Away missions 2: Rebirth

[Shadowlight213]

I've fixed up away missions so they actually can run without crashing the server now.

However, content wise they havent been balanced and there's still likely a number of bugs remaining with them.

HOW TO ENABLE AWAY MISSIONS ON YOUR SERVER:
1. In your tg-station folder, go to _maps/RandomZLevels/fileList.txt and remove the # in front of the away mission maps you want to enable.
2. IMPORTANT! Go to your config folder and uncomment or add this line without the quotation marks to your space_levels.txt: "Away Mission;8;unlinked". MAKE SURE THIS LINE IS ONLY UNCOMMENTED WHEN AWAY MISSIONS ARE ENABLED OR IT WILL CAUSE RUNTIMES!
3. You can set the delay before the gateway is enabled in the game_options.txt config.


Feedback for content balancing and bugs welcome.
Also, I need someone to help me with the Active turfs at rounstart mapping issue I've been running into.

[Aranclanos]

you can fix the bugs, balance and other minor things, but doing so you aren't change what away missions are at the end.
They are awesome the first round, filled with discovery and wonder, but once you played them once or twice they won't change. They'll be the same maps where you arrive, loot it and come back to the station to play SS13.

[onleavedontatme]

Away Missions work best as one off, rare events yeah.

Unless we get some decent random generation going and some interesting enemies, traps etc. Might give it more replayability.

Roles for ghosts might also breathe life into it.

Still glad to have let a new batch of players experience the exploit free wonder so thank you for that.

[oranges]

I'm still 100 percent behind the idea of making them an entire roundtype, it can be set to a low percentage, so you see them quite rarely, and they'll be an occasional change of pace from our usual rounds.

[DrPillzRedux]

Goons adventure areas can be accessed anytime. People don't go to them often for a few reasons. I'd think about them.

You have do to some math to access them.
You have to find the secret coordinates if you don't know them already. You still have to do math.
The loot is fucking great, including syndi gear and weapons, but enemies are deadly as fuck and there's puzzles.
Enemies gib the shit out of you and stun lock you.
You absolutely must prepare before you enter them or you die.
Their portal drains energy very fast, so a good power supply is needed.

Their areas are the same every round and after 2 years of analyzing them for endgame, it's still interesting.

[Shadowlight213]

That's essentially what I'd like to aim for. Something like what goon has. Their areas haven't grown stale and are good end game content.

[Deitus]

I'm still 100 percent behind the idea of making them an entire roundtype, it can be set to a low percentage, so you see them quite rarely, and they'll be an occasional change of pace from our usual rounds.

this actually sounds like an awesome idea. when i joined /tg/ the gateway was already disabled so im really behind any away missions being active. the only problem i can see that might have already been known about/have rules in place for is the "fucking off into space" principle: that is, when engineers grab a hardsuit and fuck off into space when they are needed around the station. who gets to go on away missions, and under what circumstances? like i dont think the captain should be able to goose step straight into the gateway at the first call of aaaawperatives and whatnot. again, this is something that has probably been discussed but help a newfag catch up yeah?

[Shadowlight213]

I'm still 100 percent behind the idea of making them an entire roundtype, it can be set to a low percentage, so you see them quite rarely, and they'll be an occasional change of pace from our usual rounds.

this actually sounds like an awesome idea. when i joined /tg/ the gateway was already disabled so im really behind any away missions being active. the only problem i can see that might have already been known about/have rules in place for is the "fucking off into space" principle: that is, when engineers grab a hardsuit and fuck off into space when they are needed around the station. who gets to go on away missions, and under what circumstances? like i dont think the captain should be able to goose step straight into the gateway at the first call of aaaawperatives and whatnot. again, this is something that has probably been discussed but help a newfag catch up yeah?

Stuff like the nuke disk and the nuke cant be sent through the gateway.
oranges idea was to make the crew need to go retrieve an item from an away mission or something to succeed. While that sounds cool, I'm worried about people leaving the station and the possibility of no one being left to call the shuttle.

As for the gateway itself, I'm thinking of adding some extra requirements to operate it, such as it draining tons of power like a power sink.

[Thunder11]

Away Missions work best as one off, rare events yeah.

Unless we get some decent random generation going and some interesting enemies, traps etc. Might give it more replayability.

Roles for ghosts might also breathe life into it.

Still glad to have let a new batch of players experience the exploit free wonder so thank you for that.

This is an automated public service announcement
REMIE ALREADY CODED A WHOLE RANDOM GENERATOR GO USE IT ALREADY
This was an automated public service announcement

[DaemonBomb]

As for the gateway itself, I'm thinking of adding some extra requirements to operate it, such as it draining tons of power like a power sink.

I like this idea, it'd require the engineers to harden the powernet and set up for it. Maybe make the power drain increase with every person who goes through, so not everyone could fuck off into it.

[Luke Cox]

As for the gateway itself, I'm thinking of adding some extra requirements to operate it, such as it draining tons of power like a power sink.

I like this idea, it'd require the engineers to harden the powernet and set up for it. Maybe make the power drain increase with every person who goes through, so not everyone could fuck off into it.

Away Missions work best as one off, rare events yeah.

Unless we get some decent random generation going and some interesting enemies, traps etc. Might give it more replayability.

Roles for ghosts might also breathe life into it.

Still glad to have let a new batch of players experience the exploit free wonder so thank you for that.

This is an automated public service announcement
REMIE ALREADY CODED A WHOLE RANDOM GENERATOR GO USE IT ALREADY
This was an automated public service announcement

Implement both of these immediately

[Not-Dorsidarf]

fucking turn off all the pre-WJ away missions are you insane

[Saegrimr]

Are you kidding? The outposts with the CO2/Plasma atmospheres were the best ones.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Are you kidding? The outposts with the CO2/Plasma atmospheres were the best ones.

I said pre-Wj, ie: Give The Crew Admin Kit: The Mission

[Shadowlight213]

The host is the one who decides which away missions are loaded. They are all turned off by default.
I'm not dropping the pre WJ away missions for now for various reasons.
The biggest reason is that I want to push away missions to be challenging end game things. No offense to WJ, but while his maps are very polished, they are more of a roundstart away mission rather than an endgame one due to mainly being just areas to explore.
I might rebalance difficulty and loot of some of the away missions, but most of the admin kit items you refer to were supposed to only be found in, and specifically made for those away missions(I'm assuming you are referring to the map specific loot).
The issue I've run into on gateway powersinks is that the singulo makes so much power that it's extremely difficult to find a well balanced drain level for it. Also the gateway was changed to use apc power for some reason at some point in time, I need to work on changing that.

[onleavedontatme]

We tried the gateway being a powersink originally it was dumb.

If we want quiet missions as well as the murderfests we should put them in different folders and have the gate time be dependent on which folder it picked from. No sense in waiting half an hour for the beach

[DrPillzRedux]

Make the gate consume power rapidly for when it's on. Allow people to turn it off to conserve power. That way there's a cost to it and a risk if you aren't maintaining the station. Engine fails? Gate's staying down.

[lumipharon]

That could be amusing if you have to power the other side, in order to get back.

[Luke Cox]

If we're really worried about people fucking off through the gateway, we could make a new Away Team job.

[JackHunt]

That could be amusing if you have to power the other side, in order to get back.

That's some stargate shit right there. Sounds awesome and thematic if somewhat of a pain from a gameplay perspective.

[Amelius]

If we're really worried about people fucking off through the gateway, we could make a new Away Team job.

Do it. We need more non-assistant jobslots anyway, and I'm sure assistants would happily sign up for that instead.

Bonus points for equipping them like a mini ERT squad with a commander, 2 secmen, a medic, and an engineer. Secmen/commander get laser guns, medic/engineer gets laser pistols and so forth, with appropriate hardsuits to match. To stem abuse (i.e. people signing up just for the free gear), throw the equipment point in the introduction areas to every away mission, geared as severely or lack thereof as the difficulty of the mission, along with some rechargers. Around halfway through, several ZPMs or whatever could be found, and they'd allow travel back to the station for the rest of the round, bringing any loot and equipment they garnered back with them.

Mite b cool. Especially since then you could have 'UNSCHEDULED OFFWORLD ACTIVATION' events with ops invading from the gateway for maximum cool.

[oranges]

COUGH GAME MODE COUGH

I'm telling you guys, they're WAY WAY too disruptive to round meta to work in any other fashion

PERIOD, DOT, END OF STORY

[Void Slayer]

I think something helpful would be a simple addendum to head of staff rules basically requiring you to resign from important positions to go on away missions.

The only downside is changeling/sacrifice objectives where the target fucks off into a gateway and gets himself trapped.. or takes traitor objective items with them.