Subset Games Forum

This this THIS!

Man this would be awesome, especially if it would have some kind of mini quests, like you have story progressing as you visit rooms of a derelict base, you find clues and switches and stuff, and you have buttons to press, and awful stuff happens, and so on. Maybe a ship comes to orbit and you have to fight him and he blocks your teleporters from getting your crew off surface, while they sufocate there, so you're on time limit, or you can only beam them up/down in a single room, but you have to do your quest in the other part of the base, and you set up a self destruct system, and have to run away fast... etc etc. So many possibilities, really, and so much more fun. This would feel even more roguelike then

A straight up system for an away team exploration would be easy. Just use the same code that you use for ships. However, that would be boring as hell. The proper way to do this would be as an expansion of the crew system in general. Put in a system for crew equipment. Let me issue a rifle to my fighters. Let me assign a man to be a medic. Let me have an engineer that can weld a door shut to give me time for my hacker to access the computer. If current boarding mechanics are the only thing used, then it becomes a matter of just who has the better crew.

Aerowind, it would not be boring if you'd have activities like quests in rooms, for example, you enter a room, and then a window with text pops, describing what you find, and what your choices are. Think Star Trek (TNG or OS) - you beam aboard a station, find signs of struggle, noone alive, find a piece of goo on the floor and then you fing a dog hiding in the ventillation shaft. Then you have options what to do - fix computers to find out about personal logs, study the goo, signs of struggle, what caused it, what kind of weaponry was used, etc etc.

Having good crew might help, but then again, you can add blue options for having say, small crew, or only zoltan/engi ("weak") crew, or having no mantis/rockmen/crystalmen with you in the boarding party to balance that. Adding puzzles may also help - for example, if you could figure out the puzzle, you'd avoid a very hard battle, like, if you figure out how to boot up the derelict ship AI, you can later make it put out fires so you dont have to fight a rockman in a ship on fire, or you can make it shut the doors so that he cannot chase you.

It wouldnt require a crew equipment system to be fun out-of-the-box. However, of course it would be way better if we could have basic crew equipment like +1 armor or +1 damage or one-time-healing, and if we could move our guys around the room without ordering bizzare movement command patterns using other rooms.

Hissatsu wrote:Aerowind, it would not be boring if you'd have activities like quests in rooms, for example, you enter a room, and then a window with text pops, describing what you find, and what your choices are. Think Star Trek (TNG or OS) - you beam aboard a station, find signs of struggle, noone alive, find a piece of goo on the floor and then you fing a dog hiding in the ventillation shaft. Then you have options what to do - fix computers to find out about personal logs, study the goo, signs of struggle, what caused it, what kind of weaponry was used, etc etc.

Having good crew might help, but then again, you can add blue options for having say, small crew, or only zoltan/engi ("weak") crew, or having no mantis/rockmen/crystalmen with you in the boarding party to balance that. Adding puzzles may also help - for example, if you could figure out the puzzle, you'd avoid a very hard battle, like, if you figure out how to boot up the derelict ship AI, you can later make it put out fires so you dont have to fight a rockman in a ship on fire, or you can make it shut the doors so that he cannot chase you.

It wouldnt require a crew equipment system to be fun out-of-the-box. However, of course it would be way better if we could have basic crew equipment like +1 armor or +1 damage or one-time-healing, and if we could move our guys around the room without ordering bizzare movement command patterns using other rooms.

Can any of this be done with the current code? It was my understanding that this would need more then just modding. That this would require rewriting the game.

Rewriting, but not much of it. From programmer point of view, we add a new kind of ship - an "event". It has custom picture and custom room placement. It may or may not have hull integrity. Each of its rooms may or may not be a valid target for ship's weapons, sensors or crew teleporter (like you can only beam at the entrance outside the facility, beacuse something inside jams the signal). And it has triggers when your crew enters room, either automatical or manual (have to hit a button "Interact" next to a crew member, similar how you trigger "lockdown"). This pops up a typical text box with options.

I'd say, to get basic functionality, not much should be done. Then, to get advanced functionality (enemies with custom AI that, say, lay in ambush at certain room, or system spawning systems, for example, when you enter trap room, a door system is upgraded so that you cant go out at will, and weapons system is upgraded so that station's weapons start firing at your ship).

It really is well inside current game's mechanics, so yes, i think its not very hard to implement. But this has to be done by game authors, modders cannot do much here.

I think the away mission text format is fine, but I should be able to pick who leaves the ship. I hate having a full crew and my lead wep's or shield man dies from a virus, leaving all the rock dummies clueless.