at the end of the month?
ALIEN: They ascend!
ADMIRAL APRIL (giving the alien an unreadable glance): Well, if our past outposts are any indication, they will probably starve, become mutated by tetryon radiation, become eaten by the local flora, be worked to exhaustion, and watch all their buildings and technology slowly become irradiated and useless and find early graves marked with mysterious messages for future explorers to discover. But you, you’ll be fine. I’m betting your career on it.
ALIEN: They will ascend like radioactive dust in the wind!
CAPTAIN YOU (to Alien): I mean no disrespect, but you look entirely human to me. In fact, you look just like Ensign Vilper from Astrometrics. And what’s that on your forehead?
ALIEN: (Silently looks to the admiral)
CAPTAIN YOU: This isn’t a prank, is it?
ADMIRAL APRIL: No, no, I assure you. This is totally a serious science mission to make an outpost and do real science things. You’ll be heroes! We are staffing your ship with our finest officers. (The admiral hands you a datapad).
CAPTAIN YOU (looking through the names on the datapad): These are a bunch of… I don’t know how to say this, Admiral, but these are not Starfleet’s finest.
ADMIRAL APRIL: Nonsense. They just haven’t been challenged enough. I have confidence in you, Captain. You’ll whip them into shape and turn them into the officers I know they can be. I’ll expect you to be ready to depart at 16:00. Dismissed.
CAPTAIN YOU: But…
ADMIRAL APRIL: Dismissed, Captain!
By the end of my time with the Outposts Unknown demo, my buildings were in disrepair because the engineers that could fix them were in the hospital and everyone was starving. They made a big scene about having replicators, but it seemed necessary to send small amounts of biomatter to the ship to be processed into food, but it was never enough. Also, medical supplies had to be sourced locally, and all these things required harvesting and processing and basically it was a death spiral. Not sure why the personnel in the outpost had to WALK everywhere. Why couldn’t they beam, or take a shuttlecraft?
The game tutorial prioritized getting trading up and running, but that just meant effort going to that when it would have been better spent building the harvesters and refineries to make food and medical supplies.
It really bugs me that they have to walk everywhere, and mining is done with hand phasers. Blah blah blah I don’t want to spend this post whining. I’ll just be Captain Sucker and take my ship someplace warm and safe instead.
One of my biggest annoyances with Star Trek Discover (oh, I should preface this with: TANGENT!) was the instant teleporting stuff, both the ship and people. The compression of space into what was effectively a single location took away a lot of the tension for me.
But the game devs could at least give them Segways to cruise around on.
I’ve pretty much given up on PC gaming for the summer (my office is SO hot) but this looks like something I’d enjoy banging my head against once it comes out.
I ready one review which said this was another lazy exploitation of the ST franchise, just overlaid on top of a will clone of a colony building game. Why can’t ST get a decent game treatment these days?