Age of Decadence Post-Release Update #2

[Irenaeus II]

Seems only lasers energy guns were mass produced while guns are handcrafted. Supposedly, bullets will be handcrafted too?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Yes.

Edit: There are 3 weapon types: melee, energy, firearms. Energy weapons are Earth-made, firearms ship-made, melee - both Earth- and ship-made. Earth-made melee weapons are power tools (no laser katanas in the game).

 

[Johannes]

Guns are not comparable to custom knives. The former are first and foremost weapons, the latter can be too but most use their knives for something else. Guns are most of all manufactured for military, in most places, and their manufacture is supervised by an authority. If not, somebody will likely look into how to establish that monopoly since nobody's stopping them. Are there no ambitious people in the setting, what's stopping an arms race? Or if the population's so small that it can't come up with resources for a proper weapons shop, how can it support several different individual gunsmiths either?

Fancy custom guns of course exist today, for people interested in cool-looking guns. But for people who really need guns for their work, they tend to use something else.

... but is that the case here? If something nonsensical, like all the high-tech constructs in AoD using only melee weapons, somehow fits the feel of the setting...

What are they supposed to use? Assault rifles?

They were ok in context, similar to how the airship had ballistas. Just don't try to say that your favored armament for a sentinel robot would be a melee weapon in real life.

... it doesn't have to be realistic. As long as it somehow fits the aesthetic you're after. Even a total mishmash like Wizardry can definitely work, just the setting shouldn't take itself too seriously in that case.

Here is how I see it.

When the ship left Earth, the firearms were made obsolete by the energy weapons, so that's what the crew and security were armed with. Then there was a mutiny and when the dust settled decades later, the energy weapons were in very short supply, especially the cells. That pushed some people to start making firearms, which explains the variety of styles. Many were primitive, one shot weapons (tier 1), then mulltiple barrels and cylinders were added to increase the rate of fire.

And why did they stop their product design there? Or alternatively, how did they get even to that point before an authority with some energy weapons would either stop or co-opt their operation?

I've seen some complaints from boring people that Fusion reactors should automatically mean pew pew lasers in AoD.

Only if you want the setting to be realistic. Could be conventional guns too of course for that.

PS. Revolvers don't automatically mean cowboys. It's an established design that remains popular and viable today, both as a mass-production and custom weapon.

Of course. But most people associate the two regardless, and you should take that into account. The free trade of those guns also gives a wild west, or some sort of frontier, wibe. In the end, it's not about whether a society is actually plausible or not, but whether it has a cool atmosphere. Just like, say, most westerns have relatively little to do with the actual period.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Yeah, I want a setting with Lovecrafting gods to be "realistic". Maybe you should complain about lack of microwaves ovens too? The word you should be looking at is internally consistent, not some vague definition of realism for somebody else's setting that only exists in your autistic mind.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Guns are not comparable to custom knives. The former are first and foremost weapons, the latter can be too but most use their knives for something else. Guns are most of all manufactured for military, in most places, and their manufacture is supervised by an authority. If not, somebody will likely look into how to establish that monopoly since nobody's stopping them.

With guns you have top manufacturers that control big chunks of the market and get military contracts, then you have smaller companies like Kel Tec (less than 100,000 pistols a year), then you have smaller companies that do custom work. Search for 'custom revolver' and see for yourself. I'd say it's much easier to make good living making custom guns and charging 5-10x more per high precision gun than set up a mass production shop and compete with the likes of Glock and Beretta.

Are there no ambitious people in the setting, what's stopping an arms race? Or if the population's so small that it can't come up with resources for a proper weapons shop, how can it support several different individual gunsmiths either?

It's not a factor of population or ambition but of supply and demand. Let's suppose that we have 4-5 gunsmiths handling all the work in any given 'town' on the ship. Some do more business, others less. At which point one of them would say, "Yyou know what, I'm going to make a factory and mass-produce guns!"? You need demand exceeding supply or proper business opportunity (more people will buy guns if I make them at the quarter of the price). On the ship at best a more successful gunsmith can hire less successful ones to work in his shop.

Fancy custom guns of course exist today, for people interested in cool-looking guns. But for people who really need guns for their work, they tend to use something else.

I don't know the custom guns market as well as I do the custom knives one, but 60% of custom knives go to active duty soldiers who do tours in Iraq. When your life depends on it, you want a quality knife, not mass production shit. I wouldn't be surprised if that same attitude didn't apply to guns as well.

Just don't try to say that your favored armament for a sentinel robot would be a melee weapon in real life.

A futuristic robot? Armed with 'chargeable' lasers, of course. A clockwork construct? Melee seems a good fit.

And why did they stop their product design there? Or alternatively, how did they get even to that point before an authority with some energy weapons would either stop or co-opt their operation?

There was no authority (or many energy weapons still intact) left after the mutiny and the 'civil war' that followed. As for the design, most of it is inspired by the 'homemade' weapons used in various wars of the last 20 years. I've seen quite a few crude 4-barrel pistols, revolvers and SMGs but not a single 'M1911' knock-off. Maybe it's much easier to make and maintain revolvers than semi-automatic pistols.

PS. We'll talk about the ship, its mission, reasons for mutiny, post-war factions, etc in the next update.

 

[Tigranes]

A fictional setting should be plausible, not necessary or most likely. If decorated, custom, small-scale gun production is plausible, then it's good enough, especially if it's a plausible explanation that also has good gameplay implications. Any serious student of real world history also knows that possible but unlikely things drove history as much as possible and likely things.

The problem with trying to be really stringent about ruling things out is that you get various things in a knot with no clear causal relation. Do guns end up being manufactured by the military in all cases? Would guns only be manufactured by the military in a colony ship? Etc, etc. If you look at a situation and think of why that situation seems unlikely or illogical you can find a million and one reasons - just pick any historical moment.

 

[Johannes]

Yeah, I want a setting with Lovecrafting gods to be "realistic". Maybe you should complain about lack of microwaves ovens too? The word you should be looking at is internally consistent, not some vague definition of realism for somebody else's setting that only exists in your autistic mind.

Learn to read faggot, I just said several times over a setting doesn't need be realistic or internally consistent to work. AoD isn't either of course, even if there's a lot sillier settings out there as well, even most of them probably.

Are there no ambitious people in the setting, what's stopping an arms race? Or if the population's so small that it can't come up with resources for a proper weapons shop, how can it support several different individual gunsmiths either?

It's not a factor of population or ambition but of supply and demand. Let's suppose that we have 4-5 gunsmiths handling all the work in any given 'town' on the ship. Some do more business, others less. At which point one of them would say, "Yyou know what, I'm going to make a factory and mass-produce guns!"? You need demand exceeding supply or proper business opportunity (more people will buy guns if I make them at the quarter of the price). On the ship at best a more successful gunsmith can hire less successful ones to work in his shop.

Of course it's a factor of population determining the demand. How many gunsmiths do you need to supply a town of 100 people or of 100 000 people? The former might not have a dedicated gunsmith, but the same guy would do a gun every now and then alongside other metalwork they need. The latter could use up a larger supply, from both bigger and smaller suppliers.
And definitely also about ambition. Guns aren't just any random commodity, they determine who has the power. It's not about seizing control of the gun market but taking over the whole place.


It's not so much about that the setting must have AKs or assembly lines, or it must not have engraved hilts. Just that the overall system makes some sense socioeconomically. Obviously I don't know any details about the ship yet, but the guns displayed (the fancier ones) seem like something you'd be more likely find in a comfy bourgeois society than in a run-down spaceship.

Fancy custom guns of course exist today, for people interested in cool-looking guns. But for people who really need guns for their work, they tend to use something else.

I don't know the custom guns market as well as I do the custom knives one, but 60% of custom knives go to active duty soldiers who do tours in Iraq. When your life depends on it, you want a quality knife, not mass production shit. I wouldn't be surprised if that same attitude didn't apply to guns as well.

Guns are supplied by the army, you couldn't switch up your assault rifle for another even if you wanted to. In tribal goatfucker societies people own the guns they fight with, but they seem pretty happy with their mass produced AKs nonetheless. Mass produced guns are actually more convenient in the field than custom ones, since you can find replacement parts easier.

And why did they stop their product design there? Or alternatively, how did they get even to that point before an authority with some energy weapons would either stop or co-opt their operation?

There was no authority (or many energy weapons still intact) left after the mutiny and the 'civil war' that followed. As for the design, most of it is inspired by the 'homemade' weapons used in various wars of the last 20 years. I've seen quite a few crude 4-barrel pistols, revolvers and SMGs but not a single 'M1911' knock-off. Maybe it's much easier to make and maintain revolvers than semi-automatic pistols.

Those guns were built in very scarce circumstances. If the guys had kept up at the trade when they had more materials, time and tools, they definitely could've made more complex, more powerful guns. In different situations you get different guns. Building (assault) rifles isn't too different from smaller arms.

But overall there's not too much relevant to be said about the aesthetic coherence here without more details. Wait and see how it turns out.

A fictional setting should be plausible, not necessary or most likely. If decorated, custom, small-scale gun production is plausible, then it's good enough, especially if it's a plausible explanation that also has good gameplay implications. Any serious student of real world history also knows that possible but unlikely things drove history as much as possible and likely things.

The problem with trying to be really stringent about ruling things out is that you get various things in a knot with no clear causal relation. Do guns end up being manufactured by the military in all cases? Would guns only be manufactured by the military in a colony ship? Etc, etc. If you look at a situation and think of why that situation seems unlikely or illogical you can find a million and one reasons - just pick any historical moment.

Well put, but it's good to identify the things people might find implausible and address them somehow. Be it by changing a detail or explaining it in more depth, if the player (or rather, if a significant portion of the target audience does) feels something's derpy that's obviously a problem no matter how much sense things make in the devs head - if you aim for them to make sense at least. Like alkeides said about AoD, the setting "feels more like Final Fantasy than Morrowind".

 

[Irenaeus II]

It feels nothing like Final Fantasy. alkeides had that impression because he's Japanese and can't relate to the Roman Empire.

 

[Tigranes]

Johannes Sure, I don't begrudge you your arguing, and you're not saying anything particularly stupid/wrong.

I agree that AOD's lore is not its strong point. The way AOD makes you feel like there are secrets and nobody knows the truth about them etc is really good, the process of discovery, but the content you actually find out is a hodgepodge of meh. It'll be fun to debate the finer details of the colony ship world over the next 15 years.

 

[Irenaeus II]

I agree that AOD's lore is not its strong point.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ecadence-released.104027/page-66#post-4268812

 

[Tigranes]

I agree that AOD's lore is not its strong point.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ecadence-released.104027/page-66#post-4268812

lrn2read the entire post

 

[Irenaeus II]

the content you actually find out is a hodgepodge of meh

I respectfully disagree, dumbass. You and Johannes must be playing games with Vedas level of lore. Fuck off

 

[ColCol]

Vault Dweller, some questions about the dungeon crawler.

1.When does it take place-time frame wise-in comparison to the main game?

2. How will equipment quality/levels work, since you are a prisoner?

3.Will there be shops or a monetary system (ore?)

 

[Lurker King]

Vault Dweller,

I was thinking about the problem of passivity with dialogue skills. Maybe the problem could be solved by creating an intricate system that simulates what happens with combat skills. If you are a powerful fighter, you can still die by choosing the wrong types of attack or if you are bad positioned. The same thing could happen with dialogue skills. You can have some idea of what a NPC thinks and need to react accordingly. The system would be based on this premise. Instead of having the option of using “Persuasion”, you could use different types of “Persuasion” for different moments in the dialogue, for instance, “Emphatic persuasion”, “Aggressive persuasion”, “Arrogant persuasion”, etc. The player would have to invest SPs only in “Persuasion” to use these different variants of persuasion, in the same way that the player could invest only in “Axe” in order to use different types of attack.

Another suggestion is to make the NPCs moods vary in accord with the time of the day, their occupations, etc. The same NPC could be annoyed if approached in the morning, or if he is busy talking with someone else, but welcoming later on, or alone. You could even provide crossed conversations with two NPCs that offered more dialogue options. A conversation between three individuals could make your job of convincing the other part harder, but could unlock new opportunities too. The traditional backgrounds (race, etc.) could provide more opportunities too. If you are from a group in the ship with poor hygiene, NPCs from other groups will treat you differently. The stats and additional feats could provide the player with tips about the NPCs moods, etc. – remember “Empathy” in FO2.

I know that to implement a similar system would require a lot of work, but it is the only way to make dialogues more rewarding for players.

 

[Lurker King]

Regarding feats, it would be cool to implement some mental disorders, which would provide bonuses and penalties in combat, and affect the conversations.

 

[Vault Dweller]

1.When does it take place-time frame wise-in comparison to the main game?

Before the events of the main game.

2. How will equipment quality/levels work, since you are a prisoner?

Obviously, metal armor and weapons can't just lie around, so we need a substitute. I'm thinking killing monsters and scavenging their hides for the armor, looting bits and pieces of iron and steel to forge weapons. There will be optional nests with extra loot as well as a pre-war facility with some constructs that can be dismantled for metal, possibly repaired and recruited to the party.

3.Will there be shops or a monetary system (ore?)

No.

 

[t]

Sounds exciting, can't wait. So, Vault Dweller, have you read about the planning fallacy yet, or is the game still coming out a year from now?

 

[anus_pounder]

1.When does it take place-time frame wise-in comparison to the main game?

Before the events of the main game.

2. How will equipment quality/levels work, since you are a prisoner?

Obviously, metal armor and weapons can't just lie around, so we need a substitute. I'm thinking killing monsters and scavenging their hides for the armor, looting bits and pieces of iron and steel to forge weapons. There will be optional nests with extra loot as well as a pre-war facility with some constructs that can be dismantled for metal, possibly repaired and recruited to the party.

3.Will there be shops or a monetary system (ore?)

No.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Sounds exciting, can't wait. So, Vault Dweller, have you read about the planning fallacy yet, or is the game still coming out a year from now?

After 11 years of development, I'm intimately familiar with planning fallacies of all kinds, but I still hope to release the game next year. We put together the arena demo in 6 months and we didn't have all the tools and scripts yet. I believe we can put together a bigger and more complex (but still a combat) game in a year. Time will tell.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Vault Dweller,

I was thinking about the problem of passivity with dialogue skills. Maybe the problem could be solved by creating an intricate system that simulates what happens with combat skills. If you are a powerful fighter, you can still die by choosing the wrong types of attack or if you are bad positioned. The same thing could happen with dialogue skills. You can have some idea of what a NPC thinks and need to react accordingly. The system would be based on this premise. Instead of having the option of using “Persuasion”, you could use different types of “Persuasion” for different moments in the dialogue, for instance, “Emphatic persuasion”, “Aggressive persuasion”, “Arrogant persuasion”, etc. The player would have to invest SPs only in “Persuasion” to use these different variants of persuasion, in the same way that the player could invest only in “Axe” in order to use different types of attack.

Another suggestion is to make the NPCs moods vary in accord with the time of the day, their occupations, etc. The same NPC could be annoyed if approached in the morning, or if he is busy talking with someone else, but welcoming later on, or alone. You could even provide crossed conversations with two NPCs that offered more dialogue options. A conversation between three individuals could make your job of convincing the other part harder, but could unlock new opportunities too. The traditional backgrounds (race, etc.) could provide more opportunities too. If you are from a group in the ship with poor hygiene, NPCs from other groups will treat you differently. The stats and additional feats could provide the player with tips about the NPCs moods, etc. – remember “Empathy” in FO2.

I know that to implement a similar system would require a lot of work, but it is the only way to make dialogues more rewarding for players.

Not sure you saw this post:

AoD dialogue system has two main flaws:

- it's passive, you either have the skill or you don't
- you do nothing but level up and select lines that match your highest skill; the other lines are flavor, basically.

So to improve we need to:
- give you the tools to modify the checks by paying attention to what the man says and actually thinking of what to "say"
- use the skills to modify the checks (not to pass them) and get rid of tags. Basically, first you talk and learn more about your "opponent". Stats and skills can help you unlock more topics to learn more. Then you "make your case" and select whichever lines you think would make a stronger case. The outcomes will be modified by what you said before (we tried that in AoD to get a feel of how it works, like talking to the praetor investigating Senna's murder) and your skills, thus it can differ from one playthrough to the next.

It does make sense in theory, whether or not it will actually work remains to be seen.

 

[ColCol]

1.When does it take place-time frame wise-in comparison to the main game?

Snip

So, before the events of the main game huh. Does that mean Deller will be playable? Also, Deller's discussion of the prison made it seem like an anything goes mass arena rather than a monster and construct filled hellhole.

 

[Vault Dweller]

It's both. Basically, there is a main area where you fight other prisoners and there are abandoned (for a reason), optional passages.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

So will AoD get a playable epilogue sort of thing?

I suppose there will be no unarmed attacks in the colony ship either? Not that I'm complaining, but damn did I freak out when I was unarmed in AoD a couple of times.

Mind sharing what goes into a "pre-production" phase, VD?

 

[Viata]

1.When does it take place-time frame wise-in comparison to the main game?

Before the events of the main game.

Will this happens while Dellar is inside the mine(which we could meet him there) or he already leave it?

EDIT: ColCol already asked this.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Make it so you can kill Dellar and play as him (by that I mean his position) in AoD for a complete mindfuck replay of the game.