Debt Credit and Debt Tracker

Quantify and display the player’s total debt to Alterra.

It should be an outrageous, unbelievable number, and we can give the player some context for what basic goods and housing cost elsewhere in the lore to establish stakes.

When the player completes goals as the QI or performs other useful work for Alterra or the NOA or PDA, token amounts are deducted from this debt via script. This creates a fun new lateral storytelling gimmick, where we can see what drives NOA’s value function.

We could give debt credits (quietly) for all sorts of things, as NOA has already established this dynamic between himself and the QI during the intro.

Consider some or all of the following events for which we can give debt credit:

• Scanning new technology, minerals, bioforms, and structures
• Locating and retrieving black boxes
• Discovering sites, wreckage, and anomalies
• Building or handling materials, objects, and equipment for the first time
• Acquiring log entries
• Making choices in dialog or in the order we choose to handle events (reward changes, NOA makes different comments, but it’s still just fun and flavor)

Cheers!

We could also allow NOA to express disapproval at key moments by adding on to the debt.