Community Input - Deployables

[Jord]

Hey all,

We're working on the new deployables systems. In simple this is anything the player can place in the game world. We need to gather some ideas for types of deployables you'd like to see.

To start here's some things we know we'll have:
- Mining Rig: Placeable in specific mining areas and will gather resources over time, can be hacked and destroyed.
- Turret: Programmable turret which will target and shoot at your enemies, can be hacked and destroyed.
- Furniture: Can be placed in unfurnished apartments, purely cosmetic/social.

Go!

 

[BioXide]

- Deployable shields (energy & ballistic)
- Healing station
- Cameras that you can control/view using a brain implant
- Remote controlled drones (flying & grounded)
- Combat & mining drones (can't control, can set AI settings while interacting with it)
- Explosives
- Spotlights
- Alarm lasers
- Holographic police NO CROSSING lines

Some ideas I could quickly think, I'm working the deployable system to be very modular in it's uses, it can support different deployables and hopefully in the far future we can support some sort of base building on huge open-world colonies like Aurora, would love to see some RP deployable ideas such as the police no crossing lines.

gibe ur ideas pls

 

[Tod Maddux]

remove them

 

[Cadonez]

- Deployable shields (energy & ballistic)
- Healing station
- Cameras that you can control/view using a brain implant
- Remote controlled drones (flying & grounded)
- Combat & mining drones (can't control, can set AI settings while interacting with it)
- Explosives
- Spotlights
- Alarm lasers
- Holographic police NO CROSSING lines

Some ideas I could quickly think, I'm working the deployable system to be very modular in it's uses, it can support different deployables and hopefully in the far future we can support some sort of base building on huge open-world colonies like Aurora, would love to see some RP deployable ideas such as the police no crossing lines.

gibe ur ideas pls

- Combat(YUCK, disgusting) & mining drones (can't control, can set AI settings while interacting with it)

 

[BioXide]

- Combat(YUCK, disgusting) & mining drones (can't control, can set AI settings while interacting with it)

Can you expand a bit on why it's a bad idea?

 

[LordAdder]

Can you expand a bit on why it's a bad idea?

I think the combat drones depend on if they are going to be humanoid in nature or some annoying floating thing. Mining drones can be good for corporations if they can afford them but they should be relatively expensive and should be something hard to obtain as an individual.

 

[BioXide]

I think the combat drones depend on if they are going to be humanoid in nature or some annoying floating thing. Mining drones can be good for corporations if they can afford them but they should be relatively expensive and should be something hard to obtain as an individual.

We're mainly looking for ideas and not feedback on proposed ideas by either us or the community, we're still in the process of designing this on "paper" while I build out the prototype mechanics. Without proper iteration, feedback and balancing is essentially worthless since we'll just be going back and forth on everyone's opinions over the mechanics, since there's no actual live environment to test them out to see if they're viable or not.

We'll take any ideas, let your imagination run wild.

 

[LordAdder]

We're mainly looking for ideas and not feedback on proposed ideas by either us or the community, we're still in the process of designing this on "paper" while I build out the prototype mechanics. Without proper iteration, feedback and balancing is essentially worthless since we'll just be going back and forth on everyone's opinions over the mechanics, since there's no actual live environment to test them out to see if they're viable or not.

We'll take any ideas, let your imagination run wild.

then add deployable sexbots

 

[Sawyer Anderson]

Mounted machine gun on top of deployable shield when @BioXide

 

[Skiy]

So my first question is how long will these last? Are they going to be persistent until destroyed or removed by players, how will we deal with spam of objects? Deployables for apartments would be sweet due to probably not having any impact on performance for the rest of the players. Will all apartments be unfurnished or just have a base amount of furniture? (I'd go with the that, letting us delete them when we want to.)

On suggestions, I hated the way PP worked in FoM. I kill somebody but nobody sees me do it? That's a murder card. Did I do it on the outer rim instead of in the middle of Brooklyn? That's a murder card and the same amount of PP. The thing is though, I liked the fact there was PP. So, I want to see something that could be used to create lawful/lawless zones in the world. I think I posted about something like it in one of Radish's threads, but I'll go again here.

All areas in MR are lawless by default. This item would be placeable and would have the radius of a sphere/bubble that would turn the area into a lawful zone. When committing crimes in this area, you'd receive PP as standard. You'd need multiple to ensure full coverage of a city/colony. I'd add something to the HUD (like, a green and orange light on it somewhere that shows when you're in a lawful area or not.) to let players know when they're covered by the scanner. Finding the gaps in coverage or just outright destroying these points to ensure the area is lawless would, in my mind, be a goal for players in the clans. Especially if TS is trying to operate on earth cities.

It's one of the things I would've loved to have in FoM. With BoS owning outer rim colonies like CD or Pax it would've been nice to have it completely cut off from the PP system, there's nobody to watch us do our crimes, why are we being punished for it? It gives a reason for CPC to try covert missions to establish lawful zones in known hotspots, gives TS a reason to hit earth and want to smash things, it's fun conflict for all the family.

 

[LordAdder]

I think deployable broadcast speakers would be neat. Give it a radius so that it can announce a message by the faction that owns it. Maybe there's an area on the planet the TDC is locking down, then when players approach the area they get a message that is from an automated TDC speaker. Example "This is a Restricted Area locked down by the Terran Defence Corps, all intruders will be shot on sight". The same could be used by gangs who could use a hacked variant or corps who are maybe trying to keep civilians away from a certain area

 

[Shakespears]

Furniture and items on the ground for your apartment are good

The police line thing could be cool just for "organizing" things.

I wouldn't do much else anything that's really "gameplay" impacting, they'll just get spammed more than likely again. Deployables like shields, mining rigs, and turrets were just spammed and thus ruined gameplay out of annoyance rather than anything really beneficial.

 

[BioXide]

Furniture and items on the ground for your apartment are good

The police line thing could be cool just for "organizing" things.

I wouldn't do much else anything that's really "gameplay" impacting, they'll just get spammed more than likely again. Deployables like shields, mining rigs, and turrets were just spammed and thus ruined gameplay out of annoyance rather than anything really beneficial.

Deployables can get hacked and stolen, you're essentially wasting money & time, might as well hand over the deployables to people for free.

So my first question is how long will these last? Are they going to be persistent until destroyed or removed by players, how will we deal with spam of objects? Deployables for apartments would be sweet due to probably not having any impact on performance for the rest of the players. Will all apartments be unfurnished or just have a base amount of furniture? (I'd go with the that, letting us delete them when we want to.)

They'll last as long as the server is online or they get destroyed, there's a limit of how much deployables you can place per world, and they can get hacked and taken or easily destroyed. Apartments will probably begin will some basic furniture that you can delete or move around.

On suggestions, I hated the way PP worked in FoM. I kill somebody but nobody sees me do it? That's a murder card. Did I do it on the outer rim instead of in the middle of Brooklyn? That's a murder card and the same amount of PP. The thing is though, I liked the fact there was PP. So, I want to see something that could be used to create lawful/lawless zones in the world. I think I posted about something like it in one of Radish's threads, but I'll go again here.

All areas in MR are lawless by default. This item would be placeable and would have the radius of a sphere/bubble that would turn the area into a lawful zone. When committing crimes in this area, you'd receive PP as standard. You'd need multiple to ensure full coverage of a city/colony. I'd add something to the HUD (like, a green and orange light on it somewhere that shows when you're in a lawful area or not.) to let players know when they're covered by the scanner. Finding the gaps in coverage or just outright destroying these points to ensure the area is lawless would, in my mind, be a goal for players in the clans. Especially if TS is trying to operate on earth cities.

It's one of the things I would've loved to have in FoM. With BoS owning outer rim colonies like CD or Pax it would've been nice to have it completely cut off from the PP system, there's nobody to watch us do our crimes, why are we being punished for it? It gives a reason for CPC to try covert missions to establish lawful zones in known hotspots, gives TS a reason to hit earth and want to smash things, it's fun conflict for all the family.

That's a good idea, we'll have to explore it, we haven't started building the crime system yet.

 

[Shakespears]

Deployables can get hacked and stolen, you're essentially wasting money & time, might as well hand over the deployables to people for free.

Some were hackable before but it was a waste of time honestly as hacking tools were costly themselves and not nearly flooded on the market like deployables were.

Deployables would have to be expensive and pain to mass produce otherwise we'll have them spammed again. The economy and production process have to be very balanced otherwise it'll just be FOM again where everyone has so much money and products that remove the point of even having an economy so to speak. Nobody should be able to easily roll high tier gear non stop in a 2+ week war. There has to be high costs otherwise what's the point not just having equipment just on hand like typical shooter games.

All in all, gameplay effecting deployables mostly hurt fom. Unless they're a challenge to make, field, and hurts the bankroll, they'll become an annoyance from spamming or utilized to replace gameplay elements rather than supplement them. Nobody wants turrets, shields, and mining rigs all over the place again.

 

[Necidious]

All in all, gameplay effecting deployables mostly hurt fom. Unless they're a challenge to make, field, and hurts the bankroll, they'll become an annoyance from spamming or utilized to replace gameplay elements rather than supplement them. Nobody wants turrets, shields, and mining rigs all over the place again.

I must say I concur with this. An issue that Face of Mankind frequently had was that players chose to spam all sorts of deployables, essentially making it a pain to watch and deal with it as unfolded within the game environment. Ideally, we would have to make it, as you say, pretty expensive, intricate and not something that would be viable to field for newcomers or seasoned players with a limited bank.

Restricting players so they can only place one or two deployables could also be a possibility. Nevertheless, this could render an issue later on when we grow a broader player base.

 

[NoahKirchner]

For the criminal factions, a siphon that can be placed near market terminals that, until hacked or destroyed, takes most of or all of the tax money received from the market and putting it into the placing faction's account.

As far as deployables go, I think that they should be utilized but not by individual players, instead, they should require a decent investment and maybe add to the amount of upkeep on a colony. Factions should have to pour money into security for their core colonies.

 

[Cadonez]

For the criminal factions, a siphon that can be placed near market terminals that, until hacked or destroyed, takes most of or all of the tax money received from the market and putting it into the placing faction's account.

As far as deployables go, I think that they should be utilized but not by individual players, instead, they should require a decent investment and maybe add to the amount of upkeep on a colony. Factions should have to pour money into security for their core colonies.

To expand on this, departments(families) should have their own account. Area wide speakers and PP detectors are a good start. I think faction owned AND individual deployables should be a thing.

 

[Cadonez]

Can you expand a bit on why it's a bad idea?

Minimizing AI in a PVP interaction is by and far my standpoint on the deployable thing. Turrets, combat drones etc. do nothing but take away from the meat game in my opinion. While not having them at all may ruffle feathers, i'd prefer to keep them as minimal as possible and only in certain areas.

 

[Hard Hat Harry]

I'd make the deployables faction only. The R7 would have to give ranks privs to get deployables. This would keep abuse down.

 

[NoahKirchner]

To expand on this, departments(families) should have their own account. Area wide speakers and PP detectors are a good start. I think faction owned AND individual deployables should be a thing.

I think that the accounting business should be left up to the faction itself. If a faction, let's say the military for example, wants one centralized account for all deployables then that should be possible. On the contrary, if they want the main deployable account to only be used for deployables on colony #1, and want the freedom marine departmental account or whatever to pay for all deployables on colony #2, then that should be able to be set up.