From f27fcdff9e922fdeb0340582a993a4bc69b614e6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Meta Vens Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2026 05:40:41 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] Match the catalog's market gaps to the corporations that should fill them Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 --- .../Corporate Roster and Item Wishlist.md | 51 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 51 insertions(+) diff --git a/Aetheria/Brainstorming/Corporate Roster and Item Wishlist.md b/Aetheria/Brainstorming/Corporate Roster and Item Wishlist.md index 97531aa..4453664 100644 --- a/Aetheria/Brainstorming/Corporate Roster and Item Wishlist.md +++ b/Aetheria/Brainstorming/Corporate Roster and Item Wishlist.md @@ -92,6 +92,57 @@ Condensed; the flavor is what matters, and the best lines are quoted as written. - **Whole item kinds from the wishlist are missing from the catalog**: no shields at all, no cloaking systems, no capacitor products, no consumables. - **Several spreadsheet items did make it in** and can be read as the branding working: Arctica, cold like my heart, deep space burnout, OK Disperser, ClearPath, Earp, Traction, Vulcan, Manhattan, ChargeBlast. +## Market gaps, matched to the corporations that should fill them + +A gap only counts if the simulation can already run the item. The engine supports fourteen +hardpoint types — hull, tool, thermal, thruster, warp drive, reactor, radiator, shield, sensors, +energy, ballistic, launcher, control module, aether drive — and behaviours beyond those for +capacitors, mining tools, resource scanners, visibility, reflectors and stat modifiers. Below is +what is missing, who the roster says should make it, and why that pairing. + +### Nothing ships at all + +| Gap | Natural makers | Why them | +|---|---|---| +| **Shields** — zero designs, though the behaviour now has an authored reserve, a broken state and a restore window | **Megiddo** (defensive technology), Finch, Aya Collective | Megiddo's whole concept is defence and it ships nothing; a shield is the one item that would put it on the board | +| **Capacitors** — behaviour exists, no products | **NiteLife Energy**, Zhestokost | NiteLife already sells the reactor that demands one (the Cottage-pi meson reservoir is written and unbuilt) | +| **Consumables** — no records at all, so stat buffs and boosters cannot exist | **Miss Terri's**, Aya Collective | Miss Terri's is the consumables faction and ships one item; BitsyBytes Snackz is already written | +| **Cloaking / signature masking** — the wishlist asks for it and a visibility behaviour exists | **Adrasteia** | The Enigma Device is written, and stealth is the faction's entire identity | +| **Continuous weapons** — the behaviour exists and no design uses it | **Lucent Media**, Miss Terri's, Odla Framgång | Lucent's continuous laser is written; Fries With That and gnrrrr-gnrrr are continuous by description | + +### Thin where it matters + +| Gap | Natural makers | Note | +|---|---|---| +| **Thrusters** — two designs, one unsellable | **Alakrita**, Finch, AU, Lightsail | Alakrita is the speed faction and ships **no thruster at all**; Victoire, Prokope, Talaria and True North are all written | +| **Ship hulls** — exactly one (Alakrita's) | **Zhestokost**, AU, Finch, Lightsail | Heavy combat hulls, the Jason/Argo line and the Galapagos are written; one hull means every ship in play is the same ship | +| **Launchers** — five designs, three unsold | **R&D** (guided), **AU** (dumbfire), DME (incendiary) | The specialisations are already split cleanly between guided and dumbfire | +| **Mining and industry** — extractors, refinery, assembly line, shipyard all exist as designs nobody sells | **Ewan Hart**, **AU** | Ewan Hart has influence and zero products; mining is AU's stated specialisation | +| **Passive sensors** — three sensor designs, none from the passive-sensor faction | **Finch Cybernetics** | Finch has influence, zero products, and ChirOptos is written | +| **Tools** — seven designs, six unsold, including the tractor beam | R&D, AU, Lightsail | The tractor beam is about to become a real pickup capability and nothing sells one | + +### Corporations that cannot appear + +Finch Cybernetics and Ewan Hart Inc have catalog influence and **zero products**, so neither can spawn +anything; Aya Collective, Corriedales, Odla Framgang, Megiddo and the pirates are not in the catalog at +all. Two of those (Finch, Megiddo) are demo or boss factions. + +### The obvious first batch + +Ordered by what unlocks the most play per item authored: + +1. **A Megiddo shield**, plus one cheap alternative — shields are a landed mechanic with no content. +2. **An Alakrita thruster** (Victoire) and **a Finch thruster** (Prokope) — fixes the thinnest slot in the + game and gives two factions their identity in the one stat players feel constantly. +3. **A Zhestokost hull and an AU hull** (Jason) — one hull for everyone is the single biggest sameness in play. +4. **A Finch passive sensor** (ChirOptos) and **an Adrasteia cloak** (Enigma Device) — the detection game + only becomes a game when both sides of it exist. +5. **A NiteLife capacitor** (Cottage-pi) — the power rework made buffers meaningful and nothing sells one. +6. **Miss Terri's consumables** — the whole item class is empty. + +Each of these already has a name, a voice and a tagline in the sections above, which is the point of +having the roster: generation starts from written identity rather than from an empty row. + ## What this is for Two live pieces of work read from here. Product names and flavor text are being split so that a design carries dry functional text and a product carries the manufacturer's voice ([[Worldbuilding/Post-Elysium/Reference/Transponder Credentials|credentials]] aside, the brand a player sees is derived from who made the lot). And each product authors quality per role, so a market segment is a second product with one part raised — which needs exactly the identity this roster describes: who is actually good at what, and who merely says so.