Androids
The Banished Vault Design Diary 13
Throughout development of The Banished Vault, I initially resisted design ideas that gave the player new Exiles, after you set the amount to start a journey with. I think it's important to the overall feeling of the game that you have a constantly dwindling crew, just drawing out the end for as long as they can to try and make what time they have left meaningful.
Since the general idea came up early, we've had time to simmer on what form it could take for a potential update, without sacrificing this overall feeling of the game. It's important that the new design maintains this while giving the player more interesting situations to contend with, and not just adding another Exile to the crew. This might be a fleeting respite for the player, but ultimately just makes their journey longer.
Androids
Androids were birthed with these constraints in mind. They are in most ways identical to Exiles, but have some key distinctions that make them feel very different in the overall arc of a journey. Androids are found on abandoned ships, and on average you'll only encounter two or three in a journey. Androids can perform any action a human Exile can, but instead of faith they have a value called condition.
Condition is always decreasing, and like faith it interfaces with the dice rolling. An android's condition starts between 10--24ish, but unlike faith cannot be restored. When an android resolves a hazard, the player can choose how many dice they'd like to roll, from one to six. The amount chosen is deducted from the android's condition, permanently shortening its lifespan. Most importantly, androids do not need Stasis to survive hibernation between solar systems, but like faith they lose one condition. Androids can last a long time in a journey, but their time in the universe is limited just like humans.
Exiles are maintained (in a game resource sense) with elixir, but are on a short timer before becoming weary, and unable to take actions. Androids are on a much longer timer before being halted, but they cannot be maintained. This is important to make androids feel truly different from humans, and between this and not needing Stasis I feel that is achieved. If androids did have a maintenance resource (either a new one or just Alloy, for example) this would introduce new goals for the player, but the overall feeling of having an android Exile or human Exile would be quite similar. This differentiation ensures we keep the feeling that the Exiles are over the limit and trying to extend their journey as long as they can.
As the design progressed, the change to hazard interaction came afterwards. We started with changing faith to condition, since it would be more thematically appropriate. How condition interacted with hazards could have gone any way, but it was clear that preventing or greatly modifying how androids interact with hazards would be too limiting for the player, and involve a lot of work for the interface to communicate. The idea that androids can choose the dice roll makes sense, and gives the player an additional way to interact with the hazards without actually adding a whole new kind of dice roll, or resource, or whatever.
And that's it! By the time I sat down to implement the androids, these ideas were pretty much set, and thematically it felt right. As we started testing, there's even more in there that we hadn't fully realized, just as an overall confluence of these new systems, but I'll leave that for you to discover.