In what ways can story, world design and game design blend together to populate worlds in a satisfying manner? I'm trying to come up with a clever way that I can reuse game assets and yet still deliver the epic feeling of being a single character who changes human destiny as we expand to the stars. Enemies present a particularly thorny problem because as the game world gets larger, the player's expectations on variety of encounter need to be carefully controlled. I think that storyline and world design can do this. I'd like to be able to deliver several classes of threats: Human and alien starships, vehicles, mecha, human and alien suits of armor, and a few creatures. I think mix & match procedural generation is going to work for ships, vehicles and mecha. Bodies and creatures, however, are dicey, possibly requiring the severe limitation of aliens-- but even mix & match mecha will get old unless world design & story comes to the rescue.

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I think the solution is to set expectations for four major types of environments, with swappable enemies: * Civilized human habitats * Wastelands, ruins and wild frontier * Human outer space environs with human starships & colonies * Alien outer space with alien starships & colonies Basic Habitat Enemies The human habitats would be cities, space stations and colony outposts divided among various factions. They'd have basic power suits and robots, possibly vehicles, possibly aliens. Advanced cities would have AI as enemies. Aircraft / Starship Enemies Aircraft would set the expectation for spacecraft. Aircraft would be suborbital for quick world travel, and become light spacecraft in later eras (with variants on hardpoints). They'd be the first vehicles available for flying and fighting in the rebuilding Earth, and later on lone colony worlds vs. other craft. Modular freighters and capital ships would be a separate class of enemies. In late game, they'd become floating anti-grav platforms. Wasteland / Frontier Enemies In wastes, ruins and wild frontier, the same varieties of scavenger suits, robots, power armor, ATVs and outposts would appear (with some hardpoint variation). On Earth, the designs served to protect against rogue nano. In space, it's just natural vs. bacteria or vaccuum. Enemy Nanotech On Earth, Then In Space Nanotech clouds & assembled constructs would make a constant appearance, courtesy of a storyline involving a rogue AI that failed to bodyjack millions of humans and instead launched itself as nanoseeds to the stars. On Earth, it would be a balanced threat, but out among the stars might have formed fleets and large automated dungeons installations. As Jotaf suggested, the AI-nano could even be responsible for disassembling entire planets. Ships, Robots, ATVs As People Drone-culture, a result of the mass bodyjacking, would also set an expectation of "people as machines." This allows reuse of ATVs, ships and probes as NPCs. Thoughts?