SWTOR vs Space Opera X new discussion

I decided to pull a few minor triggers in my SWTOR landscape. First, I took Hutran Thanatos, who just finished all of the Ilum story arc (with the exception of the two back to back flashpoints that really finish the story arc), took him to the fleet, and started training him in Biochem crafting. I spent a lot of time in the background while doing other things trying to keep that crafting leveled up; I’m in the upper 400s for the main skill and the two attendant gathering skills. As soon as I hit 600, of course, I’ll have hit the original crafting level cap, and I’ll have to spend credits to get him access to the next 100 levels and the “new” max of 700. Because I don’t really do much with Biochem, I don’t have a bunch of cool one-off schematics that I’m worried about him picking up, so once he’s done that, the reason for keeping Galation, my current Biochem crafter, will be gone.

 As a curious aside, I think I’ve gone farther in the story with Hutran Thanatos than I have with my original agent, Johhn, who’s still got some Ilum missions to complete. Then again, I’m pretty sure Johhn did Section X, the Black Hole and CZ-198. Technically, out of order, I suppose. Either way, that’s a curious little fact.

 I did this in part because I realized that I had way too many bounty hunters. Part of the reason for this is my “abortive” attempt to play the story with Graggory, my oldest actual character, meant that I thought I needed to create a Graggory look-alike for the bounty hunter story, and Galation was that character. (I actually had two characters on another account from way back during the demo days when you had to have a subscription just to play. I don’t even have that account anymore, so realistically Graggory is from my “reboot” of SWTOR playing much more recently; like in 2019 or so.) But I kept him because he was my Biochem crafter. If Hutran Thanatos becomes my Biochem crafter, then the reason to keep Galation becomes nothing more than nostalgia and holding on to something old that I don’t even need anymore. I’m quite certain that this isn’t a compelling enough reason, so the second change that I’ve triggered is that I’m preparing to retire Galation completely and delete him. This will be a slightly longer winding down process than maybe it needs to be, but I want to be thorough. I want to get Hutran Thanatos all the way up to 700 on his crafting skills first, I want to find a home for the legacy or unbound gear that Galation is holding on to (I know for sure that he’s got stuff like ice scrabbler jerky; the only schematic that is unusual, although I don’t know if I care to lure anymore pet tauntaun babies to any more characters anymore at this  point.) I’m also pretty sure his cargo hold is full of armormech crafting sets that Graggory made. Not sure why they ended up with Galation, but they did. Someone else will have to hold on to them. Johhn, being my default “banker” is probably the obvious choice, but we’ll see.

 Another aside. When I first made my big wave of characters of all of the classes, I didn’t have any idea what to name them. I decided to go like Luke (Skywalker) and name my Jedi knight Mark. Although in order to make the name work, I had to add some apostrophes and doubled letters, and he ended up as M’aar’k or something like that. I tend to write it Maark for ease. When I had Maark, not knowing what else to do, my mind was drawn to making a Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I still needed four more names, so I kept going in the New Testament and made an Actsion, Corinthion, Phillippion and Galation. I tend to hate all of these names now, but they’re not worth changing. Of course, Corinthion, Actsion and now Galation will all be deleted too. My next wave of characters had better names, using first/last name format and cool “Star Warsy” generated name list names. I tend to like all of my new names, at least so far. Phillippion is just my slicing gatherer, so I could do the same thing to him once I get another "new" character into the max level and finished with the main story category. Then my only real original badly named characters will by Mat Thew, Maark, Luukke and Johhn. Which aren't nearly as bad as Actsion, Corinthion, Phillippion and Galation were.

 And finally as part of the winding down, I recorded and edited some footage last night of Galation wandering around showing off all of his outfits. His outfits are maybe a bit on the old-fashioned side; I used a lot of world drop stuff, for instance, because I didn’t have a lot of cartel market or reputation items yet when I created most of them. This is maybe a bit of a last hurrah; he gets to show off his stuff before it all disappears forever. Once I document the pieces used, I’ll edit some sound (music and maybe me talking) and post it on youtube. It’ll be a nice tribute to Galation when he goes away forever.

 The third thing that was triggered was, that by deciding to get rid of Galation, I can create a new character and still be in the same place with regards to open character slots, so I went ahead and did it. I’m actually down to one open slot, but once I delete Galation, I’ll be back to two, which is plenty given how many characters I still need to play through before worrying about possibly making even more. I wanted a rattataki and I wanted another scoundrel with the damage over time spec instead of direct damage, so I created him as such, but he’ll be playing the trooper origin story, since that’s the one I have the least of. I not only created him, but played around with him to get him to 10^th level, took him to the fleet, and got him some stuff out of my legacy bank. I’ve created about half a dozen outfits for him, which I’ll show off, including one that looks almost exactly like an outfit of someone else’s that I highlighted a few posts ago. I’ve said before that my interpretation of the trooper is less like a regular soldier, and more like a James Bond-like agent. He has a reporting structure, sure, but he doesn’t stand around in uniform, participate in parades, salute his superiors or otherwise act in a stereotypically military fashion. He’s combination special forces and more the operations side of intelligence—an aggressive, action-oriented spy or something like that. Again; more James Bond than anything else. That actually mostly works with the story as written, it especially works with the three troopers that I have ongoing, who are respectively a gunslinger, a scoundrel and a sniper rather than a more direct combat soldier-like type of class. I also don’t really believe in my troopers or my bounty hunters either one running around all that often in heavy armor. They’re more like gunfighters from the Old West… except in space.

 I named this character Karr Tanus, which is a slightly respelled version of a name from my Space Opera X setting again, and which sounds very Barsoom-like, now that you mention it. Given that he’s a somewhat exotic alien rather than a human, I like that he’s got a Barsoom sounding name rather than a “Star Wars” sounding name like many of my human characters do. He’s obviously still on Ord Mantell and hasn’t even done the first mission yet (although as part of my leveling up, I did the Heroics—go figure.) But I didn’t make planet-specific outfits for him, I’m intending rather, like I did with Hutran Thanatos, on playing most of the run in my main outfit. Although I have a few other alternatives, because of course, why not. And I can get some variety when needed here and there.

 SWTOR always brings me back to Space Opera X, and although I haven’t done much except re-read a few of my posts on it, and think about what needs to be done. The biggest unfinished yet crucial task to get it “ready” is detailing the worlds of the Takach Kingdom, which has become less of a minor aside and more likely to be a major “protagonist area” or at least protagonist home base or friendly ally. There’s a few big differences between the Space Opera X setting and Star Wars. To wit:

 Star Wars has a lot of aliens compared to Space Opera X. Of course, I have some. But I really focus more on human ethnicities, many of which are quite exotic, because they diversified long ago on different planets than Earth, although genetically they are similar enough to be considered the same species (one of the great mysteries of the setting.) So, I’ve got exotic pale gray people, blue people, red people, and people with funky colored eyes, etc. And of course, a lot of people who are simply the descendants of Americans who went into space many, many generations ago. It’s mostly humanocentric in the way that Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age is. The aliens are mostly there for color and flavor; the setting is really telling the story of recognizably American space cowboys, swashbuckling adventurers, princesses, and whatnot.

First, the travel limitations make travel less easy and instantaneous (relatively speaking) in Space Opera X rather than Star Wars. There are comparisons that Traveller (the game and setting) make to Colonial ships having to cross the Atlantic Ocean in the 1500-1700s, which was a major undertaking to do still, or to the Pony Express maybe. And my system works very much like Traveller’s. You can’t talk via holocommunicator across the breadth of the galaxy, nor can you travel via hyperspace from one end of the galaxy to the next in a relatively short time. You can’t communicate long distance at all except in person through bulk jump (hyperspace, basically) travel, and then regular signals when within a single system. It takes months to get from the edge of the Monarchy’s main space lanes to get to their colonies in the Colonial Main, and that’s with many stops at many star systems in between, which hopefully occur without incident. Communication is as bad as travel; you can’t communicate across interstellar space at all except by making bulk jumps and then sending a signal when you’re close enough. Keep in mind that it takes NASA something like 18 hours to send a signal to Voyager 2 on the far edge of the solar system, and then it will take another 18 hours for Voyager to send a signal back. Communication—and travel—in space is a big deal. I actually like what this does to science fiction. Rather than handwaving away a solution like Star Wars has done where you can make a phone call across hundreds of millions of light years and it works just like a phone call to the neighborhood next door, the limitations force an interesting frontier vibe on the Colonial Main, the main area of my setting where stuff is happening, and that frontier vibe is crucial to  the flavor of the setting. You have to be self-sufficient, because help is never close by. 

Secondly, Star Wars had a very simple conflict system; the cartoonishly villainous Empire vs the “regular folks” of the Rebellion, or the Republic in some areas. Sometimes a few other players are woven in, like the Hutt Cartel, or other gangsters, or even extragalactic invaders in the New Republic novels, or the Alliance and Zakuul as two additional major players for part of the Old  Republic. Space Opera X is more about relatively smaller communities, and even those communities refer back to about half a dozen or so “major” groups, all of whom could be allied or antagonistic towards each other. My Revanchist Republic is actually the most overtly evil, being based mostly on modern day Clown World SJWs and wokesters. Even my Sith Empire analog, the Seraeans, have redeeming qualities, especially the Colonial ones who often are out in the Colonial Main because they chafed under the Imperial order anyway. This is more like a space-faring space opera Hyborian Age in some ways all over again; multiple nations with differing characters, so I can have all kinds of different stories and conflicts when I need them. Just like Howard may have wanted to tell a story in Ancient Rome and then another one in Ancient Egypt, and have it be somewhat coherent, I have multiple cultures that represent a combination of a real, often historical, culture and a modern ideal. But if you want to be able to tell any kind of story, you need more than just two political poles. So, that’s what I’ve done.

Anyway, those changed assumptions, or differing assumptions, mean that Space Opera X will necessarily feel a bit different than Star Wars, and it will facilitate more the kinds of stories that I prefer to tell. Not that it doesn’t still strongly resemble Star Wars, but to the extent that it does, it more resembles Star Wars as it was in the 70s than it became even after Empire Strikes Back. Much more Flash Gordon-like than it later became. Y’know what would be extra cool? If I could have access to the digital assets of SWTOR and make animated cut-scene like movies, but whole movies, or episodes of shows, or whatever, using them. I’d have to make some modifications; Chiss that have normal eyes, Rattataki with hair, etc. But how cool would that be?

UPDATE: Work's been very crazy today, but I do have another window open and I can take a few seconds here and there to start gathering and crafting missions. I passed the 600 level threshold with Hutran Thanatos, so I'm very close to not having anything left to hold on to Galation for. He'll be gone by the time the weekend is over.