Thanqol Learns To Draw Six: Stealing Time

[Thanqol]

Chapter: The Golden Ring
Imperial Fists successors
Homeworld: Forgeworld Draupnir (Ringworld)
Speciality: Hostile Industrial Environment Operations

The Golden Ring are a garrison duty force, seconded to command of the Adeptus Mechanicus to guard one of their irreplaceable prizes: Draupnir. Draupnir is a system spanning Ringworld, a wholly artificial structure and pure relic from humanity's Dark Age of Technology. Like most things from the Dark Age, Draupnir is falling apart and nobody quite knows how to maintain it. The Mechanicus have already salvaged huge sections of the Ringworld - about 25% of its total mass - to construct starships to fulfil the Imperium's quotas.

If you said that garrison duty was a waste of Space Marine talents, you'd be right. If you wondered about the social implications of having a cast of genetically enhanced super soldiers recruiting from the very territory they were defending you'd have a good question. The Golden Ring as an order is deeply politically compromised and many more traditional Chapters would be horrified at the sheer crossover between the Ring's leadership and political authority on Draupnir. They still get fighting done but the role is far closer to a traditional feudal knight than the monastic structures of many of the other chapters. This naturally exposes the Golden Ring to all kinds of heresy and deep codex noncompliance which is one of those things that is politely not talked about in much the same way as the 'eccentricities' of radical Inquisitors isn't openly discussed.

The Golden Ring ultimately is an auxiliary wing of the Mechanicus and answer to the Forgemaster in all things. Their allegiance to the Mechanicus is shown by their red weaponry. For a force comprising primarily of nobles their armour is surprisingly rusted and unpainted - and this is less because they don't appreciate some bright colour and more because they're primarily deployed to extremely toxic and uninhabitable areas that would kill ordinary soldiers through exposure, and this corrodes their paint so rapidly that they've made a virtue out of brutal simplicity. Society adjusted its trends to adapt and the exposed metal look is very 'in' as a result.

As a chapter they're deeply under-equipped and are totally incapable of independent operations without Mechanicus logistics and heavy support.

INTERCESSOR SQUAD 01: Moscow Squad

Sargent Hamlin, "Frowner": Sgt. Hamlin was previously an Arbite Prosecutor before saving enough money to purchase his commission into the Ring and gene-seed upgrade into an Astartes. He's an extremely by-the-book officer with a reputation for instilling discipline and keeping his men alive, and is frequently assigned both misfits and figures of importance as a result. Has a weakness for purity seals and collects them off dead bodies.

Brother Stukov, "Wings": Brother Stukov's life ambition was to be an Inceptor pilot - the jetpack-equipped assault elites. He trained for weeks, catching lifts on every shuttle pod and observing every technicality of piloting. One day he had the chance to prove himself - he was to make a low orbit planetary insertion and take and hold a starport terminal building while support arrived. A cakewalk mission, no way to mess it up.

Brother Stukov messed it up. He landed on the starport, sure, but his subsequent out of control jetpack roll sent him careening miles down through the adjoining hive streets impacting on every hard surface between there and a major noble's private residence. Brother Stukov walked out of that ruined mansion without a scratch but certainly without an Inceptor's wings.

[I dropped Brother Stukov while painting and he rolled clean across the room without so much as a chip on his paint]

Brother Rostary, "Featherweight": The seventh in the line of succession to the Royal Throne, Brother Rostary is afforded the honour of wearing a gold-plated armour piece. Brother Rostary is roundly mocked by his fellows after it got out he wrote salacious self-insert romance novels where powerful women would sweep him off his feet.

Sister Archibald, "Fixture": Sister Archibald is the only surviving original member of Moscow Squad since it's forming 180 years ago. She's old and grumpy and complains about everything but she knows the tunnels of Draupnir like the back of her hand. Has a gambling problem and moonlights as an enforcer for a criminal gang. The squad covers for her because she can smuggle anything past Hamlin. Sister Archibald's most prolific grumbling concerns her bionic hand which has a tendency to detach from her wrist.

Brother Martok, "Crazy Eyes": Martok is an inbred lunatic who is an Astartes because his family decided to see if gene seed augmentation would fix his craziness. The answer: Nope! He's the team's quickest draw and best shot and he says he's killing for the Emperor so arguably he's found his calling in life - Hamlin just makes sure to minimize his interactions with the public.

[Madcrafter]

Them marines are looking pretty fly.

They still missing their chapter sigils or can I just not see those?

[Thanqol]

Them marines are looking pretty fly.

They still missing their chapter sigils or can I just not see those?

Missing! I have no idea how to do transfers yet, and I'd need to figure out a design, see if anything else is close, etc. I'm thinking a 3/4 ring for the symbol, like a c rotated 200 degrees, with a few fragmentary lines.

I'd like to give them sequential numbers on one shoulderpad and a chapter icon on the other. It's super fine detail work though and so I'm going to hold off until I've got a better understanding.

[Thanqol]

Trip report:

Day 2227: Painted an entire second Intercessor squad. Nothing remarkable except I, uh, did not get the skin 100%.
Day 2228: Painted a single Lieutenant model. For the lieutenant I flipped the silver/bronze scheme, it looks pretty good. I did better with the skin but the overall colouring was a bit too close to his armour scheme so it's still a learning experience. Skin is hard, I'll be glad when I switch to the cyborgs I'll never have to do it again.

With the lieutenant I found that doing all the flats first and then applying the shades across the board was much better than doing and shading each piece individually. It cuts down immensely on mistakes if you can just fix up a base paint without having to go through a second round of shading.

Next up is the Hellblasters. I'm intending to do them with extremely bright version of the same scheme so they're all new and shiny - on account of plasma weapons being essentially suicide guns so there's probably high squad turnover. I'm going to try doing the plasma glow in green rather than the traditional blue - although I have been tempted by the concept of yellow weapon highlights they'll probably work better when I get an orange to pair and work with the admech.

I'm learning a huge amount about brushes, paint thickness and consistency, and the general practicalities of working with physical paints. But I love it! I've done nothing but paint during any of my free time for three days and I'm in an absolutely arty mood. I'm constantly going over colour schemes, variations and paint wishlists. It's enormous fun, art hasn't been this exciting for me in ages.

[TheAmishPirate]

I think I've hit a turning point in the Bonus System. Most of the remaining countries use variants of what I've already built, meaning that the average time to complete them is less than five minutes apiece. Apart from one country whose Bonus I decided to punt until other features were updated, I burned through the Middle East in about an hour today. That just leaves Central Asia, and South America. (Africa has been straight up burgled from the world map, and a daring raid to recover it will be launched in a future milestone.)

Replies to MARINES IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE coming later. I missed a few updates there.

[Thanqol]

Day 2229: Interlude due to HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS, did not get much done
Day 2230: Painted the other Lieutenant, did much better than the first one, and one of the Hellblasters to try and get my head around plasma glow effects. IT IS HARD AND I DID NOT FIGURE IT OUT
Day 2231: Painted the rest of the Hellblasters. Every plasma effect was slightly different and I didn't get any of them completely satisfactory. Went on to paint a single Chaos marine in a kickass blue/gold scheme (like a tainted Ultramarine) to see if I could get the plasma effect working there. I'll need some other colours but it's not a disaster yet! Also did a single Poxwalker to try out a green cloak colour and dang it worked out nicely.

I previously didn't pay much attention to Chaos as a faction but, dang - their models are really fun to paint and I can see why people play them.

At the moment I've done 17 marines and 2 chaos mans over the course of the week and I am absolutely loving everything about this hobby.

[Anarion]

Day 2229: Interlude due to HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS, did not get much done

Who are you and what have you done with Thanqol?

Also, yeah, I never really figured out the glow effect. People have told me the trick is several layers of progressive highlights to create a very bright pop out visual with it. A little white dot at the very top (of each coil in this case) also helps with anything that has a light effect, and works well for gemstones too.

[Thanqol]

Who are you and what have you done with Thanqol?

Maybe this will sound Thanqolish to you: After getting super excited about my shiny new game I successfully talked my girlfriend into giving a try, walked her through the mechanics and played a game with her, and now she's interested in it too.

I swear to Celestia I couldn't think of a more turpulent thing that I could do than exactly that.

Also, yeah, I never really figured out the glow effect. People have told me the trick is several layers of progressive highlights to create a very bright pop out visual with it. A little white dot at the very top (of each coil in this case) also helps with anything that has a light effect, and works well for gemstones too.

So I understand the theory, the practice of properly hitting the incredibly finely raised indents is what's tricky.

[Thanqol]

Check out my mans

Mostly completed Spcheche Machrinerczers

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AND NOW... FOR KAOS

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[Thanqol]

Day 2232: Most of those Chaos duders were done.
Day 2233: Doing more Chaos dudes - did a tainted Dark Angel and a Space Wolf and holy crap. Every mini I do is visually better than the ones before and it's not like the first ones I did were bad by any measure! I love this hobby!

I'm actually finding myself enjoying doing these chaos guys so much I'm seriously reconsidering my plan to do AdMech next. The lack of uniformity just makes it a joy to figure out how to approach each model.

[Thanqol]

2236: The Multicoloured Mans

My chaos mans are done. My 2006 camera does not do it justice, but trust me, I've been over these guys with a magnifying glass literally, they look amazing.

http://imgur.com/yyfZ6Uo

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[TheAmishPirate]

A couple of Bonus-related questions:

-Afghanistan doesn't have a Tier 3 Bonus

-Myanmar is missing from the list completely, was it removed as a country?

Regional Bank: Linked countries cannot drop below Tier 2.

Does this automatically raise Countries that are at Tier 1 to Tier 2? If so, what happens when this Bonus is removed/deactivated?

Trade Hegemon: All trade links may be international

And the winner for sleeper nightmare "oh sweet mercy this breaks everything" Bonus goes to...this guy!

Right now, influence links through a Port are distinct from normal influence links. Each country has a max of, say, 3 normal influence links, and if they have a Port, they get 1 extra link that must be a Port link. There are Technology traits and Bonuses that (separately) tweak the number of maximum Port links and the number of maximum standard links.

This Bonus says that they are now, for this Country, no longer distinct. This introduces all sorts of weirdness and non-obvious behaviors. For instance, you'd think that giving this country +Max Port Link Technology would be a good thing, right? Well, that technology actually affects the base number of maximum Port Links, which is still 1. You're probably only going to get one extra influence link out of that. Conversely, if you apply +Max Influence Links Technology to this Country, you'll get an extra 2-3 links, because the base number of standard influence links is 3.

Rather than work out some complex way to kneecap the existing system, I propose we either add a bunch of port links to the country, or add a bunch of port links at the cost of standard links.

Milestone likely coming tomorrow.

2236: The Multicoloured Mans

My chaos mans are done. My 2006 camera does not do it justice, but trust me, I've been over these guys with a magnifying glass literally, they look amazing.

http://imgur.com/yyfZ6Uo

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These are coming along great! That's a heck of a lot of detail I can see, even from this distance.

[Thanqol]

A couple of Bonus-related questions:

-Afghanistan doesn't have a Tier 3 Bonus

Oh, derp. How about:

Silk Road: Gain an influence link to China and Turkey

-Myanmar is missing from the list completely, was it removed as a country?

Yeah Central Asia didn't need five countries.

Does this automatically raise Countries that are at Tier 1 to Tier 2? If so, what happens when this Bonus is removed/deactivated?

Yeah I think their 'actual' development level stays where it is but they're treated as being T2 while the link is active. So if the link is severed or a superweapon goes off then the entire regional economy collapses!

Rather than work out some complex way to kneecap the existing system, I propose we either add a bunch of port links to the country, or add a bunch of port links at the cost of standard links.

Sounds sane. Remove 2 links add 2 extra ports.

These are coming along great! That's a heck of a lot of detail I can see, even from this distance.

I'm throwin' em down against a friend's army on Sunday and I intend to crush the fool.

[TheAmishPirate]

Oh, derp. How about:

Silk Road: Gain an influence link to China and Turkey

Iiiiiiinteresting. Is this a link that can be broken, or is it permanent?

Yeah Central Asia didn't need five countries.

Sweet deal. At some point, we'll have to go through the adjacency list and make sure everything is squared away.

Yeah I think their 'actual' development level stays where it is but they're treated as being T2 while the link is active. So if the link is severed or a superweapon goes off then the entire regional economy collapses!

oh cool it's the difficult timeline

In all seriousness, I think I may know how to make that work. Just will require a bit of fakery on my part.

Sounds sane. Remove 2 links add 2 extra ports.

This, however, is super easy and does wonders for my sanity.

I'm throwin' em down against a friend's army on Sunday and I intend to crush the fool.

Bring back war stories!

[Thanqol]

Iiiiiiinteresting. Is this a link that can be broken, or is it permanent?

Permanent I think, adds a point of weakness to Turkey which can ordinarily manage its links.

Bring back war stories!

I am in A Pickle because I'll be going up against a thought out Imperial Guard army with my starter box units - and added to that my list is pretty much 100% melee, so I gun get rekt on the advance. I'm intending to essentially form a giant wall of zombies and shove them down the centre to soak hits for my valuable units racing up behind them. I am relying 100% on my Psyker to kill tanks because it's the only thing other than my general that can reliably pierce heavy armour. The other big variable will be if there's enough cover for my bloat drone to get across the field safely - it is a big fragile target but it'll be murder if it can close to melee.

It'll be tough, but my plan is good I think.

[TheAmishPirate]

Almost - almost! - done with this Milestone. I just need to add the new Silk Road bonus, clean up some debug things, and I think I should be good. Expect a big honking demo next Thursday.

[Thanqol]

Finished painting the last Chaos mini today. Only five minis left, all Marines, out of an original total of fifty six. Over the course of the past month I have basically been painting non stop virtually every hour of every day I can. My sleep suffered, my health has suffered, my finances are in tatters, but by Celestia's beard what I have done looks amazing. I've learned so much. Never at any point in the course of these many Drawthreads have I worked so hard for so long and seen such rapid improvement. I'm proud, and I'm elated. This is the final manifestation of a dream I've carried since I was six and it's just as good as it was in the dream. And tomorrow I get to go and put my beautifully painted mans down on a table and then immediately take them off the table when artillery shells hit them.

It's everything I hoped it would be.

I'm going to take it easy for a while now. I'm behind on everything and all I've been able to think about for the past month was paint. I'll start bringing it back up to a level where it's in balance with the rest of my life. At the end of the day this is The Hobby and this is why I named myself Thanqol so many years ago.

[Thanqol]

Day 2239: Victorious Vectorum

Take a look at THE WINNING TEAM

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It wasn't even close, really.

Turn 1 I teleported in my Lord of Contagion - and he got lit up by literally the entire Guard army. Eventually there were so many lasgun shots layered on top of each other that he just melted into slag. But then my Poxwalkers hit their charge and things turned around.

I finished painting the Poxwalkers this morning and was expecting them to just be bullet catchers, but I actually pulled off a master class charge and managed to drag three of his guard squads and a tank into a huge brawl. And it turns out that getting into a fight with a bunch of Guard troopers is exactly what Poxwalkers are good at. They were the ultimate tarpit because every round they'd lose five models and then get four back (each time they kill something they get another Poxwalker). It is no exaggeration to say these bastards won me the game.

Bell guy looks awesome and all but he has literally nothing going for him other than helping the Poxwalkers advance. The Psyker is in the Shame Zone after being eaten alive by Perils of the Warp on turn two. The Plague Marines were entirely serviceable - and made it through the battle without a scratch.

Oh, and the Bloat Drone. The Celestia-damned Bloat Drone. This guy was the MVP. He drifted down the side and on turn 1 killed an entire Heavy Weapons Squad, turn two he killed the entire enemy command squad and murdered the commander, then he floated back over and blew up an entire infantry squad. I gave it the left flank expecting it to tie them down for a bit but instead it murdered everything on that half of the table including the enemy HQ. Turns out it's p good against infantry. He was only stopped from killing by running out of targets.

My Chaos Mans have done me good. I dedicated a month of love and care to them and they have rewarded me with victory on their first trip out of the house. Shine on you disgusting diamonds.

[TheAmishPirate]

*a hand claws through the gravedirt*

I liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiive

And I have a milestooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooone

Spoiler: Developing Bonuses

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This is the biggest milestone I've done yet. Lots of content to poke at in this one.

• Countries now have a Development Level from 1 to 3. It can be seen in the Country's UI.
• Executives now have the Development Aid action. It increases the Development Level of the Country they are currently in.
• Nanotechnology has a trait to increase the effectiveness of Development Aid.
• Bonuses
• Bonuses
• There are so many Bonuses
• You can view the Bonuses a Country has by clicking on the View Bonuses button in the Country UI. Faded out text represents inactive Bonuses, bolded text represents active Bonuses.

You'll note that many Countries don't have a Bonus for each tier. That's because there are some systems that need reworking (movement, Insurgency) and some systems that need to be built (Global Warming) and so all Bonuses tied to them have not been implemented.

You'll also note that Africa continues to be absent. We are tracking down the perpetrators as we speak, and will kindly request they cease bogarting the continent at once.

(The Balkans are still in time out for that whole Franz Ferdinand situation. They will return - sans dessert - when their sentence has been served.)

While Thanqol hashes out the particulars of the Global Warming system, I'm going to move on to the Crisis system. Intentionally aiming low for this one; my goal is to interrupt play at appropriate intervals, and throw up some dialogue trees that don't actually do anything.

[Thanqol]

Warhams Report: Took the Golden Ring mariners to a game yesterday against my buddy's Imperial Guard. It was tight!

The mission was a supply cache recovery, so there was only one objective that mattered. I got to it first and set up my fire team in the building as an endless swarm of Guard infantry poured into a vast pounding slugfest.

Lesson for the day: holy crap Marines are tough. Moscow Squad held the line against 40+ guardsmen single handed, without support from either the captain or the LTs. The Inceptors of Ural Squad did work, mopping up nearly 20 guardsmen for their three models, but then they caught a bunch of Sentinel Autocannons to the face. Lieutenant Parisian punched out six heavy weapons emplacements by himself before realizing that now he was standing alone in the open in the middle of a Guard army.

It came down to the wire. Moscow and Minsk squads were down to two men, my only heavy support had arrived on the wrong end of the table and were slugging their damn way across the board killing everything in their path. But then on the final turn the dude drove his two surviving tanks directly into the building, had their crews climb out, grab the objective and throw it into the back of the Valkyrie Shuttle - his two tanks and the Valk were 3 models to my two marines standing on the point which meant that he won control barely and just managed to escape with the loot.

Game is good. Starting on painting robbits.

[Thanqol]

Day 2248: Robbits

Here's where we at with robbits

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[TheAmishPirate]

Man, you remember when milestones came once a week-ish? Those were good times.

Spoiler: Now with 25% more TALKING

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Not a very big milestone this time around. After turn 3, a dialogue box pops up, and you go through a rudimentary dialogue tree. None of the options actually have any gameplay effects, that comes with the next milestone.

Day 2248: Robbits

Here's where we at with robbits

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Good robbits! I like the variation between the outer metal plating and the inner bits.

[TheAmishPirate]

I'm running into holes in the Crisis dialogue design. Specifications are vague on the following:

• The player alternates between picking red and blue options. Does this just get them nothing?
• Is there still a red/blue/white option, regardless of which option is picked previously?
• The player picks primarily white options. Is this is a fixed result, or does this randomize? (My vote is fixed result. Dialogue trees with random results are bad.)
• Will the red/blue/white option change depending on which Mr. Johnson you're facing?

I'm going to give this some thoughts myself, but what did you have in mind?

EDIT: After pacing about for a bit, here is how I envision it:

Imagine you have two buckets; a red bucket, and a blue bucket. Over the course of the Crisis negotiations, you will be filling up these buckets based on your responses. Blue answers will fill up the blue bucket, red answers will fill up the red bucket, and white answers are wild cards; they can fill up one bucket, both buckets, or neither bucket. At the end of negotiations, we look at the buckets. If the blue bucket is sufficiently filled, you get some advantage in board position. If the red bucket is sufficiently filled, you get information on Mr. Johnson.

I'm thinking that negotiation results may not be a binary "reward/no reward" thing. Perhaps each bucket has different levels of fullness, and the quality of your reward depends on how full the bucket is. For instance, if a player hops back and forth between red and blue answers, they might fill both buckets halfway, and their rewards are halved as a result. Maybe they get only a bit of board position, and only one profile is knocked off the list. This would make branches with differing depths more difficult to balance, as the player would have more opportunities to fill either bucket, but that's an issue of implementation rather than design.

EDIT 2: I'm getting looming dread on the design of the dialogue tree itself. Specifically, how we can format this data in such a way that it's easy for us to manipulate and visualize what it will do. It's too big a thing to worry about for the prototype stage, but it's going to be in the back of my mind as we're designing how this all is supposed to work.

[Thanqol]

I'm running into holes in the Crisis dialogue design. Specifications are vague on the following:

• The player alternates between picking red and blue options. Does this just get them nothing?
• Is there still a red/blue/white option, regardless of which option is picked previously?
• The player picks primarily white options. Is this is a fixed result, or does this randomize? (My vote is fixed result. Dialogue trees with random results are bad.)
• Will the red/blue/white option change depending on which Mr. Johnson you're facing?

I'm going to give this some thoughts myself, but what did you have in mind?

EDIT: After pacing about for a bit, here is how I envision it:

Imagine you have two buckets; a red bucket, and a blue bucket. Over the course of the Crisis negotiations, you will be filling up these buckets based on your responses. Blue answers will fill up the blue bucket, red answers will fill up the red bucket, and white answers are wild cards; they can fill up one bucket, both buckets, or neither bucket. At the end of negotiations, we look at the buckets. If the blue bucket is sufficiently filled, you get some advantage in board position. If the red bucket is sufficiently filled, you get information on Mr. Johnson.

I'm thinking that negotiation results may not be a binary "reward/no reward" thing. Perhaps each bucket has different levels of fullness, and the quality of your reward depends on how full the bucket is. For instance, if a player hops back and forth between red and blue answers, they might fill both buckets halfway, and their rewards are halved as a result. Maybe they get only a bit of board position, and only one profile is knocked off the list. This would make branches with differing depths more difficult to balance, as the player would have more opportunities to fill either bucket, but that's an issue of implementation rather than design.

EDIT 2: I'm getting looming dread on the design of the dialogue tree itself. Specifically, how we can format this data in such a way that it's easy for us to manipulate and visualize what it will do. It's too big a thing to worry about for the prototype stage, but it's going to be in the back of my mind as we're designing how this all is supposed to work.

So:
- If you go all blue 100% you get outcome #1.
- If you go all red 100% you get outcome #2.
- If you do any other combination you either get outcome #3 or outcome #4.
- Outcome 1 is better board position. Outcome 2 is Johnson info. Outcome 3 is both. Outcome 4 is neither.

The thought process is, you can play it safe for board, you can play it safe for info, or you can roll up your sleeves and say 'I got dis' to your people.

There are 8 Johnson personalities. The first crisis will reduce that to a potential 4. The second crisis to 2. The third crisis to 1. Each dialogue scene will be written from the perspective of trying to force a wedge between those potential Johnsons - i.e. if he's an AI he'll respond like this and if he's a drunk he'll respond like this. I'll do a few different clusters of these divides - one cluster might be Johnson 1-4 vs 5-8 in round one, the second one might be 1,2,5,6 vs 3,4,7,8 in round one, etc. Keeping it 'paired' somewhat means that I can save a bit on writing - round 1 might have the widest range of Johnsons but if round 3 is always 1v2, 3v4 etc then it'll cut down on the exponential writing curve thing.

Strategically I'm going to try and make sure it's worth going through a round or two of info even if you later take a round of position because it'll still rule out at least a few potential endgames - and in a strategy game knowing which corners you can cut is the key to victory.

Does that sound vaguely sensible?

Good robbits! I like the variation between the outer metal plating and the inner bits.

BEEP BOOP

[Anarion]

So:
- If you go all blue 100% you get outcome #1.
- If you go all red 100% you get outcome #2.
- If you do any other combination you either get outcome #3 or outcome #4.
- Outcome 1 is better board position. Outcome 2 is Johnson info. Outcome 3 is both. Outcome 4 is neither.

Is there a preset route to 3 rather than 4, or is it random whether my attempt to wing it winds up with a good vs. bad result?

[Thanqol]

Is there a preset route to 3 rather than 4, or is it random whether my attempt to wing it winds up with a good vs. bad result?

Preset route. I'm thinking specifically the conversation fights in Dues Ex: Human Revolution.

[TheAmishPirate]

Preset route. I'm thinking specifically the conversation fights in Dues Ex: Human Revolution.

This may be the most important bit. At any given leaf on the dialogue tree, we know exactly what the outcome of the Crisis is. It's a hard coded thing rather than something we're building up over the course of the dialogue. Do I understand this correctly?

[Thanqol]

This may be the most important bit. At any given leaf on the dialogue tree, we know exactly what the outcome of the Crisis is. It's a hard coded thing rather than something we're building up over the course of the dialogue. Do I understand this correctly?

Correct-o-mundo.

[TheAmishPirate]

Correct-o-mundo.

Excellent. This tells me everything I need to know about how to build this thing.

There are 8 Johnson personalities. The first crisis will reduce that to a potential 4. The second crisis to 2. The third crisis to 1. Each dialogue scene will be written from the perspective of trying to force a wedge between those potential Johnsons - i.e. if he's an AI he'll respond like this and if he's a drunk he'll respond like this. I'll do a few different clusters of these divides - one cluster might be Johnson 1-4 vs 5-8 in round one, the second one might be 1,2,5,6 vs 3,4,7,8 in round one, etc. Keeping it 'paired' somewhat means that I can save a bit on writing - round 1 might have the widest range of Johnsons but if round 3 is always 1v2, 3v4 etc then it'll cut down on the exponential writing curve thing.

Strategically I'm going to try and make sure it's worth going through a round or two of info even if you later take a round of position because it'll still rule out at least a few potential endgames - and in a strategy game knowing which corners you can cut is the key to victory.

Does that sound vaguely sensible?

It does. I was wondering how you were going to split them up, and I think this is a sensible way to do it. It'll still require a heck of a lot of writing, but it's not nearly as much as it could be.

Though this does make me realize another potential feature of the design; for any given dialogue tree, will there be two versions of the tree? One in which Johnson responds as one set of profiles, and another where he responds in the opposite set? Or do the trees only diverge at the very end where you get the information?

[Thanqol]

It does. I was wondering how you were going to split them up, and I think this is a sensible way to do it. It'll still require a heck of a lot of writing, but it's not nearly as much as it could be.

Though this does make me realize another potential feature of the design; for any given dialogue tree, will there be two versions of the tree? One in which Johnson responds as one set of profiles, and another where he responds in the opposite set? Or do the trees only diverge at the very end where you get the information?

I think the divergence will be the final interval where you provoke (or don't) the emotional reaction you were trying to get.