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The blogs have a lot of mentions of fishpeople so they might be the natives replacement.OwlFancier posted:If you want to do that, the way I'd do it is just make it so that the imperialists are horrible to everybody. Not just the natives. I get a distinct feel that you're supposed to somewhat dislike the people in charge of the empire in the game, if only because they keep issuing you stupid orders. The Empire knows best and its only laudanum soaked degenerates like you who don't understand the genius of of their betters who think imperial decrees are stupid. The Empire requires more fur of the finest quality to make outstanding hats for those with the refinement to appreciate them (not you). After careful deliberation the company has determined that your colony is suited to provide said fur. Your quota will be 4 dirigible loads quarterly. In light of your insolence your requested shipment of quinine, rifles, and such materiel has been denied and you will instead receive 1 crate of tinned bread and 1 crate of phrygian caps. Meet your quota and your request will be reconsidered next year.
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Feb 15, 2014 22:09
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LtSmash posted:The Empire knows best and its only laudanum soaked degenerates like you who don't understand the genius of of their betters who think imperial decrees are stupid. The Empire requires more fur of the finest quality to make outstanding hats for those with the refinement to appreciate them (not you). After careful deliberation the company has determined that your colony is suited to provide said fur. Your quota will be 4 dirigible loads quarterly. In light of your insolence your requested shipment of quinine, rifles, and such materiel has been denied and you will instead receive 1 crate of tinned bread and 1 crate of phrygian caps. Meet your quota and your request will be reconsidered next year. Bloody aristocracy! Novyrus here I come.
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Feb 16, 2014 01:30
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OwlFancier posted:Bloody aristocracy! Novyrus here I come. Good. The empire doesnt need cogless savages like yourself 
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Feb 16, 2014 01:39
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OwlFancier posted:Bloody aristocracy! Novyrus here I come. Vampire aristocracy. They'll ensure the poorest strata employment as blood pets. Noble daughters may disappear with frightening regularity.
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Feb 16, 2014 01:42
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LtSmash posted:The blogs have a lot of mentions of fishpeople so they might be the natives replacement. I hope not, because that would be something of a cop-out in my opinion, and wouldn't necessarily avoid the prickly issue at hand. That said I appreciate the difficulty in trying to approach the problem of colonialism in a game like this and getting it right.
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Feb 16, 2014 08:28
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OwlFancier posted:If you want to do that, the way I'd do it is just make it so that the imperialists are horrible to everybody. Not just the natives. I get a distinct feel that you're supposed to somewhat dislike the people in charge of the empire in the game, if only because they keep issuing you stupid orders. It's a tough issue, because this is literally a game about empire and empire means colonization. I don't think there has ever been a colony that has not encountered an indigenous population, and quite often it's trade with and control over the indigenous population that is the purpose of colonization in the first place.
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Feb 16, 2014 08:48
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I guess my point is that imperialists being horrible is only a problem if you're supposed to be on their side. It's entirely possible to make a game in that setting which leads you to really dislike the people with that attitude. Dwarf fortress does a grand job of making you loathe the nobility and royalty of your nation. You're playing the game to keep your dwarves alive and safe from goblins. Presumably it can be the same for clockwork empires? You're keeping your colonists alive and not eaten by lovecraftian horrors first and foremost. If the people in charge of the empire want conquest and riches then good for them, I'll settle for not being murdered by fishmen.
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Feb 16, 2014 08:58
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OwlFancier posted:Presumably it can be the same for clockwork empires? You're keeping your colonists alive and not eaten by lovecraftian horrors first and foremost. If the people in charge of the empire want conquest and riches then good for them, I'll settle for not being murdered by fishmen.
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Feb 16, 2014 09:45
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Presumably there is still a point to building a successful colony though? Otherwise the game would be a bit broken if failing horribly was rewarded more than succeeding against challenge? It's also fairly possible to make a game that requires some degree of co-operation with people you don't necessarily have to like. The dungeon master in dwarf fortress is an extremely useful noble, but you don't have to like all the hoops you have to jump through and other nobility you attract in the process of getting one. You can make the people in charge the antagonists while still requiring co-operation with them. If the game makes simulating the slave trade a fundamental part of colony operation then yeah I might have issue with it, but the blogs do suggest that the devs are aware that Imperial Britain wasn't a very happy place, especially for people on the receiving end of it. If you've ever played Tropico, that's sort of the feeling I'm getting. Yes you're a power mad dictator who can have everyone shot, but the game itself is sort of a mockery of that idea, and you do better by not having to rely on power-mad-dictator antics.
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Feb 17, 2014 00:56
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You mention Tropico, but Tropico specifically excludes the realities of the situation. Your police will not keep the peace in the slums by arbitrarily killing people, and they will not retaliate against public pressure against this by killing even more people. You can build plantations, but you are not forcing a population to work them through debt, structural poverty, and threat of violence. You can selectively arrest and kill by decree, but there are no death squads or torture. Everything you do is in full public view, you cannot simply disappear anyone, let alone everyone. You can turn a restaurant into a secret police HQ, but you cannot secretly bomb your own population centers and blame your enemies to justify your increasing use of force. You don't even really have enemies, some dudes will occasionally poorly path out of the jungle to shoot your dudes, but you are rarely in any real danger -- and the US will certainly not send you CIA agents and helicopters and guns to help you when you are. There is a lot about its topic that Tropico is rightfully afraid of, and there's no way to turn the grim details into satire. Things are already stretched to their logical conclusion, and it's loving grim.
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Feb 17, 2014 01:10
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I would totally play a grim detail simulator.
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Feb 17, 2014 01:18
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I dunno, you can set up a program of psychological conditioning to convert children to be mindlessly devoted to you, while instituting a program of complete isolationism to appease violent nationalists, while running a military police state where everyone is paid next to nothing, except for the military, while shooting and disappearing people to your own personal guantanamo bay you set up in the basement of an old colonial fort. Also I'm pretty sure you explicitly can set up your own personal death squad in tropico 4 with the expansions. Like, there's literally an option on one of the buildings called 'personal death squad' which gives you a team who goes around shooting criminals in the street. Oh and you can turn the ancient historical monuments of your island into tourist traps where you sell priceless historial artifacts to earn money for your swiss bank account. Oh and you can totally force people to work in your farms by turning them into labor camps. It's a fairly grim game if you want to play it that way, you just aren't especially rewarded for it. You can and probably should build an ideal utopia because it'll be much less hassle. That's where the satire is for me, it illustrates that oppressive regimes don't actually work all that well in the long term. That's sort of the strength of games, really. They don't need to beat you over the head with 'genocide is bad m'kay' like a book or something, they can simply give you the options, and let you feel like a huge rear end in a top hat for doing evil stuff. Or you can be completely detached from the game and just do whatever, however you play your games, really. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Feb 17, 2014 |
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Feb 17, 2014 01:18
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Wow, that labor camp is pretty loving grim, and I love that the SWAT HQ is basically just One Police Plaza and a huge gently caress you to the NYPD. You have to admit that there's a difference between automatically shooting criminals and counterrevolutionary militias roaming the countryside killing villages wholesale and burning them to the ground. The only game I've seen confront that is Hidden Agenda, and you confront it by literally confronting the mothers of the dead and their demands on your government.OwlFancier posted:That's sort of the strength of games, really. They don't need to beat you over the head with 'genocide is bad m'kay' like a book or something, they can simply give you the options, and let you feel like a huge rear end in a top hat for doing evil stuff.
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Feb 17, 2014 03:11
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I find most games do it pretty well by just doing it somewhat intuitively. Being a dick to other factions diplomatically makes them hate you, and makes them cause trouble for you and usually denies you the opportunity to trade with them and get any bonuses that might ensue from that. Being friendly to other factions means they don't attack you and are willing to trade, and possibly gives you some unique benefit such as how city states operate in Civ 5. Peace is better than war, generally. Even in games entirely about war, the point is usually to conquer everyone so you can rule the world, presumably peacefully. If you can achieve peace without killing everyone, you can skip a lot of effort. It is somewhat aided in this instance with the possibility that fishmen are literally agents of the star gods and trying to raise Rl'yeh from it's millennial slumber beneath the waves of the pacific, enslaving all mankind to the imponderable whims of great Cthulhu. This may somewhat simplify the ethical conundrum of how to conduct your fishman foreign policy. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Feb 17, 2014 |
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Feb 17, 2014 03:20
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Pozzo posted:I hope not, because that would be something of a cop-out in my opinion, and wouldn't necessarily avoid the prickly issue at hand. That said I appreciate the difficulty in trying to approach the problem of colonialism in a game like this and getting it right. Yeah somewhat after I posted I realized that having fishpeople be natives is actually kinda about as bad as you can get. Not only are you bringing technology to the savages but they are literally sub-human. Ideally the natives are just less technologically advanced people and the fishpeople are the servants of the beyond. Then the natives can be valuable allies against the fishpeople or you can push them into the fishpeople's hands (flippers) by being colonialist dicks.
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Feb 17, 2014 08:46
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If I can't drive someone mad by burying them in paperwork I'll be disappointed.
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Feb 17, 2014 08:54
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OwlFancier posted:It is somewhat aided in this instance with the possibility that fishmen are literally agents of the star gods and trying to raise Rl'yeh from it's millennial slumber beneath the waves of the pacific, enslaving all mankind to the imponderable whims of great Cthulhu. But we don't know that the imponderable whims of great Cthulhu are necessarily bad for us! All those people who walked into the sea, never to return may just like it so much down there that they don't want to come back!  This is a joke. I would be grateful if you laughed and high-fived.
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Feb 17, 2014 09:27
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OwlFancier posted:I'm not sure it'd fit really with the game though, if you wanted it as a mechanic you would probably be better off with perhaps some sort of uncontrollable Imperial Guard Commissar kind of guy, like the anti-cthulhu hit squad that gets called in if your colony gets too out of control. He just goes around interviewing people and shooting them if he suspects them of being lazy or revolutionary or something. He'd be something you could call in, but it'd be as much of a potential problem if he shoots someone important, as a benefit to productivity. I think it'd be highly appropriate of him not to suspect Respectable Folks(tm), and just shoot all your honest, non-cultist, experienced factory workers. Of course, that would remove all incentive to actually use him, but eh.. I'm sure there's a carrot somewhere  E: Having just re-read the Shadow over Innsmouth, keep in mind that the fish-people are actually townsfolk who interbred with deep ones back in the day. They ARE your greataunt and -uncle, only now immortal and fully fish. ..So, it's not a colonialism issue, more of a Called Up What We Can't Put Down kind a thing.
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Feb 17, 2014 09:35
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Goodpancakes posted:If I can't drive someone mad by burying them in paperwork I'll be disappointed. "Another shipment?" Clerk Sanders asked. "Aye from the forest workers near the deep pool." Answered Overseer Grrl'bl, Clerk Sanders had a hard time pronouncing the name the overseer had so recently adopted and had given up entirely on trying to write it down. "No no no, that's impossible we're not supposed to get another shipment for two weeks and we already had 4 in the last 3 days." "Well that's quite possible but here it is." He said and left. Clerk Sanders began counting the strangely warped planks, their angles ever so slightly wrong. "And another and another and another..." Said the paper mill clerk.
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Feb 17, 2014 10:11
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Sometimes I worry that my expectations for this game are going to end up impossibly high from this thread. 
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Feb 17, 2014 10:25
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Why, this is the game, nor are we out of it.
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Feb 17, 2014 11:57
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Poil posted:Sometimes I worry that my expectations for this game are going to end up impossibly high from this thread. It's going to be poorly optimized like most city builders, the combat will be a tacked-on afterthought, the madness mechanics will be a source of constant irritation after the humor wears off in the first half hour, and since it obviously takes so much after DF the resource management will swing wildly between "trivial and redundant" and "you have to wait years for the RNG to bring merchants with the one thing you need." Now you can be pleasantly surprised when none of these things are true. BE PLEASANTLY SURPRISED, drat YOU.
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Feb 17, 2014 12:42
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Poil posted:Sometimes I worry that my expectations for this game are going to end up impossibly high from this thread. I think this is true for most game threads. I'm sure that we've built up the madness to something that will never be, because it would be impossibly difficult to balance it and make it fun. But, it's fun to write about and wildly gesticulate what we think it OUGHT to be, so there's that.
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Feb 17, 2014 15:03
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LtSmash posted:Yeah somewhat after I posted I realized that having fishpeople be natives is actually kinda about as bad as you can get. Not only are you bringing technology to the savages but they are literally sub-human.
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Feb 17, 2014 15:10
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Wolfgang Pauli posted:I'm just using fishpeople are shorthand because we don't know what the gently caress's out there. You're right, though, this is a really common criticism of fantasy. I don't know if Mattie Brice has ever written about it directly, but I see her especially talking a lot about it. As long as the game avoids the elf and dwarves trope I'll be happy. I thought diggles were hilarious so I'm pretty confident the devs can come up with some new and unique frontier monsters and civilizations that are both tongue in cheek and interesting. It all really comes down to modding though, if people can create models and tweak some behaviours that will be fantastic for creating some interesting NPC civs and give biomes a lot of variety.
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Feb 17, 2014 15:27
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LtSmash posted:Yeah somewhat after I posted I realized that having fishpeople be natives is actually kinda about as bad as you can get. Not only are you bringing technology to the savages but they are literally sub-human. Not sure this has been covered, but I'm pretty sure that's just a reference to the satire The war with the Newts Which was an exploration of the tropes of bringing civilization to the natives, racism in the colonial era, and then finally the oppressed turning the tables and eventually taking over the planet.
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Feb 17, 2014 15:52
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Or the Fish people are just Deep ones with the serial numbers filed off. I asked about this (treatment of natives) in the thread a ways back and I'm happy with the answer I received.
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Feb 17, 2014 16:09
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It's going to be poorly optimized like most city builders, the combat will be a tacked-on afterthought, the madness mechanics will be a source of constant irritation after the humor wears off in the first half hour, and since it obviously takes so much after DF the resource management will swing wildly between "trivial and redundant" and "you have to wait years for the RNG to bring merchants with the one thing you need." Natives to trade and possibly fight would be awesome. Should be simple to lore it up like the crown bought the land of the natives who didn't want the place anyway. They learned long ago only utter fools would be dumb enough to attempt to live in THAT area and now they're just trying to fleece as much as they can from the hatbearers before the inevitable happens. 
Poil fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Feb 17, 2014 |
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Feb 17, 2014 16:15
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My expectations of this game are similar to dredmor really. A simplified version of a niche genre, packed in an accessible format. I've played some Dwarf Fortress before this game was announced, so I have a rough idea of expectations. I'm holding off on looking at Gnomoria right now due to it influencing feedback on accessibility first-impressions. Still curious what the scope will be at each stage of testing.
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Feb 17, 2014 16:32
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I see you guys got a nod in this month's PC Gamer. They also mentioned they'll be talking more about you soon. Exposure!
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Feb 18, 2014 22:45
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Deadmeat5150 posted:I see you guys got a nod in this month's PC Gamer. They also mentioned they'll be talking more about you soon. Exposure! We did? Where? EDIT: Ah, a new PC Gamer appeared in our mailbox today and we didn't see it. And inside, a nice paragraph about us! nvining fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 23:57
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nvining posted:We did? Where? It might be PC gamer UK/US (delete as appropriate) if you didn't see it.
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Feb 19, 2014 00:13
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LtSmash posted:Yeah somewhat after I posted I realized that having fishpeople be natives is actually kinda about as bad as you can get. Not only are you bringing technology to the savages but they are literally sub-human. This would be brilliant, the short term benefits of screwing the natives over can be balanced by the later ramifications of all the natives got turned into new fishpeople (or just fed to the tadpoles I guess)
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Feb 19, 2014 00:46
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Bunch more building talk (and ore refining) today. http://www.gaslampgames.com/2014/02/19/modules-and-decoration/ Those are some shiny ingots!
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Feb 19, 2014 22:42
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quote:You can also have multiple carpentry workbenches, and this might be a good idea as each person can only use one carpentry workbench at a time. If you have a particular desire for planks, which are Useful (for instance, for building more carpentry workbenches) 
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Feb 19, 2014 23:18
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Nobody posted today's dev blog? Shame on you all. Edit: Every one of those poems had better end up in the game or I may become Distressed. Deadmeat5150 fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 04:38
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Deadmeat5150 posted:Nobody posted today's dev blog? Shame on you all. You mean the one posted two posts above yours? The existential horrors are really getting to your mind. Might I suggest laudanum?
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Feb 20, 2014 04:52
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StarkRavingMad posted:You mean the one posted two posts above yours? Oh goodness. Yes. I might need some.
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Feb 20, 2014 05:12
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Adding pointless gears, pipes and other industrial parts to just about anything ought to be a manifestation of madness. A combined cradle and band saw, a throne made of hundreds of individual pipe segments, thousands of gears in a bed for an exfoliating sleeping experience... the possibilities are endless. 
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Feb 20, 2014 20:52
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endlessmonotony posted:Adding pointless gears, pipes and other industrial parts to just about anything ought to be a manifestation of madness. Endless isn't the word. The possibilities are countless and unknowable.
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Feb 25, 2014 08:12
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