This and 1FactionStory need to be merged.

The player is one of the unique, irreplaceable commanders constructed by humans millenia ago to raise and lead their armies. Commanders are equipped with an internal intersellar jump drive which, once powered, can teleport them to the planets of nearby starsystems. The jump drive cannot teleport their armies, and they must construct new armies whenever they arrive on a new planet. The armies they leave behind remain intact, but without a commander have very little autonomy. This is a failsafe built into the machines to limit their exponential self-replication (This is revealed later in the story). The player jumps from planet to planet, each planet being a mission, encountering various other commanders which detect incursions and jump in to oppose them (So, each game, both players start on even footing, and are skirmish battles- this means we can just use CAI). We can have the player fight commanders with established bases, if we so desire.

The player starts off floating in the emptiness of space. He is a relic of an force sent out by humanity eons ago to the edge of the universe to fight a war against other commanders. He was blasted into space in the final battle and has been in orbit ever since. At the start of the game, he crashes on an asteroid, and is finally able to mine enough resources and build enough energy to charge his jump drive. He then proceeds to various planets, searching out the remnants of the army he was originally sent to destroy, and trying to find the humans that sent him on his mission

Factions

The player encounters various commanders (or groups of commanders?), each in possession of a different view of the role of robots and humanity in the universe, each with a different philosophy, and each using different tactics and units. The player can choose to ally with factions if certain conditions are met (via dialogue and through completing missions). The player starts with a single factory and gains new factories by assimilating the technologies of the enemy factions, through alliance or combat.

The ultimate objective of the game is the last human, trapped in stasis. Each faction should offer a compelling and unique perspective the player might share and each encouraging the player to make a different decision at the end of the game. The player can decide to leave a faction alone, agree with a factions ideologies and do missions for them, fight a faction or wipe it out entirely from the galaxy map (genociding it).

Rogue Machines Commanderless machines. Very little autonomy or construction. The remnants of the force the player was sent to destroy, and other remnant forces. First encounters.

  • Tactics: Various. Mostly have no construction, just roaming units. For the first few missions, mostly.

Church of Man Worship humans as their creators. Elevate humanity to a semi-mythical status and destroy anyone who does not share their belief.

  • As Allies: Convert to their religion and wage war against their enemies (everyone, exclusive alliance).
  • As Enemies: Refuse their religion, refuse to worship man.
  • Tactics: M-bots? Defensive expansion?
  • Endgame: Leave the human in stasis, build a temple to worship it.

Enlightened Ones Humans that have left their human bodies behind to become robots. Believe in the right of humans to rule machines, but have become just like the other machines themselves. Enemies of the Robot Supremacists.

  • As Allies: Agree that they are the rightful heirs to humanity and prostrate yourself before them. Discover that the (sexy, female, ofcourse) recovery AI that assists and communicates with you throughout the campaign is itself a nascent human consciousness that was uploaded into you, and chose to reveal this to the enlightened ones.
  • As Enemies: Refuse to follow them and assert your robot individuality.
  • Tactics: Spherebots. Aggressive raiding?
  • Endgame: Upload the humans consciousness into a robot, like the others.

Exterminators Believe that life is an entropy-increasing destructive curse on the galaxy, and intend to wipe it out one way or another before destroying themselves. Particularly hate the chickens.

  • As Allies: Genocide the chickens.
  • As Enemies: Be alive.
  • Tactics: Vehicles?
  • Endgame: Get the human to issue the shutdown order which will terminate all commanders.

Survivors Believe in a state of constant warfare and adaptation, that conflict is the only way to survive and improve oneself, and that machines must evolve and grow to survive. Believe that the only way robots can truly survive is if they can reproduce.

  • As Allies: Gain their respect by besting them in combat.
  • As Enemies: Until you beat them, always enemies. Once you beat them, either refuse to lead them or decide to genocide them.
  • Tactics: Tanks? Gunships?
  • Endgame: Force the human to lift the hardcoded prohibition against creating new commanders, and populate the universe with robots.

Robot Supremacists Believe in the supremacy of robots over humans, and their rights to determine their own destiny. Destroyed their human creators. Enemies of the Enlightened Ones.

  • As Allies: Agree that robots should determine their own destiny and fight the Enlightened Ones.
  • As Enemies:Believe that robots ultimately exist to serve humans.
  • Tactics: Tanks? Gunships?
  • Endgame: Kill the human.

Explorers

  • Probe the deepest reaches of space and explore the galaxy. Has the most information.
  • As Allies: Give them valuable information and help them track down humanity. Eventually they will give you their technology.
  • As Enemies: Attack them to steal their technology right away.
  • Tactics: Spiders? Planes? Hovers?
  • Endgame: Wake the human up and learn from it about humanity.

Preservers Wish to preserve all the factions, and intervene to stop them wiping eachother out.

  • As Allies: Do not genocide any faction.
  • As Enemies: Genocide a faction.
  • Tactics: Hovers? Gunships?
  • Endgame: Clone the human and repopulate the galaxy with humanity.

Chickens The last biological lifeforms in the galaxy (OR ARE THEY??????). Totally incapable of communication. Only want to eat everything.

  • As Allies: You can subjugate them and use their queen as a biological weapon against other factions.
  • As Enemies: Encroach on their territory.
  • Tactics: CHICKENS!
  • Endgame: The chicken territory will slowly expand over time to take new planets. If the chickens encroach onto the planet the human is on, they will eat it. Of course, this requires you to either massively fail to contain the chickens, or to deliberately clear a path for them. Essentially, this means the chickens win the game and become the dominant lifeform.

Imperial Defenders Defends the long dead last human empire against their long dead enemies. Patrols a vast stretch of a decayed civilization and prevents all incursions. Contains the last human, deep behind their lines, in stasis, the ostensible objective of the game.

  • As Allies: None. But you can leave them alone.
  • As Enemies: Encroach into the territory of the empire.
  • Tactics: Super mechs?
  • Endgame: These guys only want to be left alone to defend their territory, so the game does not end until you destroy them.

Note some endings are not mutually exclusive. Say, you could complete both the Robot Supremacist and Survivors objectives for an ultra Robot Power ending. Also the Explorers and Preservers endings.

Comments

GoogleFrog: What is to stop the player rushing the imperials with their starting factory?

Saktoth: This is for the singleplayer demographic, who suck pretty hard. We can give any boot we want to make rush-proof more starting boost (which is the same as a starting base, really).

GoogleFrog: You missed my point. What is to stop the player making a beeline towards the imperial territory in the galaxy map without conversing with any of the other factions? As factories are just as powerful as each other gaining extra factories does not give a significant advantage when fighting the imperials (except maybe air). If the player is not gaining power to eventually take on the imperials and complete the story there is less sense of advancement. As a possible solution to my own problem we might want to let commanders 'join' the player through alliance or subjugation (much like chickens). They would be able to chose 1 of their allies/slaves to jump into the battle with them. We could then make many of imperial missions harder than the rest. The imperial rush problem could also be solved with galaxy design. I don't want a basically linear galaxy with the player at one end and the human at the other. The player could start at a plausible distance from the imperials and important tech such as air could send the player off in the opposite direction to the imperials.

Saktoth: Oh, right, yes. Well firstly the location of the last living human is only uncovered after a lot of running around. You are sent down several paths such as uncovering the Enlightened Ones, who are human of a sort, and uncovering worlds teeming with biological life, IE the chickens. Finding out there is a human left in the galaxy, and where it is, comes later. On your first playthrough, you wont know. If players want to attempt speedruns later, they are free to.

Having allies which actually fight with you is a good idea. Perhaps the Imperial Defenders could be represented by more than one commander, and perhaps be more mindless than the other factions. They just endlessly patrol the same stretch of territory and unlike the other commanders, are capable of self-replication but are programmed not to leave the territory or the empire. For now, we can just have more commanders/boost for harder missions, but yes, eventually, it would be nice to have key missions, such as the final mission, have preset maps with units already on them.

GoogleFrog: What does 'As Allies' and 'As Enemies' mean? The category cannot mean the same thing for all factions listed on the page as it would create a logical fallacy.

Saktoth: It means that if you want to be their allies, this is what you need to do and this is what happens when you do. If you want to be their enemies this is what you do and this is what you get, etc.

GoogleFrog: How structured are these missions? Do we set up some kind of web of planets each with a unique map, set a faction and let CAI lose on each one with a per faction config?

Saktoth: Yep. Until we have a good missionbuilder.

GoogleFrog: As the player reaches the heart of a faction's area the missions should become harder. Perhaps with more CAI boost, commanders or pre-established base. When the middle of the area is defeated the tech could be unlocked. With this kind of warfare it makes sense that there would be a few central strongholds with territory that can be teleported to(ie even battle) if it needs defending. How many commanders per faction? A few makes the most narrative sense and can be used to create slightly different strategies for each.

A large issue is what happens when the player wins a planet? If the enemy commander is destroyed it indicates there is one commander per planet in the galaxy and as such the entire 'teleporting to defend' system fails. Commanders would require some kind of escape teleportation which activates instead of commander death. This raises a few questions:

  • Can the player commander escape teleport just near death?
  • How is a faction genocided. The commanders could just jump to a nearby planet. The leftover units on the planet can easily be dealt with as they do not have a commander commanding them.

Some kind of static emergency teleport structure on the faction homeworld would let the player genocide a faction by capturing the homeworld. Once a player does so it would make sense for the player commander to be able to retreat. Also why do the commanders not just make more teleporters? It's a hole in the system which needs some thinking about.

Saktoth: This is all exactly what i am thinking. All commanders teleport out, rather than die. Since they are all skirmish battles, the player losing a game means he loses that battle, rather than has to reload and attempt it again. He may eventually want to try and re-take that planet, but he can try other missions, instead. Under the current system, you probably shouldnt have to destroy a commander to get their tech, because they are your rare and irreplacable robot brethren and thats meant to be kinda a big deal: You are extinguishing a whole philosophy and ruling out a game ending. Certain homeworlds that power the teleporter sound good, and make sense. The reason the commanders dont make more teleporters is the same reason they dont make more commanders: This technology is lost to them, and it is hard-coded into them by humans to prevent them reproducing it.

KR: I think it would be good to have some kind of strategic metagame behind the campaign. Economic development, eg. taking and developing resource-rich planets to get a bonus at the start of missions, for instance? Faction-vs-faction diplomatic interactions and battles? Isolating planets to prevent commanders from teleporting to them?

Saktoth: There is a strategic, diplomatic meta-game, thats already outlined, with the various factions. Doing certain missions gives you ingame bonuses, IE, more factories, techs, and buildings (you probably wont start with the nuke and bertha, etc). To prevent a commander teleporting, you capture his jump beacon.

GoogleFrog: developing planets sort of goes against the plot of commanders jumping around the place. The player could have a homeworld that houses their retreat beacon which can also do a few things. There could also be skirmishes between other factions that are just shown by a planet changing hands. We could even have factions attacking the player though this may be a bad idea as fighting the same battle to gain no ground is boring in a campaign.

Licho: don't forget to include modular commanders with its 3 basic comm types! This has to be considered when designing SP. It's important feature needed for 1faction to not feel so bland.

Saktoth: The design, let alone the implementation for this, isnt finalized. Whats stopping us from going for an indefinite number of commanders (as we get the art content, adding them in over time LoL style) each with distinct, pre-defined abilities? Or going for purely cosmetic commanders, like skins? Etc etc.

Licho: There is work already being done on this. Maackey is working on those models. And GUI proposal expects each player always having 3 commander types to pick. But in theory it could be extended yeah. Just need to coordinate better.

maackey: I had originally planned to make many different models as Saktoth mentioned earlier. However I didn't really think about giving each one distinct, pre-defined special abilities. That would be easier for adding new stuff later as each commander would have different upgrades and the model upgrade pieces would be unique to that commander. Style for individual commanders could be more consistent, and we wouldn't have to worry about re-uvmapping a texture atlas to add something new. There would be more work in balancing more commander types, but I think it would be worth it.

Licho: regarding galactic map/metagame - its cheap easy work, as long as someone supplies me with art. Doing full ingame mission editor is not easy, but i guess quantum's could be improved or we could use one of existing structure placer. Crucially - missions need finished game! Or we will have to update them constantly. For this reason its best if current SP only uses bots like chickens and CAI which update with game.

Saktoth: GUI art or art for the space scenes? Either is easy. This whole proposal has been based on the concept that CAI and chickens will be used for everything, and premade missions come later if at all.