Random Events!

[Carprillo]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):

Basically, I'm proposing a few RNG events to help break up some of the tedium of 'set up FOB shoot ayys/grow hive pounce marines'. While I understand that's more or less the driving concept behind the gamemode and server, I think it would greatly benefit from some 'spicing up' via a selection of random (albeit lore-friendly) events to make things a bit more interesting for both sides.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):

It'll give both sides some extra incentive to take a few risks and reward them appropriately. I feel it'll also help add a little bit of depth to the game, helping give players an idea that they're only part of a bigger lore. They'd also stop things from becoming TOO repetitive, giving both marines and aliens some new challenges to keep them on their feet.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):

For simplicity's sake, I've organized these events into three categories: The Good, The Bad, and The Ayyliens.

The Good

These are things that benefit basically everyone. Things such as supply drops (medical items and small weapons), crashed research vessels (technological items and some other goodies), and maybe even escape pods from other ships (more heavy duty weapons and armor as well as maybe something else I'll cover in the Xeno section). We could also have things such as dormant terraforming projects from the colony (that would alter the 'biome' of a mild radius randomly, a grab bag of positives and negatives depending on the outcome) and perhaps even have one or two player larva spawn in the Research or Medical domes instead of the hive!

In addition, things to help engage the Sulaco crew would be interesting as well. Perhaps have certain wires randomly get chewed through or frayed, requiring the crew to locate and replace/repair the wire that's causing issues. Some other passive things could be Requisitions possibly getting shipments with some extra, small goodies. Kinda like the ones on /TG/ but tweaked to CM lore and balanced accordingly. Another interesting idea could be to have the Rasputin and Pod require to be refueled by Pilot Officers since they forgot to load them up earlier, with the possibility of finding some interesting tool or piece of equipment in the process.

All-in-all, these are all things that wouldn't really provide any sort of drawback or harm to those they affect. Just some random things that could be game changers for either side while still potentially providing benefits for people willing to take the risks to locate and engage with them.

The Bad

Under this category would be things that would provide a potentially deadly challenge to whoever encounter them, forcing them to stay on their toes and think on their feet to survive. These wouldn't always necessarily need to be dangerous in of themselves, but instead potentially increasing already present risks by changing up the playing field a bit. Some of them, however, would be actively harmful to anyone unfortunate enough to get caught up in them.

The aforementioned 'game-changers' would be things like rain (which would decrease marine lines of sight without flashlights, requiring them to stick together and also mess up Predator cloaks. Aliens would have the advantage due to their enhanced senses.), snow (which would sorta decrease marine vision, but mostly just make shit harder for the Xenos.), and even potentially 'acid rain' (bad news for pretty much everyone.) These wouldn't last an entire round, really, just a medium-sized portion of it at most.

The events that are more 'actively' harmful are things such as rogue synth NPCs that would wait in the LZ, landmines left behind in small groups by someone or other, an active missile/nuke stuck in the ground that would likely need to be disarmed before that area is safe, 'mating season' (random wildlife mobs would become rather aggressive, but not outright hostile unless provoked somehow.), and perhaps even a medium-sized vessel (maybe one of the ones in the 'The Good' category?) crash into the planet, causing a decent spot of destruction and disturbance. These would likely be engulfed in flames that would either need to be extinguished or left to die out before the craft could be looted.

The Ayyliens

These are some events that almost exclusively benefit the Xenos, though it's really more just a bunch of events that involve Xenos that could be either good or bad. It's a pretty small list, mostly because a few of them kinda overlap with the ones suggested above. First up, the 'research craft' event! One of the benefits of that to Xeno players is that the craft would likely have warm bodies (wildlife, probably) that they could use as free hosts if they manage to recover them.

Another one is the possibility that the aforementioned bonus cargo deliveries could contain a larva/drone/facehugger NPC(?). This, obviously, would be an INCREDIBLY slim chance. Obviously the 'rain' event would also greatly benefit the Xeno side as well. 'Snow', on the other hand, WOULDN'T. There's also the one I mentioned earlier, with a larva or two spawning in the Research or Medical domes. Yeah, those wouldn't be contained at all. They'd spawn on the floor, not restrained in any way. I could probably think of a few other fun things for the Xenos too, but let's hold off on that because...


...I want to hear YOUR thoughts on this idea, everyone! I understand that what I'm asking is probably pretty difficult from a coding perspective, and God only knows how it would affect the server itself to try and implement it. But this idea's been bugging me for a while, and I think the game would GREATLY benefit from the inclusion of all three categories.

But that's just me. What are your thoughts, questions, concerns, random tidbits? I'd love to hear what you have to say regarding this suggestion!

[YungCuz]

This is really nice and i'd love to see this. +1

[Carprillo]

Just to clarify for those who were wondering, these wouldn't happen super often.

Only every once in a while. Again, RNG. It'd also probably be coded so only one of each kind of event can happen each round.

[completelynewguy]

+1, I assume it'll be relatively easy to implement the events, in a piecemeal fashion.

[Carprillo]

I tried to not make them TOO hard to implement.

Incidentally, I realize I made a mistake:

The 'snow' thing should be replaced with, like, harsh sunlight or a sandstorm or sunspot or SOMETHING, since it's HEAT that fucks up Xenos, not cold.

[DeadLantern]

I actually really like the rain part, but this would require Coding and sprinting. But it's probably worth it!

+1

[ZDashe]

+1 I like RNG events to spice things up a bit so rounds aren't all heading the same direction all the time. Events for Xenos would be fun too, so that Marines aren't always the ones seeing special events.

[Dude4Life]

+1 Weather and procedural random map generation for the win.

[Carprillo]

That was my thinking as well. I personally can't see any downsides to this, but I'm biased.

[Nick123q23]

Random events would be great to spice up the round. Only drawback is that it requires coding. +1

[Snypehunter007]

Old, lack of continued interest.

Locking.