Gothic IV Comments Thread

[gpt3]

Seeing that precursors will just spawn out of nowhere - in orbit of the planet, with giant ships no less - after digging it up a bit, I think I'll turn the 'enhanced precursors' setting off.
I'll probably turn off for all of the special NPRs, as that looks extremely annoying. Unless I decide I want some masochism for some reason...

You put expensive equipment on the planet, only for it to be completely obliterated by an enemy appearing in orbit - with no downside for them, like jump shock.

If anything, this basically prompts me to ask for a similar tech for players and regular NPRs - fleet teleportation installation. This installation would allow the player/NPR to basically teleport things between teleport installations, limited by installation size. I think size 1 installation would allow 100-ton ship teleports.
But of course, the precursors are darn robots which can teleport, and the pathetic organics can't! I mean, that would be my justification for why regular NPRs/Players wouldn't be able to use it.

You're probably right from an Aurora-as-video-game perspective: players hate setbacks. Sid Meier's autobiography discusses this: the Civilization team considered implementing a "civil war" game mechanic, but eventually shelved it because most players hated losing their cities. Even Paradox Interactive's grand strategy games, which do feature civil wars and rebellions, tend to make them relatively minor affairs. There's probably some sort of loss-aversion psychology going on here.

On the other hand, I think that random losses are useful from the Aurora-as-storytelling perspective. The only way for the player to experience "The Glorious Liberation of Hiigara" is as the sequel to "The Hiigara Disaster".

I think that a middle ground could be for the Precursors to only launch their ships after winning the ground war (perhaps there could be an escalating series of ground awakening). That way the player can recapture their (mostly) intact colony later.

Or just use Spacemaster to kill the Precursor fleet. Aurora is a single-player game; there's no such thing as cheating.

[Napier]

If anything, this basically prompts me to ask for a similar tech for players and regular NPRs - fleet teleportation installation. This installation would allow the player/NPR to basically teleport things between teleport installations, limited by installation size. I think size 1 installation would allow 100-ton ship teleports.
But of course, the precursors are darn robots which can teleport, and the pathetic organics can't! I mean, that would be my justification for why regular NPRs/Players wouldn't be able to use it.

Still, I guess some would like this grim aesthetic to things, but I think it would be better to give some kind of subtle early warning to player about upcoming awakening - like messages reporting odd tectonic activity or other strange seismic movement. Maybe xenoarcheologist teams getting attacked/buried by traps, or simply eroding structures. Leader of excavation team getting bad feelings about it or straight up killed.
I think whole planet getting glassed immediately is overkill, it needs to happen gradually, with subtle things happening at first, and then as you complete digging it gets up.

I was reading this not as teleportation, but as ships coming from underground hangars/bunkers (that may have been how Steve described it, I don't remember). An awakening is triggered as the player people explore and root around on the planet, they start activating ships, open the doors and launch them, so the ships come out in waves as they become fully activated.

But the ideas in your 2nd paragraph are nice if they happened very shortly prior to the reveal.. mysterious losses of elements in xeno/construction teams, or mysterious thermal readings deep in the crust.