freaky storm random event

[atomic1fire]

borrowing from the escape pod thread idea of crashing on a random planet, what if there was a random event that teleported several crewmen onto a zlevel all unprepared?

Basically the land of the lost but in space.

Escape would consist of

A. Survive dangerous things
B. turn the thing off that is blocking the radios so that the crew knows where you are.
C. Get back to station (assuming telescience is still available)

The crew would be notified that several crewmen (and perhaps sometimes cyborgs) were lost in the storm via a announcement.

Radios would not work until the lost crewmen turned the radio jamming thing off.

Reasons this would be cool

A. Gives telescience an actual objective
FIND THE CREWMEN WE JUST LOST
B. Forces random crewmen to improvise and work together
"Hey why didn't you tell us you had a welder the entire time"
C. Could give some really cool stories
Basically every telescience round where someone is secretly a traitor and starts murdering the other explorers.

To save space the map wouldn't need to change, it could just be a set location that random crewmen teleport to.

[babayetu83]

i like it a lot

the cohesion and story-telling elements that is

[epicdwarf]

I suggest having the lost crew members spawn on one of the "secret" Z-lvl that don't require you to bring tools/O2 to get around. That way, telesceince would be their only hope for escape. Maybe we can also give research some sort of award for bringing them back?

[Lavastage]

if it wont select antags and only takes a couple random crew, it MIGHT work

[icarus]

make sure it exempts antag targets as well

also maybe it can randomly teleport people flying pods sometimes, too?

[QP Evergrande]

And speaking of antags, just like you have the option to opt out of being selects as an antag, there should be an option on the job preference screen to allow you to opt out of getting picked for something like this.

But this sounds like a great idea. Maybe the lost group is a team from another station that just evacuated, and our station has to retrieve them once they make it back to their extraction point. It can't be too easy, so they should know the coordinates, but not have a beacon or anything that can be homed in on. But in case telescience goes unmanned or the scientists are incompetent, the lost group should also have some ability to return on their own. That method should just be much more difficult.

And of course they should start with some kind of booty to return with.

[Lantern]

And speaking of antags, just like you have the option to opt out of being selects as an antag, there should be an option on the job preference screen to allow you to opt out of getting picked for something like this.

But this sounds like a great idea. Maybe the lost group is a team from another station that just evacuated, and our station has to retrieve them once they make it back to their extraction point. It can't be too easy, so they should know the coordinates, but not have a beacon or anything that can be homed in on. But in case telescience goes unmanned or the scientists are incompetent, the lost group should also have some ability to return on their own. That method should just be much more difficult.

And of course they should start with some kind of booty to return with.

A busted ass teleporter could do the trick. They have to find a way to fix and power it. This whole idea seems like so much fun. its always fun to have an impromptu adventure like that.

[APARTHEID]

If either Sundance or Weavel start complaining about this, I'm as good as gold for this to happen as a late-round event.

[Weavel]

hey what the fuck this is super ultradumb

i actually kind of like it tbh

if there's to be a way to avoid it, i'd say the event picks a location zone e.g. the chemistry area, and all chemists there get a message about feeling uneasy, and if they stay they are all taken

i can't wait for it to target the brig and the AI and go on criminal-robot buddy adventures

[Sundance]

Nah man this is LAME

But I also dig it. I have nothing else to add bar an actual timeframe this would happen in the round? Perhaps around the 30-40 minute mark?

[Marquesas]

Okay if they won't complain I WILL.

About the lack of coder support on this. I like this.

[zeknife]

The idea is good but I think there should be more to it than people just being abducted randomly
Either by having it localized to a certain area (And maybe there being some indication that it's happening) or by having some other not entirely unpredictable trigger

Maybe a radstorm-type event, except instead of dying outside of maintenance you get teleported to mysterious places, or maybe wormholes/a certain type of wormhole could have a chance to do this

[Captain_Bravo]

Why not just code in that when the event happens that spawns wormholes all over the station, some will transport you to different Z-levels? Scatter crewmembers across Mars, the Void, and The Maze?

[Zadeon]

What if, if possible (probably not), to teleport an ENTIRE section of the station to some random place? Everyone is just having a good time on the station WHEN SUDDENLY robotics and everyone in it disappear. Then people have to figure out what the heck went wrong.

This whole thing is probably impossible so...

[Marquesas]

Technically, it's not. Thenagain, it'd break a few things without properly thinking about it.