Bay 12 Games Forum

The Organization needs:
A Name!
A motto/battlecry/saying. Doesn't have to be all three.
Were we more on the side of smiting evil when we set out to conquer this place, or of a more evil intent in need of a fitting lair?
A color(s) to distinguish us from other land-holding groups, such as the newly-crowned King's Red Warfleet.
Between 1-3 surviving advisors of somekind, related to the group.
A goal! (if we don't have a goal, the default goal is 'Conquer the Kingdom and proclaim our castle as the new capital of the succeeding government.')
A general description of what the group actually is (ex. a group of angry, hard to kill barbarian half-men from the north. Or a Paladin order who came to smite evil and flip tables, but forgot to bring the tables. Or a collection of former dukes who brought their armies together to claim the place for themselves and divide the land up later. Or a couple old wizards with enough experience to have not gone crazy from the practice, who bewitched an army out from under some lord's notice and led it to their doom in the process of claiming the cursed place. The only requirement is that it could've been a group with enough fighting ability, either by themselves or bought/stolen/etc to kill essentially an entire major dungeon's worth of random encounters and not all get killed in the process.)

Our Leader needs:
A name, of course.
A race of some sort (general fantasy ones or normal person, either works).
A gender, probably.
Something important about them (Being a duelist, being a wizard, being a banished problem to a more important lord, being an insane mage, being nondescript, glowing purple and being able to punch opponents that aren't in melee range, etc.)

I'll edit the title once we have a name.
Anyway, I had some ideas about how to rework the map in Crystalline to not just be gianthuge images everywhere when we're covering a major potion of the planet. But I wanted to see if they'd work first before I added it to the rest of the not being stuck on where to go in that anymore, and I wanted to make another game anyway. So here it is, a game about a group of people of currently-unknown-alignment or goals, after they reclaim a castle for themselves to own.

Green is floating islands. You can land on these if you want, or just float over them or around them. Hopefully I don't have to explain what the clouds are

Name: (The name of the castle itself is required, the name of your ruler is optional but probably important.)
Color: (This is for the map, so you can tell where the crap you are, as well as whose nearby. Hex code preferred, otherwise you get my best guess at what you meant.)
Theme/Background: (the former for a general description of the castle, the latter if you want to be descriptive.)
Starting present: Infernium Core, Gilded Box, Spike That Menaces With Spikes (Mysterious technological gift, expensive but otherwise unknown gift, or a random but probably useful weapon, respectively. Not all presents will be the same in each category. These are given out on turn 1, or whichever turn is your first one.)
Starting grid location: (Letter first. You can also mention a starting direction of movement if you want as long as your sky castle can move itself)
[Put castle stats here] (See below for details)
Example stats:
Propulsion: 5
Structure: 5 / Integrity: 5
Shield: 0
Population: 5
Luck: 5

These are mostly combat-related stats, although they can be relevant to other things as well.
A zero in a stat is exceptionally bad; A zero in Shield or Luck are the exceptions to this, as you'll see in a moment. 5 is average and 10 is rather great, and everything between 10 and 20 is various shades of excellent. You all start at 5 in each except for Shield (which starts at zero), and with 10 extra points to spend in them. Stats may be lowered down to 1 to gain additional specialization elsewhere, except for Propulsion, which may be lowered all the way down to zero if you wish to be as stationary as a floating sky castle can be, and Luck, which may be zeroed if you’re afraid of RNG events. This gives you a total of 30 points at the start, which you can freely redistribute 28 of at the start.

Propulsion: Regardless of what your engine is, this determines how powerful it is at pushing thy castle about the skies of Alzeran. Zero propulsion is essentially up to the whims of the winds to push you, while 20 Propulsion could do battle with a hurricane, although depending on your Integrity at the time, it may be the only part that remains intact if you decide to actually fight one. Can be augmented by things that improve your engine(s) and decreased by having bad things happen, like engines being shot off/exploding/struck by falling space rocks. At five propulsion you will move 1 block per major turn, at ten you can move up to 2, at 15 you can move up to 3, and at 20 you can move up to 4 spaces per major turn.

Structure & Integrity: How well-built and intact your sky castle is, and the current state of it. Integrity is based on Structure, so adjusting your starting Structure stat will also adjust Integrity accordingly.
Zero Structure means your claim to the skies has crumbled to its end and fallen onto the surface like the aforementioned space rocks. 20 structure is a very tough nut to destroy. Integrity equal to your current Structure means you are more or less undamaged, while less integrity than structure means you've taken notable damage. Integrity can temporarily be improved higher than Structure (and past 20 as well) by doing things like bolting armor plates to most of your outer walls or similar things, but repairs will only bring Integrity back up to your Structure. Actions that improve the castle as a whole physically are good for these. Major structural changes (like losing engines) will permanently decrease structure (and thus max base integrity) until replaced or worked around.
Integrity is doubled for the purpose of taking damage when resolving combat actions.

Shield: Magical or technological-based bonus Integrity, basically. Intercepts all forms of damage (the exception being sabotage performed while physically on the sky castle itself) before integrity does. If you are starting with more than 5 of this, you should have a reason for it. Hiding in a cloud bank will give a point of this for free, assuming said cloud bank is not evaporated by lava cannons or something before you get attacked. Shield does not regenerate for free by default unless you have 20, and if you have made it to 20 you probably have a power source to generate it anyway. (Max starting shield stat is 19.) Shield is not doubled for the purpose of taking damage when resolving combat.

Population: How many peasants/servants/mechanical robocommandos/purple wizards/chosen ones there are in your sky castle, in a very general and simplified fashion. Zero population means you've died and so has everyone that could keep the place afloat, and will quickly lead to no structure either unless it gets possessed or something. 1 Pop means that you (or your replacement) and a bare minimum skeleton crew are still surviving on your likely heavily damaged sky ruin. 20 means your floating sky castle cannot hold any more population and will probably have problems happen occasionally due to overcrowding. -1 population means you are the sky castle (not just the ruler of it) and makes this stat mostly irrelevant. An amount of population with a * on it (like 5*) means the castle will collapse (or implode, or explode, etc) like a load-bearing boss if your ruler is killed, but will not happen unless you set it up as such. In combat, this can be reduced if you take heavy enough damage. Setting up the star if you want it costs an extra point into pop, while having -1 costs ten points.

Luck: How often you (probably) will get an event during a major turn. This stat is inverted from the rest; zero luck means you will get no events ever, unless the event effects everyone else (and thus get turned into a global event) or something you did triggers an event on its own. 10 luck means that your sky castle, your stats, or potentially even your ruler's life is going to be affected by the whims of the RNG every major turn, for better or for worse. A d10 is rolled to determine events, if its less or equal to your luck, you get the event, whatever it turns out to be. (So if you have 4 luck, and it rolls a six, then nothing happens to/for you because you aren't that (un)lucky. Luck cannot go above 10, and if you somehow into negative luck I probably will have bad, reality-altering things happen to your castle~)

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Power: This is a very flexible stat that depends on what you want it to do, and is separate from the main 5 above as far as points go. Also a very overview-like stat, similar to population. By default it only goes up to 20 like the other castlestats, but with gm approval, you can use this as weapon/defense point caps instead, or for something else with a different maximum number entirely. Creativity is key here to making the best use of how the power stat works for you instead of adding an entire other system of stats to the game. I’m fine with doing the latter if nothing else works and you're absolutely sure of it but less things to keep track of is better.

Examples of things you might use the power stat for are thus: Are you freeform spellcasters? This is mana, and is based on what you do to generate mana. Perhaps it drains population to boost mana (which then is used for spells), or maybe it just takes a lot of work. Or it collects naturally but is limited per major turn.
Does the sky castle have an engine? Redirect all power to propulsion and speed up for awhile, or boost the destructiveness of your weapons batteries. Is it a steam engine? Nom a cloud, do more things at once.
The two major points of it: What is it doing/how does it do it (like the mana example), and what can happen to it to negatively or positively affect it? (like the engine getting damaged and requiring repairs, for example) You need both of those points described if you need this stat for something. If you don't need it, it can be ignored for your castle.

You can construct your own kinds of weapons or defenses. The below stats are just for combat purposes, and limiting how many you can have at once so people don't fire all the infinite weapons at once at everything, or something

Weaponry and Defensery
1-20 scale for each stat, maximum of 60 points spent per weapon type or 40 per defense type. Each castle, unmodified or upgraded, has 100 points for mounted weaponry and 100 for defenses. These points can be filled in any way, but you have to design your own. Stats for both are below. Weapons and defenses that are not ‘active’ and in use do not count against this cap, but also cannot be used in combat, obviously. They can still be hit by stray shots though!

---Weapons---
Destructiveness: How much damage maximum the weapon can inflict, outside of critical hits. More powerful weapons are generally bigger. Weapons with more than 20 massiveness can get a bonus to this if it’d make sense to. A weapon with more than 20 destructiveness is special and you’ll need to bring it up with me.

Massiveness: How big the weapon is. Bigger weapons are easier to hit, and this stat is the one used to determine how many points it takes up when in use. No less than 3/4ths of Destructiveness rounded up, unless its a special weapon and you bring it up to me. For very low (or nonexistent decoy) levels of destructiveness it must be at least 1, but Massiveness can be raised over 20 if its seriously a gigantic weapon. (Or to describe its so big its built into the structure of the sky castle)

Speediness: Fast weapon fires faster than slow weapon. Not a particularly complicated stat, but try to elaborate in the description if you’ve got a massive yet very quick weapon.

Stability(ness): How likely it is the weapon is going to work. 1 stability is required for a chance to hit, 5 stability is required to have a chance at crits; weapons with zero stability (sabotage, heavily damaged in the wrong spot, however it happened) are guaranteed misses with a 50% chance to blow up per shot. Weapons with 20 stability are not 100% guaranteed to hit, but its pretty damn close.

Specialization(ess): A two part stat. First part is for what kind of weapon it is (a word or two, like ‘Point Defense’ or ‘laser’, or ‘couch gun’), the second part is how badly it does outside it primary usage. Highly specialized weaponry get a bonus to their area in exchange. A zero in specialization means its probably not good at anything in particular, but it also doesn’t have any penalties in that regard either! 5 is considered average (like a small laser that usually fires at the enemy for an average amount of damage, but if aimed quickly can also be used to destroy missiles instead)

Example weapon:
20 destructiveness
15 massiveness
5 speed
15 stability
5 specialization
= 60 points.

---Defenses---
Specialization: Like its weapon counterpart, what kind of defense is this? What is it the best at defending against? Does it shoot back? The numeric part is used to reduce damage for tanking defenses, or how good it is at countering fire for firing defenses.

Integrity: For defenses that defend by tanking damage, although its also the health of firing ones if they get hit directly.

Massiveness: Same as the weapon version, used for how many points it takes up in defense when active. Bigger tanking defenses generally have more integrity, firing defenses usually have more Specialization. Must be 3/4ths of either integrity or specialization, or no less than 1.

(Not trying to make one good way to make maxed-stat weapons, just trying to not let people just max everything)

For an attack, you have a d20 + stability, vs a d20 + specialization (or if the target has no defenses left, d20 + propulsion) If you roll higher, you hit. If you both are attacking at the same time, roll d20 + weapon’s speed vs the same on the opponent’s side if you both hit to determine who hits first. Multi-weapon attacks use an average of all the weapons’ speed for the speed.

A dX is rolled afterwards for damage (X being equal to your weapon’s destructiveness, using this dice roller), and any damage leftover after subtracting defense specilization, integrity, and shield will hit the sky castle’s integrity. (Specifically, Shield comes first and subtracts its full capacity in damage. Specialization reduces it based on how high it is and acts second. Defense integrity is bashed into next, and sky castle integrity is last. If the target has zero integrity, do Structure damage instead. If after all that theres still damage leftover somehow, just hit a random non-zero non-luck stat) If you want, you can aim for particular bits of the castle like weaponry or defenses in exchange for a more difficult hit chance. If these are hits, the object's Integrity (if any) will be hit before castle integrity, but otherwise is last on the list.

Attacks with multiple weapons use the same d20 + stability for each type of weapon (If you have 4 heavy lasers and 2 plasma cannons, you’d have two rolls; one for the lasers and one for the plasma), and an average of the weapons’ Destructiveness is used to determine the dX. If all of the weapons hit, you get x1.5 the damage from the dX as a bonus.
For crits, its an extra d20 without any modifiers. If the roll equals your weapon’s stability, its a critical. Criticals do double damage and can stack with the All-hit bonus from a multiple weapons attack; It uses the lowest stability stat of all crit-capable firing weapons in that case. You can only crit once per attack, and only if all weapons in the attack are crit-capable.

Defense Specialization damage reduction: (All decimals will be rounded down.)
5 or lower in the stat: 1/4th removed
6 to 10: 1/3th removed
11 to 15: Half damage
16 to 20: 2/3rds removed

There is two kinds of alternate: Changing the names to fit your race better, and entirely alternate systems. For the first group, all you need to do is put the original stat name [in brackets] before or after the new name, so I know which is which. This can be done as much as you want as long as you don't forget the brackets. As an example, Mana [Power].

The second group needs GM approval, and requires the following:
1. Why do you need all these extra stats, and can part of it be replaced by Power (or another stat) instead? If you cannot answer this first one, the other two are irrelevant.
2. A way to fit whatever you’re doing into the attack/defense system, if relevant to attack or defense.
3. A way to determine a limit on how many active things you can have at once, like the weapon or defense point caps.

1. The Hand of God, formerly ruled by Queen Kekerezzar. Shot down by Castle Arrip on Turn 6, after several turns of battle.
2. Castle Arrip, formerly ruled by High Councilor Flabor. Revenge killed by the Fluxxstone on Turn 7 after its victory over the Hand of God.
3. Castle Zipworld, formerly ruled by Illustrious King Portsummon. Burned out of existence by the Devastator Airship on Turn 9 after they fired a War Room at it to help Heaven's Acropolis.

Cycles: A cycle is the main unit of time for our crystal. Each cycle can have up to four subcycles. On cycles that involve major crystal fabrication there are 10 subcycles, not four, and a cycle ends when either we are out of energy, or out of fabrication commands if it was more than 10 crystals.  For cycles without major crystal fabrication, unless required or noted otherwise, all actions fit into one subcycle each.
Energy generation happens as the beginning of each cycle. Other things can and probably will act midcycle due to not being a crystal.

Vision: You can see 4 spaces out in the cardinal directions from your core, and 3 cardinal spaces away from any connected crystal that isn't broken, or from assimilated matter. This makes a diamond of vision about the size of the above picture.

Energy production: Each cycle, a pulse radiates from the core crystal, releasing a cycle of energy production from all parts directly connected to it into the main mass of the crystal. This pulse can also have other effects, like destroying assimilated matter with no energy left, but does not extend outside of the crystal or connected assimilated matter.

Energy: There is not a strict limit on energy storage, but if too much is stored in too little crystal, various effects can happen ranging from minor glowing or melting surrounding non-crystal materials, to exploding. The current effect (if any) is listed in the status.
The more dangerous effects are d10-based, with 6+ being bad and 4 or lower being non-threatening, but only to the crystal. A 5 on the other hand combines the two: it will vent the energy down below dangerous levels for no subcycle cost in exchange for some integrity (getting a five when you were about to explode from the overcharge will instead mean you just disintegrate in a spectacular but no less deadly manner). You can spend an action to vent without integrity damage, but it takes up time and you guys will probably have a better use for both the time and the energy.

Movement: Rocks generally doesn't move, but it can be done. You need at least a full cycle (and the energy production from it) to do it. You also need empty space to move into.

Conversion: You must be near the material you want to convert. Otherwise look at the types of crystal for how much energy you need and what kind of crystal you could make with it.

Assimilated matter: This stuff is for when you want to get somewhere in a hurry. It will degrade as the energy pulse tears into it (only fully-converted crystal forms are not damaged by the pulse), but in the short term it acts as a a quick boost to production and a low-energy way to look around or reach interesting areas. It also will produce empty spaces eventually.

Repairing: Crystals do not produce energy while heavily damaged, if they do at all. You cannot upgrade crystals that are damaged until they're repaired. Repair however, is simple. Crystals are either 'damaged' or 'heavily damaged'; for the former you just need the normal cost of the crystal's fabrication cost, for the latter you need twice the fabrication cost. You can also destroy heavily damaged crystals for free, which replaces it with an empty space. The two have different symbols in the map legend to tell them apart.

Crystal conversion - Half the higher of the two crystal costs per conversion. (So if you build a feeler, than turn it into a refined, it costs half the feeler's cost, and if you convert that refined into an arms crystal, its costs half of the arms' cost, not the refined) If the two crystals don't share a base type you have to go down to a refined (or a storage crystal and then a refined or vice versa, you can't switch between the two for free) and then go back up. Excessively long conversion chains are probably going to get ignored and replaced with 'fabricate X crystal here if possible'.

Experimental Fabrication: First and least importantly, you need a color for this kind of crystal, and a name. Hex colors help (I can put them straight into paint.net), but aren't required. Not using the same color for two different kinds of crystal also helps, since most designs don't show up well in 10x10px squares.
Next, you need a Refined crystal at minimum. Low-Quality crystals cannot be experimented upon, however they can be modified to do one extra thing. They aren't as precisely alterable as refineds are however, so any changes to low-Q crystals will effect all of them, and will take a lot more energy because of that (250 * low-Q count). Changing the extra thing lows can do will overwrite the previous thing if there was one. Removing the extra thing costs as much as replacing it.

After that, its either a new crystal form, or a crystal with a different function & name. New crystal forms require either a lot of luck (d20, over or equal to 15 succeeds, rolls of less or equal to 5 will result in Integrity damage) and energy (use whatever significant amount you want of at least 10k, the important part here is the luck, not the exact cost.) to reforge them out of other sorts of crystals, or just new materials and an attempt to convert them.

All new functions require 1 point per improvement plus 1.5 * additional levels (ex. seeing an extra block takes 1, seeing two blocks takes 2.5, seeing three blocks further than normal costs 4, etc) except for energy production, which takes up 2.5 per level (starting at Refined level power, or Hi-Q power if its based off modifying a Hi-Q once we find a way to make those) and doubles in cost and output each additional level. Adding the ability to make it in empty space (like storage crystals) will triple the cost of energy production levels (pulling stuff out of nowhere is about as hard as you'd expect), but otherwise is a flat 5 points.
Removing functions makes things cheaper, of course (Ex: If you start with a refined, you start with its base energy production, which you can remove to get an extra 2.5 points to spend); other exceptions might be made later for exceptionally useful abilities. The cost to actually make the resulting crystal is half the point cost in thousands. (10 points is 5,000 energy, and so on)
Creating one of these crystals out of rock (or whatever else we find thats above Refined later) instead of a crystal halves the cost in energy to create. Once you're done adding things (or removing things), pick a general area so I know approximately where the new crystal should be, like 'below core, near the big hole' or 'over near the invincitite'.
If for some reason you want a very specific crystal to be modified or a very specific piece of material used, use the core as a center point and count out how many 10x10 pixel blocks there are to it from the core, and give me that instead.

Any crystal that costs more than 5k energy to make is too expensive for us to make in our current form. To improve that, we need to obtain materials that do better than the core at conducting and manipulating energy flows, and improve the core itself with them. Core cannot be modified normally, only with materials.

Example using a farsighted crystal
Name: Farseer
Color: Green
Base crystal type: Refined
No energy production (-2.5)
Freebuild (5)
Extended vision Lv.5 (7, 5 extra spaces)
Total cost: 9.5 points (4,750 energy)

Integrity: Intact

Stored Energy: 10000
Effect: You are glowing with heat (which might've been a side-effect of something else, not simply the energy...), but the rain is both hiding that fact and preventing you from getting hotter.

Energy Generation:
Core: 100/cycle

Location: Hole in the surface of an unknown planet.

Navy Blue - Crystal core
Black - Unknown
Grey - Rock
Dark Brown - Empty underground space
Light Brown - Dirt or other non-solid material
Sky Blue - Its a very descriptive color.

Core Crystal
Your core. If this can be replicated, you don't remember how.
Energy production: 100/cycle

Low Quality Crystal
Created by converting materials not able to become better tiers, like dirt.
Energy production: 20/cycle.
Fabrication cost: 100 energy, nearby material.

Refined Crystal
Created by converting solid materials, like rock. Also made by refining the structure of Low quality crystals.
Energy production: 50/cycle
Fabrication cost: 200 energy, nearby solid material.
Refinement cost: 400 energy, LQ crystal connected to the core. (300 if adjacent to another refined crystal)

Storage Crystal
A hunk of additional crystal, giving you more room to store energy without side effects.
No energy production
Fabrication cost: 200 energy and 1 empty space per section. Connected storage sections give greater results than scattered ones. In emergencies, the empty space can be replaced with 100 energy and a low quality crystal.

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Assimilated matter conversion cost: Remainder of the cost to crystal form +50 per cycle its been there.

Low-assimilation matter
Created by not fully converting low-tier matter.
Will crumble into dust in 5 cycles, leaving an empty space.
Energy production: 50/40/30/20/10 per cycle. Crumbles on the next energy pulse once it hits 10/cycle.
Fabrication cost: 50 energy, nearby material.

Medium-assimilation matter
Created by not fully converting matter eligible to become Refined Crystal.
Will degenerate into low-assimilated matter in 10 cycles.
Energy production: 150/140/130/120/110/100/90/80/70/60 per cycle. Degenerates on next pulse after reaching 60/cycle.
Fabrication cost: 100 energy, nearby solid material.

Each full turn of movement requires 0.5 power. Using less than your full movement has no effect on this unless you did not move at all, which is free. Attacks drain power depending on how much you're willing to put into it, up to 3/4ths your maximum current power (or the closest whole number if thats a weird decimal like 20.435465746673557). If using max power, a critical failure will cause you to explode on impact; If it doesn't kill the opponent, it counts as a win for them.

Fights:
You can attack any other robot on the map that is not inside or within two tiles of the current generator room, You can only really talk with the other player bots or random trader bots, so the less of you there are the more you'd have to fight things yourself. You can still attempt to talk with the others, but don't expect a direct response. Regardless, fights most likely will go on for several turns. Each attack, you pick how much power to put into it and get a d6 roll to determine your success. Anything 3 or higher will succeed, though if you get a 6 is a critical hit for double damage. At the end, one robot will be destroyed and the other will get the remaining power it had on death, unless you attack the power core (either by luck or by trying to). If you blow up their power core, they explode and hit Power/2 tiles outward in all directions, the damage also being Power/2.

The Map:
It starts underground. Floors can be 1 of 3 types while underground:
Maze-ish: small corridors, minimal peripheral vision.
Dungeon-ish: Mixture of both types.
Cave: Big open underground cave. No corridors.

Vision: At minimum power, you can see clearly your tile and the ones directly adjacent. If you have less than 6 power (vision does not use up power unless an add-on is improving its range), you can only see as many ahead as you have power, or the minimum if you have less than 1 power. Otherwise you can see up to 6 tiles away.
Paths:
Some robots follow these because they can't leave them. Some just wander through them. Some robots want to be the latter category but are bound to the Path. Path-compatible robots on a Path retain a bare-minimum of .50 Power at all times (.25 for movement, .25 for self-defense or very weak attacks), unless they return to normal ground. Explosions will disrupt Paths just as much as any other non-reinforced ground.

Integrity: If you run out of hull integrity, you're dead.
Power: If you are out of power by non-attack means, you deactivate and automatically return to the generator room to be rebooted, as long as you are within two turns of it. Further than that and you are out of luck. There is a good chance you'll hit any traps between you and the generator in this autopiloted state if there are any, so try to not let the autopilot take over too often.
If you are out of power because you've been disintegrated/blown up/cleaved/hacked to pieces/overloaded/possesed by a demon/other power-stealing event, you are dead, except in two cases:
1.Overload. If you're overloaded, you get two rolls, the higher one applied first: one to check if you still have working circuits, the other to see if you make it back to the generator with the limited circuitry left. If you fail both you explode. If you succeed in the first but fail to make it back, you can try again until either you fail thrice or make it back. After failing both thrice is the same result as failing both the first time for overload: Boom!
2.Demon possesion. Thats a special and rather rare case and I'll cover it if it happens.
Ammo: If you have an equipped material rounds weapon, this is your ammo counter. If its a energy weapon, this is how much power it takes per shot.

Name:
General shape (default is cube-shaped, this is cosmetic):
Bonus:
You will start with a sword. The sword is average, does 1 damage per Power point used, and is built-in as part of your self-defense system.
Integrity: 10/10
Power: 10
Movement: 4

Possible bonuses:
Durable: You are tougher. Start with 15 HP.
Supercharge: Start with 15 power.
Ranged weapon: You start with an inefficient laser rifle instead of your builtin sword. It does 2 damage/4 Power, and comes with a cell good for 2 additional shots. It does not fit the sword compartment however, so your integrity has also been impacted somewhat. (Start at 8/10 HP, but with a ranged weapon)