Migrants

[onleavedontatme]

One of my favorite features from SS13: Edgy Russian Edition is the ability to respawn as a "migrant" in a wilderness outside the fortress/station. If you can survive the perilous trip you get processed by the gatekeeper/HoP and can join the round again. They can also act as a third faction/antagonist.

I think it'd be an interesting feature to add to SS13 in some capacity, as all our respawn methods are currently reliant on departments being around to activate them, and most are pretty lackluster.

So my vague idea for "migrants" in SS13 would be


-There is a crashed plasmaman ship/secret base randomly hidden on the mining asteroid (or a rock golem nest)
-The base/nest is powered by an anomaly core or something else science wants
-The plasmamen/golems can fuel some kind of spawner (mine plasma, create plasmamen) for their species that ghosts can click on to easily get back in the round
-Have some way of expanding their base, building new gear, etc
-The captain/chieftain will get an objective, and sets the rules for their team. Maybe they want to collect X number of resources, or repair their ship, or join the crew, or get the captains laser. Whether they do so via diplomacy/trade/violence would be up to them (this part I'm not so sure about, it might turn into PLASMAMAN TIDE instead of a decent respawn method. The rules would need tweaking). The captain would likewise set crew rules for dealing with them, whether it be enslaving them for the gulag/borging, trading, or stealing their anomaly core.


If the general concept works out (third, neutral faction for ghosts to respawn as) maybe the mining asteroid could eventually be replaced by a random asteroid (golems)/jungle (????)/desert (skeletons) each round for mining to be done on, where the neutral tribe would be based. A pseudo away mission which we could hide random bits of science tech to gate high level RD items behind finding as well.

But thats getting way ahead. Do people think a third party ghost faction could ever work out? I think the biggest issue is that people would be suiciding to play as the aliens if people didn't get the job they wanted.

Right now, do people think a third party faction would work out? Or if not a third party faction, a hidden plasmaman spawner that could be connected to the station via tunnels and provide new crew?

[DemonFiren]

Might wanna bold those core bits at the bottom, so people will actually read 'em.

[Remie Richards]

If the general concept works out (third, neutral faction for ghosts to respawn as) maybe the mining asteroid could eventually be replaced by a random asteroid (golems)/jungle (????)/desert (skeletons) each round for mining to be done on, where the neutral tribe would be based.

if only we had a nice simple procedural generator


It sounds like a nice idea in general.
something sort of similar already can happen on metastation but is limited to drones, in the fact that 2 shells spawn on the derelict, meaning 2 ghosts always have a chance to spawn on meta they just have to navigate through space for a bit.

[imblyings]

It would suffer from ohgodshinynewthingletsallplayit for a bit and I'm not sure how'd it work out during lowpop rounds but it's an interesting concept worth some consideration.

[Wyzack]

I feel that something like this would really change the way we play spacemen in a big way. There would be a non-NT faction present in every game mode without admin intervention of any kind. Not necessarily a bad thing, but something to think about

[Malkevin]

Only if I can sign up as Captain Nigel Farage and blame everything on immigrants.

[Reimoo]

It would turn sybil's massive population into a plus, that's for sure.

[Thunder11]

If the general concept works out (third, neutral faction for ghosts to respawn as) maybe the mining asteroid could eventually be replaced by a random asteroid (golems)/jungle (????)/desert (skeletons) each round for mining to be done on, where the neutral tribe would be based.

if only we had a nice simple procedural generator


It sounds like a nice idea in general.
something sort of similar already can happen on metastation but is limited to drones, in the fact that 2 shells spawn on the derelict, meaning 2 ghosts always have a chance to spawn on meta they just have to navigate through space for a bit.

If only that generator had a preset forest module that with new sprites and some tweaked settings would make a great jungle

[callanrockslol]

What if its on the other side of the gateway, get some use out of away missions.

[Wyzack]

Really highpop might turn into two separate games until the factions meet up, help our population woes somewhat

[onleavedontatme]

Might wanna bold those core bits at the bottom, so people will actually read 'em.

I dunno how useful feedback is if people can't manage to read a paragraph, I kept it short as I could anyway

if only we had a nice simple procedural generator

Nice coincidence that. Glad to have gotten the interest of someone who actually knows how to code

It would suffer from ohgodshinynewthingletsallplayit for a bit and I'm not sure how'd it work out during lowpop rounds but it's an interesting concept worth some consideration.

And someone who can sprite. But yeah I'm worried mass suicides+respawning as plasmamen while its new will upset everyone to the point it gets removed.

I feel that something like this would really change the way we play spacemen in a big way. There would be a non-NT faction present in every game mode without admin intervention of any kind. Not necessarily a bad thing, but something to think about

From the admins who feel the need to run events (and the players that love them) and people who nerf/balance stuff to stop murderboners, to the people who call for more RP I get the feeling there are a lot of people who would not mind the structure of the round shaken up a bit. Traitors joining the aliens, skeletons stealing the captain to sac at their pyramid, golems trading their reserves of diamonds for guns to fight native monsters, I imagine there'd be a lot of possibilities in high pop rounds.

Only if I can sign up as Captain Nigel Farage and blame everything on immigrants.

Of course. Maybe we can add the captains chair/throne from Lifeweb as well, and let the captain officially set station policy regarding migrants.

It would turn sybil's massive population into a plus, that's for sure.

Hope so.

What if its on the other side of the gateway, get some use out of away missions.

Away mission gateway is very easy to sabotage. They also didn't have much point to them beyond killing stuff for overpowered loot I was thinking of using the mining shuttle and having the mining base spawn on the new z level. So a merging of away missions and mining. Make it more integrated into the round.

Really highpop might turn into two separate games until the factions meet up, help our population woes somewhat

That would require a massive amount of work (and I'd need a good deal of help from other coders) to make them truely in depth enough to be another minigame, even if their game was just a little base building/survival thing. It'd also be pretty frustrating for them to just have rounds randomly end from stuff beyond their control (nukes). Mulligans might help somewhat though, and the crew evacuating to build a new base in the desert/tundra/jungle instead of calling the shuttle might be cool.

I guess the question is whether we should trial them as a minor asteroid base first as a respawn thing or just skip straight ahead to redoing mining/adding a third faction to the game.

[Steelpoint]

Its a interesting idea worth expanding.

Lifeweb has a easier time doing this simply because their "station" is located on a planet and thus its possible to easily set up a (very) hostile environment outside the station.

Of course the biggest problem we will face is how crew-migrant interactions will occur. I think emphasizing the migrants being peaceful will prevent us having to deal with a war every other round between the two sides, say the crew can be aggressive as they want but the migrants cannot start a fight.

[Lovecraft]

I'd be interested in the story of these people.
Where they live, why they live there, human relations, culture.

It'd be a great idea to help fix the Sybil problem, even if it wouldn't be as successful on Basil.

I think that this would go along great with the Plasmamen. Give them some more weight in the lore thread, the crashed ship idea would go well since they're more advanced than humans.

[Loonikus]

Heres an idea. Remember those useless command reports that get sent in at the beginning of each round? Have them include Centcom orders of how to treat migrants. The reports could include allowing entry, allowing limited entry, or totally denying entry due to the presence of disease, contraband, or felons among the migrants. And this this time, actually have those reports be reasonably accurate so maybe the command staff will have a serious reason to deny them entry.

That way, interactions between the crew and the migrants are varied every round and can result in a number of different scenarios.

[Scones]

Cool idea, I guess. I think it'd be sort of tiresome if it showed up every round, though.

I'm going to make a Captain's Throne post-freeze I swear.

[Loonikus]

Your right, I guess it would get old of it happened every round. Maybe it should only have a small chance of happening during high-pop rounds.

[imblyings]

>And someone who can sprite [*hint* *hint*]

I have a backlog of stuff I'm still working on but I'd be happy to work on this while the code thaws out.

[iamgoofball]

You do realize we can put up a PR anyways, right, for review? It can just not get merged till after the freeze, giving us a month to hash out details and shit.

I'd love to give this a try, if anything's worth stealing from lifeweb this is.

[onleavedontatme]

I'd love to give this a try

The small base on the asteroid or the mining replacement?

if anything's worth stealing from lifeweb this is.

Other than the ERP verbs you mean

[Not-Dorsidarf]

You do realize we can put up a PR anyways, right, for review? It can just not get merged till after the freeze, giving us a month to hash out details and shit.

I'd love to give this a try, if anything's worth stealing from lifeweb this is.

The 'lol code freeze I'll just make my PR anyway and put'DNM' on it" attitude is missing the point of a code freeze.

[allura]

ways to get back into the round
-cloning
-robot
-pai
-alien
-ninja
-revenant
-drone
-death squad
-ert
-chrono
-construct
-posibrain

i would literally rather be fucking castrated than have this idea added in any way or form whatsoever

[Malkevin]

You appear to be playing on a different server to the rest of us, because half of those things we either do not have, are admin button only, or very rare random event.

[Steelpoint]

Maybe a better idea for this is to very literally copy Lifeweb's 'wilderness' concept. What I mean is that we slightly change the lore to indicate that SS13 orbits, or is near, a barely habitable planet that is overrun with toxicity and hostile life.

In the middle of this mess is a long abandoned, and very old, colony ship. This colony ship was originally sent from Earth over a hundred years ago but crashed landed, the ships occupants were frozen in cryogenics however the toxic atmosphere of the planet interacted with the colonists, killing most of them and transforming the few survivors into a mutated, plasma based, life form.

The objective of the 'migrants' is to repair their ship, recover lost equipment, venture into the deep jungle to locate ship parts and ultimately repair the ship and fly it off the planet. Sadly the ships lacks any form of jump drive and it can only reach SS13.

[allura]

You appear to be playing on a different server to the rest of us, because half of those things we either do not have, are admin button only, or very rare random event.

we have all of them, and i included admin buttons and random events

[Lovecraft]

I really think we should move forward in the direction Steelpoint has proposed. This would open up an incredible amount of doors in terms of lore/roleplay. Not to mention gameplay implications. (Perhaps an entire round type where the station must act as a team and send a squad down? Shouldn't be available to go there as crew every round at least)

[allura]

you're making this even worse

[allura]

on the upside i can know that this change will never ever get added no matter how much stupid idea building you have

[Lovecraft]

I used to be extremely keen on keeping as few ways back into the round as possible too. I was against Posibrains, I still don't like Golems, so I can slightly understand where you're coming from.

What changed is I realized it's worth the trade off. I don't mind death being entertaining for people because it's other people having fun in the same game I'm playing. The rush of slitting throats isn't gone when you give people other options of things to do once they've been killed.

Plus, it'd give us an extremely unique thing to call our own. A whole planet and interactive post-game that doesn't carry nearly as much depth but is still entertaining none the less.

Does it really ruin your experience that much that people can have fun after death?

[Malkevin]

You appear to be playing on a different server to the rest of us, because half of those things we either do not have, are admin button only, or very rare random event.

we have all of them, and i included admin buttons and random events

I'm pretty sure we dont have posi-brains, ive yet to see them.

Never seen a chrono thing either, pretty sure that got shot down as someone's half baked idea thread.

[Scones]

You appear to be playing on a different server to the rest of us, because half of those things we either do not have, are admin button only, or very rare random event.

we have all of them, and i included admin buttons and random events

I'm pretty sure we dont have posi-brains, ive yet to see them.

Never seen a chrono thing either, pretty sure that got shot down as someone's half baked idea thread.

Posi-brains are live on Sybil
Chrono equipment exists but we have no button to spawn one, and thank god for that.

[Bombadil]

You appear to be playing on a different server to the rest of us, because half of those things we either do not have, are admin button only, or very rare random event.

we have all of them, and i included admin buttons and random events

I'm pretty sure we dont have posi-brains, ive yet to see them.

Never seen a chrono thing either, pretty sure that got shot down as someone's half baked idea thread.

It got merged the chrono guys they just barely get used. We also have the brains. Shit you dont play at all do you?

[Loonikus]

Lizards should be migrants. It fits in well with their backstory as second class citizens and I love the idea of sticking masses of filthy liggers into "shower" chambers so we can "clean them of lice and pestilence" before "allowing them into the station."

[Malkevin]

You appear to be playing on a different server to the rest of us, because half of those things we either do not have, are admin button only, or very rare random event.

we have all of them, and i included admin buttons and random events

I'm pretty sure we dont have posi-brains, ive yet to see them.

Never seen a chrono thing either, pretty sure that got shot down as someone's half baked idea thread.

It got merged the chrono guys they just barely get used. We also have the brains. Shit you dont play at all do you?

I've been playing pretty frequently lately actually, but I've yet to see these things.

Which means that either their current implementation makes them too difficult to produce, or are just locked down so much they're as player accessible as a SORD, or just demonstrates that relying on players to get other players back into the round is a dumb idea because most players just don't care.

[DemonFiren]

Lizards should be migrants. It fits in well with their backstory as second class citizens and I love the idea of sticking masses of filthy liggers into "shower" chambers so we can "clean them of lice and pestilence" before "allowing them into the station."

Did someone say SCALY TIDE SPONSORED BY CARGONIA, RISE AGAINST YOUR OPPRESSORS?

Hell yeah, do this.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

You appear to be playing on a different server to the rest of us, because half of those things we either do not have, are admin button only, or very rare random event.

we have all of them, and i included admin buttons and random events

I'm pretty sure we dont have posi-brains, ive yet to see them.

Never seen a chrono thing either, pretty sure that got shot down as someone's half baked idea thread.

It got merged the chrono guys they just barely get used. We also have the brains. Shit you dont play at all do you?

I've been playing pretty frequently lately actually, but I've yet to see these things.

Which means that either their current implementation makes them too difficult to produce, or are just locked down so much they're as player accessible as a SORD, or just demonstrates that relying on players to get other players back into the round is a dumb idea because most players just don't care.

Posibrains are produced pretty frequently whenever the round goes on for more than 30 minutes, actually. I still remember the quintumvate AI round where I micromanaged the entire station and kept the other four in line with threat of instant termination from the hidden location the captain had placed me at.

Chrono guys are only in codewise, they don't have a button or anything. Also they're horrifying things that exist to delete people (literally) for no fucking reason at all.

[Cheridan]

I don't really get how this is supposed to work, mechanically.

So, these migrants spawn on the mining asteroid, with their goal ostensibly to get to the station?
How do you get to the station from the asteroid? They would either have to space themselves and pray, or raid the mining outpost. The first option sucks, the latter ruins any hope of these guys being anything more than hostile invaders to be clicked to death.

This shit works in Lifeweb because there's actually wilderness for them to arrive in. There's no wilderness in freaking space.

On top of that, this basically has the same issue as the Space Valhalla idea that gets thrown around (this basically being a Space Valhalla but in this concept the Valhallans can eventually get to the station). Which is, as the station population dwindles, you end up having a second distinct round going on at the same time as the first, but in a completely different area. Instead of "Space Station 13" it becomes "Space Station 13 until everyone dies and now we're playing Alien Town 1 instead."

This is in contrast to Drones, which are deceased players that still have a layer of separation between them and players who haven't died, but they still exist in the same space as the rest of the players and provide a benefit to them.

[onleavedontatme]

i would literally rather be fucking castrated than have this idea added in any way or form whatsoever

What do you dislike about it?

How do you get to the station from the asteroid? They would either have to space themselves and pray, or raid the mining outpost.

Or asking nicely to get in and having a miner/QM take them inside

hostile invaders to be clicked to death.

Most of our game modes involve "clicking people to death" and any game sounds boring if you reduce it to the terms of what the player is physically doing. Every game is just clicking when you boil it down.

This shit works in Lifeweb because there's actually wilderness for them to arrive in. There's no wilderness in freaking space.
/quote]

Thus the "mining is now on a planet" bit. Even without that they'd be digging their way out of the asteroid past the mining monsters.

Instead of "Space Station 13" it becomes "Space Station 13 until everyone dies and now we're playing Alien Town 1 instead."

I guess it turning into valhalla 2.0 might be a problem. But if you want an average round time of over an hour, and with the population regularly hitting 70+ people, I think there is both room and time for other stuff to be going on.

This is in contrast to Drones, which are deceased players that still have a layer of separation between them and players who haven't died, but they still exist in the same space as the rest of the players and provide a benefit to them.

Drones are terribly unfun to play as. Repairs are clunky, slow, and pointless. Does it matter if you repair a window in some corner of maint someone might run past all of twice in the next hour? Any serious damage will be taken care of by the engiborgs RCD or engineers (or more likely ignore in favor of a shuttle call).

Plus you're not even allowed to speak to other players, which I think is the worst part. You get more social interaction as a ghost, speaking of just clicking things. You have a ruleset barring you from actually interacting with the round in any meaningful way.


I'm willing to drop this if you really don't want it in though, I won't argue it forever.

[Cheridan]

ignore allura, she is a Disagreement Gnome :^)

hostile invaders to be clicked to death.

Most of our game modes involve "clicking people to death" and any game sounds boring if you reduce it to the terms of what the player is physically doing. Every game is just clicking when you boil it down.

I didn't really mean it like that. Basically just that if you want something that's going to end up being a punching bag, we already have things that fill that role such as xenos. The only thing you can do with a xeno is kill it, whereas a person who is a Traitor can be captured, bargained with, thrown in jail, or escape. There are more possibilities, which is more interesting and fits better in the context of SS13 being a sandbox instead of a top-down shooter.

Even if these migrants are intended to be more than a hostile force, you have to make effort so that it actually becomes that. Like Ninjas were supposed to be a stealthy tech bandits who worked 50% of the time for Nanotrasen and cooperated with certain crew roles to achieve their objectives, but people just got the role and telegibbed everyone.

As for drones, you can get plenty of interaction with other drones. They're not supposed to have a huge impact on the round, they're just a way to keep playing once you're dead. As far as "second chance" roles go I think they're a good middle ground between whining as a ghost doing nothing, and fucking up everything as an adamantium golem with 0 responsibilities and riot armor.

I'm willing to drop this if you really don't want it in though, I won't argue it forever.

Don't take this as headcoder vetoing your shit or whatever. I'm just a poster arguing against it. Even if something works well in another game, you can't just throw it into another game without considering the implications that it will have on how the game is played, especially something like this which is basically adding a second station with its own crew.

[onleavedontatme]

Basically just that if you want something that's going to end up being a punching bag, we already have things that fill that role such as xenos. The only thing you can do with a xeno is kill it, whereas a person who is a Traitor can be captured, bargained with, thrown in jail, or escape. There are more possibilities, which is more interesting and fits better in the context of SS13 being a sandbox instead of a top-down shooter.

I agree on that. That's why I'm hoping giving the migrants objectives like "learn about the humans by stealing their secret documents" will give them the same variety that traitors can have in accomplishing things. Hell I think there'd be more variety if there were three factions playing off of each other.

Xenos are dumb because you can't talk to them at all, they can only kill you. Same problem with away missions, you couldn't talk to the simple mobs, just kill them. They'd be the same every time. Obviously the migrants being more interesting than just a murderous invasion every round will be down to the players in the end though, just like ninja. But I can leave them the freedom and tools to do other things and hope players choose diplomacy or trade sometimes.

[iamgoofball]

You do realize we can put up a PR anyways, right, for review? It can just not get merged till after the freeze, giving us a month to hash out details and shit.

I'd love to give this a try, if anything's worth stealing from lifeweb this is.

The 'lol code freeze I'll just make my PR anyway and put'DNM' on it" attitude is missing the point of a code freeze.

And? A full month of discussion and code modification would be great for something like this. Would you prefer it gets coded during the freeze, and then worked on and polished for the rest of the month, or it gets coded after the freeze and then the merge time ends up as "whenever it gets merged"?

[Steelpoint]

I still think it would be more effective to spawn them on a toxic planet and go from there.

There are ways to balance this out, for example we could put a cap on the amount of migrants, or stop spawning migrants when the ship is repaired or require resources from the planet in order to spawn more migrants.

[MisterPerson]

Ok, discussions about the feature freeze and whatever are not related to the migrants, so let's get back on topic please.

[legality]

Before the ship crashed, everyone was in cryo-sleep.

The ship's computer only has enough power to wake the first two migrants from sleep. They must gather resources and set up a makeshift-generator to wake up more migrants.

[lumipharon]

Deathworld type place accessible through the gateway/away shuttle.
somewhat valuable loot (not fucking weapons) available on the map somewhere. May or may not be accessible to the locals.
Captain/crew can choose whether to access the world or not.
Locals busy trying to stay alive because of deadly environment/native critters, can choose to help or hinder any ss13 crew that pop in, or try to sneak onto station.

Yes/yes?

A (semi) plausible way to explain why new people keep appearing, other then fuckers just crawling out of the primodial ooze (which has its own charm) would be crashlanding little escape pods. Make the fluff that the planet emits some disturbance that attracts, and brings down any passing spacecraft. AKA: Lost.
Then the little pods could have some supplies, to keep the locals going.

[Remie Richards]

I like Lumi's idea, BUT:
It needs to be a big desert planet.
With cacti that hurt you.
Sandstorms.
A thirst mechanic for migrants only.
Sandtraps.
Giant sand worms.
CRABS.

that'll make sure an appropriate amount of people make it to the station.

[Luke Cox]

I've always advocated a neutral/3rd party role. I like this.

[lumipharon]

Why not a variety of deadly locations?

Noxious swamp, arid desert, the insides of a giant space worm, who knows which you'll be going into!

[Miauw]

>get killed
>respawn as migrant
>die 500 times
>make it back onto the station
>kill the person who killed you

[Steelpoint]

We already ban for crap like that, I should know since the guy/s that have done that/tried to do that to me all got banned.

Imo I think a toxic forest/swamp is a good singular choice simply because I think we can make a swamp more interesting and atmospheric than a empty desert.

I think a combination of procedural generation and prebuilt structures will be effective, mainly in making the ship and the surrounding area pre made. Of course the problem with procedural generation is that you cannot guarantee the quality, but I think we have to do procedural generation to avoid a situation where you can memorise the perfect way to get all the equipment needed.

[onleavedontatme]

>get killed
>respawn as migrant
>die 500 times
>make it back onto the station
>kill the person who killed you

Would be fairly obvious. You can already do the same as a golem, positronic brain, pAI, or drone (or just tell your metafriend on skype).

Why not a variety of deadly locations?

Noxious swamp, arid desert, the insides of a giant space worm, who knows which you'll be going into!

Suggested that in the OP. Skeletons in the desert, lizards in the toxic jungle, golems in the asteroid belt, plasmamen ???

Skeletons would feed something to their tombs/lazarus pits to make more of them, lizards would have nests/hatcheries, golems would build each other or some shit, plasmamen would feed plasma to their mad science tubes.



And yes I think a mix of procedural (for the desert itself) with prebuilt station structures/migrant bases, ancient tombs etc would be best.

Hell maybe we could allow you to launch escape pods early and have them fall in the desert for desperate traitors to escape security, or the bored clown to go explore.