Miriani and Star Conquest, differences
Okay I know this subject is potential flame bait but I felt it worth exploring, please keep this civil. I'm going to try to see things from as many perspectives as I can and stick to the facts, even though I'm mostly playing SC these days I still feel Miriani has a lot of good points in there.
So what do both games have? Combat missions where you fight aliens, both games require more advanced missions to involve several people crewing the same ship where one flies, one manages repairs and the rest act as gunners; debris salvaging where you suck up stuff floating in space to be recycled into useful materials; asteroid hauling either alone or in a pair where you head out and pull back asteroids to be broken down for raw materials; planetary mining where you move through tunnels and mine ore, in SC this is known as teslaworld but they're fairly similar in concept; mail deliveries and passenger transports, as well as working for courier companies who provide you w ith a loaned starship; trade though there's no way in either game to check prices remotely so you have to fly around and work out what to sell where; exploration where you gather alien artifacts for research. Let me know if I've missed anything common between the two. Flying your ship is very similar between the two games though the coordinate system for the sectors in SC has a different origin point than in Miriani, Miriani has 1 1 1 as the front left top while SC has it as the back left bottom.
As a note both games have a full communicator system including a newbie channel for questions about commands and syntax, non newbies often use this if they've forgotten how to do something.
Miriani as is often controversially discussed has a much more liberal attitude towards PVP, this may be a good or bad thing depending on your perspective. Miriani also allows you to jump back to known space so long as you're in range, SC only allows you to use your F TL drive when within a sector with a beacon or one of the major sectors, this means it's a lot more difficult to get lost while exploring space in Miriani. It also has a very useful mapper where you can type map destination and it'll give you directions to the place you asked for, with the exception of certain special areas which are considered a puzzle or maze, and you can type mark then map mark to find your way back to the place you marked. Lore computers have a very useful shopping guide allowing you to search for items you might wish to purchase, whether this be upgrades to your starship's lasers or just some new clothes, and tell you both the planet/station they're on and the name of the shop which you can use with the aforementioned mapper. You can also drive an asteroid rover around an "enormous" type asteroid if you meet the equally enormous points requirement and set up mining equipment for minerals you can sell, as well as building starship u pgrades on said asteroid, and fly an atmospheric salvager to pick up materials from a planet's atmosphere to sell though I find this a little tedious myself. There are also archeological dig sites you can get involved in to dig up alien artifacts, and alien planets you can explore for even more artifacts. Miriani's help system is also a lot more thorough then SC's. Finally there's a semi official out of character channel on metafrequency on channel 500 where you can chat with other players and at times even the hosts.
Star Conquest almost as controversially requires a profile to be submitted but not right away, you can try the game as a "cadet" and see if you like it before you submit your profile. Anyone with any experience of tabletop role playing shouldn't have any trouble with this submission, just read the helpfiles and pay the most attention to the things they recommend not to include. This aside SC has a security level system for secto rs of space ranging from automated fixed defences backed by a response from the local navy to nothing at all, this does inhibit PVP in certain areas and the ultimate goal is to make sure actions have consequences. The game isn't trying to prevent conflict, it's trying to make sure any conflict is realistic and that immersion isn't broken by some of the incongruities of Miriani's style of PVP. At the same time there is automated generation of NPC ships in known space so there's still the potential of running into hostile NPC pirates or aliens, Miriani makes these into host run events instead. There's also more variety of ships between factions and a lot more choice of upgrades, for example some batteries are more appropriate for ships that require high endurance while others have shorter legs but increase the recharge rate of the ship's combat systems. There is also a fully featured crafting system where you can craft anything from niche starship up grades and consumables to furniture. As for activities, firstly combat ships tend to require slightly fewer crew than Miriani with a large ship like a gunship only requiring 5 or 6 people compared with Miriani's 8. You can also run asteroid mining sites which is essentially a mini strategy game where you build structures and drones to try to mine all the site's ore and convert it into metal while defending the site from NPC poacher drones. There's also a full ground combat system including battlesuits and surface assault vehicles, along with various types of mission you can get involved with using them. Lastly you can also salvage debris chunks instead of single pieces, a mini game where you try to guess the angle in degrees to pull on with your grapple to dislodge pieces of debris from the larger chunk, and you can take part in a salvage operation where a group of players group together and transfer their debris to a large salvage container while some of the gr oup defend them from any pirates who might show up.
Now player owned areas. Both games have apartments a character can rent and design to their own tastes but only in set locations. Miriani offers players with the insanely high required amount of points the ability to buy a house, space station, moon or planet in order of increasing requirement and cost which they can again design to their own tastes and which they can choose the location of freely barring certain restricted locations. SC on the other hand has temporary space stations which can be used to earn money and points with modules to allow the station to accept debris, asteroids and otherwise help in income related activities, these player run stations also pay out more money than anywhere else in many cases so players have an incentive to drop their debris or whatever there instead of at the standard locations. These stations only have a limited run time however depending on their power source, the power source has a limited life and cannot be replaced or refuelled.
Hopefully this is of use to someone out there, and remember, play nice.
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