Wild ideas

This page may contain spoilers.

• Let there be waves of monsters coming from lower levels to the next upper level at random intervals. Let the waves originate only from levels down to the deepest level where any monster killed by the player. After a wave comes to a level, the monsters mix and the next wave from this level will have monsters of mixed depth. The mixing may be involve monster killing weaklings, mating, forming squads.
• Since we have robot enemies, let there be various AIs for them that mimic what the player does: in opposite direction, with a delay, each action twice, etc. No randomness. For robots this is realistic, for animals and aliens it's not.
• One more plot angle: the threat that aliens or humans can blow up the ship. Depressurizing the ship is not such a big threat, since rooms are then automatically locked and not much air is lost. Neither is disable life support a big threat, since it's distributed, in walls. A big enough explosion is a threat, however. So, perhaps aliens sometimes retreat and don't kill you off nor kill unconscious players, because they fear the autodestruction scenario. For the heroes, they may have doubts about finishing aliens. Perhaps one more game goal, to make sure they don't melt down the reactor. Otherwise ending with blowing the ship up.
• Represent levels as trees, visualize trees as nested rectangles (corresponding to subtrees). This is more realistic for a ship than little rooms and long twisty corridors of roguelikes, because all the space gets used. It naturally produces differently flavoured areas: subtrees, where flavours can be subtly varied at each node (rectangle).
• Human objects are fixed, though some may need identification, but alien objects should be randomly generated. An alien object always starts in a possession of an alien capable of using it fully, so it may take many attempts and a long wait to finally claim a particularly strong object and by that time it's strength won't influence the game balance that much. An example of self-balancing.
• Whenever a hero is incapacitated, the skirmish ends, camera cuts back to the base and some inventory objects are lost (choosing them will be tricky so that, e.g., the heroes don't carry junk to protect valuable object from being lost). Nothing is lost permanently and the particular victorious band of monsters keeps its equipment (and perhaps gain some from the players) and roams the dungeon close by. If no monster remains nearby, the party may similarly warp back to the base, gathering all loot from the immediate area automatically. Determining if there are any monsters nearby may be the only function of the sense of hearing.
• The aliens write a letter (a suicide letter, say) pretending one of the humans wrote it. But the Contact is still weak, so they write it in Classical Greek instead of English.
• DIY weapons ideas: firethrower (alcohol/petrol/what else?, need to be distilled/obtained somehow), pressured air crossbow, Molotov's cocktail, pipe cut diagonally at the end, sharpened triangle sheet of steel, electric arc powered by battery; some DIY weapons may need electric current and if taken from the spaceship's electrical circuit, the cable reduces the range and some rooms don't have electricity or it's turned off during combat; if from batteries, they run off.
• when including police and army into the fray, remember about the trend to privatize these services (so mercenaries) and use of remote-controlled or semi-autonomous robots;
• while Earth is stagnant, the rest of the solar system is akin to the Wild west. The Moon and the Asteroid Belt are more densely populated so are more like Mexican border or East Cost, but the rest is so sparsely populated that not many social problems emerge that would require the intervention of states or complex organization and people generally self-organize successfully. It may also be a bit similar to the beginnings of the crude oil industry or the Internet industry, where there is plenty of opportunities, not much competition and the states don't yet know what to ban and what to allow, so it's mostly self-regulated. So, the rockets and life support must become cheap, concessions for exploration and extraction in space must be cheap or not needed, e.g., due to undefined jurisdiction. Little space crime/piracy (outside Moon/Asteroid Belt), since if you can afford the equipment and withstand the discomfort of space travel, then running a normal space business is easy and as lucrative.
• more about the stagnant Earth: megacorporations more powerful than most (all?) states; territories leased from other countries and mercenaries let states act unofficially and flexibly almost as much as corporations can, which makes restricting free speech and other rights easier. anyway, popular, mass culture and news sources are mostly globalised and, regardless, concentrated in a few hands and so totally dominated by official optimism, political correctness and cheap comfort. Officially you can become a millioner or a president, in reality, on Earth it's almost impossible due to taxation, regulations and long ago divided spheres of economic influence. New unemployment, due in part to computers and robots, is fought mostly by creating fictional jobs in administration, but also contributes to widening sphere of hereditary unemployment. Governmental stipends, TV, computer games and local social life keep permanently unemployed people entertained.
• let there be no aliens, but a Von Newman's probe that is programmed to initiate Contact at all costs and produces alien robots, warps local robots and animals, to obtain the goal. BTW, some robots may be programmed to pretend being aliens or humans or even not to know they are robots. This explains why the enemies are different every game, explains why the evil mastermind is not easy to understand and a bit stupid sometimes, avoids showing aliens, which would undermines the horror and require lots of work to be believable and communicable at the same time. The probe will also try to match its creations to humans, which explains why they are not that original and sometimes even vaguely humanoid.
• turbulent movement: when enough mass is moved from one level to another (research the physics!), let the ship's movement become turbulent, resulting in moving every actor one step in a d direction, each k steps. The pattern can be changed by redistributing mass. AI helpless. Perhaps make a bit random or complex, not to be overused by micromanagement. Perhaps use to limit movement of mass between levels.
• an idea from 7DRL Rook: sometimes, when a move would get a character incapacitated, let him slip instead, or otherwise fumble, or perhaps experience an alien intervention through ship's tumble forces or the light being switched off, a small animal/robot jumping down from the ceiling
• steal stuff from kusemono by Oohara Yuuma. We already share things by coincidence, e.g., digital FOV with recursive shadowcasting, peeking into other levels in examine mode, repeating a key cancels command, monsters remembering last visible hero position. Compare those and steal perhaps monster sight, its visualization by cardinal direction lines originating at heroes, heard monsters denoted by ?, monster attitudes, monsters sharing heroes positions, stabbing.
• add elements of minesweeper, but for building things instead of discovering mines, with hard difficulty, but when stepping on the "mine" only wastes some time, not destroys anything.
• avoid everything in http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=293417
• justify the significant role of state (and state police), despite the power of corporations, by mentioning that all banks went bankrupt during an economic crisis and were nationalized, so the state manages the money and takes the profits from that activity. No need to go into the details about the scale of underground banking, etc.
• not so wild an idea: keep checking that we adhere to most principles of http://www.incursion-roguelike.org/TechPaper%20%28Web%20Version%29.htm
• when the player loses and starts again, let's maintain continuity, let's hint a similar ship (perhaps the same) is found by somebody and sold (again). Give the player an option to buy it (the interior transformations of the ship will be maintained, with some stronger monsters to compensate) or ignore it and in the latter case offer a ship at a later date, completely reset (either the interior was rebuilt or it's a new ship, just very similar).
• have temporary health boosts, where the over-100% HP runs off over time. This increases pacing without hard, cramping time limits (such as tight food counters, etc.) and also the period is a nice all-out combat period, where you don't care about taking lots of damage, as long as you can dish out a lot, too. In other periods reward stealth and sniping, rather.
• introduce infravision, noctovision (not only warm-blooded creatures, but does not detect immobile creatures), perhaps different sight ranges (but is it KISS?); introduce light sources that give increased viewing range in darkness but make their user fully visible despite darkness (but is it KISS? would it provoke constant inventory manipulation?)
• consider this (and other articles from the series): http://dankline.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-rema-model-part-4-experiment-games
• somewhere have an over-the-top cover or start screen, or something, perfectly rendered in 3D with real 3D terrain, with lots of particles and lightning effects, dashing heroes with sparkling teeth, swinging on a rope with a rescued heroine, etc., for a wonderful contrast with the ASCII or abstract tiles graphics of the actual game
• explore the dungeon to the east (right), at least in the first couple of levels. Make breaking through to the western (left) side costly, unless the whole level is traversed, wrapping around close to the starting place (the ship is a fat disc, levels are toroidal). A HUD pane on the left 1/10th of the screen then makes sense visually and to avoid misclicks.
• an idea from FTL: have attacks that don't subtract HP, but only disable movement or attacks or vision or evasion, etc.
• simulate the ecosystem a bit: when the player hunts game for food, let predators grow hungry and aggresive, when the player hunts down predators, let pests multiply, etc.
• start the campaign with 2 tutorial skirmishes that at most affect the flavour of the subsequent campaign, perhaps are a way to set difficulty level, but do not give exp or items. Let the first skirmish be 1 on 1 sparring with a friend, then they go to a bar and meet the other characters. In the bar, they hear the rumour about the starship, but they have to wait to see it, so they invite the whole party to a training when they cooperatively fight another group. Then they go together to see and buy the starship and only then the campaign starts.
• have the flavour of managing disaster: let many things go wrong at once during an alien raid, regular combat, sabotage behind the lines, kidnapping, fire, flood, hull puncture, etc.. Cause some of those things yourself to mitigate others. wait for some to pass, but take huge damage to quell others in time. Be careful to keep preparations relevant: even if you have to abandon your fortifications this time, let them be useful next time you reconquer the site or you fall back to the site.
• mention in passing missions to haul asteroids to various planet and moon orbits: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2013/01/04/asteroid-may-become-moon-for-earths-moon/#.UOf09dG5ff0
• diary of an NPC -- when AI is good enough, show commented game videos from an AI actor's POV.
• anything can be broken down and used to build other things; you break things down under enenmy fire and carry it to your base.
• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.games.roguelike.development/9leesIK3ijg/discussion
• ideas from a certain masterpiece space rougelike-like: 1. Weapon upgrades balanced by power requirements; perhaps do even more, let upgrades cost power even if not used? anyway, have constant power for enemies of a given level and roll only upgrades; unlucky roll does not create an uber-powerful enemy; this is a problem even for RL, because the enemy may guard the exit or main treasure of the level, etc., so frustration if has to be fleed from. 2. Back to begining: battle during a solar flare, etc. reduced power, but opponent also reduced; gameplay like at the start of the game, with a twist. 3. Different modes of play: various handicaps to all players (like a solar flare), enemy shoots down missiles, enemy has huge shields, etc. balance through either enemy also hampered or via enemy having to spend power on stuff.
• let the tutorial skirmish level be a bar fight? more of non-lethal fights?