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What Exactly Is The USCM?

Discussion in 'Starbound Discussion' started by VoltageHero, Dec 8, 2013.

  1. Guest0241525

    Guest0241525 Guest

    People keep repeating "kid-friendly" over and over again. It's getting tiring. :nuruneutral: Beta lore felt way more childish to me - in the "there are these three amazing mysterious important bad guys and they're plotting stuff together and it's all mysterious and all!" kind of way.

    Tell me, what the hell is the point of this codex, for example? What do you learn from it? There's absolutely no substance. It's just trying to impress people with a fake aura of mystery. It's simply disappointing to me that such a cheap move was successful and that so many people out there really thought that this kind of writing was impressively deep and profound - or that this kind of thing lined up with Starbound's style for that matter.

    1.0 simply streamlined the lore, cleaned up the messy parts. They took the basics, the very core of what made the races what they are, and then they built upon it from the ground up. They used it to paint a clear picture, free from some of the old lore's complications. Humanity's gimmick of reckless optimism is now more clear than ever, we now have a better understanding of how the tribal society of the Floran works, we were given much better insight into the exact workings of the Glitch.

    Then, when it comes to the story, they clearly wanted something to connect Earth's destruction, the tentacle entity, and the player character together to form a coherent story, regardless of the race chosen by the player. And that was Terrene Protectorate, made in the image of the Matter Manipulator, which also allowed us to learn of the tool's origin. It's simple as that.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 20, 2017
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  2. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    Yeah, the old lore is mostly a jumbled mess of half-ideas that overcomplicate things and really don't feel like they'd actually work with anything the player would have anything to do with, on top of making some races more important than others in the overall narrative.

    Just because it came first doesn't mean it's better or worth keeping. Any creative endeavor is gonna go through changes, and even big ideas will get dropped.

    Or at least, they SHOULD.
     
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  3. Apollo523

    Apollo523 Intergalactic Tourist

    so does no no one know that there is actually a type of friendly human settlement? I thought everyone would know something like this
     
  4. Guest0241525

    Guest0241525 Guest

    Looking back, I might've been overly rude in the post before. Sorry for that, edited my wording a little.

    But it's silly to me. Even before the full release, there's stuff I always hated about early access lore - stuff that felt forced on the universe, stuff that didn't make any sense, or stuff that outright contradicted itself. Then, to my surprise, they actually cleaned all of that up - with a single update, we no longer have everyone practically worshiping a single all-important Floran scientist, the Apex now work with their own resources instead of depending on said Floran, the Glitch stopped being hivemind-linked characterless drones and now have plenty internal conflict, and the Hylotl now have more lore than just their introduction books. Couldn't help but see it as an overall improvement.

    Then all I hear about it is that it's "dumbed down", "childish", "rushed" or a "budget cut", simply because some half-baked mysteries and pretentious "I am such an important genius" characters got dropped. I don't get it.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 20, 2017
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  5. MysticMalevolence

    MysticMalevolence Oxygen Tank

    Personally, and I cannot speak for everyone, I say things like "rushed" or "childish" (don't use that one much, bit of a low argument,) or even "dumbed down" without regard to previous lore.
    I was very excited when the lore rework was announced, even. I had hoped that despite my misgivings with the game, it would at least have a coherent universe I could fall back on and enjoy. But when it came, I did not enjoy it. I simply don't like the story that was told, I do not believe enough time and. Thought was put into it; being a galaxy-spanning saga that encompasses seven unique species who have all achieved space travel, I feel like it could have been more. There are many things in the main story I would call ill-advised or poorly thought out. There are many things in the lore that I would call dumbed down--the racial histories and cultures, mostly. I understand that there is only so much Chucklefish could have done in these regards, but as someone who has always been interested in sci-fi, literature and writing in general, it disappoints me that Starbound's universe feels, to me, flat, static, and in many places poorly integrated with the rest of the game. I feel the lore could have grown with many uodates rather than one.

    Sorry for the rather off-topic post, and I'm certain you weren't asking me specifically for my opinion (I probably don't post my thoughts here enough for anyone to know me anymore), but I am sure there are others who feel similarly, anf I hope it helps you understand that not all distaste for the new lore is rooted in love for the old lore.
    I suppose I do get a bit hostile about it sometimes, and apologise if I do.

    The USCM, for example, feels a bit boring to me in it's current state--but in fairness, we don't know enough about them, and they seem to be a bit of a work in progress still. I'd be interested in knowing who funded a militant group with such terrible discipline. Or how they could be so stupid as to destroy themselves. Or if everyone who joined believed in the cause, or if they were primarily mercenaries or the desperate who were used by a corporate head. If there are any splinters of the faction stilm around. If they had colonies of their own to recruit from, or if they were based on Earth with the protectorate. If they ever started a human war. The small stuff.


    All that said, I do miss the agaran lore.
     
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  6. Guest0241525

    Guest0241525 Guest

    Don't worry, I know how it is. Sometimes I also tend to care a bit too much, resulting in me getting overly harsh and bitter overall.

    While I did enjoy the story greatly, it was admittedly a simple, archetypic journey - more of a way to encourage you to explore, visit all these dungeons and villages, then go through a race-related mission and face against a themed boss. There is still much left to explore, and when it comes to the lore, I tend to agree that Avians in particular could use some more attention.

    There are a couple ideas I have as to how USCM ended up in such a situation... but headcanon discussion goes to a different thread I guess.
     
  7. SamuelXproductions

    SamuelXproductions Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    They could have just added to what already existed but whatever.
     
  8. kingrec

    kingrec Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    "United! Systems! Colonial Marines! We're big! We're tough! And our guns are mean!.... Yeah, never singing that again."

    -The player, upon inspecting the USCM logo




    that is what i found
    on the forums...
     
  9. Jonesy

    Jonesy Sarif's Attack Kangaroo Forum Moderator

    That information's outdated as of 1.3.

    https://starbounder.org/Universal_Space_Corporate_Military
     
  10. Polecat

    Polecat Phantasmal Quasar

    I agree that I liked the beta lore a bit better, but I think that was built more on promise than what was actually delivered. What I personally disliked about it going live was that it funneled everyone through the same intro story, whereas the beta hinted that each race would have its own backstory on how you got into that "dead ship" cold open we all experienced (and still can if you chose to skip the tutorial). I genuinely feel the whole "Protectorate' opening and storyline was a misstep in the game, and really wrecked the slow progression and discovery of the lore the beta had built up. I believe that's where a lot of people come from when they call the 1.0 launch version of the lore as being 'dumbed down'. It's not that it's more or less intelligent than the current lore, just that it's laid out in a linear fashion now. Before, in beta, it was pieced together like a giant puzzle, which we turned into something almost like an ARG here on the forums back in the day. Given a lot of people (myself included) came to Starbound for the exploration aspect it introduced, this was something that kept drawing us back, and 1.0 killed that need and desire to keep exploring to peice together the story.

    As for the USCM (so that I actually have an on topic point), I think a lot of the confusion also stems from the USMC, the real world abbreviation for the "United States Marine Corp". Aliens adjusted it to USCM for the movies, but it does tend to confuse people.
     
  11. Guest0241525

    Guest0241525 Guest

    Well, I suppose I ended up bringing up the matter of the old lore again in a Reddit post, covering more aspects of it than I did here.


    Someone did bring up something about the mysterious tone, and here was my response:
    Maybe others just found it more enjoyable than I had.


    The subject of USCM was also brought up in the comments, I guess. To paraphrase from there:
    There was next to no substance to the old USCM, so I'm not sure where people acting as if it had been more interesting before are coming from.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 24, 2017
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  12. Lintton

    Lintton Guest

    I think the problem is that the USCM is presented to be dead or dysfunctional according to the lore. Clearly they held a variety of functions within Terran society, it may be that The Protectorate was overrelied upon, but we are now looking at evidence the USCM was disposed of, for what the USCM had in the past, at least there were still people belonging to it, remnants are more alive than remains.
     
  13. Guest0241525

    Guest0241525 Guest

    Hah, Starbound doesn't really use "Terran" to refer to Earth or humans at any point.

    Well, if you want to come up with a story featuring USCM, I'd say there's still plenty room to create such a story, by simply setting it somewhere in the past.
     
  14. Lintton

    Lintton Guest

    "Terrene" but yeah, its a force of habit.
     
  15. Dragonax

    Dragonax Void-Bound Voyager

    All i know about them is that they didn't like The Protectorate very much...
     
  16. Big Blue Bird

    Big Blue Bird Astral Cartographer

    Well, they were bad... and they did bad things... Oh! And they also worked with their rival, the Miniknog, and made the bio-weapon that killed them all... Parasprites! They also had most living employees turn to banditry... maybe some joined the Occasus?
     
  17. Dragonax

    Dragonax Void-Bound Voyager

    Also, their ships are quite impressive... aaaand mostly abandoned (These places are sure swarming with those parasprites) I definitely wouldn't want to encounter one of those while U.S.C.M. still existed...
     
  18. Big Blue Bird

    Big Blue Bird Astral Cartographer

    Things are looking bad for them, but maybe the developers will make some kind of reformation? I hope so, cause they were really cool back in early access, Pulse Rifles, Serpent Droids, they had everything! I used to do a lot of bad stuff to their bunkers cause they were fun to destroy though...
     
  19. Dragonax

    Dragonax Void-Bound Voyager

    Yeah that would be fun to stumble upon them. They would make great target practice... Or if devs made it into racial mission to fight U.S.C.M. and get the human the artefact from them.
     
  20. Big Blue Bird

    Big Blue Bird Astral Cartographer

    That would be cool too, but Esther has human artifact, so it'd have to be a mod. I want USCM back in an update! Or at least a mod guys...:nurusad:
     

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