Colony Ship update #33 - State of the Game

[Vault Dweller]

Stack with other considerations such as evasion and grenades' & gadgets' effects that make you harder to hit.

 

[Johannes]

Why does Vince only put horrible sociopaths as NPCs in all his games? Seems like after sociopaths in Rome, now we get sociopaths in space.

I hope you aren't paying attention to business and politics, otherwise you might discover sociopaths in Washington and Silicon Valley.

That may be so, but I thought you once said that NPCs in AoD were sociopathic because it served the purported atmosphere for the game.

But based on these admittedly limited screenshots, it's still way, way closer in tone to AoD than Star Trek or Babylon 5.

It's a Deadwood-esque town, sitting outside of the Habitat's sphere of influence. It's exactly what you'd expect from a lawless town built from containers, both in terms of the atmosphere and people who'd feel at home there. The Habitat is the opposite: futuristic, cosmopolitan, and ideologically divided. The mutant town and the ECLSS are very different as well.

Why does Vince only put horrible sociopaths as NPCs in all his games? Seems like after sociopaths in Rome, now we get sociopaths in space.

I hope you aren't paying attention to business and politics, otherwise you might discover sociopaths in Washington and Silicon Valley.

You seem to take any environment whatsoever and explain how you'd expect it to find sociopaths there.

Or maybe you're just saying DC and SF are basically as good as lawless

 

[Junmarko]

Why does Vince only put horrible sociopaths as NPCs in all his games? Seems like after sociopaths in Rome, now we get sociopaths in space.

...name a CRPG that doesn't

& the most memorable instances have been where you end up sympathising with those sorts of characters.

 

[Lithium Flower]

I think amorality and immorality are often confused. I didn't find AoD's moral language to be edgy or "evil", I found that it didn't really have one at all - meaning that after playing it I couldn't confidently say "VD probably thinks x is wicked and y is righteous" but rather that events and characters were simply presented as-is and I was free to determine whether I agreed with them or not. Meanwhile, something that put me off Tyranny initially was that it advertised itself as a game in which "Evil won" - so you are going to apparently subvert traditional fantasy moral expectations while still pandering to (IMO) bullshit good/evil dichotomy? The amoral approach I find preferable because it provides players with the aforementioned flexibility to project their own value system without it clashing with the author's apparent intent. Of course, even that doesn't work for everyone - there are people like Vox Day and I'm assuming HHR that believe art's virtue and moral certainty to be its true measure. For a secular person that does not believe in traditional morality, however, presenting the world in terms of good and evil may come off as artificial or preachy unless done as a well-constructed hypothetical (let's suppose there is a universe where moral, objective meaning exists and actually engage with the implications.)

Actually, I am totally oversimplifying things because one can argue that moral language is in fact intrinsic to all works in that the author's choice to include anything is in itself a moral statement (still I think there is a difference between this type of moral language and actively painting your game in the broad strokes of gud and ebul) but I'm just a cute layman trying my best so here that's my shitpost.

TL;DR I don't think VD (or whoever was responsible for narrative design later in the development) designed AoD to have the highest number of sociopaths per square mile possible, I think he just portrayed the various powers and factions of the game world as honestly as possible without slapping morality labels on everything. Hopefully the same approach continues in CSG.

You seem to take any environment whatsoever and explain how you'd expect it to find sociopaths there.

Or maybe you're just saying DC and SF are basically as good as lawless

I think the implication is that there are certain trends in the human behavior/condition that VD identified and said trends become more unfettered when civilization is on its last legs (as is the case in AoD and seemingly in CSG as well.) Not sure why VD's portrayal of people as being largely self-interested is even controversial considering it is one of the main suppositions behind capitalism.

 

[agris]

Vault Dweller I want to make sure I understand weapon range before offering a suggestion. There are two sets of ranges, point blank up to and including effective, where there there is no THC malus, and effective to maximum, with the -10 THC/tile malus? So there is no range under which there’s a THC penalty? A minimum effective, for firing a long gun at point blank for example?

There are point blank penalties for certain weapon types (a rifle, for example), but let's ignore them and focus on effective (no THC malus) and max (losing THC with every tile) ranges. If the player aims a pistol and sees that his THC is 5%, he needs to know it's because the enemy is far beyond the effective range.

Sorry this took so long to respond to! The upside is that I had some more time to think about this over the holidays.

I think weapon range and impact on THC can be communicated clearly via cursor states and a shader overlay on the ground tiles. Think of the cursor states as the more advanced / less visually intrusive way to present this data, more for the experienced player, while the ground tiles shader very clearly delineates the optimal range of the weapons, at the expense of being more visually intrusive. It also is the more strategic view for when you're trying to quickly see the optimal ranges of multiple characters using guns. The ground tiles shaders should be toggle-able or press-to-view (configurable).


Cursor states.

A crosshair with a bullet is shown on the cursor when the player's mouse passes over any enemy in a valid state for targeting. The bullet component of the cursor changes depending on where in the range band of the weapon (too close/optimal/far) the target is. Bullet high means you're too close, bullet falling is too far, straight is in optimal range. The relative position of the crosshair and the bullet icons should stay the same as above, to further highlight that your shots are not optimal (i.e. bullet is not even in-line with crosshair). For shits and giggles, the bullet's silhouette could change depending on the class of ammunition being used (pistol / 9 mm-type, rifle / 7.62 mm type, shotgun, no clue for energy).


Tile shading.

A shader that is applied to the colored ground squares, assuming this is similar to how it was presented in AoD and DR, with two circles overlayed onto the square grid. For the radius encompassing a weapon's "penalty for point blank shot", tile movement colors are desaturated and washed out, indicating to the new player that something is "off". Similarly for all distances greater than a weapon's most effective range, ground tiles are darkened to indicate non-ideality. The use of circles that bisect the grid imperfectly is to draw a clear visual distinction that the player is looking at something that is not movement / AP cost based.

I like this solution because it doesn't involve much in way of a new UI layer on the ground, just the circumference of the two circles that will look quite elegant using the fancy electric blue lines from one of your earlier screenshots. It relies on changing the saturation of the existing ground tiles color, so no information is removed from the player - only added. Note that I didn't have it in me to mockup the colors for movement in my graphic, but I'm sure you get it.

Depending on how intrusive this ground tile shading is, I think making it viewable as a toggle or press-to-see (ALT) would be appreciated by people who aren't new to the game.

Elhoim

edit: I should add that the dark shading for beyond maximum range, the shading should get progressively darker as the THC malus increases.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Stack with other considerations such as evasion and grenades' & gadgets' effects that make you harder to hit.

Any plans to have environmental factors like differing lighting levels or perhaps smoke or mist which might affect change-to-hit?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Stack with other considerations such as evasion and grenades' & gadgets' effects that make you harder to hit.

Any plans to have environmental factors like differing lighting levels or perhaps smoke or mist which might affect change-to-hit?

There are smoke grenades that do exactly that.

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,7514.0.html

Ship-made Grenades (cheap and fairly common, many enemies will have several grenades on their belts).

1. Gas Grenade – creates a visible 7x7 poison cloud that hovers over the affected area for 2 turns and does X damage per turn for Y number of turns (once poisoned).

If poison gets through the respirator or mask (i.e. the mask doesn’t block the poison entirely), it causes low damage to physical stats (STR, DEX, CON), which is worse than 2-3 points of damage per turn.

So the gas grenades’ stats are:
- Damage per turn
- Number of turns once poisoned
- Stat damage (damage range is 1-3; 1 is common, 3 is rare).

Defense:
- respirators (half masks), gas masks (full masks), full helmets to reduce poison DR
- implant (synthetic heart with blood purifier) to reduce poison stat damage

2. Flashbang Grenade – instant flash in the middle of a 7x7 area that sets all affected enemies’ PER to 1 (thus lowering THC), reduces their AP by 10 (disoriented), and sets Evasion to 0. All effects last 1 turn, Evasion penalty starts during the player’s turn and ends after the enemy’s turn.

Defense: Combat goggles, full helmets, or implant (bionic eye) to reduce PER and AP loss

3. Smoke Grenade – creates a dense 7x7 cloud that hovers over the affected area for 2 turns. The cloud greatly reduces visibility: if your target is in the cloud or behind the cloud (i.e. there is a smoke cloud between you and your target), your THC is set to 5%, representing zero visibility.

Basically, it affects both parties (if you’re in the cloud, you can’t see anything outside of it either), so it’s best suited for charging melee attackers to generate some cover while they are on the move.

Defense: Goggles, full helmets, or implants (bionic eye with different properties) to increase visibility (thermal vision).

We assume that your THC is THC under perfect conditions. If the visibility is reduced, your THC is reduced with it. So if combat goggles give you visibility of 80% and your THC is 60%, then your adjusted THC is 60*0.8 = 48%

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

There are smoke grenades that do exactly that.

What about levels that might have some global effect going on?
Places without working lights or with lots of water vapor or something?

 

[agris]

gotta say, i'm digging the item icons. they're just the right amount of not photorealistic, with an illustrated look that makes the original fallout 1 icons look so good still today.

 

[Vault Dweller]

There are smoke grenades that do exactly that.

What about levels that might have some global effect going on?
Places without working lights or with lots of water vapor or something?

Most likely. I don't think creating such effects will be an issue, but I wouldn't know for sure until we try.

 

[Tigranes]

Just to say I'm a huge fan of the rising & falling phallus bullet graphic thing from agris & would love to see it in CS