RP GAMES CREATING A RP GAME, PART 2: The world

[Euchale]

Next step is to decide on the world. Now 2500 is pretty damn far away. So I honestly believe we have already managed to figure out FTL travel. Now eclipse phase sadly does not incorporate this, so everything within the game happens in our solar system. So my rule of "Don´t do work yourself that somebody else has already done" doesn't apply.
But there are always other systems to fall back to. Let's take a look at the map system of X for example.

If you take a map like this, you already have defined the way of traveling from star system to star system, and that is by using portals or using a jump drive, that is far more expensive.
This would also enable us to define where the space station is. We know that the majority of sectors with a portal will be populated. So the Space Station that you found might be "off the grid" and only reachable by using the Jump drive.
So one of the first things you would do, is to the establish a link to get on the grid.
Another great thing about a map like this is, that I can already see where typical traders and producers are located in space. I already have all of the races and faction the game will offer. I even get a full economic system and prices for all of the items, and can still adjust what I want. So I will go with this.
Next step will be bringing all of this together, and make people create their characters, so stay tuned!

 

[Diremongoose]

In EP there are Gates build by Aliens (about 3-6 in the system, can't remember) which are basically Stargates to other systems. Exoplanets are being cautiously explored by 'gatecrashers', who have a low risk of survival, but can come back insanely rich. Feel free to use it or not.

 

[Euchale]

Next up, the 2 things our people will spend the most time on/in.
1. The spaceship.
Now there are 2 approaches to deal with this, either everybody has their own spaceship, or there is one huge spaceship with everybody on it.
From a logical standpoint, a huge spaceship makes more sense, since they found that station together. On the other hand, if everybody has their own Spaceship, the total mobility of the group will be bigger, as they are a squad of smaller ships.
The question is: What type of ship would fly into a system that you can only reach with a jumpdrive? The answer is, a small ship, as it uses less energy cells to travel around, and as a bonus is not a huge target when reentering from the warp. So everybody gets their own ships.
Again borrowing from X3. Now I could simply give everybody the same ship, but since you are a group of mercenaries and not let´s say, part of the military, it is possible for people to have different ships. I will not take over the stats of these ships, as the piloting skill and your ship class (which means m3 and so on) will be the determining factor for your space combat abilities.
Here is a nice list: http://eng.x3tc.net/x3_tc_ships/list.php?class=7&race=0&o=0&d=0&s=&r=1&p=0
2. The space station.
As the game will mainly revolve around this, this is the most important step. First I think of what type of stations are going to be "outside" of the grid. 2 come to mind, either there was a research experiment gone wrong, or a mining facility, that was no longer needed after all the material of whatever it was mining was gone. I´m following the "Don´t do work yourself that somebody else has already done"-rule again and look at various layouts that stuck in my head. First the ISS, for a laboratory space station:
http://www.space.com/3-international-space-station.html
While not bad, it´s vastly to small.
Dead Space USG Ishimura, as a mining station, with a little bit of research:
http://deadspace.wikia.com/wiki/USG_Ishimura
Combining these two gives me quite some stuff to draw from, but I am not yet satisfied. As a layout I would like something that closely resembles a circle, as this is how most stations are build, so I went searching and ran into: http://starfrontiers.us/node/3452

Now with this I got everything I wanted to know to build my space station. For spoiler reasons, I will not tell which exact compartments there will be, just that you can expect the usual and the unusual!