SHORT DISCRIPTION:
Constructing and maintaining orientated, tower defense like, game mode with global task.
MAIN IDEA/CONCEPT OF GAME MODE
1) Player is alone to perform any tasks; player can not directly control any units with WASD.
All robots, mechanisms, inserters, etc. have control over their behavior, player can “adjust” each of them,
in specific way, but player cannot give orders to perform difficult/complex actions.
EXAMPLE: For Insert player can adjust speed, filter, quotas, where to insert (left or right side of transporter line).
BUT player cannot command “construction bot” to build base from blueprint.
2) Everything is against player and his constructions.
Planet is crowded with enemy humanoids, and they hate your buildings. Earthquakes destroying drills and transport lines,
forest fire swallows forests and nearby buildings, atmospheric events kill power grids, acidic rain dissolve circuits,
comets falling from sky causing mayhem (some rare ores can be mined from crater just like in Terraria),
rivers flooding pumps tubes and steam power plants, etc…
3) Global task is to prepare for arrival of earth population
- No time restrictions, as every player will choose their speed of progress.
- Global task separated in to game stages. Roughly described as: First steps, Electricity, ship wrecks, infrastructure,
defense, annihilation of alien threat, signaling for landing. (Needs to be revised)
- Agricultural aspect of infrastructure, needed not for player nutrition but as game stage for arriving earth population.
4) Reasonable level of difficulty
Main goal is to achieve such level of difficulty (amount of resources and enemy/environmental attacks) that player will
be constantly forced to expand territory he controls, for new resources. Player will suffer from way too fast expansion or
from way too slow. Eventually player will lose (if your infrastructure is too small) when resources used and player will
not stand next attack, player will lose as well, if he will expand further fast without careful protecting and maintaining
his current infrastructure, because, as bigger player`s infrastructure gets as harder alien attacks it. Game must not let
player easily create unbreakable fortress, and then peacefully live there for decades.
5) Game must encourage player for creativity
For unprepared players it will be hard to survive in this game mode, player has to think creatively, it is necessary that
player will lose 2-3 times on deferent stages of game mode, by that he will acquire real experience, and will be heavily
motivated to start all over again with new strategies.
EXAMPLE: Automatic turrets will stop aliens when player inserts ammo himself, but in time he will not be able to sustain
ammo amount on all turrets on all directions, thus player will be forced to invent (INVENT-is key word) method of reloading
guns automatically.
6) No ultimate strategies
There must not be perfect combination for solving any problem, no ultimate weapon to stop attacks. All defenses must
have weak places. One way or another, any defense will be destroyed if not monitored.
EXAMPLE: There are many ways to destroy your building, those threats like fire, acid rain, storm or earthquake can be
prevented by specific buildings, weather control station for storms, earthquakes can be handled with ground moisturizing
machines, and so on. Though most likely player will not be able to protect structures from anything, as well as protection
equipment will not work perfectly all the time or will wear off.
7) Graphic is not a priority
As simpler graphic is, as easy it for player to understand what is happening on screen. Aim of game is building that means
player will certainly build a lot, fancy graphic will distract attention. Graphics must be first of all “INFORMATIVE”. Also,
as with minecraft, square-like graphic looks ugly for first few days, later player get used to it and addicted as well. It is not
only about positioning project as “true indie” or “low-cost-project” it is all about simplicity and understandings of gameplay.
8) Time spent for complete consumption of content
Approximate time needed to achieve all possible goals must not be long nor short. As I see it, I would spend 3-5 days for one
completing, in mean of hours that would be 2-4 hours per day and 6-10 hours total. Gameplay might be prolonged if player
will decide to extract every each gran of iron from planet and thus be extended up to 25-30 hours.
9) Means of monitoring and maintaining infrastructure
In order to better understand globally what happening on your factory, following tools can be made.
Radar showing your buildings and enemies, warning signal systems for deferent purposes, surveillance cameras, flying repairer bots.
10) Few levels of difficulty to choose from Easy, Normal, Hard, and Nightmare (unlocked after finishing mode once)
Threats
All threats are divided in to two groups: Environmental and Alien.
Environmental threats and means of dealing with them.
Planet is not friendly at all. Environment is not stable on this fairly young planet. These are some of natural threats
for player and his buildings.
AOE events
Threating event which is happening in certain area.
- Chance of appearing of second AOE environmental event in one area is significantly lower. Thus overpowered
damage on single area is prevented.
Earthquakes
Earthquake happens from time to time, dealing direct damage to building.
-- Mechanism
--- Earthquakes happen one after another with random time interval between them. Rarely from 5-30 mins,
normally from 31 to 60 mins, for sure from 61 – 100 mins.
--- In random square no longer than 30 blocks from random player`s building, epicenter appear. Earthquake with
radius from 30 to 60 blocks starts from epicenter.
--- Damage dealt per tick. From 3 to 6 tics per earthquake. Damage done to all buildings in radius. Each tic, each
building has following chance to be damaged: 25% to get 0 damage, 55% to get from 2-5 hp damage, 15% to get
from 6-10 hp damage, 5% to get 20 hp damage.
-- Graphic
--- Camera shaking harder if close to epicenter also player hears loud earthquake noise. If distance to epicenter longer
than 100 blocks, light shaking happen and distant noise heard.
-- Mean of protection
--- Anti-earthquake hammer, hammers the earth, creating micro earthquakes, not harming anything and preventing
from big earthquakes.
--- Constantly working in 100 blocks radius, hammer will lower amount of tics by 70 %, lower the damage taken by 50%.
Solar storm
Solar storm happens from time to time, disabling electricity, damaging power poles and disabling power sources.
-- Mechanism
--- Pretty much same mechanics of appearing as earthquake, but with bigger radius.
--- Storm lasts for 1 to 5 mins.
--- Each 60 seconds damaging tick happen. Each electric pole has 85% chances to get 0 damage and 15% to be destroyed
while tick. (Hidden tip is to disconnect area of storm from all sources of electricity to prevent damage for poles)
--- For whole time of event electricity is disabled in radius of storm.
--- If power source hit by storm, production of electricity is stopped.
-- Graphic
---Polar lights appear in area of storm.
-- Mean of protection.
---Particle ejector. Produce and ejects particles charged in opposite way to those from solar storm, and thus annihilation
each other on impact. Protects from solar storm. Works in area of 200 blocks, lowering time of storm by 50%. Preventing
from complete loss of electricity and letting 25 % of voltage to stay in area of storm.
Acid rain
Acid rain dissolve circuits in electric devices making them work in unpredicted manner.
-- Mechanism
--- Pretty much same mechanics of appearing as earthquake, but with bigger radius.
--- Rain lasts for 1 to 5 mins.
--- Once every 10 to 30 secs tick happen. On tick 10 % to 25 % of devices in area are subjected to change their behavior.
Inserters rotated, assembling machine change its recipe or cancel recipe, transport belts changing direction to opposite
(belts has much lower chance to suffer from rain due to amounts of them in factory), manual adjusting of device
(by rotating, or recipe selection) will revert the effect. Also, any device may just stop working instead of changing behavior;
re-contracture of device will switch it back.
-- Graphic
--- Obviously, green looking rain
--- Short circuit displayed as sparks from affected device.
-- Mean of protection.
---Anti-cloud gun. Shoots projectile, filled with anti-cloud reagents, in to the sky. It is preventing acid rain
clouds from appearing. Works in area of 250 blocks, reduce length or rain by 60 %, prolong time between tics by 60 %.
Meteorite
Meteorite is falling from the sky, causing devastation and mayhem on the ground. Meteorite is deadliest of AOE events.
Also, provide rare ores for player.
-- Mechanism
--- Two types of meteorites exist: proximity and background.
--- Proximity meteorite is direct danger for player and his building. It may appear in 500 block radius from any player building.
According to size (small, normal, big), It cause deferent amounts of damage.
---- Appearing of proximity meteorite is rare event, and has certain requirements. It does not happen in early stage of game
(it might be indicated by number of drills constructed, amount of blue science packs produced etc.) Once, “middle” stage is began,
there are 5 % chance of event to happen, once in certain period of time (60 mins period might be ok), basically once per given
interval of time game decide whether or not will impact happen, if it will, exact time of event will be chosen randomly
(but not outside of given time interval)
--- Background meteorite is not dangerous to player. It may appear in area; at least 500 blocks far from players building but
no longer than 10000 blocks from player building
---- Appearing of background meteorite is similar to proximity one, but not depend of game stage. It only serves as rare ore source.
--- Meteorite sizes. It depends of size, how devastating impact will be and how much ore will be created.
---- Small meteorite – 2 blocks in diameter. It destroys everything in 6 block radius, dealing 40 damages in 6 to 10 blocks radios,
15 damage in 10 to 30 radiuses. Impact spawns low amount of rare ore.
---- Normal meteorite – 5 blocks in diameter. It destroys everything in 12 block radius, dealing 80 damages in 12 to 18 blocks radios,
25 damage in 18 to 50 radiuses. Impact spawns medium amount of rare ore.
---- Big meteorite – 10 blocks in diameter. It destroys everything in 24 block radius, dealing 150 damages in 20 to 30 blocks radios,
20 damage in 30 to 60 radiuses. Impact spawns huge amount of rare ore.
-- Graphic
--- Badass rock falling from upper part of screen with terrible noise and screen shaking
-- Mean of protection.
--- Call to earth, and ask them to send Bruce Willis here
joke, there is no protection from meteorite. Alien threats
Evolution is on basic stages on planet, humanoids are primitive and aggressive. They hate player as well as his buildings. They
attack everything that is not natural on sight, and fight to the end. As player will notice soon, they don’t have sense of fear,
thus death does not stop them. Also, they do not act intellectually, as example they do not organize their attacks, but just sprint
towards closest disturbing object. Their reactions are more like animals than like humanoids. Closest example of alien behavior
in real world is ants. The bigger disturbance, the bigger aliens attack it. While gameplay stages developes, it is revealed to player that,
aliens are not that primitive and simple as it seemed first. Actually, all aliens on the planet are bind together by invisible but
strong connection. All aliens being bind by this telepathic network are actually one big organism, and this organism has it nerve
center “HIVE”. All alien activity is controlled by this hive. As player will notice, Alien activity depends on how wide players
expansion has come, while on first stages alien will attack players buildings in small numbers and only in certain proximity to spawns,
later bigger and bigger waves will attack player even from distant spawns. When hive combined intellect will finally recognize player
is biggest threat, it will launch never stopping onslaught that can be described only as “WAR”. Central hive is a key to planet.
Destroying it, thus disabling “will” of aliens, is inevitable and must be done in order to prepare planet for arrival of men.
Alien species
Lancer – Brown skin humanoid, casual representative of aliens on the planet, males. Workers and fighters, they obey to
their combined intelligence and thus fearlessly doing everything that their instinct (telepathic commands from hive) tells.
Aggressive and stupid, they attack enemy by their hands and teeth. They hate everything they can’t recognize, thus they
will break everything that is not natural. They are living in groups of 6-8 species, but closer to hive, can be seen in much bigger groups.
Spiter – Green skin humanoids, casual representative of aliens on the planet, females. Food gatherer and mothers
to offspring, they are less aggressive then lancers. They are weak and never fight by hands, instead they spit to enemy with
acid liquid. Evolution developed their spitting ability, thus letting them to spit on 5-10 meters, acid liquid damages electronic
and metal, thus damaging it. They living in same groups with lancers, but in less numbers. Spiters attack disturbing objects
with lancers, but from range.
Hive brain – Huge biomass, serving as central hub for all aliens telepathic activity, heavily guarded by aliens, it is
located in very center of their residence. Nevertheless being combination of all intellects of each alien, hive brain has no
own intellect whatsoever, thus it has no ability to protect itself or directly harm anything. Destroying hive brain, is one of
last tasks for player, in order to complete game mode.
Alien technologies
Alien technologies is primarily bio-technologies, they do not wear cloth or collect materials to build things. They birth
from hives, and live around it, constantly looking around for food. They don’t have tools or fire, thus any light or sound
not familiar to them recognized as threat. They can grow offspring really fast, thus lack of technology is replaced with
huge numbers of species.
Alien reaction on player’s progress
Over all, reaction of aliens can be divided in to three stages: “attacks of disturbed individuals”, “anxiety and attacks of
all local aliens”, “Total war against invaders”. All stages are progressively increased in difficulty, gradually going from
one to another. Overall progress of alien reaction is calculated from factors like: science progress, number of buildings,
position of player in relation to hive, amount of consumed resources, and stage of gameplay global task.
Alien positioning
As world created, alien hives are placed in circle, as closer to center as thicker alien activity. Alien hive brain is located
in very center of circle. Brain hive is always placed on a specific distance from player spawn, same time direction from
player spawn to hive brain is always random, basically player spawns on random point which belongs to circle around brain
hive, circle with specified radius. Alien thickness is getting less and less if player going to opposite direction from brain hive,
thought there is a minimum for alien thickness.
To be continued…
Give me greenlight, and I will post more...