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Meteor showers are weak sauce. Make em better.
#1
Simply put, meteors don't do much. Massive alerts way ahead of time, rather rare, and they happen only late into the round.

And how threatening are they to compensate for this massive fanfare? Well, lets review what they do:
  • Firstly, an announcement with a loud, distinctive sound plays, 6 minutes ahead of time of impact, as to when the meteors will hit.
  • When the meteors spawn, they approach the station from 1 of 4 Z-level borders in a straight line.
  • Upon contacting a wall or window, and most objects, the object/wall/window are deleted, with shards, scrap, or full reinforced sheets (in the case of r-walls, for some reason) left behind.
  • They travel a short distance - usually a few tiles - before they're deleted, leaving behind some rocks and occasionally raw ore.

Now, here's some effects I've seen of these mechanics
  • They rarely ever hit people, and even though I've been playing for 4 years I STILL don't even know what happens when that DOES occur.
  • Minor hull breaches happen usually in maintenance, and Escape, and don't really seem to cause havoc in departments that often.
  • They don't leave much damage behind. A few broken walls with the materials to re-build them, you don't even have to repair damaged shit, since it's either all deleted or left alone (like APCs).
And now here's how people react:

They don't do much. Some panic and call for a shuttle, but nobody sets up field generators or really even cares. Hell, I don't care too much, especially on Cog1 where a lot of the outside walls are maintenance or sealed off. And, breaches aren't that big of a deal, internals are everywhere.

Here's some proposals.


The simplest course of action would be to use the current Plasma Howitzer code to create a bunch of localized explosions along the path of travel, re-sprite the explosions used to be more shockwaves due to impacts, and cause the explosion sound itself to be a more resounding grinding and screeching of the hull (or just use the sound effect that plays across the z-level of a plasma howitzer firmly smashing into the hull plating).

I think that this is the simplest, most effective course of action - it not only recycles code, which is a big yes, but also makes meteors extremely loud, flashy, and very much so dangerous. It would cause actual station damage that would need to be repaired, instead of just a few holes in the wall here and there. The differences would, of course, be that the projectiles would move slower, be re-sprited, have to approach the station from a specific world border, and make them more susceptible to things like shields. But, the sound alone from a meteor hitting the station would probably be enough to scare people into doing something.


Another option is to make meteors burrow FAR deeper into the station and cause far more havoc. One idea I personally had was to make meteors not only last longer, but their lifespan should be determined by size, which decreases as it hits more things and more of it breaks off and flies in some direction (from boulder sized chunks to shrapnel-sized rocks, possibly hitting people, which is always fun). In this case, it shouldn't break the actual floors, but it should wreak absolute havoc on any surrounding walls, with a wide area of carnage (several tiles, not just 3).

In summary of these two ideas:

1) Make meteors more akin to plasma howitzers in terms of devastation and visual/auditory effect.

2) Make meteors burrow far deeper and cause far more havoc against crew than the station.
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#2
i like the ideas
One thing I was planning on trying out (eventually) was to have meteors fly much slower, split into smaller meteors when destroyed, and take damage from bullets and thrown items and hitting otherwise solid objects. so instead of a defense game, there's also the option of flying around and zapping them down before they hit the station

maybe can be blended into this stuff a bit
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#3
I honestly haven't even seen a meteor alert since I returned. I figured they must have been removed from the disaster pool. Disasters in general seem far less frequent, really.
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#4
Honestly, it's so rare that meteor showers happen because the round usually ends before then. I would rather see them occur earlier in the round while keeping them at roughly the same level of destructiveness, I think people will put up more meteor shields if they shuttle isn't leaving anyway in 2 minutes. If it turns out that they cause too much damage to the station on average, we can always scale the amount of meteors based on round time, but I feel like right now it doesn't even matter what we do to meteor showers, because the shuttle basically always leaves before they happen (or at least very close to it).
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#5
Sounds good. Tbh I've tried putting up shields before but never know where to look for the damn things ?
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#6
(06-04-2020, 10:46 PM)Tiggersaurus Wrote: Sounds good. Tbh I've tried putting up shields before but never know where to look for the damn things ?

Qm sells them in packs of 4 for $2500 currently
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#7
How about some meteor types? With matsci behind it

Radioactive meteors that leave behind radioactive ores

Meteors that a made from denser material and penetrate deeper

Meteors that explode on impact

Meteors that bounce around off of things they hit
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#8
Ooh, I like those ideas.

Also Icy ones that melt and release reagent liquids/gasses.
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#9
I definitely think that meteors should be far more interesting (and ideally chaotic), and a good deal of suggestions laid here so far are quite good!

If we tie the meteor variant suggestion with the second option I suggested (meteors penetrating far deeper, damaging more stuff around them), then there's some chance for real chaos. Radioactive meteors leaving behind a green glow of radiation, irradiating anyone that walks over the ores it drops and their path of travel; denser meteors that have a chance of smashing *THROUGH* the entire station, albeit being much smaller; meteors with erebite cores that, once damaged enough, explode; pinball machine asteroids is a hysterical idea and I want it so bad; and icy reagent comets that released gaseous cryostylane and random chems from a small pool (basic chems like acetone and fluorine).
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#10
Miner traitor item 'meteor magnet'. Starts slow but pulls increasing numbers of meteors towards the station the more power it absorbs.
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#11
If Deathstar is ever finished this should be a weapon instead of just a random event.
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#12
(06-05-2020, 09:15 AM)Erev Wrote: Miner traitor item 'meteor magnet'. Starts slow but pulls increasing numbers of meteors towards the station the more power it absorbs.

Holy shit yes. If these meteor changes are implemented this could be a really cool traitor item. Rather obvious, big, clunky, and needs to be wired to the grid. The more energy in the grid, the more meteors it pulls in. Hotwires are a death sentence to the station in this case.
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