spaceship/core/Quests.gd

extends RefCounted

# Forgejo #129 / #133: the quest chain.
#
# One place, in order, and nothing but data. GameState answers each goal and
# QuestDirector reads each line out; neither of them knows what the quests
# ARE, so adding one here is the whole job of adding one.
#
# Two rules the chain obeys, both learned from the game rather than chosen:
#
#   1. Nothing here may ask for something the player cannot yet reach. The
#      sharp edge is RESEARCH POINTS - they come only from conquering a
#      planet (GameState.mark_point_captured), so every node with a
#      research_points cost sits after `conquest` below. Ore-only nodes -
#      Shipyards, Logistics - may come before it.
#   2. A quest names ONE goal, and the brief says what it will take. Asking
#      for a gas burner is asking for the Power Systems research too; that
#      belongs in the sentence, not in a second entry, or the chain turns
#      into a list of errands.
#
# The whole story turns on `mothership`: the fleet builds a transmitter,
# calls the World Ship, and hears nothing - not because the array is weak
# but because the breach put them further out than anyone has been. Every
# quest after it is a search.

# There is nobody left to talk to, so the quests are the ship talking to
# itself - the same voice the prologue ends on (IntroDirector.SHIP_LOG).
const SPEAKER: String = "KESTREL - LOG"

# Goal kinds. Each is one line in GameState.quest_progress().
const GOAL_RESOURCE: String = "resource"
const GOAL_BUILDING: String = "building"
const GOAL_FLEET_VESSEL: String = "fleet_vessel"
const GOAL_VESSEL_UNLOCKED: String = "vessel_unlocked"
const GOAL_EXPLORE: String = "explore"
const GOAL_PLANET_VISITS: String = "planet_visits"
const GOAL_PLANET_KINDS: String = "planet_kinds"
const GOAL_CONQUERED: String = "conquered"
# #141: researching a doctrine, as a step of its own. The chain used to fold
# it into the brief of the thing it unlocks ("spend ore on Shipyards, then
# put a crafter down"), which asks the player to do two unrelated things -
# open a menu they have never opened, and place a structure - off one line.
const GOAL_RESEARCH: String = "research"
# #156: what is in the BANK, which is a different question from what the
# player can lay hands on. GOAL_RESOURCE counts the hold as well, and the
# hold is exactly what this quest is about being too small.
const GOAL_BANKED: String = "banked"
# #163: a vessel actually STATIONED at an outpost. Building one and crewing it
# are two different acts - the chain teaches the second, because an empty
# outpost holds nothing and the player has no reason to discover the hangar
# that fills it.
const GOAL_GARRISONED: String = "garrisoned"

# #167: which quests carry the STORY, marked `"important": true` below.
#
# Most of the chain is teaching: bank some ore, place a crafter, open the
# hangar. A teaching quest handed to a player who has already done the thing
# has nothing to teach, and stopping the game twice to say so - once for the
# brief, once for the answer - is two dialogs about nothing. Those are
# skipped (GameState._advance_quests); they still land in the DONE list, so
# the player sees they were credited rather than lost.
#
# The ones marked here are different. They are the search for the World Ship
# - the wreck we start in, the call that gets no answer, the first world, the
# ground somebody else was already holding, the survey, the trail - and their
# lines are the plot rather than instructions. Those are read out whether the
# goal was already met or not, because skipping one drops a piece of the
# story on the floor.

const CHAIN: Array = [
	{
		"id": "first_ore",
		"title": "SALVAGE",
		"objective": "Break asteroids for 5 ore",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_RESOURCE, "resource": "ore", "amount": 5},
		"brief": "The hull holds. The reactor runs. Everything else we had is on the far side of that hole. These rocks carry ore. Break some, and we can start again.",
		"done": "Five ore in the hold. It is not much, but it is a start.",
		"important": true,
	},
	{
		# #142: the gap this fills was a real one. "Collect 5 ore" was
		# followed straight by "build the mothership", which costs twenty -
		# so the first thing the chain ever asked for was four times what it
		# had just taught, with nothing saying so.
		"id": "stockpile",
		"title": "THE PILE",
		"objective": "Break asteroids for 20 ore",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_RESOURCE, "resource": "ore", "amount": 20},
		"brief": "Now do that four more times. Five ore builds nothing, and there is nothing else out here to spend it on yet.",
		"done": "Twenty in the hold. Now we can build something.",
	},
	{
		"id": "mothership",
		"title": "A PLACE TO STAND",
		"objective": "Build the mothership",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_BUILDING, "building": "mothership"},
		"brief": "A ship is not a base. Build the mothership. It carries the only transmitter big enough to call the World Ship.",
		# The hinge of the whole chain (#129): the answer to "we built the
		# transmitter" is that the transmitter was never the problem.
		"done": "The mothership is online. Calling the World Ship. Calling. Nothing comes back, and the transmitter is not at fault. The breach threw us further out than any signal of ours will carry. So we find their trail ourselves, or we never find them.",
		"important": true,
	},
	{
		"id": "chart",
		"title": "DEAD RECKONING",
		"objective": "Chart 30 sectors",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_EXPLORE, "sectors": 30},
		"brief": "So we search. Fly, and the map fills in behind us. Their course is somewhere in it.",
		"done": "Thirty sectors charted. No sign of the World Ship, but the map behind us is no longer blank.",
		"important": true,
	},
	{
		# #141: its own step, and the first time the chain sends anyone into
		# the research tree at all - so the brief says where the tree IS.
		# Every later quest that needs a doctrine only mentions it in
		# passing, which is enough once the player has been there once.
		"id": "shipyards",
		"title": "SHIPYARDS",
		"objective": "Research the Shipyards doctrine",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_RESEARCH, "node": "shipyards"},
		"brief": "One ship cannot chart a whole sky, and we have forgotten how to build more. The mothership holds the archive. Go aboard and research Shipyards.",
		"done": "Shipyard plans recovered. There is more in that archive, if we go back for it.",
	},
	{
		"id": "crafter",
		"title": "A YARD OF OUR OWN",
		"objective": "Build a ship crafter",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_BUILDING, "building": "ship_crafter"},
		"brief": "Now build a ship crafter. Ore goes in, ships come out. It is the only way this fleet grows past the one hull that came through the breach.",
		"done": "The yard is running. We can build our own ships now.",
	},
	{
		"id": "second_hull",
		"title": "A SECOND HULL",
		"objective": "Fly two vessels at once",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_FLEET_VESSEL, "vessel": "interceptor", "count": 2},
		"brief": "Order an interceptor at the yard and crew it. Two ships is not a fleet, but it is twice what we flew out of the breach with.",
		"done": "Two ships in formation. It has been a long time since we flew with company.",
	},
	{
		"id": "planetfall",
		"title": "PLANETFALL",
		"objective": "Land on a planet",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_PLANET_VISITS, "count": 1},
		"brief": "There are worlds out here. Fly the fleet close to one and land on it. A surface holds more than all this empty dark.",
		"done": "We are down on solid ground. Whatever else this place is, it is somewhere.",
		"important": true,
	},
	{
		"id": "conquest",
		"title": "GROUND HELD",
		"objective": "Take every capture point on one planet",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_CONQUERED, "count": 1},
		"brief": "Something reached this surface before us, and it is still holding it. Take every capture point on the planet. What we pull out of their camps is worth more than the ore.",
		# Says out loud where research points come from, because nothing
		# else in the game does.
		"done": "The planet is ours. Their machines gave us research data, the first we have had. Every doctrine worth having will cost some.",
		"important": true,
	},
	{
		# #156: the extractor is the first thing the chain asks for that
		# cannot be paid for out of a single hold. An interceptor carries 20
		# and the fleet is small; the mothership is where anything larger
		# than one trip has to accumulate, and nothing had ever said so.
		"id": "deposit",
		"title": "THE HOLD IS SMALL",
		"objective": "Bank 60 ore at the mothership",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_BANKED, "resource": "ore", "amount": 60},
		"brief": "Each ship carries twenty units and no more, and we are going to need more than twenty. Fly what we have back to the mothership and unload it. What is stored there stays there.",
		"done": "Sixty in the vault. A hold empties on the next trip out. A vault does not. Everything from here on depends on that.",
	},
	{
		"id": "extractor",
		"title": "STANDING MINE",
		"objective": "Build an extractor on a planet",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_BUILDING, "building": "extractor"},
		"brief": "Research Logistics, then place an extractor on a planet. It keeps digging whether we are standing over it or not.",
		"done": "The extractor is digging. The ore will be waiting when we come back for it.",
	},
	{
		"id": "gas",
		"title": "THE HEAVY AIR",
		"objective": "Bring back 25 gas",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_RESOURCE, "resource": "gas", "amount": 25},
		"brief": "The striped worlds are full of gas, and gas is the only thing out here that burns. Take the fleet into one and fill the tanks.",
		"done": "Twenty-five gas aboard. Now we need something that can burn it.",
	},
	{
		"id": "hub",
		"title": "FREIGHT",
		"objective": "Build a transport hub",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_BUILDING, "building": "transport_hub"},
		"brief": "Hauling every load ourselves is slow. Research Freight Handling and build a transport hub. Its transporters fly the routes without us.",
		"done": "The hub runs its own traffic now. That frees us for other work.",
	},
	{
		"id": "burner",
		"title": "POWER",
		"objective": "Build a gas burner",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_BUILDING, "building": "gas_burner"},
		"brief": "Research Power Systems and build a gas burner. Gas in, energy out. The better weapons run on energy.",
		"done": "The burner is lit. This fleet has power again for the first time since the breach.",
	},
	{
		"id": "lab",
		"title": "SHIP SCIENCE",
		"objective": "Build a ship lab",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_BUILDING, "building": "ship_lab"},
		"brief": "Research Vessel Science and build a ship lab. It makes the ships we fly better, and it opens designs we have never built.",
		"done": "The lab is open.",
	},
	{
		"id": "shield",
		"title": "A NEW HULL",
		"objective": "Unlock the shield vessel",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_VESSEL_UNLOCKED, "vessel": "shield"},
		"brief": "The archive holds a shield ship. Unlock it at the lab. So far the fleet has taken every hit on bare hull.",
		"done": "The shield ship is unlocked. There is more than one design in that archive.",
	},
	{
		"id": "outpost",
		"title": "FORWARD BASES",
		"objective": "Build an outpost",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_BUILDING, "building": "outpost"},
		"brief": "We cannot be everywhere at once. Research Forward Bases and build an outpost. Ships stationed there hold ground we are not standing on.",
		"done": "The outpost is up. That is one place we no longer have to fly back to.",
	},
	{
		"id": "garrison",
		"title": "STANDING WATCH",
		"objective": "Station a vessel at the outpost",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_GARRISONED, "count": 1},
		"brief": "An empty outpost is only a building. Open its hangar and station a ship there. It will hold that ground whether we are there or not.",
		"done": "The outpost has a crew. It watches that approach now, so we do not have to.",
	},
	{
		"id": "worlds",
		"title": "THE SURVEY",
		"objective": "Land on three different kinds of world",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_PLANET_KINDS, "count": 3},
		"brief": "Rock, gas, and whatever else is out here. Land on three different kinds of world. If the World Ship came this way, it passed something.",
		"done": "Three kinds of world surveyed. Not one of them holds any sign of the convoy.",
		"important": true,
	},
	{
		"id": "trail",
		"title": "THE TRAIL",
		"objective": "Chart 150 sectors",
		"goal": {"kind": GOAL_EXPLORE, "sectors": 150},
		"brief": "Then we search wider. A hundred and fifty sectors, and every one of them looked at properly. They are out there somewhere.",
		"done": "A hundred and fifty sectors charted, and still no trail. The search does not stop just because the list ran out.",
		"important": true,
	},
]


static func count() -> int:
	return CHAIN.size()


static func at(index: int) -> Dictionary:
	if index < 0 or index >= CHAIN.size():
		return {}
	return CHAIN[index]


# #167: whether a quest's lines are the story rather than instructions. Only
# these are said when the goal was already met the moment it was handed out.
static func is_important(quest: Dictionary) -> bool:
	return bool(quest.get("important", false))


static func by_id(id: String) -> Dictionary:
	for quest in CHAIN:
		if String(quest.id) == id:
			return quest
	return {}