Shuttle Suggestion Thread

[AnonymousNow]

Since I now have two shuttle suggestions on the go, I thought I'd post them here.

The first is to make all non-station shuttles (ie. not escape, mining, cargo, gulag) capable of docking at arrivals - at once, if at all possible. The current shape of arrivals and the size of the medical frigate make this unviable at the moment, but with some restructuring a small arrivals expansion would be quite simple to do (basically adding another/a longer docking strut, or both); the main issue is finding places for all those shuttles.

- The Syndicate shuttle could essentially just ram a docking strut at the end, so that they can pile out in an open offensive if they so wish.
- The Medical Frigate could possibly be moved to the far end of a strut, so that only one door is docked; this leaves more room for other shuttles on the rest of the strut.
- The Clown shuttle could be hijacked by a canny player and parked anywhere. Maybe it should be changed so that it's a vertical structure, though, rather than a horizontal one, to maximise available space.
And so on, with the possible addition of even the Wizard's damaged shuttle (it'd be a one-way trip) and the xenomorph dinghy.

We've seen demonstrations of a roving away-base mechanic with the hugely successful Medical Frigate that Steelpoint created; this would expand upon it further.

The other suggestion is this - make certain shuttles capable of docking at Centcom. The shuttles I have in mind for this are the Medical Frigate and the Syndicate shuttle, and they would work differently for this purpose.

The Medical Frigate would have an option on its monitor to standby for Centcom escape (if it is parked at the station). Being in this state requires a warmup of ten seconds, has a cooldown of ten seconds to exit, and disables any other flight whilst active. If the escape shuttle departs whilst it is in this state, it will immediately make the same hyperspace jump, and then dock at Centcom, counting as an "escaped alive" victory for any traitors onboard (but not escape alone, if there's anyone on the actual shuttle).

The Syndicate shuttle requires co-ordinates. When docked at or near the station, a remote co-ordinate hacking mode can be enabled on the main console, which will pinpoint Centcom and allow the shuttle to fly there at the end of the round - this mode takes a minute or two to complete, needs to be complete before the escape shuttle departs, and cannot be interrupted, disabling all other use of the console in the meantime. The players can choose either to dock at Centcom, or ram into it at speed - each of these is a one-way trip. This is a consolation prize for defeated nukeops who manage to limp back to their shuttle.

What do you think? Is it possible? Is it viable? Is it worth doing?

[Zilenan91]

I could seriously dig the Nuke Ops being able to ram their shuttle into the station itself, hell, maybe not even as a last resort kind of thing, making it be a sort of dynamic entry to blow up a huge part of the station but disable escape for them on it. Make a huge bang, then go out guns blazing not giving a shit. It would be good because of huge atmos leaks, and Nuke Ops would still be able to quite easily win even if their nuke gets fucked with due to the self destruct terminal in the vault they can c4 open. Getting out wouldn't be that huge of a problem either since all they gotta do is leave the zlevel to win a major victory while the nuke goes off.


But no, nukies shouldn't be able to dock at centcom. If they do, I think we'd see nukies just stalling in space for a while then going to centcom to raid the ERT armory, THEN attacking the station with loads of good shit like telescopic shields, boxes and boxes and boxes of flashbangs, etc.

[AnonymousNow]

I could seriously dig the Nuke Ops being able to ram their shuttle into the station itself, hell, maybe not even as a last resort kind of thing, making it be a sort of dynamic entry to blow up a huge part of the station but disable escape for them on it. Make a huge bang, then go out guns blazing not giving a shit. It would be good because of huge atmos leaks, and Nuke Ops would still be able to quite easily win even if their nuke gets fucked with due to the self destruct terminal in the vault they can c4 open. Getting out wouldn't be that huge of a problem either since all they gotta do is leave the zlevel to win a major victory while the nuke goes off.


But no, nukies shouldn't be able to dock at centcom. If they do, I think we'd see nukies just stalling in space for a while then going to centcom to raid the ERT armory, THEN attacking the station with loads of good shit like telescopic shields, boxes and boxes and boxes of flashbangs, etc.

I'm sorry, I should've clarified - the Centcom trip would be one-way, and end-of-round. I'll edit my post to keep that in there.

[Steelpoint]

Every shuttle would need its own unique docking port (unless someone codes a way to prevent ships from overwriting each other if they land on the same spot) to prevent bad things occurring.

[AnonymousNow]

Every shuttle would need its own unique docking port (unless someone codes a way to prevent ships from overwriting each other if they land on the same spot) to prevent bad things occurring.

That's what I was thinking - hence the expansion of the docking struts there.

[MrStonedOne]

Maybe it should be changed so that it's a vertical structure, though, rather than a horizontal one

Reminder, that shuttles can rotate when docking. so this could easily be doable by just changing the dir var of the station's docking port.

[AnonymousNow]

Maybe it should be changed so that it's a vertical structure, though, rather than a horizontal one

Reminder, that shuttles can rotate when docking. so this could easily be doable by just changing the dir var of the station's docking port.

Shuttles can rotate while docking? I didn't know that. It's awkward, isn't it? But it does mean that several of our current shuttles could be angled upwards in a "comb" docking strut.