+- Goonstation Forums (https://forum.ss13.co)
+-- Forum: Discussion (https://forum.ss13.co/forumdisplay.php?fid=6)
+--- Forum: Ideas & Suggestions (https://forum.ss13.co/forumdisplay.php?fid=8)
+--- Thread: Build-A-Base Workshop 13 (/showthread.php?tid=3332)
Build-A-Base Workshop 13 - Captain_Bravo - 10-11-2014
Ok, so I'm going to start this post by acknowledging that several times before people have suggested some gamemode centered around construction and cooperation and each time it's shot down by how boring that would be for a large amount of players. However, there is something important that has changed, and that's why I think it's time to put a new shine on this old horse, and send it out. Therefore, without further ado, here's my suggestion for a Construction Round-Type.
Seeing as the introduction of the Euro server has... unbalanced things a bit, I think it would be interesting to revamp one of the old servers. Server #1, or maybe #2. They don't see a lot of use anymore since everyone wants to play on the hi-pop server, and in fact I think one of them is basically just set to "extended" mode overnight anyway. So why don't we do something awesome with it?
I propose that we turn the entire server into a Construction Round. Basically, take extended, and add in a dash of "do-it-your-own-damn-self" Strip away everything, the base, the Z-levels, all that shit has to go. Instead, give the server just one, big, Z-level, and fill it with various asteroids. You could probably copy-paste the old mining z-level, and just erase the base. Every 24 hours, the round ends, and a new one begins, wiping everything clean. When a round starts, the only thing on the map aside from asteroids is a single Survey Shuttle.
The shuttle contains whoever starts the round, a dispenser filled with a few basic healing items like patches and some pills, a dispenser with various pieces of metal, wiring, and glass, and a dispenser that's filled with some basic station equipment in the form of deployable frames. One creates a furnace for power generation, another some QM equipment to set up a functional cargo bay, and a mining fabricator as well as the assorted things needed to make that functional as well. There's also a couple Prototype RCD's which you refill with metal rods, and can then use to construct walls, floors, airlocks, or deconstruct shit.
Everyone who spawns in on the map automatically begins in an engineering spacesuit, with a jetpack that has a few minutes worth of oxygen. So the first step of every round would be to set up a furnace, build and power a Cargo Bay, and then get a functional mining system set up so you can afford to order things.
One you've gotten set up, and have a basic budget, you can order a Wireless Ruckingeur Kit. Find a good place for it, deploy the frame, and using it you can purchase frames for everything else you'd need in the station. Want a table for surgery, and some medvends? Drop some credits and build it. Want a ChemMaster or a bar dispenser? Drop the cash and build that shit! Tired of suffocating to death? Purchase mining a gas extractor and enjoy being in a station that actually has oxygen again! The sky is the limit, as long as you can afford it, you can build whatever you want. The rounds last for 24 hours, so unless you join at 11:30 PM you've probably got all the time you need. Nobody can spawn as an antagonist, so no chance of a surprise changeling ending your round. And, best of all, if you do die, there's respawns!
On a timer, of course, See, every 20-30 minutes, the round randomly spawns a random number of random mobs. (OMG SO RANDOM) You could stumble across an asteroid covered in space cats, or come back to base and find out an Omega Drone has nested in your bedroom. Good thing the survey shuttle starts off with two Phasers and a Fire Extinguisher! But in order to prevent you from just throwing bodies at the problem until it goes away, every time you die a timer starts, counting down from 5 minutes. Once it hits zero, you unlock the "respawn" button, and can pop back into life wherever your ghost currently is. (Maybe don't use it while standing on the Omega Drone.)
So, death has a minor penalty, nobody is allowed to run amok by due of being an antagonist, you have all the tools necessary to build a complete, functioning base, sounds great! What's the catch?
Well, to start with, that's a lot of assets that need to be created before it can be used. You'll need to map out an asteroid-filled Z-level, you'd have to sprite and code in the shuttle, the dispensers, the Wireless Ruckingeur, the Prototype RCD, and who-knows-what-else. You'd have to cobble together a mob timer, as well as add in the random aspect of it. Lights would not really be feasible, and you'd probably have to just strip all jobs and access in order to make things work. Also, you'd need to make it so the entire Z-level counts as one room, and starts unpowered. (Since APCs are an enormous fucking hassle.)
Now, there's probably a lot else I'm not even thinking of that would need to be done before it can become a reality. But I think it would be fun! It would give Goonstation a completely unique form of gameplay, something that's been touched on before (Post-Solarium rounds) but has never really been fully-implemented. It would definitely be a bigger draw for pulling people off of the Euro server to ease some strain on it. For the people who don't like the random brutality of most rounds, it gives them a quiet place to do their own thing and stop bitching at the rest of us. Plus, if there's something you want to experiment with but can't because the main station keeps exploding? Hop onto the Construction Server, build whatever you need to make it happen, and then have as much time as you need to figure things out! Accidentally blow your chemistry lab to shit? Five minutes later, you can rebuild it and try again.
So what do you guys thing? I already posted about it on SA, and some people seemed to like the idea. If nothing else, I think it could be a fun experiment. And since we'd be shunting it off to a mostly-unused server already, anyone who wouldn't enjoy that kind of gameplay would easily be able to avoid it.
Re: Build-A-Base Workshop 13 - DyssalC - 10-12-2014
I love this and I hope it happens and I hope wonk isn't being turbosarcasting.
However, because quoting that behemoth is work, I'm just gonna hope everyone else read it before reading this:
Phasers are currently borked for the most part, so it'd probably have to be normal lasers or something.
Or maybe phasers could get fixed or recoded because they're super cool and have a lot of cool attachments.
Re: Build-A-Base Workshop 13 - DyssalC - 10-12-2014
DyssalC Wrote:Or maybe phasers could get fixed or recoded because they're super cool and have a lot of cool attachments.Well fuck you too font sizes, go ahead and be extra-large when I asked for extra-small.
Re: Build-A-Base Workshop 13 - QP Evergrande - 10-12-2014
This has the potential to be supremely cool. Just a few things off the top of my head, though...
1. Char furnaces would be a good power source to start with, but being able to supplement them later with solars would be good too. Just make them require significant resources, and maybe more exotic ones.
2. Also, we'd have to start with quite a few canisters of air until we could get a gas extractor set up.
3. Isn't there a tool that lets you copy rooms by designating an area to copy? If you set up an APC, you could use a similar tool to designate the area it powers. The shuttle would have to start with a number of power cells, though.
4. The extra Ruckingeur Kits and blueprint expansions should be available in all rounds, but at significant cost.
5. The resource yield of asteroids would have to be increased by a factor of 10 at least, or we'd run out. Alternatively, they could be restricted to higher resources, which would have to be sold to buy the large quantities of mauxite, molitz and pharosium that would be needed.
6. Speaking of selling, we'd need to be able to designate buy and sell points somehow, or else where would the cargo come from?
7. Also, there would have to be some kind of way to build conveyor belts, cargo routers and catapults, as well as program them. The mechanics will need a tool for that.
8. I feel like med dispensers and chem dispensers should require supply packs to be purchased in order to stock them, at significant cost. Just being able to set them up and have them fully stocked is too easy.
9. Now that I think about it, the cargo market, and especially the traders, need to be significantly adjusted, because right now making money as a QM is actually fairly hard. But even still, some things are ludicrously cheap. I should put together an effortpost about that some time.
Re: Build-A-Base Workshop 13 - Amuys - 10-12-2014
Yeah, I really like this. I mentioned before a reconstruction/repair sorta round would be really fun to play as it would get people to work together on a scale that's rarely seen outside of maybe blob.
Re: Build-A-Base Workshop 13 - Marquesas - 10-12-2014
I'd like to note that this idea has a massive popularity among admins unsurprisingly. We threw some ideas around.
The concept of power is a difficult one because station APCs are tied to areas. I'd like to avoid player designated areas due to a series of complications and the ability to specify the entire Z-level as your area and basically the tackiness of making it work during game time instead of setup time. An alternative I came up with is wired power. Basically, power terminals with a small internal battery which provide power to all machines on the same tile as long as it's wired onto an active power source (like an SMES, a furnace, solars, whatever). That way, power management would be a thing that would work at least somewhat similarly to the actual station.
Also, I'd like to see atmospheric machines be buildable (pipes, connectors, vents, whatever) and we'll work towards making it available for this (and probably the main game, too).
Re: Build-A-Base Workshop 13 - Sundance - 10-12-2014
This is kinda similar to the idea that Exadv1 posted a while back, about instead of having a PVP environment and change it with more PVE. I really liked the idea and I feel some concepts should be looked at if this was to be implemented on one of servers.
Basically the gist of it is that more random occurrences could and should happen and it would encourage to set up some sort of community with proper jobs and stuff. Like every while aside from a random bunch of mobs like suggested, a virus breaks out, or asteroids or whatever. It takes survival and difficulty up a notch and encourages co-op. Nothing like level 99 asteroid from all sides kinda situation but stuff that would really ruin your day if you don't handle it correctly.
Maybe after a set time, say 2-3 hours i dunno, people can do a hierarchy vote? So if successful it assigns random jobs to people (or maybe higher up jobs for people who have been here the longest?) and re-enables new joiners to select a job. I dunno, I think it would be very interesting if once err'body has built the station, to have a little structure and to see if your design is efficient (or hilariously hazardous) and for what job. It won't stop people from continuing building, the tools will still be there.
I would play the shit out of this eitherways. I admit I do get bored of the PVP every once and a while and it's been shown with tele-science that PVE can be just as entertaining and hilarious as the former.
Re: Build-A-Base Workshop 13 - robbie - 10-12-2014
We should be able to incorporate active artifacts into the power grid. Make some sort of containment unit to hold them and hook them up to a smaller scale generator. Make the generator only be powered by them so we don't worry about core breeches from hellburns and always have a need for more artifacts. Make use of the harmful stuff instead of wasting an opportunity. What do we do about people who become borgs that will most likely have no laws?
Re: Build-A-Base Workshop 13 - QP Evergrande - 10-12-2014
As far as command structure, just having a Captain, Head of Security, and Chief Engineer should be enough, with everyone else joining as mechanics or miners. The Captain could reassign personnel as needed, until there's enough staff to justify having an HoP.
But then, what about door security clearance restrictions? I'm sure nobody wants there to be a tool capable of changing the access setting of doors. No matter how safe you made it, the potential for abuse would be outrageous in the regular game modes. But, I have an alternative. Is there a mechanics component that scans ID cards? I know one exists for reading fingerprints. But anyway, my idea is to combine a card reader component with a door, which would let you set access settings, and then the component would be locked by the HoS or Captain, after which its settings can't be changed unless they unlock it, and once the card reader is locked, the door will automatically no longer open unless a card is scanned. That way you can have secure doors just like on the regular station, without compromising the regular station's security.
Re: Build-A-Base Workshop 13 - UrsulaMejor - 10-12-2014
Make it so you have to order heads in the mail.
Mail-Order-HoS.
(But seriously, i love this suggestion and want to see it work out C
Re: Build-A-Base Workshop 13 - Cogwerks - 10-12-2014
It'd be easier to develop if some of the more complex things were already setup, especially QM's ordering launchers. There's a ton of potential for this idea though. I could see it working pretty well with something like the old mining station, just have a small arrivals shuttle docked at a little outpost with some critical infrastructure already set up, a manufacturing room and a bunch of airlocks leading out to good construction areas. Maybe a mining magnet too to help keep resources readily available.
I could knock out a prototype outpost and put it on the mining level maybe, let people experiment with that while features get worked on? It'd be easy to redo the mining derelict right away and start repurposing it.
Engineer-in-a-Box could use some reworking too, that thing could be pretty useful for this.
Memory leaks might be a problem with super long rounds, but hell, that'd be a good way to identify and fix some of those fuckers anyways.
Phasers aren't really related to this, but just as an aside- I'm gonna try to work on redoing phasers soon. They're deprecated as hell but I think it'd be rad to have them function as a new basic modular energy weapon. Tasers and lasers could both be based on a common modifiable framework. All the energy weapons already have internal power cells that exist as their own items, but iirc none of them can be popped out yet - that'd be a pretty easy project, I'm sure. I'll try to prioritize that as one of my next projects when I've got some time and energy for it. Phaser customization is really neat and I'd love to make all the energy weapons work off of that sort of framework. It could hopefully give security and away-teams more reasons to interact with mechanics, miners and QMs to get upgraded gear.
Another vaguely related WiP thing: I'm gonna try to implement non-station job slots sometime as an optional player toggle. I wanna have some weird starting kits and spawn positions out in the derelict/construction areas, more flavor jobs geared towards optional roleplaying and quiet projects. Cosmonauts, traders, drug dealers, crash survivors, construction crews, idk.
Sundance Wrote:...
Maybe after a set time, say 2-3 hours i dunno, people can do a hierarchy vote? So if successful it assigns random jobs to people (or maybe higher up jobs for people who have been here the longest?) and re-enables new joiners to select a job. I dunno, I think it would be very interesting if once err'body has built the station, to have a little structure and to see if your design is efficient (or hilariously hazardous) and for what job. It won't stop people from continuing building, the tools will still be there.
I also wanna give the Head of Personnel a way to adjust latejoin job limits. Station's going to shit? Adjust the latejoin limits for guards. Need more medics? Maybe it could cost a bit from the personnel budget to open up some more job slots. Wouldn't be hard to implement, job slots can already be messed with by admins during a round.
Hell, it could be possible to make HoP-customizable jobs too for latejoiners/respawns - high rank admins can create new job datums on the fly, the interface would just need to be made a bit friendlier and safer for players to use.
Re: Build-A-Base Workshop 13 - APARTHEID - 10-12-2014
In essence, this is a survival mode? See which crew can get the longest time on record?
Re: Build-A-Base Workshop 13 - Cogwerks - 10-12-2014
APARTHEID Wrote:In essence, this is a survival mode? See which crew can get the longest time on record?
Nah, sounds a lot closer to sandbox mode really.
Re: Build-A-Base Workshop 13 - Ali0en - 10-12-2014
I feel there should be an antag with the objective of sabotaging development. That or random space mob event s like wendigo horde migrating or something else.
Re: Build-A-Base Workshop 13 - UmmonTL - 10-12-2014
I like the idea since I especially enjoy playing as a mechanic and building interesting contraptions. Giant Penis Station every round...
Some thoughts:
- Some kind of planning contraption would be nice so that players can at least sketch out a rough layout for others to follow. I'm thinking a central planning computer that lets you edit a simple colored image and maybe give each color a name (gray = hallway, yellow = engineering, white = medbay, etc.). Each pixel you draw would show up as a colored force field if you wear a certain kind of goggles, probably optical meson. Maybe with a toggle, shouldn't annoy people or interfere with the building process. The other and more simple option would be some colored light beacons that can be anchored into space so you can mark out some basic areas. Or, another idea, make it possible to draw pictures on paper instead of just text.
- A bunch of things just can't be built currently, wether with the ABC-U, device analyzer or by hand. Some of these are quite necessary like the SMES'es, not sure how easy that can be changed. But I'm sure it's doable otherwise someone would have been screaming protest already.
- I like the idea of completely wired power, having power just work by magic would mean that there is no powernet. No Powernet would mean only wireless computers and a bunch of stuff doesn't work with wireless.
- On that note, a lot of computer devices work by space magic instead of actually sending messages over a network. Most notably, both the telesci computer and the telepad need to be connected to the network (or more specifically the mainframe) and work as networked devices but no messages are sent to actually open a portal or send/receive/scan, let alone returning the scanner data. The cloner and genetics console also magically connect and work. If this were changed it would be cool for the actual station as well because it would allow for more hacking hijinks as well as some more useful wireless constructuions.