Players' ideas to improve the game: the thread

[ekaterina]

ITT we share our ideas and then wait for our fellow gamers to tell us why they suck.

I'll start: variable TC.
I recently rolled tot on a lowpop round and my objectives felt so easy to achieve that I decided to attempt them without spending any of my TC. I ended up redtexting but it provided a fun challenge where I had to keep plotting my next steps and taking advantages of the opportunities that came up. We could make it so traitors spawn with less TC on low pop and more TC on high pop. Perhaps a formula such as TC = p/2 (where p is the number of players). We could even make the threat level a part of it, for example: TC = t*√p (where t is the threat (1 for green shift, 2 for blue star, et cetera) and √p is the square root of the number of players).

[kinnebian]

would be funny if you locked this thread

[massa]

more direct and frequent 'military' and group violence.

ERT, death squads, and an increase in the things that warrant them. I want to see the Starfury (or what ever it's called) actually pull up and some real shit go down.

[Epicgamer545]

more direct and frequent 'military' and group violence.

ERT, death squads, and an increase in the things that warrant them. I want to see the Starfury (or what ever it's called) actually pull up and some real shit go down.

I don’t send Death Squads ever because it doesn’t FEEL fair. But, maybe in the future more intense threats can warrant such deployment, because I love the idea of DS and ERTs and want to deploy them more without ruining balance.

[Epoc]

remove the economy, make vending machines free again

[mindstormy]

I wish there was a more meaningful purpose to generating more power. Right now there are only two or so real reason I can think to generate boat loads of power. First of all is bragging rights, and secondly it's if you want to hardwire the sm to the grid to kill folks with grills easily.

I'd like to see this mechanic improved upon. Maybe something like adding a cryptominer machine #syndicoin that uses power to make credits?

[massa]

more direct and frequent 'military' and group violence.

ERT, death squads, and an increase in the things that warrant them. I want to see the Starfury (or what ever it's called) actually pull up and some real shit go down.

I don’t send Death Squads ever because it doesn’t FEEL fair. But, maybe in the future more intense threats can warrant such deployment, because I love the idea of DS and ERTs and want to deploy them more without ruining balance.

It isn't, I just have very distant memories of frequent deathsquads in response to things like solo lings having killed everyone, or xeno infestations on Nox. They used deathsquads a LOT.

We just need bigger, more organized threats that warrant ERT.

[Itseasytosee2me]

i love deathsquads! They are a pocket sized climatic finale.

[BrolyButterfingers]

I want more admin intervention and admin narrative-driven responses; some of my favourite rounds have been rounds with some heavy-handed adminning.

Examples: I once rolled captain traitor due to a bug that ended with an ERT hunting me down while I shitposted across the station

I once uploaded a Liar's Paradox to an AI, who the admin immediately turned malf

I once accidentally joined a round with my regular character as my Clown's name (Rimworld Pawn) and instead of just bumping me back to the lobby, the admin sent a chronotrooper to erase me from the timeline for being "in the wrong game".

An admin once uploaded the "turtle on its back" monologue from Blade Runner to an AI as an ion law, and then spawned in a drone renamed "Robotic Turtle" to torture the AI for leaving the turtle on its back, culminating in the turtle commissioning the chief engineer to build a turtle habitat inside the AI's satellite so it could more conveniently torture them.

I would love to see admins really flex their reactive storytelling capacity much more often as a Manuel player

[FantasticFwoosh]

Admins to agree to just stop using ahelps to talk to players fnr.

[zxaber]

I once sent a singular death squad member to take on a traitor that had raided the armory (as the acting captain IIRC), expecting something resembling an even fight. In the same ball park of an even fight. Sharing the first zip code digit as an even fight.

If you were to give deathsquads instakill hitscan rifles and god mode, it would not change deathsquad balancing to any real degree. It's the button you press if you want an admin complaint.

[WineAllWine]

I once sent a singular death squad member to take on a traitor that had raided the armory (as the acting captain IIRC), expecting something resembling an even fight. In the same ball park of an even fight. Sharing the first zip code digit as an even fight.

If you were to give deathsquads instakill hitscan rifles and god mode, it would not change deathsquad balancing to any real degree. It's the button you press if you want an admin complaint.

You're right there's a valley between ERTs an DS. A Gulf. A Fucking Ocean. Deathsquads are always overpowered. It's an IC way of pressing the round end button. ERTs are an ok challenge to a normal crew

[Armhulen]

would be funny if you locked this thread

excuse you! I need more player ideas not less

[Boot]

I'd like to see the TGMC squad sent in more often. I actually don't think that I've ever seen them tossed in.
A small issue I got currently is the compete removal of the personal selling mechanic that came with the change from PDA to tablets.

[conrad]

More goodies!

I think the tattoo kit was added as a goodie? The vacant office should be something used every round. Gimme a tattoo shop.

On that note, there's the coffee shop, right? It gives assistants a way to be chefs but a lil less. More of that. I feel there are neat tools tucked away, like the blue space gas thingy and the destructo thing outside of sci, and the bounty board, the garden, that let anyone do a little bit of other departments jobs. Gimme more, those ideas were AMAZING.

Finally, how about some round ending stuff that doesn't require the emergency shuttle? Maybe having the station objective operational for a while, them a button that says "send report" or whatever that ends the round. I feel that having the shuttle be round end all the time is a bit boring.

Finally, more sec content! There has to be a way to give sec something to do in, say, greenshifts. I know they had that scan thingy to make creds. How about more of the cargo shuttle loan? Maybe more events that spawn AI controlled mobs to give sec something to shoot.

Those might be awful ideas. I'm phoneposting and spitballing, didn't even spellcheck. Byeeere

[saprasam]

i want somebody to make it so you can heat the lead pipe and then smash it into the shape of a bastard sword
more maitenance weapons would be great, but this wont happen because i dont have the will to code

[conrad]

i want somebody to make it so you can heat the lead pipe and then smash it into the shape of a bastard sword
more maitenance weapons would be great, but this wont happen because i dont have the will to code

DUUUUUUUDE PIPESWORD

[RedBaronFlyer]

Being able to stamp papers with right click to avoid opening the GUI would be nice. It can get laggy and buggy if you're stamping lots of papers since the paperwork GUI pops up for each paper until you close the screen or walk far enough away (mostly a cargo problem)

I'm uncreative, I'm sorry. Perhaps we could have more ghetto/makeshift weapons? Like, a glass shard + cable + a wrench making a ghetto hatchet?

[Rageguy505]

Being able to stamp papers with right click to avoid opening the GUI would be nice. It can get laggy and buggy if you're stamping lots of papers since the paperwork GUI pops up for each paper until you close the screen or walk far enough away (mostly a cargo problem)

I'm uncreative, I'm sorry. Perhaps we could have more ghetto/makeshift weapons? Like, a glass shard + cable + a wrench making a ghetto hatchet?

the stamping thing already shows up when you try to stamp a paper as a blind person. You could steal that code and make it work on right click. Also i remember some codebase having almost exactly that for a scrap hatchet.

[Kendrickorium]

control + F
gangs
0 results

disappointed

[datorangebottle]

Kendrickorium posting about gangs made me want to suggest bringing Hivemind back as a solo antagonist instead of a dedicated team one.
Ideally he'd be the 'changeling' to the wizard's 'traitor'. Can a changeling go loud? Sure. Can the changeling be more subtle? Yes.
The idea of someone using their brain power to manipulate the crew is a cool idea that has merit.

From what I remember, the biggest issue with the mode was that it was designed as a stealth antagonist, far more successful going loud, and fucked over every other hivemind in the round when one of them correctly went loud because of how mindshields work. Another was that if it was successful, it only really impacted the crew when one of them hit One Mind.

Suggested changes(written like a design doc and spoilered bc i expect nobody to read my novel):

► Show Spoiler

wiki page for reference
Goals:
Make Hivemind more fun. Cut out the things that made old hivemind unfun. Mindshields are no longer a one-shot complete answer to hiveminds existing, though they do help. Make their power of gaining process faster. Remove incentives for silent play(just running around and using assimilate on people). Remove mindshields hard-countering them. Make objectives more interesting and have them incentivize and give ideas for active play.
Give Hivemind its own niche. Focus on mental manipulation, tricking the crew into doing what he wants them to do, empowering or crippling crewmembers and other antagonists, and accomplishing their own objectives. They should be a puppet master and a diplomat. Find the other antags, work with them to get both your objectives done, and escape alive.
Non-goals:
Make it a team antagonist. This was part of the problem with original Hivemind; the strength given by numbers was too enticing, and a lot of hiveminds leaned too hard into doing nothing besides assimilating people because of it.
Make it a solo-murderbone antag. We already have a Wizard and a Changeling. A hivemind should not be conjuring some mysterious, overpowered wizard weapon or suddenly having a sword for an arm, though they should be perfectly capable of debilitating lone targets for a fight, and running away if they're outmatched. If they're getting directly involved in a conflict, they're either fighting another hivemind or something has gone extremely wrong.
It should be somewhere between the two; not completely self-reliant, not completely reliant on its temporary allies.
Make the hivemind completely invisible. There should be at least one way to find them, even if they're mostly casting abilities through other people.

Roundstart abilities:

Hive Sight: Important change; you can cast your abilities through people using Hive Sight. This makes them less directly visible once they have a few vessels.

Assimilate: Casts much faster regardless of distance. This was part of the problem that caused them to take too long to actually do anything fun.

Telekinetic Hand: functions like pink, activated telekinesis instead of weird ranged unarmed combat.

Add Network Invasion, Psychoreception, and Reclaim here; offense against other hiveminds should be encouraged by making it available to all of them at the start of the round. They already take up each other's space by assimilating the same vessels, so they will be itching to take each other out.

Add Telepathy. It's a fun and flavorful ability, and it makes no sense for a hivemind to not have it.

Tier 1:

New abilities: Sunder Mind: directly gives the target a decent amount of brain damage. It should be lethal in 4 casts, but cooldown quickly. Deals less damage if cast remotely; lethal in 12 casts in that case.

Adrenaline Surge: boosts the target's movement speed and stamina damage resistance. Adrenaline Surge is useful because of the aforementioned Hive Sight change, and you can affect yourself.

Move Induce Panic here. Its replacement is more permanently debilitating, so it can work as a tier 1 ability. It provides options; while not being objectively worse or better than the other, because you don't always want to inflict traumas on a person.

Tier 2:
Telekinetic Field and Repair Protocol are fine as-is, I think. Only change is that if cast remotely, they benefit the vessel they were cast through. Like they can walk through the forcewall, or they get healed instead of you.

Put Bruteforce here. It provides counterplay for the counterplay so that the antagonist can still function if they were exposed early. The stun is complete shit, though. Instead, bruteforce assimilate should take longer and potentially out the hivemind in some way, making them easier to find if mindshields have been distributed. Maybe their eyes glow pink, or something.

Tier 3:
New ability: Induce Psychosis. Lets you choose one trauma from the full list of mental traumas. You get to choose the prefix(If you don't, it's assumed to be basic). The more specific and mean you are, the longer the ability goes on cooldown. Using this on assimilated crew lets you pick from special traumas. Cannot be used on yourself, cannot be used to make permanent traumas, cannot be used to hypnotize.

Chaos Induction can be used as many times as you want, on a very long cooldown. Instead of hitting four vessels, it hits two of your choice up to four at once, allowing you to give different people different objectives. If you hit the same person, it changes their objective instead of adding more. This could be seen as conflicting with non-goal 1, but the lengthy cooldown makes it less of a team antagonist and more of an underling-creating antagonist like hypnoflash Traitor and flesh Heretic. Plus, this allows for true 'unseen puppet master' gameplay where you just give people objectives and guide/manipulate them without ever telling them your actual name.

Mind Control caused a lot of administrative problems IIRC and was nerfed into the dust as a result, but I still like it as an ability. As with Hive Sight, you can cast your spells through a Mind Controlled target.
Tier 4:
One Mind needs to go, mostly because of the earlier changes to Assimilate. I feel like making Assimilate faster would make One Mind happen much earlier in the round. Plus, it would encourage a completely silent "I only ever assimilate people" playstyle, which is exactly what we don't want.
New Ability: Mind Shift, letting the Hivemind swap bodies with one of their vessels. This would happen in stages; first, the hivemind's head pops like a grape. Second, the target gets a message about a headache. Third, after about a minute, the vessel briefly passes out and the hivemind becomes a split personality of the vessel. Fourth, after a few swaps in control, the hivemind eventually takes over the body of the person they shifted into.

They can still cast spells during Mind Shift after stage three. Mind Shift can be countered with a mindshield before stage three, forcing the hivemind to stay in its brain(for forceborging). After stage three, it requires a lobotomy.

New Objectives:
Hivemind's current goals are boring. Syndicate affiliation is overused.
Instead, Hiveminds are working with the space wizards.
The wizards want to study their mysterious power to see if they can learn it for themselves, and send them out to accomplish various tasks on NT stations, giving them random access to classic objectives like 'steal the antique laser gun'.
Could receive open-ended objectives like the Revenant's "torment the clown", if only to give them ideas.

Finally, could have an objective to investigate a specific location where psychic energy is located and absorb that energy. A large amount of psychic residue(see next section) is left in the location. This special residue can be assimilated(it takes longer, melee range required), doing so completes the objective and gives the hivemind a few extra vessels for the purpose of unlocking their abilities. It cannot be cleaned. Could have it also give them corporate secrets as flavor, i.e. this is where NT had a previous hivemind killed to keep them from doing something against the company.

Other Changes:
Most hivemind abilities will leave psychic residue behind at the hivemind's location. If cast through a puppet, the residue is left at the puppet's location at time of cast AND the hivemind's location. This cannot be seen by non-hiveminds except with Psychometric Scanner Goggles(new Psychologist item?? could go to the detective, but he already has Heretics and Traitors to deal with. + gives the psychologist job content) which also allow you to see someone's mood on-examine.

Examining residue with the scanner goggles gives you a pinpointer to different locations based on how the ability was cast; if it was cast through a vessel, it points you to where the hivemind was standing when the spell was cast. If it was cast directly, it gives you a fragment of the caster's (undisguised) name; A letter and what position it goes in. It's sort of like a mental fingerprint, without adding an entirely new database for mental fingerprints. Residue can be cleaned by spraying neurine on it.

The idea that mindshields completely shut hiveminds off is awful. It's too easy to get them in large quantities for this to work, and makes it so any other hivemind going loud punishes all of them. Instead, I suggest that it doesn't remove assimilation, just protects against it. Instead of making someone completely immune to the hivemind's other abilities, it reduces their effects. Shielded targets take less brain damage from Sunder Mind, only give you sight OR hearing with Mind Sight, et cetera.

I don't know why, but I had a lot of fun writing this, even if nobody's ever going to use or read it.

[kinnebian]

► Show Spoiler

Kendrickorium posting about gangs made me want to suggest bringing Hivemind back as a solo antagonist instead of a dedicated team one.
Ideally he'd be the 'changeling' to the wizard's 'traitor'. Can a changeling go loud? Sure. Can the changeling be more subtle? Yes.
The idea of someone using their brain power to manipulate the crew is a cool idea that has merit.

From what I remember, the biggest issue with the mode was that it was designed as a stealth antagonist, far more successful going loud, and fucked over every other hivemind in the round when one of them correctly went loud because of how mindshields work. Another was that if it was successful, it only really impacted the crew when one of them hit One Mind.

Suggested changes(written like a design doc and spoilered bc i expect nobody to read my novel):

► Show Spoiler

wiki page for reference
Goals:
Make Hivemind more fun. Cut out the things that made old hivemind unfun. Mindshields are no longer a one-shot complete answer to hiveminds existing, though they do help. Make their power of gaining process faster. Remove incentives for silent play(just running around and using assimilate on people). Remove mindshields hard-countering them. Make objectives more interesting and have them incentivize and give ideas for active play.
Give Hivemind its own niche. Focus on mental manipulation, tricking the crew into doing what he wants them to do, empowering or crippling crewmembers and other antagonists, and accomplishing their own objectives. They should be a puppet master and a diplomat. Find the other antags, work with them to get both your objectives done, and escape alive.
Non-goals:
Make it a team antagonist. This was part of the problem with original Hivemind; the strength given by numbers was too enticing, and a lot of hiveminds leaned too hard into doing nothing besides assimilating people because of it.
Make it a solo-murderbone antag. We already have a Wizard and a Changeling. A hivemind should not be conjuring some mysterious, overpowered wizard weapon or suddenly having a sword for an arm, though they should be perfectly capable of debilitating lone targets for a fight, and running away if they're outmatched. If they're getting directly involved in a conflict, they're either fighting another hivemind or something has gone extremely wrong.
It should be somewhere between the two; not completely self-reliant, not completely reliant on its temporary allies.
Make the hivemind completely invisible. There should be at least one way to find them, even if they're mostly casting abilities through other people.

Roundstart abilities:

Hive Sight: Important change; you can cast your abilities through people using Hive Sight. This makes them less directly visible once they have a few vessels.

Assimilate: Casts much faster regardless of distance. This was part of the problem that caused them to take too long to actually do anything fun.

Telekinetic Hand: functions like pink, activated telekinesis instead of weird ranged unarmed combat.

Add Network Invasion, Psychoreception, and Reclaim here; offense against other hiveminds should be encouraged by making it available to all of them at the start of the round. They already take up each other's space by assimilating the same vessels, so they will be itching to take each other out.

Add Telepathy. It's a fun and flavorful ability, and it makes no sense for a hivemind to not have it.

Tier 1:

New abilities: Sunder Mind: directly gives the target a decent amount of brain damage. It should be lethal in 4 casts, but cooldown quickly. Deals less damage if cast remotely; lethal in 12 casts in that case.

Adrenaline Surge: boosts the target's movement speed and stamina damage resistance. Adrenaline Surge is useful because of the aforementioned Hive Sight change, and you can affect yourself.

Move Induce Panic here. Its replacement is more permanently debilitating, so it can work as a tier 1 ability. It provides options; while not being objectively worse or better than the other, because you don't always want to inflict traumas on a person.

Tier 2:
Telekinetic Field and Repair Protocol are fine as-is, I think. Only change is that if cast remotely, they benefit the vessel they were cast through. Like they can walk through the forcewall, or they get healed instead of you.

Put Bruteforce here. It provides counterplay for the counterplay so that the antagonist can still function if they were exposed early. The stun is complete shit, though. Instead, bruteforce assimilate should take longer and potentially out the hivemind in some way, making them easier to find if mindshields have been distributed. Maybe their eyes glow pink, or something.

Tier 3:
New ability: Induce Psychosis. Lets you choose one trauma from the full list of mental traumas. You get to choose the prefix(If you don't, it's assumed to be basic). The more specific and mean you are, the longer the ability goes on cooldown. Using this on assimilated crew lets you pick from special traumas. Cannot be used on yourself, cannot be used to make permanent traumas, cannot be used to hypnotize.

Chaos Induction can be used as many times as you want, on a very long cooldown. Instead of hitting four vessels, it hits two of your choice up to four at once, allowing you to give different people different objectives. If you hit the same person, it changes their objective instead of adding more. This could be seen as conflicting with non-goal 1, but the lengthy cooldown makes it less of a team antagonist and more of an underling-creating antagonist like hypnoflash Traitor and flesh Heretic. Plus, this allows for true 'unseen puppet master' gameplay where you just give people objectives and guide/manipulate them without ever telling them your actual name.

Mind Control caused a lot of administrative problems IIRC and was nerfed into the dust as a result, but I still like it as an ability. As with Hive Sight, you can cast your spells through a Mind Controlled target.
Tier 4:
One Mind needs to go, mostly because of the earlier changes to Assimilate. I feel like making Assimilate faster would make One Mind happen much earlier in the round. Plus, it would encourage a completely silent "I only ever assimilate people" playstyle, which is exactly what we don't want.
New Ability: Mind Shift, letting the Hivemind swap bodies with one of their vessels. This would happen in stages; first, the hivemind's head pops like a grape. Second, the target gets a message about a headache. Third, after about a minute, the vessel briefly passes out and the hivemind becomes a split personality of the vessel. Fourth, after a few swaps in control, the hivemind eventually takes over the body of the person they shifted into.

They can still cast spells during Mind Shift after stage three. Mind Shift can be countered with a mindshield before stage three, forcing the hivemind to stay in its brain(for forceborging). After stage three, it requires a lobotomy.

New Objectives:
Hivemind's current goals are boring. Syndicate affiliation is overused.
Instead, Hiveminds are working with the space wizards.
The wizards want to study their mysterious power to see if they can learn it for themselves, and send them out to accomplish various tasks on NT stations, giving them random access to classic objectives like 'steal the antique laser gun'.
Could receive open-ended objectives like the Revenant's "torment the clown", if only to give them ideas.

Finally, could have an objective to investigate a specific location where psychic energy is located and absorb that energy. A large amount of psychic residue(see next section) is left in the location. This special residue can be assimilated(it takes longer, melee range required), doing so completes the objective and gives the hivemind a few extra vessels for the purpose of unlocking their abilities. It cannot be cleaned. Could have it also give them corporate secrets as flavor, i.e. this is where NT had a previous hivemind killed to keep them from doing something against the company.

Other Changes:
Most hivemind abilities will leave psychic residue behind at the hivemind's location. If cast through a puppet, the residue is left at the puppet's location at time of cast AND the hivemind's location. This cannot be seen by non-hiveminds except with Psychometric Scanner Goggles(new Psychologist item?? could go to the detective, but he already has Heretics and Traitors to deal with. + gives the psychologist job content) which also allow you to see someone's mood on-examine.

Examining residue with the scanner goggles gives you a pinpointer to different locations based on how the ability was cast; if it was cast through a vessel, it points you to where the hivemind was standing when the spell was cast. If it was cast directly, it gives you a fragment of the caster's (undisguised) name; A letter and what position it goes in. It's sort of like a mental fingerprint, without adding an entirely new database for mental fingerprints. Residue can be cleaned by spraying neurine on it.

The idea that mindshields completely shut hiveminds off is awful. It's too easy to get them in large quantities for this to work, and makes it so any other hivemind going loud punishes all of them. Instead, I suggest that it doesn't remove assimilation, just protects against it. Instead of making someone completely immune to the hivemind's other abilities, it reduces their effects. Shielded targets take less brain damage from Sunder Mind, only give you sight OR hearing with Mind Sight, et cetera.

I don't know why, but I had a lot of fun writing this, even if nobody's ever going to use or read it.

this was a super fun read, thanks orangebottle

[datorangebottle]

Thank you for reading it!

[junkgle]

get rid of mining and lavaland replace with shipbreaking. have asteroid mining as a second more tedious way of getting resources but relegated to kind of a background thing, like cargo drones

at least that's what i'd do for a downstream, we're probably most certainly not getting rid of lavaland here

[Bawhoppennn]

Admins to agree to just stop using ahelps to talk to players fnr.

For once Fwoosh is right

► Show Spoiler

I have no idea what Fwoosh meant by this