Away Missions 2.0 (Now with feature creep in the last post)

[onleavedontatme]

Bottom post of the previous page:

256x256 (current)



500x500



1000x1000. The max, and obviously far too large.

[onleavedontatme]

Another alternative to sizing is having three Z levels (though not necessarily full sized.)

The station would have one Z level to the south, and the migrants their own area to the north.

At the north of the stations Z level there would be a big wall/mountain range/whatever, with an entrance to a third, underground Z level. Hopefully someone (Ausops) can make a suitably imposing cave entrance. (Migrants enter it from the southern edge of their map).

Underground would be full of rocks or whatever. Would essentially be the asteroid. Could require environmental protection down here (too hot?) as well so that rigs are still needed. Where the ladder leads to could be randomized every round so you don't know where the ladder up to the migrant side is.

Here is a beautiful picture I made



And an ugly mockup



This might be suffering a bit from feature creep. I think it's doable though, especially if WJ and Sticky are going to map, and Xhuis is doing the boss thing. Plus the code for the underground is already done (asteroid). The question is more if people will tolerate such a big change to the gameplay structure than whether it can be created.

Anyway hopefully this addresses the following concerns

-Don't want mining to go away. Will still exist basically the same, other than its location in the fluff.
-Want the possibility of open planets (swamps, etc), which can now fit on aboveground. Long term the migrant Z level and station Z level could be different biomes.
-Migrants too easy to rush

[Remie Richards]

Your diagram is terrible, the mountain would fall down blocking the hole! physics!
Seriously though, this 3 Z idea is neat.

[Steelpoint]

Bigger is not always better, but at the very least we have more than enough room for whatever we want to do and size is not a real constraint.

[DemonFiren]

Dungeon Z would be an ideal excuse for xenoarcheology.

Xenoarchaeology is an ideal excuse for Vendigroth style.

[Sabbat]

Away missions are terrible.

[Xhuis]

I just don't think something of this scale and complexity could fit in SS13. Me and Sticky discussed this when we were making concepts for bosses, and there are a few key limiting factors. The first and foremost is the nature of the game itself - huge boss fights and stuff aren't really possible because there isn't any real loot that could be given without making people want to steal it, and there's enough world-ending stuff like supermatters and singularities that the boss fights can easily be made trivial by someone with the right gear. Second is BYOND limitations. I've noticed that the BYOND language is actually really flexible, and people have done some incredible things with it, but something on this scale within the already-existing game might be impossible.

[onleavedontatme]

Ugly work in progress of the migrant base lay out. I got distracted by working on various random things like ZAWARUDO but I wanted to throw this up/my ideas around it before I went on vacation for the week.


Mechanically:

-Migrants "spawn" by waking up out of sleepers
-Has an engine room (the runes, I'll explain in a minute) which powers the ship/is worth it for science to steal. Feed it plasma to spawn more migrants (need power to wake them from deep sleep). Maybe unlock extra areas or functions of the ship if you feed it enough.
-Has medical room that will have a surgery table, maybe some cryo cells or other basic healing
-Room with the fabricators will have smelting machine/crafting area (to build tools to fight the monsters, and to build environmental protection to pass through the mining area)
-Ship is in a little cave with a chokepoint so its not just covered in random monsters constantly


DEEP LORE:

A crashed space ship taken over by the locals, who previously eked out miserable existences in the harsh environment before the ship fell from the sky. They worship the engine/consider the whole thing holy ground. Due to a lack of resources, the majority of the tribe will stay in sleepers for long periods of time while the priesthood "maintains" the engine by scribbling all over it (and feeding it plasma)

With the arrival of NT's mining operation, and seeing the lights of their craft moving in the sky at night, they believe their deities/rival deities/something else supernatural is going on, and wake up the whole tribe to go on a pilgrimage/holy crusade etc.

ALT LORE:

A crashed syndicate/pirate/mercenary ship shot down decades ago (or longer), the commandos inside are prepared to continue their war regardless of what year it is (or maybe they just want out). Same deal about them all being asleep awaiting rescue until now.

ALT ALT LORE:

It was an actual colony/migrant ship that got stranded. Same deal about them all being asleep awaiting rescue until now.

ALT ALT ALT LORE Fallout knockoff

It was a ship staffed solely by an insane man and clones of himself


It'd probably be possible to rotate the "flavor" of migrants, but as should be obvious from the length of words dedicated to each lore bit, I'm most attached to a bunch of holy crusaders shouting "GOD WILLS IT" as they get eaten by carp.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I love the idea of the last one. Them all having the same random name and a number

"Bruce Freeman (532) says, "Bruce Freeman (341) hit me with a sword!""