Goonhub
01-19-2013, 08:06 PM
Version 1.1
Preamble
You can divide gameplay in an open game into two components: PVE (player versus environment) and PVP (player versus player). Currently, SS13 is dominated by PVP gameplay in pretty much all the modes. PVE gameplay is woefully unengaging and non-threatening. Thus, players tend to turn on each other. This has led to the fortification of each department (although, to some degree it is surprising that within a department people still remain civil to each other) and a vast expansion in combat options to cater to the gameplay style people have shifted to. Amusingly, this has led to further weakening of some PVE portions of the game (the singularity reactor core essentially runs itself after being onlined, the station atmospherics system is self-running, most injuries can be fixed in seconds with a first aid kit, etc.). Even in modes without an obvious antagonist, someone becomes an antagonist (naturally or through admin appointment, etc.) and general combat chaos ensues. There are a few issues with this. The first is that anyone who isn't an antagonist is somewhat screwed for stuff to do. Second, combat in SS13 (partly as a consequence of being in BYOND on servers with 70+ people) is not very advanced and pretty much boils down to who gets the stun off first. Third, the station is always on high alert so antagonists get to element of surprise.
In between my original development of SS13 and now, I have a played a fair bit of World of Warcraft, namely doing PVE raiding. The experience there is very enjoyable. you have 10-25 people banding together to accomplish a shared goal (kill the boss) in order to get some rewards (better gear in WoW). People specialize themselves into different roles (DPS/damage dealer, healer, tank, raid leader, etc.) and in general actually work together and cooperate. It is a highly enjoyable experience.
This post will outline a plan to reinvigorate PVE content in SS13.
Overview
The role of Space Station 13 is to extract, analyze, research, and develop novel materials found in the space it is situated in. Thus, players will then be rewarded for accomplishing these goals through multiple new gameplay avenues. Mining would find raw ores and send them to the main station processing. The main station then processes them to an acceptable purity, tags them, and then sends them along on the QM shuttle. The main station then gets more budget and points. The budget can be used by QM to procure more/replacement supplies for the the station. The points are simply tallied until the end of the round. At the end of the round, all crew members get a share of the points depending on role (and other factors) appended to their persistent scorecard (for bragging rights and eventually other rewards). Thus, the main station (science mostly) is busy running the processing for the materials gathered by mining. There are also plans to add in-station uses for the developed materials so the staff is forced to trade-off getting points/cash for improving the station in other ways. Security is eventually brought into the mix as an alternative raw material extraction source to mining (although for different classes of materials). Through away missions, security can go off and secure artifacts and stuff that similarly can be returned to the science team for processing and eventually sale.
However, to keep things interesting and add difficulty/competition, the round has to get harder as it goes on and the station racks up more points. Currently, events happen somewhat at random. Instead event frequency and intensity will be tied to the station's current score and round length. Thus, as the round goes on and players accomplish more research, more and more disastrous things happen to the station. There are plans to iterate on the design of the events so that the station has a more reasonable chance of anticipating and responding to them. The biggest change here is to give engineering something to do. The station will be given a positional, high-power shield system that engineering is charged with maintaining.
Example Event Series - Revamped Meteor Waves
The station will have some meteor detection dishes installed and some meteor detection satellites have been placed into orbit as well. These are designed to give the engineering staff advanced warning of the intensity and direction of meteor strikes coming to the station. This will give engineering staff a chance to fully charge up the shields and divert power to areas that are most in need of protection. However, these devices are not invincible so as the round progresses it is likely meteors will take out parts of the system thus limiting the amount of advance warning granted to station engineers (until the devices are repaired). It is also planned for the ore processing and advanced research required earlier on to require a large amount of power. Thus, command staff will need to make careful decisions on where to spend their power budget.
Eventually, the station may be outfitted with a few defensive laser batteries. These would allow the engineers/security to proactively spend some power to wear down encroaching meteor waves or, in some cases, shoot down invaders. I also plan to revamp singularity management. Currently, after starting it up, it pretty much runs itself. There is clearly plenty of opportunity to make a mini puzzle game with the particle accelerator. The engineering crew would have access to various particle additives and various mechanisms for injecting them into various parts of the singularity. The engineers would then, over the course of a round, have to manipulate particle flows to the singularity in order to maximize power output.
There are a few ways this stuff can tieback with science. Some of the new materials may be used to build super-strong walls (expect stock reinforced walls to be nerfed). Others may be atomized and injected into the singularity reactor core in order to modify power output. Alternatively, they could be injected into the shield system in order to improve. Specifically here, I envision a chemical that, when injected into the shield and provided a minimum amount of power, makes a nearly invulnerable shield but at extensive damage to the shield emission subsystem. Thus, the station gains a few seconds (minutes?) of invulnerability to that area with the tradeoff of completely losing shields there once the effect ends (until extensive repairs are done).
Mining Adjustments
This is still a work in progress. However, expect actual mining of tiles to take a fair bit of time. To keep things interesting, ore types and locations would be randomized between rounds. However, the mining station will have access to various surveying equipment that can be used to look for desired new materials. Again, there is plenty of opportunity with mining for the materials developed by science to improve mining (more durable equipment, faster mining, mining lasers, etc.). In fact, there is clear opportunity for a 'tech tree' in mining where some ores cannot be reliably extracted without using new devices developed by the science team.
Also, finally, all the violent tendencies of chemistry in producing explosives can be harnessed. Rather than simply making weapons that just sit there. The explosives and weapons now have a directed use: send them to mining or security so they can be used to get more stuff which we can then use to make even neater stuff.
Possible Perks/Rewards
'Personal items' will be unlocked for players after achieving certain milestones. (Think of, for example, a hat that you spawn with in place of your stock clothing.)
Access to new scenarios/away missions for crews where members have completed previous challenges is another possible unlock. This would allow some sort of progression between rounds.
While I imagine this will be initially unpopular, granting job preference to people who have past records of doing well is very tempting.
Miscellany
I am still trying to think of ways to detect when round progress has stagnated and pressure/force the round to end in those situations. This is basically to prevent people from dawdling at round start and ensure people cannot hang on to a clearly lost round for too long trying to wrack up points/rewards at the last minute. (This is, of course, OK for a very short bit of time similar to how when 1 person tries kill a boss with the rest of the raid dead. They get a few seconds to whack at it but not much longer.)
Also, ideas for good events, new materials, research paths, and away missions that all tie into these general ideas are also desirable.
Medical was not discussed but there is plenty of play where they try to use the new materials to develop 'buffs' in the form of organic enhancements, superhuman mutations etc. Remember though, that restraint is required here such that the best rewards have to be hard/dangerous to unlock and still contain drawbacks.
Preamble
You can divide gameplay in an open game into two components: PVE (player versus environment) and PVP (player versus player). Currently, SS13 is dominated by PVP gameplay in pretty much all the modes. PVE gameplay is woefully unengaging and non-threatening. Thus, players tend to turn on each other. This has led to the fortification of each department (although, to some degree it is surprising that within a department people still remain civil to each other) and a vast expansion in combat options to cater to the gameplay style people have shifted to. Amusingly, this has led to further weakening of some PVE portions of the game (the singularity reactor core essentially runs itself after being onlined, the station atmospherics system is self-running, most injuries can be fixed in seconds with a first aid kit, etc.). Even in modes without an obvious antagonist, someone becomes an antagonist (naturally or through admin appointment, etc.) and general combat chaos ensues. There are a few issues with this. The first is that anyone who isn't an antagonist is somewhat screwed for stuff to do. Second, combat in SS13 (partly as a consequence of being in BYOND on servers with 70+ people) is not very advanced and pretty much boils down to who gets the stun off first. Third, the station is always on high alert so antagonists get to element of surprise.
In between my original development of SS13 and now, I have a played a fair bit of World of Warcraft, namely doing PVE raiding. The experience there is very enjoyable. you have 10-25 people banding together to accomplish a shared goal (kill the boss) in order to get some rewards (better gear in WoW). People specialize themselves into different roles (DPS/damage dealer, healer, tank, raid leader, etc.) and in general actually work together and cooperate. It is a highly enjoyable experience.
This post will outline a plan to reinvigorate PVE content in SS13.
Overview
The role of Space Station 13 is to extract, analyze, research, and develop novel materials found in the space it is situated in. Thus, players will then be rewarded for accomplishing these goals through multiple new gameplay avenues. Mining would find raw ores and send them to the main station processing. The main station then processes them to an acceptable purity, tags them, and then sends them along on the QM shuttle. The main station then gets more budget and points. The budget can be used by QM to procure more/replacement supplies for the the station. The points are simply tallied until the end of the round. At the end of the round, all crew members get a share of the points depending on role (and other factors) appended to their persistent scorecard (for bragging rights and eventually other rewards). Thus, the main station (science mostly) is busy running the processing for the materials gathered by mining. There are also plans to add in-station uses for the developed materials so the staff is forced to trade-off getting points/cash for improving the station in other ways. Security is eventually brought into the mix as an alternative raw material extraction source to mining (although for different classes of materials). Through away missions, security can go off and secure artifacts and stuff that similarly can be returned to the science team for processing and eventually sale.
However, to keep things interesting and add difficulty/competition, the round has to get harder as it goes on and the station racks up more points. Currently, events happen somewhat at random. Instead event frequency and intensity will be tied to the station's current score and round length. Thus, as the round goes on and players accomplish more research, more and more disastrous things happen to the station. There are plans to iterate on the design of the events so that the station has a more reasonable chance of anticipating and responding to them. The biggest change here is to give engineering something to do. The station will be given a positional, high-power shield system that engineering is charged with maintaining.
Example Event Series - Revamped Meteor Waves
The station will have some meteor detection dishes installed and some meteor detection satellites have been placed into orbit as well. These are designed to give the engineering staff advanced warning of the intensity and direction of meteor strikes coming to the station. This will give engineering staff a chance to fully charge up the shields and divert power to areas that are most in need of protection. However, these devices are not invincible so as the round progresses it is likely meteors will take out parts of the system thus limiting the amount of advance warning granted to station engineers (until the devices are repaired). It is also planned for the ore processing and advanced research required earlier on to require a large amount of power. Thus, command staff will need to make careful decisions on where to spend their power budget.
Eventually, the station may be outfitted with a few defensive laser batteries. These would allow the engineers/security to proactively spend some power to wear down encroaching meteor waves or, in some cases, shoot down invaders. I also plan to revamp singularity management. Currently, after starting it up, it pretty much runs itself. There is clearly plenty of opportunity to make a mini puzzle game with the particle accelerator. The engineering crew would have access to various particle additives and various mechanisms for injecting them into various parts of the singularity. The engineers would then, over the course of a round, have to manipulate particle flows to the singularity in order to maximize power output.
There are a few ways this stuff can tieback with science. Some of the new materials may be used to build super-strong walls (expect stock reinforced walls to be nerfed). Others may be atomized and injected into the singularity reactor core in order to modify power output. Alternatively, they could be injected into the shield system in order to improve. Specifically here, I envision a chemical that, when injected into the shield and provided a minimum amount of power, makes a nearly invulnerable shield but at extensive damage to the shield emission subsystem. Thus, the station gains a few seconds (minutes?) of invulnerability to that area with the tradeoff of completely losing shields there once the effect ends (until extensive repairs are done).
Mining Adjustments
This is still a work in progress. However, expect actual mining of tiles to take a fair bit of time. To keep things interesting, ore types and locations would be randomized between rounds. However, the mining station will have access to various surveying equipment that can be used to look for desired new materials. Again, there is plenty of opportunity with mining for the materials developed by science to improve mining (more durable equipment, faster mining, mining lasers, etc.). In fact, there is clear opportunity for a 'tech tree' in mining where some ores cannot be reliably extracted without using new devices developed by the science team.
Also, finally, all the violent tendencies of chemistry in producing explosives can be harnessed. Rather than simply making weapons that just sit there. The explosives and weapons now have a directed use: send them to mining or security so they can be used to get more stuff which we can then use to make even neater stuff.
Possible Perks/Rewards
'Personal items' will be unlocked for players after achieving certain milestones. (Think of, for example, a hat that you spawn with in place of your stock clothing.)
Access to new scenarios/away missions for crews where members have completed previous challenges is another possible unlock. This would allow some sort of progression between rounds.
While I imagine this will be initially unpopular, granting job preference to people who have past records of doing well is very tempting.
Miscellany
I am still trying to think of ways to detect when round progress has stagnated and pressure/force the round to end in those situations. This is basically to prevent people from dawdling at round start and ensure people cannot hang on to a clearly lost round for too long trying to wrack up points/rewards at the last minute. (This is, of course, OK for a very short bit of time similar to how when 1 person tries kill a boss with the rest of the raid dead. They get a few seconds to whack at it but not much longer.)
Also, ideas for good events, new materials, research paths, and away missions that all tie into these general ideas are also desirable.
Medical was not discussed but there is plenty of play where they try to use the new materials to develop 'buffs' in the form of organic enhancements, superhuman mutations etc. Remember though, that restraint is required here such that the best rewards have to be hard/dangerous to unlock and still contain drawbacks.
