Research shuttle/derelict replacement

[kyres1]

The focus of this suggestion is the implementation of a unique research shuttle leading to randomly selected dungeons that replace the derelict station, in its entirety. It will cover some pretty substantial mapping additions, but hopefully utilize the same system Alb made with those weird dungeons that spawn in the asteroid. If it works, that is.

There’s been a strong push for exploration in recent times and means to find new content that the current setting usually ends up restricting from player hands. In this lies the problem of away missions - time and time again they’ve been proposed (at least by me, in development channels), and they usually get shot down with some very understandable and reasonable points. In this case, this is hopefully a contrast to that in a more sane and fitting manner. Also, it’s actually put into a suggestion format rather than just being ideas ran through discord.

Onto the suggestion itself.

Basically, a shuttle hangar and a flight tower would be added to the surface level, accessible by anybody in command. The shuttle itself would lead to a reading near the Aurora, which we’ll call an encounter for simplicity. The flight tower would have some basic consoles, like a shuttle camera monitor. Alongside it, some paperwork that covers exactly what can be deduced about the reading by scans alone. The papers could read in a manner like a situation report, showing a scan from the Icarus detailing the size of the reading, the nature of it, and whether there’s any electrical or biological activity. A random trait could be its distance or ambient conditions in the space surrounding it.

The shuttle itself would be large enough to fit 8 people, some roller beds, a pilot and other minor nonsense like medical cabinets and O2 lockers. An airlock should be present for when they dock somewhere that lacks atmosphere. Nominally, once departing, it’d take three or so minutes to get to the location to give people time to prepare and roleplay travel.

In the landing site, the shuttle should be in the dead center of the derelict Z-level. The entire level could be empty space barring the immediate vicinity of the landing zone, which would be the previously mentioned signature. Whatever it actually is could be literally anything - a tiny ancient monitoring station to dock to, or a massive labyrinthian ship filled with spooky monsters and loot which the dropship lands in the hangar of. Asteroid dungeons are already diverse as heck, with the contents inside turning any round into a mini-event if the explorers who find it are nice and involving about it. This is basically the same thing, with a different means of getting to it.

To prevent antag shittery from turning it into a merchant base 2.0 for cults and whatnot, or just to permit escalation when said cults flee to the away sites, a second shuttle can be added. This second shuttle could be a pursuit vessel meant to track down and deliver a retrieval team to secure the assets or crew at the site. It’d definitely need to be smaller, and arrive far away from the actual site and not right on top of the research shuttle or docked to it. It could reside in the surface bridge section, maybe north of the lift.

There are two blatant flaws with this proposal that I can think of immediately. The first being -

“Why would this station’s crew depart its assigned post?”

The easy excuse here is to say that the anomalous readings are in the immediate vicinity and they are able to investigate them as they are within the Icarus’ defense perimeter. Since it’s NanoTrasen, whatever they find may as well be theirs. This gets complicated though, as it will become difficult to explain why security would respond to an away site if at all. Genuine thought would need to be put into who to send and how many people to send for everyone to have fun. This is a good enough reason in my mind to restrict it to command access only. Though, departmental security being on the horizon makes it pretty easy to just say "Send the science officer with the RD and their scientists," honestly.

The second being, “Won’t the repetition get annoying after the third round?”

This really depends on how many encounters there are, and how they’re arranged. A few different layouts for one edition of each encounter would be as simple as adding a few mobs or varying loot or even traps to each in different locations. With hostile mobs and randomized loot spawns, it won’t be repetitive at all in my mind. The current dungeons in the asteroid demonstrate repeating encounters that are in no way repetitive - for example, I’ve seen a derelict ship easily a dozen times now and boarded it, but the dangers involved with getting there and arranging a team and looting it is always fun.

 

[Yonnimer]

Sounds neat. But what would be the reason the station is sending people to investigate? 

[kyres1]

3 minutes ago, Yonnimer said:

Sounds neat. But what would be the reason the station is sending people to investigate? 

The Romanovich cloud is filled with weird stuff. Anything anomalous that drifts in range of a research and mining station intended to turn a profit from it seems pretty straightforward to investigate.

[AmoryBlaine]

We really don't interact with the Romanovich enough. Please add, thanks.

[ben10083]

a few things:

1. yes, we are a asteroid orbiting a sun in a cloud of stuff, but why would we have so such derelict stuff right beside us, changing so often?

2. Who will man the pursuit vessel? Non-existant regular security who have to patrol the rest of the station since dept sec can't do so?

3. What if antags take both shuttles?

4. Only xenoarch should do this, otherwise places like RnD will never be manned in favor of "space adventure" (we can increase arch slots)

5. Policy needs to be made regarding this, likely a directive and some reg changes as well. Reason is to have grounds to punish those who abuse/damage the shuttle (and how shuttle is still under regs, but the areas explored are not....). Plus, all of the crew will try to find an excuse to board the shuttle as well, there should be a policy in place to prevent this so we have people on the station.

6. Make sure IPC stuff is added to them

Overall, will not make a ruling until these points are addressed.

[kyres1]

55 minutes ago, ben10083 said:

1. yes, we are a asteroid orbiting a sun in a cloud of stuff, but why would we have so such derelict stuff right beside us, changing so often?

Why does xenoarchaelogy exist whatsoever? There's several artifacts of varying origin that already spawn on the station, some being like a bajillion years old. Going off this logic, the cloud is obviously not just a normal asteroid belt. The whole place is anomalous, and it's basically the most interesting part of our setting and is ironically never explored. We're literally sitting in a phoron-rich bluespace hotspot, and never get any reference to it.

57 minutes ago, ben10083 said:

2. Who will man the pursuit vessel? Non-existant regular security who have to patrol the rest of the station since dept sec can't do so?

It'd be a way for ERT to get there if need be or for escalation to exist if necessary. With departmental security, I have zero clue as to how this could work. But it does make sense for medical to utilize the pursuit shuttle for medical evac purposes from the site if need be.

58 minutes ago, ben10083 said:

3. What if antags take both shuttles?

Then they're going somewhere that is effectively the merchant base 2.0. The likelihood of this happening in any gamemode besides really organized cult is low, honestly.

59 minutes ago, ben10083 said:

4. Only xenoarch should do this, otherwise places like RnD will never be manned in favor of "space adventure" (we can increase arch slots)

You can't go on a space adventure without command accessing it, more specifically the research director. With that said, you can expect it to be organized to a degree that specific people go and specific people are left out, as it goes with expeditions on the asteroid as well.

1 hour ago, ben10083 said:

5. Policy needs to be made regarding this, likely a directive and some reg changes as well. Reason is to have grounds to punish those who abuse/damage the shuttle (and how shuttle is still under regs, but the areas explored are not....). Plus, all of the crew will try to find an excuse to board the shuttle as well, there should be a policy in place to prevent this so we have people on the station.

1. The shuttles will not be that big.

2. Policy wouldn't be that hard to make. It'd be common sense stuff - don't damage the shuttle, balance the away teams reasonably, etc.

1 hour ago, ben10083 said:

6. Make sure IPC stuff is added to them 

I don't follow. What do you mean? Recharging stations?

[kyres1]

Also, after some extensive talk on the discord, a fantastic idea would be making the encounters more lore-centered and varied, with things mixed to a degree to permit an unpredictable outcome even in repetition. Working off this is the idea that hostile mobs would be rare, and mechanically beneficial loot even more so. At the same time, the encounters could be filled with rich lore or have goodies of value in roleplay.

@Ornias in specific had some pretty snazzy opinions on the matter and is mostly who I gathered the idea from.

Edited April 16, 2019 by kyres1

[ben10083]

28 minutes ago, kyres1 said:

It'd be a way for ERT to get there if need be or for escalation to exist if necessary. With departmental security, I have zero clue as to how this could work. But it does make sense for medical to utilize the pursuit shuttle for medical evac purposes from the site if need be.

1

We should not restrict any security action to ert, this means that any attempt to use the shuttle or antag reasons results in a free excuse for ERT to be called to shut them down, since dept sec is ineffective with dealing with any organized/non-department threats or problems

30 minutes ago, kyres1 said:

You can't go on a space adventure without command accessing it, more specifically the research director. With that said, you can expect it to be organized to a degree that specific people go and specific people are left out, as it goes with expeditions on the asteroid as well.

I still stand by only xeno arch being the principal explorers with the shuttle, yes, RD is in charge of them, but the archs are the explorers of the science department, and make the most sense

32 minutes ago, kyres1 said:

I don't follow. What do you mean? Recharging stations?

Yep, also coolant (when added) and possibly nanopaste

[Garnascus]

This would be really cool. Its going to require a lot of work to setup in a round but i do not think that is an issue. The rewards can be balanced by simply making the away missions fairly challenging. Instant kills are super lame but our robust medical and damage systems allow us to take advantage of things that kill you slowly. 

[Alberyk]

I will work on this.

[Alberyk]

Being added here: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/6320

I will need more map or at least, their ideas/designs.

[Butterrobber202]

@Alberyk this is a good chance to implement Ghost roles, throw in some Vox Encounters, maybe some stranded Unathi raiders. A small gaggle of Lii’dra spying on Tau Ceti from the inside of a derelict mothership. Whitelists are usually waived in face of antags and special events. 

 

If if we wanted we could also just invent some random Cloud monster the players could play.