Narrative

Premise Decided

• A ship on a commercial prospecting mission (searching distant planets for commercially valuable resources) crash-lands in a remote part of the galaxy. Rescue is impossible.
• The survivors start out despairing. Exploration and discovery slowly turn that into optimism, then ambition.
• The tone is growing optimism through discovery. Each find lets them work out something new they can do.
• Population is never addressed. We never say how many people crashed and never show crowds. The factory is run by autonomous machines and robots. That way the whole crew can leave on the repaired ship at the end, however huge the factory has become.

The three advisors Decided

Three officers act as the game’s voices. They are referred to by title, not by personal name. Each one maps onto a play style. None of them is entirely right or wrong. They are counterweights to the player’s decisions, not factions.

Title	Background	Wants	Play style
The General	Grizzled military advisor aboard the ship	Get the bugs under control first. The best defense is a good offense: preemptive force framed as defense.	Offense, clearing hives, territorial control, fortification
The Doctor (“Doc”)	The ship’s doctor; the humane voice focused on the people	Get everyone home, as efficiently and safely as possible. Not interested in riches or colonization. Risk-averse and wants nothing to do with the aliens, but is not a pacifist and not anti-technology.	Efficient progress toward the ship repair; careful, quieter play; shut things down rather than fight
The Director	Heads the original commercial prospecting operation (could have a scientist flavor); represents the company	Turn Evolite into profit. Still on the company’s mission. Sees the planet as the greatest discovery in history.	Maximum extraction, the big drill, industrial scale

Characterization notes:

• The General isn’t bloodthirsty. He wants to control the conditions of the fight, preferring to fight behind prepared defenses than out in the open. He is often right.
• The Director’s ambition isn’t irrational. Evolite really could enable everything. They just see no reason to stop at escape.
• The Doctor is the voice asking whether the extra gain is worth the extra risk. Later in the game the Doctor may take on an anthropologist role (see below).
• How they address each other: “General” is easy to say. “Doc” is the familiar form. “Director” is a mouthful and rarely spoken; the Director may use formal titles to assert a little authority. Avoid “boss”, because it implies the Director outranks the others.
• Whatever hierarchy existed before the crash no longer matters. Nobody needs to say so; the General and Doctor openly challenge the Director, and that says enough.
• Rejected names: Ecologist (wrong framing), Survivalist (used as an interim label), Industrialist/Capitalist (not titles). See decision-log.md.

Optional later role: the Doctor as anthropologist Tentative

Once deep drilling exists, killing creatures is no longer necessary to get Evolite. The Doctor may push for humane study of the aliens, which could open a biological/behavioral research branch (noise dampening, behavior prediction, deterrents). The General and Director see that research as an expense, but it ends up helping the Director’s profits as well (a quieter factory needs fewer turrets and less ammo).

Captain: dead, or the player? Open

Two framings are still on the table (a third, where one deputy becomes acting commander, was rejected):

	A. Captain died in the crash	B. Player is the unnamed captain
Player	Not addressed at all; watches the tension while controlling everything; no fourth-wall breaks	Addressed as “Captain”; decides, through actions, how much of each advisor’s advice to follow
Dialogue	Advisors argue with each other	Advisors try to persuade the captain
Multiplayer fit	Natural, since every player holds the same abstract role	Awkward with several players being “the captain”
Strength	More personality and unresolved arguments	Responsibility feels personal

Either way, the player has no dialogue choices. The player answers through what they build, research and fight. Sample scenes in both styles are in the transcript.

Story beats

Tier 0: discovery Decided

The story plays out as a series of discoveries, shown as comic panels or simple dialogue text over units. These double as the tutorial and the scene-setting.

1. The crash. Despair. Nobody is coming.
2. The survival checklist. The first basic resource found, whichever it is, triggers a story moment plus a checklist of the other three. Example, if stone comes first: “Excellent, that Basalite is perfect for building our foundations from. If only we can find some ferrous metals, a conductive metal, and some sort of fuel, we may just survive!” After that the four basics can be found in any order, each with a short optimistic moment:
   • Colite: a familiar but rudimentary energy source.
   • Ferrite / Cuprite: exciting because they resemble useful metals from home.
   • Basalite: the core building block.
3. Surprises (any order relative to the checklist):
   • Aliens. The planet isn’t empty. Fear. Unlocks the Barracks. The General recommends perimeter security.
   • Evolite. Something completely unfamiliar. A sample has to go back to the ship for study. When the study finishes, the advisors realize it enables technology they couldn’t build before, and the Tier 1 tech tree appears.
4. Constraint: the opening dialogue must not mention aliens, Evolite, research points or a tech tree. Those concepts should reach the player as genuine discoveries.

First contact Decided

• The first fight is not optional in the first hour, but its outcome isn’t scripted. The encounter is inevitable; the consequences depend on how well the player prepared.
• Key reversal: “The aliens aren’t coming for the survivors. They’re coming for the noise.” The creatures walk straight past the shelter and the wreck and attack the running machinery.
• The aliens turn out to be hostile but mainly defensive.
• Each advisor draws a different, valid strategy from the same event:
  • General: lure them into fortified positions.
  • Director: exploit the behavior to harvest more Evolite.
  • Doctor: shutting the machines down would have avoided the fight.
• When it’s revealed that the aliens carry Evolite, killing them becomes one valid way to harvest it, alongside surface deposits and, later, the drill. Killing is never forced (see resources-and-economy.md).

Sample first-encounter exchange (draft):

General: “They’re coming straight toward the machines. Get the turrets online.” Doctor: “Or shut the machines down. They weren’t interested in us before we started digging.” Director: “We’ve finally got production moving. I’d rather not stop everything now.” General: “Then we’d better be ready to fight.” Doctor: “We don’t even know if they intend to stay.” Director: “Well, whatever we do, let’s decide before they reach the refinery.”

Day/night Tentative

If there is a day/night cycle, introduce it just after the first encounter, once noise is understood (see world.md).

Underground Evolite Decided

• Discovered fairly early (around Tier 2–3, roughly an hour or so in) by geological scanning. It’s revealed to the player long before they can afford the drill to extract it.
• A major turning point: “we don’t have to fight them for it.”

Draft scene (Director / General / Doctor):

Director: “Evolite. Underground. And if these readings are correct, more than we’ve recovered from every creature we’ve killed combined.” Doctor: “So we don’t have to keep fighting them for it?” Director: “Not necessarily. We’d need a much larger drill.” General: “How much noise?” Director: “Quite a bit, I imagine.” Doctor: “Of course.” Director: “Doc, we were sent halfway across the galaxy to find commercially viable resources. This is the single greatest mineral discovery in human history.” Doctor: “We were also supposed to come back.” … Doctor: “Hang on. The plan is to build an enormous machine that attracts every hostile creature on the planet, and then build an enormous army to protect it?” Director: “You’re making it sound unnecessarily complicated.” Doctor: “I’m a doctor. I see complications everywhere.” General: “I’m beginning to like this plan.”

Other drafted big-drill scenes are in the transcript (drill design, “it’s going to be loud,” the first long run, and “a lesson in noise” where turning the drill off doesn’t stop creatures that are already committed).

How dialogue is delivered Decided

• The narrative responds to gameplay and never drives it. Gameplay comes first.
• The advisors appear throughout the game but less and less often. A player at hour 10 who is grinding without big milestones or setbacks may hear nothing.
• Triggers:
  • Progression milestones: new resource, Evolite study, electricity, the drill, a new species, a boss.
  • Significant events: a devastating attack, a surprisingly successful defense.
  • Contextual nudges for a mechanic the player seems to be missing (for example, the Doctor suggesting a shutdown when exposed mines keep getting destroyed). Only for persistent problems, never every hiccup.
• The advisors are not quest-givers. They disagree, interpret and occasionally suggest.
• Delivery: a compact dialogue panel while play continues, each conversation firing once. No mandatory cutscenes Tentative.
• Should the advisors comment on the player’s emerging play style (for example, the General growing confident after hours of hive clearing)? [Open — pinned]

The ending Decided

• Victory = repairing and launching the original crashed ship. (This replaced the earlier “build a spaceship/rocket” idea.)
• All three advisors want the ship repaired, for different reasons:
  • Doctor: rescue. Go home. Mission over.
  • General: expansion. Colonize further and secure more territory.
  • Director: opportunity. Interplanetary trade, riches, more advanced technology.
• Dialogue ends at the launch. We don’t say who boards. Credits roll.
• The world doesn’t end. The player can keep playing for hundreds of hours. The ship can fly off and return; it lands visibly repaired and is no longer the main goal.
• A second act or sequel could pick up from the launch.
• Rockets proper become an optional late-game expansion (the Director’s trade routes) Tentative.

Sample closing exchange (draft, from the earlier spaceship version):

Doctor: “It’s ready. We can finally go home.” Director: “Home? Do you have any idea what this place is worth?” General: “We haven’t even secured the northern continent.” Doctor: “You two can have it.”