Anomaly Research

[oranges]

Who is going to refactor anomalies and when will they submit a thread outlining their plan.

We should aim to have a maximum limit on the number of each type of anomaly introduced into the round, no more than 6-8 per type I would say, so the system will need to account for that.

This allows us to stack a limit on the overall number of anomaly core based high level items, and let us adjust it well.

But you should be able to farm 4-5 of each type in the first 60 minutes relatively reliably and have a reasonable amount of control over the type generated, there should also be some sort of ramp in the difficulty, as you farm a single type, it should become harder and harder to farm that type more reliably, capping out at the max limit.

We can then use these cores to control the number of powerful RnD items in play at any one time, as well as using the techweb to limit when they are put into play as well.

This lets us use techwebs and anomaly cores to limit when very powerful items become available, and also cap how many are actually available in game, without having to unfuck the rest of the materials economy.

First idea thread:
https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic ... 60#p553058

[oranges]

I've seen one decent idea here so far from Hugbug and Zxaber, that could be pretty decent

Hugbug: I personally would be happy to see things like explosions possibly having some aspect in it if possible, 'cause then toxins could do more than be used once and abandoned
Zxaber: do something to get the raw core, and then use the core with a bomb in a blast chamber to condense the core into a usable object?

This is an excellent idea imo, since it gives toxins a use.

[oranges]

If people could also suggest other super high tech items that could use Anomaly cores here, that would be good too.

BoH is an obvious addition, but maybe some high level laser cannons and so forth?

[EOBGames]

So oranges has made a post about anomalies, and specifically a method of production for anomalies.

So my thinking here is partially inspired by goof's recent anomalous materials PR, partially by some things Zxaber has said, and partially from my own experience in chemistry. It boils down to science producing singular SM shard which are then subjected to bombardment to produce an anomaly. The process of creating a crystal will involve crushing a number of materials, the process of which requires a high power input to produce high temperatures and pressures, and can be doped by the introduction of specific materials to allow for choosing which anomaly you receive as an end product. The result of this is a customised supermatter shard which is then bombarded (current thinking is a PA, any suggestions welcomed) to allow for the production of a singular anomaly. Upon the anomaly being produced, the crystal is destroyed.

This should result, if everything is done right, in a system that allows (relatively) easily obtaining a specific anomaly type, but with a fairly hefty time and material input to meet oranges requirements for a limit on production.

As always, feedback and thoughts are welcomed. Specifically, thoughts on how to make the system more engaging would be very appreciated.

[oranges]

This is a nice idea, if you can, could you see if you could work toxins in? I'm quite excited about having a way to work that back into Sci core flows.

[trollbreeder]

How about the experimentor, the old grey machine that's laying around gathering dust? You have to poke it with the various tools the experimentor has (irradiate, cold, heat, poke) until it reacts and activates, with ghetto reactions if an experimentor isn't available (throw it into a fire or throw it into space or throw it near the atmospherics incinerator or bash it with a fire extinguisher)

More powerful anomalies (read: experimenting more anomalies up to the limit) would require more poking before activation and a higher chance of reaction failure, encouraging safety protocol before the experiment.

[Stickymayhem]

I've had an idea sitting around for like a year about anomaly based research for creating wormholes to pocket dimensions based on a holodeck style grid populated, ruin style.

I would happily populate the maps for these.

This slots can slot in nicely to a mid late game escalating reward for anomaly research

[SkeletalElite]

If we're talking about items to limit behind anomaly cores, the beam rifle jumps to mind. The biggest complaint about this thing is when theres a blob and theyre mass printed, now you can only get a few of them without actually nerfing the gun, still good against blob, but not mass producible.

Although the gun kinda sucks otherwise.

I'd like to see new powerful guns limited behind cores though, that'd be cool.

[CDranzer]

Oranges, I realize you probably don't want to hear this, but this just sounds like another manifestation of "Economy". The cycle of Perform Action > Get Points > Spend Points as a means of restricting the flow of certain items seems to be something you want in various places, be it mining, cargo, science, or wherever else. I think you need to actually spend some time trying to come up with a real widespread scalable solution to this instead of just merging PRs that create more problems than they solve and then hoping somebody else will be clever enough to repair the damage in a satisfactory manner.

As for the topic at hand, keep in mind that whatever you do to bluespace anomalies will also affect phazons and portal guns.

[oranges]

If we're talking about items to limit behind anomaly cores, the beam rifle jumps to mind. The biggest complaint about this thing is when theres a blob and theyre mass printed, now you can only get a few of them without actually nerfing the gun, still good against blob, but not mass producible.

Although the gun kinda sucks otherwise.

I'd like to see new powerful guns limited behind cores though, that'd be cool.

yeah the beam rifle was one I thoughtw ould be a good candidate too.

[wesoda25]

Really neat idea. Would give toxins something to do after the first 10 minutes which is nice. You should make sure that the shards wouldn’t be mass produceable at all, that was the issue with the sm and why we made it lose so much integrity after one is removed. It might be better to just not have a way to create them, so that science and engineering have to work together (and take great care) in order to get anomalies and their gamer loot.

[zxaber]

The idea I was throwing around is to have a "detonation chamber" machine, in which a bomb is placed as well as the raw anomalous matter obtained from the SM process in the OP. The bomb would then be "detonated" off-screen and with no damage to the room the detonation chamber is in, to refine the anomaly into a core using high heat and pressure. Different anomalous matter could have different minimum (or even maximum) pressures, in addition to ramping up as the raw matter obtained becomes less pure (to account for oranges' requirement of a limited resource that ramps up difficulty as you obtain more). As we build into the system, we could even start adding gas requirements/restrictions (one type of anomalous matter might require might require one of the bomb tanks to have a significant amount of a deadweight gas such as n2, another type might fail to condence into a core if either bomb tank has any trit at all).

[oranges]

I have spent some time fleshing this out here
https://hackmd.io/jjLi8Nl3Th6_NnLnycYRbg

The only bit that isn't clear now is how the raw material for Anomalies is collected, so if people could expand on previous ideas around that.

[Shadowflame909]

Looking at your justification orange man.

Isn't it possible to use BEPIS as a control as well?

They can produce 1 use items through inputting "shitloads" of currency.

Therefore it'd be easy to have extreme money gates even as a temporary time-gate until someone makes your anomaly idea come to fruition.

Example being, 1M currency investment needed to have a "decent" change at creating a singular rare item, like a BOH.

[oranges]

hahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahaha he thinks money is balanced

[bobbahbrown]

we have inflated the tgstation currency to an insane volume

[CDranzer]

Hey, you're actually doing work. Good job.

Perhaps the biggest question about core material production is how widespread do you want it to be? Do you want every department to be capable of producing them, or do you want it to explicitly be something that one department does?

From a mechanics standpoint, one idea is each department can do Department Thing, generating a Rare Resource which science then refines into a Usable Resource of Department Type which can then be used to produce Department Item. Or you could just stick it all on mining I guess.

[Vekter]

Neat idea. I've been struggling with how we could make anomaly cores craftable and I think this fits the bill nicely.

[oranges]

Explicitly a science job at this stage, no plans to include other DEPTs in the production of the cores, seeing as they're supposed to be ultra high tech, I feel like it makes sense that RnD would be responsible for producing them.

[XivilaiAnaxes]

You'll probably want to cut anomalies out of the super matter then (>5k spews them out nonstop). I can make as many phazons as materials will allow through the engine if I care enough to at the moment (it is sort of suicidal to do this though).

[FloranOtten]

We could take inspiration from nuclear weapons. The way implosion type weapons work is by having explosives around a core of non-critical nuclear material. The explosives are shaped, and when detonated, they compress the nuclear material to a critical state, causing the explosion. How about just having a generator that you can build, which projects a 3 tile circle of blue shield. It'll then accept a bomb. You put the aformentioned SM in the middle of the circle, and then adapt the bomb strength/chamber pressure/heat/gas mix to whatever you need, then detonate it. This 'detonates the charge into an implosive force, causing a transformation in the matter'. That is, spawn smoke and replace the shard with an anomaly.

[Gamarr]

Using the super-engine as a method to generate exotic materials for more energy/materials seems like a legit proper use for it and this makes me say, for once, that such thing like the super-matter is fine to keep for this reason.

Maybe ask them to tweak it if it produces too many or get more dangerous, straight out lethal ones able to come from such a method of creation.

[oranges]

You'll probably want to cut anomalies out of the super matter then (>5k spews them out nonstop). I can make as many phazons as materials will allow through the engine if I care enough to at the moment (it is sort of suicidal to do this though).

Stopping the anomaly core SM farm is part of this yeah.

Using the super-engine as a method to generate exotic materials for more energy/materials seems like a legit proper use for it and this makes me say, for once, that such thing like the super-matter is fine to keep for this reason.

Maybe ask them to tweak it if it produces too many or get more dangerous, straight out lethal ones able to come from such a method of creation.

I went with cargo as the raw core source in the end (doc updated). It's not as cool as other approaches, but it does give some life back to cargo as a dept for which important items come from.

[XivilaiAnaxes]

To be honest it would be kind of cool (actually really cool) if you could get like 1-2 per round if you really pushed the crystal to near delam point (like 10% integrity with the crystal generating some form of room damage - like the current anomalies that can destroy all your emitters if you're not careful).

But it would probably take a bit too much work for something that would hopefully be "happens every now and again if engines are robust as hell".

[zxaber]

While requiring an unsafe and risky supermatter setup to farm anomalies is fun (and it really is fun), it's important to remember that a full delam usually results in a shuttle call within a fairly short amount of time. Influencing engineers to try to hold a supermatter at half integrity (where there's usually enough time to stabilize it if it gets out of hand) is one thing, but I don't think we should be encouraging engineers to actually delam the engine.

I like the cargo idea, because I like the idea that every round there's a meta of delivering the raw materials to science near shift start (and thus opportunity for people to steal the materials for less than good deeds). Especially if the raw material is some sort of SM child object that can dust people or cause various problems if in the hands of an antag. In turn, this hopefully means that security will want to be there for the delivery, making a somewhat neat interaction between everyone. (Imagine knowing an area is safe to break into for a short period because security is probably helping with the raw anomaly materials delivery, for example).

[oranges]

merged with the ideas thread

[Tlaltecuhtli]

While requiring an unsafe and risky supermatter setup to farm anomalies is fun (and it really is fun), it's important to remember that a full delam usually results in a shuttle call within a fairly short amount of time. Influencing engineers to try to hold a supermatter at half integrity (where there's usually enough time to stabilize it if it gets out of hand) is one thing, but I don't think we should be encouraging engineers to actually delam the engine.

I like the cargo idea, because I like the idea that every round there's a meta of delivering the raw materials to science near shift start (and thus opportunity for people to steal the materials for less than good deeds). Especially if the raw material is some sort of SM child object that can dust people or cause various problems if in the hands of an antag. In turn, this hopefully means that security will want to be there for the delivery, making a somewhat neat interaction between everyone. (Imagine knowing an area is safe to break into for a short period because security is probably helping with the raw anomaly materials delivery, for example).

SM child object? you can just order sm shards and lavaland is a safe space for nuclear tests, i like to buy a sm shard and few co2 cans make a 1x1 room with me on top of wall, open co2 cans and then shoot the sm with shotgun so it starts to delam and farm cores maybe add some new reaction to get bs anomalies and give scientists a scientific aux base so we can add catastrophic effects without having to balance thinking about station damage

[NecromancerAnne]

I'll be honest, if the beam marksman rifle was locked behind anomalies I'd want to see it actually just obliterate whatever poor sap happened to be on the receiving end of it. Right now it doesn't do quite enough damage to be worth using in conventional combat.

It also seems like a good candidate for flux anomaly construction, so maybe they can be made in enough quantities using SM farming to justify it's current power.

[XivilaiAnaxes]

I don't think it's a good idea to make SM farming the meta choice - more something risky that isnt reaaaally worth doing but robust engies do anyway because it's metal as fuck and strikes terror into both AI and the other command staff eavesdropping on the engineering channel

[oranges]

if you read the document, it isn't the meta.

[XivilaiAnaxes]

if you read the document, it isn't the meta.

Yeah I know, I'm replying to Anne.

[PKPenguin321]

Something that bothers me about this whole concept is that heavily incentivizing collecting anomalies means that anomalies won't be disasters anymore. Where a pyro anomaly used to be an "ALERT, STOP THE PLASMA FIRE!" announcement where maybe a scientist and a noble soul or two would come to stop it, it would now be a "IF YOU COME TO X DEPARTMENT YOU GET A FREE GUN/BoH/SUIT OF ARMOR!" announcement and every crewmember and their mother will come running instantly.
Maybe we could make the anomalies much more dangerous or much faster if we do this.

[Shadowflame909]

Those things are already uber fast. Like for example, they start at 90 seconds but by the time the announcement reigns 30 seconds have already past.


Then you have to rush to wherever, and depending where it spawned like the ai sat or permabrig. Just getting there is long enough for it to already be gone.

I'd prefer if it were more dangerous.

[SumFaggotPlayTester]

Vortex seems like a good one that can rip into the area a good bit. Wouldn't mind seeing it be a little more dangerous. Pyro is one I would like to see beefed up but the PR making floors/walls melt seems like it'll make it nice & dangerous on its own. Grav is one I think needs the most help. Giving it the ability to attract things from further away & throw them around would be a good thing. Its all fun & games till you get hit by a pile of 70 junk items. Flux is great. 10/10 anom would not change. Well, maybe make its explosion a little bit bigger & make it more often. To often see people ignore it; would be nice to make them suffer for letting an explosive anom get away.

[oranges]

Something that bothers me about this whole concept is that heavily incentivizing collecting anomalies means that anomalies won't be disasters anymore. Where a pyro anomaly used to be an "ALERT, STOP THE PLASMA FIRE!" announcement where maybe a scientist and a noble soul or two would come to stop it, it would now be a "IF YOU COME TO X DEPARTMENT YOU GET A FREE GUN/BoH/SUIT OF ARMOR!" announcement and every crewmember and their mother will come running instantly.
Maybe we could make the anomalies much more dangerous or much faster if we do this.

You act like anybody cared about them before

[PKPenguin321]

Something that bothers me about this whole concept is that heavily incentivizing collecting anomalies means that anomalies won't be disasters anymore. Where a pyro anomaly used to be an "ALERT, STOP THE PLASMA FIRE!" announcement where maybe a scientist and a noble soul or two would come to stop it, it would now be a "IF YOU COME TO X DEPARTMENT YOU GET A FREE GUN/BoH/SUIT OF ARMOR!" announcement and every crewmember and their mother will come running instantly.
Maybe we could make the anomalies much more dangerous or much faster if we do this.

You act like anybody cared about them before

No, they don't, I actually said that outright. Right now it is:

maybe a scientist and a noble soul or two would come to stop it

And that's exactly the point. They're slow enough that anyone can stop them currently. but because there's very little reward, few do unless it's a particularly dangerous anomaly. This means that they're actually capable of going off when left unchecked which is cool.

[oranges]

okay, but the value they offer was limited, so I sidejacked them for something more useful for my own purposes.

[BadSS13Player]

What's the purpose of the anomaly cap as opposed to having the difficulty of obtaining them increase until some very high (as in not possible to integrate into the meta) ceiling?

[XivilaiAnaxes]

What's the purpose of the anomaly cap as opposed to having the difficulty of obtaining them increase until some very high (as in not possible to integrate into the meta) ceiling?

Because you have to make a system that works in an analogue sense without breaking, which is significantly harder to design properly than a binarized cap.

[oranges]

What's the purpose of the anomaly cap as opposed to having the difficulty of obtaining them increase until some very high (as in not possible to integrate into the meta) ceiling?

I want to have very strict and clear control over the number of each type of core, so we can easily control the high powered items managed by the cores economy.

While you could do a difficulty increase in theory, in practice I don't trust the meta to not be broken on bombs/economy/etc, so it's just safest to have a hard cap managed in code.