BeeStation-Hornet
BeeStation-Hornet copied to clipboard
BeeStation
Reworks the Assimilation (Hivemind) Gamemode and adds it back into rotation
About the PR
Readds Hiveminds to the gamemode rotation, changes a lot of their mechanics and focuses the gamemode specially on Antag vs Antag
General concept
Hivemind Hosts are splinters from a powerful psychic entity destroyed long ago now they seek dominion over the other splinters to return to their former glory. In order to do so they must feed off the latent psychic power of some crewmembers and destroy their competition.
Hosts should have to make use of cunning, intrigue and manipulation of the crew to rid themselves of their adversaries, NOT be able to bulldoze through the entire crew themselves, we want engagement with players of the round not a murderfest or silent greenshift.
Gameplay Mechanics:
Hivemind Hosts:
Hivemind Hosts each have their own Hive, consisting of their main Host and a number of assimilated vessels wich serve to unlock their powers and channel their usage. a human can be a vessel of multiple Hiveminds simultaneously.
Tier 1 Spells (Roundstart)
- Assimilate mind: Adds target as a Vessel will fail against mindshields.
- Hive Vision: Let's you see through the eyes of Vessels
- Neural Shock: After a short cooldown puts target Vessel unconcious (for if one of your pawns is giving you problems or for thralling) doesn't work on mindshielded players or Sec/Command
- Telepathic Currents: Anonymous communication with the other Hosts, for negotiations or banter.
- Psychic Plane: UI for tracking enemy Hive sizes and hunting them down with tracking charges.
Tier 2 Spells (5 Vessels/Host vs Host abilities)
- Probe Mind: Looks for foreign influences in a mind, quick use low cooldown, tells if another Hivemind is using this vessel, or if they are an awakened vessel or Compelled.
- Network Invasion: We remove the influence of another Host from a mind and acquire tracking charge, longer cooldown .
- Integrate: Absorbs the power of an enemy Hive Host gibbing them, acquire an additional awakened vessel (must be in a strangle hold)
Tier 3 Spells (10 Vessels/Crew Manipulation)
- Awaken Vessel: We awaken a Vessel turning them into a loyal servant, ammount is limited by the ammount of Integrations (starts with one). a deconverted thrall can never be a vessel again (Aggro grabbed) DONE
- Compell: Instills a single directive in the mind of a vessel for a duration of three minutes, Vessel will remember what their directive was afterwards so don't out yourself! (They will not go through with commands involving suicide)
- Concentrated Infiltration: Allows you to assimilate through a Mindshield implant's defenses, doesn't destroy the mindshield (toggle).
Tier 4 Spells (15 Vessels/Combat skills)
- Repair Protocol: Heals the host at the expense of a vessel.
- Induce Panic: Causes those around the Host to become panicked on usage reducing their combat capabilities.
- Psychic Barrier: Creates a force barrier to shield the Host.
Tier 5 Spells (20 Vessels/Powerful long CDs)
- Hive Rally: Clears stuns and stamina damage from awakened vessels in our view.
- Shatter Protections: Shatters the Mindshield of one of our vessels, sec and Captain are immune.
Assert Dominion (One Mind replacement 25 Vessels + 20 more than any other and more Integrations than any other)
- Host gains Stun/Sleep/Virus/Delimb Resistance
- Host Can't go into crit
- Host and Awakened Vessels glow pink
Vessels:
When being assimilated an Assimilate will not inmediatly notice anything they have no way of knowing they have been affected and are NOT an antagonist, as the size of the hive increases and spells are used a Vessel may feel hallucinations or other direct effects from being a Vessel.
Eviction:
A mindshield will remove Vessel status and deconvert Awakened Vessels, also fixes Compell Brainwashing on use. Psicodine can also be used to purge Vessel status (for if you are already mindshielded/no mindshields left).
Todo (more like things to keep in mind, gamemode should be functional as is)
- [x] Double Triple and Quadruple check everything
- [x] Look for any potential runtimes/harddels even if I have been careful something might have slipped
- [x] Add a little bit of flavour I want in
- [x] Expand UI functionality a bit
- [x] Spellcheck, I ran into a lot of typos
- [ ] Playtest it, I have checked everything works fine but things break in an actual enviroment
- [ ] Whatever the maints catch/ ask for
Why It's Good For The Game
More Gamemode variety, there's a lot of talk of removing nowadays might as well have a replacement
Testing Photographs and Procedure
I have made sure all abilitiies work and are gainned correctly and that no runtimes/harddels happen in common actions, however as I was unable to test this with multiple players something must have slipped me.
Screenshots&Videos
Changelog
:cl: Penwin add: Adds Assimilation back into the gamemode rotation add: Reworks a lot of the Assimilation gamemode add: The Gamemode features several alien Hiveminds competing for dominion over the station crew add: Their abilities are mostly stealthy and revolve around manipulation of the crew add: Whichever Host manages to rise above the rest may Assert Dominion and gain powerful bonuses /:cl:
Nice i always wanted to get those back in but never found time and/or enough motivation to properly rework them good to see that someone tries.
Its completely functional right now, there's just a couple of things I want to make sure I don't forget for tomorrow
🆑 Penwin, gamemode originally by Kierany9
uhh remove the gamemode originally by part maybe i dunno how this would look like in the CL but probably not good and just leave kierany9 itself as the second author in trough technically all those changes are made by yourself so unless kierany9 gave you direct advise on how to change it i don't see a reason to include them in the CL
uhh remove the gamemode originally by part maybe i dunno how this would look like in the CL but probably not good and just leave kierany9 itself as the second author in trough technically all those changes are made by yourself so unless kierany9 gave you direct advise on how to change it i don't see a reason to include them in the CL
This.
Also it sounds really cool, would love to see it in action
Psicodine can also be used to purge Vessel status (for if you are already mindshielded/no mindshields left).
Psicodine can be very easily mass produced and this will lead to situation where expanding your hive is impossible because everyone is able to easily remove their vessel status. This can and will be will be abused
Compell: Instills a single directive in the mind of a vessel for a duration of three minutes, Vessel will remember what their directive was afterwards so don't out yourself! (They will not go through with commands involving suicide)
Sounds cool on paper but its not going to work very well in reality. First of all it lasts too short for anyone to be able to enforce the directives upon the player should they be uncooperative and i know some players respond very poorly to being brainwashed/converted. Second thing is that majority of players are very incompetent when it comes to antagonizing and might fail to act upon the directive before your influence wears off even if they are trying. I would suggest reworking this ability to have a ghost take control of the mindcontroled person as they would not care about the consequences and would be much more likely to be cooperative or even let hivemind host control person directly for the duration.
Oh and also of course thank you for taking your time to update outdated antagonist :)
You do point out some of my worries, but without seeing how it plays out it's all speculation I'll be sure to make changes as necessary, Thanks for the feedback for course!
I would suggest reworking this ability to have a ghost take control of the mindcontroled person
This or anything that completely takes away agency from the affected player is a hard pass and one of the reasons why the pre-rework Hivemind mind control was so hated
Is there an endgoal for the hivemind?
Also, you gotta talk to the headmins/Crossed about escalation/rules. They will have to be added.
Is there an endgoal for the hivemind?
Asserting Dominance ability I guess, though not required
Also, you gotta talk to the headmins/Crossed about escalation/rules. They will have to be added.
Good point, I'll write up my thoughts on this tomorrow
That should be all for changes until I get reviews, unless something comes to mind
Rules/escalation:
For the Crew:
Hivemind Hosts are non-human for silicons and classed under EOTC in Space law Awakened Vessels are human (until they glow pink) they fall under Non Compos Mentis in Space Law, aka just deconvert them Compelled crewmembers also fall under Non Compos Mentis
For the Hiveminds:
Other Hivemind Hosts are always valid kills, combat between them should be encouraged. Hivemind Hosts can kill in self-defense but don't strive to make them unrevivable/cremate/gib Hivemind Hosts can kill Security ONLY in self-defense (this is of course subject to change but we could see how it goes), they can kill security if they are after them and do whatever they want with their corpse.
I mean personally i always wanted hiveminds to have a direct dependency on (living) crew so killing crew would be discuraged naturally
They lose their powers if they dip below the threshold for said power, so It's very much discouraged for them
Hivemind Hosts are splinters from a powerful psychic entity destroyed long ago now they seek dominion over the other splinters
Brandon Sanderson?
Compell: Instills a single directive in the mind of a vessel for a duration of three minutes,
I'm a little concerned that 3 minutes might not be enought to do very much. If the intent is to have them only able to do a simple command, like release you from prison, that might be okay. However if they get confused with the order or decide to take a more careful route I can easily see the 3 minutes lapsing before they even do something.
Perhaps you could have it last up to 20 minutes (manually able to be cancelled sooner), be usable on one person at a time, and only ever able to be used on a person once. It could also open a telepathic line of communication between the master and target. One that would identify the master as "Master" so they may instruct their pawn how to do the finer things.
Alternatively add in the flavour text that action must be taken immediately and as soon as possible and maybe up it to 5 minutes.
Just some thoughts, it could probably be seen better if these changes would be a good idea through a testmerge.
I have infact considered these changes already, but I'm waiting for a testmerge to start tweaking finer things so I have some actual gameplay to draw conclusions from and not just assumptions.
I will be keeping a close eye for potential changes if we do get a testmerge at some point.
The objectives seem very easy, I assume the challenge is that there isn't enough people for all of them to win so they have to fight?
Adressed all the various oversights that came up in the TM, split spells each into their own file as requested by Bacon, sec and Captain are now immune to mindshield breaking.
Added it as a roundstart ruleset, I don't think it would work well as a midround and it's straight up not viable as a latejoin (unless it's to just inject new hosts?)
Note that one of the original reasons for it's removal is that they were too stealthy and barely interacted with crew, similar to Internal Affairs Agents gamemode. Reviewing the listed abilities it doesn't seem significantly different and will likely result in the same kind of "silent greenshift".
I'd add something like this at Tier 3 Spells (10 Vessels/Crew Manipulation): Mayhem: A random amount of your vessels will receive the same subtle hypnotic suggestion to start causing trouble.
The suggestion is picked randomly from a list:
- Start stockpiling weapons
- Vandalise the station
- Start barricading X department
- Punch people from X department
- Hack open X department
- Riot outside the Brig
Pros:
- For the Hosts this enables them to utilise a large hive to distract Security
- For crew this becomes more like an actual conversion mode, except instead of immediately trying to kill others ala Revs/Cult you're instead just mildly antagonistic
This pull request has conflicts, please resolve those before we can evaluate the pull request.
![github-actions[bot] avatar](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/in/15368?v=4 "Published by a pub.dev verified publisher"){kind=small}
This pull request has conflicts, please resolve those before we can evaluate the pull request.
Penwin you are fixing my favourite antag and if everything is good I love you etc etc thank you
