Domesticated monsters should be more difficult/interesting to use.

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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Moriturus
Space Floater
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Joined: Fri Jan 23, 2015 6:03 pm

Domesticated monsters should be more difficult/interesting to use.

#1 Post by Moriturus »

After a recent game in which my Krakens were just being effective (but slow) ships, I realized that the basic problem was that the Kraken weren't nearly annoying enough to domesticate and use.

They ought to go off-course occasionally if they get distracted by krill one jump away. Individuals ought to go faster, or slower, randomly, or for reasons nobody understands, and if some are lagging too far behind maybe the herd pauses to let them catch up. If badly wounded in a very recent combat and still not back up to 50% health, there ought to be a significant chance that they turn and attack your own ships if you try to drive them immediately into another combat. Also, about that other combat; if they find themselves wounded, badly outnumbered, outgunned, outmaneuvered, and in an engagement with essentially no hope of survival, maybe the right thing is that they should retreat from both the enemy and you, leaving your tender fleet without their powerful protection and assistance, and go feral with a wild herd for a while. Hell, maybe one or two of them should get mopey and depressed sometimes and be kind of useless until they go hang out - alone - in one of those "no star" systems for a while.

Since Kraken go through metamorphoses in their life cycle, it would be interesting to have them be effectively unarmored for a few turns after they moult, until their new scales harden. If being generous, this could be a moment when they have better stealth and possibly even better speed, but not in such degree that it would be likely to be more valuable than a good hard coat of scales.

IOW, they're animals. They ought to be acting like animals, not ships. And caring for them and keeping track of them ought to be a serious "hard fun" pain in the ass that actually requires the player to learn some things about tendencies and proclivities and requirements and conditions that ships don't have.

If this screws up game balance, there's always the possibility of making them tougher. But honestly? They're pretty tough now. It doesn't take very long, if paying attention and using stargates/transformers liberally, to turn just about every single krill swarm into a metamorphosis, and most combat engagements favor the fleet that brings a dozen great kraken to the fight. So bringing them to the fight ought to be harder.

Moriturus
Space Floater
Posts: 25
Joined: Fri Jan 23, 2015 6:03 pm

Re: Domesticated monsters should be more difficult/interesting to use.

#2 Post by Moriturus »

Wow, the silence is deafening.

I suppose this means nobody else wants the player-controlled monsters to be more annoying, and is happy for them to just be ships?

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Oberlus
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Re: Domesticated monsters should be more difficult/interesting to use.

#3 Post by Oberlus »

I think some of the ideas are interesting (I like that monsters could flee away from battle if outnumbered), but the whole thing seems too complex.
If someone makes some proposals of implementation... Meanwhile, there are many things to do before this.

Ophiuchus
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Re: Domesticated monsters should be more difficult/interesting to use.

#4 Post by Ophiuchus »

This specific "more annoying" also smells a lot like micromanagement if you have many monsters. Which would be a no-no
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Look, ma... four combat bouts!

jinlanid
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Joined: Mon Aug 12, 2019 9:26 am

Re: Domesticated monsters should be more difficult/interesting to use.

#5 Post by jinlanid »

What about introduce some tech to allow "mount ship parts to monsters" ?
And maybe, make monsters don't use upkeep.

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So, say, make monsters "monsters hull line".
You can mount ship parts. ( maybe only external )
They can flee in combat.
They don't use upkeep.
They can regenerate even better then organic hull, but can't be repaired.
Some can grow up to bigger class.

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Maybe we can design some "only for monster hull" parts.
What about some drug boost first bout?
What about some drug make them attack even friendly but boost damage?

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