Marlon P. Posted November 23, 2021 Posted November 23, 2021 (edited) Overview.This is the second part of my proposed RnD overhaul. Because it’s detached from the original document it can be accepted or rejected without harming the cohesion of the original suggestion, found here. Spoiler Justification. The xenoarchaeology/anomalist job has been suffering from staffing issues for years. It is also completely detached from the operation of the station as a whole, and the more important consequence of being inconsequential to its own department. The results are also repetitive, with the jobs not being satisfying in long-term play. That is why I have split them into 2 separate, 1-slot jobs. New Anomalist Job Basics Anomalists’ use specialized equipment to seek out locations where one or more dimensions has come into contact with ours, colloquially known as ‘Dimensional Rifts’, which measure typically only 5ft - 10ft. (2 tiles) Using additional equipment these rifts are ‘stabilized’, then resources are extracted from them. Using these resources, Anomalists can unlock research bonuses or ship them to NT for monetary rewards. By their very nature these rifts can be incredibly dangerous. How desperate are you for that next big hit? New Anomalist Mechanics (With Technobabble) The anomalist requires the following primary tools. Everett-Rift Detector: This is what you use to triangulate the position of Everett Rifts. It is a handheld device that beeps when within 50 tiles of a rift, and beeps faster the closer you get. Michelson-Morley Quintessence Infuser: Used to store and utilize harvested quintessence. Boltzmann Anti-Causality Generator: Used to tear open the Everett Rift and harvest the exotic resource Quintessence. It can stores 1,000u of the material. It takes the place of the current field generator. It has three modes that allow the anomalist to choose the difficulty of their current dig. Standard. Intense. Overclocked. Weaponized A Generator is deployed with a wrench and is activated with one of the above modes. The active process of interaction then begins. During standard mode the rift will change colors every 10 seconds for 60 seconds until the dig is complete. The anomalist must make sure that the generator and the rift do not match colors for more than 5 seconds. Allowing the colors to match for two cycles will cause the generator to emergency shut-off and not destabilize the rift. The process can be shut off at any time. Resources gained from this mode are middling. (Base 25u - unstable 50u) During intense mode the rift will change colors every 10 seconds for 60 seconds. The anomalist must ensure the generator is the complementary color from the rift, opposite of the color wheel. Allowing the colors to match for two cycles will cause the generator to emergency shut-off and permanently destabilize the rift. The generator can safely abort the extraction at any time. Resources gained from this mode are modest. (Base 100u - unstable 200u) During overlocked mode the rift will change colors every 8 seconds for 40 seconds. The process cannot be aborted. Allowing the colors to match for two cycles will tear open the rift. This also happens if you fail while overclocking an already unstable rift. The resources gained from this mode are abundant. (Base 250 - unstable 500u) Spoiler Rift Mechanics An rift is either inactive, stable, unstable, or torn open. A rift’s state is permanent for the duration of the round with the exception of one torn open. There are 3 rifts present on the miner’s asteroid at any time. An inactive rift cannot be interacted with without a generator, or detected except by the anomalist. A stable rift is unremarkable and will change colors periodically until the generator is shut-off, after which it will fizzle out and disappear. An unstable rift will randomly activate one of the following effects every 12 seconds with equal weight: A blinding flash. (8 tiles) No effect. Shoot a bolt of energy into a random direction, doing light burn damage on impact with a range of 8 tiles. In addition, resource gain from an unstable rift is doubled. This creates a meta of destabilizing the wormhole with an intense extraction, then moving to standard extraction. However, destabilizing an already destabilized wormhole will upgrade it to be torn open Entering an unstable rift will teleport you to a random location. A torn open rift will immediately activate a blinding flash, spawn 1d12 wormholes within a 20 tile radius, and then roll randomly to activate one of the following every 5 seconds: A blinding flash. Detonate an EMP centered on itself. Detonate explosion centered on itself. Make everything within 10 tiles catch on fire. Shoot 1d8 bolts of energy in random directions, doing severe burn damage. After 120 seconds the torn open rift will transform into a stage 1 singularity and dissipate naturally unless fed. Entering a torn open rift will turn the victim into ash. A weaponized rift acts torn open, and after 120 seconds transforms into a stage 3 singularity. Quintessence Stored inside the Boltzmann Anti-Causality Generator, quintessence is extracted into containers as a liquid to be inserted into Michelson-Morley Quintessence Infusers. There it’s used to interact with items or be compressed into a single brick. Solid quintessence is sold to NT to increase the RnD budget by 2,000, and 1,000 credits to the anomalist. Solid bricks can also be harvested by the infuser to add 4 points to the xenoarchaeology and extra-dimensional topics. These stack. It interacts with known matter in interesting ways. Because it’s the result of collapsing causality across dimensions, the effects are not consistent and drastically change over time. This is the justification for the table of effects to be randomized every round. The table of what effects liquid Quintessence will do to a splashed mob will range from mundane, to lethal, to bizarre. If spilled onto the floor it should either spawn a wormhole, melt the floor, catch fire, light the entire room on fire, do nothing, etc. Edited November 24, 2021 by Marlon P.
NerdyVampire Posted November 23, 2021 Posted November 23, 2021 Interesting concept. I certainly wouldn't mind some disruption in this field. I love that you can die from being colorblind xD Love the overclock option for saving time in return for higher risk. I'd definitely use it.
Marlon P. Posted November 24, 2021 Author Posted November 24, 2021 Thank you! I've edited the OP to resolve an inconsistency between whether or not the rift's state or the generator's state is what affects resource gain. They both mutually do so.
Captain Gecko Posted November 27, 2021 Posted November 27, 2021 That sounds great! But I've always thought that the anomalist's job was... Well, to analyze anomalies, the things that Xenoarchs pull off, plus investingating antag-related abnormal business, IE Technomancer or revenant stuff. Also, from what I've got, what we harvest then is mostly materials, making the Anomalist just a miner with extra dangers, or items that provide "research boosts" which right now are not really needed, because you can just set up a handful of Tech Processors in RnD faster than the Anomalist can gear up and reach level 6-8 in all fields in a matter of minutes. I'm not against implementing this, but it should be of an alternate activity Anomalists could engage in rather than a full replacement, because I feel like this would only make the Anomalist even more useless than it already is.
Marlon P. Posted November 27, 2021 Author Posted November 27, 2021 (edited) 4 hours ago, Captain Gecko said: Well, to analyze anomalies, the things that Xenoarchs pull off, There is cross-over. Ill have to edit the OP to make that clear. The xenoarch has artifacts and a method to determine if theyre "extraordinary" theyre placed on a rift to see how it interacts with it. 4 hours ago, Captain Gecko said: plus investingating antag-related abnormal business, IE Technomancer or revenant stuff. Thats still stuff the anomalist does! this is a rehaul of its core gameplay loop. 4 hours ago, Captain Gecko said: just a miner with extra dangers, or items that provide "research boosts" which right now are not really needed, because you can just set up a handful of Tech Processors in RnD faster than the Anomalist can gear up and reach level 6-8 in all fields in a matter of minutes. This rehaul is meant to be attached to my original overhaul of RnD to what for the sake of brevity I'll call v1.8, which changes the entire approach to research to a "tech tree". The goal is that the anomalists' work boosts RnDs v1.8 efforts. If for some reason 1.8 is denied, this and xenoarch is still possible, it would just fall to that criticism you mentioned of being redundant. In which case I think the core loop would still be fun, since as you mentioned its a more exciting miner, and miner is pretty staffed. Thank you for the response! Edited November 27, 2021 by Marlon P.
Captain Gecko Posted November 28, 2021 Posted November 28, 2021 That explains some more things, then, thanks. One last thing, also... While you count on having Xenoarch and Anomalist as separate jobs (which I highly approve of), do you count on having workers in these jobs being able to do the other's job? IE if the nescessity arises an Anomalist going out to pull out anomalies/artifacts from the ground, and/or Xenoarchs investigating rifts? Also, having these jobs being 1 slot is... I think that's a little small. I don't know about the NBT map, but as far as the NSS Aurora goes, the Xenoarcheology airlock contains 3 voidsuit (and 2 other older "excavation suits" near the maintenance airlock right under the atrium). I don't expect to see 5 of them, but perhaps raising the job slot to two might be a tad better. These jobs can be a bit lonely sometimes, especially when taking into account that going out and doing, well, the job, can sometime last more than an hour depending of the site (don't know how long the system you envision could take, but I assume that it won't be a five minute affair!) Leaving the possibility of having a second Anomalist and/or Xenoarch would be for the better... This, and, well, considering how hazardous the jobs are, it's generally safer to have someone by your side to pick you up if you get zapped by an ancient alien engine of death or something.
Marlon P. Posted November 28, 2021 Author Posted November 28, 2021 15 hours ago, Captain Gecko said: One last thing, also... While you count on having Xenoarch and Anomalist as separate jobs (which I highly approve of), do you count on having workers in these jobs being able to do the other's job? IE if the nescessity arises an Anomalist going out to pull out anomalies/artifacts from the ground, and/or Xenoarchs investigating rifts? Another great question with something I didn't expand on in the OP! Thank you! An extraordinary artifact, which would have strange abilities and powers, would definitely be something the anomalist could play around with before they are satisfied and ship it off. The reverse could be true as well if the rifts coughed up some artifacts for the xenoarch to investigate. I only paused on that mechanic because Evidence Fragments are placed on roundstart, and some knowledge requires characters to recognize the artifact and know that it's here from "rumors" they know at roundstart. But like I told another poster, having "minor" artifacts that aren't the big ones they get at round-start would still be fun to do so I will add to the OP sometime how the xenoarch can go with the anomalist. I personally feel that physically using the Generator should be something only the anomalist can do, but that's not a hill I'd die on. 15 hours ago, Captain Gecko said: These jobs can be a bit lonely sometimes, especially when taking into account that going out and doing, well, the job I felt that strongly and that's how cooperation and having it impact RnD's research speed were important things for me to include. The xenoarch has such a strong emphasis on social interaction that part of me worries that adding 2 in there would have them wrap up their investigations pretty fast. But this could be adjusted. The anomalist, who's job mechanically does follow that of a shaft miner, does have a radio and the Generator only needs 1 user. However their job doesn't "cap" like the xenoarch does (who runs out of artifacts) since the benefits they provide the Research Tree stacks perpetually. So I think having 2 slots would be fine to start with. No major project is implemented and then kept the same forever, and I assume that the job slots will be tweaked over time as we discover better ways of handling these jobs. It's just my personal assumptions on the 1slot / 2slot dynamic.
Marlon P. Posted June 1, 2022 Author Posted June 1, 2022 Is there possible interest in this now that NBT is out?
Marlon P. Posted June 2, 2022 Author Posted June 2, 2022 Oh fantastic! You're the bomb. Ill keep my peepers peepin on the github.
Marlon P. Posted June 2, 2022 Author Posted June 2, 2022 I dont this this specific suggestion on the git; hopefully in the future.
Wildkins Posted June 3, 2022 Posted June 3, 2022 I haven't touched Anomalists quite yet in that branch; my approach to Xenoarch is rather all-encompassing (because the underlying code is awful, ancient, and literally broken) -- but a lot of what you've written is what I had in mind for 'anomalies' in the new system, though of course I hadn't quite figured out the nitty-gritty yet. I'm hoping to get the entire system to a minimum PR-able state in the next couple weeks, but my ability to actually gauge time required to deliver a minimum viable product are, at best, terrible
Marlon P. Posted June 3, 2022 Author Posted June 3, 2022 (edited) Oh i understand now! I get you. It sounds like its a pain to update this legacy code to something that works. Good luck with it!!! There is also the xenoarch suggestion, which you might find interesting for its method of making scavenger hunt for getting to the artifacts themselves. Edited June 3, 2022 by Marlon P.
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