Metrowar - Discussion

Your factions may start on totally opposite sides of the map, and if linked under one banner there is no telling which captured station or military unit would go where. Furthermore you could just, y'know, starve that half, since the trend will be towards centralizing power in a few key stations. I have serious doubts. 9/10ths of this game is player interaction. 100% alliances don't happen naturally.

I made my own faction, at least, picked a start position and already calculated its conditions.

... Yeah, if they don't prove that I'm on the level, nothing will. I got screwed something fierce. :tsk:

 

Typed this up on Notepad so the formatting is crap, but this is the gist of what a regular post is like. Some of it is purely for your own reference/reminder so you don't lose track, some is for my benefit as GM to make sure you're following the rules and consistent with the last turn, and the rest is just a flow chart: Resources in -> Stuff that adds/subtracts it -> Ending resources. Words in parentheses are descriptions, not something you would actually leave in there.

 

Egh.. I'm getting a bit desperate.. Okay. Under two conditions:

1st - Those players who will be absent have to be 'very' clear what they are about and what their faction policy is, and the steward must follow it to the letter.

2nd - The Steward posts it as its own turn because I'll get eye cancer if I have to sift through two factions mashed into one post.

I'll post the official "make a faction" thread later today.



I've covered almost all of the mechanics except for one: Stalkers, at all stages.

So, Stalkers are a stand-in for infiltrators. This gives them a role aside from "frozen snowmen." It's as follows:

As a Scout - Stalkers can move around the map and reveal unknown territory like any other military unit. They can choose not to engage enemies and will therefore never attack anything unless explicitly stated in their movement order. Only Stalkers can force other Stalkers to battle, but you must specify "intercept hostile stalkers" in your diplomacy area to do so. Stalkers require 1 filter per turn whenever outside of friendly/owned/allied territory. They are periodically leaving safe areas and going to the surface to avoid detection, so they require constant supplies. However, they will never have to engage mutants as hostile units on the map, nor will they be automatically attacked for going to the surface or through infested tunnels. Stalkers cannot move through Radiation per se but can move 'over' it.

HOWEVER, when Stalkers move only over the surface there is a 10% chance they will be ambushed by a mob of mutants and butchered. This applies whenever they are above the surface, which must occur with above-ground sections, broken tunnels and radiation.


As a Military Unit - They aren't meant to survive pitched battles but if push comes to shove the Stalkers can be used as regular infantry. This is not to their best strengths, however, so they end up as little better than militia in terms of numbers x hitting power. That said, they are the perfect carriers for Demolition and Virus Bombs behind enemy lines, so having infiltrators and interceptors is very much appropriate.


As a Scavenger - What Stalkers are for if you don't need them on the map. They can go to the surface and look for supplies. This will result in a random generation of 1 resource based on the discovery rate for stations. Stalkers can be sent to scavenge by returning to your first/home/capital station. The next turn they will do their job, and if needed can be recalled to that station a turn later. However, once again there is a 10% chance per turn they will die, and they still cost a filter per turn. You have to weigh the costs and benefits of doing this very carefully, especially considering the manpower cost for tons of dead stalkers.

 

I know of it but never read it. My personal inspiration was a bit of Fallout fanfiction involving radical Texas Bible-thumpers creating a (rather corrupt) theocratic "republic" of Texas. That said, this faction of mine is a reaction to the relative lack of religion I saw in the Metro games: I don't think that post-apocalyptia, even as bad as the one seen here, would utterly destroy Orthodoxy, or Christianity in general. Meanwhile the novel's "Jehovah Witnesses" didn't make much sense considering the setting, and honestly if you ask any mindful Christian they'll tell you that if you're still alive it wasn't the final reckoning at all. My faction has a skewed view of pre-war Russia but it's ultimately trying to rebuild it; they have no intention of staying in the Metro forever.

 

My mistake for not mentioning earlier: Please PM me with links and whatnot for whatever you use to make a logo with. In this case, if you can link me to an isolated fox head it will be far easier to port it to the map.

This may work as a founding core but be reasonable: You're lucky enough to be close to a Metro entrance when a bunch of gamma radiation suddenly appears right next to you, and the number of hardcore survivalists are small already, especially in cities. Russians are a stubborn people in general, which justifies Metro 2033, but the number who are just rearing for Armageddon are few indeed. Survivalists can be your first members, your "elites," but you won't have a thriving 'faction' without other people joining up for their protection. And if you sit in one station the whole game, that would get rather dull, wouldn't it? Give it room to grow.

Don't make such specific statements about your environment until you get there. For all you know every single tunnel and station around you will be spotless after they're randomly generated. Once you see what you have to deal with, then you can roleplay around it.

Originally it was going to be impossible to claim, but that will dissuade everybody but the most late-game power mongers from marching all the way out to those two end stations. Tell you what: You can claim them, but you can only colonize them with 1 Pop (making them useless for resources and a drain on food), and the only benefit you gain is the ability to keep soldiers there without them needing filters every turn. Google those stations and you'll see that they're little better than glorified bus stops; at 'best' you have areas of filtered air for staging, like Sparta base. Also note that because of this, it will be impossible to fix the rail lines if they are broken, since you might as well be building a skyscraper in the open as a bunch of demons fly around you. Of course you will still need filters to move from station to station since the rails are above ground too, but the idea is that you can still move trains and cars, if at all possible.

Why on Earth would you be using jpeg? Save it as PNG.

We are, but it's been temporarily cut down until people either we get more players or the game drags on and players demand it.


Post when you've updated. In the meantime I'll set up a right proper first-post for the roleplay itself.

 

In case anyone checking here is not aware: both the main thread and the signup thread are now up and running. The first edition of the map will be posted once everyone has picked a station. That way nobody can capitalize on stations and tunnels revealed by previous players. A list of claimed stations will be available there so nobody steps on each others' toes.

 

Duly noted, and duly completed!

We can't start without folks setting up what they like. Can't even let someone else run the faction temporarily without that, either.

 

It's buried somewhere in that topic, sorry. Yes, the intention is to randomize all of that for the sake of exploration. You can't play with Metro 2033 canon in mind: we're making our own, and that means tunnels can be broken, resources can be different, the works. It'll be randomly generated as we go, so that I, too, as a player will not be in a position of advantage.

It's for Worm Cults, after all!

Always sucks, but understood, and finished!

They were different images spread over time, to be fair. All good. And Mendeleevskaya is a nice spot. About as secluded as you can get.

... But the entire point of this was creativity. You can pick any canon faction you'd like but it's not going to be a 1:1 carry-over. If people are 'that' lazy, let them pick Red Line or Reich. All is fair. But if you want to come up with templates or examples, by all means. Post them in the discussion thread.

 

If you think it will help. Again, if they really want they can use primitive versions of the canon factions, but eh... Nobody wants to write their own story?

Also, is it just me or does the "METROWAR" header for the main game thread constantly shift left?