trench/mining rework

[Mopcat]

TODAY WE ON DISCORD (mbc and some other nerds so like 5 people maybe) HAVE COME TO A CONCLUSION
THE TRENCH SUCKS AND SO DOES MINING
SERIOUSLY SPACE MINING KINDA SUCKS AND THE TRENCH HAS LITERALLY BEEN UNFINISHED FOR 2 YEARS
WE WILL HOPEFULLY REPLACE MINING WITH THE TRENCH AND ALSO MAKE TRENCH GOOD SO MORE PEOPLE LIKE IT
HOW WILL WE DO THIS DEAR READER?
-more prefabs for trench so it's not as much of an empty cave system with not much going on
-add a way to get exotic materials like erebite and starstone other than rng crates
-balance enemies to not take a few weeks to kill at the very least and maybe also not take you to crit in 5 seconds
-give trench enemies actual ai that resembles actual video game enemies instead of "UNGA BUNGA RUN AT SPACE MAN"
-make mining progression fun (how? don't ask me idk)
-pay mbc to force him to finish the crab boss (i don't have any money you figure it out)((if he does not honor this agreement i will beat him to death with the corpse of a dead clown)
-add more bosses to the trench
-add more enemies in general to the trench now that i think about it
-replace mining magnet on space maps with portal to abzu trench
-give miners an easier way back to the station without pods other than "hope you remembered the path from here to the portal fucking asshole dipshit lmao"
WHO WILL CODE THIS? HOW WILL WE CODE THIS? WILL THEY BE PAID FOR ALL OF THIS AMBITIOUS WORK? WILL IT EVER ACTUALLY BE COMPLETE INSTEAD OF BEING THROWN TO THE WAYSIDE FOR ONE REASON OR ANOTHER LIKE MANY OTHER AMBITIOUS PROJECTS ON THIS SERVER END UP? IDK FIGURE THAT OUT YOURSELF DIPSHIT I'M JUST COMPILING THESE IDEAS FROM DISCORD HERE BECAUSE MBC WANTED ME TO

[mbc]

tangentially, space z5 needs the same ore vein generation that the trench has. (you can prob copy paste code for the most part)

[Triacontakai]

i think that it would be cool if Z5 was merged with the trench completely, with the whole portal idea

[Carbadox]

-more prefabs for trench so it's not as much of an empty cave system with not much going on

A bigger selection of prefabs would be nice for variations sake but I don't find the trench to be much of an empty cave system. The sparsity of the locations is in a good spot right now. Making them less sparse would just make the trench feel like a shopping mall.

-balance enemies to not take a few weeks to kill at the very least and maybe also not take you to crit in 5 seconds

Trench enemies are already balanced as is. You can quite reasonablly find a phaser and spare power cell or even two which makes disposing of said enemies pretty easy. Even with out them, you've got the mining phasers and plasma cutters.

-give trench enemies actual ai that resembles actual video game enemies instead of "UNGA BUNGA RUN AT SPACE MAN"

That's incredibly vague and a bit useless. AI isn't a car engine you can just buy from the store and drop it into your game.

-replace mining magnet on space maps with portal to abzu trench

Add, maybe. Replace? No thanks. Why cut off miners from an alternative way of mining? Seems like an odd suggestion.

-give miners an easier way back to the station without pods other than "hope you remembered the path from here to the portal fucking asshole dipshit lmao"

Every PDA starts the round off with a Trench map. Using locations as reference points you can find you way back to the mining outpost pretty easily. I would however add a ladder to the trench hole that all descents into the trench default to, as non-miner casualties are lost a bit too often because of it.

[zjdtmkhzt]

I definitely think that rare ores like starstone/erebite/whatever should probably be found in z5 asteroids occasionally. It makes little sense that they wouldn't be there sometimes.
Also, the trench has plenty of structures, in my opinion, but space z5 could use way more. (Of course, someone has to map those.)

-balance enemies to not take a few weeks to kill at the very least and maybe also not take you to crit in 5 seconds

Trench enemies are already balanced as is. You can quite reasonablly find a phaser and spare power cell or even two which makes disposing of said enemies pretty easy. Even with out them, you've got the mining phasers and plasma cutters.

Fighting the trench enemies just seems super unfun/boring/time consuming to me. Especially because you can hardly ever run away from them like you can from drones in space, so you just shooty shooty them until they die and then weld weld your sub until it's full again. It just feels like a time sink, especially because they seem rather tanky (perhaps because the submarine weapons are lackluster).

[Frank_Stein]

How about more Friendly NPCs to find?

Meet friendly merchants, or other explorers.

Maybe there's even something of a quest system, with NPCs giving you tasks to explore certain parts of the trench to recover lost items, defeat creatures, repair or activate equipment, etc?

A big PvE environment that people can work together in

[glassofmilk]

In addition to more prefabs and challenges, I think we would probably also need more rewards to make Z5 worth exploring. Maybe making some traitor utility items available, or brand new Z5 exclusive items? What kind of things would be a fun enough reward to go exploring off-station?

In addition to adding items directly to prefabs, maybe we could add a new type of currency found only in Z5 with a vendor in the space diner or a similar always-appearing location that could accept this new currency in exchange for Z5 exclusive items? I'm thinking stuff similar to the Volton, with unique abilities. Depending on what the currency is, it could probably be added to existing Z5 prefabs right away.

I think having a guide on how to create new prefabs could also help a LOT toward getting people in the community to create them. I'd like to try making a few, but I'm still just dipping my toes into mapping and don't really know what I'm doing.

[Alphaeus]

Removing the Mineral Magnet and replacing it with a portal to the trench sounds lame. I've always enjoyed actually mining asteroids (although, I suppose the reasoning is 'you can still go to the mining outpost if you want to asteroid mine', but it seems like replacing the magnet at the outpost with a trench entrance rather than the one on station would make more sense.)

Honestly, how fast it takes you to move around/mine without a pod in space (assisted via a jetpack/mag boots) compared to underwater (assisted via flippers/jetpack) is my biggest gripe. It might actually be the same exact speed, but in my mind, it is way slower and more tedious underwater in the trench opposed to in space.

Speed is mitigated by flippers/mechanized boots, but imo there's nothing more annoying than getting out of the sub to slap a mining charge on something nearby during the first ten minutes or so when you're still trying to find a damn cerenkite/clarentine vein with the starter gear and having to suffer through the field of seaweed & whatnot. This is only made worse when you're attempting to flee from some of the enemies in the trench. (I'm looking at you, gun sharks)

Honestly, in terms of progression, I always thought it'd be cool to actually mine downwards. I've seen videos of other SS13 servers' mining where there's a lot more 'depth' (pun intended) to the mining levels. Something like being able to construct a shaft further down into the trenches would be interesting.

There's no good way to really get ore back to the mining shuttle/station either, which kinda builds upon what you said about pods not having a good way to navigate back. Yes, the trench maps exist, but honestly those are barely readable. There's certainly colors marking out where things are, like the elevator and hotspots, but I can never really figure out where exactly I am on the map UNLESS I'm right beside something recognizable like the orange square for the elevator or the white areas for the undersea mall. It'd be cool if we had something analogous to how actual deep-sea mining's done, with remotely operated vehicles and bucket/hydraulic suction systems to deliver ore to the ship directly from the trench. (This might actually be solvable with some sort of RockBox integration??)

Just my 2c.

[Frank_Stein]

Honestly, in terms of progression, I always thought it'd be cool to actually mine downwards. I've seen videos of other SS13 servers' mining where there's a lot more 'depth' (pun intended) to the mining levels. Something like being able to construct a shaft further down into the trenches would be interesting.

You could do something like the adventure map and divide the trench map into smaller sections that represent those depths. Then you just punch a hole down and teleport to that other section.
Would work great for mappers to build floor modules knowing they had a certain area to work with. Just a small dungeon floor with an established entrance and exit. Trench map pulls a few modules, links their entrances and exits, and you've got a dungeon crawler miner metagame