Colony Ship RPG Update #1

[Infinitron]

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,7104.0.html

To promote design transparency and keep everyone amused for the next {insert a number you're comfortable with} years, we'll post monthly updates showing our design process from day one and how it evolves over time.

* * *
The Setting

Before we start looking at quests and characters, we have to define the setting, both the relevant past that defines the present and the present where the game takes place. Any Colony Ship setting starts with 3 key questions:

• Who launched the ship?
• What was the social system/order?
• What caused that system’s collapse?

Answer these questions and you’ll have a detailed and logical setting. Here’s our take on it:

The Founding Fathers:

Who’d launch and most importantly pay for an undertaking that costs so much yet delivers so little? Even if Earth were overpopulated, launching a ship to Alpha Centauri – a flight that would take hundreds of years if you’re lucky enough to have mystical elven Engines of Speed X10 (thousands of years if you don’t) – solves zero problems and thus gets zero cash.

Thus, it would have to be a private enterprise with a pinch of religious zealotry. Would a neo-Christian American foundation pay to establish a 100% Christian God-fearing colony on Alpha Centauri in the distant future? They conquered the New World once and by God’s grace they can do it again - even if it takes a thousand years to get there! Yee-Haw, gentlemen!

The First Generation:

The first generations are zealots who believe in the Mission. No sacrifice is too great, no suffering is too unbearable. They will never see Earth again; they will never see Alpha Centauri either. Their children, grandchildren, and so on are doomed to live and die on the ship in the name of the Mission. They will never see the sunlight, never swim in a sea, never sit under a tree, all because they had the misfortune of being born on the ship, chained to a fate they didn’t choose or want.

The Social Order:

Clearly, a flight that lasts hundreds of years must be carefully managed. Strict order would have to be maintained at all costs. Individual rights and freedoms would have to be temporarily suspended, all in the name of the Mission.

So the first generations would be ready to sacrifice everything for the dream. Their zeal would cement the totalitarianism and the loss of freedom that comes with it. For the greater good!

The goal is to deliver ready to go colonists, skilled in the trades the future colony would require in nearly exact proportions: farmers, metalworkers, chemists, doctors, administrators, armed forces to protect the colonists against all dangers undoubtedly lurking everywhere, etc.

So you can't just leave it to chance and hope for the best. You have to keep and maintain the knowledge within a certain group. You have to restrict freedom of choice for the greater good of the colony. This faith will weaken with every generation, but the change won't be as noticeable until you reach the boiling point where suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, everyone is unhappy.

Population would have to be controlled as well, so a two-child policy would be established. A child born into a “farmer” family would be taught the farming trade (aeroponics and simulations), forced to start a family of his/her own, get the mandatory two children, shove the much hated and useless knowledge of farming down their throats. Rinse and repeat for hundreds of years.

The second generation would still be under their parents’ spell, but the fourth or fifth generation wouldn’t give much of a fuck about the Mission or Christ the Savior, which brings us to the second act: the mutiny.

The Inevitable Mutiny leading to new societies emerging. In any collapse, there is a movement that wants to go back to the good ol' ways (the South shall rise again!), a radically different movement (freedom for everyone!), and a religious movement (what would Jesus do, hmm?):

• Totalitarian traditionalism - what was good for our fathers is good enough for us; we must maintain the Laws of the Ship. The traditionalists believe that the old laws were necessary and that they were the only way to keep chaos at bay. Open-minded people would recognize the wrongs but see them as necessary and lesser evil.
• Fuck totalitarianism, give power to the people, embrace democracy!
• Democracy? We are on the ship because White Christ wills it so we must accept it and honor He Who Was Reborn as we shall be reborn when the ship reaches the destination.
• Can't we all just be left the fuck alone? Life's hard enough without your bullshit getting in the way. :deadwood:

So the idea is to explore how this giant ant-farm is affecting people, how societies and ideas governing them evolve over time (something we didn't do in AoD), etc.

We want each faction have a range of characters and beliefs, from extremism to liberalism, and I want the player to be able to push your faction toward a preferred end of the spectrum. Democracy, for example, can evolve either into a cheap popularity contest (Idiocracy) or earning the right to vote (Starship Troopers), all the way to ‘only the wise and infallible Senators can vote’.

* * *

The Overall Design

As mentioned previously, we want the CSG to feel and play differently from AoD. The core design (turn-based, choices & consequences, non-linear, text-heavy) would remain the same, of course.

So the new design elements are:

• Party-based. It’s a fundamental change that affects every design aspect, most notably content “gating”. If you have 3-4 party members, most likely you’ll have all skills covered.
• Feats. Feats require character levels (another departure from the AoD design) and will replace (and greatly expand) skills’ passive abilities. Our aim is to offer greater customization of your character’s abilities and builds’ support. So far we have the following categories: General (feats like True Grit or Critical Thinker), Specialist (Pistolero, Fast Draw, Paint It Red, etc), On Kill (Bloodlust, Second Wind), Target (anything related to the target: type, number, awareness, etc - Crowd Control, Duelist, Bounty Hunter, etc), Party-related (Warband, Magnificent Five), Combat (Adrenaline Rush, Headhunter), etc. No filler +1 to skill or +5 damage feats but meaningful feats that fit and strengthen your particular gameplay style.
• Focus on ranged combat. While melee builds will be viable, most enemies will use guns. We’ll discuss it in great details later.
• Focus on exploration rather than working your way up in a faction. While factions will get a lot of attention (see above) and play a large role, you won’t join a faction but will remain an outsider, free to work for and deal with all factions, which fits the setting better as these factions aren’t guilds but different hubs. However, many quests would have conflicting interests and reputation would play a stronger and more immediate role than it did in AoD, so you won’t be able to please everyone for long.
• Multiple-piece armor. AoD had a very basic “body armor + helmet” setup. With the CSG, we want to go a bit further: helmet, chest, right arm, left arm, legs. We’re thinking of cumulative DR against general attacks and individual piece’s DR against aimed attacks. We’ll test this system in the dungeon crawler to build up some experience in this area and see how it works.

* * *

The Character System

Expect the same 6 stats (Str, Dex, Con, Int, Per, Cha). So far the main changes are Cha determining the number and type of party members and Int determining the number of tagged skills (faster progression) instead of a SP bonus, which is a more elegant solution. A smarter person can excel at and master more skills than a person of average intelligence.

So far we're planning to go with 18 skills, grouped in sets of three:

Melee

• Fist
• Bladed
• Blunt

Firearms

• Pistol
• Shotgun
• SMG

Energy Weapons

• Pistol
• Rifle
• Cannon

Science

• Medical
• Mechanical
• Computer

Speech

• Persuasion
• Streetwise
• Trading

Stealth

• Lockpick
• Pickpocket
• Sneak

As mentioned earlier:

All firearms are ship-made; most are crude, angular weapons. It’s a 'rediscovered' tech (we all know what flintlock weapons are but we don’t make them, so if we have to start making them again, we’ll have to rediscover the tech we’re vaguely familiar with).

They have relatively low accuracy but most firearms tend to be multi-shot weapons (either more barrels or revolving cylinders or burst). They are made by various smiths for the militia and 'adventurers', so they vary in form and style.

- Pistols use powerful 0.45 ammo but most are single-shot guns. More advanced models add more barrels or revolving action.
- SMG use cheap 9mm and have burst mode.
- Shotguns use cartridges and have the widest spread.

We can consider ammo variations within each class but it’s not necessary as 3 different types are more than enough.

Energy weapons are Earth-made. Since they have no recoil, large stock isn’t necessary, so whereas the firearms and crude and angular, the energy weapons are elegant and curved (think flintlocks). They are single shot weapons that are extremely accurate but slow to fire. They use energy cells (one ammo type for all weapons) that are very rare. Some places sell re-charged cells but they are less effective.

- Pistols
- Rifles have the longest range and best accuracy; the sniper’s weapon
- Cannons (weapons that were mounted on mechs); consume an entire cell when fired.

* * *

In the future updates, we’ll give you a proper overview of the four factions and 16 locations and talk about design.

 

[Malakal]

So the religious angle is the only one you find feasible? What about some idealists wanting to start a colony based on their ideals somewhere else, some kind of hipster commune? Guess the ship money could be a problem there.

Corporation makes little sense I suppose, eventual gain is too far away. A state funded expedition of scientists and criminals/people forced to go? Like a probe with several dedicated people and the rest given no choice.

 

[veevoir]

So the religious angle is the only one you find feasible? What about some idealists wanting to start a colony based on their ideals somewhere else, some kind of hipster commune? Guess the ship money could be a problem there.

Corporation makes little sense I suppose, eventual gain is too far away. A state funded expedition of scientists and criminals/people forced to go? Like a probe with several dedicated people and the rest given no choice.

Excuse me sir, have you heard of our lord and saviour, Sir Richard Branson?
He's nuts enough to want colonize Mars in our time. He's a hippie with business resume and hard,cold cash. In VD scenario someone like him would probably own a multinational with enough money to sponsor such a mission.

If you have a corporation that has one owner instead of shareholders - anything can happen profit may not always be the main driver. Maybe the CEO *is* on the ship, immortalized in form of AI or in cryostasis. It still smells of religious zealotry (The Revered Founder/CEO/whatever who was wise enough to foresee earth going to shit and left with us, the chosen), though it might not lay at foundation of flight but surface few generations later.

 

[Vault Dweller]

So the religious angle is the only one you find feasible? What about some idealists wanting to start a colony based on their ideals somewhere else, some kind of hipster commune? Guess the ship money could be a problem there.

Corporation makes little sense I suppose, eventual gain is too far away. A state funded expedition of scientists and criminals/people forced to go? Like a probe with several dedicated people and the rest given no choice.

I assume such an undertaking would cost an insane amount of money yet offer zero profit. Even if it takes 400 years to reach the destination, a couple of hundred years to build a colony and send the ship back with mineral plunder, it's a thousand years long wait. So, we're talking about a fortune being literally thrown away for no good reason when there are real issues on Earth (overpopulation, unemployment, economy, pollution, etc).

Excuse me sir, have you heard of our lord and saviour, Sir Richard Branson?
He's nuts enough to want colonize Mars in our time. He's a hippie with business resume and hard,cold cash. In VD scenario someone like him would probably own a multinational with enough money to sponsor such a mission.

Mars is different. It's close enough (a flight there takes what, 6-12 months?), colonization can be done in manageable steps, there are ways to make it profitable and attract investors. A trip to Alpha Centauri is different. Takes hundreds of years one way, huge upfront cost, zero gain.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

So the religious angle is the only one you find feasible? What about some idealists wanting to start a colony based on their ideals somewhere else, some kind of hipster commune? Guess the ship money could be a problem there.

Why not a religious colony ship? There's plenty of precedent.

 

[axedice]

Is this an established sci-fi theme? The Expanse Series has a similar colonyship idea that is commissioned by rich future mormons.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Which theme, the generation ship? Yes. It's a well established concept and genre.

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

 

[Aenra]

Vault Dweller Elhoim
Kickstart it. Bout fucking time i pledge for something worth its bucks. In advance.

If it fails, fuck it. You cancel the campaign and keep making it as you were. Personally i think it could work..AoD did very good considering the limited audience it can cater to, so you got an established base to start with (which is a great boon as it will affect the initial kicktraq projections) and am sure MCA at the least would not mind giving you the odd shoutout considering a certain past email. Come to think of it, i also recall you giving good advice on other peoples' campaigns. Why not employ it for your own benefit
If you worry about 2022 overly long 'production' lengths and how they could influence the backers' opinion.. just KS it when you have a demo ready. Which will be doubly cool in your case, because unlike most other studios (and i make no exceptions, they all suck in this), you'll actually have something for people to try on prior to paying. Well worthy of mentioning.

edit: and am sure DU would have no issue starting our own donation 'campaign' right here.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Vault Dweller Elhoim
Kickstart it. Bout fucking time i pledge for something worth its bucks. In advance.

I'm not a big fan of KS. I don't want to ask for money until we have something playable and when we have something playable, we won't be far off from launching it on Early Access, which is a far more straightforward platform (selling playable game vs promises).

 

[trais]

Meh, I don't really like the idea of "religious colony ship". I think it can be unnecessarily restrictive at times, because you start with very homogeneous group that can then only diverge into a few predictable paths.

Secondly, with that setup you have a huge plot-hole: namely, people who were smart enough to build a Space-Ark capable of interstellar travel are probably also smart enough to predict that their initial "society model" will degenerate and collapse after few generations. After all, if anything religious zealots are good at it's psychology and sociology (e.g. to manipulate and control their flock) rather than engineering.

I also think it benefits the story to fill the ship with many different cultures at the beginning. Giant spacefaring melting pot instead of simple conflict between "new ways A" vs "new ways B" etc. vs "tradition".

 

[Aenra]

I'm not a big fan of KS

Me neither, you will easily find multiple posts of mine where i condemn it, least in its current form. In this particular case however, we would not be dealing with yet another group of people taking advantage of trends as they currently stand (be they 'incline' or not, i do not distinguish). This is about ITS. ITS offered me a fucking demo for AoD, in this day and age. Something tells me it will yet again when the time comes.

Trust is established.

I understand your reasoning, have read previous posts of yours. Just keep this last phrase in mind. And ffs, consider how much more you could do with our money. A bleeding shame not taking it if you ask me.

edit: EA you can/will do regardless. One need not invalidate the other.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Secondly, with that setup you have a huge plot-hole: namely, people who were smart enough to build a Space-Ark capable of interstellar travel are probably also smart enough to predict that their initial "society model" will degenerate and collapse after few generations.

We're smart enough to send a rover on Mars and stream Earth porn for the Martians but we can't into genders, borders, and other social or political issues.

 

[Sitra Achara]

So the religious angle is the only one you find feasible? What about some idealists wanting to start a colony based on their ideals somewhere else, some kind of hipster commune? Guess the ship money could be a problem there.

Corporation makes little sense I suppose, eventual gain is too far away. A state funded expedition of scientists and criminals/people forced to go? Like a probe with several dedicated people and the rest given no choice.

How about a child of eugenicist conspiracy tragically saddled with petty Earth politics?

 

[trais]

You mean leftists cannot


But seriously:

Even if we'd assume that technological progress in the future would be only achieved in STEM fields and all research into psych/soc abandoned, with our current meager knowledge you can predict with 100% certainty that such rigid system would fail quickly. Hell, thousands of years ago people would most like notice its flaws immediately: even ancient Romans allowed in certain conditions for slaves to become free men or barbarians become citizens. And they were pretty anal about those things overall.
Every caste system in history allowed, at very least, for free horizontal movement in between professions of certain status. Because it doesn't take a genius to observe that kids don't always inherit their parents' talents or interests. And society as a whole benefits, if the workers are at least somewhat motivated to do their jobs.

Another thing, more specific:

Christianity has a huge hard-on about God testing his faithful: Abraham, Hiob, prodigal son etc. So every Christian zealot worth his salt would be the first to assume that not everyone will always remain truly faithful. Or that someone might be getting heretic ideas and you need to go Spanish Inquisition on his ass. What if that someone is a descendant of a Captain or a Chief Engineer? Ship sails on without anyone stepping into these positions?

I get that the theme you want to explore is somewhat in the ballpark of "religious zealots are dumb", but I think current draft of it is unambitious and uninspiring.

 

[veevoir]

Christianity has a huge hard-on about God testing his faithful: Abraham, Hiob, prodigal son etc. So every Christian zealot worth his salt would be the first to assume that not everyone will always remain truly faithful. Or that someone might be getting heretic ideas and you need to go Spanish Inquisition on his ass. What if that someone is a descendant of a Captain or a Chief Engineer? Ship sails on without anyone stepping into these positions?

That is an interesting point. Wouldn't such voyage have it own brand of religious police? To ensure the stray sheep get back into the fold?
And with such power - will it in few generation turn into omnipresent secret police and a faction of its own in power struggle?

 

[Darth Roxor]

i'll just drop this here

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

 

[axedice]

Which theme, the generation ship?

I meant the generation ships being commissioned by private funding with some religious zealotry. In the Expanse series, said generation ship is commissioned by a Mormon corporation.

I'm not a big fan of KS. I don't want to ask for money until we have something playable and when we have something playable, we won't be far off from launching it on Early Access, which is a far more straightforward platform (selling playable game vs promises).

AoD has proved more than enough, so

 

[Zed]

- Shotguns use cartridges and have the widest spread.

 

[Excidium II]

- Shotguns use cartridges and have the widest spread.

U hate melee range vidya shotguns? Or cartridges?

 

[Zed]

- Shotguns use cartridges and have the widest spread.

U hate melee range vidya shotguns? Or cartridges?

vidya shotguns

and I don't hate. hate is a strong word.

 

[Irenaeus III]

Secondly, with that setup you have a huge plot-hole: namely, people who were smart enough to build a Space-Ark capable of interstellar travel are probably also smart enough to predict that their initial "society model" will degenerate and collapse after few generations. After all, if anything religious zealots are good at it's psychology and sociology (e.g. to manipulate and control their flock) rather than engineering.

I already have my own explanation for the mutiny: Jews infiltrated the mission and compromised it.

 

[Shadowfang]

Add a radial menu. It's a pain to keep switching between aimed attack head/arm in aod.
The radial menu ala toee or even nwn1 made everything so smooth, so add one of those.

Also hexagons instead of squares.

 

[Johannes]

Add a radial menu. It's a pain to keep switching between aimed attack head/arm in aod.
The radial menu ala toee or even nwn1 made everything so smooth, so add one of those.

Also hexagons instead of squares.

Fuck that, they're both bad. What's needed is hotkeys for the different attacks (was this added into AoD yet?).

 

[Johannes]

For the setting, there's a lot of reasons why a ship like this would be launched and by whom.

It could be a proper business venture under the right circumstances: people pay money up front to get on board, in order to have a life in a safe environment and a future for their kids. Of course it'd be cheaper to set up a self-sustaining space station just orbiting the Earth or Sun (both less fuel needed, and more light available to harness), these existing would p. much be a prerequisite for any attempt at a much more complex mission like this. But some people would pay a premium for the dream of their descendants colonizing a new world.
Delaying the launch (waiting for better tech) might possibly get you a much faster flight time, but who's to say that it'd be you or your kids on board then, even if we assume there'd ever be a launch? So if you've got a chance to get onboard a slow ship now, it's a form of insurance, similar to prepping or buying a share in a Fallout-style Vault.

Or a dictator could send a group of people because he thinks it's a cool concept and for the PR value of being the first to do it. He could even send his own son as the leader of the expedition.

It certainly wouldn't have to be a religious group doing it. Especially if the living conditions aboard are ok. Of course it can be a religious mission, too.


More implausible is the fact that the hereditary system laid out here doesn't remind of any current brand of religion. Any practical person, religious or not, should see that for an endeavor like this, you can't foresee how the daily life will exactly work out - exactly how many farmers and how many doctors do you need to run the ship (let alone the planet colonization process)? You have to be able to adjust and retrain people and demographic structure as needed, who knows what kinds of technical malfunctions, disease outbreaks, and social upheavals will happen. Totalitarian order is all fine but anyone can see the proposed plan as functionally retarded.
That ties also to how the mutiny starts - people were doing just fine for several generations, and suddenly their boredom just reaches a boiling point? Of course it's possible that the ship was so well designed that's the main problem they have, but then people would be clamoring for freedoms much sooner - if the strict order isn't necessary for material survival.
Social order never stays in stasis for even a single generation in real life. If anything, people who have memories of earth would be much more prone to doubting the whole thing than the people who've only experienced ship life and religious indoctrination.

Also just how big is the ship, to accommodate all these groups coexisting separately from one another? How are they getting fed? What's keeping them from each other's throats? How is the basic operation of the ship maintained and by whom?

Multiple-piece armor. AoD had a very basic “body armor + helmet” setup. With the CSG, we want to go a bit further: helmet, chest, right arm, left arm, legs. We’re thinking of cumulative DR against general attacks and individual piece’s DR against aimed attacks. We’ll test this system in the dungeon crawler to build up some experience in this area and see how it works.

Does that really add much to the game? When it's party based focusing on positioning and larger-scale interactions would make more sense, than encouraging to calculate aiming which bodypart gives best DPS. In a single-PC game it'd make sense, in a party game it's more likely to be just unnecessary bloat.