Aven Colony is a sci-fi colony-building sim - create humanity's first settlement on an extrasolar world! · By
I noticed at the begning of the missions an animated Rover vehicle.
Any chance of a vehicle factory to allow a research team (Both advanced research and/or advanced nana factory or the likes for manufacture) to wander around the map finding goodies or other associated smaller alien artifacts that are not a necessity as a secondary mission? Something for the player to monitor for extra awards explaining the story line and venturing into areas having them possibly triggering native spawns?
Great idea! I'd be happy if it was just controllable to the point where we could tell it where to go and scan for resources.
You could further add challenge to the game by having some type of "terrain fog-of-war" that needs to be explored and the terrain scanned in some way in order to allow building upon. Then maybe make the rover upgradeable to move faster, further and have new scanning capabilities.
I do like the enhancement ideas you have for the science vehicles too, but not sure about the fog of war as I like the map as it is. The animated vehicles go off screen eventually, but where?
If there were a change I would prefer that idea to be an autonomous function and build a single marine droid barracks or have advanced scrubber droids upto level four that extends the range aswell as an additional drone and have them deployed to fight any nest found within range, thereby stopping the critters at source.
Perhaps your ideas are more suited to the sandbox mode where you could be tasked with destroying all the nests in the areas surrounding your base. Along with setting up camp in another potential location for expansion and doing the same there. Just a thought.
Maybe "fog-of-war" wasn't the best description for what I was imagining, because I do not by any means want the beautiful layout of the land to be hidden from site at any point of the game. Rather I'd basically like to see the resources hidden and need to be found by the rover. Or some other method. Maybe in the begging of the mission there could be a satellite report that iron was found in a section for example. You would then need to explore that area and find that resource. I'd imagine it would be challenging to find something like Zorium before the colonies batteries drained to power an already existing Zorium Plant. I do hope they add more options to sandbox mode. I'd like to be able to set some additional scenario objectives and preset what the base has to begin with.
I do like your idea of being able to upgrade scrubber drones to extend their range and maybe their speed as well.
I think an initial topographical survey for your base area at start had been performed from the mothership in orbit revealing all the mineral deposits. Beyond the original base site (set up area for campaign mode) they could make it a fog of war and your ideas about the survey team abilities would be a wonderful enhancement for the sandbox mode for sure.
However, what the initial survey had missed was the locations of the nests or spawn points for the known native lifeforms and the potential archaeological sites referring to the original Aliens. Little clues or trinkets about those aliens and their way of life would enhance the game and maybe your team might get lucky for you whilst you concentrate on building your setllement.
All missions are optional according to command and you are free to build as you see fit as the governor. What about discovering beyond what is known in the good old fashioned way of exploration? It is in our human nature for the want to discover new things and sometimes that can be a good thing, but equally sometimes it can be a bad thing. We learn from our experiences and move on.
An archaeological or scientific survey team could search out those sites or stumble across one of the native nests and maybe get overwhelmed resulting in them been captured or succumbing to infection. Perhaps you can send a rescue squad to save them or just simply kill the infestation at source after finding your science team all dead?
Let's hope the mothership reads all the chatter going on at some point and gets back to us on snype.
PS. Not saying you have not, but be careful on what you do send over snype as you could be breaking regulations and put on charge for inappropriate behaviour and consequentially having your privilages reduced or worse still removed. I heard about it somewhere.
I think seeking out a nesting site with marine type units (something like Starcraft I'm imagining) would be a lot of fun! I just wonder if it would fit into the scope of the game with the direction it has been developed so far. I would imagine it getting overwhelming to an average player having to control units like that as well as base manage. But maybe you see it in a different light that it wouldn't be overwhelming.
I would really like to see an archeological type unit and can see that being something that would be easy to manage. Discoveries (like the artifact that's in the 3rd mission) would be a great way to introduce new tech into the game.
I'd like to see that advance to the point where it enables tech allowing you to build and launch another colony ship to another planet in a different star system. The reason could be that discoveries found on Aven Prime have told of a race that left it to rebuild on another planet for some reason. Now command wants you to spearhead the construction of a new colony ship (with enhanced tech from discovered alien tech) that will travel to this world. I imagine gameplay would then shift to you needing to build factories to construct certain parts to be taken into orbit to build the new colony ship. There could be a collapsible screen to see the progress of it.
After several missions and the completion of the new ship, its voyage could be a video of the journey as it begins it's trek to another star system to make contact with these aliens. And then this new planet could be the expansion!
That's my fantasy for the games future at least. Regardless I'm having a lot of fun playing it!
Great ideas you have, but i'm not sure if the developers would agree as you already have a mothership in orbit don't forget. No need to build what is already there, just adapt what you have and do it in half the time.
Operational control of the base marines or the archaeological survey team can be an auto function with no need for the player to be involved. You would just need to build a barracks or upgrade the scrubber drones locally to a new level and have some way of having the science team assembled in the first place through an upgrade or a seperate building, Interplanetary research and expeditions I suggest.
This would be a truly optional quest secondary to overall mission and does not detract from the original gameplay for building your settlement, in fact it improves it in some ways. Besides, it would be great to see the marines in action against the plague spores that infiltrate your colony, before they get the chance to infect anyone in their path. Can you imagine what sort of conversation would be had between the survey team and our illustrious science guy onboard the mothership? I can with a wry smile!
Maybe they have already thought of military drones that can be offensive rather than only defensive?
I look forward to seeing what they release on the next update. As you said, regardless i'm having fun playing it!
Now I see what you're saying. That would make for some interesting gameplay. I can imagine then having other threats in the game that could be dealt with by marines or scrubber drones.
One thing about game play so far, up to the current version, is that I'm often left feeling that the challenges faced in missions should come with more repercussions of a sort. I'm not exactly sure what all of them would entail, but I find myself feeling like some game mechanic should have dealt out greater loss for my shortcomings.
Some examples I can think of:
I think even more than this is I'd like to see the end of a mission (where I've built up a colony base) mean something as the game progresses. Hopefully they can work something like that in.
I do agree, but don't shout too loud or they may implement more than you bargained for as this is only the beta version and game mechanics invariably will be tweaked or squashed so as to introduce something new or for general balance.
Have you tried playing on hard or insane level?
I haven't manged to succeed on the later missions on hard level and not even tried insane as yet. Normal is a breeze and challenging is not too difficult. As you can guess i skipped Beginner and easy.
Glad you understood what i meant. I just remember playing a building game of old 'Imperium Romanum' which had the game mechanics similar to what i suggest. The legionary gaurd would defend the settlement from raids and even go out hunting the enemy encampments nearby destroying them, but only if you built the barracks in the first place. I think it was just a button activation on the barracks for them to go sally forth and you could watch the fighting whilst merrily carrying on waiting for a building to be finished. Great fun.
Perhaps they can have a game freeze similar to the onset of winter or a spawn if you have chosen to go for the survey team and barracks as a secondary option allowing for a short clip of the action whether good or bad for the science or military squad, especially small artifacts that enhance the storyline. Probably some sort of conversation would occur at that point with the mothership crew or just the dancing gorilla specialist and the survey team, who knows. Your guess is as good as mine.
Good point. Hopefully they don't do away with mechanics I do like.
I have played 4 of the maps on the hardest level and beaten them but lost a few times. And also didn't bother with beginner or easy. One of the times I lost on the hardest level was when my geothermal power plant was struck by lightning. It was a stupid way to lose. Everything was no longer powered so there was nothing I could do. Sure I could have built a solar panel or 2 ahead of time so then I'd have had just enough power for a drone to repair it, but I didn't. A very non-fun way to lose.
I like to pause the game a lot when I play to assess the situation before I make a decision (wish life worked that way). When I have lost games, it was usually because of poor decisions early in the game when I didn't have a lot of nanites and wasn't producing them.
The last mission, where you need to build the colony in 10 seasons for 1000 colonist, I beat on the highest setting first time I played it. That felt good! I guess that's one of the reasons I want more randomly destructive things to happen in higher settings.
I've never played "Imperium Romanum", I'll have to check it out. I think I'd also like to see the game pause for a survey team if they added something like that. I think it should also pause during the audio driven cut-scenes. It's distracting and everything should just pause after the sound effect they use to start them.
That doesn't sound right, we haven't pushed out an update since Feb 9 - and nobody else has reported losing their saves!
Can you email us at info@mothership-entertainment.com and attach your "Saved" folder? You'll find it inside the AvenColony folder wherever the game is installed. We work hard to make sure nobody loses their saves!
Having all your saves gone gives you more room to fill up now. I jest!
Only had one failure which was recently on the the Hyla's crescent map. Run out of nanites on hard mode, no matter how i tried to fix it either not enough space for people in housing or not enough people to be able to produce enough nanites, ore and feed them. I will try a different strategy than just follow the instructions next time.
Did you take a look at the inset video for the game by Smash Look!? 10 missions apart from the two Holo SIM starters and the last few have been renamed or missing at present. The Tempest and The Unification must be in production.
Well I still look forward to the next instalment and a possible input from the mothership, it seems to be on silent running mode atm.
Well it looks as though my saves have been sabotaged in some strange way possibly. I hope there's a way to get them back. I had 2 sandbox games that I was playing and one of them was to see how much stuff I could build before the game started to slow down. Quite a lot from what I remember!
I swear housing seems to work differently on different maps. That or the concept alludes my brain in some way. I was playing the mission where you need to scan the 3 buildings the other night (on the hardest setting), I had minimal issues with housing penalties and didn't feel like I built any more housing options then I normally do. But most missions I feel like my approval rating is suffering a lot more because I haven't made enough housing for people to live in. I like the system they have for it, I just don't fully understand how the penalty gets calculated.
I haven't checked out that video since before I bought the game. Did they update it? I will try to look at it later. It's hard to watch videos at work until lunch time.
That is a shame. You weren't able to send the info to mothership then?
The housing issue is down to sphere of influence and access for your workers to get places. I found leaving enough tunnels and plenty of housing of all types dotted around so no-one is over extended does the trick. All comes down to enough power generated to be able to do so and enough nanites to build everything to keep them happy and employed, else the VR center seems to keep them happy.
On second thoughts I think I may have been mistaken saying 'Imperium Romanum', i should have said 'Dune battle for arrakis' where it definitely had the Atreides Palace sending out uncontrollable fremen for the player. The Ordos had a useless saboteur and the Harkonnen had an inaccurate ballistic missile called the Death Hand. In priciple the fremen and saboteur were uncontrollable when you activated them whereas the Death Hand was directed by the player, but was as accurate as trying to hit a barn door from 10 miles away with a air rifle, bloody useless.
The video is old in comparison to the latest versions, but is still pretty good and informative none the less.
I did send my saved games folder to them late last night. Afterwards I realized that, for whatever reason, itch installed a second version of Aven in the same location and just threw a 2 on the end of the folder name. Very strange! I'm wondering if for whatever reason it didn't see the previous installation? Or what? So my saves are still alive and well! But my HD space is suffering on my PCI express SDD HD. So I need to manually go in and delete the duplicate game. And I'm thinking I should just leave the newest installation and copy the saves from the old over to the new as that is the one itch sends me to. I was just tired and didn't feel like doing it last night.
What you're saying about the housing makes sense. I figured it had some sort of radius of influence but am wondering if the same sphere looks for a certain # of tunnels in the sphere to calculate how well colonist have access to their housing? Or # of connecting tunnels? Basically I'm wondering if it matters how I build them or just quantity. I can't seem to bring back up the negative numbers I get no matter how many more additional housing projects I implement or how I spread out the population between the housing.
And I guess I'll need to check out both "Imperium Romanum" and "Dune Battle for Arrakis!"
Good to hear you managed to keep your old saves and can continue where you left off.
Which type of housing are you having problems with? If it is the Apartments that are doing it and you have no way of correcting the negative by building other housing near it, then destroy it and make sure you build something larger or upgrade an existing Habitat or Skyscraper that can compensate. Remove the negatives as much as possible and overcome the native adversaries in the process.
Seeing as we have sand worms and we are set only a few hundred years or so in the future, perhaps they are predecessors of Shai-Hulud? Perhaps this planet will be later known as the desert planet Arrakis or Dune? Especially, if they allow us to go find all the nests and kill the native wildlife off except for the worms of course. Maybe quori spice evolves and is used by the Sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit in an attempt to find the kwisatz haderach and also by the spacing guild to fold space? One can only imagine.
I do add Habitats almost every time (and upgrade them) and I continually check the status of the penalty number to see if there is any change in the housing penalty. But I have never seen it go up by more than 1 in a positive direction. =( I've tried adding more tunnels as well but without any improvement still. It actually seems to go in a negative direction slightly a lot of times even though I've gotten my habitats and apartments to have less people in them. And I have tried taking down the apartments after the habitats are up as well. Guess I'll try adding skyscrapers more often where I can to see if that helps as well.
Dune was the first thing I thought of when I first saw the worms as well. Would be pretty cool to see them go that direction with the game. I never got really got into the movie or books but have heard good things.
Have you tried a block or a line of four Apartments together? You can monitor the specific side that is the heaviest burdened and replace them with a Habitat if necessary, especially as they only take up the same area as a footprint and allowing for more people per square. Can't think of anything else to suggest other than decent city planning for the future. You know that already by the sounds of things anyway. I'm sure they'll tweak it up in the mothership if it becomes necessary.
There are several good quotes that come from Frank Herbert's Dune and I recommend reading or seeing the film again but here are just few for now:
A beginning is a time of taking the most delicate of care that the balances are correct.
Never sit with your back to an open or unlocked door.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it.
He who controls the spice controls the universe!
I'll try the line of apartment idea. May have already done that but I'm not certain. Think I'll also just try tearing down and relocating buildings that are in the way and rebuild them elsewhere to make room for more housing. Maybe I'm not doing that enough.
It would be cool if they added a high speed futuristic train that could be built both above and underground. And make it so it could be built through some of the large holes made by the worms (not the ones the worms are actively using of course). But I think it would look really cool to see sections of the train through the holes passing through in a tube. Something like this--> Future Train.
Cool, maybe I'll pick up a Dune book. I've been looking for something new to read.
Nice ideas.
They could even introduce subterranean farming or an industrial mining complex simialr to one of the episodes in Star Trek where the rock eating mother alien that lays her spherical eggs everywhere, but the miners keep destroying them without realising and she defends her future babies the only way she can. Spock mind melds with her and they resolve the conflict with both parties involved benefitting from the new arangement.
A fast track monorail system set in their own tunnel above the existing tunnel network or straight and parallel to a station departure lounge in desired locations. That would give more significance for a marine outfit to move quickly where needed if any infestation occurs.
Hope you enjoy the reading, but please don't let it distract you from the serious matter of playing this game. Mothership values your input i'm pretty sure.
I don't think I've ever seen that episode. But I haven't watched a lot of the original Star Trek Series. Underground farming and mining would be a wonderful addition.
I thought about what a tube mono rail high speed transportation system above the existing tunnels might be like. I think it could look great and be fun to construct but it could be distracting to gameplay. If done right it may not be so bad given that you can change your view in the 3D interface.
I hope they give us better controls over exploring the colonies view. Only being able to toggle through views of the tube sections kinda sucks. I'd like to have a fly through zoom in and out control similar to the Sims 3 when you press "tab". It's great because you can also edit a text doc and adjust the speed and limits of zooming.
I just hope they release the next version soon! Looking forward to checking out the new features.
How soon is soon?
Do I have time to finish the game saves that I have accrued, also are they going to be lost in any future upgrade? My thoughts are that they will be lost, unless you have a way of being able to introduce the upgrades without doing so.
Maybe you can give us a sniff of what to expect or possibly comment on what has been discussed to date? Feedback can be a nice thing to receive and we are certainly fans of the game as you can tell. Does it break protocol?
Nobody has lost any saves when upgrading - we've gone to a lot of effort to make sure that even saves created with the very first beta will still work in the latest version. That hasn't been easy with some of the bugs that we've fixed! The only person who had problems with updating was because of a bug in the itch.io launcher where it installed the game in a different location rather than updating - and so the game couldn't find the saves.
The only thing that we can't guarantee at the moment is that the release version of the game will support saves from the beta versions of the game - we haven't decided on the right course of action yet. There'd be less potential for future bugs if we dropped support for older saves - but so far it's been fine.
As far as what you can expect... well, we've announced the new Expedition system at GDC this week! It allows players to send out expedition vessels to explore the often hostile surface of mankind's new home. Your expedition vessels will rescue lost explorers, repair crashed vessels, confront splinter groups and rebels, destroy deadly creep spore and plague spore nests, explore ruins, recover artifacts, and fight robot guardians left behind by mysterious ancient civilization that once inhabited Aven Prime.
This will be coming in the next update!
Okay, all previous beta games I had participated in I unfortunately did lose the saves each and everytime for a new update. You have managed to put my mind at rest for my existing saved games and it is a welcome surprise.
I would like to think that we had some influence in your descision for the new Expedition system, but probably what is more appropriate is great minds think alike.
I look forward to your next upgrade and thanks for the heads up.
