Martian Mode

[Sundance]

I did try make something like this, but I dident really manage to make my idea good enough so I wish you better luck!

That is quite awesome and you seem really great at making .gifs. I could use some help in .gif making in that department, my .gif's are somewhat lackluster because I quite simply don't know how to make em'.
Maybe the main problem with your idea was that there wasn't any fighter pods to fight that alien thing to begin with, while what I'm trying to do here is make a game mode that would fit well in cog's new map.
My spaceship is somewhat different than yours in that upon entering the spacepod you get teleported to another z-level that acts as the interior of the ship, in which all your stuff to play with is there.

[Azungar]

Sure thing, I could do animatiosn to your sprites or I could just throw you some tips on how to, if you want to. PM me with the ideas you had if you want me to make the animations.

[Azungar]

Im also making an alternative look for the shuttle. Heres a WIP pic.

http://i1063.photobucket.com/albums/t50 ... abe52e.png

[atamusvaleo]

I had an idea for a Martian mode but before I posted anything, I searched the forums. I'm glad I did because the original idea is much more thought out than what I had come up with. I feel like a lot of this is achievable through borrowed code and some respriting.

Sundance! You did already created some superb sprites here!   
Spoiler!

Some stuff I'll dump here too as the sprite page is often unloved. I've got a load of other sprites; tables, chairs, misc for inside the spaceship pod and I'm designing a huge-ass martian vehicle, about singularity and a half size at the sprite thread if you wanna holla!
Acid Biomass Vat

Birthing Polyp

Restoration Chamber/ Statis pod

Biocharger (other modes at sprite thread)


Yeah so I'm designing stuff that will go into martian mode. I'm speaking about all this stuff hypothetically, but there's alot of coding already there that could help this actually be a mode.
My idea is somewhat different than Molly's, basically it revolves around a stranded martian ship that finds ss13 and starts harvesting humans so they can get back to the red planet.
It's very much snatch and run at the start as you're very weak, so you must be silent, attacking 1 or 2 humans and dragging them back to the ship. The ship itself is mobile, so you could pull up to QM, take down a wall and drag the QM's into your ship without anybody noticing.
You build up forces strong enough, constantly upgrading your troops and your ship until eventually as a group you're a living nightmare for the crew. Even if the captain whip's out his own fighter pod to take down your ship, you're about 4 times bigger than it so he can fuck right off unless he has backup.
The objective is to harvest X amount of humans, which could potentially mean 3/4's of the crew because you are robust as fuck.
The fail is if you all die, or your martian ship is destroyed.

and here: https://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid=829

My addition to this would be objectives "kidnap specific crew members John McTwiddlestein, Ruff McGruff, and Johnny Tsunami" instead of "accumulate biomass/commit homicide on massive scale."

[Mageziya]

Let's revive this. We're in need of a new gamemode, and a lot of assets were already made for this. We can make this happen!

Yeah, from a broad perspective, Martian could be seen as a very surgical special ops style game-mode compared to the ruff and tumble murder of the nuke ops gamemode. I also admit that I haven't properly read this thread, but here's an idea that could provide this other ideal special ops gameplay:


Maybe give the martians a list of say, 2/3rds of the station that they need to abduct alive. The remaining 1/3rd is useless and can be freely killed. Of the 2/3rds, x-total must be abducted to be harvested. This is also the biggest problem in the game's design. If we make dead bodies worthless, people can just dick over the Martians by suiciding, or even just accidentally dying. Alternatively, if we make dead-bodies useful, it'll just be another rough and tumble bloodbath. If we try and strike a balance, where if every single target, or the majority of them, died, then the martians wouldn't be able to meet their objective; then we have the risk of both problems being present.

Either way, there should be a focus on taking people alive. After all, we wouldn't have alien abduction stories if the "abductees" didn't come back alive!

[misto]

the warrior sounds like literally the best class because shaking off stuns is incredibly valuable

the mutant's destruction of biomass despite only exploding the head is highly unattractive

the soldier sounds okayish. going over tables is nice

the soporific grenade sounds like the best weapon and even then it might be resisted by humans wearing gas masks and or using internals? these martians lack good stun weapons compared to their prey.

if martians still take cold and pressure damage then the humans can fuck the martians pretty bad by gearing up with space suits and then depressurizing portions of the station. however, this is not too bad i guess because that degree of organization is a rare occurrence. this also makes the setting of martian bombs an incredibly bad and utterly self destructive idea on the part of the martian team.

heres a toy - Martian Weeds - it spreads like kudzu (maybe slower than kudzu if you think its too tuff) and can be killed off like kudzu and also killed off by weedkiller and other poisons. can be walked over and seen thru as it merely covers the floor, rather than kudzu which forms into solid walls, but it slows humans who walk over it slightly while leaving martians to traverse at normal speeds

[NateTheSquid]

shaking off stuns is incredibly valuable

rip vampires

[Sundance]

Working on other perspectives at the mo', hardest part was design. I rejigged so that they're somewhat translucent, jellyfish like, with their skull visible underneath.

Martian Trooper: Hardened Foot-soldiers.

Martian Mutant: Psychics with a turgid cranium.

Martian Beserker: Pale warriors with gold warpaint. (varied facepaint, aesthetic)

Martian Mancer: Militant biologists of malicious intent. (with/without eyepiece. Again, aesthetic)

Martian Sire: Egotistical aliens of royal bloodline.

Just cross posting these..
and this: https://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid...ht=martian
and this:https://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid=323 (lots of terrible sprites at the start *shudder)

..and yes I have an old massive warship sprite kicking about in a dusty folder. It's still unfinished, and will probably remain so. It's different than the current one in the previous thread, it uses perspective and generally looks far better and not badly photoshopped. Promise.

..And i'd love to see Martian mode be implemented, in some shape or form. I've felt that it could be implemented in a phase by phase basis before being a fully fledged mode, like just having alien 2x2 pods available for purchase, or having some mob abilities to Martians. That way admins could actually have gimmick rounds revolve around by spawning these guys on the station.

But you must understand that this was made in 2012, and I gotta say it as it stands: Time has.. worn me out and I have little to no appetite for this, especially seen as there hasn't been any committed coders willing to look at it, for 4 years.

The good news that since then, byond has raised the roof at what can and can't be done, and a large majority (critter code, giant pods) of this stuff is already coded, so it'd just be a case of figuring it out (in theory).

[atamusvaleo]

The addition of the patch subforum has made some wiggle room for folks to take a crack at this. Even if it's piece by piece. Perhaps we'll see progress. Who knows!

[ZeWaka]

This could be a possible project for me to work on this winter break. This, or restructuring. A lot of the key concepts look neat. It would be cool to have some kind of abduction mechanic at play. The way other servers run their abduction gamemode seem cool, but could definitely use a lot of the improvements that are in this thread.

Edit: If abducted dudes are not used for transformation/biomass, let ghosties become martians.

Edit 2: Cruiser integration would be top notch as well.

[NateTheSquid]

Yes please make cruisers a useful/existant thing. the cruiser test (the one that works) in the open release is fricking sweet, although a little glitchy

[Cirrial]

I am all for more game modes that lead to eerie silence and paranoia as the crew slowly dwindle away, instead of loud explosions and bloody rampages across the station.

[Sundance]

Well actually cirrial, it's actually a little more indistinct than that. I suppose i'll have to dust off my .txt file of "martian mode three point oh" where I outlined the actual mode itself. It diverges pretty majorly from Molly's original post, and is fleshed out.  I'll post it later today. 
Basically it boils down to a numbers game and it forces the martians to teamplay, because if they don't teamplay, they'll get fucking screwed by the crew, majorly. The mode encourages abduction/hostage scenarios, but murder is a definite option. Essentially the meatgrinder which they stick the captured in is a information processing machine and these guys are looking for dirt from nanotrasen, with the offshoot that the bodies act as some form of biofuel for material produciton. They're essentially murderous alien spies.
But that means that different crew will be ranked depending on what they know. Example would be the Captain, who would be ranked the highest, and would be "worth" the most. But he's also a threat. As is Security, who are also ranked high, and other heads. So it comes down to moments of conflict where "do we kill the captain?" or "do we need him" and that requires clear communication with other martians. Dead bodies are worth less points. Essentially their greatest strengths are also their greatest weaknesses. It'd be very much a unique mode.
There's also average crewmembers, such as the humble chef, who might "know" shit about nanotrasen, and they become designiated targets at the start of the round, to mix it up. "Why are they going after the chef?"
But without rambling, i'll post more later tonight.

[Megapaco]

Fund it

[Mageziya]

Fund it

---

That said though, balance is always a concern with new gamemodes, but at the same time, I'm slowly starting to understand that most game-modes are unbalanced. Traitor, for example, is intentionally unbalanced, with a few crew members vs. the rest of the crew, but then traitor gear can flip it in the other direction to make it unfair for the crew. Changelings and Vampires suddenly take out people, who have no real hope of opposing, but still create conflict as the crew tries to weed out who's eating people. A skilled wizard can do horrible things to most of the station crew in less than 20 minutes, while a new wizard can trip and die in less than 5.

I suppose why I'm saying this is that imbalance can create interest. I always feel like a concern when making new gamemodes is, "But what if it gets tossed for being too broken? Too imbalanced?", but at this rate, I'd say just do it. The foundation looks good enough that we can (hopefully) correct any glaring issues along the way.