Hello,
it is finally ready – the androids are now live on our staging branch.
In this post I want to go into detail on how the system works and the thinking behind it.
The initial idea was it to have an AI controlled opposition that is a little smarter than the forest warden. We want to make the game gripping and fun even if the player is playing in singleplayer or on a low population server.
To acomplish this goal we introduced ‚player-like‘ robots which are part of the faction called ‚Androids‘.
These androids:
-claim territorys
-mine ores
-build bases
-and raid players with a bad reputation.
I differentiate the android system into two main categories: macro and micro.
The macro level of gameplay is controlled by the grand strategy sytem (GSS). The GSS is responisble for finding the next territory an android should claim (this search is performd every hour of gameplay).
Whenever the GSS has found a territory it sends out an aircraft with a few androids in it that lands in the territory and claims it on touch down. Initially i had an android run to the faction building, destroy the turret and go into the building to claim the territory but that cost way to much performance and was causing too many bugs. So i removed that detail and just claim the territory on touch down.
Once the aircraft has landed the builder-android gets to work and starts building an outpost or a fort. An outpost is placed when the territory was free and a fort is placed when the territory was claimed by another faction.
Every android has a primary and a secondary weapon so the builder might hold a C.M.T but he can pull out a pistol when you attack him or his base.
You can find encrypted data and some other tier-1 items in the outposts but forts have tons of encrypted data and high-tier loot but are very well protected.
The GSS will place an ‚Economy-Base‘ every 90 minutes in a friendly territroy. These economy bases hold mining or smelting equipment and accommodate mining- and builder-androids.
These economy bases hold a lot of useful loot and come in different sizes. Bigger bases hold more loot than smaller ones. You can find encrypted data, ores, ingots and miningtools in thses bases.
You will loose ‚Android-Reputation‘ when you raid any android base. This stat can be found under the faction tab beneath the player rank. Every 30 minutes the GSS finds the player with the worst reputation and raids him. The Reputaion is cut in half when a player is raided and you will gain one reputation point every minute.
Based on the value of your base the GSS determines how many androids to send to you.
Every raid party consists of one or more ‚Rocket-Raiders‘, one or more ‚Rifle-Raiders‘ and one or more ‚Android-Drones‘.
They will get shipped to you in an aircraft that lands near your base and they will try to destroy every active-basepart (generators, smelters, turrets, lights etc.) on it.
You will not be attacked if you are offline but when you go offline while your base is being raided you might not have a base anylonger when you get back on.
So you will be let alone by enemy androids as long as you are not attacking them or get to close to their bases.
Now, the micro level of gameplay is what happens when you raid an android base or get raided by androids.
If you start raiding an android base you will not only be attacked by the androids surrounding the base and the turrets that might be on the base but also by waves of android-drones that spawn over the base. The amount of waves of drones that you have to fend off is determined by the value of the android base.
These android-drones are a new mob and are equipped with a laser that fires for two seconds and can be outmanouvered if you are quick on your feet. Stand still and you will get roasted. These drones are difficult to hit and will drop no loot (this will probably be changed later). But you will find plenty of loot inside the base.
These drones are also part of every raid-party and will attack your base from above while the androids attack your base on the ground.
Android bases that have been damaged will repair themselves and restock their loot over time. The androids in the base will only respawn after a server restart or when loading the gamefile.
We will improve the android system over time and expand on it but we have to focus on polishing and bug fixes for now.
I hope you have fun testing the androids and if not, then please let us know your thoughts through our discord channel.
- Julian