Need some space hazard ideas

jonmulcahy

I'm working on a new game, and I need some cool ideas of what could go wrong on a long term space flight (100+ years). I've already got 62, but I want a lot more. Anyone have any thoughts?

jonmulcahy

some of the hazards I already have:

medical problems (cold/bacteria/virus/depression)
mechanical problems (stasis pod, o2 generator, engine, hull, ai, med bays, fuel pump, radiation shields, fuel explosion )
alien attack
meteor collision
black hole
supernova
famine

Adrenaline

Not really a hazard but…internal dissension? Like a mutiny/reshuffling of power type thing?

It's funny that I keep coming up with man-made problems when I try to brainstorm on this. Like mysterious murders? A killer in your midst on an extended trip through space is pretty terrifying.

Oh, here's one less cynical: navigation error. The team learns they've gone lightyears off course and don't have the resources to survive the extended trip.

tatiang

bizarre love triangle
rheumatoid arthritis
flesh-eating bacteria
extremely important doohickey gets stepped on and bent (hate that!)

Armelline

• Getting lost because everything is pretty much black and you were singing along to the radio
• Encounter with God (wrong or right, depending on if you've been a good boy)
• Lack of sufficient genetic variety
• Soap opera dramatics due to failed relationships
• Worm hole in the wrong direction
• Space crazies
• Forced by strange fates to become Doctor Who's companion for a while
• The Shadows
• Cancelled by Fox after only one season
• Accidentally become a space prostitude
• Drifting in space with George Clooney
• Androids going mental
• Travelling so fast everyone else in the universe dies while you're on your way
• Ending up stranded on Mimas after 25th birthday binge drinking
• Everyone getting turned into lizards
• Affliction of. Random. Punctuation in. Sentences while you. Speak.
• Your mission gets bought out by Disney and nobody knows if it'll all go to !@#$%
• You have to mount your horse using the same appendage as your girlfriend
• You're too old to command the attack on the alien homeworld
• You've lost your multipass
• You run out of spice (both mental and navigational problems ensue)
• You travel halfway across the universe and the alien's your dad
• Dr Manhatten is sure you looked as him funny
• You slowly become less intelligent over time
• You crash-land on A'Tuin

Those are the ones that scare me about going into space. I'd still do it though.

tatiang

@Armelline said:

• Getting lost because everything is pretty much black and you were singing along to the radio

@Armelline lol! love that one.

Socks

Mild eczema

StormyStudio

• after travelling for 99 years you remember you never left the holo deck and have gone literally no where.
• flat battery
• after travelling for 3 days you hit the edge of space (Truman show style).
• teleported zombie toxin on board by accident, classic zombie outbreak occurs.
• jean luc Picard turns up and you have to stop the mission for risk of copyright infringement.
• someone from the r&d division creates a frustratingly addictive bird game and most of the crew stop doing safety checks.
• a local sun implodes and causes part of the ship to be pulled apart.
• pulled into a tractor beam
• pulled along by a farmers tractor.
• crew hallucinate due to some space clouds
• crew mutate after being exposed to cosmic rays
• crew overworked and need some sleep.
• night night

LiquidGameworks

"You crash-land on A'Tuin" This made me laugh!

You may also run into Q, which could result in any of the previous suggestions. And possibly a lawsuit.

jonmulcahy

haha some great ideas guys. This game is a more serious one, so some of the more silly entries don't really have a place, but maybe I can have a random encounters mode . I did have some crew related hazards like mutiny, civil war and devolving back into a tribal society, but there are some good ones to flesh that out.

in the game these hazards have a certain percentage of occurring, and each of them will reduce your population by X%, with catastrophic ones taking 100%. You have different research trees that can reduce (or prevent) the effects of each one.

Hopscotch

The prices at the restaurant at the end of the universe.

SlickZero

• Solar Winds
• Solar Flares
• Radio waves from Earth during the 50's interfere with onboard navigation/communication
• Dark Matter chasing you
• Russian chimpanzee astronaut trying to hitch a ride and board your ship
• You run out of Plutonium Nyborg (Google it)
• Decompression
• Space Radiation
• Competition from others trying to steal your mission and achieve the same goal first (Captain Mateen and the Space Raiders)
• Boredom

Armelline

Okay, serious game. Some serious suggestions then.

• While travelling through space, your ship stumbles upon an old Earth vessel, sent out on a colonisation mission over a hundred years ago. The crew survived the following decades but slowly had to turn to cannibalism. When you find them, they are beyond any hope of ever being civilised humans again, and your ship badly needs parts. There is no way your food rations will support both crews. You must cannibalise their ship, but should you also become what they were, and cannibalise them? Or try to redeem them, even though it is a task destined to failure and the doom of all? Plunging into despair, you fail to notice your ships slip into the gravitational pull of a star, which consumes you, moral dilemma and all.

• Passing through a solar system you spot a planet that is capable of supporting life. You are about to send a party down to investigate the planet and seek any civilisation when you are visited by the system's deity, who is dying. His death is a slow and deeply painful one and the only power this ill-fated god does not posses is the strength to end his own suffering. He begs you to do it for him. Taking pity on him you render the assistance he needs in extinguishing his life, only to find your ship shot out of the sky by the angry pursuivants from the planet below, the flames cremating your body snuffed out only by the cold dark emptiness of a oxygenless, godless space.

• You have strayed too close to a black hole. As your ship is pulled into it, you realise the dire conundrum you face. The speed you need to reach to break free of the black hole's immense gravitational pull is mind-boggling. As you are pulled deeper and deeper into the timeless, cosmic dusk you realise you are not the first ship to have fallen prey to its lightless tendrils. Hundreds, no - thousands of other ships are there, between you and sightless eye at the centre. Relativity means that a minute for you passes like a thousand years for them, their deaths becoming ever more drawn out the further they succumb. You have but one option - set off a chain reaction amongst their ships, fuelling your escape with the near-endless lives of the hundreds of thousands of souls within them. You are still there, escaping, endlessly escaping, the shame of your pogrom spurring you on.

You might need to edit them down a little. Make them pithier.

BBEnk

1. You could run out of toilet paper.
2. The toilet gets clogged and you forgot a plunger.
3. When you get to your destination you discover that the Earth's technology has advanced beyond yours and there already there so you go to McDonalds and get a cheeseburger.

ADSentertainment

@Armelline said:

• Getting lost because everything is pretty much black and you were singing along to the radio
• Encounter with God (wrong or right, depending on if you've been a good boy)
• Lack of sufficient genetic variety
• Soap opera dramatics due to failed relationships
• Worm hole in the wrong direction
• Space crazies
• Forced by strange fates to become Doctor Who's companion for a while
• The Shadows
• Cancelled by Fox after only one season
• Accidentally become a space prostitude
• Drifting in space with George Clooney
• Androids going mental
• Travelling so fast everyone else in the universe dies while you're on your way
• Ending up stranded on Mimas after 25th birthday binge drinking
• Everyone getting turned into lizards
• Affliction of. Random. Punctuation in. Sentences while you. Speak.
• Your mission gets bought out by Disney and nobody knows if it'll all go to !@#$%
• You have to mount your horse using the same appendage as your girlfriend
• You're too old to command the attack on the alien homeworld
• You've lost your multipass
• You run out of spice (both mental and navigational problems ensue)
• You travel halfway across the universe and the alien's your dad
• Dr Manhatten is sure you looked as him funny
• You slowly become less intelligent over time
• You crash-land on A'Tuin

Those are the ones that scare me about going into space. I'd still do it though.

The Doctor*

jonmulcahy

@Hopscotch said:
The prices at the restaurant at the end of the universe.

ooooh, like that as a random encounter.

@‌Armelline
so many great ideas!

@SlickZero‌
had a few of those, but some great news ones too

@Adrenaline, @tatiang, @StormyStudio some great ideas too

i should be able to expand the list nicely!

gamestudent

space pirates.
captain goes insane
You blow up an intire species, and even though it's really awesome and you save the whole human race from annihilation, they still end up hating you.
the previous senario is followed by two lame sequels, and an awesome companion novel and an ok movie...
fear of the unknown strikes the crew.
a nasty cyborg pretends to be a cook but is really a pirate.
you get raided by demented curious george clones bent on your destruction
you get captured, sent to a bone shaped satellite and forced to watch lame old movies with two puppets
in the seventh one you find out he isn't lukes father (mind blowing)
you end up in an edgar rice burroughs novel
you get bombarded by obnoxious fans trying to convince you that a show about a brittish guy in a fez is really good.
you run out of supplies
the foundation collapses
turns out jordi laforge is secretly white and not really blind!
your favorite star ship exploration series is re-hashed by jj abrams and all your favorite parts end up not happening because of some time travel balarky. Oh and he makes kahn white instead of latino. what the hey!
you invade an ailien planet war of the worlds style..
or independence day style and your whole race is wiped out by will smith, jeff goldblum, and the guy from spaceballs
Spaceballs
space pirates... wait...
turns out that you went back in time and helped build stone henge
the crew is incapacitated by the flue
you end up being featured on a journey album cover
the captain dies of old age and the first and second mate have a power struggle
the water supply bursts and floods part of the ship, drownding half the crew
a plague infects so passengers and you must quarentine the ship, but several people try to escape I am ledgend style
someone important gets pregnant
oh and the baby is evil
some crew members get lost in space while doing exterior maintenance
an ailien disguieses him self as the captain
you return to earth to find out it was over run by monkeys
low self esteem...
probably caused by bullying
pressure loss