Spaceship

Publicly available ship records

Ship history

Allure of the Stars (named after a gigantic cruise ship of the early 21st century) was one of the long series of luxurious orbit-to-orbit cruise liners. The ships are produced for 34 years now, one or two per year, depending on economic cycles. Quite an obvious design: a disc just large enough for comfortable artificial gravity through constant spinning. Fusion reactor in the middle of the axle powering engines protruding far back from the rear plane, a meteor shield at the front. This particular specimen had a meteor shield in the form of a flat, multi-layer. unpressurized cargo bay covering the front plane. Such extra cargo capacity enables long space journeys or opportunistic cargo transport assignments on shorter routes. It also makes the ship much thicker than usually: the length from the tip of the cargo bay to the end of the engines is almost two thirds of the diameter of the disk.

The vessels of this kind are the largest passenger ships ever serially manufactured and the third largest including transport ships, but then, a lot of bigger ships are still produced ad-hoc, by wiring together cheap modules and primitive cargo hulls welded in space. This particular specimen was produced in a year and a half, 23 years ago, for long cruises to gas giants. It sustained serious structural damage in a docking accident on a low Jupiter orbit after a couple of years of service. A millionaire bought it then and refurbished as his private mobile space island. Affixing engines to a hollowed out asteroid is more stylish, but rolling a big ship in asteroid rubble of various sizes is much cheaper and results in a faster, roughly spindle-shaped unit.

The ship is reported to have burned down in the Neptune atmosphere due to a navigation error eight years ago. Only the millionaire and the ship's captain were on board at that time. They reached a space shuttle docked at the surface of the spinning disc and catapulted away from the planet using the centrifugal force. Initially, they had trouble transmitting an S.O.S, but were finally found and picked up. The millionaire returned to Earth and his name never again appears in public space logs or space ship registers.

Technical details

The ship is rotating at 2.5 rpm. Contemporary drugs and easy exercises counter the Coriolis effect problems for the few that experience them already above 2 rpm. To get 1g at the floor of the first outer level, the diameter of the disc has to be 288m. That's above half the length of the New York's Empire State Building and of the largest oil tankers, and more than two thirds of the ship's namesake sea vessel length. The thickness of the main disc is 65m, which is a bit below the width and the height of the namesake, but gives around 5 times the volume. The disk's radius is 144m. Since decks are 3 meter high, it's potentially 48 decks, but the inner ones would have negligent gravity, terrible Coriolis force and enormous curvature. Gravity as little as that on the Moon (0.165g) appears at level 40 towards the centre and the remaining 8 inner decks are taken by the nuclear reactor and engines, which protrude from the rear of the ship.

The first outer level hosts an airlock, supply stores and acts as a meteor shield buffer. Docking of shuttles is performed under autopilot via a tangent line flight with a speed matching that of the disk surface. At the very moment of contact the clamps are engaged and the passengers experience immediate transition from free fall to 1g gravity. The second level is the navigation deck where most of the crew works and lives. Then comes the passenger area with a bit less than 1g, which is considered comfortable and fun. The longest decks are around 900m long, the 38th deck is around 180m, which is 5 times shorter.

The hidden facts

Backstory

TODO: Was there any shady motive in the millionaire's purchase of the ship? How was it refurbished? What extra, secret installations and vaults? What experiments and what space exploration was accomplished? Did the millionaire invite the aliens? How soon was he aware of the alien infestation? Why didn't he alert authorities? Why did he want the aliens killed?

See the alien backstory for what happened to the ship between they took control and had to temporarily relinquish control again to avoid detection.

Layout

Allure of the Stars has 40 decks divided thematically into areas, each a few levels deep. The precise extent of areas is slightly randomized and some areas may even overlap a bit after the greenery level, but the general order is fixed. Each level is divided into sectors, between 90 and 180 meters long, with fuzzy borders. The layout of the sectors reflects the history of this ship: first a luxury cruise liner, then extravagant private flying island, private trans-jovian space laboratory, alien fortress, alien reconnaissance and transport vessel.

The lifts are dead and the lift shafts are inaccessible. There is only one set of aligned stairs from level 1 to level 40, starting close to the airlock on level 1. For security, even decks have the stairs aligned in one position and odd decks in a nearby position, so that closing doors is always enough to separate decks. Some other levels are connected by ad hoc stairs, too, with their respective walls and doors for security. For simplicity, the stairs can never be obstructed or destroyed, so the only way to block them is via walls and doors.

A tentative draft of areas:

• Level 1: airlock and nearby stairs to level 2. The level is a buffer against meteor hits, so there are no human cabins and lots of strong doors; the ones around the airlock area are closed and corridors are obstructed, so most of level 1 will be explored after visiting level 2. Double height to fit the water-treatment basins.
  • Sectors: water recycling basins, with plants and water-liking animals, water filters, some chemistry stuff. Life support machinery rooms (for simplicity, breaking these does not ever disrupt life support), various supplies storage rooms.
  • Weapons: fists and clubs.
  • Enemies: animals, most of the assassin type (low HP, high damage, attack from hiding). Most die if two players hit them at once or one hits them twice; they incapacitate a hero in two blows, but the medical bay is close and they can't open doors, so it's easy to avoid serious danger.
• Level 2: navigation panels and other areas where space crew officers hang on.
  • Sectors: navigation area with lots of open space and various other equipment for running the ship, captain's and owner's apartments, officer's studios, a common kitchen with no cutlery and an eating room, gym, medical bay.
  • Weapons: fists and clubs.
  • Enemies: animals, as on level 1, but much less, only in remote and closed rooms. One or two mildly deranged unarmed domestic robots.
• Levels 3--4.5: passenger area (the fraction means its randomly 3--4 or 3--5).
  • Sectors: cabins and apartments of various sizes, small restaurants, open lounges around lifts. Exceptionally, this area can be entered without a hard fight, using just the welding equipment found on level 1 and the counterattack wave is very weak. On level 4 a big server room with navigation computers. Whomever controls the room, controls the ship engines.
  • Weapons: knives and other implements from the restaurants, TODO: more?
  • Enemies: less, but much stronger animals. Some reprogrammed human robots, some with weak weapons.
• Level 5.5--8.5: greenery, only one level, but thrice the height, plants everywhere.
  • Sectors: recreational areas with benches and ponds, densely overgrown areas, swimming pool, zoo gone wrong.
  • Weapons: hay forks, hatchets, scythes, mowing equipment, an electric saw of course.
  • Enemies: lots of strong animals, a bit of deformed animals and animal-robot unarmed hybrids, alien animals.
• Level 8.5-10.25: an area under construction.
  • Sectors: lots of rubble and empty spaces.
  • Weapons: electric drills, pneumatic hammers, hand rivet setters and nail shooters.
  • Enemies: construction robots armed with the above weapons, all animal-like variations, alien animals, unarmed alien robots.

TODO:

• an area/time window with personal weapons, such as pistols, shotguns; hunting weapons
• an area/time window with army weapons up to small stun grenades, without RPG or rocket launchers
• an area/time window with available, working alien weapons; this may coincide with alien-built structure and/or a chaos/fractal chaos of rubble; make 3 such areas, first mostly melee weapons and close quarters levels, then mostly various strange weapons and strange rooms, at last mostly ranged weapons and quite open levels --- it's just aliens choosing weapons according to the terrain
• a very tough alien area with varied terrain, where heroes at last can and at last want to smash whole level sections to pieces, very strong alien counterattacks, which push heroes back almost to the start of the ship, most of the ship gets smashed to pieces in the process, but the newly acquired potent ranged weapons work OK in open areas

Ending:

• Level 39: the endgame battle area (TODO: special height? protruding into the cargo area? anything else?).
  • Sectors: large mostly empty halls, a bit of cover can be purchased by ripping down the sparse constructions (under fire) and building week barricades from them. About the only smart tactical move possible, except the obvious frantic retreat to lower levels, is going around the level and attacking the enemy from behind. Which they may decide to do first, if you don't.
  • Weapons: all alien weapons, lots of.
  • Enemies: the strongest badass alien force you've ever seen; assembled in rectangles and firing in volleys. Two alien robot kinds you've never seen before.
• Level 40: the nuclear reactor servicing rooms turned alien laboratory.
  • Sectors: mazes of human machinery, mazes of alien installations plugged into the reactor. One central room with main nuclear reactor controls on a wall, bumping them wins this part of the game.
  • Weapons: sparse alien, including the best kind just lying on the floor, nobody expected you to survive that far.
  • Enemies: only aliens nerds, half unarmed.