Survivor Crafts

[Jembo]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary): I think it'd be cool if survivors, people who had to survive though the xeno onslaught and hold off until marines arrive should get access to crafting defensive tools limited to them only. Or until taught to another person with a skill set capable of making the same crafts. Crafting items would take a few seconds of standing still, or depending on the item maybe a full minute.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole): This would add value to the survivors as people who had to live and adapt to these monsters taking out their friends. They'd be able to work either on the ground with marines making different crafts to help, or on station working with research or engineering to help give marines a bit of an edge.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):
IED - Empty can filled with welding fuel. Add igniter, and cable to make a weak and unstable grenade with a random timer of 1 - 5 seconds.

Weaker than a standard grenade with a semi random blast radius, but if lucky it could be used to scare off a xeno or even get a stun giving time to escape. Or if you're unlucky it could blow up in you're face breaking your hand, stunning you!

Electrified Welding Mask. Attach cable cuffs to a powercell, then attach insulted gloves to a welding helmet. Followed by installing the wired powercell into the helmet, go give survivors a helmet capable of withstanding two huggers. Increase the size so it won't fit in a pack, and it seems like the perfect item to boost a survival rating while not being too powerful.

I really feel like survivors need more hugger protection, and I feel like it's not overpowered because of the rare materials required to create. Insulated gloves aren't exactly common after all. Give it a long crafting time.

Hobopack.
Jumpsuit/Bedsheet + steel rod.

Makes a backpack that you can't wear, but have to carry in a free hand. Not really overpowered, and not having a pack is suffering as a survivor.

Spraybottle Flame Thrower.
Empty Spraybottle filled with welding fuel. Add cable cuffs to a lighter/welder, and then to the bottle.

Makes a very weak version of a flame thrower 3 tile distance, with a chance of exploding upon use lighting yourself on fire! Make it a two or three time use ghetto flame thrower. The bottle melts beyond use after use and becomes unusable.

Molotov Cocktail.
Requires a bottle full of booze, and a piece of cloth / rag / jumpsuit?

Requires a lighter to ignite the cocktail, makes a small but random radius flame style grenade maybe covering 4 random tiles spread out random in the tile throw upon. Has a chance of going off in the users hand upon lighting.

Reinforced Wooden Barricades.
Apply metal rods to a wooden barricade to make it so xenos can't squeeze though. But have to break them down to get those juicy tall hosts.

Doesn't really seem OP, and it'd be cool to see wooden barricades actually used as it's a nice abundant material for survivors to use.


Improvised Shield.
Plasteel, Wood to construct the shield, and cable coils applied for grip. With a high chance of the cables snapping during damage, requiring the user to have to reapply more cables to use the shield again.

Might actually give a lone survivor a chance to fight off and escape a runner / hunter.

Warbat
Wooden, or metal Bat + Cable cuffs + Metal rods / Glass shards.
Seems like a pretty quick improve weapon to make to wrap a bat in spikes to make it hurt that much more.

Welding Spear.
Welding tool + metal rods, and cable coil.
Make a nice high damage burn item you an weld like a spear with a burning tip providing light as it uses welding fuel.

Really just a spear with a different sprite that causes burn damage instead of brute.

Xeno Spear
Dead xenobody + Metal rods.
Makes a bad ass looking xeno tail spear so the marines can watch in awe of how robust you are.

Make it have a chance of failure like surgery every failure causing burn damage.

Xeno Shield
Dead xenobody + Metal cable coils. Cutting tool in hand.
Makes a bad ass looking xeno skull shield that'll get stolen by a jealous marine.

Make it have a chance of failure like surgery every failure causing burn damage.

I'd also like to add that these are just ideas that I came up with off the top of my head. Feel free to spin this in a way that'd be more balanced with maybe other ideas, or highlight ideas you'd like to see added.


Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it): Some of the coding for crafting exists on open source server /tg/. But it would require a fair bit of sprite work, and coding on top of that.

[YungCuz]

These actually seem pretty cool and i always loved using the crafting system.

[KingKire]

Well, worse case, this was indeed a fun read of ideas. +1

[Jroinc1]

These actually seem both cool, AND balanced if "Survivor-locked".
+1

[Jembo]

The idea would be survivor only, but they could teach a marine ICly how to do it. Or for some of the more difficult / advance items requiring an engineer to learn it before using it. But I would personally love to see more cool suggestions I know on other servers you can make chainsaws out of circular saws.

[Crab_Spider]

My only dislike of the idea is Marines get a few methods of powergaming. But everything else, wew! +1

[Swagile]

Survivors are REQUIRED to powergame or they will get killed / huggered in the first 15 minutes of the game.

Hiding in a locker at round start no longer works due to xenos checking everything instead of hunting furry hosts (and its boring).

Giving marines an extra incentive to rescue survivors gameplay wise (welding helmets that survive 2 huggers are REALLY good) would add a lot to the gameplay of a survivor because right now there is literally 0 reason to get survivors up to the Sulaco or to even talk to them as you will figure everything the survivor says out in the next couple of minutes when xeno's swarm marines anyway.

[Crab_Spider]

Survivors are REQUIRED to powergame or they will get killed / huggered in the first 15 minutes of the game.

Hiding in a locker at round start no longer works due to xenos checking everything instead of hunting furry hosts (and its boring).

Giving marines an extra incentive to rescue survivors gameplay wise (welding helmets that survive 2 huggers are REALLY good) would add a lot to the gameplay of a survivor because right now there is literally 0 reason to get survivors up to the Sulaco or to even talk to them as you will figure everything the survivor says out in the next couple of minutes when xeno's swarm marines anyway.

I said MARINES

[Swagile]

I said MARINES

Yeah but Survivors gotta teach the Marines, and lets be honest, if a Survivor knows that his only usefulness is through his own powergame item making system and the moment he teaches someone else he ceases to exist in the eyes of every other marine, he is VERY unlikely to teach Marines shit.

[Jembo]

Who's to say a survivor won't try to trade with the marines welding helmets for weapons, IED's for a info about the hive, Xeno spear for some metal for their autism fortress. It's just a win, win, it gives survivors more value and it forces marines to actually interact with them in new ways. It also makes it so the survivor has a better chance to survive.

edited for typo.

[Swagile]

Who's to say a survivor won't try to trade with the marines welding helmets for weapons, IED's for a info about the hive, Xeno spear for some metal for their autism fortress.

Thats my point.

A survivor will likely not teach Marines jack shit because it makes them just as useful as before the system gets implemented; aka not useful at all.

So trading for goods (since survivors have actual survival knowledge about this place) would be great.

Now the Xenos actually have a reason to attack the survivors besides "lol survivor" because they offer an actual gameplay advantage to the Marines.

[Casany]

It's low priority, but it's a good idea

+1

[Crab_Spider]

Yeah but Survivors gotta teach the Marines, and lets be honest, if a Survivor knows that his only usefulness is through his own powergame item making system and the moment he teaches someone else he ceases to exist in the eyes of every other marine, he is VERY unlikely to teach Marines shit.

Why would teach a trained Marine, how to make an improvised explosive device? Think of that for a minute. It's still powergaming, there are other ways to get into a room, and IEDs and C4s, are terrible for that job, it's like getting a Ravager to infiltrate the Sulaco rather than using a small group of lesser castes. Not to mention the amount of griefing there'd be if everyone knew you were actually able to make a C4 and are able to mass produce them, welding fuel is very abundant, and cans are very simple to retrieve.

As I said, my only problem is these are too simple to create (an aspect that's imperitive for survivor roles), but out of the many there are, 3 make it simple to bypass the limitations and problems you'd run into.

[Heckenshutze]

My only dislike of the idea is Marines get a few methods of powergaming. But everything else, wew! +1

We could enforce a rule about this, just like Spec weapons.

Since, IC why would a marine prefer shitty crafted weapons before his beloved Rachel or Lucille (Assuming they received the "This is my rifle" thing at the bootcamp)

[Swagile]

The aim of developing systems like this is to make gameplay mechanics that discourage powergame, not rules.

Admins can't be there all the time nor can they see everything; plus putting that burden on them is shitty.

The system itself should make powergaming hard (aka only Survivors can make these tools and have a better way of utilizing them while Marines have a hard time using them / they explode in their hand more often). That will discourage Marines more than rules.

[Heckenshutze]

The aim of developing systems like this is to make gameplay mechanics that discourage powergame, not rules.

Admins can't be there all the time nor can they see everything; plus putting that burden on them is shitty.

The system itself should make powergaming hard (aka only Survivors can make these tools and have a better way of utilizing them while Marines have a hard time using them / they explode in their hand more often). That will discourage Marines more than rules.

Why the hell would you use this as a weapon?

Everytime you try to attack with any of the items

[Jroinc1]

I was suggesting locking the ability to make them to the roundstart survivors. Marines can use them, but they can't make them, to minimize meta.

[Jembo]

The welding helmet is really the only powergamey thing here and it has plenty of draw backs. The material cost is high, plus the downside of welding masks is you lose vision which marines really need if they wanna deal with over half the xeno casts. I've personally handed marines 40 science 240 unit potassium / water grenades and they still managed to lose. Having a few grenades created by survivors that have a smaller explosion radius, and do less damage plus it comes with a risk of no timer just throw it and hope it goes off when you need it to. I don't feel like it'll impact the end game as much as you think it will.

I'd like to hear suggestions to alternatives to making these more balanced, or even new ideas. Like maybe a weak plasteel trap, that can slow xenos down but they can resist out if they sit still for five seconds. With a really obvious big sprite. Or Make the IED's require a timer and igniter making them difficult to produce.

[Crab_Spider]

The welding helmet is really the only powergamey thing here and it has plenty of draw backs. The material cost is high, plus the downside of welding masks is you lose vision which marines really need if they wanna deal with over half the xeno casts. I've personally handed marines 40 science 240 unit potassium / water grenades and they still managed to lose. Having a few grenades created by survivors that have a smaller explosion radius, and do less damage plus it comes with a risk of no timer just throw it and hope it goes off when you need it to. I don't feel like it'll impact the end game as much as you think it will.

I'd like to hear suggestions to alternatives to making these more balanced, or even new ideas. Like maybe a weak plasteel trap, that can slow xenos down but they can resist out if they sit still for five seconds. With a really obvious big sprite. Or Make the IED's require a timer and igniter making them difficult to produce.

That works!

► Show Spoiler

There's an autolathe in robotics, and there's a couple of powercells around the map. It could work

I wasn't really worrying about what the Marines would do to beat the xenos (although powergaming was my main focus, I meant it in the fashion of ignoring RP because it removes meta)