Holy cats, Skyfire, that was awesome. Much better than the random serial-numbers-filed-off totally-not-Transformers-guys CRPG/MMO setting sketch I came here to post. But, i've never been known for having a sense of shame, so I'm posting it anyway.
- - -
Once, the galaxy was wracked with ceaseless warfare between two factions of an ancient machine race, one dedicated to expansionism and personal gain, the other to conservation of resources and other forms of life. Their battles raged for millions of years and completely consumed their own homeworld along with scarring countless others, and in the end was fought to exhaustion rather than a decisive victory. The few survivors of each side were left scattered to recover from damage and build or salvage whatever they could from the ashes as their skills and abilities would allow, most passing into obscurity as local guardians or warlords, or as hermits hidden away in isolated, covert bolt holes. That was long ago now, and while some of those ancient warriors still persist, the new wave of activity is overwhelmingly made up of organic or uploaded sapients who have adapted the technology of the ancient machines and made it thier own, adopting similar transforming bodies to augment their abiliites and for the utility of transportation. The typical face of the new galactics is an organic humanoid in the range of five to six feet tall with the ability to call on a suit of powered personal armor at need or a robotic humanoid of generally similar dimensions who can assume a less rigid civilian form, either of whom can also call a much larger humanoid form from a personal dimensionally folded space which can transform into a vehicle, robotic creature, or gadget and merge with it.
With the new wave of exploration and travel new factions have formed, though unlike the rigid ideology of the ancient machines it's not unusual to find members of most groups mingling and traveling together, and while changing factions is less common it carries little stigma. The major exception is Malice followers, whose nihilistic and agressive attitudes are more reflective of the worst of the ancients. Members who come around to less fanatical mores tend to join one of the other groups to avoid the stigma of association with murderous barbaric raiders.
Sub-sapient and bordeline-sapient self-replicating cannon fodder units unleashed in the ancient conflict are unfortunately much more common than true survivors, and together with hostile space monsters form the majority of macroform opposition the average adventurer will face without looking for specific trouble, their IFF programming outdated by literal millenia of undirected operation despite the remarkable durability of ancient technology.
The modern factions:
Anima: "The purpose of strength is to secure personal freedom." Anima faction members are less interested in pushing forward any overall agenda than building their personal abilities and exploring the universe. If an opponent is too strong to face, they simply leave and find something else to do, or come back when they have become stronger. Anima characters gain a discount to Speed and skill growth. Their eye glow and faction highlight color is green. As a member, your initial alternate mode will mimic an animal. The Anima faction is ideal for those who favor exploration and stealth play.
Build: "The purpose of strength is to gather resources and create greater prosperity." Build faction members seek resources and the ability to transform them into even more useful and valuable forms. If an enemy is too strong to face, they will hire backup or acquire powerful equipment to even the odds. Build characters gain a bonus to collection and crafting. Their eye glow and faction highlight color is gold. As a member, your initial alternate mode will have a large cargo capacity. The Build faction is ideal for those who favor item collection and support play.
Malice: "The purpose of strength is to destroy all who deny Lord Malice." Malice faction members are interested only in how much destruction they can cause and how many enemies they can slaughter in the name of their dark and mysterious master. If an ememy is too strong to face, they will scream a challenge and let the sound of battle draw more of their fellow zealots to see who can land the killing blow for the glory of Lord Malice. Malice characters gain a bonus to battle salvage and can temporarily command ancient cannon fodder units or make them non-hostile. Their eye glow and faction highlight color is red. As a member, your initial alternate mode will be an obviously tranformed robot with minimal additions to fuction as a vehicle or beast. The Malice faction is ideal for those who favor PvP.
Order: "The purpose of strength is to raise your status and influence." Order faction members seek to raise their position among their fellows, by virtue of personal power and victory in battle as well as by building a following of their own. If an ememy is too strong to face, they will seek a way to ambush or work around them, or send a group of suborinates to weaken them before entering the battle. Order characters gain a discount to Attack and a bonus to building carrier craft. Their eye glow and faction highlight color is violet. As a member, your initial alternate mode will be visibly customized. The Order faction is ideal for those who favor tactical play and crushing opponents with a barrage of firepower.
Sentinel: "The purpose of strength is to safeguard the weak." Sentinel characters believe in protecting innocents and infrastructure, and preserving the rule of law. If an enemy is too strong to face, they will call a group of allies and face them together. Sentinel characters gain a discount to Defense and a bonus to building fortifications. Their eye glow and faction highlight color is cyan. As a member, your initial alternate mode will be able to blend in with normal examples of its type. The Sentinel faction is ideal for those who favor strategic play and weathering assaults to strike back while the enemy is recovering their energy.
Uncommitted: Uncommitted characters are more interested in getting on with their daily life than gathering power, looking for adventure, or advancing an ideology. Their initial alternate forms are civilian vehicles or gadgets, and few will have the motivation or means to rebuild except as part of their job. Their eye glow and faction highlight color is white. Uncommitted characters are mostly encountered as clients or victims, or simple bystanders to incidents that break out in populated areas, but may also be low-level members of local military or police forces where Order and/or Sentinel members don't fill those roles.
- - -
I'm picturing a Kingdom Hearts or TF Armrada video game style action-rpg play format, or the kind of thing you see in the current video game Transformers Devastation during combat with point-buy RPG mechanics for advancement/rebuilds out of battle, with a mostly open world if you can stealth or blitz past the wandering enemies - but with the overall setting being planet-hopping space opera. Procedural generation would be a possibility for planets in general, like if No Man's Sky was an actual game with multiplayer and a plot rather than an overpriced tech demo. The TF
visual aesthetic is what set my mind wandering in this direction in the first place, it's the first game I've honestly seen look like high-quality cel animation, so I'd definitely want to see it duplicated for something like this. Customizable robot forms would also be a must, and beyond mere reskinning and head swaps; this sounds a lot harder than it is though since it's a digital simulation rather than actual toy design - all you have to do is include a few details cuing the alt form(s) and it's no different than the visible weapons and outfits in any other modern 3d game, with the addition of either a few standard transformation schemes on an intermediate model that gets swapped with the player when shifting modes or the ability for advanced players to design true custom transformations using the stock parts and skeletons. The latter would have a high overhead in bandwidth even if transferring animation data is only a matter of a text file with coordinates and timing when you have a hundred or more players in a hub area, though. Microform and macroform interaction would be a thorny question as well, without plot armor ensuring that suddenly appearing macro enemies miss or ignore micro characters until they can suit up and Head On/God On/etc. especially when the faction of edgelord backstabbing PK assholes is given IC justification for existing and also the one that can order swarms of "wild" monsters around due to their patron being one of the few-even-among-survivors Ancient Machines who can supply IFF codes, along with having gotten deep into dark magic since the Old Galactics' Great War fizzled out. I suppose micro characters could just be untargetable, but that still leaves AOE blasts or bombs that should logically splatter anyone not at least armored up and preferably macroformed...
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
- - -
Once, the galaxy was wracked with ceaseless warfare between two factions of an ancient machine race, one dedicated to expansionism and personal gain, the other to conservation of resources and other forms of life. Their battles raged for millions of years and completely consumed their own homeworld along with scarring countless others, and in the end was fought to exhaustion rather than a decisive victory. The few survivors of each side were left scattered to recover from damage and build or salvage whatever they could from the ashes as their skills and abilities would allow, most passing into obscurity as local guardians or warlords, or as hermits hidden away in isolated, covert bolt holes. That was long ago now, and while some of those ancient warriors still persist, the new wave of activity is overwhelmingly made up of organic or uploaded sapients who have adapted the technology of the ancient machines and made it thier own, adopting similar transforming bodies to augment their abiliites and for the utility of transportation. The typical face of the new galactics is an organic humanoid in the range of five to six feet tall with the ability to call on a suit of powered personal armor at need or a robotic humanoid of generally similar dimensions who can assume a less rigid civilian form, either of whom can also call a much larger humanoid form from a personal dimensionally folded space which can transform into a vehicle, robotic creature, or gadget and merge with it.
With the new wave of exploration and travel new factions have formed, though unlike the rigid ideology of the ancient machines it's not unusual to find members of most groups mingling and traveling together, and while changing factions is less common it carries little stigma. The major exception is Malice followers, whose nihilistic and agressive attitudes are more reflective of the worst of the ancients. Members who come around to less fanatical mores tend to join one of the other groups to avoid the stigma of association with murderous barbaric raiders.
Sub-sapient and bordeline-sapient self-replicating cannon fodder units unleashed in the ancient conflict are unfortunately much more common than true survivors, and together with hostile space monsters form the majority of macroform opposition the average adventurer will face without looking for specific trouble, their IFF programming outdated by literal millenia of undirected operation despite the remarkable durability of ancient technology.
The modern factions:
Anima: "The purpose of strength is to secure personal freedom." Anima faction members are less interested in pushing forward any overall agenda than building their personal abilities and exploring the universe. If an opponent is too strong to face, they simply leave and find something else to do, or come back when they have become stronger. Anima characters gain a discount to Speed and skill growth. Their eye glow and faction highlight color is green. As a member, your initial alternate mode will mimic an animal. The Anima faction is ideal for those who favor exploration and stealth play.
Build: "The purpose of strength is to gather resources and create greater prosperity." Build faction members seek resources and the ability to transform them into even more useful and valuable forms. If an enemy is too strong to face, they will hire backup or acquire powerful equipment to even the odds. Build characters gain a bonus to collection and crafting. Their eye glow and faction highlight color is gold. As a member, your initial alternate mode will have a large cargo capacity. The Build faction is ideal for those who favor item collection and support play.
Malice: "The purpose of strength is to destroy all who deny Lord Malice." Malice faction members are interested only in how much destruction they can cause and how many enemies they can slaughter in the name of their dark and mysterious master. If an ememy is too strong to face, they will scream a challenge and let the sound of battle draw more of their fellow zealots to see who can land the killing blow for the glory of Lord Malice. Malice characters gain a bonus to battle salvage and can temporarily command ancient cannon fodder units or make them non-hostile. Their eye glow and faction highlight color is red. As a member, your initial alternate mode will be an obviously tranformed robot with minimal additions to fuction as a vehicle or beast. The Malice faction is ideal for those who favor PvP.
Order: "The purpose of strength is to raise your status and influence." Order faction members seek to raise their position among their fellows, by virtue of personal power and victory in battle as well as by building a following of their own. If an ememy is too strong to face, they will seek a way to ambush or work around them, or send a group of suborinates to weaken them before entering the battle. Order characters gain a discount to Attack and a bonus to building carrier craft. Their eye glow and faction highlight color is violet. As a member, your initial alternate mode will be visibly customized. The Order faction is ideal for those who favor tactical play and crushing opponents with a barrage of firepower.
Sentinel: "The purpose of strength is to safeguard the weak." Sentinel characters believe in protecting innocents and infrastructure, and preserving the rule of law. If an enemy is too strong to face, they will call a group of allies and face them together. Sentinel characters gain a discount to Defense and a bonus to building fortifications. Their eye glow and faction highlight color is cyan. As a member, your initial alternate mode will be able to blend in with normal examples of its type. The Sentinel faction is ideal for those who favor strategic play and weathering assaults to strike back while the enemy is recovering their energy.
Uncommitted: Uncommitted characters are more interested in getting on with their daily life than gathering power, looking for adventure, or advancing an ideology. Their initial alternate forms are civilian vehicles or gadgets, and few will have the motivation or means to rebuild except as part of their job. Their eye glow and faction highlight color is white. Uncommitted characters are mostly encountered as clients or victims, or simple bystanders to incidents that break out in populated areas, but may also be low-level members of local military or police forces where Order and/or Sentinel members don't fill those roles.
- - -
I'm picturing a Kingdom Hearts or TF Armrada video game style action-rpg play format, or the kind of thing you see in the current video game Transformers Devastation during combat with point-buy RPG mechanics for advancement/rebuilds out of battle, with a mostly open world if you can stealth or blitz past the wandering enemies - but with the overall setting being planet-hopping space opera. Procedural generation would be a possibility for planets in general, like if No Man's Sky was an actual game with multiplayer and a plot rather than an overpriced tech demo. The TF
visual aesthetic is what set my mind wandering in this direction in the first place, it's the first game I've honestly seen look like high-quality cel animation, so I'd definitely want to see it duplicated for something like this. Customizable robot forms would also be a must, and beyond mere reskinning and head swaps; this sounds a lot harder than it is though since it's a digital simulation rather than actual toy design - all you have to do is include a few details cuing the alt form(s) and it's no different than the visible weapons and outfits in any other modern 3d game, with the addition of either a few standard transformation schemes on an intermediate model that gets swapped with the player when shifting modes or the ability for advanced players to design true custom transformations using the stock parts and skeletons. The latter would have a high overhead in bandwidth even if transferring animation data is only a matter of a text file with coordinates and timing when you have a hundred or more players in a hub area, though. Microform and macroform interaction would be a thorny question as well, without plot armor ensuring that suddenly appearing macro enemies miss or ignore micro characters until they can suit up and Head On/God On/etc. especially when the faction of edgelord backstabbing PK assholes is given IC justification for existing and also the one that can order swarms of "wild" monsters around due to their patron being one of the few-even-among-survivors Ancient Machines who can supply IFF codes, along with having gotten deep into dark magic since the Old Galactics' Great War fizzled out. I suppose micro characters could just be untargetable, but that still leaves AOE blasts or bombs that should logically splatter anyone not at least armored up and preferably macroformed...--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows