I’ve been working on the selection of AI storyteller and starting colonists.
Now you can actually choose your AI storyteller. The starting options are Cassandra Consistent, who tries to keep you on a pre-defined tension curve, Randy Random, who just does crazy stuff, and Phoebe Friendly, who basically makes sure nothing bad happens. Possibilities for expansion are Harry High-Population, who gives you lots of colonists, Negative Nancy, who just starves you, and many others. I'm open to suggestions here!
The AI storytellers have some new events to play with too: passing travelers, and animal-goes-psychotic. The travelers are cool because you can ignore them, capture them, enslave them, recruit them, or sell them into slavery. Or just kill them and take their stuff (it is still a video game, I suppose). The psychotic animal is more amusing than anything - especially when it's a squirrel or a boomrat (that is, a weaponized genetically engineered rat that explodes and ignites fires on death).
I've also smoothed out the game start experience. Starting colonists won’t be created by players any more. The number of options available is becoming too much; it slows down the start of the game to an unacceptable degree. Instead, you’ll just roll up characters until you get one you like. Some of their traits may be hidden, too. Your only direct control over them will be in changing their names.
Here's the new title screen: Ludeon.com
Lizzy Lazy, which turns off events in their entirety so people could test things real quick could work, if you made a AI director that made bad things happen very often, but never in a way you can't bounce back (30 pirates showing up and shooting up the place, in this Director's case it'd be like 14 and they'd look around and then leave if they didn't find anything, or if they killed everyone they did find.) pretty much my idea is a more casual negative Director, and then maybe a more extreme negative Director so that people could fool around more, just some small ideas.
And don't know if you've got this suggestion before, but if colonists have inventories, and are killed by pirates, you should make the pirates walk up to their corpse and take their inventory.
People do carry and drop their weapons, though there is not yet any AI for stealing them (though, of course, your colonists can pick them up, store them, use them, drop them, and sell them - but the enemies won't). But it is something that should be in there. I'm interested in AIs who just try to steal from the colony. It's a bit lower-key than lethal pirate raids, but still a threat to worry about.
Your thoughts on the casual-negative storyteller resemble some of the the adaptive storyteller stuff I've been considering. Basically, a storyteller that adapts the hostility of the story to keep the colony barely alive.
You are right, that is exactly what I meant, and would make great for new players trying to learn the game, who want a exciting director who won't put them into situations they can't come back from. and thank you for taking the time to read my comment!
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