FTL Mode

[PKPenguin321]

Before I begin, I'd like to say I already realize how unfeasible this is, but when the idea occurred to me I figured it was too cool not to share.

What if we ripped off FTL in basically every way? It would basically be like FTL, but more immersive in basically every way since you're actually a part of your crew, and the rest of your crew is all living people.

Some Basics:
There are multiple ships roaming around an area of space. They're gonna shoot the fuck out of each other for RP fluff reasons that I haven't written yet, but it'll probably have to do with centcomm being sadistic or Nanotrasen sending out fleets of ships to take down the syndicate mothership or something. Each ship is basically a larger shuttle, sorta like the white ship. It's fully simulated, just like SS13; if the enemy ship shoots a hole through your hull, you'd better patch it up before it sucks all the air out of the room.

There's no fuel in this since I feel it wouldn't work too well, as this is multiplayer rather than single player like FTL is and not being able to move your ship at all would be too annoying. Scrap is used for a lot of stuff (described more in depth later), and each ship starts with a good amount of it. Asteroid fields can also be found and mined for more scrap. When a ship is destroyed in battle, the ship that destroyed it takes their scrap. You can also send miners to defeated ships to reclaim the wreckage into even more scrap.

All crewmen are given a laser pistol that has unlimited ammo but has a 5~ second delay between each shot. It does 15 HP of damage to both consoles and carbon lifeforms.

The ship has status display screens in basically every room which show the ship's current health as a percentage. When examined, the description shows the health as a number, and the amount of scrap the ship has collected. When in combat, it will show the enemy ship's health, as well.

Once numerous ships have been destroyed, more can be spawned in pulling players from ghosts. Each ship can have randomized themes, such as a syndicate ship, a pirate ship, a cultist ship, etc.
Bays/Areas:

The Bays and Areas on the ship would have a console in each, and if it breaks, then the room needs maintenance. Consoles are kind of like dominators, in that they have their own health. Health between each console varies, and if it is below full, crewmen can interact with it to perform maintenance with slowly heals it. Consoles at 0 health are broken and can't be interacted with beyond repairing them. Multiple crew can repair one console, which stacks the repair rate. Average console health is 100 HP.

The Weapons Bay controls what weapons are active, where to aim at the enemy ship, and if somebody is actively manning the console, how fast they can aim. The map of the enemy ship that he uses to target it could work like the minimaps we have on crew monitoring consoles. When this bay is damaged, it loses the power to maintain some weapons; when it is fully broken, all weapons are depowered.

The Shields Bay simply controls whether or not the shields are active, and when manned, the shields regenerate much faster. Considering this mode would be PvP, this room will probably be blowing up a lot, meaning it will be pretty high maintenance.

The Engine Room is a room that is vital to movement. If it is damaged, the ship cannot move at all. This means it has less chances to evade enemy fire and cannot escape combat in an emergency should the need arise. When manned, it gives a slight boost to the ship's evasion.

The Captain's Room is where the captain can pilot the ship. He can either move the ship out of combat to another area in an emergency or simply use it for its intended purpose of moving to another sector once combat ends. He could also use it to contact an enemy ship and try to resolve conflict diplomatically via trade, begging for mercy, etc. He also manages the energy usage of the ship from here, meaning he could depower the engines to give a boost to shields, etc. He can also use scrap to repair the ship, but at a high cost.

The Camera Bay would basically be an AI chamber. The AI can look around the ship freely and cannot be killed by any means short of the ship being destroyed. He can open airlocks to space to attempt to extinguish fires or to suffocate invading enemies (he doesn't have laws in this mode, he's just expected to not be a douche). The AI also provides energy to whatever room it is currently spectating. The Camera Bay room also has an advanced camera console in it, allowing a human player to view the ship through the cameras, as well. If the room is damaged, the AI is blinded (and the console is broken), and is left to scream at everybody to fix it. When this room is upgraded, the AI will be able to look at the enemy ship (but not be able to interact with it), allowing it to provide guidance to the crew as to where to aim, etc.

The Atmospherics Area is much simpler than the normal atmos system. What it does is maintain oxygen throughout the ship magically scientifically, but when it gets damaged and goes offline, oxygen levels will slowly start to drop. If left online for a fair amount of time, it can become a serious issue. Since this is SS13 and not just FTL, it also normalizes the temperatures of rooms so that extreme heat/cold isn't as game-ending.

The Medical Area could have a sleeper or two, and an epipen/bandages generator. Standing in the area itself passively heals you, reduces any stuns against you by 1/2 their duration, and passively restores lost blood. The passive benefits of this area only apply to friendly crew. Permadeath in FTL is supposed to be expected, but since this is SS13 and not FTL, we could also throw in a cloner and a cryo tube as well as a cryoxadone dispenser. If the room is damaged, all equipment is depowered and the passive effects stop.

Those rooms are all basically the vital ones. Here's what I propose for other rooms:

Telecomms Room. Basic SS13 telecomms that provide messaging between the whole ship via headsets. They can be upgraded by the science area one time to be advanced. Advanced telecomms are immune to being listened to by other ships, and can listen to other ships telecomms. They are also more durable than usual due to communication being so critical in this mode.

The Science Area. The science area is not something in FTL, but the way it would work is it would allow you to upgrade your ship with the scrap earned from combat. This works the same way it does in FTL. You can upgrade your generator to have more power available for every room, or upgrade other rooms to work better (IE upgrading atmospherics so it produces air more quickly, upgrading medbay to buff its passive effects further, upgrade shields bay to make shields regen faster/be stronger, upgrade weapons bay to allow more weapons to be active at once), at the cost of that room requiring more power. You can also research (or more accurately, purchase) advanced tools with scrap, such as a taser for combat, or a wrench that repairs consoles faster. This bay also allows you to research new departments by spending scrap, giving you access to stuff like...

The Teleporter Bay. Used to warp crewmen onto enemy ships and fight them man-to-man. Crew that are warped in are automatically given a return implant, which allows them to warp back at any time provided they are not stunned/unconscious and the cooldown on the teleporter is done. The laser pistols can damage enemy consoles and rooms, allowing crew to warp in and sabotage certain areas/crewmen. Warp into the captain's office, shoot him in the face, and destroy the piloting console! Forget to warp out when your ship destroys the ship you're currently on and get gibbed! The teleporter itself has a cooldown (which can be shortened by upgrading), during which no crew can teleport to or from the enemy ship.

The Drone Bay. Drones in FTL are pretty fucking neato, but would probably be too crazy to simulate in SS13. This version is basically an SS13 robotics lab. It can produce borgs using positronic brains, which can act as medics for the crew, secborgs for stopping invaders/invading other ships, engieborgs for repairing rooms quickly, service borgs for being useless, etc. The production for cyborg parts requires, you guessed it, scrap. Upgrading this department reduces the cost for producing cyborg parts, unlocks higher capacity cells in the fabricators, unlocks mech parts (which are very expensive), and increases the speed of the fab.




So yeah, I'm not sure how we could make the round end (maybe after a certain period of time it scores all the ships based on how much scrap they have + how much they've spent, and the one with the most is selected as the winner? Maybe if there is only 1-3 ships left, a final boss ship spawns, normal ship spawns stop, and the round ends when it dies/it is the only ship left?) or how we would handle latejoins (put them into a priority pool for newly spawned ships?). I'm also not sure if you could even still call this SS13, maybe it would work better as a spinoff game or it's own codebase. But like, fuck, wouldn't it just be the coolest shit ever?

tl;dr: an idea so complicated that it wont ever be made

[Xhuis]

I was actually working on something like this not too long ago.
Probably not feasible, unfortunately.
Probably.

[Jacough]

Would it be possible to do something like nuke ops where a team of antags warps their ship in to specific locations around the station and uses cannons on specific hard points of the ship to blast holes in the station? You know, without causing too much lag aside from the usual atmos leaks shit?

[Incomptinence]

I know shuttles can flip and be placed most anywhere now. A harassing shuttle which shoots broadsides at the station occasionally moving to a new location can probably be done. Only thing missing is some collision prevention system so they don't just ram the bridge like badmins can with shuttles.

[Remie Richards]

I wrote a multi-tile vehicle system about a week or two ago:

Spoiler:

Sadly, it's butchered by Byond's turf update speed, and I'd need to request a (reasonable) feature to add to the language to finalise it.
(and probably add rotation too)

[DemonFiren]

I wrote a multi-tile vehicle system about a week or two ago:

Spoiler:

Sadly, it's butchered by Byond's turf update speed, and I'd need to request a (reasonable) feature to add to the language to finalise it.
(and probably add rotation too)

PODS WHEN.

[Incomptinence]

Goon already has pods apparently 2x2 is about what byond can manage at present.

[Remie Richards]

Goon already has pods apparently 2x2 is about what byond can manage at present.

Byond can handle more than 2x2.
Narsie is about 15x15.

What it is is that Narsie and Goon Pods are one object with a large sprite, vs my multitile vehicles which are, as the name says, multiple objects spanning multiple tiles moving in unison.
Byond can handle this, but when it leaves your vision byond's updates for it stop getting sent to your client (since you don't technically need them), but when it pops back into your vision it's not in unison anymore, it gets what I can only describe as "scanlines" like on an old TV, to fix this I'd have to request a buffer of extra tiles around the client's view for them to receive updates on.