Gateway+telescience: alien world

[Midaychi]

 

Tl;dr - Merge telescience and gateway into one thing, that still has current functionality of both things, but has an exploration option and totally abusable ghost-respawning powers (though people that abuse it for meta and not roleplay can get locked out of the ability to do it, like a job ban).

 

 

If you merged telescience and the gateway into the same thing; a machine that can still go to the clown planet like normal, and still can function like the telescience console now, but has an additional mode.

 

On round start, there's a zlevel that gets randomized on roundstart in placement and arrangement and is surrounded by impassable mountains (or maybe has z-level transitions where you can visit more of the world? I dunno depends on how many zlevels you want to appropriate for this).

 

This world has a randomized unsimulated gas content (can't really be depleted but is immune from certain zas shenanigans), and is impossible to set on fire even if it has flammables in it (at least while the gas is on the world). I'm assuming that any world generated by this would be stable enough to not be able to be sparked into a raging inferno, even if its full of plasma and oxygen, due to space magic and maybe undiscovered xeno-gasses. You can, however, start forest fires, so you can troll smokey the xeno-bear.

 

The layout is also semi randomized. Some areas will be forested, others plains, some with neat things. Colours of such will be chosen from an array. Maybe certain sprites could be chosen from a list.

 

At least one area in it is a settled village, where ghosts can choose to spawn at. Basically, the spawn as npc command. There would be a number of them spawned at roundstart and maybe they'd slowly increase over time as ghost demand increased. Coming out of the town hut like in spore or something.

 

The species they spawn as has semi randomized abilities and disabilities compared to humans and has a somewhat humanoid shape, and the game picks a sprite for that species on roundstart from a list. Ostensibly there'd be a number of humanoid sprites made up for it.

 

Maybe one round they'd be slow like diona but breathe and heal from plasma, and find nitrogen toxic, and become hyperactive from drinking ethanol, etc.

 

From their side, they will be able to run around and talk and possibly go out and slaughter wildlife and trees and stuff. They can use that to make themselves clothes and construct junk and basically chill out as weird alien people.

 

Maybe they could have alchemy and/or light magic one round, be weird technophiles another, etc. Be swimming in artifacts. The main thing is they'd be stuck there on that planet, UNLESS:

 

Back on the station:

 

This is where the change comes in though; Through telegatewayscience merge, you can switch it into extreme range mode and try to solve a math puzzle to determine the gateway signature to alien planet. If you fail, you could potentially open up a gateway to space or the middle of a plasma giant instead.(but you wouldn't do that would you?)

 

If you succeed though, you can open up a gateway to said randomized on roundstart planet and investigate it. You'd have to be careful though because gas can go through the portal too. Also aliens. Aliens can go through the portal, though I don't know why they would want to.

 

Every round could be first contact, and all those dead ghosts could be studied. If you manage to figure out what gas content they breathe and what they eat, you could even hire them on to work nanotrasen jobs (though I'd expect them to be better at simple jobs than others. Whatever.)

 

Or you could go in there blasting lasers. Do horrifying deeds. Become their emperor? Abduct them for genetics experiments. Whatever floats your boat.

 

If the ghosts spawn as the aliens and start being super meta or showing a lack of an attempt to roleplay then they can probably get banned from doing it further. Like a job ban, but from spawning as aliens rather than a job.

 

[HereticChurch]

 

I really like this idea, but I don't think creating a semi-random player-controllable race/mob that breathes different air would be easy. I do like the thought of ghosts respawning as some indiginous village species and going around hunting on their own z-level. Perhaps on a 10-minute death timer like maint drones. Then you could have a small village growing, fighting off space bears and clubbing seals for their meat and crafting furs from tribbles... Perhaps the ability to build walls and other new things from wood... Just for something to do. And the whole first contact thing could have some real fun RP involved.

 

Just... the gases bit irks be slightly. I don't really want plasma or any other kind of gas other than standard air in this area. Gases scare me. Atmos scares me. Buck scares me.

 

[Fj45]

 

Been planning a similar thing, ditch the gateway and give most of its function to telesci, and have a proper debris field/space content for people to explore. Very far into the future maaaybe have proper adventure levels/away missions. Nothing else though, I don't think randomized content is possible due to lag and the extreme difficulty of coding a system that isn't buggy as hell.

 

New gasses are impossible and any custom gas stuff would be a bitch to map and code+laggy.

 

[Midaychi]

 

No man I meant, the same gasses we have but in a randomized percentages and content. Like one round could be 12% nitrogen and 80% plasma and 8% n2o, another might be 100% oxygen, etc, and just code in an exception for that specific map where the gas is unsimulated and can't be ignited or ZAS shinanegans'd with. As an ANTI-lag measure.

 

 

But whatever it could just be standard atmosphere too and that'd work.

 

Randomization is totally feasible though. Tg does it to a limited extent with their mining zlevel and caverns. It wouldn't be TRUE randomization. Just like, you paint specific tiles and areas on the map and the server places certain slightly randomly oriented premade stuff at those tiles and extents during startup.

 

[Fruerlund]

 

This is a very interesting topic which opens up a bunch of possibilities for new events. Primarily this provides possibilities for the whole crew to do expedition missions, where you can include all the departments, science for science, security for protection and so on. Additionally you can give the civilians something else to do other than to run around.

 

Now. This can also be used to remove some of that ambassador area that's taking space. If this were to be implemented what I would suggest was that the whole upper area of dorms is reconstructed into some sort of expedition central. I've tried to picture my ideas below, so you can see what I mean.

 

 

[Midaychi]

 

...Gateway... gateway... science.. stuff..

 

Yeah I like that actually. Reminds me of gatecrashing in eclipse phase, except maybe with less TITAN shenanigans. It kind of makes telescience more like goon's too; where the guinea pigs public can go to adventure beyond the veil.

 

[Fj45]

 

 

Eh, far easier to just ditch the useless gateway and give its features to telesci. I have some plans for that area anyway.

 

Nice bit of mapping though.