Electric anomalies on the 'roid

[Scheveningen]

In the interest of making the asteroid slightly more dangerous and mining marginally more hazardous/interesting, I have a proposal totally not ripped off from the same font of Slavic night terrors.



Electrical anomalies, known by belters as 'dark stars' and accepted as the de facto layman's term. Essentially shrunk down tesla balls that are certainly no less meaner than their larger man-made compatriots, electrical anomalies are 'natural' formations of ball lightning that generally occur with notable frequency within the fields of the Romanovich Cloud. Dark stars, unlike their man-made sisters, are phenomena that are generated with an already substantial energy level and possess only one intent most foul: to release its destructive energy on everything and anything in sight that is either well grounded or not. Their only purpose is to burn off their energy slowly and then dissipate, though nearby radiation can not only sustain them but permit them to grow to a more potent threat. Dark stars may float over holes and pass through asteroid rock terrain, but are stopped by walls and solid airlocks. They may pass through glass, grilles and glass-based airlocks at their leisure, able to infiltrate maintenance and contribute electrical charge to any exposed wiring and thus the overall power grid. Incidentally, this also makes maintenance incredibly dangerous when a dark star has taken up residence.

Dark stars have a preference for targeting essentially the same as the tesla, with a mild difference. Its damage scales inversely from its overall health. The more health it has, the more damage from an arc, but lightning arcs from a dark star should expend the dark star's 'health', the value at which it does so should be more or less random to mix things up. When arcing its energy, there should be a distinct blue tint matching the dark star's identifiable haze. Simply to match its flavor, doesn't really matter though.

Unlike man-made tesla, dark stars have a large light source attached to them at all times with a light bluish-tint to indicate their presence, much more noticeable in the dark. Electrical shocks as audio cues to further indicate where they prefer to camp out. Dark stars cannot be fought, reasoned with or conventionally destroyed, running away from the suspected presence of a dark star is the only chance of surviving an encounter with one, with one exception. Tesla coils or grounding rods can harness and ground discharged energy, and dark stars will generally be compelled to be within the presence of tesla coils/grounding rods for the rest of their existence and can be considered defeated, as they will discharge their remaining energy to the coil/rod while being permanently stuck in place until it finally dissipates due to expending all its evil energy. Attempting to fight a dark star in virtually any other fashion, such as shooting at it with guns or lasers, is an ill-advised and 'scientifically dumb' move, it will simply power up the dark star by pissing it off (or, more accurately, potentially irradiating it/creating additional friction in the air that the anomaly can harness as angry energy). 

Unfortunately, when a dark star dissipates it should also disintegrate the first target it struck as a final note in its destructive song. In ideal cases, this should be a tesla coil or grounding rod. In worst-case scenario, this could be Ian or Bones. In other situations, it could be a hapless crewmember. Dark stars cannot disintegrate targets hit by a lesser lightning arc in the chain as part of its death throes. If no viable target can be found to disintegrate, the dark star will simply die out without taking anything with it.

The frequency of dark star spawns should coincide with ion/electrical storms. At least two should spawn, at most 4 anywhere else. I mostly think dark stars should be in to also curb the massive carp waves that occur sometimes, as too many living hostile mobs can be a pretty silly proposition by itself. Letting nature take its course would add a level of intrigue and mystery when all of the carp you saw alive 5 minutes ago are now dead and charred.

Edited January 9, 2020 by Scheveningen

[Happy_Fox]

Asteroid should be scary. Dangerous anomalies entities appearing around a research facility is very awesome. Maybe give the anomalist the responsibility of and some way of locating them with their tools?

[ben10083]

Wouldn't this make another obstacle for IPC Miners? Tesla can emp synthetics. 

[Randy]

+1 sounds pretty awesome

[Scheveningen]

19 hours ago, ben10083 said:

Wouldn't this make another obstacle for IPC Miners? Tesla can emp synthetics. 

yes

[Scheveningen]

oops double post

Edited January 10, 2020 by Scheveningen