Quasar E77 - The Mysterious Science Station

    Quasar E77 - The Mysterious Science Station v1.3

    Game version
    v0.202.87
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    Quasar E77...
    A gigantic pearl oyster hidden among the nebulas.
    StarMade interior architecture pushed to extremes.
    Constructed using a meticulously designed, modular interior template pack.
    A maze of ultra-detailed hallways and compartments, all following a uniform, high-standard style.
    Completely self-sustained: whatever you'd need to have in a real space station, you'll have it in this one.
    Featuring many deeply immersive roleplay elements, with a lot of attention to orderliness and consistency.
    Sometimes stylish and cozy, sometimes bleak and industrial, sometimes sinister and downright spine-chilling.
    Easily at least two hours worth of explorables.
    Navigate – Absorb the mood of the place – Find pieces of stories – Conquer your fear within the darkness – And discover the SECRETS!


    And, all the while, have fun! (Just don't forget to watch your back!)
    EXTERIOR:
    • Astronomical observatory with a usable optical telescope
    • Massive radio telescope that realigns itself once every 20 seconds
    • 4 powerful "floating sphere" cannon turrets
    • 10 anti-missile turrets
    • 4 small laser turrets
    • Glass domes with trees
    • Actual chamber machinery on the underside connected with actual piping
    INTERIOR:
    • Living necessities for a crew of about 100 people (and a bunch of droids)
    • Mineralogy labs
    • Chemistry labs
    • Astrobiology labs
    • Cryogenic sleeping chamber
    • Android maintenance bay
    • Android army warehouse
    • Comms & Security center (contains faction module, build block, main storage access)
    • Hydroponic gardens
    • Water and atmosphere management center
    • Electric power center
    • Nuclear power and shielding center
    If you wish to use this station beyond singleplayer, please note that it's optimized for use by servers as an automatically spawned, abandoned station: it's almost entirely publicly accessible!

    It has Public Permission blocks at each major plex door, access-controlling button and transporter. Those who intend to use this station for personal use in multiplayer environments should modify at least the main entrances (20 docks with public rails and public outer buttons on the airlocks).

    Also, there are 20,800 orange basic armor blocks in the central building, divided into two equally sized groups, used as a placeholder fillout material, which might be replaced with systems, with the possibility to install two additional reactor chambers in their place, if needed.

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    AN INVITATION FOR SOME FUN:

    Do you have an explorer's or detective's spirit? - Then you will love Quasar E77!

    The main focus of this station is interior exploration, and quite some thought and effort was put into making it worth it. If you are explorative enough, there will come several points where you will face something odd, fishy or worrisome. To prepare for such moments, let's just say that certain things "might" be just the first layer of strangeness, with a second (or perhaps even a third) layer residing much closer than you would think upon first glance. Being attentive and caring to search will bring major rewards!

    To give a rough idea of what to expect, if you find the most sinister part of the station (and there are many), no less than three layers of spine-chilling strangeness will lead you to face (and I mean face-to-face) either monstrously drooling jaws, or... who knows? ;)


    CHALLENGE: find the 16 suspicious strangers hiding throughout the station - listen to what they "say", take it with a grain of salt, and find out the true reason of why they are hiding - depending on your investigative skills, you may discover that there are actually two equally worrisome reasons for their hiding.
    Habitation: 2
    Science: 6
    Storage & High Risk Areas: 2
    Technical & Engineering: 6
    CLUE: find the visiting corporate executive's room in the private rooms corridor of the habitation section - the email left open on his computer's display has an unmistakable reference to the station's biggest hidden secret - the backbone of the station's lore narrative, which overaches the secondary storyline of the hiding strangers.

    I would be really-really curious to know if someone managed to find the BIGGEST SECRET. Please share your impressions and tell me and others about your discoveries in the reviews :)

    Author
    DeepspaceMechanic
    Downloads
    1,361
    Views
    4,707
    First release
    Last update
    Rating
    5.00 star(s) 10 ratings

    More resources from DeepspaceMechanic

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    1. Modernized systems; removed outdated blocks; made fully accessible

      The systems setup of both the main entity and its turret arsenal was modernized to new configs...
    2. Upgraded turrets, shields, power, and some smaller changes/fixes

      Finally, after 200 downloads of the original, here's the first update of Quasar E77 (Click "Read...

    Latest reviews

    FINALLY I got a chance of exploring this masterpiece of a station. Absolutely glorious work, with so much tiny detailing, definitely an example of how the station should be built.

    Truly loved the little vent surprize ;-)

    A tiny note though - sometimes the inner machinery gets a bit repetitive, maybe add some extra equipment variations? That could make the project even more outstanding
    DeepspaceMechanic
    DeepspaceMechanic
    Thank you very much, MChain! It's very kind of you to call this creative effort of mine a masterpiece. Nice to know that someone else appreciates all the micro-detailing in this station.

    Finally, someone discovered the most well-hidden secret of Quasar E77, and on their own! Thus far only two other starmade-ians have indicated (one in a PM and another in YT comments) that they've found it, but only through several hints from myself. Knowing that its simplicity might be kinda anticlimactic for some, I might expand on it in a future update (already thinking about something logic-animated and diabolical) ;D

    And yes, repetitiveness is one of the major flaws of this station, both inside and out. My excuse is that the interior was built in only 10 days, using a modular interior template set that I made beforehand. Introducing more variation in the hallways at least does indeed feel necessary, but it's up to the inspiration of future times.
    like an adventure map
    we need more of these types of things
    DeepspaceMechanic
    DeepspaceMechanic
    I share your sentiment, it would be nice to have more quest-oriented StarMade creations on the Dock.

    I know a few such builds that qualify as "adventure maps" much more than this station, but it sure would be nice if more people would create such things. And thanks for the review :)
    Great fun, was lost in this for 2 hours in my stream, was able to find some secrets but not the most important one author told me XD
    Well, this is probably the only mystery mission station out there, I could see DeepSpace making some basically visual novel in StarMade sometime, by switching text in displays with logic, depending on what actions a player choose, anyhow, this stations exterior alone make this a 5 star station, but thats nothing compared to the super well crafted cryo area :)
    DeepspaceMechanic
    DeepspaceMechanic
    Thanks man, I really appreciate your positive feedback :)

    I enjoyed your exploration video on your Twitch channel, and I urge anyone who doesn't feel like going through the station by themselves to find and watch that stream, because it was some excellent explorer/detective work, done in the best possible walk-through path.

    I'm happy to hear that you also liked the aesthetics of the exterior and that cryogenic sleeping room.

    Also, I love this idea of your's of achieving an actual "dialog" between the player and the inhabitants of the station, by having their "speech displays" interactively change based on the player's actions. Really great idea, I'll keep it in mind until a time when I'll have the high level of motivation required for something on that level. - Thanks again! :)
    Excellent work! This station is such an awesome place to explore. You really put gifted hands on bringing together just the right - sometimes unconventional - blocks to provide a playful design with surprising and sometimes mind-blowing features. I had so much fun to discover all the different sections that perfectly suit their role while coming across depressive robots or xenomorph references. They really made me smile. Not to mention the gorgeous astronomic observatory - simply brilliant!

    However, I don't want to spoil to much. :D

    Given its costs, I am not sure how "useful" the station would be from the perspective as an outpost or home base, whereas, I assume it simply was not build for this purpose. Totally a 5-star build!
    DeepspaceMechanic
    DeepspaceMechanic
    Thanks, happy to hear that you had fun exploring Quasar E77.

    Yes, it took some experimentation over the years I've been playing StarMade to get such interior detailing results, always trying different decorative options and different combinations of non-cubic blocks, to see what works well visually.

    As for the robots and the xenomorphs... I would call those 15 hidden robots psychopathic/scary rather than depressed/depressing. There's a particular locked compartment with a warning sign that gives context which explains the true nature of these hiding robots (they're all related, and their story forms one of the two possible lore narratives of the station). And the Alien references, well, the station's biggest discoverable secret actually revolves around xenomophs ;)

    And you're right, this wouldn't be a good choice as a practical station. It was mainly built for singleplayer exploration sessions, or perhaps as a possible addition to the abandoned station set of customized universes (although I still have to update it with a lot of Public Permission blocks for that purpose).

    Thanks again for sharing your impressions, cheers! :)
    Very nice. Neat exploration features and some nice humour dotted throughout. Awesome creation!
    DeepspaceMechanic
    DeepspaceMechanic
    Hey, thanks Kupu! - It's a whole new level of success when your creative efforts get a dev team member's seal of approval. Glad that you liked the exploration features, I tried my best to make the place extra immersive.

    As for the little humor on displays here-and-there, most of it is part of the "dialog" between the explorer and the 15 hiding suspicious strangers of the station. And the humorous nature of what they say gets slightly shifted towards worrisome, and perhaps even creepy, once the player finds a particular display which provides the context of who these strangers really are and why they are hiding. (Hope this was more hype than a spoiler.)

    Thanks for the review, I appreciate it! :)
    Lavish doesn't even begin to describe how much detail is in this station. I love it, it's a brilliant piece of work, with a lot to see and explore. Makes me excited for DeepSpaceMechanic's Constantinus project.
    DeepspaceMechanic
    DeepspaceMechanic
    Well, thank you very much, ProfDriftwood, that is one of the nicest reviews any of my StarMade creations have ever received. I'm mostly (but not always) used to sort of a disproportion between the amount of work I put into my creative efforts and how well they are received, but hearing you say "it's a brilliant piece of work" makes me feel that my time spent on building this station was worth it.

    I'm happy to know that you appreciate the details and explorable contents of Quasar E77, and it's really quite a pleasant surprise to hear someone even mention my still-under-construction Constantinus titan.

    And here's a coincidence... At some point I decided that the only way I can ever continue that titan is if I build a modular interior template pack outside of it, then fill it with it afterwards. Well, this station was built using that already finished template pack, in 29 days (after 21 days of work on the template pack alone). So revisiting that dusty old ghost-ship titan might just be the next thing I'll do.

    Thanks for the review! :)
    very nice disign anf details ,it 's a beautifull science-station ^^
    DeepspaceMechanic
    DeepspaceMechanic
    Thank you Darknassius, I'm happy to hear you appreciate the overall design and the details. Nice of you to say that it's a beautiful station, thanks :)
    All I can say is. WOW. I look foreword to whats next.
    DeepspaceMechanic
    DeepspaceMechanic
    Thanks, I'm glad you're impressed. And nice to know that you want to see more, we'll see what I come up with next time :)
    I had fun exploring this thing. I think I might use it as an additional abandoned station. I like what you did with the reactor conduits btw. The conduits as power lines idea makes more sense than having separate power lines coming from a reactor with "expansion" conduits as I was trying with my older designs
    DeepspaceMechanic
    DeepspaceMechanic
    I'm glad that you enjoyed it, and I'm flattered that you say you might use it as an extra procedurally generated station. I myself thought of having a few custom stations (and fleets) if I eventually set up a separate adventure universe for myself with pirates and NPC factions enabled.

    Also glad that you like the power and chamber setup. I think it's kinda cool how if you select a conduit block on your hotbar in build mode, you will see a highlight of all the actual functional conduits nicely snaking between the machinery within those armored pipelines. It's a poor design choice from the perspective of survivability to showcase those things on the station's underside, but it's more appealing to the eye this way, I think.

    Thanks for the review! :)
    Impressive... Most impressive.
    DeepspaceMechanic
    DeepspaceMechanic
    Thank you very much! - I'm happy to hear that you appreciate it :)