Colony Ship RPG Update #4

[Infinitron]

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,7181.msg145450/

Reflections on the main quest design

There are many different ways to construct a main quest in an RPG and every studio uses a different set of building blocks reflecting their own preferences and goals. We’re all about Choices & Consequences, which means 3 key types of choices:

• Multiple quest solutions (you should be able to go through the game in a different manner if you decide to replay it with a different character)
• Narrative choices (craft your own story by making different choices and reaping different consequences)
• Moral choices (aka ‘you should not be forced to play a hero obsessed with helping people’)

Needless to say, there is a lot of work involved in supporting these choices and giving them depth. Narrative choices require multiple factions, a branching main quest, and multiple endings; moral choices – evil/opportunistic bastard path, etc.

Our main quest’s building blocks aren’t that different from the ones we used in AoD...

• 3-4 factions
• Branching main quest (at some point you choices should take you into different directions)
• At least 5-6 vastly different endings

... but we’ll use them in a very different way and craft a very different experience.

Before we talk about the CSG’s main quest design, let’s talk about the AoD’s main quest to illustrate some points without spoiling anything.

The main quest started vague – "go I know not where, bring back I know not what", and then the faction quests took over as the meat of the game. Essentially, the game wasn’t about finding the temple but instead working for the factions and slowly uncovering what happened in the past. By the time you’ve visited all 3 cities and learned what you can about the factions, the war, and the gods, you know where the temple is and you're ready to make your choice. That fairly important choice affects the ending slides, but not gameplay because the game is almost over at this point.

Naturally, we want to do better. So in the CSG we’ll get rid of the vagueness, move the main quest to the center stage, push the factions’ quests back, and allow you to make key choices earlier and thus enjoy the consequences earlier.

It will start simple – while scavenging you stumble upon something clearly valuable, a long-forgotten device that wasn’t meant to be used until the ship lands (but can be used in-flight). Not being an expert on such things, you need to know exactly what this thing is to figure out what one of the factions will pay for it, which is a good way to introduce you to the three main factions in Act 1, whereas in AoD the Noble Houses were introduced one Act at a time for storytelling reasons (escalating events):

(click to show/hide)

Once you know what that device is (at about 30% of the game), you’ll offer it to the faction of your choice, at which point your relationship with the other factions will go down, introducing an aspect we didn’t really touch in AoD – factions acting against you, attacking your base of operations, and turning locations under their influence against you, which will boost replayability.

At about 70% of the game, you might realize (via learning more about the ship if you’re smart enough) that what you’re doing might not necessary be what’s best for the ship (or you personally) and get an option to do things in a very different, "fuck all factions" way. The remaining 30% of the game will be dedicated to each path within this fork, presenting different challenges and choices. So far, that’s 3 'working for a faction' paths, 3 'fuck 'em' paths, and 7 different endings without counting permutations.

This way you’ll get to play through your key decisions, instead of being told about what happened next in the slides. Obviously, the slides will still be there but gameplay-to-slides ratio will be different.

Progress report:

I’ve been working on the game for 5 months now and so far it’s going well:

• Finished the second iteration of the main quest. In the first iteration that "something clearly valuable" thingy was merely a disposable lead-in, introducing you to the factions. In the second iteration we changed it into a more important device, not something you just hand over and forget, which had a cascading effect and changed the entire main quest. In terms of AoD, imagine delivering the temple to one of the lords at the end of Act 1. It would have instantly changed the rest of the game.
  
  That’s what I like about the iteration approach. You do the first draft and look for the weak spots. Sometimes it takes a few weeks to find a perfect "piece of the puzzle". You put it in place and it forces changes across the board, which in turn creates new weak spots waiting to be replaced. Eventually it settles down, but it takes time to slow-cook it to the point where you’re more or less happy with it.
  
  
• Finished the overviews of the first 5 locations out of 16: The Pit, Armory, Shuttle Bay, Hydroponics, Industrial “District” and passed them to a new concept artist (can never have too much quality art). It seems my progress rate is one location a month, plus other things like the CSG systems, the dungeon crawler’s dialogues and “quests”, for the lack of a better word, etc. So I’ll need 11 months to do the remaining locations and that’s just the overview (visual, basic level design, quests/points of interest outline). On the plus side, IF everything goes well, we’ll have a pretty good foundation by March 2017 and still 3 years of development ahead of us to put it all together.
  
  
• Finished the first draft of the starting ‘town’ quests, including a conflict that nicely fits into the main theme of the game: different societies and ways of governing.
  
  
• Finished the first draft of the combat system; wanted to dedicate this update to it but decided to wait and work on it some more.

 

[AbounI]

Vault Dweller has added the first concept screen

Freemen camp? (according to the URL)

 

[Kwota]

I really don't know how to feel about freight containers onboard a generation ship. If the game took place on a merchant ship turned rogue - I''m all the way behind it.

Nevertheless that pic gives that old fallout vibe, I really wanna see some character artwork now.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I really don't know how to feel about freight containers onboard a generation ship. If the game took place on a merchant ship turned rogue - I''m all the way behind it.

Nevertheless that pic gives that old fallout vibe, I really wanna see some character artwork now.

It's a retrofitted cargo ship in the best traditions of colonizing distant worlds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower

By 1620, the Mayflower was an aging ship, nearing the end of the usual working life of an English merchant ship in that era, some 15 years....

 

[Kwota]

Sure, where's bulk cargo in that shot?

cisterns for fossil fuels, grains, chemicals and ores? I do think that those supplies would find their way on cargo ship turned generational one.

but don't mind me, just throwing my 2 cents on what I see.

 

[Lurker King]

factions acting against you, attacking your base of operations

A base of operations?

 

[Vault Dweller]

You can't move the device until it's fully assembled, so you'll have to protect it and secure the area.

 

[Kem0sabe]

The device will be alien in origin, maybe retro engineered, the colony ship was secretly a government op to take the device to a certain planet, maybe back to the home of the aliens who left it on earth.

 

[Johannes]

Sure, where's bulk cargo in that shot?

cisterns for fossil fuels, grains, chemicals and ores? I do think that those supplies would find their way on cargo ship turned generational one.

but don't mind me, just throwing my 2 cents on what I see.

It's more about what's cool than what's realistic, same way as Fallout or AoD.

 

[Kalin]

Looks kinda like the drop zone.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Sure, where's bulk cargo in that shot?

cisterns for fossil fuels, grains, chemicals and ores? I do think that those supplies would find their way on cargo ship turned generational one.

but don't mind me, just throwing my 2 cents on what I see.

It's one of many cargo holds (even today's cargo ships have several holds, usually 4-8, so a space ship would have a lot more). I doubt they would be transporting cisterns of fossil fuels (I assume we'll have portable reactors 500 years from now), considering that the voyage would take hundreds of years, same goes for the ores. Chemicals? Maybe. The way I see it, the colony would need building materials, agricultural and mining equipment (why care ores across the galaxy when you can extract them on arrival - I assume both the planet and the landing site would be chosen accordingly), industrial base to expand, build vehicles, etc, defensive equipment, life support systems to provide the colonists with everything they need before they start producing it on their own, seeds and plants (which wouldn't be stored in the cargo holds), etc.

Back to the ship, the scavengers who want a base of operations would pick a cargo hold the most suitable to their needs and easiest to convert into a "town". They won't pick the one with cisterns and chemicals, but the one with containers and supplies that could be put to use right away. They'd use the cranes (not shown but you'll see them in-game) to move the containers around to build something resembling a town.

 

[ThisNameIsFree]

How many people on ship?
How about cryogenic tech for true elite?
I doubt planet colonizing possible without sending millions... With 10k or so one random epidemic from mutated virus can wipe everyone.
If voyage take hundreds of years they need prepare low tech as well since degradation inevitable.
Another thing - really big spaceships don't meant to land on planets with atmosphere - it's too costly, especially for cheap transport. They meant stay in space while goods get transported with smaller aerodynamic spaceships.
Looking at setting society here can be quite messed up (i wonder if they gonna throw not working individuals into space/meatgrinder)

 

[Mustawd]

I doubt planet colonizing possible without sending millions... With 10k or so one random epidemic from mutated virus can wipe everyone

Logistically it makes sense to send multiple smaller colony ships rather than one huge ass ship. For the same reason you mentioned: One event is all it takes to wipe out millions. Besides, the first expedition anywhere new is bound to kill a fuck ton of people anyhow. Just look at how N. America was settled. Many colonies failed at first before getting used to the land and learning how to harvest its resources.

 

[ThisNameIsFree]

I doubt planet colonizing possible without sending millions... With 10k or so one random epidemic from mutated virus can wipe everyone

Logistically it makes sense to send multiple smaller colony ships rather than one huge ass ship. For the same reason you mentioned: One event is all it takes to wipe out millions. Besides, the first expedition anywhere new is bound to kill a fuck ton of people anyhow. Just look at how N. America was settled. Many colonies failed at first before getting used to the land and learning how to harvest its resources.

So it's one huge as ship or first from the many? Setting looking like it's some type hit or miss mission with one big ship. Also it's possible to make multiple settlements with one huge ass ship too.

 

[Mustawd]

Yeah, just talking about the realistic logistics of it all. Setting does seem like one huge ass ship.

 

[Excidium II]

Huge city-sized ship is cooler.

 

[Gambler]

So, I've been thinking about these announcements, the core idea of a colony ship, concept art posted here, concept art in general... I re-read Orphans of the Sky. And also just stumbled upon a TV series called Ascension.

My conclusion: there are two crucial things that weren't addressed.

1. What is the size of the ship?
2. What was the technology level (and "flavor") it started with?

Everything posted so far can be interpreted in wildly different ways based on those two factors. They are the foundation that a bunch of other assumptions would rest upon.

IMO, a game that follows Orphans of the Sky concept too closely can easily end up being boring. Not because the book was boring, but because it's mots interesting aspect wouldn't translate well to an RPG format.

 

[hivemind]

What was the technology level (and "flavor") it started with?

I think they did address this in a way.

It's meant to be a retrofitted cargo ship and not some state of the art colony ship.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I liked the idea of the book but we aren't planning to follow it closely (or at all). We tell a different story in a different setting and examine different themes. The ship is big enough to carry 50,000 colonists; it was launched in the 25th century. It's a retro-fitted old cargo ship so it doesn't have all the latest bells and whistles. However, it doesn't mean that the entire game takes places in some cargo holds among container stacks. That's the starting "town" only which is the least technologically advanced location (which is why nobody wants it or cares about it). The actual population hubs look appropriately futuristic; same goes for the majority of the 16 locations so don't jump to conclusions yet.

 

[Gambler]

I appreciate the response, but I also want to point out that your answer is quite ambiguous.

Ship size and population aren't necessarily proportional. Is it 50,000 people suffocating in an tiny, overpopulated metal city? Or is the ship huge enough to get lost in, with forgotten sections that no one visits? I think that distinction would change the nature of the game quite a bit.

Also, even an old cargo ship in 25th century could be insanely high-tech with decent AI, autonomous repair robots (nanomachines?), advanced communication network and a sophisticated monitoring system. We're kind of getting there even right now, in 21st century. Heck, some people believe that there will be a technological singularity in 2029. (And I consider them fanatics who drunk too much of their own cool aid, but still - it is true that the theoretical applications of even our current technologies are quite advanced.)

You also wrote that at launch time the society of the ship will have a totalitarian overtone, which makes me think of the possibilities for 24/7 surveillance in a closed environment.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Ship size and population aren't necessarily proportional. Is it 50,000 people suffocating in an tiny, overpopulated metal city? Or is the ship huge enough to get lost in, with forgotten sections that no one visits? I think that distinction would change the nature of the game quite a bit.

It's not a huge ship. It was filled to capacity before the mutiny. The population dropped sharply after the mutiny (in-fighting, deteriorating living conditions, loss of many facilities, etc). There are no forgotten sections but there are areas few people visit because they are sealed or protected by auto-defenses or simply too dangerous.

Also, even an old cargo ship in 25th century could be insanely high-tech with decent AI, autonomous repair robots (nanomachines?), advanced communication network and a sophisticated monitoring system. We're kind of getting there even right now, in 21st century. Heck, some people believe that there will be a technological singularity in 2029. (And I consider them fanatics who drunk too much of their own cool aid, but still - it is true that the theoretical applications of even our current technologies are quite advanced.)

Well, look at today's ships: you have state-of-the-art recently built ships, you have ships from 70s-80s, 40s-50s, and even older.

http://www.professionalmariner.com/June-July-2014/oldest-laker-converted-to-barge/

^ 107 year old ship

Considering that it was a private enterprise and that ships are expensive, it's unlikely they'd buy a 'modern' ship just to deliver the colonists to another world. They'd buy a ship that's just good enough to get them there, which would be an aging ship, stripped of anything that can't be easily replaced or repaired during the centuries long flight.

You also wrote that at launch time the society of the ship will have a totalitarian overtone, which makes me think of the possibilities for 24/7 surveillance in a closed environment.

I'd say so but that's in the past now.

 

[Endlösung]

Will this game also be in Torque?

 

[Vault Dweller]

We're planning to use Unreal 4 if we can handle it.

 

[laclongquan]

Actually, big ass ship landing on planet depend on the role and timeline.
+ If they arrive as the vanguard of colonization effort, the mountain of resource a ship offer make for a compelling reason to land. You got resource in a defendable fortress.
+ If they arrive after that, a ship like that in orbit will help immensely to industrialize ground people: Permanent Satellite for weather report. Communication relay. Possibly weather recaliberation if they can cobble together a massive array of solar mirror to provide more sunlight at local spot.

 

[Vault Dweller]

+ If they arrive as the vanguard of colonization effort, the mountain of resource a ship offer make for a compelling reason to land. You got resource in a defendable fortress.

This.