Star Turn on 3rd Rock

Thirza Ember: happy first contact day everyone

James Atlloud: and a first contact day to you too Thirza

Our first stop on this new season of Safari is the absolutely spectacular Star Trek colony on 3rd Rock Grid. a great crowd of 3rd Rockers were there to meet us, and the peerless Alia Souldstar gave us a wonderful tour. The HG Address for this wonderful build is, of course, at the end of the post.

Nila Shvaress: greetings everyone arriving

Georgina Mills: Hello everyone :)

Ellemir Maven: Hello Lucy, Lavia and Kitty

Dolfke Barbosa: pls take your time to let everything rez properly

James Atlloud: Hello!

Pauline NOVA419: ooo, visitors :)

Alia Soulstar

Alia Soulstar: Hiya Thirza and Safari people :)

Beth Ghostraven: Hi Alia!

Prodyck Theas: Helloo

Alia Soulstar: Is that everyone or are there a few still coming ?

Thirza Ember: ok we are good to go, APPLAUSE! for Astraios colony

Thirza Ember: is James' hat regulation uniform?

James Atlloud: Um, I'm not really sure.  I don't have a rank or a communicator so I do feel quite the interloper. But science-blue is a good fit for me.

Mal Burns: I see we have gone back in time to before latest Picard story

Alia Soulstar: we are kinda cherry picking here Mal :) 

Pauline NOVA419: I got called to work.  See you all in a few minutes.  I work on the space station. Some technologies are easier to repair than others.

Alia Soulstar: Welcome everyone to Starfleet Infinity. Please set your camera distance to maximum and cam around as we really don’t have enough time to even explore this colony in a cursory way, it is a big, very detailed build. Starfleet Infinity is a Trek Role Play group, which is not an original idea in OpenSim or Second Life. But we have taken a novel approach to it, which I hope will become evident to you as you tour our colony and space assets. We opted to not just role-play “Three Klingon warbirds have de-cloaked and locked weapons on us…” style adventures based around the bridge of a model ship, but to dig a little deeper into trek culture and back story…

Georgina Mills

Normally, when you visit this build, even if your five or six people, you can easily get around the ships using the turbo lifts that add real depth to the reality of the role play vibe, but since there were so many of us, we skipped that and Alia very sensibly teleported directly to the places she wanted to highlight on board the space station.

Thirza Ember: Alia is the region name going to change?

Alia Soulstar: Yes, the name will change, Astraios is a legacy name, it will be Starfleet Infinity, hopefully sometime this week or next, but if you log in to Welcome there will be a url pointing here

Dolfke Barbosa: (( Changing Region Names is not that easy because there is always a lil tricky, as the LM still have to work with the new name ))

Alia Soulstar: So on the theme of "deeper",,, Around you is Lyonesse Colony, a Starfleet colony on a remote planet (Sarlea) some 471 light years from Earth. It has its own documented history and culture and we have writers still fleshing it out

Lavia Lavine: Interesting establishment.

Alia Soulstar: We have xenolinguistics laboratories, exobiology laboratories. Our role-play spreads beyond the bridge of our ships into the larger picture of world-building. Imagining a remote water planet inhabited by a humanoid alien species that has joined the Federation and invited us to build a base

Lazuli Pooraka and Star Ravenhurst

Lavia Lavine: Fascinating.

Alia Soulstar: This is the backstory that we pin our adventures to. The Colony Commander down here at ground level, Admiral Keely Scrumptious, runs weekly “Mind Melds”, which are open forum discussions on a wide range of topics, there are weekly dances over at the Shooting Star club, that big white dome just over there, which are well attended; and a writers group. An art gallery hosts exhibitions, and a variety of other events take place

James Atlloud: I've been to a mind-meld - really great!

Alia Soulstar: Some of our members join as civilians to partake in these events. Others role-play as officers based on the colony

Pauline NOVA419: Live performances on the base.

Alia Soulstar: We run a programme of in-world TED talks (the Boldly Go Trekking series), where we invite members and real world specialists to talk on subjects like space exploration, Astronomy, Astrobiology, Science Fiction, and other relevant themes. These talks have been nothing short of wonderful and our plan is to document them all and record them for playback using NPCs to recreate the original talks. I will show you a snippet of one of these recorded talks if you would like to follow me please—it’s a real pity we don’t have time to play the whole thing through, but you can of course return any time you like to watch these recordings

Alia Soulstar: this way please

Alia Soulstar: please take a seat, I'll dial up a talk from the menu and we can watch a couple of minutes

Rachel pfefferi: Welcome to this recorded talk on the subject of astrobiology: "Is there life among the stars?" My name is Rachel pfefferi and I am the clone of an avatar of a biologist :) This talk is an introduction to astrobiology, the first in a series of talks related to this subject  ... TALK BEGINS... We don’t know how many stars are in our Milky Way Galaxy (or how many grains of sand are on our beaches) but we can determine how much our galaxy “weighs” by measuring its gravitational footprint, from which we derive its mass. We know the average mass of a star, the mean distribution of other massive objects like nebulae and singularities, and we can do a back of the envelope calculation based on that. Alternatively we can take a snapshot of a small portion of our galaxy and map it across the rest of the volume. These methods converge to around 150 billion stars. Give or take 50 billion...

Biologist Rachel pfefferi  NPC 

Alia Soulstar: Sadly I will turn Rachel off now as there is a lot to see here but it's a fascinating lecture and you can come here and play it any time you like

Nila Shvaress: wonderful, so glad we have this resource

Mal Burns: claps

Alia Soulstar: It's around an hour long but worth every minute

Kelso Uxlay: Well written

Forest Azure:   :҉❥•APPLAUSE•❥•҉

Tosha Tyran: impressive!

Lavia Lavine: Most interesting.

Dolfke Barbosa: Applauses to Rachel

Thirza Ember: yes good, job rachel clone

Alia Soulstar: Staying on the theme of using NPCs as an education tool, I’d like to show you our simulator This is used for training, showing good role play by example

Star Ravenhurst: I imagine that is helpful for new roleplayers

Kelso Uxlay: Engage!

Alia Soulstar: This is a pared down copy of the bridge from one of our ships I will dial up a NPC crew, then instruct them to perform part of a mission, so if you are sitting at a station, prepare for fisticuffs with the NPC who wants your chair

James Atlloud: oops - just habit

Georgina Mills: Hehe

Thirza Ember: if i sit on the workstation, will  the ship explode? I hope not... Alia, who designed all this great content

Alia Soulstar: I'm the designer but with help from specialists. Lorin has been wonderful supplying sound

Lorin Tone, Dolfke Barbosa, Han BoShi

Georgina Mills: oh nice, thanks Lorin :)

Alia Soulstar: and Han BoShi and Astro Balut are taklented scriptors who went under the hood

Lazuli Pooraka: This is an amazing way to train new people, very cool

Thirza Ember: wow klingon guy... is he single? asking for a friend

James Atlloud: <grins>

Alia Soulstar: The rezzer tool can load a complete or any part of the crew and has a number of preset missions for them to simulate. I'll now instruct them to perform part of a mission. They will fill nearby chat with their chatter and operate the screens the same way Rachel did in the Astro theatre

Lavia Lavine: Amazing craftsmanship

Captain Soulstar NPC

Captain Soulstar: How are we doing Mr Balut?

Lt.Cmdr Balut: Captain, engineering reports all systems online. Ready for launch

Captain Soulstar: All Decks, this is Captain Soulstar, prepare for immediate departure. Helm, thrusters

Ensign Ahab: Moorings retracted Captain, dock control reports ready. Thrusters fired. Separating from space dock

Computer: Thrusters engaged

Captain Soulstar: 3/4 impulse when you’re ready

Ensign Ahab: 3/4 impulse engaged

Computer: Impulse engine engaged

Lavia Lavine: Makes me miss my Enterprise from my old grid...   :(

Beth Ghostraven: /me looks for a seat belt, or a seat

Lazuli Pooraka: Alia, and her helpers, has been creating content in 3RG for well over a decade, skills growing each year.

Forest Azure: /me taps Lt Swahili on her shoulder : pay attentiom

Mal Burns: think my legs are warping

Ensign Ahab: Engines at maximum Warp, 30 minutes to destination

Pauline NOVA419: No chasing space whales, Ensign Ahab.

Captain Soulstar: Mr Eco, begin ship-wide mission broadcast

Ensign Eco: Yes ma’am. [OPEN SHIPWIDE BROADCAST CHANNEL]  Attention all crew. At 1600 hours we received notification from a Federation science station under construction on Xantippe IV, an ice planet orbiting variable star V675334, that the star has started expanding and getting hotter. Our mission is to analyse the star and it’s likely impact on the biosphere of Xantippe IV; to evacuate the engineering team if required; and to help in the salvage of the station, if required. We should be arriving at Xantippe IV in 27 minutes [END BROADCAST]

Captain Soulstar: Science, bring up a display of the Xantippe star system on the main screen, explain what might be going on with the star.

Lt.JG AaAkimbo: Aye Captain. On screen now… V675334 is a Mira variable giant red star. This type of star has two pulse phases, a hot expansion phase which lasts six weeks and a cool retraction phase which also lasts six weeks. 

Lavia Lavine: Sounds like things are about to get a little steamy there.

Pauline NOVA419: Bipolar solar system?

Lt.JG AaAkimbo: Modulation between these two phases—their duration—is like clockwork. The surface temperature of the star in its hot phase is around 1500°K hotter than in its cool phase. 

Beth Ghostraven: ooh, that can't be good for an ice planet

Alia Soulstar: ok, back in the box -You get the idea :)

Simulator Desk: All role npcs have been removed

Lazuli Pooraka: What an awesome tool

Forest Azure: /me gets associations with No man's sky

Alia Soulstar: Ok so, that gives you some idea of what a “mission” looks like, or at least the mechanical parts of them. Ships’ captains come up with story arcs and the episodes themselves throw problems at the crew to solve.  Missions can be edge of the seat action or they can explore philosophical ideas or they can just be a romp.

Thirza Ember: do all new people go through this before joining?

Alia Soulstar: No, but we try to include training as a feature

Thirza Ember: how long do your rp sessions last each time?

Alia Soulstar: around an hour, there are 5 ships each with their own crew so five missions a week.

Pauline NOVA419: Plus we have fun between the missions too.

Lazuli Pooraka: On Tuesdays Infinity hosts  a social event to meet many of the crew.

Georgina Mills: Yes everyone is invited to the Starfleet Boogie every Tuesday in this region at 12 noon grid time

Mal Burns: i'm bored - where's the holodeck?

Georgina Mills: lol

Lorin Tone: Behave, Mal!

Han BoShi: Holodeck is on the space station

Alia Soulstar: Anyway, let’s look at some of the environments we’ve created for our missions. We’ll start with the Galileo Station, a really massive space station hanging in the sky, we’ll tp you all up to engineering

Paula the Android

Alia Soulstar: Pauline the Android there is one of our engineers and this is her domain

Thirza Ember: are we near the warp core? if Mal is bored, we will send him in there to change something deadly

Mal Burns: stands clear

Pauline NOVA419: do NOT break my engines. Last tourist who played with the reactor made it go offline.... 2 meters off line.

Lavia Lavine: Well we all know how engineers are they love changing things.  

The massive engine on the 18 floor space station

Alia Soulstar:  Through the glass there is the fusion reactor that powers the station, it looks like a pretty vast chamber but actually we are in the small bulb at the bottom which you can confirm by camming out, there are 16 large floors above us

Pauline NOVA419: *points to map of wall*

Alia Soulstar: This station is just shy of a km high

Lavia Lavine: Very large

Mal Burns: certainly not yer average tardis then!  ooops! wrong multiverse

Alia Soulstar: and to the best of my knowledge is the largest single hulled object in any VR

Beth Ghostraven: wow!

Tosha Tyran: that really is amazing...

Pauline NOVA419: This station is larger than the SS Galaxy in SL. A tour of the base alone would take almost and hour.  Save a LM and come back when you have time.

Tosha Tyran: lol, I just start feeling like a human bread crumb

Alia Soulstar: This is Deep Space Comms, where we scan space and monitor known subspace frequencies, Level 15. It is a typical “service environment” on the station. There are science, medical, ops, engineering, entertainment and command levels and a few others thrown in, crew have spacious staterooms near the top too. The whole structure is wired up to a mainframe computer with terminals dotted around that interface with various machines around the station and on the ships

Thirza Ember: you mentioned the backstory... is there a way for new people to learn about that? or do newbies pick it up as you go along

Alia Soulstar: We have two very talented scripters, Astro Balut and Han BoShi have done the bulk of this scripting and I’ll show you an example at the next stop

Alia Soulstar: yes, our website: https://starfleetinfinity.com  has tonnes of info. The idea here is not just to have models of things but to have working models of things to base our RP on, so the consoles, and machines you use interact with you and some of them do very smart things

Forest Azure: but are there actually planets to work on?

Alia Soulstar: yes, we create planet environs as we need them for story arcs

Beth Ghostraven: Alia, do you have a library?

Alia Soulstar: I kinda am a library, but on this station there is a database that acts as a library

Pauline NOVA419: Handle her with care, check her out but don't break her spine :)

Beth Ghostraven: I meant so crew members could access information and stories

Nila Shvaress: we have mission logs and crew backstories and records on the website

Alia Soulstar: Here you can bring up service records of crew, defence systems, and lots of other data...

and I guess we are out of time :)

Nila Shvaress: that time did go fast -  thanks for visiting everyone

Lazuli Pooraka: This is a most impressive build and so much to see, it could take days

Beth Ghostraven: Thank you for the tour! This has  been amazing and wonderful, Alia!

Alia Soulstar: which is a pity as we didn't make it to a a starship, our starships are actual 1:1 size

Forest Azure: i thought there was no real roleplay in OS, I was clearly mistaken

Lavia Lavine: It has been fascinating indeed.

Dolfke Barbosa: you always can come back, pls do not forget to make LM's,  there are still 5 Ships to explore ^^

Mal Burns: stupendous build(s) - congrats

Lazuli Pooraka: Immersion at the highest level

Ard Rhys: Thanks for the tour;-)

Alia Soulstar: I’ve run out of time to go any deeper but you are all most welcome to return, explore, and if you see a starfleet officer, don’t hesitate to ask for a personal guided tour, and of course, if you’re interested in joining, please do. This is our website which is full of information: https://starfleetinfinity.com and you can enlist from there

James Atlloud: And great graphic design!

Kelso Uxlay: Very impressive setting

Tosha Tyran: thank you guys... I am so impressed, that I am absolutely speechless

Star Ravenhurst: Thank you for such an interesting visit.

Georgina Mills: That was short but sweet :)

Alex.Salamander: Thanks for all

Alia Soulstar: thank you all for coming today, enjoy the rest of your Safari :)

HG Address   grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002:Astraios Colony    

hop address:

hop://grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002/Astraios%20Colony/633/694/22