Xenoarcheology = Soft port (Fossils!)

[FantasticFwoosh]

Right now science has no real reason besides minerals to really justify gaining either A their own little area of lavaland or B. shuttle or access to ride down themselves to the mining site/other

Heres something for you alternatively Xenoarcheology (inspired by vg's systems) that is inclusive to digging and exploring at the same time.

Core concept Fossils

Fossils are rare ore rock formations that come in different densities, light density fossils can be dug along with ore without much difficulty but larger fossils require more prep work. By scanning your ores with a mining scanner, you can identify the size of a fossil and a vague clue to its contents or class (if different kinds of fossils have different loot tables etc) digging a fossil before you scan it and identify risks destroying it, as per carving through the rock recklessly, this only applies to medium and above and light fossils can be torn through (as a additional bonus, when scanned and identified light fossils will drop clusters rather than individual pieces)

> light density fossils - relatively common, they can be cracked open by hand (as to say you "polish off the dust") for a set pool of small convenience objects and special collectable aesthetic fossil stones, they have low tech attached and can be bundled inside ore boxes and mining bags.

> Medium density - often have objects of interest inside but arent heavy so can be deposited inside a backpack, fodder for the experimentor to poke at and examine

> Heavy density fossils - These fossils are as large as gibtonite and require double handed effort to move or dragging, however they have the largest quantity of significant loot, either resulting in a valuable item in bulk or a extremely valuable small one.

You cannot immediately crack open fossils as soon as you find them beside common kinds, first you need to analyse them in the experimentor (which summarily gains a new lease of life as a rare object analyser instead of a machine for spamming events) via the discover function

A small handful of fossil loot

Light Fossils
- syndicate screwdrivers (random tools of that nature in syndie colours)
- common earth plant seeds/mushrooms
- renamed & resprited bone daggers named "Dinosaur Teeth"
- generic cosmetic fossil objects (legbones, amber stones, fossilised leaves etc) *see amendment at the bottom about selling these for profit

Medium (as to say dropped by the experimentor, so not found out in the field allowing more tech orientated loot rather than detritus)

- Cosmetic wear/literal dinosaur bone armour with a goofy trex bone head (as cosmetic alterations of regular bone armor and items)
- slightly rarer plant seeds with some mutated types

- unique pool of artifact strange objects with new effects
- some weapons loosely based off cult/tribal fusion

Heavy Fossils
- Unique plants - gatfruit and some other plants created specifically for fossils (summary ideas - mushrooms that have literal pouches of O2 for fruit like organic canisters, naturally pod people can roll to get 1 of these etc)

- Carnivorous roro's - Precursor to slimes, repurposed into a dangerous variant for future elaboration beside just having a pet roro only 1 required to self reproduce as per slimes do. Or specific slime varieties/mobs that can be revived.

- Special genetics disks for turning into a ashwalker (summarily voiding the ashwalker conversion spell) or random superpowers
- Unique machine boards - (you may want to make a ancient machine not accessible via RND like a pimped up clockwork power generator/some kind of vat etc)

Some of the points are vague and i will revisit but feedback would be appreciated

---

(2017 Edit:) Going to revive this from the dead like a good archeologist with DNA of a much needed idea encased in amber.

Now that science through the RD has auxillary base access, its much easier for the station to access the lavaland level, therefore if you could incentivise more exploration to gather back large & small fossils to run through the experimentor and explore their function for loot & techboosts then it is fully possible to still salvage the function of the room.

- All cosmetic & general fossil objects will yield cargo points as per being paid by the archeological commission, meaning a use for dinosaur leg bones you might find.

- With proper display items we can show off the bizzare selection of useful and collectible rubbish that we find.

Any function to get more loot even if its worthwhile just by processing it would be functionally similar to the experimentors function in scanning station side strange objects.

[ShadowDimentio]

Xenoarchaeology blows ass, and that's on Bay where rounds are slow at best. Here, where everyone likes it fast and loose, this would absolutely never be used.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Fair point, but this is a soft port and nowhere in the long term depth of bays system that requires running xenoarch stuff through multiple machines.

This is literally bring the loot back, and RNG for your prize based on density of the ore, you can completely ignore and dig through the fossils which are optional to be scanned destroying them if you want to. It also adds a second function to the experimentor which is very lacking on any purpose for existing right now.

Miner: "Hey science do you want me to bring back this heavy fossil i found?" - Scientist: "Yes please" (because y'know nowadays mining and science co-operation is at the hip, if there was something of interest in there amongst the higher tier loot it would also be worthwhile and it helps keep scientists sweet & independently looking for fossils if they have too many minerals)

[cedarbridge]

Xenoarchaeology blows ass, and that's on Bay where rounds are slow at best. Here, where everyone likes it fast and loose, this would absolutely never be used.

>constant threads about wanting slightly longer rounds
>instant response that we can't have longer rounds because we don't have the content to support it
>here's content that takes longer than the standard 20 minute shuttle call
>nah, rounds are too fast nobody would use it
????

[WJohnston]

it wouldn't matter if there's a lot of job content that could only be used when rounds reach 1-2 hours in length.

the gameplay mechanics of how ALL our antagonists work (especially crazily chaotic things like rev, wizard, nuke ops, blob etc), how random events work (and how lethal they are like meteors), and the established player mentality would ALL prevent rounds from lasting more than an hour above 30 players (which is always).

you need to change those before you can have longer rounds, and by that point you'd probably become bay lite.

[FantasticFwoosh]

This is literally just something for people to do between minerals, like the current set of experimentor objects which all have technological levels when they are processed & a 'discovered' functional purpose (though generally the corgi spammer is arguably a worse result than the one that explodes, so these are treated like novelty items.)

- Often you just see robotics & RnD with full 10 sheets spare of every mineral just lounging about with their printed stuff, its also a good way to get semi-exclusively rare items into the game without printing them off. Some of them are purely thematic. However you can tie it into miners & science goals is a plus and the rest can be donated to cargo to sell off for points & just used for aesthetics.

Motivate scientists to get off their butts with the carrot rather the stick of being stuck with a room that they never use and has (*citation in the past) been used exclusively as meme room for (*citation in the past)

• Spamming asteroid showers
• Self-xenoing yourself (*which is wierd but did happen)
• Pointlessly harmful malfunction effects that don't happen with better parts (???)
• Unable to actually experiment on anything successfully, or the finalised successful test just yields flavour text & no actual result
• That one useful malfunction that draws a lot of blood for a free no questions asked 1 level tech upgrade
• Strange objects & their meme functions, only barely useful

[DemonFiren]

>self-xenoing yourself
how do you self-xeno someone else, anyway

[christ110]

Xenobio fuckery involving magicarp.

[FantasticFwoosh]

>self-xenoing yourself
how do you self-xeno someone else, anyway

It used to be a malfunction, besides from scientists also summoning meteors as a malfunction to grief.

[Supermichael777]

I would play it though i would port the roid side stuff and not much of the machinery. You find artifacts faster by digging out formations anyway (literally the only thing those do is tell you VAGUELY what you get and let you triangulate its position which is pointless because its always in sites). The one thing you need to keep is the scanner.

Plus bay xenoarch runs fast, hell it runs so fast your able to fill up a whole day on it without any boring downtime. its mentally engaging which a lot of jobs lack (looking at you science spreadsheet). its simple arithmitic but hey.

[DemonFiren]

>self-xenoing yourself
how do you self-xeno someone else, anyway

It used to be a malfunction, besides from scientists also summoning meteors as a malfunction to grief.

but then you're not self-xenoing someone else, you're just xenoing someone else

[Togopal]

Im not gonna lie, I am losing faith in this subforum because none of the ideas ever get implemented, but this one sounds nice. The "Roros" should have the old metroid sprite and work like metroids did

[FantasticFwoosh]

It is a test of faith Togopal, i suggest therefore i am.

Still think more lavaland/science activities is good though.

[Super Aggro Crag]

Im not gonna lie, I am losing faith in this subforum because none of the ideas ever get implemented, but this one sounds nice. The "Roros" should have the old metroid sprite and work like metroids did

Roros were a temporary replacement for metroids. They were named after Errorage and looked like angry yellow gloves

[FantasticFwoosh]

Digging up rocks, potentially reviving a old mob still in the sprite code as either a failure/malfunction or actual pet is literally themed as a blast to the past feature. What people want to do with roro's themselves is up to them.

If we're thinking antagonistically, feathery roro's are the carnivorous tribbles of space.

[youtube]dwG6MO92xtI[/youtube]

Otherwise they might just make a cute squaking pet that lays roro eggs periodically, i don't really have my mind set, but if somebody should be doing xenoarcheology as a main (a actual main department focus rather than a offshoot) then i want them to have options besides some of the traditional loot they find.