Hey everyone! Jorden, here. I've had time to get a lot more work done on the game's scenarios, which are my primary responsibility, and I thought I'd talk about how that works. Briefly, since I have to get back to it soon. We basically have three categories of events that can happen in game: static discoveries, random events, and dynamic scenarios. None of these are in the game right this second but we have started to lay the groundwork and planning for how they're going to be run.

In order:

Static discoveries will be placed at world generation; these are stories that you find as you explore the map looking for the enemy and for good territory to expand in to. They tend to be pretty short but they will alter the short term outcome of your exploration and you'll be finding them all throughout the game. The enemy can find them too and reap the benefits or pain associated with any given discovery (some of them are very dangerous).

Random events are fully controlled by the Storyteller AI and are triggered over time; these stories come to you. At the most basic the only determining factor for these events is a simple dice roll which would be run every few minutes to determine if you get an event and which one. That being said there will be a lot of other factors to try and ensure that random events do not trigger too freqeuntly or too rarely or that an empire does not experience so many challenging ones in a row that they get destroyed. Basically we want to protect you from the whims of the dice (or random number generator to be specific). AI empires can also experience these but generally random events will be somewhat localized and only affect one empire at a time.

Dynamic scenarios are the most intense and they have specific, individual triggers; these stories are never random and will usually have wide-reaching effects. The main campaign events are all going to be considered dynamic but there will also be many additional scenarios which a player will encounter. They don't really like to share the spotlight with one another but they can be triggered in all kinds of ways. Some of them will probably end up being placed at world gen like the static discoveries; never drop your guard while exploring. Dynamic scenarios will usually affect all or most of the empires currently in play and the results will have long term impact on the future of the game. Some dynamic scenarios may even result in permanent, solar system wide buffs or penalties that will force all empires in play to adopt new strategies in order to be successful.

That's just a quick look at what I'm working on, currently there are quite a few static discoveries written and a couple of really good random events. There's even an early dynamic scenario. I'm hopeful that all of these will be present in the game at Early Access but as always I cannot make any promises. Looking forward to seeing you encounter my stories!