More incentive for artifact research

[Roomba]

In 90% of rounds, this is generally how artifact research goes:

-the entire research division makes a mad dash to the artifact hangar at round start in the hopes of an artifact gun

-

[Roomba]

Whoops, pressed wrong button.

-artifact lab is ignored for the rest of the round.

It seems most large artifacts are better off left unactivated, considering how the beneficial types (healing) are far less common than the inconvenient (darkness, forcewall, noisemaker etc.) or dangerous (pain, bomb, borging etc.) types. Nobody likes prodding at a clammy pile for twenty minutes just to find out it injects you with initro when you poke it.

One thing I'd like to see is a system for changing the effects of activated artifacts, so you could do more than just activate them and then space them/leave them lying around. A dedicated artifact scientist might be able to turn a light-emitting one into a darkness artifact, or crank up the power of a gravity artifact to maximum before activatinv it in front of sec, or tweaking an injector artifact so it injects people with medicine/drugs, for instance.

A simpler solution might be to have a conveyor system that allows you to buy artifacts with the research budget from Vurdalak, and sell back activated ones for profit. A bit more incentive than just artifact research for its own sake.

[Sam Guivene]

Whoops, pressed wrong button.

-artifact lab is ignored for the rest of the round.

It seems most large artifacts are better off left unactivated, considering how the beneficial types (healing) are far less common than the inconvenient (darkness, forcewall, noisemaker etc.) or dangerous (pain, bomb, borging etc.) types. Nobody likes prodding at a clammy pile for twenty minutes just to find out it injects you with initro when you poke it.

One thing I'd like to see is a system for changing the effects of activated artifacts, so you could do more than just activate them and then space them/leave them lying around. A dedicated artifact scientist might be able to turn a light-emitting one into a darkness artifact, or crank up the power of a gravity artifact to maximum before activatinv it in front of sec, or tweaking an injector artifact so it injects people with medicine/drugs, for instance.

A simpler solution might be to have a conveyor system that allows you to buy artifacts with the research budget from Vurdalak, and sell back activated ones for profit. A bit more incentive than just artifact research for its own sake.

This already exists, theres a mass driver in artlab hanger explicitly for spacing dangerous artifacts. And half of the point of artifacts are that we don't know how to manipulate them, although, a few more flavors of artifact would be nice, like an increase in superpower granting ones, random ones that will monkey you or otherwise polymorph you, and maybe include a bunch of other random effects, like causing space madness or spawning a wave of X enemy.

[DyssalC]

Artifacts definitely need more effects, and they definitely need to stop being shitty noise maker 90% of the time.

Making the more interesting ones more common like the wish granters or the gravity wells would be nice, along with adding some new ones that turn you into a lizard or monkey, or maybe a reverse borger that turns borgs into humans. Or something that causes everyone around the artifact to be effected by extreme levels of berserker and space madness, or one that creates a shockwave when activated, pushing everyone away from it, similar to a super fart.

[Sam Guivene]

Artifacts definitely need more effects, and they definitely need to stop being shitty noise maker 90% of the time.

Making the more interesting ones more common like the wish granters or the gravity wells would be nice, along with adding some new ones that turn you into a lizard or monkey, or maybe a reverse borger that turns borgs into humans. Or something that causes everyone around the artifact to be effected by extreme levels of berserker and space madness, or one that creates a shockwave when activated, pushing everyone away from it, similar to a super fart.

or even better, an artifact that farts, screams, or poos upon being touched

[Roomba]

This already exists, theres a mass driver in artlab hanger explicitly for spacing dangerous artifacts. And half of the point of artifacts are that we don't know how to manipulate them, although, a few more flavors of artifact would be nice, like an increase in superpower granting ones, random ones that will monkey you or otherwise polymorph you, and maybe include a bunch of other random effects, like causing space madness or spawning a wave of X enemy.[/quote]

Yeah, but that's just for tossing dangerous artifacts into the void of space. I'd prefer if you could sell activated artifacts for profit from the artlab hangar. Ideally I'd like it if you could buy artifacts and sell them directly from the artlab hangar, but that might be bypassing QM's role a bit too much. Still, just being able to sell activated ones for profit would be useful.

[DyssalC]

Yeah, but that's just for tossing dangerous artifacts into the void of space. I'd prefer if you could sell activated artifacts for profit from the artlab hangar. Ideally I'd like it if you could buy artifacts and sell them directly from the artlab hangar, but that might be bypassing QM's role a bit too much. Still, just being able to sell activated ones for profit would be useful.

I think the idea of selling activated artifacts through a special research console is neat, and doesn't bypass QM at all, so long as this all comes out of the research budget. It'd streamline artifact research really nicely.

Of course, the geneticists would be pissed.

[Crumplehat]

I enthusiastically support the idea of a monkey-making artifact.

[Natsumehack]

I enthusiastically support the idea of a monkey-making artifact.

I would like to see more as well.

[Sam Guivene]

I enthusiastically support the idea of a monkey-making artifact.

I support this so long as there are owl making artifacts also, like the kind that make you a player controlled owl.

[UmmonTL]

It's quite easy to grab enough artifacts with telesci to last the entire round. But I must admit, art-research needs some more variety.
Since the alien seed have gotten the seed sprite I have only ever seen one kind of tiny artifact, the art-battery.
Handheld artifacts are basically never a bad thing. Though they are mostly art-beakers and always with the same boring water-saltpetre mix (they should come with some random chems/cocktails, especially stuff used in recipes that is otherwise very hard to get in large quantities). The non-beakers are easy enough to identify and while activating them can be a pain you always get a good thing. I've never seen the mining or activator artifacts, the former probably because I don't have any rocks to test them. Never seen a handheld noisemaker either.
The big artifacts are basically useless once you've found the first healing one. Most of the time you just get annoying stuff, sometimes an artbomb you might have a use for, mabye a fun injector or an
owlbomb. But you always risk getting borged while dealing with them.
More variety in the smaller artifacts would be nice, especially some things that are actually dangerous to you. More variety for the bigger ones would be appreciated as well of course.
For getting artifacts quicker the separate trading option seems fine, another idea would be to make a mini-mining magnet that would only grab ~4x4 asteroids with at least one artifact inside. That way research could also get some ores, make the cooldown longer than the regular mining magnet and it should be fine.
I also think the instruments should have more tells as to what an artifact does. Xray is fine, the heater has it's moments but should really control at a higher temperature range. Why is it worse than a chem heater? The elec_box very rarely shows something but it's good when it does, still you'd expect some more response from it. The pitcher&impactpad are still completely useless while being the most work of all the instruments. I'd probably replace them with an oscillation device that vibrates the artifact at a certain frequency and measures the response. Perfect for recognizing noisemakers.
Finally, some alterations to how artifacts work would be neat. How about giving the artifacts a series of trigger conditions, similar to pulsing different wires with hacking, that will get different respones. Artifacts could have a deactivation trigger so you could shut down bombs, forcefields and noisemakers. Another trigger could be similar to shocking a door, making the artifact do bad stuff for a limited amount of time. Or maybe it could toggle between a helpful/harmful state. With multiple triggers though they would have to be less lenient about when they activate and thus the instruments would need to give some indication how close you are to a signal. They could also do with an actual interface instead of console commands.

[atomic1fire]

Maybe more alien tools that happen to have human uses.

e.g

Pathology scanner: makes a beep boop when the subject's blood contains any kind of pathogen. (You still have to do all the pathology work, but it's an artifact that has the sole point of detecting infections.)

Alternatively

'chemical' scanner: Scans for exactly one reagent when found, what that reagent is no one will probably know. Maybe you find a meth detector, or maybe it just beeps at weird cheese.


heat emitter: Hit something to make it hotter, also light cigs in a cool way.

Alien radio: Picks up a random frequency from the station's coms and receives broadcasts (when activated). how or why no one knows. Like you could be getting the botanist's grocery list, security talking about a perp, or just random generic radio chatter from 145.9, but you would never know without something to compare it to. Maybe you strike lucky and hit a syndicate channel, but probably not. Note that talking into the artifact should not work.

Alien Microphone: The exact opposite of the alien radio, it sends sounds to a random frequincy, how, where, or why is a mystery.

[Frank_Stein]

How about some weird medical artifacts?

-A Life Supporter that keeps people alive no matter how much damage they take provided they are standing right next to it. Take a mistep or have someone shove you and collapse into a pile of meat as all the damage hits you at once.

-A mindswapper. Activate it and have your mind swapped into the body of a nearby player

-Organ Jars. Handheld artifacts that suck up hearts and brains and keep them alive inside them. The player is otherwise unaffected.

-Doppleganger. Makes NPC copies of you. They sometimes repeat the ends of your sentences. Can be harvested for limbs.

-Empathy Syringe. Hand held syringe that draws brute damage, which has to be injected into someone else within a certain ammount of time or else bad things happen.

[Crumplehat]

A mindswapper. Activate it and have your mind swapped into the body of a nearby player

We used to call that a jukebox.