Cyclops Emergency Teleporter
EvilSmoo
Join Date: 2008-02-16 Member: 63662Members
Join Date: 2008-02-16 Member: 63662Members
This allows players to completely screw up, and yet not be completely screwed. Losing a Cyclops in Kelp Forest would be simple- swim back out and repair it. Losing a Cyclops in ALZ? That's the "screw this, reload the last save" scenario. Which, IMO, is the kind of thing that should be avoided in a SP exploration game.
1: Disable complete destruction of Cyclops. What is currently "lethal" damage just puts the Cyclops into a non-functional state, requiring repairs to bring it back online, but items inside are preserved (though I suppose the plants and any aquariums might all get killed...)
2: MFR addition, on top of MFR, or built into the roof. Requires decently deep water. When triggered with a large amount of power, it teleports a Cyclops from any location to above the teleporter, tilts it back upright, and repairs it to water-tight. Then you can repair it the rest of the way, drive ALL the way back out, and try it again, but hopefully more carefully this time.
And... that probably wouldn't even be super-expensive to program? All the game does is remove a distant entity, move any stuff out of the way, paste the entity back in at your safe base, and modify it a little to not instantly die again. No animations, just reuse the glowy effect from building subs, and the player is inside the MFR watching when it does this.
Or... if you wind up back at base in a minisub, and you'd really like your Cyclops to not be at the other end of the map...
1: Disable complete destruction of Cyclops. What is currently "lethal" damage just puts the Cyclops into a non-functional state, requiring repairs to bring it back online, but items inside are preserved (though I suppose the plants and any aquariums might all get killed...)
2: MFR addition, on top of MFR, or built into the roof. Requires decently deep water. When triggered with a large amount of power, it teleports a Cyclops from any location to above the teleporter, tilts it back upright, and repairs it to water-tight. Then you can repair it the rest of the way, drive ALL the way back out, and try it again, but hopefully more carefully this time.
And... that probably wouldn't even be super-expensive to program? All the game does is remove a distant entity, move any stuff out of the way, paste the entity back in at your safe base, and modify it a little to not instantly die again. No animations, just reuse the glowy effect from building subs, and the player is inside the MFR watching when it does this.
Or... if you wind up back at base in a minisub, and you'd really like your Cyclops to not be at the other end of the map...
Comments
Cyclops is ALREADY effectively immortal as long as the game has saves. Save before ALZ, and if the Cyclops is going to blow up, reload and try again.
They devised some neat sub-dying animations. Which will be wasted entirely if people just alt-F4 if the sub starts to blow up, because they'll have to spend time salvaging the thing, possible in the middle of possibly hostile territory, maybe even while burning, and trucking it back to the surface. And then more time re-building everything that was inside.
Versus the loss of a few minutes since the last save.
You seem to have not read the OP.
I'm not sure how to deal with the player dying, really. People just die and respawn unless they're in hardcore. The Cyclops dying is far more of a reason to reload a save instead of interacting at all with the Cyclops-wreck system. Putting in a teleporter to let the player flee would make a lot of sense, though.
My idea was for a base device that pulls in the Cyclops from anywhere (the game is not MP and/or big enough to make this unfair submarine teleportation).
And... even if players DO use it to drag their Cyclops around, would that be a bad thing? Load up your minisub and any stuff, use the base teleporter to get yourself over, and then go to the top MFR and teleport your Cyclops in. Use a bunch of power, then hop in Cyclops and go about your business. You could say that this large-scale teleporter kills everything inside, and replace all the plants and fish with dead versions, and use that as an excellent reason why the player can't use it to ride around. The personal teleporter is friendlier to organics, though smaller scale. And killing everything inside would make sure the decision to teleport the Cyclops is not made too lightly.
That would probably be more common than the Cyclops meeting an untimely demise at the hands of something big, or getting pecked to death, or simply running out of power. But, instead of just frustrating the player, or pushing them to simply reload an earlier save instead of dealing with it, the teleporter would allow them to pull back the Cyclops repair it if needed, and then resume playing.
The player DOES lose food, fish, some time, location, and base power. This isn't some MMO where players need to be penalized to make the rest feel better, it should be balanced to be an entertaining SP experience, rather than a grind. Unless the player wants to start up hardcore, then you can disable whatever and remove player progress, because apparently some people like that sort of thing.
It wipes out all the planters, so you have to resupply from a base for extended trips, instead of just getting infinite supplies from the planters. I can only assume that bases and Cyclops filter out fertilizer from the water or something. (Let's not overthink that.)
AND- if a dead Cyclops can be brought back and repaired, it provides MORE interaction than just a few really interesting moments that result in the player going "welp, THAT just happened" and reloading their last save. Because really, even if the wreck is in an accessible location, it's a LOT of scrap to move, plus however many planters, lockers, and all the contents of both. And if the wreck is sitting in lava, with a huge carnivore wandering around, only a very few special snowflakes will bother. I know a few people that might just quit the game and uninstall, instead.
And: a Cyclops dock above a MFR could double as a boarding dock, as well.
2. OP
3. It doesn't take too long to go back and get it if you know your way around
4. Happened to me to day but my clcyops was near the LRZ cave didn't take long to get it with my Seamoth
Thank you for almost responding competently. They're not separate ideas, though.
Single player games ARE nearly always overpowered in some way. Even if it's just that the player has the best tactics (well, hopefully). Either that, or random chance decides who wins, at which point you might as well not even bother playing.
I can't even think of any game that has the player with no "OP" advantage, aside from ones that depend on random luck instead.
It should be about fun. And anticipating as many situations as possible. From somehow managing to drown in safe shallows, to losing a Cyclops and minisub in ALZ. Some players need the hand, some might like the convenience, and the rest don't HAVE to construct the thing if they would rather pretend like playing a SP exploration game in hardcore matters.
Oh I did. I just think that an emergency teleport to get the PLAYER out of the Cyclops would be more fun and fit the overall feel of the game than something that teleports the whole dang sub.
The balance in time for activation could be very important, teleporting a single person could be quick and teleporting the sub could take upwards of 10-20+ seconds. So not only do you have to manually engage the teleporter, you have to also actively run away or repair to the best of your ability at full speed as all hell is breaking loose around the ship. It could definitely create some interesting risk/reward scenarios. Reminds me of something out of Star Trek where the warp drives come online right at the crucial moment.
What's more, the game will automatically save once you enter a base, cyclops or lifepod. People will not be able to save-scum except in specific circumstances, and also know how to alt-f4 out of the game.
I gotta say I do see a problem with a forced autosave and no backups because of the sheer amount of glitches I run into. I've had my Prawn fall straight through the terrain many many times and only noticed it on my way back out from a base. I just had it happen 3 times today while at my lost river base. So I end up having to reload the last save. If they do autosaves they need at least 1 manual save and a few backup autosave slots (like the last 3). Cause unintentional things can still happen, and being locked into a glitched scenario sucks. Even with 1 autosave, those who want to savescum can just backup that version of the save manually, all it really accomplishes is inconveniencing players. If a person wants to do a pure run they'll do it, if someone wants to scum it they will, and there's nothing wrong with that because it's a single player game.
It's mostly only needed if a Reaper or other huge monster smashes the Cyclops in a non-recoverable area.
I don't mean a teleport that works while the player is in the sub, and maybe not even while the sub is still functional. This is to retrieve a "destroyed" sub and rebuild it to critical health, with all the grow beds, lockers, and other stuff intact. That takes the "sub destroyed" function, and makes it usable, rather than making it something that many people would WANT to save-scum out of.
Getting the Cyclops for the first time is a game milestone. You gain the ability to operate remotely for extended periods of time, and move around significant amounts of resources. Many players put a lot of lockers and grow beds, and maybe other decorations and such. Having that get smashed would be past annoying, to the point where I would not personally want to invest the time recovering. I quite literally have better things to do with my time.
If I can instead get, say, an automatic quest on Cyclops destruction, that gives the player the ability to recall the Cyclops and salvage it back to usability, that would be interesting gameplay. Sure, it might take some resources, and have to replant the crops, but it would not be nearly as annoying.
Maybe you need to scan a warper, both live and deactivated (Disease Research Facility), and both slave and master warpgates, or add a terminal which provides the blueprint, preferably to the Primary Containment Facility.
Once that is done, maybe it could be implemented as an upgrade for the Cyclops dock when/if it's added.
And as mentioned it should cost a rather large amount of power, spatial displacement aint cheap yo.
Potentially huge clipping issues, and if the Cyclops dies in lava or something, getting there would be unreasonably hard.
then the deployable would lift it up to a safe spot nearby, you wouldn't have to place it right on the hull, just drop it within 50 meters or something
Think like a game engine. How do you QUANTIFY, in specific game terms that the engine can use, EXACTLY what qualifies as a safe spot? For the MFR thing, you can just have a huge deploy box that fails if stuff is in the way.
An on-site version could be similar, but there are definitely places where trying to build stuff like that would be very dangerous. If a Sea Dragon just killed your Cyclops on top of a ROOM FULL OF LAVA, where exactly do you propose to build this deployable?
This is why I think that building it back at a safe place is a good idea. Requires hand-waving about teleportation, but IMO good for balancing and gameflow.