Thorium Nova's North Star Principles

[alexanderson1993]

I recently read this blog post about product design. TL;DR: If you have moonshot, North Star, idealized plan, completely unconstrained by time, resources, or other constraints, the final product will likely be that much better. It is unlikely you'll actually achieve the North Star plan – you will have to make compromises and tradeoffs as you go – but keeping your eye on the North Star will elevate whatever experience you do manage to attain in your product.

Without further ado, here are Thorium Nova's North Stars.

• Up to 12 Stations
  • Stations depend and interact with other stations frequently
  • For small ships with no NPC crew, between 3 and 8 stations
  • For large ships with NPC crew, between 6 and 12 stations
• Just enough, but not too much, Flight Director controls
  • Simple controls for most common actions, ability to drop down to do more complex stuff, plus ability to add their own FD controls for convenience.
• Fully automated flights
  • Timelines that auto-advance based on the simulation
• Full suite of show controls
  • Lights, sound effects, music
  • Show controls should work well in a dedicated bridge and for over the internet play.
• Fully simulated 3D universe
  • Simulated movement of NPC ships, track position of player through space, tight integration with ship system behavior.
• Fully simulated internal ship map & crew
  • NPC Crew improve performance of ship and add secondary storylines
• Fully simulated dynamic ship systems & power management
  • Ship systems interact with each other to create emergent gameplay
• Multiple bridge support
• Internet play
  • Architected where it can be reasonably played over a standard internet connection
• Customizable
  • Almost everything can be adjusted or overhauled
• Extensible
  • An open, well-documented API makes it possible for third-party tools to access and use the same data and mutations which clients use
• Documentation
  • Everything that can be done in the controls is documented. Automatically if possible.

Perhaps these North Stars are a little too attainable? In the blog post, the North Star example was a Hovercar, which nobody knows how to build these days. Do you have ideas for more moonshot, unrealistic North Stars? Let me know below.

With these North Stars we can start applying constraints – giving shape to the vision to make it more realistic.

• The game is intended to be played in the following venues:
  • In a living room
  • Over the internet
  • At conventions
  • In brick-and-mortar space centers
• The game is intended to be played by between 4 and 12 crew players per ship. Single-player ships should be possible, but we are not optimizing for single-player gameplay.
• The game should be fun to play both with and without a Flight Director, regardless of venue, while recognizing there are major differences in how the game is played in either case.
• The game should work on a local area network without needing an internet connection. Features requiring an internet connection are considered optional.
• Players should only need to run a single self-hosted server and and connect via modern web browsers. Third-party clients are not required to play the game.
• The game should perform well over the internet when players are ±2 timezone from each other. We are not optimizing network code for intercontinental internet gameplay.
• Features should be designed with each play style (venue, Flight Director, crew size, ship style) in mind. We should avoid implementing features that cannot be implemented well for all play styles.
• This game is all about human interactions between crew members, Flight Directors, and other human participants. In this spirit, we prefer human-created contributions to AI generated contributions.

What other constraints would you include? What things am I missing? Or do you disagree with some of my North Stars or constraints? Let me know below.