Away mission suggestions

[michellebaren]

 

Away mission tweak suggestions

 

Underground Outpost 45 (aka UOS45)

This one's honestly my favorite away mission. It's fairly balanced as is and has lots to do already. However it really lacks backstory. My only suggestion for this one is.. adding clues, be it in the form of notes/diaries of what happened to the previous inhabitants. I know there's gibs and alien walls and such in the caves but eh.. It really doesn't make sense seeing there's no signs of struggle at all on the inside of the outpost.

 

With whatever backstory is added to this one I'd like for it to be different than Moon Outpost 19 and not have any relation to Xenomorphs at all.

 

Black Market Packers

This one's neat in concept. A crashed ship that belonged to a bunch of black market traders before they met their demise..

 

One of the first things I noticed wrong with this map was despite its past crew having dealings with the Black Market and trading in general, the loot.. really sucked. And the lack of loot also made no sense as well as they were.. traders.

 

My suggestion for this map:

 

•  

  Add randomized contents to some of the crates on the ship. Contents could be:

• Small amount of rare refined minerals [moderate chance] This could be Gold, Diamond, Silver, Uranium, Bananium.

Rare hats/clothing [moderate chance]

Rare seeds [moderate chance]

non-lethal Syndicate gear such as Chameleon Jumpsuits/Projectors [low chance].

Additionally, add in a low chance for one of the large crates in the ships cargo hold to either be a Ninja Crate or a Wizard Crate (I know there isn't one of these already but it'd be easy to make). Chance for this could be 5% and it should be impossible for both to spawn in the same round.

 

 

Listening Post

This one's another nice concept but it's so small it's kind of hard adding to it. About all I can think of is adding artifacts to it if they're not on it already and making the rarer artifacts spawn at a higher frequency here.

 

Additionally, may want to make it so the Gun on this map actually spawns inside the safe too rather than on top of it..

 

Moon Outpost 19

The only addition I can really think of for this one is.. you may have guessed it, add in a Facehugger. It could spawn right next to the Queen.

 

Balance wise, all I can think of for now is making it so alien NPC's can't kill each other with their projectiles.

 

Challenge

This one actually needs some balance changes made to it. Displaced wall girders make it too easy dealing with the Emitters and NPC's here. What was initially a daunting and legitimately challenging away mission has been turned in to: Walk in > Block Emitters with displaced Wall Girders > Try and get the right pathing with the NPC's so they walk on a space tile and kill themselves > Collect loot.

 

The risk has mostly been thrown out the window and there is nothing left but the reward.

 

 

• Make it so Emitter's (or at least only Energy Cannon's) can fire through wall girders or at least destroy them with a few hits.

• Either remove the space tiles from inside the ship or swap out the reinforced windows for unbreakable ones (like the ones that are on the Syndicate Supply Depot)

Allow NPC's to push wall girders and maybe even destroy them should they be used against them to block their pathing.

 

 

This may seem like a lot of changes to ramp up the difficulty but it's honestly needed considering the loot you can get from this away mission I'd say it's justified.

 

I'd honestly like to see this one removed due to the firepower obtainable here, but I'm sure some people would dislike that.

 

[Spacemanspark]

 

 

Challenge

This one actually needs some balance changes made to it. Displaced wall girders make it too easy dealing with the Emitters and NPC's here. What was initially a daunting and legitimately challenging away mission has been turned in to: Walk in > Block Emitters with displaced Wall Girders > Try and get the right pathing with the NPC's so they walk on a space tile and kill themselves > Collect loot.

 

The risk has mostly been thrown out the window and there is nothing left but the reward.

 

 

• Make it so Emitter's (or at least only Energy Cannon's) can fire through wall girders or at least destroy them with a few hits.

• Either remove the space tiles from inside the ship or swap out the reinforced windows for unbreakable ones (like the ones that are on the Syndicate Supply Depot)

Allow NPC's to push wall girders and maybe even destroy them should they be used against them to block their pathing.

 

 

This may seem like a lot of changes to ramp up the difficulty but it's honestly needed considering the loot you can get from this away mission I'd say it's justified.

 

I'd honestly like to see this one removed due to the firepower obtainable here, but I'm sure some people would dislike that.

I wouldn't mind if this singular away mission was removed.

 

[Fj45]

Yeah, the away mission need some work, having a facehuger may be a bad idea, rounds could be turned into xeno by idiots rather easily.

[Shadeykins]

 

Challenge is pretty damn difficult even with girders, and one wrong step gets you killed immediately. It's also impossible to kill the nuke-ops without directly putting yourself in the line of fire, which means there's inherent risk. If you fudge the girders you're also auto-dead as you'll get SMG'd to death really fast. Either way getting through here takes a good, dedicated 30 minutes or so. This is not to mention that a 50 stack of metal is REQUIRED, and most people aren't going to bring a 50 metal stack unless they're seasoned gateway vets (In which case no amount of extra turrets, or NPC's will stop them anyways).

 

Making the cannons shoot through wall girders will legitimately make the map impossible. I'm not sure if you've gone through it before, but there's laser turrets that take you to crit in 2 shots and they are 100% unavoidable without girders (Not to mention they're just renamed emitters.. Which would wreak all sorts of havoc with on-station emitters).

 

The only person I've seen pull through the challenge map is myself and Ivan Ooze, and Ivan Ooze has robusted the Syndicate station in space before, so.. I'm not sure how the gateway map itself is really that much of a problem considering only very clever/skilled players can beat it anyways. Anyone who self-antags with it is going to get robusted by the admins as it is, so it's really only trophy gear.

 

If you've been seeing a lot of someone walking around in nuke-ops gear recently during non nuke-ops rounds.. Hi. That'd be me, and I can tell you with certainty that despite finishing the challenge map 7-8 times, I've still died on it (At least three times, and had my ass saved two times. If I didn't get lucky, that's almost a 50% death rate), and witnessed at least 20 other people or so die on it as well.

 

As for UO45, I personally find that that mission completely pointless and boring.

 

There's really nothing worthwhile on it that you can't already get on station, and there's no NPC's to fight. If it had some sort of unique loot I would be totally cool with that, but it really doesn't and it's a major bummer. The best thing it has is an engineering hardsuit, which.. C'mon? Who cares, really. If you're there, you already have an EVA Suit.

 

Said gateway becomes completely irrelevant, uninteresting, possesses no challenge and no reward, and even if it gets "back story", after going there once there is literally /never/ going to be any reason to go there whatsoever.

 

Moon outpost I don't see why you'd disable the alien's ability to friendly fire (That'd be snowflake code anyways I think), not to mention the loot on that station is subpar, and consists of a syndicate pistol and a relatively useless pump shotgun that will get taken away by sec anyways. Adding in a facehugger means we'll just get xeno'd on station from some greytide idiot who decides to obliviously run into the gateway (which happens every round) the moment the doors open.

 

As for the pistol/safe thing. Please no, because nobody going in the gateway is EVER issued a weapon no matter how hard they try, how many palms they grease, or how biased the command team is towards them. I've had rounds where I known the Captain, HoS, and NT Rep very, very well (And they are all aware that I'm a no-nonsense seasoned gateway spelunker) and I still can't get a damn gun. You absolutely need that gun in the door, and need hairtrigger reflexes to grab it and unload otherwise you are just flat-out dead.

 

 

Looking at the masterfile there's a lot of "away" missions that never, ever show up via gateway. Making the current missions impossibly hard will only deter use of the gateway entirely, as a death in the gateway may as well equal being gibbed (Nobody will save you, or even go through 99.99% of the time).

 

Personally I'd prefer to see more gateway missions, rather than sucking the fun out of the current ones/removing things.

 

[acme220]

 

So I've been tinkering with the away missions for a little while, trying to get my head around DM and fix a few things about the maps that just bug me. So far, my current list of tweaks basically amounts to:

 

Listening post:

I've added some ores to the map, giving people another chance at getting some tasty minerals if they don't mind hunting and hauling them back, as well as a mini-asteroid used as an unfortunate clown smuggler's secret stash. Seeing as clown planet isn't in the rotation currently, this at least gives the clown a glimmer of hope at a HONK. There's also that mysteriously absent sketchkin silencer added back in, because I'm a sucker for continuity, and a balloon the demoralized agent was using as a punching bag. (Hey, there were boxing gloves there already, so why not?)

 

Challenge:

Definitely a work in progress, but I'm redesigning the bottom area to remove the space tiles and open it up a little more. There's also a few unfortunate souls scattered throughout more dangerous areas of the arena, carrying some slightly more useful weaponry for any expedition carrying more than a few members. And, because I'm still a continuity freak, I've replaced the deathsquad armor with a syndie strike team suit. Having an NT hardsuit there makes no damn sense.

 

Beach:

Let's face it, who actually likes Beach? I couldn't see too much to do offhand, but now there's somewhat of a challenge to get to the bar. All the crabs hate you.

Definitely needs more work. If I could figure out a little more about the coding aspect of things, I'd add a horrible pun wizard who holds some half-decent loot, but that's a long shot at the moment.

 

Station Collision:

Not actually in the rotation yet, but a really interesting looking map. There's already a nice amount of backstory lying around the area, but very little in the way of challenge if you avoid the xenobio room. So I've removed the infinite energy SMES and powered every APC down. To get back, you'd need to assemble a generator (with parts conveniently scattered everywhere) or repair the solars and get power to the gateway. There's also a little tweak to the backstory, adding in a conspicuously missing syndie corpse with a chameleon jumpsuit. Shouldn't be too hard to get if you dispatch experiment 35b.

 

Space Battle:

Another one not currently in rotation, purely because some joker put a BSA console on it. Very little changed about this, except a few planned randomizations for the end of level loot. Currently, there's three crates of exosuit-specific loot that I'm thinking of changing up a little, giving it a high chance of spawning things like pacifiers, drills, clamps and the like, and lower chances of spawning anything up to a missile rack or a teleporter.

As for the BSA console, it's a definite chucklefuck magnet. Which is why, instead of removing it, I was considering modifying it to have a roughly 5-10% chance of hitting the station, a 50% chance of missing, and a 40% chance of blowing up in the user's face. Makes it a semi-plausible way for desperate antags to complete their objective, but a daunting enough prospect to hopefully drive away anyone that thinks blowing a chunk out of the station is a good idea.

 

[Fj45]

 

One solution for "boring" gateway locations:

 

Add even more (some may just be grassy meadows or desert) but make it possible to reset the gateway two or three times. Maybe something for research.

 

[michellebaren]

 

Yes I have went through it a few times. I've seen many people make it through the map so far.

 

It's also impossible to kill the nuke-ops without directly putting yourself in the line of fire, which means there's inherent risk.

 

Out of the 7 NPC's there only one of them is a Nuke Op. I do not believe killing one of them legitimately makes up for cheesing the other six.

 

Moon outpost I don't see why you'd disable the alien's ability to friendly fire (That'd be snowflake code anyways I think)

 

How exactly would this be "snowflake code"? All that suggestion was for, was to prevent people from yet again exploiting the NPC's bad AI and forcing them to kill the aliens themselves. There is nothing snowflakey about this. In fact, all it does is increases the challenge by hopefully making people fight them as intended.

 

Adding in a facehugger means we'll just get xeno'd on station from some greytide idiot who decides to obliviously run into the gateway (which happens every round) the moment the doors open.

 

Interesting that you think a Greytider would be able to pull this off but not the challenge map.. These Alien's, when fought and not exploited actually hurt quite a bit. The Hunter's for example break bones in just a couple hits.

 

As for the pistol/safe thing. Please no, because nobody going in the gateway is EVER issued a weapon no matter how hard they try, how many palms they grease, or how biased the command team is towards them. I've had rounds where I known the Captain, HoS, and NT Rep very, very well (And they are all aware that I'm a no-nonsense seasoned gateway spelunker) and I still can't get a damn gun. You absolutely need that gun in the door, and need hairtrigger reflexes to grab it and unload otherwise you are just flat-out dead.

 

You don't need a weapon for that away mission. You do need a drill/pickaxe and those also happen to have a force of 15. If for some reason that is not enough for you, bring a friend and medical supplies!

 

Personally I'd prefer to see more gateway missions, rather than sucking the fun out of the current ones/removing things.

 

All most of these suggestions are for is improving actual challenge and loot on these maps. I do not see how it is sucking the fun out of them. You will actually have to fight Syndicates with the proposed changes in order to get the goodies. If you like actual challenge then I believe you should like this.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

Out of the 7 NPC's there only one of them is a Nuke Op. I do not believe killing one of them legitimately makes up for cheesing the other six.

 

The other ones have SMG's and will kill you really damn fast, considering you will have to fight 2-3 at once. Furthermore, two have e-swords and energy shields. There is no way to NOT "cheese" those two.

 

How exactly would this be "snowflake code"? All that suggestion was for, was to prevent people from yet again exploiting the NPC's bad AI and forcing them to kill the aliens themselves. There is nothing snowflakey about this. In fact, all it does is increases the challenge by hopefully making people fight them as intended.

Anything, anywhere, anytime can friendly fire. It'd be snowflake code because you'd need to specifically flag NPC xeno's to be unable to produce friendly fire without affecting player-controlled ones. It'd be a lot of code for little benefit.

 

Adding in a facehugger means we'll just get xeno'd on station from some greytide idiot who decides to obliviously run into the gateway (which happens every round) the moment the doors open.

 

They don't kill you once you drop to the ground. You can get infected and explode during crit, all the larva has to do is wait until it grows up, become a queen, and waltz on through the gateway with a bunch of huggers. This is made even easier by the fact that someone almost /always/ cuts a hole in the wall leading to maintenance.

 

You don't need a weapon for that away mission. You do need a drill/pickaxe and those also happen to have a force of 15. If for some reason that is not enough for you, bring a friend and medical supplies!

 

The shortest route there is to actually circle around via space, and it's almost guaranteed that your friend (or friends) will be flung into space. Considering that it takes 20-30 minutes to crack safes, I would opt for removing the safe entirely and keeping the gun on a table. During other missions guns are LITERALLY laying on the floor, I'm not quite sure why this one in particular has the intent of leaving you there for 20 minutes using a stethoscope, when you could already be doing exactly that on the ruskie station (Which yes, has a safe with a gun).

 

All most of these suggestions are for is improving actual challenge and loot on these maps. I do not see how it is sucking the fun out of them. You will actually have to fight Syndicates with the proposed changes in order to get the goodies. If you like actual challenge then I believe you should like this.

 

Making them impossibly hard is not making them fun. There is already inherent challenge in the fact that one wrong move will get you killed, and killed very, VERY quickly. As I said, dying in the gateway is more or less the same as being gibbed. You will never, EVER be saved, and the chances of someone else who's with you knowing what to do or how to get out is about nil. No amount of removing space tiles will solve anything, as players can just as easily have a girder wall they push forward 1-by-1 and just trap NPC's in place.

 

Can't crush them in space? Okay. I'll corner them with girders, and quickly pull the girder away only to push an energy cannon there instead. Same result, roughly the same amount of effort. Exact same risk. Exact same result, just takes more time... Remove the ability to move the energy cannons? Okay. I'll use reinforced glass (Since SMG's can't shoot through that anyways) and laser them to death. *shrugs*. Same thing with the aliens, assuming it ever gets coded for no friendly fire (Which would be a waste of time) I'd just use girders to shovel them back and pin them before taking the stuff.

 

Time is something we have VERY little of. I can't tell you the number of times I've entered the gateway only to hear "The emergency shuttle has been called", making the rewarding/difficult gateways take even more time than they do already will (as I said before) deter gateway use entirely. Despite the rewards you get from the gateway, I have seen pretty much next to no abuse of the rewards given... So I'm honestly not sure why you guys want to tamp down on how hard it is to get a hold of this stuff. Antags/traitors aren't going to waste time with the gateway to equip themselves since they have TC, so making antag-specific things (like the BS console which will get you banned hard) in the gateway is really, really moot.

 

No amount of anything is going to make people "fight fair and square" with the ridiculously fast ultra-robust never-miss NPC's. Why? Because they are stupid fast, stupidly accurate, and they will wreck your shit in a stand-up fight. Using alternative tactics and taking advantage of their inherent weaknesses is just.. The smart thing to do.

 

Again, I would prefer to see more variety in overall gateway missions rather than nerfing the hell out of the current ones (or making them ludicrously hard). If I wanted to be shot to death 99% of the time and sit the round out I would go to the syndicate station in space. Any rewards/contraband you get is almost always taken away by security, or if you get it signed off on by the HoS/Captain you don't really use it for anything but trophy as-is, because if you did it'd be self-antagging.

 

With that said, I am really unsure why anything currently in the gateway should be made harder to get/not be able to be taken at all.

 

Add more missions overall if you want to see syndicate challenge mission stuff less. More variety means a less chance of having that gateway pop up. The solution to balance things should always be to /add/. You should never go "What can I take away to make this fun?".

 

[nachomeep]

I fully support each of these ideas.