Goal Generator + Earth Mission Control

[Marcus Aseth]

Would be cool if some of the "Lonelyness" of the game was trimmed away during the mid to late game, while giving more driving goals to the player.

This could be achieved in a "simple" way: You can research a stronger antenna that enable the player to establish communication back to earth (researched in late mid game).
Now they cannot do anything to help you since you are too far away from home for some reason, but they will still get the opportunity to make something useful out of the player unfortunate situation, by giving you important errands that need to be attended in order to prepare the planet for humanity mass arrival. Give us some meaning to do things

So this Goal Generator could be filled by the developers (and modders) in a modular way with self contained "Goals" that could range from:
"We need a powerful antenna in the middle of the desert" to
"You absolutely need to exterminate this hive and extract resources from the oil deposit in the middle of it" to
"A weapon factory at this coordinates is of paramount strategic importance" to
"We sent you an experimental weapon at this coordinates but there was an error in the coordinates calculation, go there and try and retrieve it" to
"Our long range sensors detected a big wave coming your way guided by an unknown creature we never saw before, you have less than 20 minute to fortify this position!"
and so on.

This means that I could download a pack of 10 "Goals" from a user in the Workshop, a pack of 100 more from another user and all this would just work seamlessly with the "Goals" already created by the developers, so that the "Goal Generator" would just keep picking and spitting Goals at random for me giving me at any run a different play experience and situation. Each playtrough would be it's unique story / sequence of events!
Not only that, but you now don't have to throw away the "launch a missile into orbit" current end goal because that would be just one of the long term "Goals" that the Earth Mission Control could end up asking us to achieve.
If you DON'T do it this way, whatever "long term" goal you choose to replace the current missile launch, over time will become boring and will suffer the same fate of the current missile launch. Probably there cannot be a single goal fit for a sandbox builder game like this, so the answer is to have infinite of them.
This system could really "Snowball" and tireless modders would end up creating packs of thousands of goals over time, I bet!

There are many player that can build for the sake of building but it is important for the developers to acknowledge that many of us need some external "motivational push" from the game, to get us going
Also think to Kerbal Space Program, it has a construction/exploration side but it also has a "contracts" system, can you think of that game without one of the two?! Maybe you can, but it would be a lot less fun and rather plain, in my opinion

Please Devs, acknowledge below you've read this post if you do, even if you don't put this into the game at least I will know that my time writing wasn't totally wasted

[JohnyDL]

This could be super cool for scenario makers and things but in a free play I wouldn't want it so it'd have to be an optional thing

For Multiplayer though I see it having extra uses say as a job board if it can have multiple goals available at a time that are set-able within the game

Map admins get the permissions to set as many goals as they like but regular players don't
Regular players can earn the right to post goals by completing goals the idea being if you complete 10 goals you've probably learned enough about the map that a goal you set will be of benefit to the map, you can have 1 extra active goal at a time for every order of magnitude of goals you complete (so 10->1, 100->2, 1000->3 etc)
Random goals will still appear but me marked low priority (except natural disaster style ones)

I wonder if there's a mod maker that could do this anyway even if it doesn't get into game

[Marcus Aseth]

I agree on the optional thing, which could be as easy as to toggle on/off this "special antenna" (that enable earth communications) from the tech tree.

Though I think is probably a huge system, especially for it to be modular the way I described it and provide the flexibility needed in order to express a huge range of different goals, so I just want to point out I would be interested in this even if it was a separate expansion for the game

[Impatient]

I back that. Though, imo this should only happen once the rocket was launched and the satellite was placed into orbit (which serves as com-link to earth).

Though, there are questions:
Apart from just being occupied, what is the motivation for the player to do received missions? To receive resources? To receive additional technology?

I absolutely like the idea of a goal generator and moddable goals, because it would just add the possibility to add so much more long term motivation other than finding the perfect design for the factory and its production lines.

[Marcus Aseth]

There could be several type of rewards based on the mission type

For instance, there would be random Goals/Event like the one "Our long range sensors detected a big wave coming your way guided by an unknown creature we never saw before, you have less than 20 minute to fortify this position!" that is comparable to a "natural disaster" in other city builder games, you really don't get much saying on it, is just some random sh*t coming your way and you have to deal with it, so put some pressure/panic on the player and makes for an exciting play session since all you worked for (strenghtening your base defenses) get put to the test, and you wouldn't get the "wave head's up" without the Earth Mission Control, because maybe the "unkown creature" ability is to jam your radars, so that adds to the panic in the player

But some other goals type could grant you few "Credits" when completed, that you can spend to call a "Deployment" from Earth Mission Control, this would be special gadgetry produced with the most advanced tech and materials on Earth, thing you cannot build, maybe some kind of "Tesla Coil Tower" that still required the player to hook it up with a BIG source of energy for it to work, maybe a "Base Shield Tower" that when powered by the player project a shielding dome around the base, maybe a super advanced "Hovercraft Tank" with a railgun cannon, maybe the "recipe" for the Railgun bullets (for the tank)!, maybe now you have to pass trough them for the nuclear tech unlock, And so on...

But I strongly disagree with the "launch missile first", there is no point for the player at every run to go trough all that (which take quite some time) just to get to the cool part, this should be unlocked early- mid - game in my opinion, so that the Goals are just are distribuited evenly troughout the whole playtrough and maybe with a difficulty rating, the early one pay less so that you have a long way to go before the super expensive gadgets

And then, put more infamous creatures type that require this kind of super advance tech, just to give further motivation to work toward it

[JohnyDL]

I think the point is actually to fulfil one of the key aspects of bartle's taxonomy that seems to be missing from the single player game

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxpW2ltDNow

The socialite is in effect an ignored player type by having the missions you're in effect simulating inter player comunications and social interaction rather than providing another way of rewarding the achiever archetype (though I admit there's nothing wrong with some reward too but it shouldn't be game breaking maybe a boost token on one of the infinite researches e.g. +10% for 1 hour)

[Marcus Aseth]

I think the point is actually to fulfil one of the key aspects of battle's taxonomy that seems to be missing from the single player game

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxpW2ltDNow

The socialite is in effect an ignored player type by having the missions you're in effect simulating inter player comunications and social interaction rather than providing another way of rewarding the achiever archetype (though I admit there's nothing wrong with some reward too but it shouldn't be game breaking maybe a boost token on one of the infinite researches e.g. +10% for 1 hour)

Interesting video! Apparently I fall in all 4 the categories mentioned at the same time
The Earth Mission Control rewards Achievers because you have Goals, the Goals reward Explorers because you are prompted to go out in a desert to place an antenna or something, the Earth Mission Control reward Socializers because cut some of the lonelyness of the game by giving you a (fake) human contact while you're alone separated from your species, and finally the weaponry and gadgets and waves attack gives the Killers a chance to shine. That would tied up the game pretty neatly in my opinion
The 5th category is "The Builders", but they are already sorted out with this game

[JohnyDL]

I've been devouring all of extra credits it's an interesting series on game design, it's always great when you can point at a five minute segment that fits a discussion or part there of perfectly - I've used their accessibility video a few times already on this website ^_^