Scryve: First encounters

from StarControl Forums

I’ve made some comments on the Scryve in the beta feedback thread and read Brad’s response.  I’d like to make a thread to discuss how to make the players’ first encounters with the Scryve hit just the right stride between meaningful threat and winnable battle. My ideas are below, please add your own.

 

So, we’re told the Scryve are thousands of years more advanced than us and they want us dead. Shortly after being told this we encounter a probe that goes down after 2 or 3 shots. A little while later we meet the Scryve proper and are told how insignificant we are.. they can barely tolerate the time they’re wasting talking to us. Then they go down in 5 or 6 shots (might have been more).

 

As I mentioned in my feedback, these encounters play against the dialogue. We are either way more powerful than everyone thought we were (not likely where the story is headed) or the ships we were fighting were the Scryve equivalent of pleasure craft.

 

In Brad’s response he mentions that originally we were to fight a full Scryve cruiser, but it was too hard so they backed it off, admitting it was probably too much. But if we study the issue for a moment I think we can get to a cleaner solution. We want the player to buy into the idea that the Scryve are scary, but we don’t want the first meeting to be Game Over because most players won’t be practised at the controls or even the ship equipment they’ve been handed up to this point. From a story point-of-view, the best ship Star Control can build is on its maiden voyage with an inexperienced crew.. it should be tough - actually impossible - to beat the Scryve.

 

IDEA 1

The simplest option is to scale the danger level of the Scryve to something that loses only because of the one thing our mothership has in spades at this stage: crew (i.e., Hit Points).  In other words, give us an enemy that completely outguns us, but we win anyway because we only have to get in a few good shots to take its hull down.  This works, and should make the player a bit scared to encounter the Scryve in the future, and probably is the easiest to implement, but still comes in at odds with the dialogue we’ve had thus far.  Remember that we’re supposed to believe we CAN’T win, and to make the Scryve the best enemies they can be, we should feel that we SHOULD NOT have won.

 

So, I have two alternate ideas beyond the one I mentioned in the feedback thread (which I dislike relative to the ones I’m posting here).

 

IDEA 2

We get pasted by a proper Scryve cruiser, and when we’re down to our last 10 crew or so, we go back to dialogue where the enemy tells us he’s wasting his time. He dispatches another probe to finish us off, which we must then beat (and we already have, just we have way less HP now).

 

IDEA 3

We get pasted by a proper Scryve cruiser AND LOSE.  Our ship explodes and survivors take escape pods back to Star Control base, where the only other ship in the fleet stands ready to fly. This option means there needs to be some dialogue changes, where the second ship is mentioned (maybe it’s not quite ready at the outset of the game). It may also mean the second ship could be a downgrade of the first. I know it’s been mentioned that the first ship we get to name at the start, but in this scenario it’s better if that ship has been named and we get to name the second one.

 

Anyway, these ideas are, in my opinion, increasingly dialogue consistent with respect to the Scryve threat. I personally like the 2nd idea best, but the 3rd is workable with the right writing. Some people don't like the "supposed to lose" battle scenarios - fair enough - the first option is still better than what we had in the beta.

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Reply #1 from StarControl Forums Top

Problem with Idea 2 and Idea 3, if the Scryve ship gets away then it can inform others of its kind the location of Earth and then there would be an entire fleet heading towards Earth.

An alternative idea would be to have a stronger Scryve ship and if it looks like the player would lose, say 10 or less crew remain, a mysterious spaceship would arrive and destroy the Scryve ship. Though this too would require new dialog, for which it might be too late. 

Reply #2 from StarControl Forums Top

In idea 3 that would indeed be a problem and not worth the amount of story rewriting, I agree. In idea 2 I suppose they might grow curious why the probe they left to finish you off never returned but it’s not an insurmountable problem to explain.

Your idea is similar to the one I suggested in another thread, that they nearly kill you and then experience a weapon failure or something. It’s deus ex machina to the max, but otherwise a workable solution.

The main point is to make the player feel that space is really really dangerous out there. It becomes a big driving force to start improving your ship ASAP.

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Reply #3 from StarControl Forums Top

Hrm.  Since many races are getting different "levels" of ships (finally), we could have the Arliou come in and save the Flagship in a battle saucer or something.   That could be their introduction to us?

Reply #4 from StarControl Forums Top

The current thought is that they should probably be made into a Scryve Scout so that it's more clear to the player that they're dealing with a minor ship.

Reply #5 from StarControl Forums Top

As I mentioned in my feedback, these encounters play against the dialogue. We are either way more powerful than everyone thought we were (not likely where the story is headed) or the ships we were fighting were the Scryve equivalent of pleasure craft.
 

In Brad’s response he mentions that originally we were to fight a full Scryve cruiser, but it was too hard so they backed it off, admitting it was probably too much. But if we study the issue for a moment I think we can get to a cleaner solution. We want the player to buy into the idea that the Scryve are scary, but we don’t want the first meeting to be Game Over because most players won’t be practised at the controls or even the ship equipment they’ve been handed up to this point. From a story point-of-view, the best ship Star Control can build is on its maiden voyage with an inexperienced crew.. it should be tough - actually impossible - to beat the Scryve.

 



I addressed this in my response to Cuore's post about a lack of urgency in the beginning, but I think it's equally relevant to this thread, so I'm gonna repost it here:

I realize that it's probably too close to release to make major changes to this at this point, but how about changing the order? Start with the enemy probe encounter. That could set off the alert and the sense of urgency that's lacking right now. Imagine how everyone would respond if our very first encounter with alien life was a probe informing us that our race's destruction was imminent! Then when the Scryve vessel appears, we could be fighting it when the Tywom show up and save us (getting their ship blasted to the surface of Triton in the process, essentially a double-KO). This would also help us avoid the sense that our ship is better than it is, since we wouldn't be able to defeat the Scryve on our own! We could still fight the first battle with a much slower, weaker ship without dying and having to worry that our game was over before it had really begun.

Reply #6 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 4

The current thought is that they should probably be made into a Scryve Scout so that it's more clear to the player that they're dealing with a minor ship.

Of course this works, but I'd still make it a fight that makes us feel the stakes (Idea 1). If you just rebrand the second enemy as "Scryve Scout" and we win in 5 shots with little damage all that tells us is they were arrogant enough to think a scout could take us, suggesting they have poor judgement. We need to feel in awe that a little scout could bring our flagship so close to disaster.

I'm not oblivious to the challenge: if the scout is too tough then later in the game the Scryve would need to be even tougher. People who have played the fleet battles or have a bit of Star Control experience should be able to win, perhaps easily. If you go the scout route I encourage you to include in the dialogue leading into the battle how they can't be bothered sending a bigger ship after you, again to present the sense of risk of engaging a more serious combat ship later on.

It's your call. You have the bigger picture and we don't, but I think you can't go wrong in laying the groundwork that we should be scared of the Scryve and had best upgrade our equipment as quickly as possible, or avoid future battles.

PS - what happens if the player loses the fight? Game over? Maybe because it's right at the beginning of the game this fight should have a Retry button upon loss so as to limit frustration of having to restore from a previous save. My guess is a lot of players won't have saved the game before the battle, especially because the enemy comes out of nowhere.