Prepared and Trapped Outcasts

In the next version of Anamnesis, outcasts will be able to hunker down in a territory and prepare in a number of ways for the attacks of pursuers, but they might also become trapped in other territories.

Another issue that was raised over at the Bay12forums after the latest release was that sometimes those Local Tension spirals in which allies and enemies start attacking each other happen when the player starts as an outcast before having time to settle down in a base and do something about it, so now we get two new mechanics to liven up the outcast experience.

For starters, if any territory is controlled by allies at the time of being outcast, enemies will most often prioritize attacking and occupying these territories rather than searching for you. Temporary garrisons might also happen to be available either to defend these territories or even you if you are lucky enough.

But this won't be reliable, so when you are an outcast you'll also get an action in most territories allowing you to prepare in a number of ways against enemy attacks as long as you remain in said territory. The exact action will vary depending on the territory, it might allow you to build defences out of scrap material if you have enough Resistance in one place, costing some Weariness. In some other places you'll get lucky and be able to persuade others to defend you out of the kindness of their hearts if your Intelligence is high enough, but you might want to leave an otherwise profitable territory because your Mobility is not high enough to scout for proper escape routes there.

The Preparedness of a territory will work as a fourth type of barrier and will be most effective against enemies with low Mobility, just like normal Barriers better stop enemies with low Resistance, Ruses work best against those with low Intelligence, and the third mystery kind of barrier you might not have even found inside the game yet stops enemies with low Terror.

In a small minority of territories however you won't get these actions because you'll be trapped in them. If you find yourself trapped in a territory either as a captive or because of the work of mysterious forces, instead of working towards preparedness you'll get a new action to work in your escape. It's tempting to put a stat requirement for these too, but I'll be nice and let all players pursue these actions so that you can't be really hopelessly trapped forever inside a territory.

This action will notify you of how many more weeks of work you'll need to be able to seize the next chance to leave the territory, but an unlikely miracle could still happen and give you a chance to escape before that. Some other actions will be unavailable in those territories until you regain that freedom, but this will be mostly for the sake of consistency. For example, it always bothered me that in The Crawling Labyrinth you are supposedly sealed inside but you can still help neighbours fumigate their houses.

Still, there will be a bright side to being confined to a territory. You will be considered dealt with, since the enemy's objective is to capture you after all. As a consequence, there will be no enemy attacks against you as long as you remain captive, or pretend to remain so, in one of these territories. Whether this will be worth it will too be up for each player in each given situation to decide.

 

The whole thing is subject to balance, but preliminary testing is looking fun so far. It really helps make outcasts feel like clever little mice eluding a mighty enemy as they look for that big break that will allow them to turn the tides rather than just a leaf caught in a hurricane.

There will be times when we'll die just as horribly as we die now, but with these extra choices in our hands it'll hopefully be harder to blame bad luck for it.