Vorestation: Abduction events should be triggered by specific conditions, not RNG

[TheDavestDave]

Brief description of the issue

The things filled with bugs and only a few people find grinding itself fun. Worse still they can't get it when they want it, and it's forced on everyone else wether they like it or not. It was fun the first time, annoying the second time. And honestly I just depsie it to the point I'd rather be blown up and resleved than play it.

There's also the problem of people who do want it piloting and going everywhere but where the rest of the crew wants to go.

Also if no one knows OOCly how to hack a door you're fucked becuase you can't shoot it open. Even pusleing random wires won't work because the bolts start down.

It also pushes that explorers are a combat focused job. Becuase game play wise the whole thing is trying to kill you, and maybe I just wanted to pet fennics or explorer caves.

Turrets aren't fun to fight naked. And it slows down moveing a lot. It's possible to spend the whole shift there fighting turrets if you don't know you need to wait for them to pop out to fight them. But it's much easier to learn if they pop out they're going to shoot you.

Did I mention this is FORCED on people if they want it or not.

it's "balanced" with high tech gear, turning the place into a loot and shoot campfest game.

What you expected to happen

Not have RNGues ruin a trip with. Have it as a selectable location, or replace that with haveing some pilot mini-game and have the event happen if the pilot fucks up at a later time. It being an admin triggering event if the whole team decides to go in 20 mechs or something.

What actually happened

the team is taken out of a round into a grind-fest few people want. And on the odd chance you DID want it fuck you. You don't get to decide to do it

Steps to reproduce

• (Step 1) hope RNGues let's you do what you wanted to do. Maybe scene at the beach when you are done or something

• (Step 2) Die

  Code Revision

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  Just because you did it once by yourself in 30mins Scree doesn't mean the rest of us are that robust. It kills most teams that go. And cripples the rest.

Also I know this was added to stop over gearing. But this punishes everyone who over gears or not. I would say it encourges overgearing becuase the less trips you make the less likely you are to go to this hellhole. It also stops a lot of non-experdition staff wanting to go because they say or heard about an abductor event. This results on less people going on a shuttle trip, and us haveing to do non-explorer jobs. Like setting a relay the RD demanded, even thought we didn't want it.

I really hate that you ether out robust the turrets or die. If you pick too big a fight anywhere else you can run away. It isn't rewarding going through a death maze for the 50th time that you never wanted to do the 2ed time.

if you want a oh no the pilot can't do his job, the pinic area would be much better for this. Becuase there isn't turrets everywhere. It would be Exploration focussed instead of combat focused. Imagine that. Explorers. Exploring. Instead of shooting phasers non stop singing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1CQ7Vwz8Eo

It's FORCED on people if they want it or not. Most people don't want it. Again the few nutjobs who do want it can't get it. Both sides suffer becuase of RNGues decidieing if you do it or not.

You connected them to the space elves empire people. So at somepoint when you want to do some kind of peace talk agian, or have a large number of them on the station for an event. Or another event like that. You've got a big portion of the station who's been adbducters by them, put in a death maze. Or had to deal with that. Heard that happen to their friends. And it's not going to be fun event haveing tensons that high during that talk.

[Screemonster]

Honestly at this point I'd be fine with leaving the abduction chance at zero (with the possibility of adminbus) but with certain things the explorers could do to raise it, such as messing with the crashed UFO PoI. Take off from V4 carrying a bunch of void cells and other alien loot and you run the risk of attracting attention.

Although personally I'm gonna admit I laughed at that time a couple of days ago when you asked the admins for a void cell to power your circuit gizmo and then the RNG sent you to the alien ship where void cells can be found.

[TheDavestDave]

oh I should git hub devices not chargeing other devices before I forget. But yeah keep the adminbus option. Haveing it a selectable distation lets people not have to have an admin online to trigger it.

[Very-Soft]

Making an abduction be a selectable option is a little bit silly from a sanity and lore perspective.

I do like the idea though of abductions only really happening if you do certain things.

Like, I think that having a comms relay on the shuttle should totally attract attention. And like scree suggested, having alien tech with you on the shuttle also.

But I think that making it a selectable location is a bit silly.

[TheDavestDave]

that's going to be fun
RD: I want a relay on that ship
Pathfidner: Sorry but no, I want to live
RD: we have a possiton open for pathfinder

[SpadesNeil]

I want to see the abduction event changed from RNG to specific circumstances as well.

Until we add in a new functionality, the chance should be removed completely without admin abuse.

[Screemonster]

instead of building comms relay on shuttle where it takes up your precious space, build comms relay at destination where you have an abundance of space. You don't even need to build a SMES, just slap an APC on the wall and jam a cell in it, it'll last you a good long while.

[Novacat]

Once one of my existing PRs get merged, I will put up a PR to set abduction chance to zero.

Relays are largely built on the shuttle for two reasons. The main reason is that it is rare for people who know how to build relays to go on expeditions, usually an engineer or scientist will set one up and then do something else (Usually they have no interest in going along). The other reason is that the shuttle has unlimited power, and thus, there is no need to set up power or wiring or anything like that.

Ever since I enlarged the shuttle, it is practically very difficult to run out of space. The only time things got cramped was during an event where a couple dozen people + mechs were assaulting an abductor ship.

[Very-Soft]

I know WHY people build the comms relay on the shuttle. It's the simplest way to deal with that situation. There's no downsides to doing it, and as things presently are, most people don't like going out with the shuttle, specifically because there's a chance they'll be tied down for however long the abduction takes.

But I mean, if you tied abduction chance increasing to factors like the presence of a comms relay, I'd be willing to bet people are a lot more willing to bring the parts for a couple solar panels and an apc to set up a relay at the destination as intended.

I am personally of the opinion that putting an autolathe and a comms relay and whatever other machines you might want on the shuttle is a bit powergamey, specifically because those things are meant to be used with and have to deal with power.

The shuttles only really have unlimited power as I understand it, because that's the easiest way to make sure that all their parts work properly.

I don't think it's unreasonable to consider, that if you have something on the shuttle that's sending and receiving advanced signals like that, then you might attract the attention of the abduction craft.

[SpadesNeil]

Cool, so we can punish powergaming while at the same time removing a mechanic people don't like to RNG into.

[KasparoVy]

Niiice.

[Novacat]

The long term plan was to make it so that the shuttle had limited power like everything else. Originally Aronai asked me to redo the shuttle into something like the Baystation shuttles, which have their own SMES, APCs, and Atmos, and basically just functions as a portable part of the station that can run out of power like everything else. This would have likely also fixed the ongoing issue with the airlock.

That went out of the window however, as one of Polaris's developers is going to be completely overhauling shuttles. No sense putting a few solid weeks of work into something that is only going to be around for a limited time. Especially given how long it takes for PRs to get reviewed and merged here.

"But I mean, if you tied abduction chance increasing to factors like the presence of a comms relay, I'd be willing to bet people are a lot more willing to bring the parts for a couple solar panels and an apc to set up a relay at the destination as intended."

The main problem with this is how do you _communicate_ to the characters, ICly, that it is the relay that causes abductions? Even if abduction chance was set to zero tomorrow, all of the bad habits that abductions caused are not going to go away overnight because character just will not know what changed ICly. It would have to be paired with some kind of announcement.

The other problem is that it is not going to make people bring parts for solar panels and an APC. Outside of the fact that explorers generally are not trained in engineering, and, people who are trained in engineering usually have no interest in going on expeditions from my experience. What is more likely to happen is that people will just not set up a relay at all, which is usually what happens most shifts there are expeditions.

It is kind of like the Quantum Telepads. They were supposed to be a huge boon to explorers, allowing easy transit to and from expedition areas without concerns of abduction, but they ended up never getting used after the novelty wore off. They needed power and they could not be set up on voidcraft tiles, and the characters who had the engineering knowlege rarely go on expeditions, so they just ended up not being used at all except to set up a shortcut between the bar and medical.

[SpadesNeil]

It would have to be paired with some kind of announcement.

I could do that easily.

The rest of what you explained, I'm afraid I don't understand what the point is you are trying to make. Seems more like a rant about how explorers don't use these tools even though they would make their jobs easier.

But that's the point of having multiple departments. You can get the job done independently, but can do it better with outside help.

[Novacat]

It is a murky grey area. SMES/APC/Solar work is very clearly engineering department duties, but explorers are science department, and having another department's work as a core part of the explorer's job is a bit icky. While it is nice if an explorer knows engineering as well, it should not be a requirement.

TLDR: A vast majority of explorers are not going to be trained/know engineering stuff.

Though, the Subspace Radio PR will probably make the whole relay thing moot since, at that point, explorers would have a method of communicating with the Tether by means other than a relay. The relay is still useful as a nice QOL thing than something required in order to communicate with the Tether at all, so in that light I am fine with relays being made more difficult/having downsides.

[Very-Soft]

I mean, I don't know about other engineers, but when I'm playing engineer, I'm usually kind of sitting around looking for things to do after the basic setup.

If the exploration team asked me to come help set up an APC and a few solar panels or whatever on the beach to power their relay, and I knew that we would be able to just do that without having to worry about 'what if abduction', I'd hop at the opportunity so long as they weren't rude about it.

I know that a lot of engineers LIKE engineering work, so having a small project now and then is usually a welcome distraction.

And, I'd like to point out, that having a relay is by no means required for the expeditions. On abductions, the relay gets turned off, and Virgo 4 and 2 both have secondary maps where the relays can't reach. Passed all that, having a relay is convenient, but not ultimately all that actually useful unless you've set up other things like quantum pads, since if the shuttle's gone, no one can come to help you.

If the RD threatens to fire you because you won't put a comms relay on the shuttle, fax or ahelp, because that's REAL DUMB.

[TheDavestDave]

I've stopped asking for engineering help becuase when I tried to ask nicely for shuttle improvement I got told rather rudely no. Then once thoose players left I got told very politely no, we wish to live to engineer another day. This is always going to be a problem while exploration is gameplay combat focused. This is a problem on V2 solars because of the hive bots. Sometimes we can get people to go to the beach on virgo 4 however. It make me think that combat is a big turn off for most people.

tbh if I think I can safely take people I'll ask over the radio and let anyone who comes. But I've stop asking fro specific people

[Wickedtemp]

Abduction has already ruined more than one 'beach party' and turned it into a depressing round with a bunch of fatalities. It's the sole reason Tempest has never gone off-station via shuttle. Sure, it could be fun going to a beach, but there's literally a small chance shi could be abducted and more or less forced to watch crew members die in front of hir with no reliable means to save anybody or hirself.

Glad to see it corrected.

[SpadesNeil]

Temporary fix with abduction chance made 0 by default.

We can now consider new ideas to make abductions happen. I like the idea of a communications hub on the shuttle triggering the event. This will discourage players from abusing the infinite power supply and lazy placement of the equipment when it really should be installed planetside if at all.

[Novacat]

I do feel that the proper solution to the infinite power issue is to just not have the shuttle have infinite power to begin with. One of my planned projects was to overhaul the shuttle to work something similar to Baystation's shuttles, which have an SMES, APCs, and they primarily get their power from a power line to the Tether, with a backup generator and some phoron.

However, it was announced not that long ago that Polaris is doing a overhaul on shuttles which includes a component system, so I am waiting to see what Polaris does before touching the shuttle.

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