Expedition Ghost Spawners

[Brutishcrab51]

I think this was mentioned in the past, but let's revisit this idea.

There are a handful of Expeditions wherein there is abandoned infrastructure or """FUNNY""" locations. The hulk has a Nar'Sie temple filled with spirit shells and armor. The Solarian ship has an armory and cryo bay. The ERT base has a barracks, armory, a dozen storage rooms, prison, security checkpoints and personnel lounge. The Jargon mining base has an atmospherically sealed and powered mining outpost with bedrooms and mining equipment. All of these are totally empty.

 

What if they weren't? Or, rather, didn't have to be? I would suggest something like a 25% or 50% of one to three ghost spawners opening up on these respective maps. Given their size, only one should spawn on the Solarian ship and Mining base (if the coin toss flies positively) and between one and three on the hulk or ERT derelict.

What can these be? Well...

Nar'Sie cultists, or wraiths, or revenants. Solarian navy personnel stored in cryo, waking up on a ruined ship. Abandoned ERT personnel or NanoTrasen prisoners at a high-security site absorbed by bluespace. Jargon Federation mining personnel or expedition scientists.

 

Just to name a few. These roles would, of course, have some sort of code (which I cannot provide and am simply spitballing as an idea) upon the arrival of the expedition shuttle on their Z-level. Or rather, it would fire the code wherein a coin toss occurs in the code which could possibly enable ghost spawners. These roles should have a few goals..

 

The Nar'Sie temple should either spawn Revenants that don't drop dead into ash, or wraiths/artificers that are awakened by the presence of intruders. They are purely antagonistic in nature, of course. The Cult of Nar'Sie exists in-lore, there are two lore articles referring to them and they exist in the Republic of Biesel. This can make sense.

Solarian navy individual with a combat uniform waking up on a decaying ship? Objective number one, find out what that proximity alarm was that woke you up. The presence of an expedition for this ship lost-in-bluespace could be an interesting leadup, or they could run into a scared soldier who shoots at them with a dinky service pistol. Who knows.

The ERT base? Well, uh. Honestly this one's tricky. We don't know how long it's been there, it's full of hostile mobs that can kill very quickly and are themselves difficult to kill. It may be reasonable to make the ghost spawner here an individual in ERT/S in-atmosphere armor, perhaps? With an Energy Rifle? Who knows, abandoned ERT member trapped on a decrepit installation. Or a prisoner with (insert backstory here in NT maxsec prison-base) that escaped his cell during the collapse.

Jargon base? Honestly, this expedition's not very supernatural. It's just an asteroid mining base with some space sharks and an artifact. Miner(s) or an expedition scientist.

 

Now, this isn't very fleshed out. I thought of this in five minutes and posted it in ten. I'm aware of other expedition sites, but I can't go stumbling through the code trying to figure out what they are and where. The PRA base was not included because half of it is depressurized (or very soon will be with all those dumby dangerous security droids) and not everyone has catman PRA whitelist. Not to mention the place is booby-trapped. Obviously meant to be 100% abandoned. This suggestion is meant to give some element of life and variableness to expedition sites.

[The Stryker]

Just want to throw my two cents in here but I've had amazing experiences with being alone on a derelict, including but not limited to being a Trinary Perfection pod survivor who crashed on the prison station and had to techpriest an AI off it while avoiding the turrets.

Having actual human players in a derelict allows expeditions to be much more interactive and closer to the Star Trek episodes they were meant to be, especially when they're alreay getting so stale as for crew to be hoping for certain derelicts when they get their scanning report. Brutish sums up my point when he describes a shell shocked soldier taking potshots with a rinky dink service pistol.

If this (I hope) gets implemented, then we also have to talk about when and how to spawn these guys. I personally think having two to three random spawner slots open at the start or thirty minutes into the round can already make for interesting albeit isolated RP, but if everyone's concerned about these two or three guys soloing the derelict before an expedition gets there (although that's a bit of a feat, especially with the PRA derelict), then some sort of check can be made to only allow the spawner a certain amount of time into the round, or when the expedition shuttle launches.

I also think derelict survivors shouldn't get so much of an exposition/backstory when they spawn that way they can just make their own up on the spot allowing for more freedom.

Anyway, that's just my two cents, and this get a big fat

+1!