The Campaign Mode

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Bigjoe5
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Re: The Campaign Mode

#16 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Tortanick wrote:I'll respond to the other stuff when I have time, currently buried in coursework.


Ultimate Spy Masters: Stonecarvers also fit this niche, its a natural offshoot of paranoia. I can see the stonecarvers being "wiped out" repeatedly then returning thanks to a contingency plan. (When things are going ok for them they spend their time worrying about eachother, but when things get bad they start working together)
I think the Stonecarvers would divide their focus between espionage, defense, and stockpiling resources. Definitely not a purely espionage focused race.
Genocidal Maniacs: definitely a niche where we would want multiple races, I suspect a high morality rate for genocidal maniacs. Trith also fit
Good. Something needs to be done about the Trith's gameplay effects though... IMO, their a bit out there in terms of practicality...but a good race concept all the same.
Experimenter Obsessed Race, I'm not sure I like that, the precursors should add a little spice to a story about the Orion Races, they shouldn't take centre stage.
I'm not sure what you mean about making the experimenters center stage. IMO, having races develop an obsession over a specific precursor is a great way to add depth and interest to the precursor aspect while still making the actual playable races the primary focus.
Empathetic Animal Trainers: There's a race of robots programed for environmental maintenance somewhere around here, however I'm not sure this works as a concept, I know you like Space Monsters but given where they fit into the game a race that revolves around them might not actually work so well.
I don't have a thoroughly thought out plan for this race yet, but I think they might end up being kind of a Caretaker type race that excels at terraforming and Bio-tech in general. I might write up a draft for them soon.
Reckless explorers: AEIOU (rename them too if you want), if we add something hard to find that shouldn't be touched we can count on them to touch it. They'd probably make a mass exodus if they ever found their god at the most inappropriate time.
The trouble with that is that if we wanted to make them a really interesting race to play, there would have to be a chance of them actually finding their god, which would force us to add a super powerful entity who is actually an offshoot of a player race, which doesn't seem reasonable to me, which is why I believe that races who are obsessed with the god-like precursors actually work better for that purpose. Speaking of things that shouldn't be touched, I'm thinking about Orion being a massive black hole in the center of the galaxy with a single extremely well cloaked planet orbiting it (for the campaign, at least).
Tragic Diplomats: The People, they're so few of them that wiping them out is pretty easy, its kinda inevitable.
I'm a bit concerned that the people won't work as a playable race the way they are. A great deal of change may be required, but I think the basic concept of the People is good for this role.
The Straight Man: we'd definitely need some races who are a bit more normal, Abbadonainas (foreign policy anyway, domestic policy is anything but normal), George, Ugmorrs.
In a way, the Chato'matou'Gormoshk fill that role already. And having too many normal races would be boring. What's "normal", anyway?

Tortatick wrote:I never saw that, I saw them as practical expansionists (we've got quite a few of those, Abbadonians and George for example)
That's true, but I think that personality compliments their history and physical description nicely. I mean, if you were a fiefdom, wouldn't you be just a bit egocentric?
Tortanick wrote::roll: we don't have to have humans you know.
True, but it seems that the opinion that they shouldn't be included is more or less limited to you and Krikkitone.
Tortanick wrote: Feel free to rename them, and if they move, move them to swamps, you won't need to make any changes if they're in a swamp.
Alright, but if the People are made to be a viable playable race (I could see that happening) then they would have to move because Eaxaw and Stonecarvers would be filling the swamp EP. What do you think of moving one of them to Ocean?
Tortanick wrote:Is it really that important to balance EPs? Its not like the races will be static, we'll have more arriving over time and others leaving, either an Exodus, extinction or just fading to a minor race.
Campaign balancing can be done on a mission-by-mission level. The EP balancing is necessary for the standard game, not the campaign.
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Re: The Campaign Mode

#17 Post by Tortanick »

Bigjoe5 wrote:I think the Stonecarvers would divide their focus between espionage, defense, and stockpiling resources. Definitely not a purely espionage focused race.
Oh certainly, overstockpiling resources is one of their big weaknesses (Plan A fails because they kept too much in reserve for Plan J) I think it really comes down to how you define "Ulitmate Spy Masters", is being really good spies with a lot of covert activity enough? Or are you disqualified if you do anything except focus on more spying
Bigjoe5 wrote:I don't have a thoroughly thought out plan for this race yet, but I think they might end up being kind of a Caretaker type race that excels at terraforming and Bio-tech in general. I might write up a draft for them soon.
Why not improve the robot design? Something appeals to me about a robotic bio-tech focused race appeals to me.
Bigjoe5 wrote:The trouble with that is that if we wanted to make them a really interesting race to play, there would have to be a chance of them actually finding their god
Not true, we just need to make exploration interesting enough, there was some brainstorming about that a while back.
Bigjoe5 wrote:which would force us to add a super powerful entity who is actually an offshoot of a player race, which doesn't seem reasonable to me, which is why I believe that races who are obsessed with the god-like precursors actually work better for that purpose.
There are ways around that, I quite like the idea that as soon as they find him they do a mass exodus when they're needed most (since they search harder in a crisis its quite likely) which means that either he never shows up in game, or when he shows up its the payoff after you've already won. A hard mission where you defend against superior forces until you find him followed by an easy mission where you start with the defences overrun and use a little divine power to force the attackers back giving you space to exodus.
Bigjoe5 wrote:I'm a bit concerned that the people won't work as a playable race the way they are. A great deal of change may be required, but I think the basic concept of the People is good for this role.
"a bit concerned", obviously I didn't do my job properly ;). They designed from the start as a non-playable NPC race. I'm sure there's room for NPC races in the campaign.
Bigjoe5 wrote:In a way, the Chato'matou'Gormoshk fill that role already. And having too many normal races would be boring. What's "normal", anyway?

They definitely fit that roll, but being a single race they arn't enough to fill it. I guess when I said normal what I really meant was adaptable, someone interesting enough to be worth including, but not too defined by any one trait that they can't fit in various roles over time.
Bigjoe5 wrote:That's true, but I think that personality compliments their history and physical description nicely. I mean, if you were a fiefdom, wouldn't you be just a bit egocentric?
Your forgetting that to them that's just normal, everyone is a fiefdom, and outside their race I don't think they have that much contact with regular people just other governments.
Bigjoe5 wrote:What do you think of moving one of them to Ocean?
The People's Biology dosn't work without the move from water to land, and if you put the Stonecarvers underwater they loose the unusual biology I deliberately aim for. Land nautilus is odd, aquatic nautilus is normal. That said I can't see The People moving from NPC to player race so nothing to worry about.
Bigjoe5 wrote: The EP balancing is necessary for the standard game, not the campaign.
I always saw those numbers as preliminary, I imagine the race count will go up quite a bit once the game develops a fanbase. Balancing EPs could easily be done on a game per game basis, the planets could be calculated so there's more of X if there are more races who live on X.
Since we're talking story before we know what races are in rather than try to predict anything I'd just go for whatever races we want.

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Re: The Campaign Mode

#18 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Tortanick wrote:Oh certainly, overstockpiling resources is one of their big weaknesses (Plan A fails because they kept too much in reserve for Plan J) I think it really comes down to how you define "Ulitmate Spy Masters", is being really good spies with a lot of covert activity enough? Or are you disqualified if you do anything except focus on more spying
Well, essentially you have to take into account how racial picks will affect gameplay. The ultimate spy master's racial picks would be almost entirely, if not entirely focused on increasing their stealth, detection and espionage.
Tortanick wrote: Why not improve the robot design? Something appeals to me about a robotic bio-tech focused race appeals to me.
Sounds good. I'm in favour of including the Silexians.
Tortanick wrote:Not true, we just need to make exploration interesting enough, there was some brainstorming about that a while back.
I suppose a type of race which is constantly sending scouts everywhere and findind out stuff they shouldn't know would be interesting. The real question is how to incorporate that personality into the racial picks so that the race will have personality even when being controlled by a player, not a character. I've been thinking of ways that personality can be customized via a special type of citizen racial pick which affects the morale and perhaps the allegiance of the empire's citizens. Making the citizens less happy if you aren't exploring may not be the most understandable thing to implement. I'll make a thread specifically about morale/allegiance related picks in brainstorming.
Tortanick wrote: There are ways around that, I quite like the idea that as soon as they find him they do a mass exodus when they're needed most (since they search harder in a crisis its quite likely) which means that either he never shows up in game, or when he shows up its the payoff after you've already won. A hard mission where you defend against superior forces until you find him followed by an easy mission where you start with the defences overrun and use a little divine power to force the attackers back giving you space to exodus.
So really, their "god" doesn't need to actually exist outside of the campaign mode. Even so, I think the race description as a whole is also going to need a workover, because i can't figure out for the life of me how a few of their people fused together to gain massive power and why others cant.
Tortanick wrote: "a bit concerned", obviously I didn't do my job properly ;). They designed from the start as a non-playable NPC race. I'm sure there's room for NPC races in the campaign.
How would they fit into the standard mode? Perhaps they could be a campaign-only NPC?
Tortanick wrote: They definitely fit that roll, but being a single race they arn't enough to fill it. I guess when I said normal what I really meant was adaptable, someone interesting enough to be worth including, but not too defined by any one trait that they can't fit in various roles over time.
I think most races should really be defined by their abilities and personalities. having more than one race as (approximately) the average in terms of abilities and personality just seems like a waste of a slot that we could put a better race in.
Tortanick wrote:Your forgetting that to them that's just normal, everyone is a fiefdom, and outside their race I don't think they have that much contact with regular people just other governments.
And to them, normal can mean Overbearingly Egocentric. Anyway, someone has to be overbearingly egocentric, and I like the Egassem and think that they could fit that role nicely with a slight update to the culture section.
Tortanick wrote: I always saw those numbers as preliminary, I imagine the race count will go up quite a bit once the game develops a fanbase. Balancing EPs could easily be done on a game per game basis, the planets could be calculated so there's more of X if there are more races who live on X.
Since we're talking story before we know what races are in rather than try to predict anything I'd just go for whatever races we want.
By making the story around specific races, we're essentially defining what races will be in, unless the higher ups want to remake the whole story themselves when we're done. The thing is, that if we go against reasonable balancing rules, they'll be forced to balance the races we've included themselves. Which means that we should think about balancing standard mode if we're defining the races that will be included in FO.

I doubt the race count will go up significantly. Writing a race is easy; making all the ships for it is not. For v.4, there's only 6 ship models per race. This will probably increase as different ship shapes are given their own 3D models. 18 races is already more than MoO1 or 2 had, and possibly more than MoO3 (I don't remember). And our ships are going to have significantly more work put into them than any of those games. It's reasonable to count on 18 races and no more, IMO.
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Re: The Campaign Mode

#19 Post by Tortanick »

Bigjoe5 wrote:Well, essentially you have to take into account how racial picks will affect gameplay. The ultimate spy master's racial picks would be almost entirely, if not entirely focused on increasing their stealth, detection and espionage.
Sounds like overspecialisation to me, then again that's just a hold over from previous 4x games (all of them), free orion might make
Bigjoe5 wrote:The real question is how to incorporate that personality into the racial picks so that the race will have personality even when being controlled by a player, not a character. I've been thinking of ways that personality can be customized via a special type of citizen racial pick which affects the morale and perhaps the allegiance of the empire's citizens.
Actually that's been thought about before with the same conclusion. Eaxaw citizens get unhappy with you if your being diplomatic or not committing enough genocide, AEIOU citizens get unhappy if your not looking hard enough etc.

[quote="
Bigjoe5 wrote:"]So really, their "god" doesn't need to actually exist outside of the campaign mode. Even so, I think the race description as a whole is also going to need a workover, because i can't figure out for the life of me how a few of their people fused together to gain massive power and why others cant.
Actually they can, easily. However the more people who fuse together the more likely they are to go insane, even two people is risky and it takes a few hundred to produce a god.
They pulled it of once through military discipline and sheer desperation, they were on the verge of extinction. And your right, that is somewhat contrived that it can only happen once, I mentioned that they never speak of the second attempt so perhaps they simply don't try any more... your right, I should come up with a better reason that it only happened once.
Bigjoe5 wrote:How would they fit into the standard mode? Perhaps they could be a campaign-only NPC?
NPCs AKA minor races, are planned for standard mode.
Bigjoe5 wrote:I think most races should really be defined by their abilities and personalities. having more than one race as (approximately) the average in terms of abilities and personality just seems like a waste of a slot that we could put a better race in.
Firstly I never talked about abilities, just personality, and as I said in my last post average was the wrong word. Since I'm including races like George and the Abbadonians I don't think they count as "average" personality.
Take the Abbadonians (well Mother). I can easily see her trying to conquer the galaxy, peacefully sharing the galaxy with her neighbours, joining a "lynch mob" of races against the Eaxaw or sabotaging that mob depending on what she thinks is the best plan to keep her people safe.
The Abbadonians are hardly "average" but because their quirk allows them to fit a verity of roles, that really helps when it comes to writing a plot. If at some point we want a "Grand Alliance" or "European Union" then we'd need level headed races to dilute the more eccentric races. If the Gyiashce are scared of their allies, the Stonecarvers are spying on their allies, the AEIOU are in one of their phases where they ignore day to day matters and the Egassem can't talk without insulting everyone with casual arrogance, how long will the alliance last?
That's why I refered to the niche as the Straight Man (you have heard the term before right? I assumed it was pretty much common knowledge). If the "punchline" is a large alliance that joins against the Eaxaw we need level headed races to make the alliance work.
That dosn't mean they arn't good for anything else though, take George. A pretty level headed guy with interesting game-play effects, but you can get some interesting plot ideas regardless. Like what happens if an artificial hive mind tries to assimilate one of his bodies?
Bigjoe5 wrote:By making the story around specific races, we're essentially defining what races will be in, unless the higher ups want to remake the whole story themselves when we're done. The thing is, that if we go against reasonable balancing rules, they'll be forced to balance the races we've included themselves. Which means that we should think about balancing standard mode if we're defining the races that will be included in FO.
Basically I just don't think we have any real chance of predicting who's in and who isn't. So rather than wasting time trying and failing we should just pick the races we want.

Also I'm not too sure if the 18 races includes minor races or just playable races but I suspect the second, so that gives us a bit more room to work anyway.

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Re: The Campaign Mode

#20 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Tortanick wrote:Sounds like overspecialisation to me, then again that's just a hold over from previous 4x games (all of them), free orion might make
...Is that sentence finished...?
Tortanick wrote: Actually that's been thought about before with the same conclusion. Eaxaw citizens get unhappy with you if your being diplomatic or not committing enough genocide, AEIOU citizens get unhappy if your not looking hard enough etc.
Yes. It's easy enough to judge whether or not you're at war, but how does the game define being in a state of exploration?
Tortanick wrote:NPCs AKA minor races, are planned for standard mode.
Yes, but given that the purpose of the People is primarily diplomatic, they may be better suited for campaign specific scenarios than typical standard mode scenarios.
Tortanick wrote:Firstly I never talked about abilities, just personality, and as I said in my last post average was the wrong word. Since I'm including races like George and the Abbadonians I don't think they count as "average" personality.
Take the Abbadonians (well Mother). I can easily see her trying to conquer the galaxy, peacefully sharing the galaxy with her neighbours, joining a "lynch mob" of races against the Eaxaw or sabotaging that mob depending on what she thinks is the best plan to keep her people safe.
You're right. We can say that George (with a slightly less human name, I think) and the Abbadonians are in. The only problem is the Abbadonians EP (yes, I'm still going on about that!), which is occupied by the Xelytia and the Egassem. Granted, the Abbadonians were there before the Xelytia, but the Xelytian homeworld is actually essential to the Xelytia's history and personality, so the Abbadonians are going to have to be the ones to be displaced. (The Egassem might be able to be moved instead, though.)

Tortanick wrote: Basically I just don't think we have any real chance of predicting who's in and who isn't. So rather than wasting time trying and failing we should just pick the races we want.

Also I'm not too sure if the 18 races includes minor races or just playable races but I suspect the second, so that gives us a bit more room to work anyway.
I think you're missing the point. I'm not predicting anything. I'm deciding which races are going to be in. ;)
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Re: The Campaign Mode

#21 Post by Tortanick »

Bigjoe5 wrote:
Tortanick wrote:Sounds like overspecialisation to me, then again that's just a hold over from previous 4x games (all of them), free orion might make
...Is that sentence finished...?
The rest of it was: it a viable strategy.
Bigjoe5 wrote:Yes. It's easy enough to judge whether or not you're at war, but how does the game define being in a state of exploration?
Shouldn't be hard, every time you do some exploring you add points to a secret exploration value, every turn reduce the points by a set amount. That allows both a large expedition that gets lots of points followed by a period of no exploration or many small expeditions.
There's been brainstorms about making exploration more interesting, such as leaving high detection ships in a sysetm to fully map it out, that should be included too.
Bigjoe5 wrote:Yes, but given that the purpose of the People is primarily diplomatic, they may be better suited for campaign specific scenarios than typical standard mode scenarios.
I could see them having a point in the standard game makeing wars harder for everyone, it might not work but you'll never know unless you try.
Bigjoe5 wrote:You're right. We can say that George (with a slightly less human name, I think) and the Abbadonians are in.
I don't mind when you want to change names I came up with, mostly they suck, but George is a good name because it is so human yet is given to an alien who is so not human.
Bigjoe5 wrote:The only problem is the Abbadonians EP (yes, I'm still going on about that!), which is occupied by the Xelytia and the Egassem. Granted, the Abbadonians were there before the Xelytia, but the Xelytian homeworld is actually essential to the Xelytia's history and personality, so the Abbadonians are going to have to be the ones to be displaced. (The Egassem might be able to be moved instead, though.)
I can't see how the Egassem would feed on any other kind of world, Abbadonians could work on a Toixc world hiding from acids rather than lava. That was actually the original idea but when I needed a name and ended up with Abbadonians and Dis (thanks to a friend) I changed it to go with the hell theme.
Unless there is an actual problem with the race I think its a bit premature to start changing EPs, and it dosn't actually have much effect on the story anyway.
Bigjoe5 wrote:I think you're missing the point. I'm not predicting anything. I'm deciding which races are going to be in. ;)
I somewhat doubt that ;)

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Re: The Campaign Mode

#22 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Tortanick wrote: Shouldn't be hard, every time you do some exploring you add points to a secret exploration value, every turn reduce the points by a set amount. That allows both a large expedition that gets lots of points followed by a period of no exploration or many small expeditions.
There's been brainstorms about making exploration more interesting, such as leaving high detection ships in a sysetm to fully map it out, that should be included too.
The first problem with that is the word "secret". If the AEIOU experience unrest due to a lack of exploration, the player needs to know the exact exploration value, threshold for the beginning of unrest, and how unrest scales as the exploration value decreases beyond the threshold point. The second problem is with leaving ships in a system for more than one turn to fully explore it, a concept which is highly contentious and which I happen to be against. We'll see what happens, but so far, IMO, of all the races we've chosen to be in, the AEIOU are most likely to be booted out and replaced by a different race that works better with already established design desicions.
Tortanick wrote:I could see them having a point in the standard game makeing wars harder for everyone, it might not work but you'll never know unless you try.
Someone else can decide that, since their presence (or lack thereof) in the standard mode does not affect their presence in the campaign mode (unlike playable races).
Tortanick wrote:I don't mind when you want to change names I came up with, mostly they suck, but George is a good name because it is so human yet is given to an alien who is so not human.
I dunno... I'm kinda on the fence about this one. We'll see. George is fine for now. We'll probably keep that name.
Tortanick wrote: I can't see how the Egassem would feed on any other kind of world, Abbadonians could work on a Toixc world hiding from acids rather than lava. That was actually the original idea but when I needed a name and ended up with Abbadonians and Dis (thanks to a friend) I changed it to go with the hell theme.
Unless there is an actual problem with the race I think its a bit premature to start changing EPs, and it dosn't actually have much effect on the story anyway.
K, we'll make Abbadonians Toxic then. And the reason I'm changing EPs is that if the decisions we make are in fact implemented in the campaign mode, these races will also be included in the standard mode, which means that we should make the campaign mode viably compatible with the way the standard mode will be. Which should involve balancing EPs and making all playable races reasonable to use in the standard mode.
Tortanick wrote:I somewhat doubt that ;)
Ah, but you see if the campaign mode we create is included in the game, there will be no choice but to bring all the races we choose along with it. Real power is taken, not given. :twisted:

BTW, I've decided that the Silexians, (who might be renamed to Silexions, to avoid another -ians ending) have an EP of Barren so they can start all their gardening products from scratch in artificially protected areas. They now excel at breeding animals to assist them and get a huge bonus to biology tech.

So to summarize the current races, we have:

Cowards: Gyisache
Elitist Espionage Adepts: Genus Hominum
Ultimate Spy Masters: (In progress. Telepathic plant race, EP ocean)
Genocidal Maniacs: Eaxaw, Trith
The Straight Man: Chato'matou'Gormoshk, George, Abbadonians
Peaceful Diplomats with a Touch of Paranoia: Xelytia
Paranoid Nutcases: The Stonecarvers
Overbearing Egocentrists: Egassem
Experimenter Obsessed Race: Alvalios
Builder Obsessed Race: (perhaps those cyborg plants? I haven't seen them though... link please?)
Humourously Overconfident Diplomats:
Fanatical Scientists:
Tree Hugging Nature Freaks: Silexians
Hedonistic Economists: (Simulacrons might do, but perhaps a more sneaky, aggressive race would be better: one that has to actually go and get what it wants)
Reckless Explorers:AEIOU
Last edited by Bigjoe5 on Sun Mar 15, 2009 9:19 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: The Campaign Mode

#23 Post by Tortanick »

Bigjoe5 wrote:The first problem with that is the word "secret". If the AEIOU experience unrest due to a lack of exploration, the player needs to know the exact exploration value, threshold for the beginning of unrest, and how unrest scales as the exploration value decreases beyond the threshold point.
Yet another question that can only truly be answered by gameplay testing. I'd assume that since the player only has one strategy on this (more exploreing) the finer details are unnecessary clutter.
Weather I'm right or wrong *shrug*. We can debate all day but until we test we won't know and FreeOrion is no where near being ready to test this.
Bigjoe5 wrote:K, we'll make Abbadonians Toxic then.
Feel free to call them toxic in your calculations, but until we eventually get to working on races in 0.8 I'll leave them as they are ;)
Bigjoe5 wrote:Ah, but you see if the campaign mode we create is included in the game, there will be no choice but to bring all the races we choose along with it. Real power is taken, not given. :twisted:
That's a very big if, check the road map: story mode isn't in until after 1.0 at the moment. I suspect the choice of races wont be that affected by any story we write. Doesn't bother me though, I suspect writing the story will be fun regardless.

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Re: The Campaign Mode

#24 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Sorry, edited a lot while you were writing that. May want to check out what you missed from my post.
Tortanick wrote:That's a very big if, check the road map: story mode isn't in until after 1.0 at the moment. I suspect the choice of races wont be that affected by any story we write. Doesn't bother me though, I suspect writing the story will be fun regardless.
Aquatine wrote:The roadmap after v1.0 will involve champagne.
That says champagne, not campaigns! *flattens Tortanick's hat down on his head*
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Re: The Campaign Mode

#25 Post by Krikkitone »

I Could see the Eggasem as overbearing egocentrists... although for that (taking my races, I'd either go with the Rimekh or Qweritar.... Rimekh more likely because they believe they are genetically superior... the Qwieritar are more master manipulators)


For a real overbearing Egocentrist, I think one has to have an idea of past glory (ie France) an empire that feels they ought to control the stars, because they used to control the planet... I think Genus Hominem could work for that. Or any empire that is very tradition bound.

The Eggasem would tend towards "tradition bound" due to their near immortality and they wouldn't understand the idea of relating to "the people" there would merely be the more powerful and less powerful states. so they could definitely work.

And as for George, that is the reason why I chose that name, very "normal"... and it is clearly the name of an individual rather than a species (which is effectively what George is)

I think the Rimekh would fit the bill of potentially Humorously Overconfident Diplomats... In the sense that they are
1) Bureaucratic (social nonviolent skills, ie diplomacy, trade, spying)
2) convinced of their superiority
[plus they are toxic]

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Re: The Campaign Mode

#26 Post by Tortanick »

Bigjoe5 wrote:BTW, I've decided that the Silexians, (who might be renamed to Silexions, to avoid another -ians ending) have an EP of Barren so they can start all their gardening products from scratch in artificially protected areas. They now excel at breeding animals to assist them and get a huge bonus to biology tech.
That's fine but it will need a good explanation in the race text as to why they use animals. I can offer two suggestions:
Their "gardens" are fully functioning ecosystems, to them a planet with the most stunning plant life but no animal life is unfinished until they add some animals.
Their ultimate goal is to make themselves unneeded for day to day maintenance. They could travel from flower to flower pollinating or they could introduce bees.

As for barren planets sure, but explain it not that they like to start from scratch but that they think barren planets need them more than Terrain or swamp. A possibility for them is that they don't care about EP, but the citizens get unhappy if you just colonise Terrain planets and ignore the needy.
Bigjoe5 wrote:That says champagne, not campaigns! *flattens Tortanick's hat down on his head*
But notice that it dosn't say campaigns before 1.0, if its not before 1.0 then it must be afterwords.
Bigjoe5 wrote:Builder Obsessed Race: (perhaps those cyborg plants? I haven't seen them though... link please?)
Same post as the AEIOU, scroll down. but they're a terrible fit: firstly they're traders not builders, secondly the builders havn't had any special influence on them (the Expermientors did, the race history dates back to when the Orions were the standard precursors so ignore the entire bit about Orions and replace it with the Expermientors standard MO: saw interesting plants, introduced sentience but never spoke to them, they can buy their bodies from one of the playable races). And finally they're a minor race, they just don't fit as a major one: no real ambition and too introverted.

Krikkitone wrote:I think the Rimekh would fit the bill of potentially Humorously Overconfident Diplomats... In the sense that they are
1) Bureaucratic (social nonviolent skills, ie diplomacy, trade, spying)
2) convinced of their superiority
[plus they are toxic]
How about Rimekh with Qweritar bodies? I think you have a more interesting physiology in the Qweritar, the somewhat overcomplicated reproductive system could also provide a nice reason why they started eugenics: once hit sentience and some form of gender equality they had serious issues finding stable families where all four parents cared for each-other, unstable families were considered unsuitable for upbringing children so they separated reproduction from child-rearing. Once reproduction isn't tied to family / private lives / love its a short leap to introduce stuff like red-tape and eugenics.
Last edited by Tortanick on Mon Mar 16, 2009 9:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Krikkitone
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Re: The Campaign Mode

#27 Post by Krikkitone »

Tortanick wrote:
Krikkitone wrote:I think the Rimekh would fit the bill of potentially Humorously Overconfident Diplomats... In the sense that they are
1) Bureaucratic (social nonviolent skills, ie diplomacy, trade, spying)
2) convinced of their superiority
[plus they are toxic]
How about Rimekh with Qweritar bodies? I think you have a more interesting physiology in the Qweritar, the somewhat overcomplicated reproductive system could also provide a nice reason why they started eugenics: once hit sentience and some form of gender equality they had serious issues finding stable families where all four parents cared for each-other, unstable families were considered unsuitable for upbringing children so they separated reproduction from child-rearing. Once reproduction isn't tied to family / private lives / love its a short leap to introduce stuff like red-tape and eugenics.
Good idea... I'll just copy paste most of the History from one (cutting out the Orion G.E. maybe have them compared to another one of their own empires that did G.E.)

edited into my last Race post
Stuck with the Name Qweritar and the Desert HW and "solid state beetle" physiology kept the 'G.E. failed, leading to eugenics' from Rimekh.

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Bigjoe5
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Re: The Campaign Mode

#28 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Tortanick wrote:That's fine but it will need a good explanation in the race text as to why they use animals. I can offer two suggestions:
Their "gardens" are fully functioning ecosystems, to them a planet with the most stunning plant life but no animal life is unfinished until they add some animals.
Their ultimate goal is to make themselves unneeded for day to day maintenance. They could travel from flower to flower pollinating or they could introduce bees.

As for barren planets sure, but explain it not that they like to start from scratch but that they think barren planets need them more than Terrain or swamp. A possibility for them is that they don't care about EP, but the citizens get unhappy if you just colonise Terrain planets and ignore the needy.
All of that is good. I might rewrite that race soon with those features.
Tortanick wrote: But notice that it dosn't say campaigns before 1.0, if its not before 1.0 then it must be afterwords.
Yeah, but it also says that 1.0 will be the final release. Therefore, the campaign mode must come sooner. I imagine initial coding of the campaigns can occur for v.8 when we have espionage and space monsters. Specific races can be included after v.8, and everything can be balanced for various difficulty levels for v1.0.
Tortanick wrote:Same post as the AEIOU, scroll down. but they're a terrible fit: firstly they're traders not builders, secondly the builders havn't had any special influence on them (the Expermientors did, the race history dates back to when the Orions were the standard precursors so ignore the entire bit about Orions and replace it with the Expermientors standard MO: saw interesting plants, introduced sentience but never spoke to them, they can buy their bodies from one of the playable races). And finally they're a minor race, they just don't fit as a major one: no real ambition and too introverted.
That's a shame. A plant builder race would be a great alternative to the cliche insectoid builder race.

As for the Qweritar, I think that would work nicely with one slight alteration: They're SO convinced of their superiority that they think they don't even have to try to take everyone over: it will just happen automatically. As a result, they're super diplomatic and always willing to lend a helping hand in a war against a ridiculously overpowered opponent. BTW, Krikkitone, you missed a reference to the Rimekh when you merged the two races.

So the new race list looks like this:


Cowards: Gyisache
Elitist Espionage Adepts: Genus Hominum
Ultimate Spy Masters: Laenfa
Genocidal Maniacs: Eaxaw, Trith
The Straight Man: Chato'matou'Gormoshk, George, Abbadonians
Peaceful Diplomats with a Touch of Paranoia: Xelytia
Paranoid Nutcases: The Stonecarvers
Overbearing Egocentrists: Egassem
Experimenter Obsessed Race: Alvalios
Builder Obsessed Race:
Humourously Overconfident Diplomats: Qweritar
Fanatical Scientists:
Tree Hugging Nature Freaks: Silexians
Hedonistic Economists:
Reckless Explorers:AEIOU

Open EPs are Ocean, Radiated, Barren and Desert, and I'm going to have to move the AEIOU to one of these for the purposes of my calculations.
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MathGeek
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Re: The Campaign Mode

#29 Post by MathGeek »

I can give you an idea for a race that fills the fanatical scientist role:
Radiated or Barren planet with super-strong tidal effects and highly energetic weather phenomenon, so strong that the atmospheric pressure in affected beyond ranges that most life could survive. Now enter a race in constant pain and struggle as the tidal and weather effects change pressures and destroy buildings. Then they figure out that mathematics can forecast these effects and save tremendous suffering. Now they have the belief that science is the answer to all suffering. More research will take them to the stars, so they can share their science with all.
Obviously this is just a paragraph caracature, but I think it could work if you just made the world start out as a Terran, where the race evolved, but some cataclysm [experimenters?] changed the world. It would have to be slowly, so that their physiology adapted to live on this new world, but they didn't necessarily like the new way the world worked.
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Tortanick
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Re: The Campaign Mode

#30 Post by Tortanick »

Bigjoe5 wrote:Yeah, but it also says that 1.0 will be the final release.
It dose? that can't be right, we talked quite a bit about post V1.0 and like all open source projects it will continue for as long as people want to work on it.
Bigjoe5 wrote:That's a shame. A plant builder race would be a great alternative to the cliche insectoid builder race.
Why not make the builders themselves plants?

I can see the Builders as a massive coral tree, something like this (originally I thought normal tree, then it occured to me: why not theme the Precursors on things that evolved early) who originally evolved in symbiosis with some semi-intelligent prawn/shrimp like creature. The builders provided the brains and food, the prawns provided hands and eyes, however they since dumped the prawns in favour of machines (the prawns are still around though living in the branches of the builders but its been so long since the two races communicated that they've forgotten how)

These days builders basically live without knowledge of the world, no sight, no sound, no smells, just designing ever more intricate projects inside there heads, machines hooked up to their minds tirelessly build these projects. Since builders live one to a spaceship there are no longer any births, being plants and having precursor medical technology they're extremely long lived but unless something changes they're headed for extinction, eventually.

The prawns are a nice hook for a builder obsessed race, if some of them managed to move from semi to fully intelligent. Although I'd avoid a worshipper - god relationship, maybe a nurse - mental patient relationship would work better. The prawns are convinced the Builders need someone to look after them (lets face it, they're probably right), but how do they get the attention of blind, deaf gods?
Or alternatively they had access to some Builder stuff and know of one or more old projects that really need to be taken care off else disaster, unfortunately the Builders arn't going to do anything so they take it upon themselves to either get the Builders to fix things or learn enough about Builder tech to do it themselves.
Bigjoe5 wrote: BTW, Krikkitone, you missed a reference to the Rimekh when you merged the two races.
Looked deliberate to me, the Rimekh is now the name for a historical empire not a species.

Open EPs are Ocean, Radiated, Barren and Desert, and I'm going to have to move the AEIOU to one of these for the purposes of my calculations.[/quote]
Ocean works best, followed by desert.

MathGeek wrote:but some cataclysm [experimenters?] changed the world. It would have to be slowly, so that their physiology adapted to live on this new world, but they didn't necessarily like the new way the world worked.
How about there solar system traveled into a bad part of space and they had constant meteor impacts for a while, meteor showers also have the advantage of being pretty predictable with a bit of mathematics. They'd have to be reasonably small meteors just to explain how they survived.

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