-A Social Space Simulation Game for the Starship Captain in All of UsBy Paul Weiler Galactic Adventures is about

the fun in building up a starship and manning it with your friends. This game will provide an accessible, understandable, and fun social gaming experience in a realistic distantfuture universe. Think Mafia Wars meets Star Trek. You play as a starship captain who must build his ship and crew, and then adventure through the galaxy. The Life of a Space Adventurer: Gameplay in Galactic Adventures is very straightforward. There are three simple steps to success: 1. Put together a ship and crew You buy a ship, hire your crew, and buy new parts and equipment to make them the best possible. You can even add your friends as crew members. 2. Take on missions You pick which missions you can do and queue them up. Each mission requires a specific amount of real-time to complete. You have only so much fuel to use on missions each day, but you progress through a mission whether youre playing or not. 3. Reap the rewards of credits and fame. Your rewards for completed missions will be waiting for you when you log back into the game. These rewards range from Galactic Credits, to Items, or even rare Artifacts. By taking advantage of your rewards, you can improve your ship and crew to take on even more rewarding missions later! Visually, Galactic Adventures will have plenty of futuristic interfaces and space backdrops, but the game itself takes place entirely within menus. Concept art may be used as a reward or victory screen for completed missions, but there isnt any on-screen action. Preparing for Adventure (putting together your ship and crew): Your Assets: Galactic Credits: This is your standard issue currency. You use it to buy most items.

Galactic Fame: Galactic Fame is your rare, special resource. It is earned by completing special Artifact Missions and by completing missions on someone elses crew. Galactic Fame is needed to buy the best ships and rare equipment. Youll hear a lot more about Galactic Fame a little later. Ship Fuel: This regenerates every day, and it determines how much time your ship can spend on missions each day. You can buy items to restore this, and you can use cash purchases to buy special Warp Fuel that lets you finish missions instantly. Cargo Hold: This is your inventory. It contains all your items. Items are divided up into several types. Items: All items are designed to help you complete missions. The primary function for Items is to get you the Skill Points that you need to take on missions. Each mission has specific Skill Point requirements, so in order to do missions, you need good items. Youll hear more about missions later on. Equipment: items that are attached to your character and your crew Ship Parts: items that are attached to your ship Alien Artifacts: rare, alien artifacts that unlock special high-reward missions Salvage Boxes: random mission rewards that require special keys to unlock Fuel Packs: let you do more missions Skill Points: There are six different skills/competencies that play a pivotal role in the universe of Galactic Adventures: Piloting: How well you can handle missions requiring agile maneuvers or other skillful flying Engineering: How well you can handle missions with technological threats or demands on your ship Science: How well you can handle missions requiring dealing with unusual or anomalous environments Combat: How well you can perform in a battle situation Exploration: How well you can perform scouting or analysis missions in unknown areas Diplomacy: How well you handle missions requiring charisma and communication Your Captain: In Galactic Adventures, you play as a starship captain. When you start the game as a new character, you are given 10 skill points to allocate to whatever combination of skills you like. As you complete missions, you will gain experience as a Space Captain and eventually gain levels. Each level, you will get 1 additional skill point to spend wherever you see fit.

Your Crew: Non-player crew members each have their own skill lists. These stats will be much lower than a player characters skills, with early crew members only having 1-3 skill points total across all skill types. Both the players and crew members skill stats are modified by equipment bonuses. Any individual character can have at most two pieces of equipment in use at a time. For example, you might equip a [Holo-Shield] that gives you +2 to your Combat skill. Your Space Ship: Your space ship has a specific number of space ship parts slots. This number determines how many space ship parts the ship can equip. Larger ships that you can buy later in the game have more slots for extra parts. You might equip your ship with the [Ultra Thrusters] to give a +2 to Piloting. You ship also has a specific number of crew slots. This is the number of crew members that your ship can have. Larger ships will have space for more crew members. Your space ship as a whole has a combined Mission Rating. The ships Mission Rating is the total of all the skill points of the captain, the crew, and the space ship parts that are attached to the ship. The Mission Rating is very important because it determines which missions your ship can undertake. Later on, youll be able to buy new, larger ships. You will even be able to buy additional ships. If you can equip and crew your extra ships, you can send them out on their own missions. Your ship has a limited Fuel Supply. This determines how long your ship can spend doing missions. Every day, this fuel is automatically recharged. When you start playing, you may have 3-4 hours of fuel to work with each day. If you run out of fuel mid-mission, all your progress toward completion is saved until you have more fuel to continue. You can buy items to restore or expand your fuel supply. Adventuring in the Galaxy (undertaking missions): Missions: Missions have a wide variety of requirements and parameters, but they all boil down to a simple formula: if you have the required skills, you can take on a mission, and once the mission has been completed, you gain rewards. For instance, an early mission Scout out the Asteroid may require 2 points in Piloting and 1 point in Exploration to undertake. The mission will take roughly 5 minutes of real-time to complete, and it will reward you with a small amount of Galactic Credits and a Space Ship Part [Mineral Scanner] that gives your ship +1 point in Exploration. By contrast, a far more advanced mission such as Rendezvous with the Alien Envoy will require 20 points in Diplomacy, 15 points in Combat, and 10 points in Piloting. This mission will require 4 hours of

real time to complete, and will score you a huge amount of Galactic Credits, a piece of Equipment [Universal Translator] which gives you +5 Diplomacy. The Story: This game isnt primarily about story progression, but there will be specific story missions that provide some background and historical information for the game world. These missions do not have unusually high requirements, but they generally take a long time to complete and grant significant rewards (including some Galactic Fame). These missions will also be used to mark significant steps in your progression. For instance, one story mission may require you to deploy three separate ships at the same timewhich will be quite the feat to buy and assemble. The Benefits of Adventure (claiming your mission rewards): Every time you complete a mission, you get some Galactic Credits. Sometimes, you may get a Salvage Box, an Item, or even an ultra-rare Alien Artifact. Galactic Credits are used to buy the vast majority of items. Almost any equipment or space ship parts are bought with Credits; you can also buy extra spaceship Fuel with Credits. Salvage Boxes: Throughout your space travel adventures, you will occasionally earn a Salvage Box when you complete a mission. These boxes may contain great rewards, but you need keys to open them. Keys can only be acquired by purchasing them in the cash store. Each box has a level, to let you know roughly what level of equipment youll find in it. You will consistently find Salvage Boxes with levels (and appropriate contents) that are several levels higher than your character and existing equipment (you can still equip them, though!) Keys have levels too, and they are available at specific increments. For instance, you may be able to buy level 5, 10, 15, etc. keys. Each higher-tier key is only slightly more expensive than previous keys, and unlocks all the boxes you have or find in the future that are that level or lower. Salvage boxes can contain any number of things: parts, equipment, credits, artifacts, or crew contracts. You dont need salvage boxes to obtain equipment, though. Everything can find in a box can also be bought at the Galactic Station, the games main hub. Alien Artifacts: Alien Artifacts unlock special Artifact Missions. These are most commonly acquired through the cash shop, but you can also find them rarely in Salvage Boxes or as mission rewards. Artifact Missions are usually very short, and the skill requirements are not unreasonably high. However, these missions grant a significant amount of Galactic Fame for completion.

The Galactic Station: The Galactic Station is the core locale where you perform all of your in-game actions. The Galactic Station is divided up into several different areas: Mission Command: This is where you take on new missions. You wont begin a mission until you depart the station, but you can queue up your missions and decide which ones to undertake. Recruiting Station: This is where you go to hire normal crew members for your ship Officers Lounge: This is where you go to get premium crew members for your ship Galactic Market: This is where you buy equipment for yourself and your crew members. Tech Bay: This is where you buy new parts for your ship(s) The Recruiting Station and Officers Lounge: These areas are where you can recruit new NPC crew members to serve on your ship(s). Each NPC recruit has a specific cost associated with them. The more skills, and in particular the higher any one skill, the more Galactic Credits that crew member will cost to hire. The Officers Lounge contains premium crew members with skill totals that may be roughly twice as high as those of normal crew members. All premium crew members cost an amount of Galactic Fame to hire, however, once you hire a premium crew member, he or she will gain skill points with you every time you level up, dramatically extending the mileage you get out of a single hire. The Galactic Market and Tech Bay: These are the two shops where you buy all your upgraded items. They are divided into two separate areas for logical reasons, but they also make it easier to distinguish between ship items and character items. Each shop has an ITEM OF THE DAY that you can buy for discounted rates, probably 75% off. These deals will emphasize items requiring some Galactic Fame, making the discounts all the more precious to take advantage of. Playing with Friends: You can get all your friends who play the game to join your crew, or later on you can get them to fly separate ships in your fleet. Since player characters have dramatically higher skill point totals than generic crew members, even much lower level friends may be worth bringing on your crew. You can of course buy equipment or parts and send them to a friend, but that friend will need to equip the item manually before it takes effect if they are a member of your crew.

Every time you complete a mission as a member of a friends crew (something that you dont even have to know that youre participating in), you get a small reward in the form of Galactic Credits and Galactic Fame. These rewards will be waiting for you to collect the next time you log in. The significant advantages of having player crew members incentivize existing players to recruit new players, and the perks of being on a friends crew encourage players to keep their friends playing. Tuning for Progression: Getting friends help is important, but its also important that this doesnt make the game too easy. Ships will have maximum stats so that a new player cannot instantly do every mission by bringing their high level friends onto their crew. For instance, a low level ship may have a piloting skill cap of 3, because even the best pilot in the galaxy cant make that hunk of junk turn any faster. Only by accumulating Galactic Fame through missions and crewing for friends can the player purchase new, more advanced starships. Because missions require fuel to complete, only so many missions can be performed each day. With Credits, the player can increase the amount of time on missions each day (up to 24 hours per ship), and with cash purchases, the player can instantly complete missions. Monetizing the Adventure: To sum up, Galactic Adventures has several mechanisms to incentivize players to pay-in to the game: 1. 2. 3. 4. Buying Keys (which are used to open Salvage Boxes) Buying Artifacts (which yield the rare currency, Galactic Fame) Buying Warp Fuel (which let you complete Missions instantly) ANY PURCHASE will unlock the Officers Lounge, granting access to the best Crew Members

Why the Monetization Strategy: I chose to monetize the game off these four principles for several reasons. 1. Taking a page out of Team Fortress 2s book, the idea of mystery boxes and purchasable keys seems like a strong incentive to put in just a little money. I took the formula a step further and allowed a single key to open a large stash of boxes. Every time the player completes a mission and gets a Salvage Box, that cheap key purchase looks more and more appealing. 2. Buying Artifacts was a bit of a leap of faith. I could have allowed the players to simply buy Galactic Fame (which is what an Alien Artifact is good for), but by doing it this way, there is still that sense of accomplishment (if minor) that comes with earning your Fame. The logic shifts a little bit from paying to win to paying for more content that just happens to help you win.

3. Buying Warp Fuel to complete missions instantly was a no-brainer. If you finally scrapped together the skills to accept a really hard mission, what would be more fun than warping through it instead of having to wait a few hours to see the fruits of your labor? From a metagame perspective, you will ultimately be capped on mission-hours per day by 24 hours times your max number of ships, but with Warp Fuel you can complete as many missions as you want. 4. The Officers Lounge is designed to be the X-factor that pushes people on the fence about paying over to the other side. This adds a sense of prestige and premium status that comes with spending even less than a dollar. Though the crew members in the Officers Lounge all require Galactic Fame (which is easier to get by paying more), players will still be able to acquire these crew members by playing the game with no additional payments. Mission Accomplished? Galactic Adventures is a social experience pulling from distant-future space flight mechanics to create a fun, deep, simulation that is accessible to new players and interesting to long-time players while constantly providing meaningful incentive to pay in.