Ghost Roles

[MrMagolor]

My personal philosophy is: don't remove ways to take people out of a round; rather, give people more things to do while dead.

I think that, frankly, tg does this very well- ghost roles in their variant of the mining zlevel, with strict rules to not go to the station and interfere there without admin permission.

Since we have Z5 and the trench, it couldn't be too infeasible to have such roles there, right?

Now the issue comes in the form of observers - on the one hand, it shouldn't be actively detrimental to be an observer, but on the other hand, it would lead to people observing just to steal the ghost roles from other people.

As for the roles themselves - 

A "mindless" flockdrone, that is unable to eject its trace. It can only birth minidrones. 

A syndicate plasma cutter drone, with the sole objective of denying the miners their ore.

Controllable Cade Plids

Various controllable critters in all the ruins in Z5/trench

[EristheSlackWyrm]

Small idea I brainstormed. Haunted Door. Get control over 1 random door with the ability to speak, open, rig to close on the first person who passes or bolt. Encouraged to complain when someone wants to come through, ask them to solve riddles or bring an offering. Can be exorcised by the chaplain by slapping the door with the bible a bunch of times, so he also gets something to do.

[Superlagg]

z5 mine drones. digs stuff and auto teleports the ore to the station. can't return to the station though.

[aft2001]

I'm all in favor of more ghost roles. However, as with all ideas, remember: Simpler is better, and far more likely to be implemented.

I think that a modified ghost drone with mining tools would be fantastic, as well as a cargo transporter. If it leaves the Z-Level, it immediately shuts down. Should give it an omnitool to also be able to crack open crates and such!

There was another idea thrown around ages ago about the AI being able to essentially recruit ghosts as little helpers with very limited abilities, such as only being able to communicate over Binary poorly due to limited speech. Could even make them a mobile viewport, giving the AI even more eyes, and ones that can respond to commands as to where to watch. I'd imagine that this second ability would be easier to implement than an entire new role.

Personal AIs would also be handy-dandy - other servers have them, after all.

Would also be nice for Roboticists to be able to make synthetic brains which, when put into a borg, will make that borg able to be occupied by a ghost and start a new life - possibly with limited speech capabilities if people metagame too much.

[Zamujasa]

Letting it teleport crates onto the station runs the risk of it teleporting a crate with Bad Things in it, like plasma spores. Or teleporting in plasmastone, which generates plasma while it's out in the open.

Technically ghostdrones can already do some of that, you just have to carry around a mining tool in a magtractor.

[Frank_Stein]

Small idea I brainstormed. Haunted Door. Get control over 1 random door with the ability to speak, open, rig to close on the first person who passes or bolt. Encouraged to complain when someone wants to come through, ask them to solve riddles or bring an offering. Can be exorcised by the chaplain by slapping the door with the bible a bunch of times, so he also gets something to do.

I kinda like the idea of possessed items, provided it was a whitelist of harmless and useless things, like balloon animals or those little crew figurines.

But mostly I like the idea of Chaplin getting to run around and be a ghost buster

[The Gorog]

Small idea I brainstormed. Haunted Door. Get control over 1 random door with the ability to speak, open, rig to close on the first person who passes or bolt. Encouraged to complain when someone wants to come through, ask them to solve riddles or bring an offering. Can be exorcised by the chaplain by slapping the door with the bible a bunch of times, so he also gets something to do.

I kinda like the idea of possessed items, provided it was a whitelist of harmless and useless things, like balloon animals or those little crew figurines.

But mostly I like the idea of Chaplin getting to run around and be a ghost buster

Same, but the door bolting thing would just end up being abused by people that got mad for being killed and they bolt the door when their killer is in trouble.

[MrMagolor]

Small idea I brainstormed. Haunted Door. Get control over 1 random door with the ability to speak, open, rig to close on the first person who passes or bolt. Encouraged to complain when someone wants to come through, ask them to solve riddles or bring an offering. Can be exorcised by the chaplain by slapping the door with the bible a bunch of times, so he also gets something to do.

I kinda like the idea of possessed items, provided it was a whitelist of harmless and useless things, like balloon animals or those little crew figurines.

But mostly I like the idea of Chaplin getting to run around and be a ghost buster

Same, but the door bolting thing would just end up being abused by people that got mad for being killed and they bolt the door when their killer is in trouble.

I imagine that it would have a lengthy cooldown to respawn as a door after dying in the first place and/or being exorcised, similar to a ghost critter.

[moonlol]

The z5 mining drones idea could in my opinion work
but theres a few things that should be done
1. Prevent the drone from doing zlevel transitions completely.
2. prevent it from activating artifacts.
3. prevent it from either opening or teleporting unlocked crates (this so the drone couldnt meta grudge or attack the people on station)
4. prevent speech or put it under a "new life" rule (explained further down below)
5. prevent all attacks unless they are directed at a non player controlled critter eg: space bear or clown spider
or prevent attacking at all
6. add a ghost drone esque rule to disallow the drone to interfere or change a players plans (like clown spider farms(??))

As for the mindless flock drone idea
1. prevent speech or put it under a "new life" rule
2. either make it have a in build pickaxe, touch asteroids to "mine" them using their flock tools(??) or leave a pickaxe near its spawn location. (pickaxe near spawn location is least preferable in my eyes)
3. add in a rule to only attack in self defense or to not explicitly hunt people
4. prevent z level movement
5. allow free movement in space (jetpack esque)
6. add some way to produce flock doors (like some kind of bootleg flock rcd)
7. give the flock drone mesons
8. make it NOT guaranteed to spawn so that people wont suicide to spawn as it

About the new life rule:
make it similar to the ghost critters as in
dont keep grudges 
dont meta game 
dont tell information to other players you learned from death chat or your previous life
Preferably add a bit of fluff to the change log along the lines of
"experimental nanotrasen mining drones have been launched onto the asteroid belt any attempts at communication from these are to be reported"
Something similar for the flock drone

Edit: oh and add a gui for ghost roles which can be used to activate the "spawner" for the ghost role as the trench (im not sure if z5 aswell) are restricted and boot you off if you are a ghost.

[Technature]

I do think being able to be a crew member figurine and shout tiny screams at people is some of the most fun a dead person can have.