03/21/2023 - 12:00 PMWelcome to Loremakers: Community Questions, a series focused on answering your lore quandaries and conundrums. We’ve done a deep dive through the lore Ask A Dev section and selected ten questions to answer about the Star Citizen universe. All questions were edited for context and clarity but you can click on the topic to go directly to the original post and join the conversation. Also, the Narrative team plans to do one installment of Loremakers: Community Questions every quarter with the next entry scheduled for Tuesday, June 20th, so please join the discussion and drop any other questions you might have about the universe in our Ask A Dev forum.
Messers and the Name of the United Empire of Earth Question: Why is it still called the United Empire of Earth when the Messers, now widely seen as malevolent dictators, originally gave it that name? Is there some reason why they opted not to rename the UEE to something new, without the historical baggage, after the Messer Era?
Answer: The simple answer is democracy. On April 30, 2793, the Senate voted on the massive Governance Modernization Act (GMA) meant to repair and reform a system warped to the will of the Messer's for far too long. Within this piece of legislation was a provision that would've renamed the United Empire of Earth to the Democratic Stellar Union (DSU), while another would have moved the empire's capital from Earth to Terra. Following a spirited debate within the Senate, the GMA fell three votes short of passing.
Of course, the real answer is much, much more complicated. It's a mixture of politics, optics, adoration for the past, and other factors. While the revolution was successful, not everyone supported it. Plenty of people and systems benefitted from the Messer regime and their policies, while others were happy to see the Messers go but believed the underlying institutions didn't need to be drastically overhauled. It could be argued that bundling the name change alongside other initiatives in the GMA, like the still controversial proposal to move the capital to Terra, forever tainted and politicized the idea. It made supporting a new name synonymous with moving the capital to Terra, an idea Earth-centric politicians and corporations strongly opposed.
Meanwhile, others argued that renaming the empire would make Humanity look weak to the Xi'an Empire and immediately nullify trade treaties with the Banu, grinding vital inter-species trading to a halt. One anti-name change Senator even calculated the cost of updating the empire's name on buildings, ships, equipment, armor, stationary, and more. Though the astronomical sum and the methodology used to achieve it were widely disputed, the number became a cultural punchline, turning people off to the idea and onto the immensity of the issue it would be to rename the empire.
Changing the name of the UEE has never come to a vote again after the failure of the GMA. Blame the politicization of the idea, or the Earth-centric entities desperate not to lose political, economic, or cultural cache. Blame the potential real world and political cost. All of these factors, and more, combined to keep the name United Empire of Earth around after the downfall of the Messers. Once it survived that turbulent time, the UEE worked hard to redefine itself so it would symbolize something other than the despotic regime that named it.
Historic Ship Hall at the IAE Question: Why doesn't the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo (IAE) have a historical ship hall? It would be great to have historical ships, like the Zeus, for players to see even if it's only the outside.
Answer: This is a fun idea but probably beyond the current scope for the IAE. Having a historical ship hall makes sense in lore, but would require extensive support from other teams. Even showing only the ship exteriors would necessitate that they go through the concept phase, which would include creating or reworking each ship's design language to be unique and era appropriate, before being modeled in-engine to meet our high standards. That would be a lot of work for an IAE hall. That said, there is interest in making flyable versions of historic ships. If we end up building enough of these, then there could potentially be such a hall at a future IAE expo.
Trash and Recycling Options Question: How are we supposed to sort our trash and recycling? Based on the bins currently in-game, it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's sparked some serious discussions between me and my friends and kept me up at night. I even asked the Reddit SC Discord but everyone had different answers.
Please help us settle this important waste separation discussion! It's more relevant than ever and also has some potential gameplay around it. Cleaning up the trash could offer a small incentive, like improving your rep, reducing fines, lowering crimestats, and so forth.
Answer: Not only does litter make us bitter, it's also a potential issue for servers to handle. While the game could just magically make garbage disappear, the hope is that we can develop it as part of possible gameplay loops and allow players to help with properly discarding items. That's why Design has been tasked with figuring out how to handle things players want to throw away. The Narrative team has had an initial, broad discussion with them, but it's still very much a work in progress. While nothing is set in stone, one of the proposed ideas is that the player shouldn't have to sort anything. A player could place their unwanted items into any bin and it would be sorted behind the scenes. This would make it easy for players to help keep the servers from getting bogged down. If that path is chosen, the lore could lean into a bit of future tech, like a smart trash sorting system, to explain how it works.
There's also been discussions about how to incentivize players to toss things in the trash, but nothing has been settled on yet. Would certain kinds of trash offer higher incentives than others? One thing to keep in mind is that providing a perk, like improving rep or lowering a crimestat, ties into other systems and might lead to unintended consequences. For example, imagine a player who is focused on earning reputation with a particular gang. They take a few minutes to toss trash into the bins at Orison only to have the rep boost with Crusader mess with their outlaw status. However these issues get sorted, the Narrative team is definitely looking forward to the satisfaction of placing an empty Pips can where it belongs.
Drama and Tension Question: How do you plan to introduce tension and suspense into the narrative of this universe? Everyone is functionally immortal. No one can die from anything but old age. How do you write around that?
Answer: The opportunities to introduce drama and tension into the narrative of the universe are limitless. There's tension in what system lies on the other side of a newly discovered jump. There's drama in a Hurston hiding from their family that they fell in love with a member of the United Workers of Hurston. Death is fertile ground for drama and tension but not the sole source.
Also, I wouldn't classify regen tech as functional immortality. It may currently feel that way in-game because the mechanic hasn't been fully implemented, but the regen system should have plenty of interesting wrinkles that create tension. For example, catastrophic deaths may result in injuries or affects that stick with your character. The loss of a ship or a frantic race to retrieve a precious or valuable item following a death is another. Plus, there's always the chance that this death might be the final one and result in that character passing on their stuff to an heir (new character).
Since the full system isn't in-game yet, it's worth reading both the original Death of a Spaceman post and the Loremakers' Guide to Regeneration to better understand our goals. Within the lore, we've already explored drama and tensions around regen and death in posts like Far From Home: Regen Contemplation, Starwatch: Bo 2.0, and Crossroads. Death won't be without consequence, tension, and drama in the game. It'll just be different than what we're used to.
Does the UEE Have a Universal Date and Time System? How About Aliens? Question: How is time handled in the UEE? Is one year still 365 days? How is that counted when the length of a day can vary from planet to planet? Do alien species have a sense of time? If so, do they have a different year than ours and a completely different time? How do you talk about time between two different species?
Answer: You're right, it's very complicated to figure out time in a universe where we have multiple planets, each with their own day/year cycle. How do you make plans to meet with someone, for example? The way we got around it was establishing Standard Earth Time (SET) as a standardized date/time signature that's embraced around the UEE. That way everyone would adhere and could plan to a single clock, even though they would still potentially have their own local time.
Aliens would also use SET when dealing with Humans, but have their own sense and scale of time. 100 Xi'an years roughly equates to 128 Standard Earth Years, and rai.Hy’ūm is their word for a Human year. Meanwhile, the Banu count time in "beats," which they call umi and equates to five seconds in Human Standard time. As members of the UEE, Tevarins would use SET. Finally, anyone who’s taken a moment to ask a Vanduul about their concept of time has died, so their perception and experience of it remains unknown.
Where is Gliese 667 Cc? Question: Do you have any information about this planet? I did not find any in the Galactapedia.
Answer: The Gliese system in-game is not meant to represent the real Gliese 667 triple-star system. Outside of Sol, all other systems in the game are fictional and, even if they share a name, are not intended to have a real world equivalent. As the old Star Citizen adage goes, "space be crazy" and Human knowledge of what lies out there is ever expanding. To save ourselves from constantly updating or retconning system information based on new discoveries, the Narrative team decided it would be best to keep them fictional.
Place Names? Question: I was wondering what the Narrative team's plans are for naming features in the 'verse? Names for things like the lakes, seas and oceans, and rivers. Larger craters on moons often have a distinct name, as do mountains and plains. This makes wayfinding easier and fleshes out the believability of the places. Colonized worlds would undoubtedly have named features, often given to them by the first person to discover or traverse them. I haven't seen any references to names or the naming convention, so I was just curious.
Answer: This topic pops up often, as we continue to build out and expand planetside locations. Much of the discussion around it is actually what or how much information should be given to the player. Does every mountain peak need a name? What about a small squatter's camp set up within the husk of a crashed ship? Would its name show up on the StarMap, and if so, would it be the name used by its residents? Is it weird that a group of ten who took to living in a crashed ship somehow got their name for the place on the StarMap? Should names of places only reveal themselves once players visit them? Should players be able to adjust the names of things on their own StarMap?
For now, Narrative has only named what's been deemed essential. How far we go with the naming of locations and environmental features is still to be seen, but one option would be to create a "name generator" that could kick out a bunch of distinct names that could then be assigned to locations. We already use one to generate names used in bounty missions and have messed around with one for businesses that could be used in building interiors. Such a location name generator would be very helpful if we need to name a bunch of places for the StarMap, because as fun as it sounds coming up with names for things, that fun fades fast and can become mentally exhausting once you have a couple hundred to tackle. While we'd still look to handcraft as many names as feasible, by utilizing a name generator for smaller locations we'd be able to quickly get a wide swath of options and can then spend our time picking and placing the good ones.
Effects of Regeneration on Society Question: I’m curious to hear from the Narrative team on the effects that regeneration has on a society. I was trying to think how such a fundamental shift would affect society, since many of our longstanding laws and morals would be deeply challenged by the fact that death is no longer final.
Would execution as a punishment even exist? Would murder be as heavily punished as it is now? It would seem that in general, people would value life less as death would not be final. Assuming a person imprinted before a dangerous mission, non-traumatic suicide (i.e. cyanide pill) would be a mostly viable means of escaping capture. High-risk economic activity would be seen as more viable. In fact, it's likely that crime would explode for a period while society adjusts to the fact that being killed in the commission of a crime is no longer "the end". Resources once considered too dangerous to extract would be actively sought out by those with the means to imprint/regen. Acts once considered extremely noble (i.e. captain going down with the ship) would be simply commonplace or even contractually required. Sorry, I know this has been kinda rambling, but it's something I've been wondering about more and more. I'd love to hear the lore team's take on regeneration and what it would mean for society.
Answer: We know this question comes around a lot and is of great interest to the community. The Narrative team actually dedicated one of our recent "lore jams" to elaborate on the subject of this question.
First, the death penalty. This practice would be impacted by regeneration tech, but the death penalty itself has already been outlawed in the 'verse for hundreds of years. As for murder, the law has gone a simple route. It is the act of murder that is being punished. Whether someone successfully regenerates or not, the prosecution is the same.
Second, using Regeneration as an "Out." It's not unheard of for criminals to use regenerating to escape a disadvantageous situation, but it's not all that common, either. It's important to remember that regeneration is not pleasant. Even if death itself is painless, regenerating is not. And then there's all the other side effects, like scarring, loss of memory, or being unable to use limbs you've previously lost even after they've been regenerated because the loss has deeply imprinted itself upon your consciousness. Using regeneration as an "out" is an extreme action - like sawing off your arm when you've been pinned under a rock - even if it's your only way out, how many people would actually go through with it?
Third, the broader cultural impact. It's understandable that we want to try and explain the risk-embracing behavior of players as an indication of the broader cultural impact of regeneration. But people don't drive more recklessly because they have seat belts. A lot of the repercussions and limitations of regeneration aren't represented in the current iteration of the game so while some individuals might be more reckless, it's likely they were predisposed for that behavior regardless of the wide availability of regeneration. For companies and organizations like the UEE, regeneration is still a costly process, and it's almost always either cheaper, easier, or simply more moral, to focus on saving lives than it is to rely on this imperfect technology.
Regeneration is a huge topic that we could explore for days on end. It is definitely part of the fabric of what makes Star Citizen unique as a science-fiction setting. Don't forget that in the lore of the universe regeneration is still very new technology. It was only released publicly in the UEE a few years ago, so the full extent of its impact hasn't been seen yet.
Lore About 323th Aggressor Squadron? Question: While searching for information about badges given at the first referral program level, I discovered the incredible stories of some squadrons, but found nothing related to the 323th. Is there any lore around the 323th? I'm really curious to know the notable actions of this squadron.
Answer: The UEEN Aggressor Squadron 323 was first introduced into lore as part of the announcement for the Esperia-manufactured Vanduul Glaive reproduction. Specializing in mimicking Vanduul tactics, the highly-skilled squadron was selected to be outfitted with the first production run of Human-made Glaives so they could operate training skirmishes to better prepare Navy pilots going up against Vanduul clans. Traditionally, an aggressor squadron is one that serves the role of being the "enemy" during training exercises and war games. In Star Citizen, this means that the 323 have become masters of Vanduul combat behavior and can fly with their unique aggressive flight style in a convincing manner. Before Esperia started making accurate reproductions, aggressor squadrons like the 323 would fly either normal military ships (frequently outfitted in special livery to make them seem more Vanduul), or the rare Vanduul salvaged ship; though the latter was infrequently used owing to impracticalities involved. Based out of MacArthur (Kilian V), the Navy's official headquarters, the 323 frequently recruit pilots who are near the end of their service commitment as a way to utilize their combat experience before they retire.
As mentioned in the question, Star Citizen's Referral Program features an Aggressor Squadron 323 "No Quarter Given" badge to display as part of the "Badger and Badges" reward given for obtaining the rank of Recruiter. However, in researching this question, the Narrative team discovered a typo in the description of this reward where the squadron was referred to incorrectly as the "35th." It should now be correct.
I Am Intrigued by S-Pop. What Does It Sound Like? Question: From the Galactapedia:
"S-pop (abbreviation of Saisei Pop) is a form of Human popular music originating on Saisei (Centauri III). Common characteristics of S-pop include the incorporation of relaxing organic-sourced sounds and traditional Saisei instruments. The term can refer either specifically to the popular music of Saisei or to any music functionally derived therefrom."
What would be the closest contemporary equivalent to S-Pop? I've found some genres which might fit the description but without knowing what traditional Saisei instruments are or how they would sound I'd love to know more.
Answer: You asked this question at just the right time! We recently posted a Galactapedia article on S-pop that gets into what it generally sounds like. Check it out!
Many S-pop songs incorporate synthesizers that source their sounds from organic noise, like crickets chirping, wind blowing through leaves, or water flowing. These aren't 1:1 replications, but baseline sounds that are used to build different notes (although directly sampled natural noises do pop up from time to time). The genre also utilizes instruments built from softwood trees that grow on Saisei. One mainstay, the s-guitar, is an all-softwood guitar that creates a deep, clear, and resonant sound. Look up an all-spruce guitar for a great example. Many songs use the chord progressions IV-V-iii-vi and vi–IV–V–I, along with minor keys. There are a lot of subgenres within S-pop, so you will find styles like pop, rock, dance, hip hop, metal, etc. within the genre. Saisei band the Claw famously covered "Moonlight" by metal band Clover and kicked off the S-pop craze that dominated UEE charts from 2932 to 2934.