I examined the time lines of cata, and I would really like to be able to start from the breaking point. The hour 0 of the end of the world. Maybe under different roles, such as a soldier that is garrisoned in one of the military bases, or as a researcher that was working at a lab at the exact moment when the sub-space monsters broke through. You know, I would like to able to tell a story from it’s beginning, waking up in a shelter stresses me because I want to live in first person the struggle to safety while the world literally crumbles upon you. By my opinion this beginning would give cataclysm much more realism and a more consistent backstory, you could witness the military burning the corpses, executing the looters, the widespread anarchy, events such as a nuclear detonation, or simply turning on the radio to hear the desperate broadcasts of hopeless military units sent to die. You could act differently to every different situation, like a nearby town just got nuked, your first idea is to seek shelter from the fallout in the nearest evac. shelter or maybe a basement. This would also give cata much more life and interactivity between the player and the environment around him.
I wanna start five years in the future.
Also, you should rename the topic because it sounds like all of the other “New spawn/starting point” topics.
Doing so you won’t be the hero who will eradicate fungaloid/triffids and sub-space visitors from earth.
Sure you will! Except there will more then likely be factions with stronger grips on the land. Entire towns overtaken by triffids, covered with plant life. Your post-apocalyptia hardened survivor ready to keep fighting to stay alive and hope for a better tomorrow.
This suggestion is simply unfeasible at this point. WAY too much work would be required- functional NPCs are only going to be a thing once the next stable is out. That’s a far cry from cohesive factions and semi-scripted story telling.
I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.
I like to think that my char survived a couple of months in the shelter basement before the start.
It is a shelter, it should have supplies for some time to feed an average number of people.
Everyone expected the military and the government to roll trough shortly
Other people mighty have stayed with you but they decided to go after some time and never came back. Only you remained.
Now that the supplies are gone, you finally have to leave you shelter and try to survive on your own
As of now I don’t think the system is capable of handling large scale faction battles and the multitudes of NPCs this would require. That said, in a theoretical future when it can, I like both the five years later and pre-cataclysm idea.
But of course, this is a long term suggestion, I know that the npc system is still basic, I’m obvously talking about an update for the next year or whenever this game will have functional npcs that won’t attack moses while wielding a string.
I’ve thought about making a roguelike that would function similar to this before. It wouldn’t be cataclysm, it would have to be it’s own seperate game.