Choice of Rebels Part 1 WIP thread

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4252

I think that even if the system was better balanced or less complicated (add my vote to the motion to strike the mules from existence!) it would still be problematic. It kind of stops the flow of the story - you only got started and now you’re suddenly in this micro-management 4X game. I think it needs to be aggressively streamlined, because even if you do have a winning strategy that isn’t luck dependent it would still be a slog to get through. And even if it’s fun, it demands metaplaying to succeed, unlike the more RP-oriented vibe of the other chapters.

I must say I really admire the depth of it, though. It could be a game all by itself, with those agonizing choices and emotional punches that an unsatisfied band delivers. The story portions of it are wonderful, but I can’t get emotionally absorbed when I’m worrying about getting more damn mules.

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4253

Count me as one of the people who mostly like the new design. I think it is a bit weaker narratively because of the heavier focus on survival and feels like a ‘game’. The game you end up playing though does a much better job of feeling the weight of your decisions, the responsibility you have, and makes you feel less like the bands all conquering hero. (Particularly sense it doesn’t feel like you are leading every mission, and other leaders are involved more.)

It feels less like a book and more like a game, but I think the game is hitting the themes you want it to much better than the book was. I do think it needs more tightening like has been said.

I’d like much more control over my mules (being able to see what they are assigned to, estimates for how many I’ll need for certain things, and any unused mules to automatically help with the sick in weeks they aren’t needed).

I don’t like how guide less a lot of the input number choices can feel. I think the worst offender of this is scouting for Hegemonic mules. The other scouting options have flat rates for what’s needed while this option only tells you they have a lot of ground to cover. Also some sort of recommendation from Terret about the amount of mules needed for the sick is another.

Also here is pile of bugs/continuity errors:

Scouting for a tithe Barn doesn’t let you know when you have found one. And also won’t return the scouts to ‘free_followers’.

I think trying to recruit from helots and yeoman isn’t getting its leader value rest. If I had previously selected someone to lead the mission, but then just let a random bandit lead it the text used the previous leader’s name.

A raid to the Owlscap didn’t report back but I can now send people on the raid again. They ended up being considered scouts but aren’t listed in the section after. They weren’t being added to my free followers every week either. However Elery ended up coming back when she should normally. This was doing the raid the second time, but it works normally if you make it a standing order.

I sent scouts to find a noble estate to raid, but I didn’t raid the estate the week they found out about it. The next week they are still considered scouting, and I can’t raid a noble estate.

The tax raid option isn’t appearing after you find out when the Architelone comes to town.

The end of week report will mention that I sent children off to be fostered even if I choose not to, I think this is only happening when sending some one to lead the mission beside yourself or Breden.

bandits line 18211: Invalid expression at char 98, expected closing parenthesis, was: BOOLEAN_OPERATOR [or]

bandits line 4193: It is illegal to fall out of a *choice statement; you must *goto or *finish before the end of the indented block.

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4254

Thanks so much, all. :slight_smile: You can imagine how much buggier and gappier it’s been over the last couple of months… appreciate your willingness to play through a work very much in progress.

I should have some time this evening to fix a bunch of the bugs that you’ve found – several of which are making the winter significantly harder than it should be for the bandit leader willing to do a bit of semi-discriminate raiding. (The inaccessibility of the tax raid and subsequent raids on the caravans and noble estate, for notable examples).

I’ll also start trying to smooth out some of the structural flaws. I think there’s no avoiding the fact that this bit will feel a bit more game-ish, but I don’t want it to feel like trying to play Civ on a text-based platform. Getting the mules right or dumping them will clearly be a key part of that. :slight_smile:

I’m off to a fairly remote bit of the country on Sunday (Langley calling, as @idonotlikeusernames would say) but I’ll bring the laptop along and see if I can do some work when we’re staying in a place with microhydro or solar.

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4255

I get the feeling that shooting, wooden, paper or even real mules with air rifles will become a very popular fairground game among former rebels after the revolution.

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4256

Can we just have an option to eat them instead? I’ll carry the sick people myself, damn it!
I think we’re gonna need some New Game+ system to get through the winter, especially if you don’t want to steal from nobles and merchants. I’m too soft to be mean even in text-based games, the NPCs don’t even need pixels to guilt trip me.
(Though if I were inclined to be a ruthless character, I’d just starve all the sick people to death to get rid of them. If we’re gaming the system might as well go the full nine yards.)

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4257

@idonotlikeusernames @Jackrabbit

The mules are sad. What did they do wrong?

http://cdnstatic.visualizeus.com/thumbs/8c/2a/sad-8c2a07b9c3d84c3a05ca4de7cf417464_h.jpg

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4258

Well, to be fair, as many have already said, you do manage to get the feeling of the weight of the MC’s choices, and how much of an impact they’ll have along the way.

And, this is just a thought I had today, but how about coding it where the results aren’t left to chance, but to numbers? I imagine it could be simple, like sending more than 20 people results in success, while less results in failure, and having a character like, say, Zvad, informing the MC that they’d need a big amount of people to do something. I think that might make the game better.

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They were badly implemented and never there when we needed them. :grinning:

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4260

I think in almost all of the cases where you get to pick your numbers, it’s chance + numbers, not chance alone. Sending more people will increase your odds of success; the chance element is meant to keep there from being a threshold that you can perfectly and precisely game.

Where are people currently finding the random elements most frustrating? Mule theft from nobles and merchants, obvs. Elsewhere?

Edit: and it should be possible to make it through as a pacifist, on helot-begging, rabbits, mule-begging, and smuggling, with the occasional bear if you’re lucky and losses to starvation if you’re not. Particularly with Breden’s help, and particularly if you’re a high-CHA character. I’d made it through on that route a couple of times before posting.

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4261

Woah, I’m glad to see this WiP is back up and running! I remember reading it months ago and then…completely dropping the ball on it. Time to read it again! :smiley:

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I’m running into an odd bug in Chapter 2, @Havenstone. :astonished:

Every so often, if I choose to check my stats, the game seems to rewind to the beginning. It doesn’t give me any error message, but - for example - when thinking about what language to be spoken at camp, I was checking my Homelander / Cosmopolitan stats and when I returned to the game, I found myself right back at the start of the chapter. It doesn’t seem to be happening past that choice though.

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That will unfortunately happen with any game where the files are being updated by the author while you play – if I make any edits (which I currently am) and save a new version of bandits.txt, and you then go to the stats screen, when you return it’ll restart the scene. Apologies!

Edit: all done with edits for the moment. About to go to bed, so should be safe to play for a few hours now!

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4264

I get an error right after I specify how much barley I want to buy anyone else getting this and if so can you please tell me if you know how to fix it because I really want to play the new chapter 2.

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  1. Archers: need to understand better how archers factor into raid success. Numbers of forged weapons too.

  2. How many mules are needed to carry the sick.

  3. In general I would like my bandits to stop assuming I know how many mules or people it takes to do a thing and let me know how many they think it will take. Feels kinda like a math test atm. “You send Jonna on a raid. You expect her to get 30 bushels of grain. 1 mule is needed to carry 4 bushels and a person can carry one. You only have 2 mules. How many bandits do you need to send to get all the bushels???”

  4. Same goes for recruiting and begging.

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4266

This is one of my favorite WIPs and I’m so glad to see it updated however there is a bug that I keep running into.

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I didn’t know that. Sorry, I’m not a dabbler in ChoiceScript myself.

I think that rabbit hunting is pretty stable, and the bear is supposed to be a high challenge. But I’d like to know how having archers helps. I kept thinking having archers would make me hunt more with fewer, and would make the raids go better.

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@Havenstone

Chiming in about the archers. It’s a little hard to understand exactly what effect training your followers has. It also says that they’re making more bows, but the Archers stat never seems to change.

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@TheTrueKing I think it took around 2 hours but a lot of it was copy and paste. I just wanted to make sure the issue could be duplicated exactly. The last I’ve seen, that issue appears to be have been fixed (if a bug)/changed (if not a bug) with the update.

I am not sure yet about the new version of Chapter 2. I must say that I enjoyed the previous version of Chapter 2 and was looking forward to advancing the storyline from where the previous version of the game left off. Out of dozens of attempts, I’ve only made it to the current end of the game once without it crashing. I agree with the suggestions that a save state is needed. When it crashes, I do not have the option to revert to the end of Chapter 1 and so I have to make those choices again each time. If possible, I would suggest giving us save state info we can copy and paste like in the Work-In-Progress Guenevere.

As far as new content goes, I like the raid to get mules from the Hegemony. I tend to be so desperate for mules that I allocate a full 50 bandits to hit both the Alastors and the Ecclesiasts. I did not notice any bugs with that raid.

If we attempt a second raid against an Ecclesiast temple and try to lead it ourselves, the game was still having Breden lead it anyways but also left Breden available for other assignment. I’m not sure whether the latest changes have fixed that. I can scout out the tax raid and I’ve been told to come back in 7,8,9 weeks but I never get the option to launch the actual raid.

I really dislike the element of luck in its current implementation. For the first few weeks, my band is hanging on by a thread and if my main character gets sick then certain raids that can be vital that very week cannot happen which means that entire playthrough is messed up and I have to restart. That has only happened once or twice but an even bigger nuisance from bad luck is Hegemony theurges tend to incinerate my sick and wounded before I can get more mules for them even if I send out 20 or so scouts to look for Hegemony mules the first week. I believe I’ve had 2 playthroughs where the sick and wounded survived long enough for more mules to arrive but it is frustrating. The bear hunting is so unreliable that I don’t bother using it. I’d rather assign followers to archery practice which is apparently guaranteed to do some good than gamble on bears. If I am sick and select the option to launch the temple raid later, I have to send out scouts again and wait for their return before being able to raid the temple.

I’m not sure if there are many changes beyond Chapter 2 because most of my attempted playthroughs crash before getting through Chapter 2.

As far as Theurgy goes, I find it fascinating and I would love the option to assign Elery and Pin to study that rather than do anything else over winter. I have the feeling that another 2 Theurges/Wisards would be far more useful than even a few hundred archers. I was thinking about what plants would survive in the winter and while I know little about botany, I’m curious whether plants like potatoes and onions and other root crops might still be around. Could Theurgy be used to accelerate their growth or cause them to reproduce? I would like the chance to try to use Theurgy to heal Yebben’s eyesight. Since Yebben starts blind, it seems relatively safe to study the appearance of Yebben’s eyes under Theurgy, to compare them with healthy eyes as seen by Theurgy, and then to use Theurgy to change Yebben’s eyes to match healthy eyes. Also, I’d rather implement reading lessons for my band than archery lessons. The Hegemony can shrug off a few hundred bandit archers but if those bandits start unlocking the power of Theurgy in the hundreds even being limited to their own blood, then the Hegemony will have something to worry about.

I would like an additional option on raiding settings. I have no intention of raiding yeomen or merchants, but I dislike the implication that raiding nobles means raiding innocent victims. I think the Helots would dispute that implication as well. I would like the option to raid the Hegemony and nobles and while leaving the rest unharmed. I would be willing to only target nobles that have mistreated those over whom the nobles held power. As far as motivation goes, even if I did choose to ignore the nobles, I would explain to my band it is not out of a belief in their innocence but because I suspect the nobles would rise against the Hegemony the moment the nobles thought the Hegemony vulnerable enough for the attempt to succeed and I am willing to wait on dealing with the nobles until after overthrowing the Hegemony.

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Not so sure about that. Just because anyone could become a Theurge in theory, doesn’t mean anyone could become a Theurge in practice.

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The line 13930 error is fixed so Ch 2 should be playable again. Sorry about that!

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