Quests

A signal-driven quest system ties gameplay together: objectives that trigger on in-game events (kill / collect / scan / dock / reach / arrive), a quest log players accept and abandon quests from, and multi-step stories.

Authoring in AMD

Quests are authored in AMD files (a movie-script-style dialogue/story format) rather than hand-written control flow, which keeps the writing readable and the logic consistent. A quest is a ## [Title](key) heading with a fenced block of fields, then prose:

## [Defend the Convoy](defend_convoy)
---
Scope: shared
Starts when: at once
Objective: Drive the raiders off the freighters
Done when: destroy 6 raiders
Reward: 500 credits
---
Escort the freighters through the belt - every raider you burn buys them time.

The full file format — headings, the fence, nesting, lists and how a record says what it is — is in The AMD file format.

Quest fields

Field	Meaning	Also
At start:	What condition this record is in when the mission BEGINS. posting is listed like an available job but shows no Accept button - something else has to offer it.	State:
Objective:	The sentence the player reads in the quest log.
Done when:	The COMPLETION trigger - what has to happen for this quest to be done.	Goal:
Starts when:	When it ARMS - at once, accepted (the player takes it off the board), revealed (another quest reveals it). Not what completes it; that is Done when:.	When:
Fails when:	What FAILS it - the same trigger grammar, plus all dead <role> and a bare time.
Then:	Follow-up on COMPLETION - reveal <quest> to unlock another, or signal <name>. Those two verbs only; anything else is read as a reveal target.
Action:	What the world does the moment this beat STARTS - one stage direction per line, all simultaneous. Then: is the other end.
Part of:	The quest this one belongs under, by key.	Parent:
Scope:	Who holds it - shared is one quest for the whole game, ship gives every player ship its own copy.
Held by:	WHO owns the quest - a landmark key or a role, so a station's resupply job is held by the station and its deadline lands on the world rather than on a passing crew.
Reward:	What COMPLETING it gives - credits, an item key, or a reputation clause.	Pays:
Penalty:	What FAILING it costs - the same grammar as Reward:. Abandoning an accepted job fails it, so this is what walking away costs.
Tier:	Optional ordering for the quest log.
Speaker:	WHO this quest talks as - a character or ship key. The voice of its deadline reminders, and of anything else it needs to say.
Signal says:	The words a deadline reminder transmits. {time} interpolates the remaining clock.
On accept:	What to say the moment the player accepts it.
On complete:	What to say the moment it completes.
Required:	Whether the mission needs this one completed to succeed.
Fatal:	Failing this ENDS the mission.	Critical:
Win:	Completing this WINS the mission.
Lose:	Completing this LOSES the mission.
Citation:	The commendation read out on the end screen.
Scan says:	What a SCAN of the target reads out. Not Then: reveal, which unlocks another quest - same word, two concepts.	Reveals:, Scan text:
Show:	WHEN this quest is listed. when done runs it unseen and shows it once it resolves, reading as history; with children earns a row only while something under it is listed; never drives its events invisibly. Not the same as Starts when: revealed, which also stops the triggers.
Accept on:	Restrict which CONSOLES may Accept or Abandon this job, overriding the mission default.
Engage on:	Restrict which consoles may ENGAGE (travel to) this job.
Cockpit:	The craft a sortie is flown in.

At start: posting is worth calling out: the job is listed like an available one, but the Accept button does not show - the only way to take it is whatever else offers it, typically answering an incoming hail. And a record that calls itself a Beat or an Arc already implies its Show: value - see screenplay words.

Say Beat or Arc instead

A record that calls itself a Beat (a moment the crew lives through) already means Show: when done, and an Arc (the heading over a run of beats) already means Show: with children — see screenplay words. Write Show: only to contradict the word.

Console gating

The Quests tab displays on every enabled console, but who may act is gated per console. A mission sets the defaults (shared vars, e.g. in settings.yaml):

Var	Default	Controls
QUEST_ACCEPT_CONSOLES	comms,admiral	Consoles that may show Accept / Abandon. "" = any console (the pre-gating behavior).
QUEST_ENGAGE_CONSOLES	helm	Consoles that may show Engage (when QUEST_ENGAGE_ENABLED).

Each control is also gated by the job's state: Accept shows only for an available (not-yet-accepted) job, Abandon only for an accepted (active) one, and Engage only for an active one. A completed or failed job — or a section header / no selection — shows no action controls. Engage additionally means the job must be accepted first — before that, the helm shows a short "Accept this job … before engaging." hint. On a console that can't act on an actionable job, the buttons are replaced with text naming the console(s) that can. Accept On: / Engage On: on a single quest override these lists for that job (a station-specific task).

Triggers

The verb in Done when: / Starts when: (or a fail_* field) maps to the event the quest listens for:

Verb(s)	Fires on	Argument
destroy, kill	a kill	role (+ count, e.g. destroy 6 raiders)
collect, recover, gather	picking up an item	item key
scan, survey	a science scan	role
dock	docking	role
reach, travel	arriving at a sector	sector (e.g. reach 6, 4)
signal	a named signal — the escape hatch for any game-state milestone	signal name
all dead	every object of a role is gone	role
a time	5 minutes / 30 seconds — a time is a trigger like any other	—
accepted / revealed	the player takes the job off the board / another quest reveals it	—

Mission tree & end-game

Quests form a tree so a mission's whole win/lose condition is authored in AMD, not hand-wired in script:

Field	Meaning
Part of:	Attach this quest to a parent quest (its key), aggregating into that mission.
Required:	The parent isn't won until this child completes.
Fatal:	Failing this quest loses the game.
Win:	Completing this quest wins the game. Bare flag, or prose that becomes the end-screen reason.
Lose:	Completing (or failing) it loses the game. Bare flag, or prose reason.
Fails when:	Fail the quest — signal base_lost, all dead convoy, 5 minutes.

This is the same vocabulary Open Universe uses and the Siege bosses hang their objectives on.

A Fails when: time starts counting when the quest goes ACTIVE

The deadline is anchored lazily — the clock starts on the first tick the quest is active, not when it is granted. So an available job's timer does not run until a player Accepts it: a timed rescue gives the crew the full window from the moment they take it on, instead of ticking down while it sits unaccepted on the board. (Pair it with spawn-on-accept — key the target spawn off the quest_activated signal or a state watch — so the objective's objects also appear only once the job is taken.)

Deadline reminders

A countdown that only lives on the Quests tab is one the crew discovers by failing. A job with a Fails when: deadline calls in as its clock runs down, on comms, in the voice of whatever is transmitting:

## [Rescue the Shuttle](rescue_shuttle)
---
Job
Speaker: shuttle_pilot
Fails when: 6 minutes
Signal says: LIFE SUPPORT CRITICAL. {time} TO FAILURE.
---
Their air is going. Reach them before the clock does.

Cadence is absolute marks — 5:00, 2:00, 1:00 and 0:30 — filtered to the ones that fit under the deadline. A six-minute job gets all four; a forty-five-second job gets two. They are sparse early and tighten as it matters, which a fixed interval cannot do: every-minute is spam on a long job, and fractions of the deadline land three messages seconds apart on a short one. A mark equal to the deadline never fires, so a five-minute job does not announce "5:00 remaining" the instant it is accepted, and a tick that crosses several marks at once (a long frame, a restart) sends only the most urgent rather than a burst.

Who speaks is resolved in the order of how much you asked for it:

Order	Source
1	Speaker: on the quest.
2	Held by:, when it resolves to something that can talk — a station's job speaks with the station's face for free.
3	The mission's registered dispatch voice (quest_dispatch_voice(<agent>)).
4	Silence. A reminder from nobody is worse than no reminder.

The mission registers its own dispatch voice, because the library has no business knowing which faction is in charge — and it is resolved lazily, so you may register it before the cast has spawned.

What it says comes from Signal says:, with {time} replaced by the remaining clock. Without one, the wording follows the voice: a speaker with no face is a machine and transmits ("AUTOMATED SIGNAL - 2:00 REMAINING"), a cast character speaks ("2:00 remaining."). Either way the message arrives on comms, titled with the quest's name — a crew can hold several timed jobs at once, and an urgent line about the wrong one is worse than none. The last mark is marked final and colored red.

Signal says: is not Done when: signal <name>

Same word, two jobs: in Done when: signal breach the signal is an event name; in Signal says: it is the thing transmitting. One is a field value, the other a field label, which is the only reason the collision is safe.

Signals

Quests emit signals you can react to from anywhere:

Signals go two ways, and the names are dangerously similar. Check the direction before you write a route — listening on an input waits for something nothing sends, and fails in total silence.

Driver → you (react to these):

Signal	Data keys	When
quest_started	AGENT_ID, QUEST_ID, DATA	a quest became active
quest_succeeded	AGENT_ID, QUEST_ID, DATA	a quest completed (rewards granted, reveals done)
quest_failed_done	AGENT_ID, QUEST_ID, DATA	a quest failed (penalty applied)
a quest's own Signal:	AGENT_ID, QUEST_ID	that quest completed, if it declares one

You → driver (emit these to drive a quest; the driver listens):

Signal	Data keys	Effect
quest_activated	AGENT_ID, QUEST_ID	mark the quest active
quest_completed	AGENT_ID, QUEST_ID	mark the quest complete
quest_failed	AGENT_ID, QUEST_ID	mark the quest failed
quest_signal	SIGNAL_NAME	advance any quest whose Done when: signal <name> matches

Then: signal X reaches other quests too

Then: signal X fires the raw signal X — so a //signal/X route still matches what you wrote — and the quest_signal milestone, so another quest's Done when: signal X advances. A choice in a hail written ; signal X does the same. Before this the two lines read as if they met and never did.

quest_completed is a request, not a notification

To react to a quest finishing, listen for quest_succeeded. quest_completed is what you emit to ask for a quest to be completed — the driver handles it and calls quest_mark_complete. Writing //signal/quest_completed to catch a completion is a route that never runs, and it fails in silence.

Request → announcement: quest_activated → quest_started, quest_completed → quest_succeeded, quest_failed → quest_failed_done.

Put event bodies on //shared/signal

Every message verb addresses its own audience. On a plain //signal the route runs once per connected console plus the server, so a five-console bridge sends each message five times and performs each side effect five times.

//shared/signal/quest_succeeded
    log("Quest complete!")

See Signals and the quest API for the full surface (quest_set_state and friends).

A trigger in Starts when: is a real gate

Starts when: signal relief_authorised opens the quest; its Done when: then decides what finishes it. The two are separate, so a gate can no longer complete the job it was only meant to unlock. A quest with a start trigger is not advancing until that trigger fires.