What is/is there an end game?

[Zootboy400]

After your successful colony is approved by the Federation (Or whatever centralized government there is) a passenger ship is sent to your world to join.  Unfortunately, the ship breaks down, and 3 hopeful new colonists get stranded on yet another world...

New Game + mode.

Rinse and repeat

[Finjinimo]

Perhaps it could be interesting if your colonists each had a personal desire / ambition for the colony. One that could change over time depending on what happened.

Examples might be:

1: Build a spaceship and leave
2: Build a successful colony
3: Join the pirate faction

Your first 3 colonists would all start with number 1. They've just crashed, their desire would be to try and leave. That then is a long term goal you could try for (assuming you want to reach an end-game) or ignore.

As time goes on, if your colonists start having children etc, spending more time in the colony, some of them might want to stay. So their ambition changes to 2: build a successful colony (by meeting certain criteria like population, food in storage, happiness etc).

The idea here is that no matter which you decide to aim for, some members of your colony will probably desire something else. You then get to make a choice on what to strive for.

So even if 9 out of 10 of your colonists desire to leave on a ship, some will want to stay -- that stubborn merc who has nothing to go back to but whom everyone respected decides to stay behind on his own... etc.

So every 'victory' could be a little bitter sweet. I like the idea that even in finishing up a game, I can still imagine the narratives of those who didn't get what they wanted. That even though my game has finished, the narratives of that universe still continue on a little in my head.

[BTAxis]

Unlike many, I find an endgame goal is essential for keeping my interest in a game. If I don't have some ultimate objective to direct my efforts to, I lose interest after a while. I've seen some good ideas for endgame scenarios in this thread, and I hope some of them will eventually be included in the game. Possibly the best way to go about it is to make them opt-in via the storyteller system; after all a lot of people prefer to play without set goals and endings.

[British]

Unlike many, I find an endgame goal is essential for keeping my interest in a game. If I don't have some ultimate objective to direct my efforts to, I lose interest after a while. I've seen some good ideas for endgame scenarios in this thread, and I hope some of them will eventually be included in the game. Possibly the best way to go about it is to make them opt-in via the storyteller system; after all a lot of people prefer to play without set goals and endings.

There's at least one possible ending that is likely to get in:
You'll have the possibility to build a ship.
So if you want an ending, you build it and leave.
If you want to carry on colonizing, then you don't build it.

[DNK]

Most important thing is to make this end-game optional imo, though this assumes that the base game will be complex and open-ended enough to make it worthwhile to continue on.

[British]

Most important thing is to make this end-game optional imo, though this assumes that the base game will be complex and open-ended enough to make it worthwhile to continue on.

Wut ?
Allow me to quote myself (the post right before yours):

So if you want an ending, you build it and leave.
If you want to carry on colonizing, then you don't build it.

How is that *not* optional ?

And I'm not pulling it off thin air, here's what Tynan said on the KS comments, answering to that very question:
"Edward Leighton Bourque III
I absolutely adore this game idea, it looks like so much fun! Just please, if you want to add an endgame, make it completely optional.

Tynan Sylvester
@Edward - Endgame will definitely be optional. After all, I can't force you to build an escape ship.

[Glymner]

It would be cool if you could turn your colony into the port where pirates and other "free spirits" came to spend their cash etc. Sort of like a free harbor. And you would have to defend your port from both internal and external threats of "anti-freedom forces".

[meganothing]

About the spaceship paradox:

Lets assume that there are different ways to get faster than the light. So there might be tech levels that are able to cross to stars in the vicinity (<50 light years) but their method is not practical for greater distances (takes too long, uses too much of some scarce fuel, damaging health effects...). Your home civilization was some tech levels above and could produce ships with a range of more than 500 light years (maybe you even came on a prototype). Since it is a completely different method of hyperspace travel or uses wormholes instead of hyperspace you can't just capture and improve local ships. There is also no contact to your own civilization possible.

You also come in contact with other civilizations of your own tech level, but even for them travelling 500 light years is a mayor undertaking. They won't just transport you there because the round trip would cost them half their lives (or in the case of wormhole travel returning is likely to fail as you yourself found out, crashing on the planet was the best possible outcome of using the worm hole in that direction). Buying a ship from them might eventually be possible but your colony is aware that they can go home much faster if they build the ship themselves.

[Ontogenesis]

What about a 'Reavers' continuation option?
One game ends when you successfully build a ship and escape. Another game starts on the same map with new crashed landlanded colonists - except your old colony is still there and the old members who got left behind have all gone mad. Essentially your old colony is now your enemy, it'd be like playing against yourself.

[Yarkista]

What about a 'Reavers' continuation option?
One game ends when you successfully build a ship and escape. Another game starts on the same map with new crashed landlanded colonists - except your old colony is still there and the old members who got left behind have all gone mad. Essentially your old colony is now your enemy, it'd be like playing against yourself.

So you have all your previous architecture and resources which makes most of the game pointless?

[Ontogenesis]

What about a 'Reavers' continuation option?
One game ends when you successfully build a ship and escape. Another game starts on the same map with new crashed landlanded colonists - except your old colony is still there and the old members who got left behind have all gone mad. Essentially your old colony is now your enemy, it'd be like playing against yourself.

So you have all your previous architecture and resources which makes most of the game pointless?

Well, you wouldn't have ownership over anything so wouldn't be able to use doors or access the gathered resources. Plus they'd be filled with hostile and chaotic survivors. You could also simulate a time gap and cause random heavy damage and structures to all the structures.
The basic idea is playing a post-apocalyptic version of your own previous world.

[Yarkista]

What about a 'Reavers' continuation option?
One game ends when you successfully build a ship and escape. Another game starts on the same map with new crashed landlanded colonists - except your old colony is still there and the old members who got left behind have all gone mad. Essentially your old colony is now your enemy, it'd be like playing against yourself.

So you have all your previous architecture and resources which makes most of the game pointless?

Well, you wouldn't have ownership over anything so wouldn't be able to use doors or access the gathered resources. Plus they'd be filled with hostile and chaotic survivors. You could also simulate a time gap and cause random heavy damage and structures to all the structures.
The basic idea is playing a post-apocalyptic version of your own previous world.

Yea but it could be repaired and then you would have nothing to do, it just seems that it'd be fun for half an hour then become boring.

[AspenShadow]

I think this is being over-complicated a little, games like this were never really designed with an end-game in mind and I hope this one doesn't have an end-game either.

If people want an end-game the viable possibilities I see are:

- If your base has expanded over a certain percentage of map, or have a certain population then you split from them and travel to a different sector of the same planet (that little map isn't all one world) and start anew with 1-3 chosen colonists from your old one.

- If you're being raided mercilessly by pirates and slavers then your base eventually falls and one of your colonists (choose) is kidnapped to be sold and once again has the worst luck to be jettisoned onto a RimWorld when the slavers get in trouble.

- An astronomical disaster (solar wind, sun expansion, black hole, etc.) forces you to vacate your world and colony by building a space-ship. Perhaps not everyone can fit when time's up depending on your effort put in and when you escape to the next RimWorld you have more/less people.

- Your colony has become a galactic hub famed for it's unusual and inspiring beginning, the Galactic Governing Body (GGB) has bestowed you with official recognition and asked that you select three of your best and brightest to start a new colony somewhere else in much the same fashion.

- You have succeeded in creating a great colony, unfortunately others don't see it that way and the GGB come in to take control of your colony for trumped-up charges. You are exiled for your crime to a RimWorld they're positive no-one could survive on... [Possibility of increasingly difficult worlds?]

- The latest Reaver idea was that you'd be incapable of using your old base (as a significant period of time or disaster has passed) and that you'd have to build up a new base from scratch interspersed with attacks from your old-game-colony. Really it's equivalent to starting a new game with an unfriendly high-tech tribe that gives you a sense of nostalgia.

[Ferigad]

I think if i would take a endgame, it would be intressting to get a choice in the end. The possibility of a spaceship to evacuate was discussed several times. But i would like a other way too.

I thought about that. Yes, you could evacuate. But the Universe is cruel and cold. So should you really go out there, back to the chaos where you used to live and the other refugees? Ã'r choose to make a final stand and show the local pirates/raiders that you won´t be a easy target and that you will stay on this world.

Somebody watched Voyager, the episode in the last season where Neelix decides to stay with his people? They make a final stand agains a aggression by deploying a shield-grid to defend themself. I thought about a similar possibility. Instead of investing ressources into a evacutation ship, you invest it in a planet-defense grid of some sort. Like Ground to Orbit defense weapons, a shield-grid or some kind of Sattelite Defense System, a final grand-project to claim the Planet and secure it as a real colony that can beginn to expand into a nation of the galactic community. And while you set up that final defenseline that will secure you from future pirate/mercenary/raider/slaver attacks, they will mount a last and massive offense, a real big one, with troops streaming down like rain to defeat you before you can secure that RimWorld.

At least that would be cool, i think. After that this new Nation could send out Scoutpartys to "new" RimWorlds, because you expanded the core of the Community further, and bam, you are crash again ^^

[Fodd]

(Sorry for the long post - TL;DR - just very excited about the game!)
As an alternative option for “end game” mechanics, (and it depends on how much of a “meta game” Tynan wants in there) but as an option that jumped into my head:

1 - The game runs as is (with all the AI director events, etc) and the player decides to build the “escape ship”, and launches it and off it goes. At this stage, some of the colonists are left behind (and Tynan, I think, has hinted this “left behind” concept is planned to have !!fun!!, potentially even settlement ending, effects).
If the player “completes” this several times (say, 3).

2 - When enough have made their way back to “civilization”, where/whatever that may be, and so the existence of a “viable” human survivor’s enclave is known.  At this point, a MegaCorp of some sort would send an emissary, and set up a deal, either with the colony that launched the 3rd escape ship, or as a triggerable event once a new colony gets to a certain size (if launching an escape ship kills your colony). The deal is for a certain (horrendously large) volume of goods, the MegaCorp will tow a space station core into orbit (or sell the designs to make it). The goal then becomes to get sufficient materials off planet, either just with the one colony, or with several spread over the planet, if Tynan lets you have several active colonies (as saved games) on the same planet. It should probably be difficult for the player (since chasing this metagame mechanic would be done by a player looking for new challenges), so the player needs to “Launch” the goods, instead of having one of the travelling merchants picking it up. So they have to have enough colony development and size to have a basic space industry (and hence being attacked/challenged by appropriate scale/level of baddies). If you need a mechanism/story for this, say it’s because the big Cargo MegaCorp Freighters are run by computer (i.e. no/minimal crew or life support) and are too big/not programmed to enter anywhere near a poorly charted sun’s gravity well. To pick up the MegaCorp cargo, the player needs to get it launched to the edge of the solar system (where the Freighter travels). That would also explain why the travelling merchants won’t pick up passengers for transport back to civilization, cause they can’t get away from the solar system either, they just sell to the Freighters . .

3 - When you, through whatever system, get enough “paid” or delivered into the MegaCorp’s account, they deliver the starting module. The player then has the option to play on a “space station” map, and try to build that up, in that environment, with all that entails (minimal easy-to-aquire resources, food shortages, any power outages would be survival critical, no ability to hide in bomb-proof mountain sides, meteor showers blowing entire sections off/up). Enemies attacking you in orbit would likely bring ships with them, with appropriate levels of fire power.

4 â€" if you somehow survive all that, you can start selecting to send colonists to new (more challenging or different challenging) environments. Feel life is still not challenging enough? Target an ice world (no/minimal light for growing and power). Target a lava world (mineral rich, but no crop growing, no water and everything keeps catching on fire. Any above ground movement will need metal paths built). A planet with toxic gases in the atmosphere (anything above ground keeps breaking all the time, colonists keep getting sick and you’re in constant need of a doctor). Want an extra challenge? Instead of colonists, send political exiles (i.e., no supplies, no tech, no food. Equivalent of a “one pick embark” from dwarf fortress). If you want a reason for the player to be pushed to accept these challenges, say the harder planets have materials needed for starbase expansion (exotic materials for larger power generator, or for a field generator to increase structural strength of station or the weight of its own expansions will tear itself apart, designs from alien tech in a ruin on a planet which will allow a shield to protect against meteor shower). If you want a reason for a “1 pick” mission, say after population gets above a certain point, you start having coups all the time. You need to show authoritive power (get rid of dissidents) but not be a complete bloodthirsty murderous dictator (you need to give them a “chance of success” rather than just execution). So, I guess a “successful” 1 pick colony would effectively be a penal colony? And at that point you start getting more and more dissidents exiled to you.

5 - I guess the next step would then be taking the penal colony residents, and trying to take back over the star base . . ? 

So, if you want to chase an "end-game", then you work your way through the above. And if you want to play on a vanilla planet, just enjoying where the Narrator takes you, then just keep making small colonies on the first planet. The main thing behind the above would be to give a “storyline” reason for the player to be able to push the difficulty (planet/starting equipment). Of course, if Tynan is just planning to give you the option to “Set up game starting parameters manually” right from the start, I guess you don’t really need it  .