Text-based, using the handy framework I made for Fleet. Probably takes place in the same universe as Fleet -- one of the hyperbolic universes with irregular galaxies and vast distances between them.
The game is a space-based 4x type game, except without the exterminate angle of it. The goal is instead to expand large enough to allow your civilization to escape the universe via the Hyperring in the SMBH at the center of the galaxy. This requires multiple steps.
Saving is done via logins and ajax, as various parts of the game take time to complete so it's more something you check on -- though you can explore/exploit at your leisure. Saving exclusively stores your civilization's progress, as locations are contingent on terminable "missions".
Upgrades and progress towards game goals are ultimately real time based, taking hours or days to see measurable progress. However you can do a heck of a lot while you wait to speed those processes up.
The game integrates heavily with its initial lore, similar to Wild Pig Island or Minds. I'll explore it in this post.
Your civilization starts at a planet at a star that lies above the elliptic plane of the galaxy, known as Zenith.
Zenith has been a kind of stasis egg for thousands of years, largely preserving your civilization's technology at the expense of population growth (or them being alive for that matter). Your civilization also seeded the galaxy's habitable worlds so you'll find various other high-breeding peoples, known as Horizons. These are at various levels of technology but definitely don't rival your own for lore-explained reasons. They're completely isolated from each other.
The original civilization built a network into various sectors of the galaxy that allows one-way travel (and temporary two-way communication) there. Over time, colonies of your technology and the manpower of the Horizons there can bridge the gap and connect back to Zenith, which is how you Expand in this goal. Provided the Horizons accept you of course.
This network has unfortunately shifted over the past thousands of years in unexpected and chaotic ways due to the different physical laws that govern this universe -- gravity is super weak on large scales, which explains the overall lack of galaxies, their shape, and the chaotic movement of celestial bodies. Some worlds (known as Pivots) have a more understandable location, and you start the game with the knowledge of these.
You can find additional Nodes on the network randomly (which would definitely take a while) or by finding still-running planetary Artifacts that have tracked the positions of stars and can identify viable Nodes. Horizon civilizations tend to build around the Artifacts or worship them or something equally ridiculous, as their technology level is a lot higher and they're capable of running for hundreds of thousands of years.
Node jumps
The network is a series of letters and numbers preceded by @, so you can store it in your Journal easier. The game engine allows you to take your own wiki-like (and table-friendly) Notes for your own internal use. These can maybe also be shared with players of the same Seed (galaxy basically).
Node jumps are instantaneous and can send Scout ships for a minimal amount of resources. However they take a lot of energy, so until you can get your energy production up, you have a limited amount of trips you can make per irl day.
Planetary Ships and especially Colony ships take more resources, but you start with a pretty good stock of these and can generate more over time, you mostly just want to make sure your production of these matches what you're doing per day. Horizon Transport vessels are trickier.
Assuming you've found an active Node through some means and can send a Scout ship, you then have to do a bit of exploring to see if there's still a habitable planet there. This requires:
Measuring the size and luminosity of the star to determine its goldilocks zone. You get real-world formulas here and random data and have to do the calculations yourself, for fun.
Scanning for planetary bodies within that habitable zone. This takes effort rather than time, but there are various planetoid "clues" that can help speed it up, or upgrades of course.
If you find a rocky planet(s), cool you're done. If you find a gas giant or ice giant, however, you then have to do something similar to find habitable moons.
You'll get a readout of the likelihood of each planetary body having various planet types (desert, mountainous, oceanic, forested or the rare terran). This will help you determine what kind of Exploration kit to send. With upgrades, you'll improve the accuracy of these results, eventually knowing the planetary type with 100% precision.
There can be multiple habitable locations per node system. It's worth taking the time to find them all, so you don't have to waste additional energy/resources for scout ships later.
Exploring
Once you've found suitable planetary body(s), you need to send Exploration Kits to them -- these are vessels that will drop off a planetary vehicle. The planetary vehicle has to match the planet or you've wasted your time. So starting out it might make more sense to send a variety of vehicles into the system and hope you get a match somewhere.
Assuming it matches, you'll deploy the vehicle and it'll begin scanning/transporting around the environment to find Horizons (if any), resources, etc. The scans are instant, however the transport to pockets of civilization or resources can take several irl hours. You'll at least get an idea of if it's worth keeping communication up or not. Resource pockets have a similar scale as planets -- you know the likelihood of various things but not what's actually there until you go.
Speaking of communication, you can only maintain a limited number of missions at a time (upgradeable). Terminating one will allow you to establish others.
Exploration Goals
While I'm here, your exploration can take you towards several things:
Horizon civilizations -- still-living peoples of the planet. There are likely going to be multiple groups on the planet that are very similar but not exact replicas.
Ruins -- people don't live here, but there's a chance of finding useful Technology and a higher likelihood of finding Artifacts than in civilized areas (though it's still pretty low and you can't scan for them).
Resources -- exploitable resources for the colonization phase.
Horizons provide the manpower for various Expansion tasks. A good Horizon population will have the following characteristics:
High Population
High Subservience, since you're basically aligning them with your goals.
High Fertility, so their numbers grow quickly.
High Ingenuity, so largescale projects develop quicker.
High Tolerance, so they can be mixed with other populations without conflict.
High Adventurousness, so they can be transported to other parts of the galaxy.
However, it's highly unlikely to get all of these traits at once. Large populations tend to be more resistant to subservience, and those in unsustainable conditions will have low fertility (but high adventurousness). Failing to acknowledge these traits will lead to longer wait times or conflict that leads to depopulation, decreased resource yield, etc. Maybe even revolution if it's bad enough. Management is therefore a big part of this game, and the stat splay should be equally as complex as the Fishing Game and also depend on things like the condition of the planet, its history, climate, etc. Might even be procgen from seed to seed.
Lore-wise, Horizons have been engineered to have maximum fertility, to breed quicker (and younger) and produce twins/triplets more often and maintain fertility throughout their (relatively short) lives. These changes come at the cost of decreased lifespan (20-30 years), so their societies and cultures are gonna be pretty alien. These changes led to decreased intelligence originally as well, but depending on the society this may have been deselected. They're definitely not in a position to do interstellar expansion after only a few thousand years, however. Societies of Horizons are very likely to collapse as well, or the gene shifts might accelerate and turn them into semi-animals so you'll see largely unusable groups like that too.
Zenithians, meanwhile, are immortal/invulnerable/etc and are used to long periods of stasis. Their goals with the projects here are the same as they were thousands of years ago -- collect material, build conical arks, send them (and people) into the hyperring into other universes. This particular universe was chosen because while it's hyperbolic, it's more stable than the parent universe and the date of it ripping itself apart is calculable by the distance of galaxies -- a few thousand years. So it made sense to seed it and wait for population growth for the next steps. The goal isn't to save everyone in the galaxy, it's to build a civilization capable of sending as many people as possible into other universes to preserve humanity as a whole before the whole thing goes belly-up. So they picked the sweet spot time-wise between population growth and eventual destruction. You might therefore have some kind of time limit as a player and get a kind of "score" of how many people you saved. It would kinda be funny to have a high scores table for a simulation game that could conceivably take months to run.
Colonizing a planet already home to people, and essentially using the existing manpower. This is the saner option.
Colonizing a dead planet due to it having better resources. This requires transport, the likelihood of people dying in transit or on the other world, etc. Also more time. It might be worth it though.
The first type requires Colonization ships, which are a bit cheaper -- their goal is just to transfer information and technology and I guess some Zenithians to run the damn thing.
The first thing they need to build is a Node Mouth -- a big circular object that allows them to transport stuff to and from Zenith and maintain communication indefinitely. They should ideally use local resources and manpower. Once they're linked, they just become a set of stats/growth stats that influence your stat totals, at least until you decide to transport them elsewhere or alter their society to improve stats.
Transport ships require actually ferrying people, which takes time, and ties into adventurousness/tolerance stats. It can cost lives, and be way slower, however is generally more useful in the long term, especially if you're moving high-fertility groups.
