Lavaland

[onleavedontatme]

Bottom post of the previous page:

>you would've been able to see the presence of with mesons

Not sure what you mean? Mobs are still invisible with mesons, though I guess easier to see at visions edge. But yeah I said I'm open to reverting to mesons, I think I"ll just do it in another PR.

>Also pls buff the explorer armor it sucks now

It has better armour stats than the hardsuit and no slowdown.

The hardsuit is spaceproof. Meanwhile the explorer armor starts killing you if gibonite explodes.

Put some sealant in the miner vendor for like 1000 points that spaceproof it.

Gibtonite should not be causing vacuum

[Zilenan91]

Actually yeah the explorer suit should have the same bomb armor as the old hardsuit if it doesn't already so that miners can survive gibtonite if the fuck up in disarming it. It used to put them at like 1 health if they took a hit point blank

[onleavedontatme]

It has higher or equal armour in every category, and is fire/cold resistant all without slowdown. Can't go in space though.

[lumipharon]

Wait, if it has no slowdown at all isnt that rather good for like, powergamers and shit?

[Zilenan91]

Probably. It isn't spaceworthy though and miners don't have maint.

[lumipharon]

When has maint access ever been hard to get? Not while assmaint is on, that's for sure.

[TechnoAlchemist]

listen if people go miner, grab the suit and then don't mine i'll ban them and do us all a favor

[Incomptinence]

Eh I don't really care if they grab the suit and don't mine the hop basically just assumes mining full yo so the suit sits there unused forever.

[Anonmare]

Gibtonite causing vacuum is really bad. It even fucks over escaped prisoners since they have no healing, no hardsuit and no way of knowing the gibtonite is there.

Also the mining station needs a few more cameras, for both the outpost camera console and for the AI to know how many suits are missing from mining (I.E Rogue AIs being able to tell how many miners are out there and when they get back).
I'd also make the external outpost airlocks have no access restrictions so Lavaland-spawned players can steal the O2 tanks/hardsuits.

I'd also make a Syndicate ruin with some low-level loot for miners to enjoy/early illegal tech research. Like a small bunker with two dead Syndies, a syndi-toolbox, a camera bug, a security camera console and pirate radio intercoms. To make up for the fact that lavaland doesn't have static Syndicate tech spawns like the abandoned mining outpost on the asteroid.

[TheNightingale]

When a necropolis tendril dies, it instantly kills anything near it, sending them into a chasm (and deleting the body). As cool and thematic as it is, there should probably be a huge red message saying "IT'S GOING TO COLLAPSE RUN FOR YOUR LIVES".

Also, can the golems get backpacks of some sort? It's difficult to hold a resonator, scanner, mining satchel, lantern and pickaxe all at once.

[Super Aggro Crag]

lavaland fucking sucks for mining. should bring back old asteroid for mining and make a surveyor job for the bitchfags who actually like stumbling around in pitch blackness and hiding in a capsule for 3 days because of an asssssh storm

[onleavedontatme]

I think I'm gonna make a player poll about whether to keep lavaland or not, gotta figure out the questions though. I'm thinking something like

Do you prefer lavaland or the mining asteroid?

-I have not played on lavaland yet at all
-I have not mined yet on lavaland, but I enjoy the ghost roles.
-I would prefer that the asteroid come back and lavaland be removed.
-I like lavaland, but I think it's too dangerous
-I like lavaland, but I dislike the theme.
-I like lavaland, but it needs better rewards.
-I generally like lavaland as it is, I would like it to continue in this direction.

Is this a fair set of questions? I could probably condense the the rewards/theme/danger into one question.

[TheNightingale]

If we make it a little less deadly (nerf the ash storms to only affect vision, stop the necropolis tendrils instakilling anything near them, and make part of it monsterless so unrobust miners can still get ores), it should be generally better than the mining asteroid. It needs preset Syndicate gear spawns so R&D can still do their thing, but the ghost roles are nice, and the loot is generally more interesting than old-Mining (although it could do with some more high-frequency, low-effect rewards, like the artifact rooms).

[Super Aggro Crag]

i like my idea the most

[lumipharon]

Old mining is pretty dull and uninteresting, not to mention very safe (unless you seriously fuck up). Dunno why you'd want old mining back unless you're sitting in R&D shouting for minerals over comms.

[Kel-the-Oblivious]

1: Bring back basic abandoned crates. Tendril crates are nice, but nothing feels quite as nice as getting a lucky crate and running off with a new sonic jackhammer, after having found a hundred and one corgi suits, party crates, and ghetto surgery sets.

2: Some way to deal with the lava. Either an explosive method, or a suit to make you lava proof. I'm thinking a fully plated explorer suit. Since you can see goliath's swimming in lava all over the place, it'd be a good end game reward for prolific miners.

3: Bring back random loot rooms. The ruins are pretty interesting, but know what you'll get every time you see it really removes the desire to look. I have no use for Envy's knife if I'm not a antag. The RNG rooms could provide a mixed bag. They could be a great boon, a useless trinket, or something between. Nice to have those wizard card caves that spit out a spellbook of fireball, a high end mining tool, or several pieces of high grade technology.

4: If we are going STALKER with the looks, I want anomalies, and new use for anomalies besides "Worth X tech levels, or Phazon." I'd like to see some actual STALKER style anomalies and artifacts. Solve the lightning ball maze, and get an artifact that makes you immune to lightning. The scrying orb is a fine example on how to make it and how it'd work.

5: Make the sleeper in bluespace shelters auto inject bicaridine and kelotane. Without a mining partner, the sleeper is completely useless and you only have the donk pockets for healing.

6: Increase the size and change the text color for ash storm warnings, and maybe give an audio warning. Too many times I see the warning get lost in a wall of red text in combat, and end up panicking as the storm hits and I scramble for a capsule.

[onleavedontatme]

As a random aside regarding this/the game as whole: I feel like I'm caught in an awful catch 22 regarding "the rounds aren't long enough, there isn't enough content to justify staying this long" followed by "this stuff takes too long, the rounds aren't long enough for this."

[1g88a]

This isn't feedback about lavaland itself really but lavaland's general design makes me wish we had more space content of a similar vein. Not necessarily the "huge themed area" aspect but the hazards/various things tucked away in it.

[TechnoAlchemist]

Ash storms should remain lethal, having to take shelter is cozy and it should be an inconvenience

[TrustyGun]

There need to be more ruins that are ruins; simply atmospheric, lore-ridden, abandoned structures that serve as a shelter/buffer between the lava, basalt and monsters of normal lavaland.

[Zilenan91]

My main beef with it is that it's not fun dying to stupid stuff on lavaland. Primarily invisible goliath tendrils you can't see because of the floor sprites, and retarded 5x5 instagib waves whenever you kill a tendril.

[onleavedontatme]

There need to be more ruins that are ruins; simply atmospheric, lore-ridden, abandoned structures that serve as a shelter/buffer between the lava, basalt and monsters of normal lavaland.

Yeah. Lavaland is very empty right now. I plan to flesh it out and improve the generation etc once I can get people more or less satisfied with the basics (and maybe after a short break from coding for me, it took lots and lots of background work to make even the sparse amount of content you see workable, but it should be faster now that the framework is in place).

My main beef with it is that it's not fun dying to stupid stuff on lavaland. Primarily invisible goliath tendrils you can't see because of the floor sprites, and retarded 5x5 instagib waves whenever you kill a tendril.

You get a GPS that shows you where the tendrils are. They're perfectly easy to avoid (or just stand back once you kill them).

[Zilenan91]

You mean the old GPS that just showed where your dead body was that nobody was going to go find anyways have an actual use now?

[onleavedontatme]

You mean the old GPS that just showed where your dead body was that nobody was going to go find anyways have an actual use now?

Yes

[lumipharon]

Hey now, I've had my corpse recovered due to a GPS at least ONE time, thank you very much.

[Saegrimr]

Hey now, I've had my corpse recovered due to a GPS at least ONE time, thank you very much.

I used to do that shit all the time back when telesci was still around.

[Grazyn]

About free golems, now that mesons no longer show minerals, they don't have any way to mine efficiently, since the only thing they can buy from the vendor are GAR mesons.

Also, there's no night vision version of material scanning goggles, probably intended but still, it would be nice to have an upgrade from science as a reward so you're not forced to work in the dark for the whole round

[onleavedontatme]

I put mesons back anyway, but I'm pretty sure I gave them GAR material scanners in the vendor during that test.

[Grazyn]

I didn't know it was a test, anyway I really enjoyed the non-slowdown stalker suits and mining without knowing what's on the other side

[ShadowDimentio]

I died to the collapsed tendril pit, please nerf thanks

Seriously though I have no idea how you'd do it but it should be more clear that it's INSTANT DEATH if you fall in the pit. Maybe instead of a pit it opens up to lava? That'd help because everyone knows lava is bad.

[ShadowDimentio]

It's bad design to have an object that instantly and permanently kills you with little way of knowing it does that until you die to it.

[confused rock]

It's bad design to have an object that instantly and permanently kills you with little way of knowing it does that until you die to it.

waah nobody ever told me that syndiebombs kill you

[lumipharon]

People know what bombs do. Syndie bomb says syndieBOMB and loudly ticks.

I haven't seen the tendrils since the drop thing was added, but there is no logical reason to think a tendril will randomly remove you from the game after death (presuming there's no warning which I assume is the issue).

[Zilenan91]

I knew the tendril made a chasm beneath it, but I thought the gap was like just under it or maybe 1 tile out, not 5x5

[onleavedontatme]

People know what bombs do. Syndie bomb says syndieBOMB and loudly ticks.

I haven't seen the tendrils since the drop thing was added, but there is no logical reason to think a tendril will randomly remove you from the game after death (presuming there's no warning which I assume is the issue).

There is a warning and a 5 second delay. There is also a chest that it drops to encourage people to risk getting closer though.

Maybe I'll add some overlays around it to show what area is about to break.

Here is the line for those curious

visible_message("<B><span class='danger'>The tendril writhes in pain and anger and the earth around it begins to split! Get back!</span></B>")

[Gamarr]

You die once to a tendril. I don't see why everybody who is absolute nub to lavaland needs some kind of warning that killing this giant tentacle monster that spawns monsters may just perhaps be dangerous and kill you when you do needs some snowflake warning. If it happens, you will learn that one time and adapt. Anyone who doesn't know, will either see someone else die, be told, or experience it -one time- themselves.

About the mapping issues, there is map freeze so until then, cannot do much about it. I agree there needs to be a lot more, pointless ruins along with weaker stuff that the miners can dig up. But gotta wait afaik on all of this. Regarding the lethality, the outpost for mining needs a larger 'safe-zone' swath around it, because the rng can make the mobs spawn insanely close to the outposts front door. It would also be less lethal for miners if they stayed out of the tunnels. With mesons, you can dig your own tunnels and you will run into monsters a lot less if you stay out of theirs. Why people haven't, I think, is because there was a bug preventing the minerals from spreading after lavaland implementation, but I believe it's been worked on if not waiting to get fixed. With that fixed, miners (and golems) should be able to actually mine without being Forced to go super far just to try getting any notable amount of material. That played into how lethal lavaland was I think to some degree, because then players had to engage mobs considerably more often in order to find these tiny mineral patches.

As someone pointed out, the sleepers are nigh-useless with tg code. Unless we upgrade to non-ko crit and have sleepers that can put crit people into hibernation (both a goon function), then the sleepers as tg has them honestly serve ZERO point in the bluespace shelter (yes your ally can heal you but this seems to be rare because miners/players don't play together enough). Mining however could seriously use one in their outpost. Along with pipes. And several other quality of life improvements... like maybe a turret to get monsters off the doorstep.

Tendril collapse time needs more than 5 seconds, with game lag and stuff, that 5 seconds doesn't really leave much room for mistake, atop of forcing you to hotkey-pull the chest if you even want a chance at it.

[onleavedontatme]

Vague ideas/plans for the lavaland

-Lava walking boots. Walking over lava wont damage you directly, but combine with a fireproof suit to be immune.

-Building bridges over chasms

-Minetracks. I have this halfway coded. Minecarts can only move on tracks, but go super fast.

-Supply drop pods. The QM can spend some resource to fire crates directly at miners if they set a beacon.

-Deployable outpost. Giant version of the bluespace shelter. That or having a destroyed outpost midway through lavaland that they can occupy and repair.

-Way to remotely return materials. Fultons?

-Mob scaling. Goliath sends tentacles up for every mob in range, legion shoots more heads out, etc. That or just variant stronger versions of mobs that do that.

-Some sort of flora, not sure what

-Hopefully better generation with caves and small empty ruins instead of just tunnels

-More weather/events instead of only ash storms. Maybe earthquakes or something.

-Anomalies

-Either make lavaland turfs slow you (build roads!) or make the monsters a bit faster now that miners can run circles around them

-Make goliath tentacles something you can attack so that you can kill them with melee weapons without being murdered

Hopefully one day lavaland will be interesting enough to warrant mapping a station on it

[TheNightingale]

Oh, goliath tendrils are brutal. They stun you and make you drop your weapon for a good few seconds, enough for the goliath to close in on you and get off a hit (if it's far away), or kill you outright (if it's already close). What if you could resist out of them?

[Zilenan91]

As far as Flora goes I'd love to see a bunch of dark glowy cave shrooms. We could also let miners make things out of said cave shrooms if we add them, like some sort of shitty healing, narcotics, or whatever.

Also yeah Fultons sound great. I really like the idea of a central outpost miners can repair, maybe make it the old abandoned mining station from the asteroid that miners can rebuild/fix in some way. Could put a bunch of crates in the abandoned station so miners can fulton them back.

[TechnoAlchemist]

How would you redeem your sweet sweet points with fultons?

[Zilenan91]

You wouldn't, I assume the fultons would only be if you think you're gonna die soon or if you don't need the points.

[Zilenan91]

Oh also hot lavaland tip here, Miners can put their survival knife in their jackboots, and altclick to get the knife out.

[onleavedontatme]

How would you redeem your sweet sweet points with fultons?

The QM would process your ores and then buy/send stuff to you.

[Zilenan91]

Realistically most QMs would pocket your points and either never let you have them ever, forcing you to kill them, or waste them on memes.

[Zilenan91]

I mean considering I got threatened with bans by saegrimr for killing someone in an IC issue a few days ago that's not something I want to keep repeating.

[Ivan Issaccs]

Lavaland gets better and better.
Once you get used to ash storms its just asteroid with more fun, keep up the good work.

[TheNightingale]

Whilst the lethality of lavaland is its main challenge, I'm not entirely convinced having two necropolis tendrils right next to each other is a smart idea... perhaps a check to stop a tendril spawning too close to another?

[PKPenguin321]

So I finally had the chance to play this today.

Good.
Shit.

Like, God damn. It's super atmospheric, it's somewhat challenging, it has ACTUAL HAZARDS THAT YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT (chasms), the sleepers in the portable shelters encourage teamwork among miners, the whole shebang.

If we added shit like randomly generated loot and a ton of new monster types, it could be it's own game.

[onleavedontatme]

OOC: RandomMarine: Kor, could you make it so that if someone has a jaunter in them and hits a chasm, it automatically gets used.

Saving this here because it's a pretty good idea

[LordZalgo]

Goliath plates cannot be used to reinforce your explorer hood, which is typically beneficial to an antag miner back when they had the hardsuits. Dunno if reinforcing the suit also reinforces the hood or if it's a feature that you can't reinforce the hood, but figured I'd lay it out.

Could give goliath meat a beneficial effect such as temporary damage resistance and/or temporary immunity to ash storms. Probably not for very long, but perhaps a bit longer than a single ash storm lasts. Just to give it a neat effect that sets it apart from standard steak.

The minebots do not display levels of damage upon observation; it'd be helpful if they did for repair purposes like the cyborgs have.

And finally, perhaps the addition of a few varied and random mining boss creatures would be a nice touch. Each may have its own tactics that would not be completely impossible to fight alone, but would promote teamwork. For example, maybe a king goliath that would create two larger sets of tentacles instead of the small one set, so if a full group of three took it on, if two miners got tangled, one could still attack it and lure it away while the others waited and recovered. Might be a bit too difficult, but you get the idea. And then these bosses would drop enhanced resources that could make for excellent mining gear. For example, the king goliath would drop king goliath plates, which when applied to an explorer suit, would add a 20% chance for melee and ranged attacks on the wearer to reflect off and inflict no damage, and goliath tentacles would no longer trap them when they otherwise would.

Pretty rough thinking, but I figure if refined, there's potential.

[Lumbermancer]

Where in the poll is the option to rotate asteroid and planet?