Goonhub
01-15-2026, 10:49 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-15-2026, 10:51 PM by tamakona. Edited 1 time in total.)
Idea description:
A new trench prefab that always spawns which is basically just a one tile tower lookin' thingamajig. The special thing is that it shows up as a yellow or brown or what have you color blob on the trench map; when it's hovered over on the trench map it'll show its coordinates.
Why is this needed?:
For starters the engine on Oshan and Neon is pretty disliked by a not small amount of engineer players. From anecdotal conversations it seems like the biggest barrier to entry is walking around like a headless chicken lookin for dat stupid fukken square with no luck for 40 minutes. I mean you can't even see the damn thing, and technically "hotspot" is not an object that exists in the game, it's just a moving explosion zone with custom behavior. Hunting invisible ghosts that quake you to death can understandably get pretty frustrating, so I think this barrier needs to be smoothed out.
At the same time, I like how unique the mechanics are as is, and I think once you get used to it it's pretty fun. So I don't want to change how anything really works. My understanding is that the intention is to use a combination of the trench map and space GPS to roughly figure out where the hotspots are, which is a very doable and satisfying method as is! But from an in game perspective, it's not very intuitive. There isn't really anything pointing to the idea that that's what you're supposed to do, other than the trench maps scattered in the engineering room. You also kinda have to rely on out of game knowledge like the trench map being a 300x300 area or where the station exits are on the map to get your initial bearings, which is slightly metagamey and immersion breaking, which sucks.
I think an in-game beacon that you can use as an initial bearing that helps you find those hotspots without getting rid of the space GPS and trench map navigation gameplay is the best, most immersive option for balancing between smoothing out a highly frustrating barrier to entry and keeping the unique and satisfying mechanics intact, by providing a visible guide that the player can intuitively understand is to help them utilize the tools they already spawn holding in their hands to go accomplish the goal of finding dat stupid fukken square.
A new trench prefab that always spawns which is basically just a one tile tower lookin' thingamajig. The special thing is that it shows up as a yellow or brown or what have you color blob on the trench map; when it's hovered over on the trench map it'll show its coordinates.
Why is this needed?:
For starters the engine on Oshan and Neon is pretty disliked by a not small amount of engineer players. From anecdotal conversations it seems like the biggest barrier to entry is walking around like a headless chicken lookin for dat stupid fukken square with no luck for 40 minutes. I mean you can't even see the damn thing, and technically "hotspot" is not an object that exists in the game, it's just a moving explosion zone with custom behavior. Hunting invisible ghosts that quake you to death can understandably get pretty frustrating, so I think this barrier needs to be smoothed out.
At the same time, I like how unique the mechanics are as is, and I think once you get used to it it's pretty fun. So I don't want to change how anything really works. My understanding is that the intention is to use a combination of the trench map and space GPS to roughly figure out where the hotspots are, which is a very doable and satisfying method as is! But from an in game perspective, it's not very intuitive. There isn't really anything pointing to the idea that that's what you're supposed to do, other than the trench maps scattered in the engineering room. You also kinda have to rely on out of game knowledge like the trench map being a 300x300 area or where the station exits are on the map to get your initial bearings, which is slightly metagamey and immersion breaking, which sucks.
I think an in-game beacon that you can use as an initial bearing that helps you find those hotspots without getting rid of the space GPS and trench map navigation gameplay is the best, most immersive option for balancing between smoothing out a highly frustrating barrier to entry and keeping the unique and satisfying mechanics intact, by providing a visible guide that the player can intuitively understand is to help them utilize the tools they already spawn holding in their hands to go accomplish the goal of finding dat stupid fukken square.
