Latest revision as of 20:09, 12 December 2022

BTA Developer Blog #9: The Story of the Sanctuary Worlds

With BTA v15.0 comes a brand-new addition to the mod, and to BattleTech as a setting, the Sanctuary Worlds and the nations and peoples that live there. Because the Sanctuary Worlds are non-canon I invented them whole-cloth and I figured some folks might have a small interest in where they came from and why I went to such an effort to make this entirely new faction. Additionally, some folks might want to know more about their background and history in-setting (not much of which appears in BTA v15.0), so I'm taking some time to discuss the factions both in and out of setting. We'll start with the real life aspect to the factions, i.e. why did I make them?

For many years I've had a desire to make something unique and new about BattleTech. It's the old "OC Do Not Steal" vibe from the earlier days of the internet. Everyone has their own headcanon after all and wants to make stuff that's uniquely theirs. The Sanctuary Worlds started life in like 2014 as the Dane Sacellum, a Clan-like faction that fled the Inner Sphere during the Star League era to make their own space nation with blackjack and hookers. I wrote out a rough fluff document and included some notes about rules for their weapons and that was it. I attempted to figure out how Solaris Skunk Werks (a tabletop BT mech design program) functions so I could make their gear in there and actually print and play with Sacellum mechs and gear on the tabletop, but at the time SSW was rather difficult to mod and I abandoned it in favor of having other stuff to do in my day-to-day life. When 2018 rolled around and HBS BT was released and I fell into modding it, I realized that this custom faction could be resurrected somewhat in HBS BT, which is much easier to mod. In fact, in the very early days of BTA (2019ish) I even took a stab at making the Sacellum into a real faction. However, the demands of running BTA quickly interfered and I set the project down, vowing to return one day to finish it.

Which brings us to August 2022. I had been slowly burning out from constant updates to BTA and from the daily grind of making content. Don't get me wrong, I love the job and wouldn't trade it, but even a job you love can wear on you after 3+ years of doing it. I realized that something had to change, and quick, or the ultimate result was going to be me quitting BTA and walking away, which I didn't want to do. I love BTA and I love the community and didn't want to ragequit because I was sick of it. I went digging through my storage files to see if I could find something to revitalize my interest and energy and lo and behold, the Sacellum files were just hanging out waiting for me to rediscover them. I decided that I was going to set out to bring this idea to life and I'd do it right this time.

To that end, I made an announcement on August 19th, 2022. I told the community that I was burning out and needed to shift focus. From then on, I was focused on the new project and normal BTA would get backburnered for awhile until I got it done. The community was immensely supportive and understanding and I felt I had the freedom to go for it so I did. I took the original single faction, the Dane Sacellum, and I spun it out into four factions: the Dane Sacellum, the Mallard Republic, the Jacobson Haven, and their mutually-assembled army the Sanctuary Alliance. I wrote an entire history for the region of space they settled and how they got there. I reworked their entire techtree from the ground up, redid all the weapons, made new ones, adjusted old ones, invented all their new equipment and gear (such as heat sinks and armors and structures and such). I sketched out how many units they'd need to be roughly viable as factions, including tanks and turrets. I figured out where their worlds would be located (trickier than you might expect). I figured out how they'd interact with the Inner Sphere, who would be in their warpath, and how their war would turn out (decently well, as it happens). I even made little characters for the faction representatives that the player gets missions from and who say things to the player at the Mission Complete screen (all factions have this in the upper left-hand corner, that portrait and name and text is all changeable). I sketched out ideas for events that would happen in their space to immerse the player in their lore and personalities, though these were left out of the initial v15.0 release for lack of time due to real-life commitments involving my family (they're coming in later patches, promise!).

The project brought me back to life and rekindled my love of BTA and of working on BTA. Playing with the new gear felt *fresh* in a way that BTA hadn't felt in a long time. I know that not everyone will want to play with non-canon content, that's fair, and I made sure to keep it relatively contained to a corner of the map so that you have to go looking for the new factions to encounter them instead of them coming to find you wherever you are (sort of like the Clans). I do hope that folks approach this with an open mind and give it a fair shake. I want people to experience something new and get to see it with new eyes for the first time, there's something magical about seeing something for the first time that you've never seen or know anything about.

Anyways, that's the deal. That's how we got here and what I was thinking the whole while. Hope you give it a shot and enjoy it, it's fun stuff, I promise! :)

Previous Developer Blogs

BTA Developer Blog #1: BTA's Core Philosophy - 2021/5/18

BTA Developer Blog #2: BTA and the Clans - 2021/5/24

BTA Developer Blog #3: Tanks For All The Fish - 2021/5/31

BTA Developer Blog #4: Abiding Quirkiness - 2021/6/11

BTA Developer Blog #5: Artillery and You, A Primer - 2021/10/8

BTA Developer Blog #6: The Salvage Question - 2022/3/13

BTA Developer Blog #7: Damage Reduction And You - 2022/4/14

BTA Developer Blog #8: BD's Favorites! - 2022/4/15

BTA Developer Blog #9: The Story of the Sanctuary Worlds - 2022/12/12

BTA Developer Blog #9.5: The Actual Story of the Sanctuary Worlds - 2022/12/12

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-= BTA Developer Blog #6: The Salvage Question =
+= BTA Developer Blog #9: The Story of the Sanctuary Worlds =
-So, in BTA's 13.2 patch, we made a change that I believe has been heavily misunderstood. We changed max salvage on missions to top out around 4/19 or so. The community has reacted with a fair bit of panic about this change and so I felt the need to explain a little further why we did it and why this isn't the end of the world so that folks can relax a little and perceive our reasoning.
+With BTA v15.0 comes a brand-new addition to the mod, and to BattleTech as a setting, the Sanctuary Worlds and the nations and peoples that live there. Because the Sanctuary Worlds are non-canon I invented them whole-cloth and I figured some folks might have a small interest in where they came from and why I went to such an effort to make this entirely new faction. Additionally, some folks might want to know more about their background and history in-setting (not much of which appears in BTA v15.0), so I'm taking some time to discuss the factions both in and out of setting. We'll start with the real life aspect to the factions, i.e. why did I make them?
-To be clear out of the gate, this was not a nerf. Nerfs are actions taken to specifically punish a play style or stop something from happening and that's not why this action was taken. We had no direct issue with salvaging stuff, salvaging stuff is fine and good and fun and we like it. This was a gameplay focused decision, taken to encourage a certain gameplay loop. It is also part 1 of a multi-part effort and has multiple aspects to it. But I want to be extraordinarily clear: when we made this choice it was not to punish anyone or any play style, it was not done to hit the players with a stick and say "Bad Players! Bad Players!" Some folks have implied or believed as much and that view is just flat out wrong, this was not a punishment move.
+For many years I've had a desire to make something unique and new about BattleTech. It's the old "OC Do Not Steal" vibe from the earlier days of the internet. Everyone has their own headcanon after all and wants to make stuff that's uniquely theirs. The Sanctuary Worlds started life in like 2014 as the Dane Sacellum, a Clan-like faction that fled the Inner Sphere during the Star League era to make their own space nation with blackjack and hookers. I wrote out a rough fluff document and included some notes about rules for their weapons and that was it. I attempted to figure out how Solaris Skunk Werks (a tabletop BT mech design program) functions so I could make their gear in there and actually print and play with Sacellum mechs and gear on the tabletop, but at the time SSW was rather difficult to mod and I abandoned it in favor of having other stuff to do in my day-to-day life. When 2018 rolled around and HBS BT was released and I fell into modding it, I realized that this custom faction could be resurrected somewhat in HBS BT, which is much easier to mod. In fact, in the very early days of BTA (2019ish) I even took a stab at making the Sacellum into a real faction. However, the demands of running BTA quickly interfered and I set the project down, vowing to return one day to finish it.
-I can hear you asking now though, "Ok BD, then what the fuck did you do it for?" and the answer there is multi-stage. The first, basic, answer is to increase c-bill equity. The BTA Team identified that c-bills vs salvage is absurdly lopsided in terms of gameplay choices, to the point that the community wisdom is to never take c-bills. This is bad design. If a choice may as well not be there, then why is it there? Increasing c-bill equity is important and something we want to encourage. This is the weakest part of the reasoning behind changing the max salvage but is the easiest one to see immediately. There is a change coming in the next few days that will further act on this point, with an estimated 50% c-bill boost to all contract payments across the board, including special contracts such as flashpoints, with no drawbacks or tricks whatsoever. This should further help to equalize perceived c-bill vs salvage value and is one of those "multi-part efforts" I mentioned earlier.
+Which brings us to August 2022. I had been slowly burning out from constant updates to BTA and from the daily grind of making content. Don't get me wrong, I love the job and wouldn't trade it, but even a job you love can wear on you after 3+ years of doing it. I realized that something had to change, and quick, or the ultimate result was going to be me quitting BTA and walking away, which I didn't want to do. I love BTA and I love the community and didn't want to ragequit because I was sick of it. I went digging through my storage files to see if I could find something to revitalize my interest and energy and lo and behold, the Sacellum files were just hanging out waiting for me to rediscover them. I decided that I was going to set out to bring this idea to life and I'd do it right this time.
+To that end, I made an announcement on August 19th, 2022. I told the community that I was burning out and needed to shift focus. From then on, I was focused on the new project and normal BTA would get backburnered for awhile until I got it done. The community was immensely supportive and understanding and I felt I had the freedom to go for it so I did. I took the original single faction, the Dane Sacellum, and I spun it out into four factions: the Dane Sacellum, the Mallard Republic, the Jacobson Haven, and their mutually-assembled army the Sanctuary Alliance. I wrote an entire history for the region of space they settled and how they got there. I reworked their entire techtree from the ground up, redid all the weapons, made new ones, adjusted old ones, invented all their new equipment and gear (such as heat sinks and armors and structures and such). I sketched out how many units they'd need to be roughly viable as factions, including tanks and turrets. I figured out where their worlds would be located (trickier than you might expect). I figured out how they'd interact with the Inner Sphere, who would be in their warpath, and how their war would turn out (decently well, as it happens). I even made little characters for the faction representatives that the player gets missions from and who say things to the player at the Mission Complete screen (all factions have this in the upper left-hand corner, that portrait and name and text is all changeable). I sketched out ideas for events that would happen in their space to immerse the player in their lore and personalities, though these were left out of the initial v15.0 release for lack of time due to real-life commitments involving my family (they're coming in later patches, promise!).
-The next part of the answer is the much more important but much more obscure answer and, simply put, is that this salvage change was done to extend a specific period of BTA gameplay. BTA careers can be broken into about three parts: the scrappy early-game when you've got nothing to work with and your pilots are bad and you're struggling to survive, the rich and interesting middle-game when you've stabilized and are starting to define the career's trajectory, and the snowballed late-game when you're an unstoppable juggernaut of destruction with maxed out everything. It's the BTA Team's general belief that BTA is at its very best in the first two phases, with a lot of the best gameplay coming in the middle-game where you have some power (unlike early-game when you're just flailing for any lifeline) but still have some restrictions due to lacking perfect builds like in late-game snowball. The salvage change was made to extend the middle-game, the phase we believe is the best phase of BTA.
+The project brought me back to life and rekindled my love of BTA and of working on BTA. Playing with the new gear felt *fresh* in a way that BTA hadn't felt in a long time. I know that not everyone will want to play with non-canon content, that's fair, and I made sure to keep it relatively contained to a corner of the map so that you have to go looking for the new factions to encounter them instead of them coming to find you wherever you are (sort of like the Clans). I do hope that folks approach this with an open mind and give it a fair shake. I want people to experience something new and get to see it with new eyes for the first time, there's something magical about seeing something for the first time that you've never seen or know anything about.
+Anyways, that's the deal. That's how we got here and what I was thinking the whole while. Hope you give it a shot and enjoy it, it's fun stuff, I promise! :)
-We had this discussion a while ago about where the best time in BTA was had and how we could extend that period so that players could experience more of it. The core problem is that BTA, like many games of this type, is by definition a snowball game and that can't really be stopped. Success means that you acquire more parts and mechs and tools which means that you inevitably snowball really really hard and become the unstoppable juggernaut of death I mentioned earlier. The key metric to how you do the snowball is salvage, which is the objectively best source of material to encourage the snowball. Further, salvage shares go up as missions become harder. On the face of it, that's logical: harder missions bring bigger rewards. But it also accelerates the snowball meaning you skip through the middle-game faster to get to the broken as hell end-game.
-In order to extend the middle-game, we looked at two options: shorten the early-game or slow down the end-game. The early-game is dangerous but also deeply deeply rewarding as you survive and gain that stability that leads into the middle-game. We didn't want to shorten that experience because it too was identified as being really enjoyable and rewarding to push through. On the flip side, since we can't stop the end-game snowball, slowing it down doesn't actually change anything beyond making you get there slower. You'll still always get there if you succeed, it's the nature of the design, that cannot be stopped, only delayed. The choice seemed clear: make a change to slow down the end-game and thereby extend the middle-game some. The choice we landed on is, I hope, obvious now: reduce salvage numbers.
-By reducing salvage numbers we can keep players in that enjoyable "choices still matter" period of the middle-game. Less access to everything a player wants when they want it is intentional. I've seen people saying "oh, you need to super upgrade the shops" and, uh, no, I don't. That defeats the point. The point is to extend the period where you don't have all your tools because the very act of having all the tools defeats the entire point of having a middle-game because that's the definition of the end-game snowball period. Think about it critically: you've lost literally no access to anything. At the absolute worst case scenario, a mission that offered you 7 picks offers you 4 now. That's three less items. That's it. It's not that the items became rarer, it's not that the items aren't there, it's that you now need to make choices about what you value more often. That extends the middle-game where choices are important without removing the end-game because you'll get there anyway, just 1-3 less picks at a time. Nothing changed, it just ratcheted down the acceleration a little.
-I know there are going to be voices that say "but BD, I like the snowball". You know what? I do too. It's fun to be super powerful. And guess what? I didn't take that away from you, I just made it come a little later. It means you get to enjoy your career longer, it means your success will feel more earned because it took a little longer and little more tactical choices on your part to get there. Each piece of that snowball feels better because you chose it over something else. This choice wasn't made for no reason, it was made to encourage a longer, more contemplative, more "choices matter" style of gameplay. It wasn't a punishment of the snowball, it was a mild delay to encourage another period of a BTA career.
-At the end of the day, BTA is a modpack with a vision and a clear design goal. Total "do it your way" freedom leads to uniform blandness (see: Ubisoft sandboxes). I as a designer believe firmly in a focused experience with intentional goals and that's the spirit this change was made in. I talked with the team, we decided that this was the period of BTA's gameplay we want to encourage most, and that's what we did. We didn't take away the early-game struggle for those players who love it and we didn't take away the late-game snowball for those players that love it, that's all still here. When you comment, and I expect there will be comments, keep in mind that we did this to encourage something, not punish something else.
 = Previous Developer Blogs =
@@ Line 38: / Line 27: @@
 [[BTA Developer Blog 6: The Salvage Question|BTA Developer Blog #6: The Salvage Question - 2022/3/13]]
+[[BTA Developer Blog 7: Damage Reduction And You|BTA Developer Blog #7: Damage Reduction And You - 2022/4/14]]
+[[BTA Developer Blog 8: BD's Favorites!|BTA Developer Blog #8: BD's Favorites! - 2022/4/15]]
+[[BTA Developer Blog 9: The Story of the Sanctuary Worlds|BTA Developer Blog #9: The Story of the Sanctuary Worlds - 2022/12/12]]
+[[BTA Developer Blog 9.5: The Actual Story of the Sanctuary Worlds|BTA Developer Blog #9.5: The Actual Story of the Sanctuary Worlds - 2022/12/12]]
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Latest revision as of 20:09, 12 December 2022

BTA Developer Blog #9: The Story of the Sanctuary Worlds

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