Mechanically slowing down the rate at which teleporters can be used

[Ikea]

Right now with telesci, you can get all locked crates/artifacts from debris within 7 minutes or so. This takes far less time if you use a dwaine script. This trivializes the process of receiving loot from debris, as its far faster and safer then the alternative method of going out there and getting it with a pod. Here are a few undeveloped ideas I have. The ideas for these concepts are not mutually inclusive or exclusive. Criticism of the basic concept of these ideas (that telesci being able to quickly teleport in 30 things from a whole z level isnt well balanced) and the ideas themselves would be appreciated.

Teleporting in fast succession (Something like over 2 teleports in a 30 second interval) forces the telepad to require cooldown, if you override the cooldown teleporting in faster succession can lead to drastic results. A machine in telesci that accepts telecrystals, more telecrystals helps reduce the cooldown, however each teleportation usage degrades the telecrystals. This makes having more telecrystals in the machine not necessarily the best route, as using more telecrystals is less cost efficient then using a few. Telecrystals can be "Rune written" on, different runes help teleportation in different ways, one reduces the chances of telesci fucking up when youre going past the cooldown, the other makes the cooldown less drastic, the other reduces telecrystal degradation, etc.

[Cal]

Seems fine to me. One caveat I'd suggest is these downsides only applying if they're on a different z-level, so they can trial and error quickly on-station themselves.

However this could make it difficult for newer scientists to play around and learn, since waiting for a cooldown because they're trying to learn coordinates is unintuitive.

Telecrystals have basically no other use, could be fine with this.

[coolvape]

Isn't most of the particularly interesting stuff in debris teleblocked anyway?

[Mouse]

IIRC there are only like four teleblockers in debris.  Crown, robusttech, some old path stuff that was irrelevant back when path was enabled, and some unimportant shit with the zombies.

[coolvape]

oh dang, huh.
also not a point for or against, just noting that there's already a chance on every single teleport for the offsets to change - if you're using it a lot it's entirely possible for this to happen and you'll have to recalibrate.

[Brixx79]

I'd be for adding more artifacts and randomizing their position on the Z level to make exploration to find them more important.

[Ikea]

I feel like if you had spawnpoints people would just learn the spawnpoints and go to teleport for those. And artifacts without spawnpoints and instead spawning on random tiles wouldnt be asthetically pleasing.

[aft2001]

As someone who enjoys being a telescAI nerd I'd prefer if the cooldown was only for other Z levels, so that AIs can still use telesci to their advantage to help the crew. Or burn them alive, not much difference. (Telesci is laughably vulnerable as it is, since anyone can just snip some wires or spoof SU and delete teleman)

I also like the idea of randomizing loot positions - perhaps having a small radius of, for example, a 3x3 spawning area where something can spawn. As an additional suggestion, how about making the teleporter have a chance to trigger the security systems on secure crates and damage/trigger/destroy artifacts?

[onetoughcreampuff]

I'm fairly certain the syndi suit ship is teleblocked too

[palpetinus]

Randomizing loot positions would be great, but it would be just an artificial bandaid to make it more tedious. Coupled with a cooldown, you'd have a waiting game, not very exciting.
I'd suggest no telesci cooldown and a randomized chance (~20%) that an interesting piece (locked crate, artifact,..) is instead a Space-Yeti, Wendigo or similar threat. Maybe instead of just putting it there, it could be an "Unstable Rift" that only pulls a hostile creature with telesci, so that going there physically isn't punished but telesci is a risk.

[Brixx79]

When I say randomized, I don't mean an artifact will appear in location A, B, or C. Though that would be good for a few key locations to keep them special. I mean add more arts but scatter them all over the Z level. You can't just teleport the arts to you, but now have to explore and spend time to find them.

[Ikea]

More arts but scattered randomly simply wouldnt look good. An artifact being in the middle of space/surrounding DOC would detract from theming. It also would make art searching mostly just flying up and down because most of them would likely be on space tiles and that would be the fastest way of searching.