Chapter 1

Vlad is currently standing in bewilderment as realises that he along with his ship has just transmigrated.

He came to the conclusion after the status screen disappeared, along with the sudden sensation of his other sense which is impossible to reproduce in game.

It's really quite strange at first as the simulation of the sense touch is still beyond current VR technology and is only just recently started researching.

Not to mention that his other the sense of taste and sense of smell.

Well... the sense of smell could be added if the person plugged in a smell cartridge but funny thing is that Vlad doesn't remember plugging it in.

Vlad found it cumbersome to constantly log out every few hours to replace the smell cartridges just so that he could smell the stale air in the ship and the the annoying red blinking icon "empty smell cartridge please replace " at the corner of his eye is quite irritating and won't go away until you ether replace the spent cartridge or pull out the spent cartridge! as this alert only happens when you have an empty cartridge plugged in!

Anyway the sense of taste is the most tricky of them all as different parts of the tongue has a slightly different taste receptors specialising in different taste, there also the matter of how our brain interpret these signals coming from the tongue.

Suffice to say research in this area hasn't even begun and is completely impossible with the current technology despite being in the 24th century.

It's really quite surprising to taste actual food in game. You see while there a wide variety of food choices in game but most people viewed it as mere cosmetics.

Anyway Vlad finally came to that conclusion as he was eating a piece of steak aboard his Titan class ship.

Hmmm~

Vlad munched happily on the piece of steak feeling the sensation of the beef and the sauce.

'This taste much better than the crappy 3D printed "steaks" at home' Vlad thought obviously quite dissatisfied that despite living in the 24th century the hight of human civilisation they still can't figure out how to make a tube of tasteless nutrient paste into a piece of steak!

Truly quite infuriating! The packaging said that it can make stuff as good as the real thing. My ass! Quite frustrating isn't it?

You see in the 24th while everyone is being supplied with free food that doesn't mean said free food would taste great. Of course the government know about this which is why they gave out food printer as well that is said to be able to print food "as good as the real thing".

All one has to do is plug in a nutrient paste and select what type of food one wants to eat. Then it will automatically reassemble the paste to resemble the same consistency, texture and taste as the food selected. Simple right? Or that's how it's supposed to work...

But unfortunately reality is quite different form what the creators envisioned as the stuff that came out taste bazaar as while it somewhat taste like the stuff you ordered and ... at the same time it's not.

It's like the uncanny valley only on food, it's really quite disgusting if one thinks about it and one might even prefer to eat the raw nutrient paste directly than that staff.

Which is why there's a recent movement to bring back real food such as real pork, beef chickens, bats and so on. (A subtle hint at the Chinese market)

Anyway once he's finished eating Vlad order the worker bots to take out the dishes as he thinks about his current predicament.

Vlad stares at the holographic display in front of his which shows the surrounding star systems.

Looking at the blank names of all the star systems in the whole galaxy serves to only reaffirmed his belief that he has transmigrated.

Those basically means that the star systems is unexplored as a name will be automatically generated upon discovery of the system and of course the name can only be change by the one who found it or by the one who later lay claims to it.

So seeing all the star systems in whole galaxy without names pretty much means that the system doesn't recognise any of them.

Naturally he has lost communication with everybody as the world chat disappears along with his status screen.

As he would have obviously asked for technical support already through the player personnel interface or otherwise known as status screen.

The status screen basically functions for all the meta games stuff like world chat, group chat, forums, log in/out, wiki pages, technical support.

Obviously you can't call for help to the other side of the galaxy when you're avatar get captured by alien NPCs in a high security prison with all your equipment forcibly removed and communication jammers all around.

The wiki page and forums are kinda meta-game like as it game players easy access to informations to things that they otherwise wouldn't have or at least having a hard time gathering.

Naturally players took full advantage of this feature especially when dealing with NPCs.

Like in certain situations the NPCs would try to bluff/scam players by saying "we're blah blah blah..." (possibly dropping some (fake) ground breaking information)

The player would pretend to be thinking deeply about it all the while sneakily looking through the wiki, forums and asking chat if it's bullshit.

Of course players can find the same information in game without the usage of the wiki like looking up terminals but generally players are too lazy to walk just like 3 feet for the ship's terminal.

Of course why walk 3 feet for a terminal when you can have access for the same if not more detailed information from the comfort of your couch?

While the lost of the player interface is a huge tragedy besides all those meta game stuff, it doesn't really offer much else.

It doesn't really use Hit Points system like all the ancient games in the past as "Final Frontier" is designed to be as close to reality as possible so such unrealistic things are naturally discarded.

(Think the game sniper elite where it shows where the bullet hit. Think of the game war thunder where hitting certain parts of the vehicle would disabled parts of the vehicle, just love the part where it shows you which part got hit there by disabling that part.)

As the game doesn't use the nonsensical points system or level system.

No level system? Nani!?

Yes, it doesn't have a level system. Realistically speaking what's stopping a newbie player from just picking up a hand portable railgun and releasing mayhem on the enemy instead of the some crappy knifes?

None right? So what the difference between the damage dealt by a newbie operating a plasma canon and a veteran player operating the same weapon? While there might be an argument of how skilfulness or experience but ultimately a plasma canon should have the same damage potential in a veteran as it would on a newbie.

It's very much ridiculous that a veteran player could hold on to a stick and the stick would some how turn into a lightsaber dealing a bajillion damage!

Without the HP bar naturally made the game much more complicated as telling what is dead and what is not can sometimes be quite hard.

In some instances players/enemy NPCs has been able to successfully escape death by pretending to be dead.

Or to newbies "how many times do I need to shoot that tank with my pistol?"

Veteran players facepalm at latter's question. Well... Maybe if the newbie somehow manages to find himself inside the Tank and shoot the power core then, perhaps he can die with along the tank in one epic explosion but otherwise, No!

Of course these situations are rare as most action takes place in space and ships are much easier to tell if they're dead.

Like is there power signatures? Is it crumbling apart? is there life signs? Or how badly peppered the hull is?

If it doesn't look quite dead yet then a few more rounds into should confirmed your suspicion.

Anyway as he's now in his in-game character then that means he an "immortal".

An immortal is basically the in game explanation as to why and how a player is able to respawn.

Basically through the usage of quantum mind transfer players are able to transfer into a new body upon the death of the old one, as long as you have a clone prepared that is.

The detailed explanation involves around scanning the brain before death and through the usage quantum entanglement, it can be transferred instantaneously to a cloning facility thereby replicating the patient's brain to achieve instantaneous mind transfer.

Fortunately for him he has as pretty much all ships above capital ship class has cloning facility which players can respawn to.

Otherwise, he would be in quite a pickle as he doesn't know if he would be wake up back in "Final Frontier" or simply die.

(took great inspiration from EVE online's capsuleer system)

Granted he very reluctant to commit suicide just to test out if he's immortal or not, what if all that stuff about being reborn is nonsense? Then won't he has just died for nothing?

Fortunately, as everything in the ship seems to working as they're supposed to he has some confidence that this feature of the game should be the same.

Anyway Vlad looks at the holographic map before him before he decided to head to a star system than seem mineral-rich.