/tg/Station 13

Kevinz and Goof keep hassling me to make a more depth plan about this so here is a first attempt. Obviously this needs sprites.

Stage 1:

A small tendril/nest/spire/whatever. It spreads a small amount of the gunk turf around it. It will spawn a monster or two of a single type (goliath/watcher/legion etc), but mostly it will spawn a number of weaker mobs that function akin to AI swarmers, eating plants/bodies/etc. They'll run from player mobs, unless that player is injured, in which case they'll attempt to bring them down. These will be easily managed by one or two people.

http://i.imgur.com/Vh0Uejv.png

Stage 2:

More health, more mobs (and variety of mobs). A series of organic shields will spring up around it to prevent offscreen projectile kills.

http://i.imgur.com/KnxiOpc.png

Stage 3:

The tendril will begin to reproduce, starting the process over. It will also produce stronger mobs (somewhere between megafauna and the random mining ones in terms of strength), and be able to use the goliath tentacle attack to protect itself. Reproducing reducing it to stage 1 again might be a good idea as well.

http://i.imgur.com/rmCczzG.png

All stages:

It will call for help if attacked, alerting mobs nearby.

The mobs it produces might be pulled to form raiding parties against the station.

The turfs will provide negative lighting.

They'll all need to be linked to a subsystem that controls them to prevent exponential growth.

The exact numbers of mobs/how fast/how often they grow will obviously have to scale with population and lots of testing to see how far they get and how fast when a map size is finally settled on.

Hopefully this is enough for someone to code a prototype (and someone to sprite larger tendrils) though.

Make it so that bigger the tenticle, the better the loot

I mentioned this in the map thread, but will there be tendrils on the surface or just lavaland? If so, will they break through from below and risk having a spike punch up into the station itself if the lavaland crew don't go down and clear them out every once in a while?

I love that idea. Tendrils start at the Lavaland z-level, growing up to tier 3, whereupon they burst through the roof and spawn a tier 1 tendril directly above on the surface, and if somehow that hits tier 3 the tendril erupts into a tower structure swarming with baddies that also contain a miniboss and PHAT LOOTS.

ShadowDimentio wrote:I love that idea. Tendrils start at the Lavaland z-level, growing up to tier 3, whereupon they burst through the roof and spawn a tier 1 tendril directly above on the surface, and if somehow that hits tier 3 the tendril erupts into a tower structure swarming with baddies that also contain a miniboss and PHAT LOOTS.

>Complete tower necro chest drops now have to run through 3 zlevels to escape before the tower collapses into a chasm

Bombadil wrote:

ShadowDimentio wrote:I love that idea. Tendrils start at the Lavaland z-level, growing up to tier 3, whereupon they burst through the roof and spawn a tier 1 tendril directly above on the surface, and if somehow that hits tier 3 the tendril erupts into a tower structure swarming with baddies that also contain a miniboss and PHAT LOOTS.

>Complete tower necro chest drops now have to run through 3 zlevels to escape before the tower collapses into a chasm

holy fuck YES

Armhulen wrote:

Bombadil wrote:

ShadowDimentio wrote:I love that idea. Tendrils start at the Lavaland z-level, growing up to tier 3, whereupon they burst through the roof and spawn a tier 1 tendril directly above on the surface, and if somehow that hits tier 3 the tendril erupts into a tower structure swarming with baddies that also contain a miniboss and PHAT LOOTS.

>Complete tower necro chest drops now have to run through 3 zlevels to escape before the tower collapses into a chasm

holy fuck YES

So i'm thinking the tower collapses whenever you grab the "artifact". That way its not oh shit gotta manage my inventory and then hoof it.

Have bits of the ceiling falling down and collapsing only do brute because doing stuns would be even worse with the slowdown brute would do

Maybe give a timer somehow i dont know if thats possible

Question I have is will some Tendrils be starting on the planet surface.

If so, what's to prevent someone from rushing north east and killing the Tendrils well before they become a issue?

will start dev work soon

Steelpoint wrote:Question I have is will some Tendrils be starting on the planet surface.

If so, what's to prevent someone from rushing north east and killing the Tendrils well before they become a issue?

Nothing.

ShadowDimentio wrote:

Steelpoint wrote:Question I have is will some Tendrils be starting on the planet surface.

If so, what's to prevent someone from rushing north east and killing the Tendrils well before they become a issue?

Nothing.

That seems to be quite the prudent preventative action, in my opinion.

I mean you're going to have the jungle in your way, and the jungle won't be an insignificant obstacle, to say nothing of the corruption even at base level. If someone wants to bumrush across the map and try to beat the corruption before it grows let them.

tbh i dont like the idea of being forced to go and kill tendrils because lol you gotta grind

i wanna be a relaxed hut hippie who smonks weed and eats jungle mushrooms not "shaft miner but this time it's in the jungle"

Corruption intensity is decided at roundstart from 1-5. 1 is practically nonexistent, 5 is nightmare mode. If you wanna relax on a 5, well, too bad.

It seems pretty clear that if SS13 is a place where you can relax, fuck off from your job, and do whatever you want without any real consequences... Planetstation is where you need all hands on deck - sure a few people relaxing won't spell DOOM, but it also means you're not pulling your weight and if enough people just sit around doing nothing then the corruption will overrun the station.

I still wonder if this should just be a MODE in addition to a map. If its not a mode then it seriously need to have a MAJOR influence on how modes are run. You need fewer traitors/lings, weaker antag teams, etc.

Only one that can probably stay untouched is Ops and Rev. Rev is just a giant TDM and so corruption can be a natural "clock" that prevents the round from dragging out. Ops can do their normal thing though I do think it might be fun if they are simply rebranded as a saboteur or expeditionary unit that basically tries to siege the station and ensure the corruption wipes out the crew. Perhaps in this variation Centcom detects the Syndicate presence and sends an evac shuttle X minutes into the round - and the mode basically becomes a fight for survival and trying to be among the few who escape on the shuttle.

As an alternative/supplement it could have a standalone mode in addition to the augmented modes where the corruption is simply more aggressive and it functions like a blob-style cooperative effort against "player controlled" corruption.


The biggest flaw in corruption, as I understand it, is that currently its not that rare for traitors to wipe out most of the crew. If corruption is a serious threat then it won't be hard for traitors to cripple the crew so that a corruption "victory" is inevitable. This will inevitably form the metagame where people will understand that a certain amount of chaos and carnage makes victory impossible and just leads to people giving up really early. Like when two blobs are growing uncontested except here the "loss" could take over 20+ minutes to resolve whereas rampant blobs will usually wrap things up in ~5 minutes. Alternatively if its still possible to beat the corruption back even with a large % of the crew dead, then the issue is that corruption is a non-threat for a mostly intact crew and thus nobody really cares about it since a few dedicated powergamers can handle it on their own.

The best solution I feel, it to make corruption a very serious threat but neuter the antag presence, ideally through numbers and perhaps cutting the easiest murderbone tools (ebow, revolver, etc.).

as far as I'm concerned, this will be a "Scenario"
"Scenarios" are like maps, but with custom gamemodes that only run in these "Scenarios"

So planetstation + planetstation modes will run in the Planetstation "Scenario"
Current SS13 will be the Space Station "Scenario"

this way everyone is happy.

can i just bump this and ask for sprites beecuase this needs to be done?

Name it Korruption

Idea of a progression based evil independent of player interaction is something I like a lot.

Kor wrote:...be able to use the goliath tentacle attack to protect itself...

I like to think I inspired this idea.