Ships in Starmourn
Below is a transcript of the 5th weekly installment of the Starmourn Newsletter dated June 4th, 2016:
Hello Starmourners!
This week comes without an update to the website because, frankly, I'm on vacation and I'm the one that's doing the website updating. I promised you roughly weekly updates though, so that's what you're going to get.
Let's talk about ships a little in Starmourn. Just a little though!
1. Are there starships in Starmourn? Yes. Yes there are.
2. Can I pilot a starship in Starmourn? Yes, and not just you either! Ships in Starmourn are going to be accessible and easily obtainable by players very early on in their characters' lives.
3. Can I blow up other starships in Starmourn? You've just single-handedly disproved the idea that there are no dumb questions. Of course you can blow up other ships. If the highest purpose of an apple is to be eaten, and the highest purpose of a MUD is to be awesome, then surely you understand that the highest purpose of a starship is to make other starships all explode-y.
4. What if I feel bad for the other starships and don't want to turn them into space confetti? First, I applaud your pacifism and compassion, and look forward to blowing you up many times while you dither around mired in internal moral dilemmas. Second, no, you don't HAVE to blow up other starships. It seems like it'd be a shame not to but if you insist, you could just use yours for transport of people (such as your fine self) or goods.
5. Can starships travel faster than light? No. In fact, your starship can't even get close to the speed of light. Virtually all civilizations that develop interstellar travel try it, and it always ends the same: with them discovering that the energy required to shield a ship going any large fraction of the speed of light from the loose atoms found here and there in space - any one of which would rip a hole right through the toughest physical materials we know of - is so large as to be impossible on a practical level.
6. Does that mean it'll take real-life years to cross the vast distances between star systems? No! That'd be one boring MUD. Beyond that though, ships in Starmourn are powered by what are called 'skipdrives'. Essentially, it's possible to open short-distance wormholes fairly cheaply, though the cost of opening them rises exponentially the further apart they are and the larger they are. So, what starships do is use a combination of 'linear drives' that push them through analog space the way you'd expect, along with skipdrives that open a very fast series of wormholes a short distance in front of the ship, dramatically cutting down the time it takes for the ship to get from point A in analog space to point B in analog space. They're called skipdrives because the effect is somewhat akin to skipping a stone across a lake.
Skipdrive tech is not the only way to get around Starmourn Sector, and is not really that suitable for really long distance travel, but luckily, it's not the only option. You'll have to wait to hear more on that though.
7. Will ships require multiple players to pilot? Nope. You can, of course, bring other players with you, but there will be no combat advantage to having multiple players on a ship. Of course, there will be combat advantages to having multiple people piloting multiple ships in a group....
And that's it for this week. I trust you have been suitably teased, but if not feel free to reply to this address and futilely beg for more info. Emphasis on futilely.
Talk to you all soon!
Best,
Matt Mihaly CEO, Iron Realms Entertainment