Game News Colony Ship RPG Update #1: Setting, Character System

[Irenaeus III]

The Catholic Church will be made great again. A strong wave is coming.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

but first Rome needs a new, strong Emperor

 

[Jaesun]

Does anyone know what this tread is about?

 

[DSW]

Regarding the massive decline of Christianity in the last decades, such a prominent role in a future Colony Ship wouldn't be very believable for me.

Precisely why. The numbers are declining but the Catholic Church is the biggest financial power in the world and I don't mean just the Vatican bank. Thus they have the means and the reason.

Catholic Church has no reason to build a colony chip. Colony ship could be inspired by church, built by church, but with crowdfunded money. 10% commission would go to the church. This is how they became the biggest financial power, not by throwing resources into nothing. Church CFOs are not idiots.
Different crowdfunding tiers bring you different classes of colony ship decks ranging from peasants to aristocrats. Here you put real reasons for future conflict. Nobody starts mutiny just for abstract will to live in freedom or democracy. Moreover, nobody can fund/fuel mutiny - what can you promise for your rebel faction? Booze and whores only. Upper class deck definitely would have such things. Please, make conflict reasonable.

 

[Irenaeus III]

Catholic Church has no reason to build a colony chip.

How about spreading the Truth to the final frontier?

 

[DSW]

Catholic Church has no reason to build a colony chip.

How about spreading the Truth to the final frontier?

Nice idea, but how you'll deliver loot from final frontier to cardinals' blessed hands? No loot, no spreading.

 

[StrongBelwas]

I'm sure some element of the budget for the ship would just so happen to fall into the right pockets. A project that big would have plenty of places to embezzle from. Also, it could very well be that the Church at that point has gone hardline enough to be willing to throw resources into the vague hope of the religion still existing somewhere.

Regarding the massive decline of Christianity in the last decades, such a prominent role in a future Colony Ship wouldn't be very believable for me.

Precisely why. The numbers are declining but the Catholic Church is the biggest financial power in the world and I don't mean just the Vatican bank. Thus they have the means and the reason.

Catholic Church has no reason to build a colony chip. Colony ship could be inspired by church, built by church, but with crowdfunded money. 10% commission would go to the church. This is how they became the biggest financial power, not by throwing resources into nothing. Church CFOs are not idiots.
Different crowdfunding tiers bring you different classes of colony ship decks ranging from peasants to aristocrats. Here you put real reasons for future conflict. Nobody starts mutiny just for abstract will to live in freedom or democracy. Moreover, nobody can fund/fuel mutiny - what can you promise for your rebel faction? Booze and whores only. Upper class deck definitely would have such things. Please, make conflict reasonable.

Vault Dweller has already made it quite clear what kind of repression would be needed to keep the ship functioning. All you need is enough of a generational gap to make people believe the mission isn't worth the suffering for the ship to turn into a warzone. And that is assuming the upper class decks don't fuck the system up after a few decades of corruption/decay and leave a starving lower class that presumably has all kind of neat equipment to bash in heads with....

 

[Vault Dweller]

Nobody starts mutiny just for abstract will to live in freedom or democracy.

Also:

http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/6-famous-naval-mutinies

 

[DSW]

I'm sure some element of the budget for the ship would just so happen to fall into the right pockets. A project that big would have plenty of places to embezzle from. Also, it could very well be that the Church at that point has gone hardline enough to be willing to throw resources into the vague hope of the religion still existing somewhere.

Regarding the massive decline of Christianity in the last decades, such a prominent role in a future Colony Ship wouldn't be very believable for me.

Precisely why. The numbers are declining but the Catholic Church is the biggest financial power in the world and I don't mean just the Vatican bank. Thus they have the means and the reason.

Catholic Church has no reason to build a colony chip. Colony ship could be inspired by church, built by church, but with crowdfunded money. 10% commission would go to the church. This is how they became the biggest financial power, not by throwing resources into nothing. Church CFOs are not idiots.
Different crowdfunding tiers bring you different classes of colony ship decks ranging from peasants to aristocrats. Here you put real reasons for future conflict. Nobody starts mutiny just for abstract will to live in freedom or democracy. Moreover, nobody can fund/fuel mutiny - what can you promise for your rebel faction? Booze and whores only. Upper class deck definitely would have such things. Please, make conflict reasonable.

Vault Dweller has already made it quite clear what kind of repression would be needed to keep the ship functioning. All you need is enough of a generational gap to make people believe the mission isn't worth the suffering for the ship to turn into a warzone. And that is assuming the upper class decks don't fuck the system up after a few decades of corruption/decay and leave a starving lower class that presumably has all kind of neat equipment to bash in heads with....

Mission itself or belief into mission can not serve as motivation on colony ship. Believing or not into mission has no point since you are going die on ship. It is universe where people rise and die, so they need something tangible. Bread and show. Motivation should done with modern instruments at least. Colonists have to get more goodies for correct behavior. Please do not trivialize it to banal repression a-la medieval age.

Conflict should have real cause. Some tech hole in surveillance should make possible survival of illegally born children until certain point. Or some interstellar scout drone-scavenger-vulture (bigger than ship) should intercept colony ship, transmit into space "fresh meat found", and start pushing colony ship in unknown direction. Part of colonist could establish another colony on alien drone to make total population bigger. Some years later drone should drive away new colonists with genocide-like cleaning procedure. But human ship cannot do double. It is nice when conflict starts because of progressive and good intentions, not because of weakness to decline. Look at EU. Their nice good intentions in regard of migrants are going to end up with chainsaw massacre if genocide like procedure will continue in migrant's world. And European faith in brighter future or whatever else is irrelevant to conflict. It has more down to earth reasons - limited resources for serene life.

 

[DSW]

Nobody starts mutiny just for abstract will to live in freedom or democracy.

Also:

http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/6-famous-naval-mutinies

All of this mutineers had outer world to landing, to accept their deeds or at least to change their life to better. What reason to start mutiny on colony ship without needless repression from the beginning? If you not introduce something to change from the start then mutineers on colony ship can change nothing. Kind of let do wrong design of colony ship, so colonist can fix it in future via mutiny. You need mutiny. It is your choice how to introduce it, artificially or naturally.

 

[Vault Dweller]

All of this mutineers had outer world to landing...

Not all.

What reason to start mutiny on colony ship without needless repression from the beginning?

Explained in the update.

 

[The Vanished One]

Like others I'm not sold on the setting very much. I don't find it believable such a "neo-Christian American foundation" will exist. We are talking tens to hundreds of trillions of dollars here. Besides, with Christianity on the wane and more fragmented than ever it just sounds anachronistic. I can hardly claim expertise in geopolitics and futurology, but what about a Chinese-Indian venture?

I also would find it more appealing if the stakes were higher than fear of god(s). For example, and I'm aware I'm being unoriginal, the Earth could be dying and doomed, with all humankind sacrificing all resources and themselves to send their best and brightest away on the ship. But then at the moment of departure fear takes hold as good feelings disintegrate and many try to fight or bribe their way aboard. Global riots erupt as the ship barely manages to flee the chaos, and many of "the chosen ones" are left behind.

I agree with vean that cryo for most of the passengers would make more sense, but a permanent crew to look over them and the ship would probably be needed. Also, in my little backstory there was no time to freeze many of those aboard and the resources to do so are left back on Earth. Cloning on arrival makes even more sense, but kind of turns the setting into something else altogether.

Also it seems to me you could take somewhat greater risks with the skill-set and weapons list.

You most likely know about it already, but just in case:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/

Anyway, setting my timer for 2048. 5/10 concept, will pre-purchase as soon as you let me.

Also, obligatory suggestion for the trailer:

 

[Vault Dweller]

Like others I'm not sold on the setting very much. I don't find it believable such a "neo-Christian American foundation" will exist. We are talking tens to hundreds of trillions of dollars here. Besides, with Christianity on the wane and more fragmented than ever it just sounds anachronistic. I can hardly claim expertise in geopolitics and futurology, but what about a Chinese-Indian venture?

What about them? Like I said, short of a catastrophe threatening Earth, nobody but the religious groups eager to colonize space would go for it as it offers zero return on the investment. The Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest organizations and I don't expect it to change. Nor do I expect the Catholic Church to go away. Such things have a tendency to swing back.

As for the ship, it's not built from scratch. It's an retrofitted cargo ship. Much like the Church invests today in various industries, it's safe to assume it will invest in profitable space exploration and mining, which will make acquiring such a ship much easier.

I also would find it more appealing if the stakes were higher than fear of god(s).

Fear of god is not a factor. It's not a ship full of zealots.

For example, and I'm aware I'm being unoriginal, the Earth could be dying and doomed, with all humankind sacrificing all resources and themselves to send their best and brightest away on the ship.

Too epic.

I agree with vean that cryo for most of the passengers would make more sense, but a permanent crew to look over them and the ship would probably be needed. Also, in my little backstory there was no time to freeze many of those aboard and the resources to do so are left back on Earth. Cloning on arrival makes even more sense, but kind of turns the setting into something else altogether.

The genre is well established and calls for generations hence the name 'generation ship'.

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

 

[Monocause]

Vault Dweller

The CSG is an excellent idea and would be an absolute video game novelty re: the themes it explores.

Some food for thought - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyklos

Get someone well versed with social sciences, political philosophy and political history on board. The devil will lie in the details.

Consider getting this sort of mechanic on board:

When you start out a game, you choose a set of three values that drive the ship's mission and are upheld by most of the crew. Over the course of a generation swap, the player can do what he can to support these values and make sure these are fostered among the young ones.

http://www.bolenderinitiatives.com/...ert-king-merton-mertons-five-types-adaptation

The thing is - if one of the values is liberty, but the player neglects mitigating certain institutional issues, we reach a situation where the value is theoretically upheld but is, in fact, severely restricted - it causes more rebellious crewmembers to gain influence over time. Over the course of a generation or two this may cause a value shift. Depending on how the ship is governed (are any officials electable?) this can be a relatively peaceful (if stressful) transition, or a full scale violent revolt claiming dozens of lives.

Another neat concept to consider is having a random chance of spawning 'charismatic individuals' (a prime example of one is certain A. Hitler) or 'Deviants', that can greatly accelerate a shift even if there weren't a broad support for it brewing before their ascent.

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

Re: Deviants, define the word as 'a person who chooses to pursue actions or behaviour that is considered unacceptable, abhorrent or against established norm'. With this definition, while obviously a thief/rapist will fall under the deviant label, so will fe. a mathematician who casts down certain very well established theories and ultimately revolutionises his field without regard for being ostracised in the process. Think Galileo.

 

[Tigranes]

I think it's rubbish to say a Christian venture is any less realistic than a Chinese, Indian, Muslim, etc. venture. Believe it or not, it is not a logical practice to take the trends in the last 10, 20 or even 100 years and extrapolate that to the likelihood of a colony ship outfit hundreds of years away (when exactly is it meant to be VD? If it's like 2070, then I retract my objection.) After all, using the same practice, a science fiction text written in 1899 would not be allowed to speculate China as a world power, or perhaps even the current state of Christianity in the West, etc, etc. I haven't seen anyone make a substantial case for why a Christian-backed colony ship doesn't make sense - no, "Christianity not done well last century" doesn't count. Besides which, as Samuel Delany wrote, science fiction isn't about trying exactly to predict what would happen by taking the last few years and stretching out that graph with no changes - it's about what could have happened.

Now, the Christian part of the premise doesn't fill me with excitement, but that's not due to plausibility - the plausibility lies in the detail, after all, and how the intervening years between now and then is rationalised. I'm just not super sure how VD will spin that religious origin into something interesting. Is the place of religion in the social fabric, or religious thoughts about human destiny and space colonisation going to feature in some way? Will religion continue to have a place amongst the various sub-communities at the time of the game? Rather than why Christians are the most likely ship senders or not, I'm more interested in why VD thinks it's interesting or can be made interesting. After all, if he really wanted the ship to be sent out by a Vault-Tec like public-private partnership, or a Mr. House-like visionary super-rich Lord British meets Richard Branson meets Elon Musk fellow, then you could spin it like that.

 

[Shin]

Why not do it both ways and just explain it by saying some new wacko american jesus cult which is actually *spoilers* scientology goes into space to seek jesus in the stars or whatever the fuck. Or a new schism has been inflicted upon christianity, and now the molesting half has joined up with the money jews and the oil arabs to look for go(l)d in outer space resulting in lots of fun and exciting space drama full of religious bigotry, social injustices and sexual perversions.

anyhow, I wouldn't dwell too much on 'what will happen in x amount of years' and just craft a somewhat believable cause which results in the most fun interactions between the factions in the ship.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Rather than why Christians are the most likely ship senders or not, I'm more interested in why VD thinks it's interesting or can be made interesting.

There is an interesting angle (imo), which will be revealed in due time. It's not a secret but I don't have time to present the entire design doc in one update. Anyway, we have plenty of time to cover every aspect of the game.

PS.

I think it's rubbish to say a Christian venture is any less realistic than a Chinese, Indian, Muslim, etc. venture. Believe it or not, it is not a logical practice to take the trends in the last 10, 20 or even 100 years and extrapolate that to the likelihood of a colony ship outfit hundreds of years away (when exactly is it meant to be VD? If it's like 2070, then I retract my objection.)

A couple of hundreds of years from now. Early space exploration, outposts on the Moon and Mars, strip-mining, helium factories orbiting Jupiter, etc. Basically, space exploration is no longer a novelty concept but distant stars still remain out of reach due to sub-light travel speed.

 

[MRY]

Vault Dweller Wouldn't it make more sense for it to be the Church of Latter Day Saints, which actually includes alien worlds as an important part of its cosmology? And, I believe, may include proselytizing to these worlds, although it's been a while since I've chatted with anyone about the subject. Mormons also have a history of diaspora that seems more consistent with this mission than anything I can think of from the Catholics -- certainly there were great Catholic explorers, conquerors, and so forth, but as I recall, it was usually tied to explicit secular goals (e.g., finding Prester John, opening trade routes, funding military undertakings). The Catholic Church is obviously vastly wealthier, but the Church of LDS presently has assets in the tens of billions, which presumably would suffice to fund the building of the generation ship if the general technology were already there (as it sounds like it was).

(That said, I can think of sound reasons why it's easier to make the game about Catholics. For one, the symbols are more familiar, so taking them and varying them would be easier for the player to understand, while LDS symbols may seem alien to begin with.)

 

[The Vanished One]

...nobody but the religious groups eager to colonize space would go for it as it offers zero return on the investment.

I still think it's simplistic to assume that only religion is sufficient motivation to organise a colony ship. Not going to argue on the choice any more though; once I see it fleshed out, I'm likely to like it anyway.

Much like the Church invests today in various industries, it's safe to assume it will invest in profitable space exploration and mining, which will make acquiring such a ship much easier.

From various people's musings on the matter, as well as a common knowledge of space exploration, my impression is that the costs for such an enterprise would be a couple orders of magnitude greater than that of whatever run-of-the-mill space exploration and exploitation there will be in 200 years, available ships or not. Mostly because you not only need to build something huge and complex, you must also give it millennia of lifespan. No cargo ship would have this kind of design life, it would make no economic sense.
Seems to me that even a reasonably-sized ship would have to be purpose-built and at least almost ruinously expensive even for a very rich, large and powerful organisation.
Again, once I see it fleshed out I might just simply suspend my disbelief.

Too epic.

Fair enough.

 

[DSW]

All of this mutineers had outer world to landing...

Not all.

What reason to start mutiny on colony ship without needless repression from the beginning?

Explained in the update.

Update introduced totalitarian traditionalism. It kind of to introduce colony ship design with lack of oxygen, which is inevitable end up after one hundred or two years of journey. It is a lame design. Lame from the scratch. It is completely wrong and lame to copypaste ship mutiny to colony ship. Accidental mutinies like you pointed as examples are result of cost efficient maintenance of thousands of ships around the world. All this ships have some world related agenda. Ships and crews are replaceable instruments. Therefore mutinies are acceptable risk. All this is not applicable to colony ship. Mutiny is not acceptable risk for it. Colony ship does not perform outer world agenda. It is cut from the world once and forever. Keeping colonist calm is the task number one, like keeping them alive. Therefore you can't mechanically transfer cost efficient procedures, which maintain ordinary world fleet, to colony ship. This mean you cannot introduce colony ship with repressive authorities, bad food, lack of joy or burning colonists with napalm.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Vault Dweller Wouldn't it make more sense for it to be the Church of Latter Day Saints, which actually includes alien worlds as an important part of its cosmology? And, I believe, may include proselytizing to these worlds, although it's been a while since I've chatted with anyone about the subject. Mormons also have a history of diaspora that seems more consistent with this mission than anything I can think of from the Catholics -- certainly there were great Catholic explorers, conquerors, and so forth, but as I recall, it was usually tied to explicit secular goals (e.g., finding Prester John, opening trade routes, funding military undertakings).

So there will be 144 000 passengers onboard?

The Catholic Church is obviously vastly wealthier, but the Church of LDS presently has assets in the tens of billions, which presumably would suffice to fund the building of the generation ship if the general technology were already there (as it sounds like it was).

(That said, I can think of sound reasons why it's easier to make the game about Catholics. For one, the symbols are more familiar, so taking them and varying them would be easier for the player to understand, while LDS symbols may seem alien to begin with.)

I wonder if there would be even enough of raw materials on earth to build a vessel of this scale - unless you resort to confiscating and disassembling already existing fleet/infrastructure. Which would require an army. Or is the scenario such that the society is already mining asteroids etc?

FWIW, this book you might find interesting: http://www.amazon.com/Entering-Spac...qid=1454394911&sr=8-1&keywords=entering+space

 

[Tigranes]

All of this mutineers had outer world to landing...

Not all.

What reason to start mutiny on colony ship without needless repression from the beginning?

Explained in the update.

Update introduced totalitarian traditionalism. It kind of to introduce colony ship design with lack of oxygen, which is inevitable end up after one hundred or two years of journey. It is a lame design. Lame from the scratch. It is completely wrong and lame to copypaste ship mutiny to colony ship. Accidental mutinies like you pointed as examples are result of cost efficient maintenance of thousands of ships around the world. All this ships have some world related agenda. Ships and crews are replaceable instruments. Therefore mutinies are acceptable risk. All this is not applicable to colony ship. Mutiny is not acceptable risk for it. Colony ship does not perform outer world agenda. It is cut from the world once and forever. Keeping colonist calm is the task number one, like keeping them alive. Therefore you can't mechanically transfer cost efficient procedures, which maintain ordinary world fleet, to colony ship. This mean you cannot introduce colony ship with repressive authorities, bad food, lack of joy or burning colonists with napalm.

If keeping colonists calm is task number one, why does that preclude a mutiny?

If colony ship is cut off from world once and forever, why does that mean the residents, especially after multiple generations, will never rise up against whoever is in charge?

Sure, it probably won't turn out exactly like a seafaring ship mutiny.

 

[DSW]

As for the ship, it's not built from scratch. It's an retrofitted cargo ship.

I belive that retrofitted cargo ship has dead-end design solutions, which are not suitable for interstellar hundreds to thousands years jorney of live stock.
How about gravity on cargo ship? What technology solves it?

I feel sorry about your design decisions, VD. I mean:
1. Cliched mutiny of repressed sailors copypasted mecanically.
2. Retrofitted cargo ship.
3. Prison made firearms design like colonist never saw 3D printer. I believe that industrial scale 3D printers should be common thing in order to maintain colonists' joy of achievements. Also industrial quater have to be capable to fix or reproduce any equipment or machine on board.

Why I feel that game should be called "Mutiny on the "Alcatraz" ferry"?

Should I believe in colony ship because of some pew-pew weapons and tinfoil armor against pew-pew?

And I am not started to talk about that Generation Ship is an abstract concept like Turing machine, which can be build in theory, but never would be built in practice, because technologies give us much more diversity to reach our goals. Of course, I reserve place that messing with strip, quills and ink for Turing machine could be fun entertaiment, kind of sci-fi joke, but never as real representative of computing machine.

 

[DSW]

All of this mutineers had outer world to landing...

Not all.

What reason to start mutiny on colony ship without needless repression from the beginning?

Explained in the update.

Update introduced totalitarian traditionalism. It kind of to introduce colony ship design with lack of oxygen, which is inevitable end up after one hundred or two years of journey. It is a lame design. Lame from the scratch. It is completely wrong and lame to copypaste ship mutiny to colony ship. Accidental mutinies like you pointed as examples are result of cost efficient maintenance of thousands of ships around the world. All this ships have some world related agenda. Ships and crews are replaceable instruments. Therefore mutinies are acceptable risk. All this is not applicable to colony ship. Mutiny is not acceptable risk for it. Colony ship does not perform outer world agenda. It is cut from the world once and forever. Keeping colonist calm is the task number one, like keeping them alive. Therefore you can't mechanically transfer cost efficient procedures, which maintain ordinary world fleet, to colony ship. This mean you cannot introduce colony ship with repressive authorities, bad food, lack of joy or burning colonists with napalm.

If keeping colonists calm is task number one, why does that preclude a mutiny?

If colony ship is cut off from world once and forever, why does that mean the residents, especially after multiple generations, will never rise up against whoever is in charge?

Sure, it probably won't turn out exactly like a seafaring ship mutiny.

It not precludes, but makes mutiny plot less possible than others, not cliche, plots to introduce in the game. Bunch of cliche degrade novelty of Generation Ship to the level of a prison ferry.

Life full of joys does not allow to rise. How many raised up in the modern Western Europe? I will tell you more. If some alien ship would dock to colony, and aliens would rape colonists' women even then nobody will rise for decades until somebody from outer world would say "What the fuck is going on?" But there is no outer world on colony ship, but booze, food and entertainments. Nobody will rise. True story.

 

[Tigranes]

Your language seems to suggest that we're looking at some Carribean style 'lynch the captain and crack open the rum' mutiny, but I don't get the 'mutiny on the Alcatraz' feeling from anything in this thread except your post. Maybe if VD said the 'retrofitted cargo ship' is truly a piece of shit that barely holds itself together?

I don't know what "It kind of to introduce colony ship design with lack of oxygen" means, but the update clearly doesn't paint a "we are like slaves on a galley FREEDUM" narrative, that's all you. Nobody's going 1789 on the ship from what I can see. But any kind of multi-generation space mission is going to have highly motivated and disciplined folk launching off, and then the community developing many tensions and conflicts as years go by... like every human community there's ever been. There might be booze and entertainment, but it takes more than that to make any society become violence/conflict-proof. Are you saying there's no way people will fight if they're all stuck on the same ship?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not particularly inclined to defend the mutiny / Christians stuff. To me it could be Christians or it could be communists, it all depends on the execution. I just don't see very compelling reasons to write it off as completely unlikely or stupid.