Labyrinthine Structures: Monster planning

[I-am-Erk]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Labyrinthine Structures are proposed subdimensional "dungeons" linked to netherum and exodii content. They should become the new go-to loot area to get CBM related gear semi-independently of the exodii (connection to at least another high tech faction will be necessary to get it fully functional), as well as a new and different type of place to loot. The core of the lore is that the exodii use the mimicry properties of the Netherum to intentionally create nether-copies of their own stuff. These places are creepy and weird but can be looted.

I have been unable to devote much time to CDDA dev recently and don't have any idea when this will change, so in the interests of both getting my plans in writing for my future self and also possibly enticing someone to help me work on this, I am writing up some of the notes I have on these structures into issues to store in an associated project.

This issue will detail the "basic level" monsters and their ecosystem for the Structures. Eventually, there should be more enemies than these in the Structures, with more wild and chaotic nether stuff appearing the deeper you go, but these are sufficient to form the backbone of enemies until we get further along.

Solution you would like.

Update 2023:

I will probably still use the ideas in this thread, but I have been thinking of a somewhat different tack for labyrinths as I am preparing them for #67978. At least at first, zomborgs and some kind of nerfed netherum clone of exodii quads and workers will form the backbone of the "conventional" monsters, and may in fact be hostile to each other. I'm also considering some non-conventional monsters that pose new challenges, and I think an interesting theme to develop would be "draining your juice". The netherum works by copying and 'stealing' what makes you real; perhaps a lot of enemies and threats in here further that by draining what you perceive as powering you.

The concept here is that your weapons and armour make you more effective against the conventional threats, but i want to make some aspects far harder to evade by just gearing up, requiring you to circumvent them rather than charging them headlong. So, on one hand, I want to avoid anything that heavily penalizes you while ignoring armour (no mi-go pain guns eg), but does threaten and even potentially kill you.

Drainage attack ideas:

• drain your cybernetic power (possibly use it to power a special attack)
• drain your blood (possibly use it to heal)
• drain your fluids (use it for something, what?)
• drain your stored calories (use it to boost enemy movement speed)
• drain your memories, temporarily lowering your skills (use it to improve own attacks?)

Note that for blood/fluid/calories the individual attacks should be small but the combined effect should get dangerous, I don't want anyone dying of thirst in two turns because they wandered into a Dust Swirl room.

Note on enemy spawning:

Enemy spawning should ideally be a bit different from the rest of the game. With zones (see #55794) being small, we should have rooms start with just a few pre-added mobs, and use Effect on Conditions to have new mobs enter from the "far" sides of the new zone after a few turns, sometimes in a couple waves (and sometimes you only face the original enemies). So you enter a zone, face maybe a few enemies, and then defend yourself from 0-3 waves of reinforcements. Due to the transdimensional nature of the place we could have cleared rooms eventually reset, after a random 1-12 hour timer, so the dungeon is never completely safe. (Optional: some uncommon loot within the Structure could render a single room safe, allowing you to make rest zones)

• Another way to run this would be with the previously proposed "dormant monster" option, where some monsters would be present in the room as inactive objects that activate over time or on a trigger. Even if we go this route, I think we should use both options.

Fleshborgs

Fleshborgs form the main enemy inside the Structure. They look like humanoid cyborgs, but their "cybernetics" are composed of bone, hair, and skin. They are somewhat smarter than zombies, able to avoid threats and traps.

Fleshborg (melee)

This is the most common enemy in the early level of the Structures

• Speed comparable to zombie, can lunge a short distance when close to player
• Somewhat higher hp than zombies, little to no armour
• Slow regeneration
• Fairly strong blunt melee attack
• Occasionally does a melee electric attack
• Immune to electric, nearly immune to acid/heat damage

Fleshborg (ranged)

A larger variant of the fleshborg with a weird meaty blaster arm, these guys fill the role of turrets in the dungeon.

• Speed very slow, no lunge
• Hp higher than melee variant and regenerates a little faster
• Ranged attack is a single target electric arc that does mild to moderate damage and may zap players in metal armour.
• Melee attack is slow as heck, but devastating

Stiltwalkers

Stiltwalkers are the big guns down here, and should be rarer than the other enemy types, but should often represent a huge threat when they appear.

Stiltwalker (Melee)

Looks like a metallic version of those creepy humans-on-four-stilts things, with a serene masklike human face. Imagine you crossed this picture with a Boston Dynamics bigdog with a bit of HR Giger thrown in.

• Speed quite fast, harrier tactics
• Low HP but pretty high armour. Crumples in two to four hits from a decent weapon, if they can get through the armour. Easy to hit. Should be a priority target when it appears. Using weakpoints, we can make it so that hits to the legs and things don't kill it but knock it down and break the leg, crippling its speed.
• Reach melee attack that can knock you back or knock you down and does quite high damage
• Tactically these tend to appear in groups of 2-3 and swarm at you, forcing you to deal with them immediately... they come on fast and hit hard so you have to try to take them out as fast as you can.

Stiltwalker (Ranged)

Smaller version of melee, with a cannon on its back. Ranged support role.

• Not quite as fast as melee but still pretty fast.
• Similar defenses to melee, even easier to take out but harder to hit
• Melee attacks are less powerful and don't have reach or knockback, but still pretty strong.
• Ranged attack is a spray of metallic goo that does mild acid and heat damage and adds an Encrusted effect:
• • Encrusted effect lasts 5-10 seconds and increases encumbrance, carry weight, and resistance to physical damage, but increases vulnerability to electricity and heat.
• • If encrusted again while already encrusted, intensity increases and timer resets. Eventually you can become Cocooned, which is pretty debilitating, but should still only last a few seconds.
• • Ideal: you can strip off your outer clothing to end the effect (even when cocooned). This is hard to encode so can be left out of a first pass. Alternatively, passing your turn could cause you to shake off the crust/cocoon faster.
• • Encrusted thus makes you more vulnerable to fleshborgs and wiregnats because of their heat and electric damage types
• Tactically, ranged stiltwalkers appear in small swarms again, and should pretty much always be accompanied by another enemy type that can take advantage of their support role. They should be slightly easier to ignore than the melee variant, encouraging players to prioritize them lower so that they have a chance to get in and use their spray.

Other types

Wiregnats

About the size of a volleyball. Looks like a flying bundle of barbed wire around a glowing, firelike core; makes a buzzing mosquito sound. Really annoying.

• Moves somewhat fast but not as fast as other small fliers like hacks and raptors. Not a harrier - it moves in close and behaves more like a zombie when it's there.
• A bit of armour but nothing special, go down in one good hit even with something like a metal pipe. Quite resistant to point attacks, they go right through (use weak points for this) but easy to smash in melee with slash or blunt
• Has a low damage, short ranged fire jet attack and a moderate damage melee slash attack
• Three variants that are indistinguishable on examination:
• • Top-splitter: on death it splits into 2-4 new gnats. Most will be poppers and second-splitters, rarely (1/10 maybe) you might get another top-splitter
• • Popper: on death explodes into a small fireball and fragments of metal
• • Second-splitter: behaves like a top-splitter but always explodes into 2-3 poppers, stopping the chain from going on forever.
• have a swarm effect similar to zombies, where multiple gnats get increased attack and damage when crowding the player.

Wiregnats should be individually no trouble, but with the capacity to rapidly overwhelm the player as they split. Their annoyingness is further exacerbated by them often spawning alongside ranged stiltwalkers, which will make their heat attacks more deadly while also reducing your ability to hit the gnats. They should often spawn randomly inside of zones, just a single gnat with the capacity to turn into a bigger problem.

Describe alternatives you have considered.

The possibilities are endless!

Additional context

It's possible that some of the existing netherum and distorted lab monsters could be occasionally reused, but I think if we do that, it should be limited to special occasions and used frugally. Sometimes it would be appropriate to have zomborgs, quads, and exodii workers in here as well, but those would have to be a modified versions that are part of the netherum faction... and the quads should be nerfed a bit.

Artistic inspiration

I've found deep dream AI image generators really great for getting a feel for the kind of technological mirrors we'd see in the twisted constructs of the netherum. Like any right-thinking human, I am very excited to turn these weird, confused products of a not-yet-sentient AI into a twisted dungeon we can explore and dismantle.

[John-Candlebury]

Attacks with even a minuscule chance of setting you on fire are incredibly deadly, it might be necessary to redesign how the on fire status functions if gnats aren’t supposed to be individually threatening.

[I-am-Erk]

Fire does need reworking, and I wouldn't consider that a barrier to developing more fire attacks. I'm always a fan of getting bugs fixed by making them more prominent. However I would prefer gnats to not light you on fire at all, which may require some separation of "heat" damage from "fire" effect

[MNG-cataclysm]

Fire does need reworking, and I wouldn't consider that a barrier to developing more fire attacks. I'm always a fan of getting bugs fixed by making them more prominent. However I would prefer gnats to not light you on fire at all, which may require some separation of "heat" damage from "fire" effect

A melee-range spell could be used for that. In Magiclysm code, the “IGNITE_FLAMMBLE” flag designates if the spell will set you on fire or not. Excluding that could allow for “heat” damage without making the player a walking torch.

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[I-am-Erk]

I will probably still use the ideas in this thread, but I have been thinking of a somewhat different tack for labyrinths as I am preparing them for #67978. At least at first, zomborgs and some kind of nerfed netherum clone of exodii quads and workers will form the backbone of the "conventional" monsters, and may in fact be hostile to each other. I'm also considering some non-conventional monsters that pose new challenges, and I think an interesting theme to develop would be "draining your juice". The netherum works by copying and 'stealing' what makes you real; perhaps a lot of enemies and threats in here further that by draining what you perceive as powering you.

The concept here is that your weapons and armour make you more effective against the conventional threats, but i want to make some aspects far harder to evade by just gearing up, requiring you to circumvent them rather than charging them headlong. So, on one hand, I want to avoid anything that heavily penalizes you while ignoring armour (no mi-go pain guns eg), but does threaten and even potentially kill you.

Drainage attack ideas:

• drain your cybernetic power (possibly use it to power a special attack)
• drain your blood (possibly use it to heal)
• drain your fluids (use it for something, what?)
• drain your stored calories (use it to boost enemy movement speed)
• drain your memories, temporarily lowering your skills (use it to improve own attacks?)

Note that for blood/fluid/calories the individual attacks should be small but the combined effect should get dangerous, I don't want anyone dying of thirst in two turns because they wandered into a Dust Swirl room.

[OtherBiscuit]

Not sure if you're still looking for ideas, but I had one a while back. As an upgrade for the existing Time Stop CBM, something to take away the damage from friction:

A miniaturized quantum computer, interfaced with the body, constantly calculating the current and expected positions of every solid part of your body, and shielding them while the user moves through stopped time. (So now, every tiny molecule of dust doesn't become a jagged razor, and every drop of blood in your veins a dagger)

Unfortunately, calculating and accounting for shielding every single atom, muscle, etc of a user's body would be infeasible for even nigh-magical Exodii technology.

So, naturally, optimized frames were developed with as few parts to keep track of as possible. A leg of, say, fifty or so moving parts is easier to keep track of than a fleshy or fully mechanical one. And if they have set limitations which can be fed into programming, even better.

This would still be far too complex for C:DDA's Exodii chapter to develop on a scale large enough to justify fielding, let alone giving to the player. But it would still magnitudes more simple than their other indecipherable tech.

The freed up processing power can even support calculations for a non-mechanical brain's movement. Which it appears some poor souls decided to try.

The result is a "Tachyon", one of these frames with overgrown, rubbery grey matter wrapping the metal, like muscular tissue. Naturally, the brains of the quantum computer and the (corrupted, netherum copied) brains of the former pilot are processing in union.

-At first, they seem to teleport. But for a split second, the blur of their motion is visible. For the player, a single turn after some flavour text is all the warning they'll get before it acts. And a brief description of the thing's afterimage, for some flavour text as well.

-After an attack (or other movement which it speeds up for) the Tachyon takes some time to regenerate, as the brain matter vaporized by the movement regrows. This is when it is most vulnerable, though it can still attack and move at normal speed. If an Exodii were to safely interface with this corrupted computer-brain hybrid--and could sort through what I'm sure would be a very confusing, very squishy file/neuron structure--they would see the chain of logic dictates that it isn't worth the power to protect the brain-muscle, as it regenerates quickly and locomotion and armour only briefly suffer without it.

-The frame's parts can be damaged, slowing it down (shorter teleports), but it will be able to use its speed if the quantum-computer/main-brain is still intact. And until it is destroyed, it will always out-speed you (in teleports, not several attacks per turn)

Overall I feel like this would be a miniboss-like encounter. It's impossible to dodge (for a canny dodger) and without time-stop of your own will always be able to close distance or create it. And it knows it. This is a smart enemy, not a mindless murder-cyborg, it can and will cut its losses and stalk you.

Ideally, Tachyons fill a similar role to the Stiltwalker: A priority target. But less immediately threatening, just capable of distracting and wearing down players. And with a critical vulnerability to their processors, accessable for a weakpoint hit while they recover.

-For health and armour, scale depending on whether it's a normal enemy or a special encounter. Damage should be low regardless, it's conserving energy and wearing you down.

-As for coding this thing, I would relegate its attack to a special attack, teleporting to its end-destination and dealing damage to the player (to simulate it moving so quickly). This would leave it without a normal attack, and slow movement while it recovers from a charge. And of course a solely-movement special attack for when it enters Tracking mode. Special cases given for uncanny dodging, and disabling these abilities when the player is moving quickly as well.

And for the frame itself? Any encounter with it would be after destroying the quantum computer it runs on, and likely damaging the frame itself. It's a fancy mechanical skeleton, after all.

Even if the Exodii could reverse-engineer enough of the quantum computer after sorting through the flesh and corruption from the netherum, AND could produce a working model, this is an Exodii frame. You would need to trade out your body (and put in a bunch of other tech that would make the time-stopping less efficient), or plug in your brain.

Best case scenario, since they understand a little more than the Exodii, the Hub01 understand enough of it to recreate a simpler version as an exoskeleton (or as an upgrade for another exoskeleton). I'd imagine it would run on battery charge and inefficiently discharge much of it for a tiny duration of supercharged movement.

If you still needed ideas, hope this can help!