Cik wrote:meteor is dumb because there's nothing to do
it creates no conflict because there's no actual chance of survival
engineering has no ability to turn the tide at all, there's no incentive to fortify anything, the only thing that does anything are the force fields and they can't really be manufactured and require no power so there's no power supply protection issues either
basically engineering is barely there as a department and it's supposed to be their antag but there's nothing to actually do because >barely there as a department
Functionally fixing meteor is easy on paper, the hard part is properly coding it to work as it should.
Ideally, Meteor would your standard survival game mode with automated CC announcements giving a short warning about the direction the next wave is coming from and an estimated mass and type of meteors inbound (I.E. a pseudo-crytpic message about the estimated tonnage of rock inbound with detected minerals that a nerd could reasonably deduce if it would be a large wave of rocks or just a few heavy ones).
Teleporters would have to be disabled or only work on the station Z level, with all other Z levels (save for mining) being inaccessible or outright deleted to discourage/prevent players from running away and just trying to wait out the round until they can pressure admins into ending the round.
Warnings would give engineers and those helping them 3-5 minutes to move field emitters into place and set them up, reinforce areas that can't be covered and repair what ever else. Every few survived waves cargo would receive a relief package being supplies that can be used to rebuild, more field emitters to protect the station or other high value items or bonus points to buy things that might help.
Initial waves are small and from one direction, increasing in number, variety and even having multiple directions so that one or two sides of the station in its entirety could be targeted at once. Rogue meteors that aren't announced or only given a brief warning that can strike anywhere on the station to fuck things up could also increase in frequency. Meteor penetration would also need to be toned down significantly given how common it is for tungska and other types of meteors to pierce 20+ tiles in a row without stopping. Cause that was a great idea.
This mode of course isn't worth the time to most coders because a significant number of tg regular players refuse to take part in a round in which they are not allowed to murder and vent violence, and since there is no feasible means to stun prod and toolbox a meteor into submission no amount of work would bring it
down up to tg standards.The only solution to that would be have a random chance each wave that xenos, swarmers or some hostile side antag like spiders or a demon have a chance to spawn at the location of a meteor strike and wreck havoc while the crew is trying to make things work.
Law 0: Secborg din do nuffin.