Pedantic Posted November 6, 2022 Posted November 6, 2022 So. As with all of my posts, I have to say that I am a digital dumbass, and do not understand anything at all about coding, sprite design, or any of that important work that keeps our string of spaghetti and duct tape of a server together. So anything I suggest may not be possible in the code, or could cause horrific unintended consequences. Right, disclaimer out of the way, time to theory craft. So, as we all know, Meteor is the meme mode. Its pure PVE, which essentially is Extended with extra steps. If you like Extended, you probably hate Meteor because your RP gets interrupted by about forty tons of gravel. If you like Secret, you probably hate Meteor because there's no player throwing said gravel that you can beat with the nearest blunt object. So, I've got a few ideas to maybe address at least the Secret player's concerns, since I figure the Extended player just wants to get back to flirting in the Bar. Firstly: Allow the new Armaments to target Asteroid Swarms. Before, we really only had the shields and hull as a way to interact with the rocks. With the new armament system, we can extend that to shooting rock swarms, which in turn would require more of Command, Ops, and Engineering to keep the point defense going. This helps a lot with the problem of Meteor either being completely ignore-able with enough shields, or devastatingly fast if we have no Engineering. In addition, it expands on our current starscape system, by giving the swarms paths they might follow, or maybe spawning A LOT of them that the Horizon then has to navigate or suffer unintended perforation, giving more control of the situation, and making it less of a literal 'rocks fall, everyone dies' problem. Secondly: Put in up to two on-station antags. This one's a bit more complicated, and could be shuffled into a hybrid mode instead (similar to borer's vs. bughunt). While the above solves the problem of Command, Ops, and Engineering having nothing to do during Meteor besides react, the rest of the crew basically sits around waiting to see if they get a new rock garden. So, add in a few traitors or lings, and let them know the Rock is coming for a visit in their antag intro. Suddenly, a lot of areas of the ship that are otherwise not that interesting to an antag, or might not see much use even if they are, will see more action as ship damage mounts, while giving Medical, Service, and Sec something to be paranoid about. The Longbow is having issues reloading? Oh, its because half the loaders are killing the other half. Shields are looking a bit dim after the main gun fired, and ISD is chattering about a masked man throwing bombs? Wonder if those are connected, and if we have enough time to fix it before the next wave? It adds an element the rest of the crew can interact with, while serving as a way to force the Bridge to communicate and cooperate with the rest of the crew. Thirdly: Maybe make random meteor storms or 'bluespace debris' a semi-common event? Short warning period to allow the crew to get the guns up, or hunker down if there's no gunners. followed by a short blitz to deal with or offer opportunities for more play. Okay, screed done. I don't have the stones for any more puns, granite if you give me some malachite time, I could come up with some more.
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