More Variety In Hostile Xenofauna

[ChevyChevron]

You've all seen it. A station announcement rings out warning the crew about unknown life somewhere in the vicinity of the station. Not a few seconds later, someone from command or security chimes in on the common channel to remind people to pull fire alarms in case of carp. Or to let security know if you see fully grown greimorians somewhere. The announcement claims not to know what exactly is threatening the station, but everyone and their mother knows what it is anyway.

I propose that these events should choose from a pool of potential simplemob types to spawn in and around the station, rather than just being something easily identified. This would make it so that people have to actually investigate the situation to know what the proper response is. Some of these might be non-hostile, a fact the sensors simply couldn't determine at range. Some of them might be dangerous enough to warrant busting out the armory guns. The point is to create more varied situations that people have to actually care about understanding and dealing with.

The list should obviously be weighted to prevent more serious threats from becoming too commonplace, possibly including preventing some from spawning at all without at least some security presence to deal with them. (I'd say the same thing should be applied to blobs, preventing them from spawning at all if there isn't at least one engineer present, but that's outside the scope of this suggestion thread.)

As for what critters could be added, I'm not sure yet. If you have any ideas for xenofauna, feel free to share them in this thread.

[CoffeeToffee]

Sounds fun. I'll be here if anyone has creature ideas that could use sprites. I'll take a moment to brainstorm some of my own.

[Roostercat]

I think a creature that can give you hallucinations/mental trauma from staring at it could be interesting. Maybe make skrell and people with psionic receivers immune to the effect as well. if you stare at it too long you get the messages from the rev aggression implant so your char flies off the handle for a lil bit

[ChevyChevron]

For the "something has burrowed into the station" event, maybe something that builds a little nest in maintenance somewhere could work. A more defensive-oriented species that spreads some kind of biological growth over surrounding tiles, breaks open unbolted airlocks, and just tries to chase off anything that comes too close. A bit like how cult constructs can cultify walls/floors or how the hive spreads on Eris is what I'm thinking of.

[Melariara]

14 hours ago, Roostercat said:

I think a creature that can give you hallucinations/mental trauma from staring at it could be interesting. Maybe make skrell and people with psionic receivers immune to the effect as well. if you stare at it too long you get the messages from the rev aggression implant so your char flies off the handle for a lil bit

Maybe the green horror things we see, though they might require a nerf. Or like, a single vannatusk.

 

In fact, the entire thing could be weighted on pop and what has a chance to spawn depending on what role, maybe. I don't know, I'm not a coder.

[NerdyVampire]

Would really love more variety and danger in the spawned mobs. I love seeing hivebots. I love seeing gremorians grow up. I have grown tired of the announcements, especially I have grown to hate the false announcements altogether. It's like the game is presenting a gift to us saying "Look, something interesting for you to- Oh wait never mind! Just joking!" is it just me, does anyone enjoy that little trick it plays on us every round?

[Gangstafary]

Always in for more variety of random events that may add to uncertainty as OP said. Besides the hivebots, spiders and the usual, some refreshment would be nice. Nevertheless I wouldn't go too far with it so as to make very unique mobs with unusual powers and the alike.