Flock Suggestions

[T-man]

Hello,

I've been able to play a couple of rounds of Flock, and I wanted to suggest a few little things.

"Teleport to nearest empty drone" - option for flockminds and flocklings. Does what it sounds like.
This would be a great QoL improvement for a fairly obvious reason.

"Set priority" - flockminds. "Consume, Convert, Grow, Destroy"   Sets the AI controlled drones to focus on that goal -- eg. Destroy will be aggressive to non-marked enemies. Gives flocktraces a big ol' text line telling them to focus on it. Consume focuses drones on building up a large stock of materials, healing themselves, and otherwise looting. Convert grows more flocktiles primarily and consumes just enough to keep converting. Growing focuses on producing eggs and upgrading drones, setting traps if there's already a number of drones. Destroy... well, let's just say the humans are getting eaten.

This would give the flockmind more control over AI units. Destroy could set the drones to a red color, so the flock can be rouge/rogue just like the AI.


"Grow extra deconstructor space" - 30ish materials, drones. Allows drone to hold +1 item in the deconstructor queue. Allows you to hold more items in that slot, will deconstruct going oldest to newest. Can grab the last item put in. Could limit to 3-5 spaces.

It can be hard to grow extra flocktiles AND keep feeding the deconstructor slot. This would let drones "eat" a big amount of items, digest them, and fight/convert/reproduce on the go.

"Bound Lifeform" - 50 materials, drones. Slightly faster than a human, places a weird sticky version of handcuffs on a downed enemy. Makes getting out of a conversion chamber harder, meaning being bound THEN conversion'd require at least some health loss, minimum one new egg.

Right now they basically have to be willingly being consumed OR already dead. This would allow robust drones to make sure they get some material from the lifeform.

"Grow combat drone" - 200 materials, flockmind controlled drones OR 15 minute+ old drones. Creates an egg that produces a drone that's more robust, with a stronger taser and faster bounding and conversio n chamber building. AI is always hostile.

Might be a bit of work, but I think having different classes would spice things up.

"Set trap" - 30 materials, harm intent on Flocktile. Humans are conversion chambered if they step on the tile. Cannot set traps directly next to each other (think new Rimworld) but diagonal acceptable. Might keep humans from wandering too far into flockhive areas alone. Could only affect known enemies unless "destory" is the focus.

Humans often kill flock

"Create Flockzombie" - 60 materials Drones, possibly combat-only. Requires a corpse on flocktile. Reanimates it as a cool blue zombie that can heal itself on flocktiles and has big ol' cyberspurs. Same AI as combat drones. A real bad sign.

Not sure on the materials cost, but this could be a great lategame way to build up a defended area. Good reason to take out cloning.

Non-powers, but still a good idea:

- Converting lockers slowly consume their items and produce eggs using the materials stored inside. Doesn't harm living beings.

- Converting key machines (Mainframe, AI, Manufacturers, Cyborgs, NPC bots) grant control over player controlled machines, or a bonus materials bonus from non-player controlled machines.

- Eating a warm brain creates a flocktrace. Same for heads, with a bit of a delay. Maybe you can pull off heads using Grab intent for drones.

- Nanobots (current chem) gives flockdrones bonus speed and health. Perhaps converting food items could give nanobots instead of materials.

- Give flocktraces the ability to communicate via radio just like the OG.

Thoughts? I'm not committed to anything in particular. This could also be a good thread to chip in your ideas. Hail flock.

[aft2001]

There are quite a few good ideas in here, and I think that the additional control over drone behavior as well as having types of drones are wonderful ideas which should expand the playstyles that Flockminds can have.

I particularly like the idea of multiple drone types that are distinguishable from one another and, when examined, STRONGLY hint at their function (so it's easier to RP since you won't have to meta-game to ascertain the possible actions of a specific drone).
Depending on how effective these drones are, perhaps they should be limited in some way (either lifespan or a special limited resource [possibly called Flock Processing Power] which is temporarily expended whenever a special drone is alive, so you can only have so many specialized drones at any given time)

[Combat Drone]

Largely what OP suggested. Should be able to toggle between Offensive and Defensive:

• Offensive would actively seek out humans and borgs to neutralize and convert them
  Defensive would lock onto the area that it was set to defend and not go too far from it - essentially Offensive but staying in a pre-designated area. Should also set up traps and defenses in the area.

Is fully incapable of converting structures and can only deconstruct very small objects, and slowly. Armaments aren't particularly lethal, but very good at incapacitating (should have flock-cuffs or something, costs some material) and stuffing people into conversion chambers.


[Scout Drone]

Small, quick, and weak drone which can hide under tables, climb into mail chutes, has a multitool, and has a gripper in place of a nanite-sprayer. Useful for targeted operations, such as sabotaging electronics, stealing key items, etc. Also handy for hit-and-run combat. Designed to be directly controlled by a player. When not directly controlled, it'll avoid combat and people while salvaging high-value objects and operating far from active flock drones. Probably needs some kind of use for the materials it'll gather over time (perhaps the ability to emag something but requires the max amount of material and makes a loud distinct noise)


[Construction Drone]

Incapable of deconstructing objects and combat, but is much faster and more efficient at converting objects and tiles. Takes resources from nearby drones (non-specialized drones should 'donate' their materials to nearby Construction drones automatically) and has a significantly higher material storage.


[Salvage Drone]

Incapable of construction/conversion and combat, but excels at deconstructing objects (faster and more materials from deconstruction, and can store more objects at once). Automatically donates material to nearby drones, prioritizing construction drones which don't have filled material storage. Also has a VERY high material storage.


[Production Drone]

ONLY capable of creating new drones. Weak and slow, but creates new drones more cheaply and rapidly, and the drones are finished much sooner, but these drones are cheaper and more fragile - they're the same in all regards to regular drones, but cannot be specialized and have a lot less health.

---

These drones should be pretty damn effective at what they're designed to do, but you should only have so many at once, though each one should probably have different costs. Scout drones should be super cheap, maybe costing 2 FPP (Flock Processing Power), whereas Production Drones should cost, say, 5 (arbitrary number, honestly). Of course, when a specialized drone is destroyed, you get those FPP back.



This is a bit of an overhaul and mostly spitballing, but could make Flock gameplay even more interesting, both to play and play against.

[Lady Birb]

I have an idea regarding flockzombies:

Right now, coagulated gnesis eats a person's blood, causes ominous messages to appear in the chat, makes you hear flockdrone beeping sounds, and eventually gibs you and spawns an AI-controlled flockdrone. I was thinking we could change coagulated gnesis to change people into flockzombies instead. Here is a step-by-step guide of the process:

1. Combat drones will have an auto-injector full of coagulated gnesis they can spend materials to refill. They can either inject corpses with it to reanimate them into a flockzombie, or inject living players to slowly convert them
   
2. When a living player is injected, the coagulated gnesis will eat their blood like it does now, but it will also simulate the effects of blood in their body, preventing them from getting bloodloss symptoms.
   
3. Once the coagulated gnesis exceeds 100 units, they will begin receiving the ominous messages/sounds they get now, but also with symptoms similar to borg conversion (eg: random brute damage, stuns, character begging others to help them)
   
4. Once the coagulated gnesis exceeds 250 units (ie: more than half their blood is gnesis), they will have a chance every cycle to become a flockzombie. Dying at any point with coagulated gnesis inside them will instantly convert them.
   
5. Flockzombies will also inject small amounts of gnesis every time they attack something, creating a zombie apocalypse of sorts.
   

[Berrik]

Coagulated gneiss was changed because people were smoking it and forcibly flockgibbing others.

[moonlol]

Coagulated gneiss was changed because people were smoking it and forcibly flockgibbing others.

pretty sure coagulated gnesis "nerf" was a blanket (or quick) fix due to the coder who maintains flock: Cirrial being away on irl stuff
i believe its current behaviour is to change once cirrial is available again

[Berrik]

Also, I think splitting drones into all these subtypes is a bad idea. It'll just make it more complicated. I think modifying the existing drones is a better option if they are too bad or too good in some fashion. Mabye let them use absorbed matter to upgrade different aspects of their functionality?