Gamemode ideas

[warnipple]

Well I heard a coder was asking for more game mode ideas. So why not make a thread to brainstorm some new gamemodes?


My idea:

A hide and seek gamemode with an added touch.

Attack on Station
requires 4-15 people

Centcomm report of huge humanoids heading to the Station. It is known, they want to devour all of the crew. The crew must survive until the shuttle arrives and leave. Unfortunately the shuttle will arrive in 30 minutes. Centcomm has redirected a cargo ship containing lots of metal for you to fortify your posts until the shuttle arrives. Report to QM if you want some.

One person is randomly chosen to start off as the titan, the main antag. The titan is hungry and must eat the crew to gain more strength and speed. The titan may smash walls and destroy them. Initially this is weak (takes a lot of hits) but gets stronger as he devours more crew. The crew's weapons are ineffective against the titan but some weapons are able to push the titan back. This might help to give you precious time to escape or refortify a position.

Titans
- Immune to all types of damage, don't require o2
- Cannot be stopped but some powerful weapons (laser guns) can push them back.
- Can smash walls and destroy them.
- Eat crew to increase in power.

As time progresses, Centcomm will send more equipment and more titans are created.
25 minutes remaining - a Centcomm supply drop. It contains some items to help the crew survive.
20 minutes remaining - the next person a titan devours will become a titan.
15 minutes remaining - Centcomm supply drop, this time containing some random humanoid mobs with weapons. They do a small pushback but shouldn't be too hard for the titan to kill and eat.
10 minutes remaining - the next person a titan devours will become a titan.
5 minutes remaining - the Syndicate have heard of the titans and wish to win favour among the crew, they also send supplies (chameleon projectors or some good items).


- All sources of food are blown up. To prevent titans from eating non-crew and crew from eating so they are slow. This includes vending machines, the chem machines, grinders, botany stuff and any source of food. Instead the Centcom supply drops will contain food.

[Name Changing Autist]

How can you kill him, if he's immune to all forms of damage. Also pushing him back doesn't kill him and it'll take far too much time. This game-mode sounds very unbalanced.

Also there's been several game-mode suggestions here before, none of them have actually gotten in because either they're impossible to do, are more fitting of an event or are simply too hard to code.

Also this sounds far too hard to put in. Even if people did want to.

[warnipple]

Well the idea is to hide not kill the titan.

Also the only hard part to coding this would be coding the titan. Everything else is a timed event.

[Name Changing Autist]

Sounds bad.

[Snowfat]

Do something like that movie 'The Thing'. Basically a single changeling that's ripped as fuark, hopefully on par with a wizard.

[flimflam]

I can churn out a few ideas so here goes:

Either at the start of the round or in death the crew members either become a Golem or a Shadow (shadows get hurt by light and can do something called "ethereal jaunt" (like a wraith teleport), and the golems can well, survive in light. The idea is that these two factions must fight one another either to the death or toward some specific objective. The objective could be competition over sacrificing or securing a specific target (like the captain for example), or even something more macabre like corpse collection (or any kind of item based scavenger type objective). Could also be a good old team death match. This Game mode would be unique in that it would define two competing factions of equal sizes which is not something we often see. Whichever parts of the station are dark are where you know the shadows control, and vice versa with the light. I think a solid idea for an objective would make this concept interesting.



Second idea:

Centcomm informs the crew at the start of the round that it has been sabotaged, the pods and the shuttle are not functional and worse still, there is a nuclear bomb planted not at the station, but at centcomm itself. The crew will be forced to construct a starship, find and enter the rift leading to centcomm, break into centcomm headquarters, and disarm the nuke itself. Additionally, the saboteurs will have left some random surprises at centcomm to protect the nuke (random deadly mobs of any kind, turrets, booby traps, or anything that kills people). I think this game mode would be good because it can incporporate both ship building, nuke disarming, and the looting of centcomm all in one round. The randomness of the centcom nuke protection can provide excitement, forcing the crew to prepare for anything, maybe even some sort of boss fight based on whatever harassed them back at the station (space carps at ss13? giant boss carps or one up carps at centcomm, spiders into giant spiders, etc).

Anyway those are my ideas for now, i'll try and think of an obejctive for the shadow/golem war...

[DrunkenFlyingDemoman]

The Hiding gamemode idea is a terrible one.

It's just plain out stupid.

First off, think about every other game mode is, it's about finding out who's the guy trying to kill us all, to find out who are the ones that ain't part of the crew, it's about fighting these antagonists, aliens and corporate agents WHILE still doing the job that Central Command has assigned each crewmember.

Your "Hide and Seek" idea goes against THE ENTIRE GAME itself, because quite frankly, SS13 isn't just about antagonists, it's about running the station as well, an all-powerful-god-unkillable thing is NOT what SS13 is all about, goddamnit.

Remember, it's called Space Station 13, not fucking Space Hide and Seek.

[Name Changing Autist]

Oct 26, 2013 4:36:30 GMT -5 flimflam said:

I can churn out a few ideas so here goes:

Either at the start of the round or in death the crew members either become a Golem or a Shadow (shadows get hurt by light and can do something called "ethereal jaunt" (like a wraith teleport), and the golems can well, survive in light. The idea is that these two factions must fight one another either to the death or toward some specific objective. The objective could be competition over sacrificing or securing a specific target (like the captain for example), or even something more macabre like corpse collection (or any kind of item based scavenger type objective). Could also be a good old team death match. This Game mode would be unique in that it would define two competing factions of equal sizes which is not something we often see. Whichever parts of the station are dark are where you know the shadows control, and vice versa with the light. I think a solid idea for an objective would make this concept interesting.

Golem and Shadows fighting each other on the Station while the crew sit in a middle-ground. Sounds decent enough.
It'd be quite hard to balance out though.

[flimflam]

So i thought of some balance points for the shadow vs golem mode, but it requires a more fleshed out concept of the game mode itself

I figure that either the Golems or the Shadows, or both, could have some sort of Holy/Evil totem/Relic that they need to protect and or set up /release. the Golems could be fighting to protect and raise the Alpha Golem, and the shadows could be seeking to destroy it, Or the shadows seeking to raise their Insidious Lord, Or both!

Here are some thigns that can be tweaked for balance

~ Shadows and golems can be given their own chat channel (because shadows are restricted to darkness, cooperation is more important for them so if the shadows seem the underdog i would add channels for them.

~ Only one side needs to have an objective to resurrect or protect something, the other side can always just seek to destroy it, but the crew might not know which faction is actually trying to raise their leader. Whichever is made easier, attacking or defending, could be given to the underdog species. The difficulty or time limit for the objective could be increased or decreased to provide further balance opportunity.

~ An additional ability or two could be added to shadows or golems to make their lives easier or their opponents harder (fix or destroy nearby lights for example) (summon totem or relic with very large cooldown or teleport to totem or relic with large cooldown)

~ the amount of damage shadows take from light can be tweaked pretty straightforwardly.

Now to wax on the initial circumstances that set up the game...

What would be a proper way to set this up? Do certain lucky people get chosen to be a golem or shadow at the beginning of the round? Do they start somewhere specific or are they secretly injected in as a part of the crew? Perhaps Lairs could be established where ghosts spawn as a golem or shadow with means of teleportation to your factions foothold area on the station. Maybe all the shadows spawn in a specific darkened area (incinerator or something dis-used) with their objective relic if they have one, while the golems spawn in a similar place with their own. There seem to be a lot of ways the station could be thrusted into the middle of a golem shadow war, but i am concerned about their incentives.

Which side are the crew going to side with? If the relic/totem idea isn't completely stupid, maybe when a crew member somehow submits themselves to one, they gain a sort of alliance with the faction they chose in exchange for a reward. For the shadow faction i know the reward would be to see well in the dark, like shadows themselves, giving them the ability to work together in darkness. For golems it could be something of equal merit (that would somehow help golem/crew synergy, i just dont know what). This would create incentives for the crew to not just obliterate both factions, but to openly or secretly side with one, and then we have an atmosphere of two totally warring sides being aided and abetted by your secret crew initiates. If you are a crew member who gives themselves to the shadow or golem faction, like cult membership you will be able to tell who your fellow shadows and crew initiates are. Loyalty implants may or may not be used to deconvert faction initiates. Heck, if the whole "raise our leader" thing seems fun and interesting, then it can be through sacrificing a crew member and turning them into a super powerful attack thing that then goes to wreck the opposing faction's leader/relic/totem/base/race.

The last thing i want to submit and ask about is the actual objectives themselves in such a set up. It could be that both sides simply want to destroy each other and raise their leader, but it could also be that one side, after all is said and done, wants to destroy the station somehow while the other wants to have at least 5 faction members escape on the shuttle. This final objective could be randomly assigned to either faction, providing a modicum of risk for the crew, and forcing them to judge for themselves which side they want to assist. So basically one faction being secretly malevolent. The loyalty implanted heads of staff will be forced to adopt a strict policy against one or both factions, which adds yet another interesting dynamic.

Obviously there are a lot of ideas here, so please, share some harsh criticism in order to distill out the feces, and maybe we can come up with something simple and good enough for a coder to actually code!

[Zebidian]

How about Solar flare game mode (or random event)?

In this game mode, the station is hit by a massive solar flare that heats up the hull causing numerous breeches throughout the station. Space would be absolutely consumed by super heated flames and heats up any exposed parts of the interior of the station causing fires.

The fire locks would easily seal off the exposed portions but not without that lose of that section of the station. The event could last only a few minutes (10 perhaps) but the results would be devastating.

This is more of a random event than an actual game mode but it would give the engineers something to do every once and a while.

[flimflam]

I have a few passing ideas for some game modes.

One that incorporates the spaceship: Pirate warfare: the station must build the star-ship gather necessary supplies, and then go through a a rift or something to do battle with a ship full of pirates and recover a stolen item or something, or else the station will blow or shuttle never come or something. Instead of traitors during this round, you would have mutineers who have spaceship oriented objectives.

Second idea: wizard apprentices! Like traitors, wizard apprentices could be peppered throughout the crew with neutered or new sorts of spells. They could have traitor like objectives but instead of a pda link get to choose from a few, maybe up to three or something, spells.

[Danuis Studnick]

Man ya SUCK at making game modes.

[lordmummie]

2 things: a undercover syndicate team, working together to kill all heads.
2 something like a saboteur. He has to disable the engine then blow up all consoles and then arm the nuke or something and has accses to extra stuff but no extra weapons.

[peterj555]

Can't we just nab an idea from another server?Pretty sure someone implemented a new game-mode revolving around teams of antags out to murder each other,all wearing specific uniforms(hat and jumpsuit) and converting a limited amount of crew into their "gang" either using an implanter or some other mcguffin(Note this is completely different from shadows vs golems,as it is just normal crew with snazzy hats)

TL:DR Glorified TDM