"Butterfly Effect" Sources In The Last Federation

[mrhanman]

This is really sounding like it's forming up nicely!  I'm wonder though, how do all  the other races find out what you've been up to?  Some of it would be obvious, of course, but in your example you mention smuggling the Burlusts space faring tech and as a consequence, the Evucks dislike you.  How do the Evucks know it was you who gave the Burlusts the tech?  Evuck-sympathetic spies among your crew?  I don't guess it matters much gameplay wise how they found out.  I was just curious if there was some mechanic at play that feeds info from one race to another.

[DrFranknfurter]

thanks for the info and the depth of your replies. All the talk of simulations peaks my interest, personally I'd love to see a game like this married to an Achron-style meta-time so that you could play around with the history and future of a universe... 6hs seems a little short to me but I suppose I'm closer to the player who strives towards but never actually achieves capturing 100/100 planets in AI War, millions of sims in a simcity region or a giant 50+ sprawling demonic city in Civ4 (/fall from heaven/MoM modmod). I like the idea of replaying the world but it isn't quite the same as staying with your fleet in your world, tending fragile alliances and fighting tooth and nail for some goal you set yourself.

With those similar players in mind - Do you have any plans for an epic or marathon setting that, for example, delays the invention of game-ending techs/buildings/events 2x, 3x or more times. (Either directly or by reducing income/research per population)

Second question, have you thought about making achievements a bigger deal?

I've seen them in AI war and Bionic dues (only bought it yesterday, but picked up a few achievements already for one normal game completed). I think they're a useful, cheap, extremely simple but powerful tool to encourage and reward otherwise merely self-imposed challenges and to guide players into new and unusual ways of playing. (not merely a mark to record if you've completed the game.) Peter from Gameinabottle working on gemcraft 2 had a post about his planned use of achievements and use in indy games (http://gameinabottle.com/blog/2013/01/gc2cs-achievements/) - basically showing a small subsection only and using a script to create simple icons for them.
so e.g. Pacifist run - never fire a shot in anger, is it really possible? Blockade runner, Medicine man, Typhoid Mary, My friend has a moon and he likes to play pool with it, Pirate King, Regicide, Serial blackmailer... whatever they are I like the idea of only showing a small number to the player rather than the full list so you can see them as a sort of quest metagame. If you only have 4 possible achievements open at a time you're much more likely to try to achieve any single one than you would otherwise... I will learn to be concise one day...

[x4000]

Thanks guys!

1. Regarding my example with the evucks finding out, I actually skipped some steps for the same of brevity. You have to catch a spy drone they have before it escapes and tells on you. If you do, actually they don't get mad at you. In my example the drone got away from you.

2. For marathon play, which is something I also like I should add (just look at the length of the games I make!), I imagine we will have a variety of advanced settings for tweaking stuff in that regard. Suggestions will be welcome on that sort of thing for the advanced start. I so far have been describing just vanilla games.

3. Regarding achievements, I think we tend to have more than most games, judging by some site that tracks such things on steam. I think AI War was something like #3 in terms of achievement volume behind TF2 and some other AAA title. Most of our other games are in the top 20 last I checked. With Bionic we started asking players for suggestions of unusual side mission things that they might like to do, and that worked well. We had a similar thing in Valley 1, although those weren't tied to achievements all the time.  Anyhow, I'm sure we'll be interested in achievement suggestions this time around, too.

[mrhanman]

1. Regarding my example with the evucks finding out, I actually skipped some steps for the same of brevity. You have to catch a spy drone they have before it escapes and tells on you. If you do, actually they don't get mad at you. In my example the drone got away from you.

That actually sounds really cool!  Do you automatically know there is a spy drone, or is there some sort of perception check in the background?

3. Regarding achievements, I think we tend to have more than most games, judging by some site that tracks such things on steam. I think AI War was something like #3 in terms of achievement volume behind TF2 and some other AAA title. Most of our other games are in the top 20 last I checked. With Bionic we started asking players for suggestions of unusual side mission things that they might like to do, and that worked well. We had a similar thing in Valley 1, although those weren't tied to achievements all the time.  Anyhow, I'm sure we'll be interested in achievement suggestions this time around, too.

Tales of Maj'Eyal just crushed the achievement record by a huge margin.

[tigersfan]

Tales of Maj'Eyal just crushed the achievement record by a huge margin.

!!!

Now I need to find out if I can get my paid copy converted to a steam copy!

EDIT: It appears I can in a few days.

[x4000]

Wowzers!  Yeah, that is really quite crushing even TF2.  I think TF2 had something like nearly-900ish last time I looked.  But that is absolutely insane.

For the spy drones, there is always one there from one of the spacefaring races, and they share the news with one another if you bring spacefaring tech to one of the other races.  The races are intensively spying on one another during the space race portion of the game in particular, and that's a big theme in the early game actually.  That's why they all become spacefaring around the same-ish time, is all their espionage.

[tigersfan]

Actually, TF2 only (heh, only) has 477. But there are 5 games, including ToME that have more. The list is here: http://astats.astats.nl/astats/Steam_Games.php?DisplayType=Achievements .

[x4000]

Actually, TF2 only (heh, only) has 477. But there are 5 games, including ToME that have more. The list is here: http://astats.astats.nl/astats/Steam_Games.php?DisplayType=Achievements .

Awesome, thanks for that link!  I have been trying to find that page for like a year; I've had to go on memory from that!

[Teal_Blue]

On page one you talk about the interesting differences in how the races act and behave.
But i was curious if there were non-race related 'events' in the game, something like...

1.     Are there cosmic storms that destroy ships that wander too deep into them, or cut off communications, or strand ships deep in space?

2.     Are there 'monsters', or 'accidents', like coming across an asteroid with an 'Alien' (Ripley) like thing that guts people if they explore the alien ship (yuck!)?

3.     Or ships that accidentally have coolant pipe failure that blows out half of a ships environment control system and everyone ends up breathing vacuum?

4.     Or toxic spores that reproduce in foodstuffs stored in an infected warehouse facility on Ganymede that wipes out half a colony on Mars?

Event kinds of things that are not related, at least directly with the races or with actions the player takes. Just 'things' happening in the universe around the races and our player that sometimes people fall into?
Thanks for listening,
-Teal

[tigersfan]

Yes, there is other stuff like that. Some of it is more and less likely based on what is happening in the game. For example, if the environment on a planet is bad, then that planet is more likely to be victim to a major volcanic eruption.

Other stuff isn't related to anything, and might just happen.

[Teal_Blue]

That sounds wonderful!    Thank you!

-Teal

[relmz32]

I'm in, this sounds great!