Keep the Player Moving (FTL Style)

[Rogue_Yun]

I made this post on GitHub and was requested to move it here (Issue #27061). Below is a Copy Paste of the OP.

I would like to suggest a game mode that would keep the player moving.

One of the great strengths of the game FTL was the aspect that the player couldn’t just leisurely explore an area and amass all the resources that they needed and then move on when they wanted to. (There is a certain amount of boredom that constantly amassing resources creates). In FTL the player felt constantly hounded and were eventually punished for staying too long in one spot, forcing the player to make difficult choices and increasing the games excitement.

The idea is that this would encourage players to make critical choices and to pack light and/or to always carry their essential gear on themselves. Dissuading players from becoming hoarders. Keeping players cold, sick, and desperate instead of sitting on a lifetime supply of cough syrup.

Should I take the Hummer or the RV?
Katana or Awl Pike?
Multi-tool or Screwdriver set?

Some examples/ideas of a good motivator might be Blight, Nuclear Winter, Fire, Increased Zombie Presence/Threat, etc. It could also be something like the ghost from Spelunky.

Maybe a combination?

I’m no programmer, I just want to try to share my perspective to see if anyone can make some good of it.

[Wayticus]

Aside from punishing players for not following this play style that option is already in the game, currently there is nothing stopping people from playing that way if they like, and many do with their mobile bases, but many people like setting up static bases hence the addition of the faction camps. If one gets bored amassing resources, then don’t, just keep moving.

Not sure how this would make one choose between a katana and an awl pike or a multi tool and screw driver set, plenty of storage in mobile bases. Unless the plan is to limit storage to what one can carry on themselves, and do away with customizing vehicles in this option. In which case trucks over hummer or RV.

[TheMurderUnicorn]

Indeed. The nomadic lifestyle can be a lot of fun and there’s nothing preventing you from playing that way.

I don’t know what it would take to implement something like that (a constant encroaching danger of some sort, I mean) and it would probably be easiest to just ramp up horde spawns the longer a player exists in a particular map tile.

But, right, the main issue I’m seeing is the vehicles, as mentioned. Even using the default vehicles, a hippie-van or RV is already a very basic mobile base. Even a car with a trunk can be used to hold a lot of supplies and taking away the ability to modify a vehicle means all damage would be permanent.

You could blacklist vehicles, I suppose, whittle the list or just give them bicycles and nothing else, but at that point I don’t know if I’d be having fun anymore.

All that said, I don’t hate the idea. I do think that currently there’s a real lack of danger for the player on any given day (other than the first day or so of any given start) and would like to see something adding a constant ambient pressure if it could be implemented in a quality way.

[Rogue_Yun]

Maybe it could be weather-borne giant toxic gas clouds?

I’m not seeing a need to remove vehicles or limit vehicles. I think eventually the vehicles will limit themselves. It’s not easy to find a working vehicle as it is and if a vehicle fails on the player and the player can’t repair it before whatever it is starts to catch up he/she will have to abandon it and move on.

[hydroplatypus]

I don’t really see the value in forcing the player to be mobile, as they can already do so if they wish. But if you really wanted to, you could use blob infestations/slime pits to force the player to move. Having tiles constantly convert when the player stays in one area a bit too long, spawning more and more enemies until the player has to leave. Could do the same with Mycus, which might be better actually. While they can be easily dealt with by using fire, the fire would probably destroy the towns around them, resulting in the PC having to move on to somewhere else, as a burned out wasteland is not useful to the pc. Maybe include some story element about how they are a sort of carrier from the mycus. Not infected enough to get the actual mutations, but still just enough that fungus tends to follow them around.

[redxlaser15]

I think I once heard of fires ‘collapsing in on themselves’ before. Effectively, the fire becomes so large, it starves itself of oxygen. This could help make fire less useful in a mycus spread scenario. And explain it with SCIENCE!
I think that there is a more official name for that, but I can’t recall.
Side mention: Fire tornados exist.

[TheZoneWizard]

Last I recall. Kevin wanted more people to make a base instead of being nomadic and using death mobiles. Perhaps more to the point. I think he wanted to make bases equally amiable to the player as to not make being nomadic the only way to survive.

That said. I hate FTL. Burn it with fire. I would feel dirty even parousing the forum and seeing it as a mod…EWWWwwwww!! >_<

[Erk]

I wouldn’t love this, given how much work I’m putting into NPC camps. What I would like to see is large enough camps attracting the attention of worse horrors, but it should be activity related, not time.

[Trigon]

There’s already enough motivation to keep on moving. Nomadic is basically the mechanically best playstyle already so it hardly needs an alternate game mode just to force a nomadic playstyle.

[nameless_survivor]

Personally I like building a base; the nomadic lifestyle is completely unappealing to me.

Even if the environment on the surface was extremely hostile (constant acid rain, radiation storms, toxic atmosphere, extreme cold, etc), I would not even try to outrun or avoid it, I’d just build my base in an underground bunker, and dig a tunnel network intersecting with the subways and sewers for traveling, Metro 2033 style.

[Bobdole44]

If we don’t come to a point in this game where a player can make fire tornados via mutation or CBM it will be a sad existence indeed. Flaming zombies and wildlife being flung through the air in random directions as the flamenado tears down the street

[redxlaser15]

If I recall correctly, flamenados are very unstable and tend to not last long. They also need VERY specific conditions and only happen in VERY rare cases of forest fires and the like.
I guess, in theory, if a regular tornado had a large quantity of flammable liquids and said liquids were lit on fire it might work.

[Bobdole44]

There could be a cbm that or weapon that can shoot a small fire tornado. It is about only forest fires where they occur naturally but I thought I’d remembered doing a science thing years back in school where you could make one and lo, here be how to make a small but stable firenado

https://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/fire-tornado/

Enough of me being off topic though, that mention of firenados got me throughly distracted

I like the idea of something to keep a fire under the players butt, especially late game. Like FTL there needs to be a grand ending or mission to be reaching for I’d think though. Maybe even just the ocean with the goal of getting to an aircraft carrier, oil platform, etc. It could be a camp you can set up without having to build from scratch and dump ungodly amounts of resources into sounds like a decent reward/goal to me,

[kevin.granade]

For people that don’t like the described play mode, this is the very definition of a mod that wouldn’t impact the rest of the game. It definitely won’t be the default.

[Trivega]

Why not just make a ‘crank’ challenge? Like the movie, in this challenge your character must constantly be generating energy by moving, drinking coffee/energy drinks, and etc. Every turn your character isn’t getting energy they will lose it, and if it hits zero you die.

[Krisu]

Just set size 16 cities, 0 spacing, wander spawns, spawn rate to 10+, evolution to .01, and start with rbd.

[redxlaser15]

What when you need to take long periods of sleep,reading,crafting etc? This is about a nomadic lifestyle, not staying on the move the whole time.

[Rogue_Yun]

I guess I’m one of the few that doesn’t play nomadic. Farming is really OP and one can subsist on a few seeds with exponential increase forever. I find that motivating forces tend to stop me exploring or at least not encourage it. I set up my stockpiles. I collect a couple lifetime supplies of all the basic necessities within the first season or two. I read books for the next three seasons at my leisure. I set up a couple work stations. Deck myself out in the best armor and weapons. And then boredom sets in… I lose motivation to go places because I’ve gotten everything I’ll need or want right there.

However, If I felt a pack of ferocious lions were on my tail I would be reassessing my plans and needs and moving forward with the game instead of stagnating on a pile of wealth.

My vision goes something like:

• Fear of an impending doom.
• Frantic, desperate, calculated choices that lead to sacrifice of some essentials to better my overall survival.
• Barely escape impending doom by stratagem, blood, sweat, and sacrifice.
• Strive to use the down time as best as you can.
• Fear of an impending doom.
• Cycle continues.

[Trivega]

Would probably have to idle decay much lower to account for sleep, etc. [if you went the ‘crank’ style challenge]

But if you go the ftl route, i don’t see how one would have time to do anything like reading or sleeping or whatever. The thing i hated about FTL is how little time you got to even breathe, couldn’t enjoy the game mechanics or explore much. Another idea is whatever impeding doom you have, massive horde or mutated locust swarm or super volcano, you have to figure out how time to allow the player to do such things as sleeping & reading. Do the doom come every week 7 days style? Every season? Every 3rd day you get accosted? Is there even a place for such thing in Cata?

[nameless_survivor]

I don’t have that problem, because I’ve set myself long term goals that make exploration and continued resource acquisition more necessary:

Build an underground vault-city of several hundred NPCs.
Arm the inhabitants to the teeth.
Give them all some degree of bionic enhancement. Militia get as many bionics as I can install.
Alpha mutations for militia.
Hacking a robot army to protect the city.
Building military grade fortifications on the surface.

In short, I’m trying to singlehandedly rebuild civilization.