Suggestion: Progressive Stranger Relationships

[Psyra]

This all came to me as a dream last night so I'm whipping it down here in all its unorganized glory before my brain forgets it all. I apologize if it is overly chaotic and sounds like rambling, because, well, it is!

Something that always irked me about the game was the omniscience of the colony, how everyone's names were known in this mysterious planet you just crashed on, how you know upon slamming the prison door shut on someone that just tried to get their murder on with you that they'd make a great colonist, 'cuz you can just magically see their stats, and so on.

Well, this throws a wrench in things and fixes both issues, and to me, it adds a lot of realism and discovery into the game.

- When a faction's traders or raiders first appear to you, they are not specifically named, but instead assigned a moniker based on their visible equipped weapon (if raider) or backstory/possibly social-oriented trait (if trader/friendles). So a group of three raiders may be 'Raider Grenadier', 'Raider Rifleman', and 'Raider Sniper'. A small group of traders from a faction may be 5x 'Friendly Tradesman'. The exception in both cases would be if a faction relation is in the group - they would always be identified normally by name.

- In the case of non-hostiles, friendly interactions between your colonists and the faction would reveal their identities as an 'introduction' social action, once a traveller is introduced to the faction, their names are shown as normal. Perhaps parties could be held while traders/visitors are present that would allow mass introductions. Maybe trade prices could be effected by knowing the visiting trader rather than dealing with someone that could try to stiff you. Continual talking with these friendly factions would also reveal their stats for viewing over time, rather than omnisciently knowing that this guy here is a legendary gardener and melee expert.

- In the case of hostiles, their names would remain unknown until a raider was captured. In addition to the standard do nothing/chat/chat+recruit/release/execution, there would be an option 'Interrogate'. This could have a mild/severe negative effect on other colonists when used, who knows. But instead of merely having a chance to outright recruit someone that was just trying to kill you moments ago, you would go through interrogation sessions where the captured raider would be coerced to offering up information first before being trusted to join the colony. Each session would have a chance of the prisoner volunteering information on their faction, and may be accompanied by minor bruising if the prisoner is of a combative nature (volatile, bloodlust, masochist, etc).

- The first interrogation session would yield the name of the prisoner.

- The second interrogation, his adult backstory title (if available) or child one if a teenager.

- The third, the raider's stats would be discovered.

- The fourth interrogation, the name of one of the bandit faction's raid leaders is revealed. At this point, if another raid is sent from the prisoner's faction, if that leader is part of the raid, he will be marked with a star. Killing the leader outright would have a more pronounced negative morale effect on the raiders. At this point, the prisoner will be considered a traitor to their original faction, and would be unable on his own, if recruited to the colony, cause an attacking group to retreat. (It may be possible that his presense in a defensive position may even anger his once-fellow raiders into being -more- bold)

-The fifth interrogation would potentially enable the prisoner to warn his captors prior to a future raid.

At this point, the 'Chat and Recruit' option would unlock as normal, with those resulting in revealing identities of a few raiders, warning of sieges, etc.

- Continual interrogations/chat and recruit would mostly reveal information of other raiders, but also things like the population of outposts and bandit camps, and other handy advice regarding the other faction. Eventually one of these sessions resulting in final joining of the colony if done by chat + recruit. Or just information until the prisoner escapes or otherwise meets their fate if left to interrogation.

While in interrogation, prisoners with confrontative personalities (volatile, bloodlust, etc) may attempt to assault their warden, starting a fistfight (same as a social fight essentially) until one or the other is incapacitated or killed. If the prisoner succeeds in defeating the warden, it would trigger a jailbreak.

Anyways, that's all I remember, and it honestly sounds fun to me, at least!

Parts of the idea may stifle storytelling, but other parts would expand it. It gives colonists a progressive way of turning prisoners to your faction that seems more logical than a sudden "Okay, I'll join you guys", and adds more logic into the relationship between your colonists and others.

[Ra_silk]

That would be amazing, but then you get the problem of not knowing if a sniper is a dead-eye, or has never laid eyes on a gun before. but cool idea.

+1

[Third_Of_Five]

This actually does make sense. It seems odd that I am able to know all of the health and character stats of every enemy pawn on the map.

[Sylvain07]

Good idea, the omniscience of the colony too strong ...

For prisoners, they should only be questioned and recruited as if nothing had happened. I think there are 2 ways, classic recruitment or muscular interrogation. the action of questioning should increase the difficulty of recruitment.
In addition, a small cell, deprivation of food and drugs should facilitate the interrogation. The information could be of the following nature:
- a hideout (new mission)
- where is hidden a prisoner of our colony
- in which city hides the leader who owns the plans of a module of the spacecraft (to speed up a search) ...
About hidden information, for abilities, I think it's a good idea not to know. For the names of the raiders, it does not seem very useful to hide it. I like the idea of ​​leaders with star (or under leader) who can demoralize their group.
I think that speaking during recruitment is little used. Players want to recruit directly. Also if the abilities are hidden, one could imagine that "to speak" would allow to know information about our prisoner. this action would be easy to do with the same sociability. We would have in the "social" menu information such as: "I love gardening but I'm still a beginner", "I'm a very famous old blacksmith", "I'm nervous and I like to drink"

To go further, I think that the communication console should be worked again to gradually discover the other colonies, build relationships and enrich the story that each player plays.