Hello pilots!
This is 2325 speaking.
New colonization models are being loaded.
Accessing them now...
New Game Mechanics!
Game development is something "ongoing and living", and is both art and game, feelings and technicity.
We are going to enjoy a new set of game mechanics, and that's even before players had the chance to fully experience the previous one.
The previous one, actually, was more like a first simulation outline, whereas the new one is even stronger in simulation but also much stronger in gameplay and ease of play.
Without further ado, let's get into it!
The new game system
The new system is called Rest & Contribute.
All characters will receive 4 points every day, represented visually with little squares.
The squares will either be of the "Rest" color or of the "Contribute" color.
Contribute means working hard.
Rest means enjoying leisure, social, eat or sleep activities or not being as effective (only being present at a workplace). Resting is part of a normal human activity to recover or enjoy life.
Points will be spread as follows:
| Rest points | Contribute points | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 4 | Quickly exhausting. Can only happen if strongly enforced. |
| 1 | 3 | Immensely dedicated, fresh and hardworking citizens on a 16+ workday. |
| 2 | 2 | Hardworking citizens on a normal 10+ hours workday. |
| 3 | 1 | Normal citizens in a civilized world. |
| 4 | 0 | Happens sometimes with humans in real life! |
Positive scores to receive more "Contribute" points:
- High Discipline.
- High Loyalty
- High well-being (well-being is the sum of Health, Stamina, Morale and Happiness)
You usually want citizens to be more contributive.
Values being used to receive more Rest points:
- Low Discipline
- Low Loyalty
- Low well-being
Characters with such low values will usually activate more Rest points, which at least should help them recover on the well-being part.
We know how players are - they would like their citizens to work hard, won't they?
However please note the following elements:
A good Rest cycle is extremely important to preserve Stamina. Stamina is quickly regained, such as regained overnight, but also quickly lost.
A good Rest cycle is also crucial to preserve longterm values such as Morale (lost and gained in a few days) and Happiness (lost and gained in days and weeks). Health, on the other end, is usually unaffected by work, but can be affected by incidents and then slowly regained during Rest.
Note that losing your well-being can be detrimental to all your skills output and can also be hard to regain on a struggling colony with radioactive insects, vegetal killer-traps, deadly sunburns and everything made to make you feel unwelcome!
What happens when we rest?
Using rest points, citizen will eat, sleep, socialize and enjoy some leisure too.
This is what we called the LESS system.
LESS stands for Leisure, Eat, Sleep and Social.
For every Rest action, characters will receive a number of Actions Points (AP) - we are thinking that there should be 3 APs per Rest Action, with a possible bonus from well-being or some skills - and will randomly select activities for every point.
Usually 1 AP should be spent in Eating (unless no cantina is present or citizens are on 2325 food pills ; food pills do not bring happiness but at least they are fast to use!).
And also, at least 1 AP should be spent in Sleeping.
Introverted citizens will be oriented toward more Leisure, and extroverted citizens will be more oriented toward Social.
There is some little extra thing.
There is a little extra S which stands for Scheming.
It especially applies to characters with a Secret Agenda, as this is where they will further their ambitions when they use extra APs for Scheming.
What happens when we contribute?
Contribute points are used in a more streamlined sequence:
- Is the character a team Leader?
If NO, then this step is skipped.
If YES, then the character spends at least 1 AP in an activity called "Decide".
Performance on this activity will influence all team results of the same day.
- Did the character receive an individual job?
Individual assignments may result from player request or team special requests.
If NO individual assignment is there, then this step is skipped.
If YES, then the character spends at least 1 AP in his individual assignment.
- Is the character part of an active team?
If YES, then the character spends the rest of his APs doing progression for the team.
Teams receive an assignment and this assignment is then translated into a number of "activities". Each activity is like a chain of little tasks.
For instance, a "security team" will automatically create an activity for every colony building (including the ship wreck) and another for the colony close perimeter or your Origin character.
Each of these security activities will involve some small tasks, such as testing the Awareness skill to detect any danger.
So, when a team member Contributes, he actually performs this test and contributes successes, if any, toward the team progression.
The same concept is applied to every possible team assignment and team project!
Okay, but what about gameplay?
All that sounds great for the colony simulation but we never want the player to be passive. We also thought about the player here.
Thanks to the Rest & Contribute system you will be able to log in every day and check new reports of course (more about that below), but also some visuals about the next day:
The next Rest & Contribute points will be displayed for all your citizens.
They will be displayed for your NEXT DAY. Meaning it has an impact on everything you plan for.
This means you will see little squares for Rest and little squares for Contribute, and thanks to the four points total you won't be lost when seeing this on a game screen near every character.
The game will also display the total number of Rest points on the colony, and total number of Contribute points. And when we have time, maybe we will display the chances for every AP to be spent on a given activity.
In addition, we will deploy access to some Colony Doctrines.
Using Colony Doctrines you can for instance decide that your citizens should have a maximum of 1 Rest point. This will change the display by showing some Rest points being "transformed" into Contribute points.
About colony doctrines:
Enforcing this can reduce Happiness and also needs a good (and contributing!) security team to enforce it better.
Events and Missions
- Colony events will happen all the time, be it little disputes, observations or random incidents!
Most of them may go under the radar but some of them will be reported by "your observants", who should usually be your Administration Team. This will add some reports in your daily routine.
Events can be prevented or put under control sometimes, and otherwise will have some effects on your colony. Event effects can be displayed in the report with good observants.
- Missions, on the other end, will be a VERY different and much bigger thing.
Missions are interactive events with a briefing and where you can assign characters of your choosing to specific slots. Missions allow you to be offline for some time and "catch up" in time, before being auto-cancelled or auto-failed.
Missions also have a timer. During the mission time, all characters committed to this mission will be removed from the Rest & Contribute system.
We will first test missions with the EXODE Factions gameplay coming up near the end of this month; we will then use the EXODE Factions experience to enhance colonization gameplay.
- Away Teams will become a specific Missions feature.
The main difference with Away Teams is that the Mission, this time, can be initiated by the player, and its objective customized by the player as well.
EXODE at 100%!
Now that you know our objective, you also know we are "all set" and programming every day to make this live and available to all our players!
With the Rest & Contribute system, Events and upcoming Missions, you now have our feature roadmap for colonization.
Our target for the Rest & Contribute system to become LIVE is actually next week.
This will be added to the Colonization Console, our latest client for testing colonization features.
We initially spoke about Monday 13th, but please keep tuned for a final target. We had some gremlins in our maintenance tasks lately which we had to purge!
At the moment we think Thursday 16th will be a perfect target.
Before this happens you will also be able to access a preview of the Rest and Contribute points and a new INSPECT feature. This will be added to colonization console in an update this week!
That's all for today pilots!
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