The InertialRef design bible

723 words · 1 diagram

What the game is, what the player does, and why each mechanic is shaped the way it is.

This is the design counterpart to the engineering documentation. docs/vision.md is the charter — what the platform is for. This directory is the game — what is built on top of it. Where the two disagree, vision.md wins and this directory is wrong.

How to read this

Start with charter and loops. Together they are about twenty minutes and they contain the whole game in outline. Everything else is depth on one system.

flowchart LR
    C["<b>charter</b><br/>what and why"] --> L["<b>loops</b><br/>what you do"]
    L --> S["<b>systems</b><br/>flight · ships · galaxy<br/>exploration · onfoot · combat"]
    S --> P["<b>presentation</b><br/>ux · art · audio · world"]
    P --> M["<b>production</b><br/>modes · technical<br/>competitive · production · risk"]

    style C fill:#0369a1,stroke:#0c4a6e,color:#fff
    style L fill:#0e7490,stroke:#155e75,color:#fff

Current version: 0.4. All twenty-eight open design questions are resolved and recorded in appendix. All five engineering spikes have now been run (docs/spikes.md) — four are closed, one waits on hardware — and their results are folded into the pages below. Two named content gaps remain. Earlier revisions: v0.3 resolved the design questions; v0.2 replaced the cruise throttle with brachistochrone burns, established the Canopy as a sensor rather than a window with real HDR output, and widened the jump-range spread to ~7.7×.

What v0.4 changed, in one line each: Gaia is non-commercial and leaves the bundle · the catalog is 12× cheaper than estimated · TSL is free · HDR detection does not work and auto becomes a capability probe · HOTAS is a Chromium promise.

Contents

The game

Page What it settles
charter High concept, the four pillars, positioning, audience
loops The micro, macro and meta loops, and what brings a player back
progression The three ratchets, and why there is no XP bar

Systems

Page What it settles
flight The Reference Drive, the three travel regimes, fuel
ships Hulls, modules, power, heat, damage, targeting
galaxy Real data, catalog revisions, the galaxy and system maps
exploration Scanning, discovery credit, the reward model, the economy
onfoot The first-person layer, the suit, interaction, inventory
combat Ship combat and the deliberately scarce on-foot combat

Content and presentation

Page What it settles
content What exists in the galaxy, in what quantity, generated how
world Setting, tone, and the diegetic frame that holds it together
ux The shell and routes, cockpit, HUD, the two maps, accessibility
art The photorealism doctrine and the LOD continuity specification
audio Music, effects, and the problem of silence

Production

Page What it settles
modes Solo offline, solo online, persistent universe
planetarium Free navigation of the galaxy — the mode with no ship
cinema The player for scripted scenes, and its URL contract
technical WebGPU migration, performance budgets, targets
sustainability Open source governance, contribution, funding
competitive Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous, No Man's Sky, and the gap
production Milestones M2–M7 and the named MVP
risk The risk register
appendix Glossary, open questions, revision history

Status legend

Used throughout, matching docs/roadmap.md:

✅ built and proven · 🟡 partially built · ⬜ designed, not built · ⛔ deliberately deferred

Design pages describe the intended system. Where something already exists in code, the page says so and links to it. Where it does not, the page says what seam it lands on. A design page that cannot name its seam is speculative and should be marked ⬜ and left alone — the same rule vision.md applies to abstractions.

Decisions, spikes and gaps

Design questions are resolved inline where they arise and collected in appendix. The five [OPEN QUESTION: …] spikes that needed a measurement rather than an opinion have been run — their results are in docs/spikes.md and folded into the pages that held the guess. What remains is [PLAYTEST: …] values awaiting evidence, plus the hardware half of spike 5. Everything is listed in the appendix so nothing hides in a paragraph.