Game Plot & Goals...

Armorama

I have been playing this game for about 8hrs now. Built all the stuff and explored a good deal of the area around the crash site. I just had an idea about potentially giving your character a real motivation beyond just day to day survival. Here it is...

You are NOT the only survivor. You were woken up out of cyro-sleep with a few others to prep the ship for orbit. A catastrophic system failed and you were the only person to get to a life-pod. However there were more crew and specialists that were on the ship and they MAY be still in cyro-sleep. Once you can get to the ship, and explore it, you determine there are about 30 more survivors still on board. You could wake them but you know that they might not survive with your current resources, etc. So... you need to build a base. And you need to research and create areas to help support them. First and most obvious would be water and food. A reverse osmosis generator and farm would be first on the list and once you have those built you will need people to run them. So... you go get two crew from the ship and revive them and assign them to the task of making sure everyone has food and water. Bingo... the player no longer has to worry about those things either. This process of base additions could go on until all the crew are busy working on their own areas. Air processing, base repair, communications, security, etc.

Once you have done this you will have a thriving colony and can look at doing other goals if needed.

Hope you like.

Cheers,
Jim

Seldkam

Lol I need a disclaimer saying these two things for a signature:

I don't like there being other living humans on the planet, and 2, I don't like realism (the former applies here)

Here's the problem:
A system failed, yes, but it failed because in the beginning of the game some entity or event lets loose energy that destroys your ship and sends it careening towards the surface of the planet

I also don't really like a particularly defined story in this game, but that's just me :P (And I particularly don't like the idea of having a "colony" while you're actually playing the game-- that should be an aftermath or something)

LeahJ

Agree on no (living) humans in the game, but I wouldn't mind seeing other empty life pods, perhaps containing logs or scavenged materials implying that others did survive for a time, but have stopped doing so by the time you find the pods (perhaps they weren't fortunate enough to land in the safe shallows).

I think the fake signal idea is a good one, particularly if the devs intend whatever took down the ship to be intelligent.

Armorama

Hmm... is this because you feel the devs wouldn't create NPCs that would make the game more interesting or believable? Or you just want to play in a world with no other humans? You think the world is somehow better if you are the only one on the planet to enjoy it? Just curious.

Toothbrush123

I think they are trying to say that it wouldn't go very well with the style of gameplay, or the story itself. Maybe not, that's just my interpretation.

SBShuffle001

Well, the way I see the game developing in the plot part of it is this: You start off the game like you normally would. You know, collecting sand and getting peepers, but then you get a flashback to when you back on board the ship. And every so often the flashbacks become clearer and the story of what happened to your ship unfolds. Every time you get farther into the background of your life. Maybe you were being briefed about your mission when you were struck out of space.

Also I noticed the radiation you run into if you get too close to the ship. Maybe that radiation wasn't caused by the ships engines. What if it was the "thing" that knocked the ship out of the sky.
Just an idea, really love how the game is going keep up the good work!

Seldkam

Well it's because it's frankly overdone lol-- survival games for some reason have a habit of wanting you to "connect" in some way or another with other humans and try to make it an integral game mechanic or make it important to the story

The devs have said they want to do something different, and I have always wanted to actually make a game like this one, so, I am very much a fierce defender of what (I interpret as) their vision

neamerjell

Are there other survivors? I have no way of finding out, the ship is surrounded by radiation leaks. I'd be dead before I got half way there. Which means everyone who still might be on the ship is also very likely dead. So I have to face the possibility that I am the lone survivor of the crash.

The bigger and more ominous question is what caused the ship to crash? Meteor shower? Debris field? No, the bridge crew would have known about those far in advance and would have been able to avoid them. Well that rules out the natural and the benign. The only explanation left is that we were shot down. But by whom, or more likely what?

If the ship was shot down, who and where are the beings that did it? I'm going to assume it was a "they" that did it as a single pilot ship wouldn't stand a chance against ours; it had 427 other crewmen - all dead or presumed dead at this point. Did they assume they got us all or are they still looking for survivors?

Armorama

Interesting responses. Well I know many people would probably lose the will to live if they thought they were going to be stranded somewhere for potentially the rest of their lives (who knows how long the terraforming mission was going to be until a colony ship is sent). Most characters even in fictional settings need a reason to keep going.

As for the ship radiation that would be easy to explain as the engine core could have melted down and spilled radiation into the sea but left other parts of the ship (which would have radiation shielding built into the hull -- space and all) more protected and potentially able to sustain crew in suspended sleep.

This would be pretty unique as a concept. A sort of merger of FPS survival game with some level of god game control of the colony, etc. Would require a lot of solid programming though to make it work right. Probably not for the faint of heart.

Cheers,
Jim

Seldkam

That's my point, to my knowledge the Deva aren't trying to make a god game (and id rather they didn't )

Deceiver9811

Adding colonists to manage would change the game drastically. It would no longer be about survival, which is what the game is currently being built around, it wouldn't be the same game.

Also it's typically a very bad idea to have the gameplay shift half way through it. SPORE is an excellent example of why.

En9a9e

I know they are really keen to add co-op if possible down the road so maybe that would fill in the gap, so to speak, concerning your suggestion. I can't see them trying to do NPCs as just getting the unique world and the simulation that runs in it, plus tech progression, sub refinement, bases, and various other mechanics, is a huge undertaking. Never hurts at all to throw out ideas though, so great post for sparking discussion. You never know when a dev might be interested in or inspired by some smaller part of the suggestions even if the grander idea isn't incorporated.

Seldkam

I wouldn't say really keen, they are cautious if anything About coop

I think pets would help greatly in this regard

En9a9e

Cautious about the time, resources, and balancing to implement it I think, but from what I have read and heard - very keen to put it in if they can at a later point

Armorama

I feel a bit vindicated in my original idea as I just stumbled upon some news that Bethesda are adding base building to Fallout 4 and will have similar functionality to a Settler Mod for Fallout 3 and NV where NPCs could be recruited to be in your base/village. I figured someone had this idea before me. Glad to see it works for some people.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/7070/?