wow, i actually finished writing this up
Quick Summary AKA - TLDR
Essentially this suggestion would be for us to be able to hire Mercanaries/Meme teams from the Communications console. The teams will be split between three categories: Meme Teams (Harmless joke teams) Light Mercanaries (About as strong as a greytider with a spear, available for hire once 33% of the crew’s dead) Heavy Mercanaries (About as strong as ERT, super expensive & available for hire once 66% of the crew’s dead). This is mainly intended to both let more players back into the game whilst at the same time acting as soft punishment for murderboners.
Why this is a good thing!:
Let’s be honest, we all love playing this game but there’s that one common situation that we all know, been through and hate… Dying… and having no way on being cloned!
Especially when it’s due to some robust antags managing to wipe out pretty much everyone capable of fighting back & the only thing the crew can do is just thow abunch of salt all over d-chat with the game now turning into a dull game of just waiting for the shuttle to finally arrive. Whilst GhostRoles do exist to let us back into the game in the form of ashwalkers & such, i’m sure most of us would rather be given a second chance to resume playing back on the main station or at the very least be given a shot to get killed for a second time give the Martial Arts-North Star User/Changeling an extra challenge to overcome!
And heeey, it’d give the heads & cargonians more of an incentive to make more money!
Plus we’ve got tons of cool unused stuff/mobs/gear in the code which we can probably cobble together to make a dope team with!
How will this be implemented?
Similar to purchasing a new shuttle, a new ’Hire Mercanaries’ button would appear on the comms console after logging in, where you’d be able to purchase em. After clicking on ‘Hire Mercanaries’ you’d be taken to a new screen with three options: Meme Teams, Light Mercanaires (Cannot be accessed until 33% of the crew has perished) & Heavy Mercanaries (Cannot be accessed until 66% of the crew have perished).
This is intended to both soft-punish murderboners and to prevent the crew from willy nilly hiring ERT tier squaddies when the station’s still fine & fully functional.
Mercenaries will have both a minimum & maximum limit on how many ghosts can join in. The minimum requirement is there to ensure that you don’t end up paying 15,000 creds for just one measly merc boy, should this happen however, an announcement would appear; refund the crew & notify em about the lack of ghosts who’ve signed up for it & also won’t go into cooldown (More about the cooldown later below in this section).
During the purchase of a team, the purchaser will be given the option to write down an optional objective for said team to accomplish, informing them about any threats here & is mainl intended on giving them a valid reason on why they know Greytide McRobust is infact an augmented martial arts using changeling, flash memelord who also has a lil personal cyborg army under their command.
As for how the teams would get onto the station, i’m not entire certain what the optimal way would be to tackle this however here’s what i’ve cooked up for now. They’d begin spawned in a cozy little indestructable shuttle & will be given two minutes to get familiar with their new self, come with up with plans, trade equipment around and just generally prep themselves for deployment. After the two minutes are up they will all be teleported down to the tracking beacon in arrivals.
We could it make it so they take a special shuttle down to the shuttle which then buggers off, however this would naturally be more work for the mappers/coders.
After a purchase’s been completed the ability to hire more mercs will be on cooldown for about ten to fifteen minutes.
Issues and concerns that may rise up should this be added & how this could be dealt with
Balance - This shouldn’t be too much of an issue imo, if one of the team’s too overpowered or underpowered, then they could easily be tweaked by changing their cost and/or by adjusting the Min/Max members of the team.
Access - What’s that you say? All the heads have already been killed by the threat and nobody can log into the comms console to call for aid? One solution could be to grant AI’s the ability to also hire mercs as they both tend to safe and usually tend have a better grasp on the situation at hand. However i do fear that this’d lead to teams being called in constantly everyround by the AI.
Another option could be add in a ‘Fire a distress signal’ button to the console which can be activated even if the console’s locked! This should only be unlocked once 33% of the crew’s dead, usable once per round and will have a chance of either: Spawning in a meme team free of charge!, Notifying the sister server that they require aid, small chance to spawn in a light merc team (Chance should be raised should 66% of the crew’s dead), maaaybe summon pirates, etc etc.
Metaknowledge - What’s that you now say? the mercanary somehow knows who the antag is and wordlessly tracked down and stabbed em to death? whilst this behaviour is definetly gross, the ‘optional’ objectives that the purchaser can fill in should atleast give the mercanary a valid excuse for why they know so and so’s a traitor, assuming that is, the purchasor had actually noted down who the threat is. Otherwise, atleast on sage, the mercenaries should be clueless on who/what the threat are until they either spot em or are informed by a crewman about em.
These nerds keep hiring the same team every round!!! - Grossss, but no worries, we could make it so that instead of every mercanary being available for hire at all times, the game instead randomly picks out 6 meme teams, 4 Light teams & 2 heavy teams from a global list of mercanaries which can be hired for that shift only! More work for the coders but that should prevent purchasing mercanaries from feeling stale for a while.
I’m an antag & i want to hire a bunch of nerds to do my bidding!!! - It’d be pretty dumb if a murderboning lad could hire a team to help em murderbone the crew plus it’d make zero sense for CentCom to let the crew hire Mercanaries who’re willing to shoot up their station.
Howeverrrrrr, since you can emag the Comms Console i suppose you could be given a new option to hire some ‘shady’ mercenaries instead. The costs will be paid directly from your ID card & a ‘warning announcement’ will be blasted once purchased plus the teams themselves should be ridiculously overpriced for what they’re worth but heeeey, it’ll atleast make the suitcase full of cash in the uplink a somewhat reasonable choice to purchase for once!
SECURITY JUST ARRESTED ME FOR BEING A DUCKING MERCANARY!!! - … Bruh!
Team Examples
Barring the Category & Notes, this’d be the information that would appear should you select the team, a template will be provided below this bit if you got any team ideas you’re willing to share below.
Category - ’ The category this teams fails under - Meme/Light/Heavy/Syndie.
Name - ‘What the name of the team is!’
Cost - ‘How much they’ll cost to purchase’
Size - ‘The minimal & maximum amount of mercs that can appear’
Description - ‘The description about the team that’ll show up in the comms console, preferably noting down their gimmick, pros & cons’
Notes -‘A more detailed explanation about the team, their clothing, items, race, what gimmicks they have, etc. So any potential coders knows what exactly this team’s meant to be.
Here’s a lil template you can use if you’ve got any decent team ideas you wish to share below.
Category -
Name -
Cost -
Size -
Description -
Notes -
With that outta the way, i’ll give out a couple examples on what sorta teams you’d be able to hire in each category.
Category - Meme
Name - Ian’s Merry Band!
Cost - 5000
Size - 1 - 9
Description ‘For whatever unholy reason, one of the scientists working aboard Laika 57 had accidentally managed to unleash a gigantic horde of sentient pets after an experiment had gone awry, we’d greatly appreciate it if you’d be willing to take some of these adorable critters off of our hands!’
Notes - ‘1 guaranteed corgi named Ian, 8 other randomly selected harmless sentient animals!’
Category - Meme
Name -Drones Sans Frontières
Cost - 8000
Size - 3 - 8
Description - Greetings station dwellers! We provide medical assistance to spacemen affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. Our teams are made up of thousands of professional Light Geists & aided by our lovely repair & medical drones - most of them made locally! Call us now & we’ll dispatch a team to help rebuild, relieve & restore the glory of your station!
Notes - 3 Drones, 3 Medic Drones & 2 Lightgeists. The Medic Drones will be wearing a nurse hat and will have medkits and other medicinal supplies in lieu of the tools Drones normally spawn with.
Category - Light
Name - Elderly Response Team
Cost - 10,000
Size - 3 - 6
Description - 'One of the oldest and most respected teams we’ve got here! Sure, they may be bound to a wheelchair and maaay have a few screws loose in their brains, but don’t worry, they’ll definitely stop whatever threatens your station… I think?!
Notes -All of them spawn in as a paraplegic, will have 3 randomised mild traumas present. Wears a centcom jumpsuit, degraded armor vest and a red beret. Given old people names such as: Harold, Susan, Agnes, Everett, etc etc. Carries a police baton, pepper spray and and a couple of zip ties and energy bolas. Grandpa Gang Rise up
Category - Light
Name - 501’st Ash Legion
Cost - 15,000
Size - 4 - 7
Description - ‘Former native ashwalkers who’d managed to find their ways into the stars. After somehow intergrating themselves into society, these hardened veterans will often seek out employment as cheap but reliable warriors! Donning their signature roman attire, these spear wielding lizards can be trusted to put up a good fight against whatever’s threatening the station!’
Notes - Pretty much reskinned ashwalkers (Digitrade legs, can’t shoot guns) with the roman helmets and clothing you can acquire in the costume vendor, the grunts will spawn in with a bone spear & a bone knife in their pockets.
1 guaranteed ‘Centurion’. Has a centurion helm, only one who can speak galactic commons and will have their spear be replaced with a bone axe.
Category - Heavy
Name - Dimitri’s Best Boyz & Bears!
Cost - 75,000
Size - 5 - 9
Description 'Greetings comrades, Is me, Dimitri!! You say you have problem down on your station? No worries friend, for they are no match for us! We have rifles, vodka & bears with us Dah! Call us now comrade and the bad ublyudok will be no more! "Ey Viktor, my nakonets poluchili rabotu!
Notes - 1 Guaranteed Commisar named Dimitri, 3 sentient combat bears, 4 Russian Grunts & 1 Slav Combat Medic. Grunts will spawn in wearing an advanced military tracksuit, russian vest & a Battle Ushanka. they’ll spawn in with a Mosin Nagant with two extra clips, vodka & a combat knife!
The Medic would have the same clothing as the grunt but with a medi-hud, couple of medkits in their backpack & a medbeam gun instead of a rifle. Old Dimitri’d get a Unica revolver with two extra speed loaders & a saber instead of a rifle and will don a fancy Russian battle coat & the HoS’s fancy hat.
Category - Heavy
Name -The Righteous Fins of Carp’sie
Cost -50,000
Size - 5 - 7
Description -Greetings young one, evil hadst did strike into thy station? has’t nay feareth young one, f’r those wretch’d h’retics upon thy station shalt not escapeth the righteous fury of mine own holy fins! That is right childe. Tis fusty wise carp shall p’rsonnaly descend upon thy station 'longside mine own two holy knights. and some oth’r rabble i hadst pick’d up 'long the way. W’rry not, this wise fusty gudgeon shall p’rsonally empow’r the plebs f’r as longeth as mine own avatar lives!
Notes - 1 Guaranteed BIG, named spaceshark named ‘Avatar of Carp’sie’. 2 normal sized space sharks, 3 Carp’sian Crusaders & 2 Carp’sian Medics/Acolytes! the Carp’sians will all be granted a carp’sie plush nullrod. The Crusaders will naturally be wearing the crusader armor & will be equipped with a claymore. The Acolytes will have the same ‘powers’ a normal chaplain would have (Blessing water, bible heals, etc). will be wearing a space carp costume & will have both a bible and a few medkits in their backpack.
The ‘Avatar’ would have some special properties, carp’sian folks that are within a 7 tile radius will have a 10% defence buff against all damage types & will slowly heal up at a rate similar to how a pylon would heal up a cultist, and will grant them major mood buff, however should the avatar fall, the surviving space sharks will have their player force-ghosted out & revert back to their normal npc self whilst the remaining carp cultists will fall over stunned for a lengthy ten seconds before given two random traumas for failing to protect the ‘avatar’. That being said this sounds like a pain to code soo we could always have the avatar just be a funni big shark boi who speaks with high volume on!
Category -Syndie
Name -The ‘B’ Team
Cost -10,000
Size - 4 - 9
Description - "Greetings agent, Barry B Benson here, don’t ask how i’ve buzzed my way in here but don’t you worry you busy bee, this sure as heck ain’t no sting operation! Me & my Bee bros have over 300 confirmed kills. we had trained in wasp warfare and we’re the top stingers in the entire BEE armed forces. Your enemies are nothing to us but just another target!
Notes - 9 sentient bees with random chems, given terrible bee related names such as ‘Agent Buzz’ ’ Sting Operative’ & ’ Barry B Benson’
Category - Syndie
Name -Jungle Rampage
Cost - 40,000
Size - 2- 5
Description - Ook Ook, Ook? (Well met you fine dashing traitor, our creater, Hara M. Be had graciously uplifted me and all of my brothers & sisters, and had kindly granted us former, belligerant savages the joy that is sentience! In return for their kind deeds we’ve decided to form a team to pay off the debt we our to our beloved creator! Our application may’ve been denied by Nanotrasen… but don’t you worry Sir/Ma’am, we’re the fiercest warriors here & we promise to get whatever job you need done!
Notes - 2 Sentient Gorillas & 3 Sentient Monkeys. The apes will be given names such as ‘Brother Bonobo’ ‘Sister Koko’ ‘Brother Homo’ & ‘Sister Siameng’ to differentiate themselves from the regular monkeys you’d find on the station. The monkeys will be granted a syndicate gas mask & a 02 tank on their back.
oof comming up with some examples teams sure did take a while
You guys are still here? niceee. As usual, feedback on this & suggestions for potential teams are greatly appreciated.
One last thing, this suggestion was made with mainly golden in mind, would love to get some sage player’s thoughts on this.
Now then, time for me to finally sleep i’ll polish up this suggestion later tomorrow.
