Ostranauts - spaceship management sim set in NEO Scavenger universe - now available on Early Access

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

http://bluebottlegames.com/content/career-history

Career History

dcfedor
onMarch 14, 2018

Hey Folks! Working on the next character creation UI today: career history.

The top-down sprite for this was a yellow kiosk/counter, as I was sort of picturing a job board of some kind. However, after a bit more perusing for ideas, I saw an image of a "build-a-resume" kiosk at an employment office, and thought that sounded more appropriate. So I set about creating a kiosk screen for compiling the player's career history, in the most utilitarian, boring government UI way possible

The rough workflow will look something like this:

1. Access kiosk from map.
2. Kiosk asks for player name. Simple text box and submit button.
3. Kiosk shows list of careers player can choose from (seen above). Available careers depend on player's stats, starting location, and prior career choices. So not all careers are available at all times. (E.g. can only take Doctor after med school).
4. Clicking a career shows more detail about it.
5. If the player can choose this career, they are presented with a list of skills they can choose.
6. After the player chooses their skills, they "submit" their choice and see if any special events happen. (E.g. family death, accident, windfall, special contacts, friends, or enemies, etc.)
7. The career choice is added to the "Resume History" sidebar.
8. If the player can choose another career, return to step 3.
9. Otherwise, the career path ends, and the player moves on to another kiosk to continue character generation.

Career-ending events mainly include obtaining a starting ship, which basically signifies how the player got started as a captain. The probability of this will depend on the career chosen, but will likely increase each new career, to ensure all players end up with a ship eventually. (Each starting location has a maximum age, given the colony's founding date. So I can probably scale chances of getting a ship to always reach 100% by that maximum age.)

I wouldn't mind experimenting with career-ending death, too, as that was sort of a neat feature of the Traveller RPG. But I'll have to see if that's fun or just annoying, and is secondary to the ship-based end above.

Also, I've setup the "Resume History" sidebar with "Edit" buttons in case the player wants to go back and change their choices. I'm guessing this is going to be necessary, though it might be weird to combine this with the death outcome I mention above. Also, it might be interesting to experiment here with "perma-choice," as it sort of transforms the experience into a choose-your-own-adventure. But again, this all requires testing to see.

Ultimately, the desired outcome here is to spool-up a history for the player. Some idea of who they are, what they've done, who they've pissed-off vs. befriended, and using that info in-game later to create procedural events and goals.

http://bluebottlegames.com/content/your-first-ship

Your First Ship

dcfedor
onMarch 15, 2018

Hey Folks! More work on the career history UI today. I've nearly got the structure in place, enough for a first draft anyway. And I hope to get it live with data soon.

In today's screenshot, you can see two important screens from the process: the career details choice page, and the career detail results page.

Once you choose a potential career from yesterday's screenshot, you're taken to the choice page above. And there, you can learn more about the career in question. What are the requirements to join? How many skills can you choose? And which ones are available? You'll also be able to choose secondary activities (a.k.a. hobbies), and see which credentials the career imparts (e.g. "diploma").

Assuming you pass the requirements, you can then choose skills from the list, and either cancel (returning to the career list), or confirm. Confirming locks that career choice into your history, and then shows the detail results page, seen at the bottom of today's screenshot.

The detail results page is two things. First, it's a summary of what you chose. No real surprises there.

Second, it shows special events that happen during that career. When you "confirm" your selections in the top screen, the game "rolls" for random events relevant to that career. You might have a windfall, accident, make a friend, enemy, or even find a ship.

In this case, the screen says we caused someone to die through our action or inaction. We're a shipbreaker, so maybe we failed to rescue a colleague from a collapsing ship wreck. Or maybe one of our tools went astray and ruptured their suit. Whatever the case, someone died because of us.

We also see we gained an enemy. Chang, a civil pilot from K-Leg (where we are a shipbreaker). Perhaps it was Chang's buddy that died in the accident? Or worse, his family? Whatever the case, he hates us now. And not just "I don't like this guy," but he's a sworn enemy. Probably planning vengeance or tracking us.

And then there's the third event, and this is a very special one. We found a ship. And Not just any ship, but something we think we can use. As a shipbreaker, we see a lot of hulks dragged in to be broken down. But on rare occasions, someone drags in a hulk that isn't exactly junk. In fact, it might even be spaceworthy. With some elbow grease and "borrowed" parts from elsewhere in the yard.

And that's where we get a special choice. We can seize the opportunity, or ignore it.

If we choose to ignore it, we simply get back to our job, and take another career to see what else happens. But if we take the ship, our career ends here. This is where our backstory ends, and our "now" story begins. We can walk through the airlock, and we'll proceed to some UI where we either choose a ship from a list, or build it in the editor, and choose that.

And when that's finished, we begin the game! Likely alone, sitting inside an empty ship. Floating in whichever junkyard we chose in character creation. And potentially, with an enemy (Chang) hot on our heels. And in this case, we'll probably gain yet another enemy (K-Leg Harbormaster) when we fire-up the thruster and take-off with the junkyard's property. The junker might not be worth hunting you directly, but he'll have eyes and ears out for you around the System. Another enemy at K-Leg.

Still several details to be worked out here, but hopefully that gives you a slightly better idea of how things will work. You now have a backstory to shape who knows you and where in the System, and probably some things you want to take care of right away.

 

[sser]

I find the idea that people would put "criminal" on their resume even funnier than letting everyone know you are/were a spy. Seems like the sort of history that requires a bit more creative euphemism.

Some people are just blunt. When I worked immigration, one of the things I first noticed was that Subway workers had to call themselves "Sandwich Artists." The second thing I noticed is that Russians never said 'Yes' to a "Would you fight for the U.S. if asked?" question despite it being an obvious throwaway. And the third thing I noticed - and this only happened once - is that this guy from Africa was in an armed resurrection for about ten years, and he just plainly put fighting against the government, and there's a checkbox that says have you ever "Overthrown a government" and he's the only one I ever saw check it. Dude had a ridiculous life. I always hoped they let him in.

Fourth thing I noticed is that you'd sometimes see women with like ten marriages in the span of a few years, also known as immigration fraud. I was under the impression you didn't need to be a genius to see what was going on there, but I saw them a lot so I guess they get away with it pretty frequently.

 

[agris]

this guy from Africa was in an armed resurrection for about ten years

Dude, shit or get off the pot. No one has time to wait around for your slow-ass rez to be cast.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The second thing I noticed is that Russians never said 'Yes' to a "Would you fight for the U.S. if asked?" question despite it being an obvious throwaway.

What did they say? Did they try and dance around the question or what.

 

[sser]

The second thing I noticed is that Russians never said 'Yes' to a "Would you fight for the U.S. if asked?" question despite it being an obvious throwaway.

What did they say? Did they try and dance around the question or what.

It was a checkbox of Yes/No. Basically a glorified shit test because it wasn't like the U.S. would sift back through their files and wave it in your face saying you agreed to it or something.

 

[fantadomat]

The second thing I noticed is that Russians never said 'Yes' to a "Would you fight for the U.S. if asked?" question despite it being an obvious throwaway.

What did they say? Did they try and dance around the question or what.

It was a checkbox of Yes/No. Basically a glorified shit test because it wasn't like the U.S. would sift back through their files and wave it in your face saying you agreed to it or something.

How many americans checked no?

 

[Blaine]

And the third thing I noticed - and this only happened once - is that this guy from Africa was in an armed resurrection for about ten years, and he just plainly put fighting against the government, and there's a checkbox that says have you ever "Overthrown a government" and he's the only one I ever saw check it. Dude had a ridiculous life. I always hoped they let him in.

I hope they let a few hundred just like him in.

 

[Egosphere]

The second thing I noticed is that Russians never said 'Yes' to a "Would you fight for the U.S. if asked?" question despite it being an obvious throwaway.

What did they say? Did they try and dance around the question or what.

It was a checkbox of Yes/No. Basically a glorified shit test because it wasn't like the U.S. would sift back through their files and wave it in your face saying you agreed to it or something.

How many americans checked no?

 

[sser]

Thanks for the kind words! And I think my plans for the game are fairly well-aligned with what you're describing.

Before I go further, let me reiterate that this is still NEO Scavenger. It's still the same universe, with the same tone and sci-fi/paranormal possibilities. The natural laws that produced enfield horrors and the DMC still run the show "up there."

The main difference is, Earth is a mess, and The System is, despite some typical international dysfunction, still relatively civilized.

On Earth, civilization has fragmented into pockets and enclaves separated by wilderness and ruin, and supernatural activity lurks outside (and sometimes, within) the walls. A little bit of everything failed, causing a synergistic collapse. Orbital space was not exempt, and is an impassable graveyard of hypervelocity debris dotted by automated defenses. Everybody is in the dark down on Earth, and the things of myth, legend, and nightmares have started creeping in again from the periphery.

In the System, things are a bit different. Earth's collapse was devastating (especially to some colonies), but there was enough of a network from which to recover and grow. There are multiple sovereign states and agencies, interplanetary trade, and even relative opulence and luxury in places. But there is no shortage of strife, often more in the form of capitalistic dystopia.

And weird things still happen. Where there are people, there are unexplained stories. Ships gone missing. Crews gone mad. Rumors of biological tests and experiments. Glitchy audiovisual snippets suggesting "something" was there, when nobody could have been.

The possibilities are still going to be there. But it is going to be a bit more of an X-Files/Alien/Firefly vibe compared to NEO Scavenger's Rifts/Shadowrun/STALKER vibe.

On the topic of narrative pov, you're pretty much on target with player-controlled captain. I'm leaving it open to revision later if playtesting shows otherwise, but I agree the limited pov seems like it should add a lot of tension. I want the player to have satisfying cycles of tension and release, whether that be through drama, action, or dread. And leaving them questioning what goes on beyond their line of sight is an excellent tool for that

Have you by any chance read the book or seen the movie, Annihilation?

 

[dcfedor]

Have you by any chance read the book or seen the movie, Annihilation?

Not yet, unfortunately. I don't get out much these days, so unless it's on Netflix or Prime Video, I tend to miss out. But that one is definitely on my "to do" list. Looks right up my alley

I find the idea that people would put "criminal" on their resume even funnier than letting everyone know you are/were a spy. Seems like the sort of history that requires a bit more creative euphemism.

Yeah. I think I'll need to find a nice balance here between serving the player as a UI vs. in-character/in-world UI. Maybe "respectable entrepreneur"

 

[Alienman]

You are in luck, it's on Netflix

 

[dcfedor]

It is? Are we talking about the Natalie Portman Annihilation? Or the Patton Oswalt one?

 

[Alienman]

Natalie Portman one.

 

[dcfedor]

Huh. Looks like only non-US Netflix has it. Bummer!

 

[Alienman]

Oh

Yeah, now that i think about it. It was mentioned somewhere that the studio that made it didn't have faith in it so they dumped it on Netflix in Europe. Forgot.

 

[dcfedor]

Damn it! Don't get my hopes up like that!

 

[fantadomat]

I heard that it is pretty bad...mediocre.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Annihilation has an interesting premise but the all-chick team is just cringy. Bad acting all around and kind of lame effects, too.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

http://bluebottlegames.com/content/wrapping-chargen

Hey Folks! Character generation may be pretty close to operational today! I hesitate to say "finished," since it still has a ton of tweaking, fixing, and potentially rework to do over time. But I can basically build an entire character now, and the only step missing is the code to transport the finished character into the game!

Well, technically, first they transport to the ship customization screen, then the game. But still!

It's been a long time coming, and I thought it might make sense to do a recap. Take a step back, and review what it is I'm trying to do. And for anyone who's catching-up, this'll be a useful bird's eye view.

Today's screenshot basically maps out the major beats in the process, starting at the top left and progressing right and downward from there. We start a new game as a random named NPC wandering around a chargen "station." There's a restroom for character appearance/gender editing, and three kiosks for homeworld/strata, name/career/skills, and general traits.

The top right panel shows the appearance and gender UI, which is actually the only one here I didn't give a graphical treatment too. It'll probably look like a public bathroom wall when I'm done, but for now, imagine you're looking into a mirror over the sink. The red buttons toggle gender pronouns, and the white button randomizes appearance.

From there, we move to the (green) homeworld kiosk, which is meant to look a bit like a System-wide comms terminal. You can choose your preferred homeworld from the buttons in section "1," and your social strata from section "2." A helpful government pamphlet peeks up at you from the bottom, which can be raised to view detailed info on the stats you'll get as a member of that homeworld.

Moving on to the (yellow) career kiosk, this is a sort of government build-a-resume terminal. Like you'd find at the local employment office. Here, you can edit your name, and start choosing your career path. Each career term is 4 years, and there's a limit to the max age you can reach based on your homeworld (it's foundation date). Each career offers different skills from which to choose, and some are only accessible if you have certain requirements filled. (E.g. medical career requires medschool, pilot careers require pilot training, etc.)

Each term, there is a chance of one or more special "life" events. You might gain or lose people in your life, such as family, friends, or useful contacts. Sometimes, you might gain enemies. Or injuries. And in rare cases, you might stumble across a chance at a ship.

Each ship origin story will be a bit different. Some involve stealing. Others borrowing. And still others are free and clear. Some are ready to fly. Some are heaps of junk. Some are experimental.

Whatever the case, you can choose to preview the ship by docking it at this station and touring it. And if you don't want it, continue your career normally. If you do take it, however, the ship and career become locked-in. You might be able to reset/restart career if you don't like how it turned out, but you have to wipe it clean to do so. No "undo" along the way.

Once that's done, we move on to the (red) traits kiosk, fashioned after a pharmacy vending machine. Basically, it shows you the list of positive and negative traits you have, and this is where you'll balance those out. Like NEO Scavenger, if you have a surplus of positive traits, you must take some negatives. Unlike NEO Scavenger, there are a lot more to choose from here.

I'll have to do some testing to see if this step should be resolved before careers or not. Or if any of these can be done in any order. I'd like to offer freedom to make what you want, but there are some careers that cannot be pursued with certain traits. (E.g. IsObtuse would not likely graduate to become a scientist or doctor)

Anyway, after those choices are made, you end up with a fairly fleshed-out character. You have stats, a history, a ship, and people you know (and are maybe on the run from).

The only thing not really working here is shown in the lower right corner: ship editing. Your career reward that provided a ship will also include a purse of funds to customize the starting ship. Probably not enough to overhaul it. And probably no way to sell existing parts (would be too easy). But maybe enough to rearrange a few rooms, add some equipment, or patch some holes.

Anyway, that done, you'd be plopped into said ship, and off you go! Probably with some sort of urgent immediate need, like being on the run, or finding funds to stock-up. And then...we find out what is needed to make this fun, I guess

 

[Jimmious]

*Annihilation is worth watching because of amazing direction and photography alone.
Acting and story are so-so, depends a lot on taste

 

[tsiforb]

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Plenty of posts on the blog between the above post and now.
http://bluebottlegames.com/news

 

[lophiaspis]

dcfedor

I have some suggestions. This critique is based on nothing but a desire to see the game reach its full 5/5 potential, so no offense is intended.

My first suggestion is: Make the setting at least ten times more post-apocalyptic. There are many reasons why this is a good idea.

With the current non-apocalyptic setting, your pitch is almost like: "What if System Shock 2 was set before SHODAN took over, and you were just a normal citizen on the Von Braun, doing everyday tasks". That might potentially be an interesting idea, but is it really the best idea? Will it make for the most engrossing game, compared with having to survive on a ruined and infested Von Braun, where all the locations and characters have been contorted in interesting and nightmarish ways?

I mean, what do you think is the most exciting scenario:

"Earth is screwed, but don't worry, humanity is doing fine in space. We still have advanced colonies with tens of millions of Chinese just on Mars. No sweat. Why don't you join our corp as a Level 1 miner and do some exciting mining and trading between our bustling colonies? Don't worry if you run out of supplies, just come back to the spaceport and we'll fill you up!"
Versus
"Earth is screwed and humanity in space is reduced to less than a million people, scattered across colonies and space stations, most of which have collapsed from starvation, civil strife or anomalous events, and the survivors are slowly running out of food, water, oxygen and supplies. Will humanity even survive, or be wiped out by these supernatural creatures? We desperately need anyone that can fly a ship, to investigate anomalies and bring us supplies - and we can't afford to just hand out food and fuel, you'll have to scavenge them from creepy, potentially monster-filled derelicts."

So you don't have to scrap any of your present world design. Just use that as the pre-apocalyptic stage. This exponentially increases the narrative depth, the tension and mystery of the setting. It gives a much greater impetus to survival and exploration. As a bonus, it would be very cool if your ship's encyclopedia provides a stark contrast to the reality. Your onboard computer cheerily informs you that Tharsis Prime is a metropolis of 12 million, mostly Chinese and Americans, with a booming economy. You go there, and Tharsis Prime is a ruin filled with a few thousand desperate survivors holding out against supernatural horrors. Your Ship Computer tells you that Europa City is a complex of 200,000 people based on advanced research and trade with the Outer System. You go there, and everyone has vanished without a trace. Go to Vesta, and you are greeted by a bizarre authoritarian polity run by a mysterious exalted being, that may or may not be a ghost-possessed human or AI.

And that leads me to my second, related suggestion: Make it more of a straightforward NEO Scavenger in space. Focus the game more on roguelike survival gameplay and exploring the mysterious apocalyptic setting, than on career management in a pre-revealed, civilized setting with no mysteries. Your character relationships system is a very interesting development, and I do think it should be in the game, but I'm worried that if you focus too much on such mundane relationships, then it won't really go anywhere interesting.

The problem with your current game start is that it gives away all the potential mystery of the setting. If all the colonies are still civilized, and you already know everything about all the colonies, and can choose where you come from and where to start, then there's nowhere interesting to explore, or at least a hundred times fewer such places than if you switch it up as I have suggested.

Thus, I think the best way to start the game is just like NEO Scavenger: You wake up from cryosleep onboard a ship, with no recollection of who you are or how you got there. This is not just a nod to NEO Scavenger, but also to countless sci-fi movies that start with waking up from cryosleep. Amnesia is a trope for a reason - because it works. This way, the entire setting is a complete mystery to the new player. Exploration becomes infinitely more exciting.

Just as an example, you could start by waking up from cryosleep in orbit around Enceladus, you have to scavenge some nearby ships and stations, and then the game becomes sort of a quest to get closer and closer to Earth, like getting closer to Detroit in NEO Scavenger. And from somewhere in the Inner System you learn that you have to go back to the Outer System to open some portal or something - maybe the whole apocalypse was caused by scientists trying to open some portal just like in Event Horizon. There should be a 'look out window' button to see a beautiful picture of the world or station you are currently orbiting, and when you get to Earth, maybe the Earth is covered in some awful shadow, or maybe you as the player don't even get to see it, instead you just get a description like "oh my God... that's..." and your character starts going slightly insane just from looking at the Earth. Like the Earth is that shiny thing in the suitcase in Pulp Fiction. Good mystery! Your 'killbots attack anyone getting close to Earth' idea is decent, but IMO it should be a secondary problem to the awful supernatural blight that surrounds the planet.

Some more specific critiques on character creation: For one, the part where you choose your own homeworld strikes me as unnecessary. Firstly because all those traits are already available without picking the Homeworld trait, secondly because it lays out the entire gameworld at the beginning instead of allowing you to discover it in play. The same goes for the Language part. Wouldn't you have universal translators for all practical purposes anyway? I think you should just handwave English as a common language for the whole system and leave Chinese, Portuguese etc. as background fluff. I also honestly don't see the need for character portraits, even if you can make them look less cartoonish and Prosperian than they do now. I mean, would X-Com have been more immersive if you had a dynamic portrait of every soldier? With no portraits, your imagination fills in the blanks with something much better. If you really need portraits, you should make them in the realistic style of the Doomguy instead of a cartoon, IMO.

I've been thinking about the captain/crew perspective question some more and came to the following conclusion. If you have full control and sight of all crewmembers, RimWorld style, this is not very scary and is not a good fit for this game. So it's better if you only control the captain at any given moment and can give orders to your crewmen that they may or may not carry out. But a feature in space horror as in other horror films is that the crew gets picked off one by one until there's only one left. The way to simulate this I think is that you should have direct control and view of one character at a time, starting with the captain. But if the captain dies, then the perspective moves to the next ranking character and he/she then becomes the 'protagonist'. This way the roguelike harshness is softened by having a few 'lives': you can weather a few deaths since you only lose if your ship runs out of crew entirely. And I think it is also a really good way to generate player stories. Say your ship is docked to a derelict station, and your crew is busy scavenging supplies from all the shelves and closets when they are attacked by a monster. You as the captain shoot a few precious bullets, but soon realize that the only thing you can do is run like hell toward your own ship, so you order everyone to run (and your Cowardly crewmembers might be running already). But you don't make it to the airlock - the captain gets eaten by the monster even as the crewmembers make it to safety. The captain is dead and the viewpoint now switches to the second in command. Isn't this a cool story? This way you can still keep playing even if your last crewmember had to eat all the others. And crewmen should not, in my opinion, be something you just buy like any fungible resource. They should be valuable and you can only get new ones sporadically, like in RimWorld. (Yet another reason for making the setting more apocalyptic - otherwise you could logically just hire dozens of crew at any point.) You might find one as a last survivor onboard a derelict ship and he would be so grateful for you saving him. But who's to say this 'last survivor' isn't a psychopathic cannibal that murdered and ate his crewmates, or even the host of a Genestealer type xenoform?

These are the essential elements of NEO Scavenger that are solid gold, and I think should be developed and perfected in this game:
1) The health system is so good that I recommend copying it entirely. All your crewmen should have the same need for food, water and sleep as in NEO Scavenger, and the same ways they can get hurt and have to heal. But for crewmen you should not be able to see their diagnostic without laying them down on the table. If it turns out that their sickness comes from something awful crawling inside their belly... well, choice and consequence.
2) Same thing for the combat system. It's literally the best turnbased combat system ever and it would be a big shame not to use it. I think perhaps there shouldn't even be any detailed ship-to-ship combat in this game. Because how exciting is getting blown up by a missile compared to having to fight an alien or a possessed lunatic onboard your own ship? The way it would work when you have multiple characters on your side is simply that your crewmen are treated like any other AI character, except they're on your side, and you can give orders to them. The turnbased combat system would trigger as soon as you see an enemy, and maybe the whole derelict scavenging part would be turnbased.
3) The inventory system should probably be simplified, but you can still only scavenge those supplies and items that your crewmembers physically pick up from a boarded ship - there's no 'auto looting'. This fixes one of the issues in NEO Scavenger, namely that scavenging, your core activity, is rather boring and repetitive. If you have to physically enter a spacecraft and sneak around in fear of monsters hiding in the dark, then scavenging for supplies suddenly becomes as exhilarating as a terror mission in X-Com.
4) The roguelike gameplay should still be in. This would be somewhat softened by the fact that you have multiple crewmen to draw on.

And here are the main issues that IMO prevent NEO Scavenger from reaching 5/5 status, and my suggestions for avoiding such pitfalls:
1) It's too short. The Military Base should have been the midpoint, not the end. Should be fairly easy to fix. Just draw out the 'main quest' a bit longer.
2) Scavenging, the main activity, is pretty boring and repetitive. Fixed by turning the scavenging into an X-Com like affair where your crew must physically enter the spacecraft and pick up any loot and bring it back to the ship, while monsters can jump out at any moment forcing you to fight or flee.
3) Gotcha puzzles. I respect you for having the balls to put King's Quest style instakill puzzles in a roguelike, but it really doesn't work. The burned player will just use a walkthrough, breaking immersion. There shouldn't be any such puzzles in the next game.
4) Some balance issues (Strength is broken, it should not give any bonuses to scavenging). This is a minor issue but still important.
5) Last but not least: Issues with writing and tonal consistency. The writing in NEO is decent overall, but the setting feels more like a jumble of sci-fi ideas than a harmonious whole. In particular, the Detroit megacity breaks immersion for me. There's a serious incongruence between the wasteland, which is so post-apocalyptic that the humans are mostly roving cannibals, and DMC which is a super advanced metropolis with flying cars, apartment blocks, banks and convenience stores. I mean, where do they even get fuel for the cars? Where's the industry that gets them packaged goods and spare parts? How does that industry get raw materials? How do they keep it all from collapsing into anarchy? Why haven't they just reconquered the wasteland with all their gadgets? Normally I'm not that anal about such things but the DMC is just handwaving overkill. It's a very cool location, but in my opinion it belongs in a cyberpunk game, not a post-apocalyptic one where it clashes with the overall moods and themes. This is yet another reason for why the setting should be much more apocalyptic than your current pitch, aside from making the gameplay better. To take one example, how can Tharsis City still have an economy based on entertainment when Earth is gone? How can you sustain your economy when 99% of your market and supply chain just disappears? There's no plausible explanation for why interplanetary society should get along just fine without Earth. I respectfully suggest you ought to think long and hard about what kind of societies might arise after such a total apocalypse, and be a bit more subtle and less random about the characterization and location design than in NEO. Again, something like Zom Zom's or Martha's Army might be interesting ideas, but they just don't fit into the setting very harmoniously. Sad to say, NEO Scavenger's lore makes it feel more like a cartoonish pastiche on the order of Wasteland 1, rather than a plausible post-apocalyptic world. This is not inherently bad for all games, but with the otherwise ultra-realism of the setting it does harm immersion.

To sum up, I think the core game loop ought to be desperately scavenging derelicts for supplies you need to survive - sort of like the combat missions in X-Com except your goal is to get the stuff and get out rather than killing everything - and then dealing with the sci-fi horror movie style physical and mental aftermath onboard your ship. I think some of your current design decisions might get in the way of this. I think if you made the setting more apocalyptic and eerie and desperate, then this would make it infinitely more exciting than a game based around space trading or space mining (which I honestly think is the worst gameplay ever invented), or other more mundane quests in a fully functioning space society that can replenish all your needs easily.

Lastly, I think you have enough of a fanbase from NEO Scavenger that a Kickstarter would be a good idea, so long as you don't go overboard with physical rewards. It would help with advertising as well as development funds and let you maximize your revenue from the hardcore fans. I would certainly back at a high tier.

 

[dcfedor]

lophiaspis, you cover a lot of ground here. And I doubt I'll have good answers for all of it. But I'll try to tackle what I can.

TL;DR, you make some good points. Some I agree with. Some I don't. But that's the nature of this business (and its audience).

I'm going to skip ahead a bit to address one of your later points, as I think it informs a lot of the discussion. The "cartoonish pastiche" comment, specifically.

NEO Scavenger is one of the settings (and games) I've always wanted to play. The genesis of NS was actually a spreadsheet chock full of everything I loved about media and games as a kid. All of the stuff I wanted license to employ in my game, from monsters to cybertech, nuclear wastelands to glittering fortress cities. Maybe even magic.

From that, a loose idea of how it could all fit together. How these (admittedly disparate) things could all coexist.

Spoiler

Which is where Merga and the whole consensus reality thing comes from. Basically, if enough people believe something, and can rationalize it, that becomes reality. Merga is just someone who figured out how to manipulate that early on, enforced a certain reality for a long time, but recently stopped.

(It's a bit more complex, but that's the gist.)

Mechanically, and within that context, I wanted resource scarcity, scavenging, repurposing, survival, and strategy. Gameplay bits of Civ, STALKER, Fallout, Silent Storm, Lego, D&D, Rifts, and Shadowrun.

This bit about the game's origins is an important point, since it's not necessarily one of the games we most needed to be made. Or even one of the most financially viable. It's just one giant guilty pleasure. Which is sort of the basis for my business. I could be earning dependable pay and benefits at someone else's studio, or even stacks of fat cash if I would just start putting ads in my games, fremium-them-up a bit, and follow whatever trend was "reeling in the whales."

Instead, I saved up some cash, and took a sharp, risky turn from BioWare. I started throwing pieces together in my la-la land to see what would stick.

NS sucked at first. Like "really boring" sucked. Forget about setting. Just strictly on mechanics, it was nothing but advancing time and collecting soup cans without any purpose or tension.

But as I toyed with it, solicited feedback, added, and removed, it started to feel more like a game. Around the time I had map movement and scavenging roughed-out, and weather and biological needs were in place, an honest-to-goodness game started to appear. And from there, things just accelerated.

Fast-forward to this space game, and we're pretty much following the same path. I liked Firefly. And The Expanse. I loved the implied history of Han Solo saying "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've added some special modifications myself." This ancient ship customized to suit the owner.

I loved Alien(s), and not necessarily for the xenomorph. The horror and action is cool and all, but I loved the world. The characters. The tech. The oppressive corporatocracy. I kinda want to cozy-up in the Nostromo, sipping a cuppa WU black and puffing Balaji Imperials for a while, without that damned alien popping it's head out from every vent cover for a change.

I played a fair bit of Eve Online in the past, and liked it well enough. I loved poring over ship modules and doing calculations to max-out my ship. But I didn't like being stuck with limited ship templates and slots. I wanted more graph paper ship design, like I did with Lego. Except all the Lego pieces are functioning hardware.

I still want NS's physiological needs. I think that was a success. But I want to exand that into psychological needs, too. I also want the orthogonality of NS, where each problem has multiple solutions. A system of tools and problems, and freedom for the player to mix and match as they please.

And I want to be surprised by my AIs. I don't want to spend 8 months writing 180 thousand words in over 3000 rote encounters for people to decide they've seen enough in 5 hours. I want the encounters to write themselves. For complex social webs to be woven based on my (and NPC) actions. I want to play my own game and not know what's going to happen. In my special world designed exactly to my tastes.

Which is stupid. It's a terrible business plan. It might make me rich, but it (more likely) might bankrupt me. It's literally me throwing tens of thousands of dollars out the window in pursuit of satisfaction. Unless that isn't stupid. I don't know.

In any case, I hear what you're saying. And if I could pull the single most salient point from your suggestions, it would be this: the space prototype lacks scarcity. (Or tension. They sort of go hand-in-hand.) I.e. The player isn't struggling against anything.

As you point out, they already have everything. They can be anything. Start anywhere. Begin with a big ship. Take on crew wherever. Nothing is being drained. Lost things are easily replaced. It's a lot like NS was before it "clicked."

My hope is that there is now a system in place where I can start hanging rules. I have a grid map. I have interacting pieces. I have AI that can pathfind the grid, and seek fulfillment of needs. I have places to go, and ways to get there.

Now I can start playing with things like: how does the player get resources? New ship pieces? New crew? What is working against them? How are resources lost? How can I make it such that there are different tools to solve each problem, and all of them create new and interesting problems?

To be clear, I don't like mining and trading, either. That's not where this game is going. (Well, I kinda liked mining in Starflight, but still...) The usual MMO trading, mining, fighting trifecta is not very interesting to me.

Rather, I'm hoping I can find a nice balance between survival and slice of life mechanics. Sort of the Sims, but in the Alien(s) setting. And instead of your sim disappearing 8 hours each day to earn a wage, they're doing the stuff in a Firefly episode during those hours.

Just to reiterate, I don't think your suggestions are bad. Far from it. I think what you're describing would be a really cool game. I just think what I'm making (and want to make) only partially overlaps that idea.

That said, you're absolutely right that there needs to be more scarcity.

 

[you know what time it is]

This ticks all of my boxes, coincidentally your moniker is an amalgamation of names of my two favorite fighters. Finally a man after my own heart.