Since this idea has grown so big I decided to open its own thread. First of all I want to mention the source of my inspiration. It was from a RPG game named Legend of Mana (PSX / Squaresoft), One of the many features of the game (besides the great music) was that you could craft your own robotic/golem companion. You crafted the golem's Battle AI and body. It was like this: -You created a golem mounting 1 weapon and various armor pieces. -The quality of the weapon defined the size of logic grid (which I will explain later). -The quality of the armor defined golem stats like attack, defense, or magic. -A golem's AI actions would be determined by the logic grid contents. That was a N x N grid in which you put some tetris-like pieces called logic blocks. -You could only change the logic blocks in the golem workshop, not in battle. -Each logic block was a different attack. -The vertical axis was the preference hierarchy. the golem will use the topmost attack when possible, when not possible, it will try the second attack, and so on (just like in the Final Fantasy 12's Gambit System). -The horizontal axis defined how much the golem would expose itself to enemies before performing an attack (valiant vs coward). -The tetris-like shape of logic blocks makes difficult to place them in an optimal arrangement. -The unused logic grid cells caused situations when the golem would take no action (fortunately there were 1x1 low-rate logic blocks to fill gaps). All of this generated funny situations where you yelled at the golem's stupidity when it performed a strong and slow attack against a single weak enemy or launched short range attacks from long range, missing the target. An example of Legend of Mana golemancy: So my idea is: -You create mechanical non-playable pets (from now on referred to as mechapet). -You recycle useless items like outdated armors to create mechapets. -You use valuable game blocks to create valuable behavior. Beeing greedy can be lethal. Cheap logic blocks means weak actions. -You do not know the effects of a logic block unless you expose yourself to a mechapet equiped with the unidentified logic block. -You cannot manipulate the mechapet's behavior once you are in a battle or any other dangerous situation so you must take responsability for the mechapet's stupidity. -The more risks you take creating the mechapet's AI, the highter chance to take great benefits. -Your pet's Artificial Stupidity can result in weird random situations which can be very profitable or catastrophic. -The mechapet's stupidity is your own stupidity. -Your mechapet's stupid-generated positive achievements are not your achievements. -You shall feel terror when you see your mechapet behaving unexpectedly (like adopting an energy-charging stance that could be preceeding a nuclear blast from which you can't be sure to be able to escape from on time). ------------------UPDATE------------------ -Behavior blocks are destroyed when removed. -Firstly placed behavior blocks can obstruct future block placing, So if you regret placing a valuable behavior block on an inconvenient arrangement, you must decide if you destroy the valuable behavior block or if you take the risks of creating a stupid AI arrangement placing new behavior blocks on the remaining space. -Behavior blocks can be attacks, can be battle abilities (like healing) or can be non-battle abilities (like minning resources or cyberlockpicking). -Behavior blocks can be incompatible. A mechapet equiped with a high-tier attack logic block can only equip low tier non-attack logic blocks. So this mechapet would be a battle-oriented one. -There are certain critical actions that can only be performed by your mechapet. (like hacking an electronically locked door or casting a healing spell). So you must expose yourself to your mechapet's Artificial Stupidity if you want to overcome certain game obstacles or situations. -You shall feel stupid when you see your mechapet has started to open a security door that says DO NOT OPEN and leads to a room filled with extremely dangerous monsters. -You shall facepalm when you see your mechapet hacking an explosive mimic cyberchest. ------------------UPDATE 2------------------ I was also thinking of a "singularity rate system" to work as a loyalty system. -Singularity gauge starts filling slowly when a battle starts, and resets at the battle's end. -At 100% it would "singularize" and gain self awareness and abandon you, or try to kill you. Or experience a religious/mystic experience and become a valuable NPC story character (like joining the robot church and start praying the binary bible) or start a secret quest (I will explain later) -A singularized mechapet would take humanoid shape reflecting it's human-like mind, or even angel shape reflecting it's beyond-human-like mind. -The stronger the mechapet is in comparison to your strength, the faster the "singularity" gauge fills. (a mechapet stronger than you should be hard to keep loyal) -A 25% filled singularity gauge will cause the mechapet a chance of a 25% to cast a random action not necessarily contained in the logic grid. Even endgame skills!!! (that can kill all of your enemies or yourself) -The more damaged a mechapet is, the faster the gauge fills. So a mechapet's loyalty depends on how much you take care of it and how much do you overuse it. It also would be fun if there was an optional (omega-weapon-like) special quest where an ancient overevolved singularized mechapet (that can shot temporal singularizating beams against your mechapet) is the boss.
Nice idea and very nice control system for mechapets, it seems that the game could use something like it, thumbs up! I really hope the devs decide on implementing something similar to this for mechapets. They should also put drones into the game and sorry for advertising my idea everywhere, but I think it would be just cool .
Here is another video of a remarkable game showing another pet sistem I liked a lot, Castlevania Simphony Of The Night. AKA SOTN. Do not expect to find any games this good on new generation consoles. 3D videogame marketing killed 2D videogame art.
We can have a place on the space station where we could do this. And later we could have such a place on a planet. Also, we should be able to make them guard your home planet from invaders
I was also thinking some weaponry logic blocks could be incompatible with some "transport" blocks or body parts. -A mechapet equiped with a "flying logic block/body part" can only equip small short range laser weapons or any other recoiless weapons. -A mechapet equiped with a "walker logic block/body part" can equip the above plus recoil kinetic weapons like heavy machineguns or shotguns. -A mechapet non equiped with any "transport logic block/body part" (that would be a turret) can equip the above plus extremely heavy recoil long range artillery like snipermassdrivers, indirect fire mortars, tactical nuclear weapons. Or even non-weapons devices like cargo massdrivers. You are on the battlefield lacking ammo? Then (radio)ask your mechapet at your home base a railgunned ammo delivery and pray it does not miss the target.
Also it would be cool that you could have a small flying drone swarm flying in formation hellbulleting enemies like in George Moromisato's Transcendence (PC/RPG/game) auton drone swarm or like in Gradius multiple options.
