Lavaland used to have a moon, which as a result of a Nanotren toxins bomb stockpile detonating, literally fragmented the moon into two, though it was purely a accident (?), it also revealed a yet undetected cache of minerals sealed beneath uniquely thick bedrock that sensors sweeping the region hadn't picked up. Some outer-dimensional cosmic presence was detected in the region though so for fear of unleashing some great evil, Centcomm (until now hopefully with this idea implementation) had been laying off using the site to any extended effect.
The explosion also triggered a rapid change in lavalands atmosphere causing the root issue of the storms as frequently as they have been as per volcanic activity, it is fortunate lavaland did not too shatter.
The Map
The map of the shard planet is relatively straightforward, the outer exterior walls of the map are actually lined with inpenetrable fake rock walls (which can be asset swapped for lavaland or wheverever) and for your benefit i've broke out the colouring book of MS paint to give you a diagram.
The bottom to top for the mining base with the gulag to the side (the map can be any shape as long as the static BOSS entrypoint is furthest) , but there are multiple islands to explore away from the mainland, for familiarity besides the setting & obvious dangers of space (atmos dragging into a cold void and objects flying away) and enough inland tiles so you're not being pulled all over the place, the asteroid turfs have gravity.
The little start at the top is the boss entrypoint (read below) the star at the bottom is the mining point and to the left side is the gulag asteroid shard with the lower grade of ores modelled after the prior original asteroids design in which prisoners can deliberately dig through walls to space themselves/escape.
- A additional idea is that periodically wormholes along the outer edges of the space map scoop up objects and deposit them periodicially randomly on solid floor turfs as to keep clutter (unless you literally want to make a trash collector/recycler ghost role or keep collecting side of the map trash a thing.) free from floating in space since this is disjointed from the rest of the space Z levels purely into mining.
Another childishly drawn map, this is a kind of example of the mining base, it is basically a tiny fan & pod walled dome area with fully surrounding solar collectors (because of adjacency to space) on the inside (can be changed to outside but having them broadly inside seemed cooler) to protect them from asteroids, there is a solar control panel & a smes present and atmos is pumped into the solar's "Safe zone".
Demonstrated areas, beige is the shuttle, blue is the preparation room (with mining hardsuits), grey is the foundry, orange is recreation & medbay, while yellow is basic engineering, atmos and tcomms (the diagramme is not representative of size.)
Weather
Without the constant annoyance of ash storms, miners are free to be out in all non-weathers within space, but this doesn't nessecarily mean that they are safe besides the residual dangers of monsters there, in a slightly longer periodic instance, asteroids will fall from the *sky* (immediately above) upon any territory that is not marked as a room area, though most of the asteroids
- Like a dragon projectile or comparably the shuttle landing zone there is a projection of size related to the amount of damage its going to do on impact, as the very largest kind of asteroids will have a normal asteroid AOE explosion falling top down, while the most common and smallest asteroids only affect 1 tile.
Boss(es)
The only realised boss is THE SUN (because if we're taking the heirophant i see why not), a boss summoned off a divine machine of bronze Ratvarian origin at the very end of the asteroid where the necropolis would be. THE SUN is a malevolent and super sentient ball of trillions of moles of plasma gas that was created during the fusion present when the moon was destroyed, and being a one of a kind threat to the universe as a all devouring rogue star was sealed away.
it is a competent boss that for if you are not wearing simultaneous welder eye protection will blind you, It shoots out lots of projectiles and has a destruction aura around it similar to a tesla/singulo with a legitimate health bar given it can be destroyed. In its final stage it will collapse, sucking things towards it (without fighting against it with a jetpack) then explode outward revealing its loot. It does not require nessecarily to have any form of hostile AI & it is attracted to strange beacons functioning much like a engine object that likes to shout in large text a lot, theoretically you can make a engine out of it while its still in its boss state.
- Throwing a bag of holding into THE SUN, will deal a one time hit of damage, which can be useful for finishing it off. It will loudly telepathically protest in response.
- It will drop a neutron star-hammer which is a high force Mjolnir that can cause a gravitational backlash like the blue space gun in R&D & a solar core, which when stablised with a PA and surrounded in shield emitters will create a new stablised THE SUN, that will activate if it eats too much betawaves from the PA as efficient engine.
A handful of ideas for a armful of a subject.
