Adds Oil Platform specials to spawn in the ocean

[Peakwastaken]

Summary

Content "Adds a new globally unique special to spawn in the ocean : an Oil Platform !"

Purpose of change

The ocean is completely devoid of content right now, and I understand it might make it very unappealing to work on before anything is actually there to make people interested in going there, so I figured I'd get the machine rolling while trying my hands at doing some mapping for CDDA !

Describe the solution

This special is UNIQUE with a 5% chance of spawning per overmap, I tried using check_for_locations to prevent it from spawning to close to the short with no luck, so city_distance is what's kind of doing that for now.

It features mostly industrial loot (Tools, electronics, work/diving clothes, heavy machinery, solar pannels), as well as quite a few skill books, medicine, food, some chemistry ingredients, and the potential for 55gal drums containing various fuel, as well as a catalytic cracking reactor and newly added crude oil (which I'd like to make a recipe to turn into fuel with the reactor in the future). It also has a catalytic cracking reactor in the lab section !

There's a 20% chance for a helicopter spawn on the helipad, which might be a wreck (from the "helicopters" spawn group), and four 10% chance for single motor boat spawns by the pillars on the water. There's also up to three inflatable boats floating down below the emergency dockings on the east side.

Besides the most common types of zombies, It is mostly populated by zombie/feral mechanics or crewmen, swimmer zombies, and there are small chances of zapper/gasoline zombies to spawn. For the latter, there are four hardcoded locations with 5% chance of spawning, and some further chances in the zombie group a week in. Figured it'd work well thematically and could be interesting as either a boon or a bane depending on how you handle it.

I tried to stick as best as I could to what an oil platform could look like by doing quite a bit of research, the only thing I really skirted around was for the plume; a chimney that usually extends quite a ways out over the ocean to burn excess gas. I didn't want there to be somewhere you could just easily walk to and attract all the zombies to take a dive so easily, so it mostly goes up in height.

I went with a gravity based structure, the supporting pillars extending all the way to the bottom of the ocean, because I'd like, in a potential follow up, leave some room to add a small chance of it having a submerged hidden lab kind of thing in the concrete slab at the bottom. Such pillars usually are used to house piping that'd connect to underwater pipe-lines, so I figured it'd be good like this for now anyways ! Plus it makes it easier to justify every bit of piping that runs along the platform, which i've tried to do as best as possible.

Describe alternatives you've considered

• As said above, adding a chance for a hidden submerged lab to be connected to the pillars going down - probably for a new project if it seems like a good idea.

• Adding ramps instead of stairs to the various walkways - seemed like idle zombies liked to kill themselves by walking up and dropping back down.

• Making it bigger and globally_unique, but I'd rather have both if possible !

• Adding even more chances for gasoline zombies to spawn as time progresses.

Testing

Spawning in a new world, teleporting to the ocean, seems to spawn fine.

Going around to see if I've made any mistakes, fixed all the ones I could see.

Additional context

Screenshots with explanation : https://imgur.com/a/PHeXLWv

Otherwise :

[NetSysFire]

While this is cool and all, all oil wells are incredibly far from the shore in real life, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_drilling_on_the_Atlantic_coast_of_the_United_States#North_Atlantic_coast - which shows that the nearest well is 190 km from the shore of Massachusetts. Plus those are all exploratory wells and do not appear to be active.

However, since a war is looming per ingame lore and war usually needs oil, maybe this can be tied into the lore. Yet that region is practically devoid of oil or gas reserves so that will be an additional problem.

[cainiaowu]

How about some offshore wind farms and tidal wave generators? These things dont need to go out too far.

[Zireael07]

I think this is a case of a slight break from reality being understandable IMHO

[NetSysFire]

I think this is a case of a slight break from reality being understandable IMHO

I disagree. There must be a lore reason why oil rigs suddenly spawn in an area without oil or even gas reserves. Of course there can be slight deviations from reality but entire oil rigs coming out of nowhere?

[Peakwastaken]

While this is cool and all, all oil wells are incredibly far from the shore in real life, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_drilling_on_the_Atlantic_coast_of_the_United_States#North_Atlantic_coast - which shows that the nearest well is 190 km from the shore of Massachusetts. Plus those are all exploratory wells and do not appear to be active.

However, since a war is looming per ingame lore and war usually needs oil, maybe this can be tied into the lore. Yet that region is practically devoid of oil or gas reserves so that will be an additional problem.

Totally agree with this, but I figured it'd be okay to let that detail slide a little, for the reason you mentioned, and with the idea I had of adding a small chance of having a small lab at the bottom, if I ever get to it, I wanted to add some context in the computers hinting that DARPA (of course, unofficially XEDRA) also used those as fronts to study the effect of the blob on maritime life !

Besides, there are some offshore operation just a little north in the Atlantic, around nova scotia and Newfoundland, I personally don't think it's completely unreasonable, or at least contrary to the idea of verasimilitude, to think some deposits can be found in this area

[Zireael07]

https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/2008/09/19/gas-not-oil-could-drive/45929505007/

https://ecori.org/2018-1-4-offshore-drilling-proposed-for-new-england/

seem to indicate some oil in the area

There was apparently also some searches for gas https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/coastal-new-england-senators-introduce-bipartisan-offshore-drilling-ban

Though I agree that offshore wind is a very attractive proposition and IRL there's a current proposal for New England Wind around Martha's Vineyard

[NetSysFire]

seem to indicate some oil in the area

which are uneconomic to actually exploit and this is the reason there are no active oil rigs there.

[worm-girl]

With just a bit of modification, this could be re-envisioned as a construction platform for an offshore wind farm: see https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/new-england-mid-atlantic/science-data/offshore-wind-energy-development-new-england-mid-atlantic-waters or https://ctmirror.org/2024/03/27/ct-offshore-wind-park-city-avangrid-2/

Construction of the Block Island Wind Farm, RI

It could also, with a bit of imagination-stretching, be something like Big Shell from Metal Gear Solid 2, an offshore construction designed to contain an oil spill due to a shipping accident. The wind farm is more realistic though, and could also believably be a front for some dubious activities.

The wind farm idea also suggests its own followup: Occasional windmills at sea.

[Maleclypse]

While this is cool and all, all oil wells are incredibly far from the shore in real life, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_drilling_on_the_Atlantic_coast_of_the_United_States#North_Atlantic_coast - which shows that the nearest well is 190 km from the shore of Massachusetts. Plus those are all exploratory wells and do not appear to be active.

However, since a war is looming per ingame lore and war usually needs oil, maybe this can be tied into the lore. Yet that region is practically devoid of oil or gas reserves so that will be an additional problem.

So Massachussets alone is 296km long. Not including the other five states of New England. So while 190km offshore is quite a ways it's not as far east as the player can go west if they were to start in Boston. Post Erk's ocean additions we have the ability to dictate how far east something starts appearing. So if we took the Mass Mod and figured out how many overmaps it is east to west and set these to start appearing in the ocean 1/2 that number of overmaps east of ocean start.

That may be quite a ways out into the ocean but it's definitely manageable and then they provide good quest locations for things. Not necessarily sci-fi things but hey every oil rig is a guaranteed source of catalytic cracking machinery.

Speaking of someone should add the catalytic cracker to this map.

[Peakwastaken]

Speaking of someone should add the catalytic cracker to this map.

I thought about doing it, should've put it in the alternatives section, but I figured that oil platforms aren't where things are processed so I was afraid it wouldn't make enough sense.

If you think it's a good idea, i could add a chance for one to spawn in the small lab or dedicate a room for it.

I was thinking that if I added it I'd have a computer with some logs of the people running the place seeing the world going to shit and ordering their scientists to try and build a makeshift reactor so they could be self-sustainable

[Maleclypse]

Speaking of someone should add the catalytic cracker to this map.

I thought about doing it, should've put it in the alternatives section, but I figured that oil platforms aren't where things are processed so I was afraid it wouldn't make enough sense.

If you think it's a good idea, i could add a chance for one to spawn in the small lab or dedicate a room for it.

I was thinking that if I added it I'd have a computer with some logs of the people running the place seeing the world going to shit and ordering their scientists to try and build a makeshift reactor so they could be self-sustainable

So the research I found was that the main places catalytic crackers of player usable size are found is in oil resource extraction locations so that they can purify what they need to run the plant and to determine the yield of that particular field as it's makeup determines the value of the crude oil. So yes one or more rooms with catalytic cracking equipment makes sense

[NetSysFire]

Since I have apparently not said this explicitely enough: You may also keep the current oil rig if you find a convincing lore reason for oil rigs suddenly popping up in the middle of nowhere where the oil reserves are quite sparse. XEDRA stuff sounds somewhat plausible but this might still be a bit of a stretch, but maybe you (plural you) have something else in mind.

[Maleclypse]

Since I have apparently not said this explicitely enough: You may also keep the current oil rig if you find a convincing lore reason for oil rigs suddenly popping up in the middle of nowhere where the oil reserves are quite sparse. XEDRA stuff sounds somewhat plausible but this might still be a bit of a stretch, but maybe you (plural you) have something else in mind.

I missed that they were exploratory and failed. Hmm.

[Peakwastaken]

I addded a catalytic cracking reactor in the lab room :

As for the reasons why there might be oil platforms in this area, I personally think the two reasons discussed in this thread are already pretty reasonable to explain why such infrastructure developed in this area :

• Not having found commercial viability in our world doesn't mean that they can't become viable in the CDDA world, especially considering the economical/political instability rising. Countries would definitely want to secure production of raw material to be autonomous and not rely on fragile alliances - the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and the energy crisis that happened in Europe is a great example of this.

Furthermore, the Oceans are the most unexplored areas on our planet, there are frequently new prospects for undiscovered oil pockets, I really don't feel like it's a stretch to say we haven't found everything that can be in this area. I remember 15 years ago people were saying we'd run out of oil in 2030, yet we're still going strong !

• XEDRA detecting blob/porta/alien activity in the ocean (One of the first "extraterrestrial visitor" bodies was retrieved by a whaling boat as per the lore) would make it very enticing to be able to study this environment intensively - and their motus operandi was to be as secretive as possible, thus why disguising them as oil platforms under a shell company (something also very present in the lore) and dispatching their own scientists there would make sense. Where better to put a secret lab than a vast, uninhabited, expanse of water ? Hell, they could even use the platforms as contained testing grounds for new chemicals/mutagens/whatever !

Lastly, it's not like they'd be very common anyways, one every 20 overmaps on average, that's one every some 80km, arguably a lot less than the distance between oil platforms might be in real life, but scales and distance in CDDA have always been a little murky anyways - And if they need to be even less common for this PR to be accepted, I'll take the rate down no problem !

This is, of course, my (arguably pretty biased) opinion on the subject, if you think these reasons are not valid enough, I'd love to hear why !

EDIT : I had tested the ropes leading up to the cranes and they used to work fine, but not anymore, they teleport you to nearby stairs, I'm trying to find a replacement/workaround or I'll sadly (I really liked 'em) remove them.

[Maleclypse]

I spoke to Erk about this and he suggested we make it globally unique and Venera suggested using the same general shape but different insides to make a wind farm construction platform which I think someone else suggested as well above. But making it globally unique would solve the rarity issue and we can have missions that breadcrumb to it and also it leaves room for other globally unique variants like a Xedra platform out in the middle of the ocean without the player encountering a dozen of these guys. Sidenote this is a fantastic map you’ve made!

[ADekema]

I would like to add something about there not being any fuels on a oil platform. A lot of oil platforms are powered by diesel or other fossil fuel generators. So it would make sense to have a few generators and a LOT of assosiated fuel on the platform itself. Some platforms get thier power from the mainland but even in cases like this I would imagine that the platform would still have a few generators and associated fuel as a backup incase there is a blackout of the cables get damaged. A oilplatform without power seems like it would be very hazardous both to the enviroment and to the crew maning it.

I would also like to suggest a potential challenge scenario where you have to escape the platform and make it back to the mainland.

[Peakwastaken]

I spoke to Erk about this and he suggested we make it globally unique and Venera suggested using the same general shape but different insides to make a wind farm construction platform which I think someone else suggested as well above. But making it globally unique would solve the rarity issue and we can have missions that breadcrumb to it and also it leaves room for other globally unique variants like a Xedra platform out in the middle of the ocean without the player encountering a dozen of these guys. Sidenote this is a fantastic map you’ve made!

Understood, sounds good that way ! I'm switching this to draft for now since if we make them globally unique then I'll probably switch z2 around a bit so that there's a canning area and it relies less on a would-be underwater pipe-line system which would make more sense if there were more of these out there - and I'm gonna be a little busy these next few days so it'll probably take up to a week to do so.

Thank you for all your feedback and help !

[Maleclypse]

I spoke to Erk about this and he suggested we make it globally unique and Venera suggested using the same general shape but different insides to make a wind farm construction platform which I think someone else suggested as well above. But making it globally unique would solve the rarity issue and we can have missions that breadcrumb to it and also it leaves room for other globally unique variants like a Xedra platform out in the middle of the ocean without the player encountering a dozen of these guys. Sidenote this is a fantastic map you’ve made!

Understood, sounds good that way ! I'm switching this to draft for now since if we make them globally unique then I'll probably switch z2 around a bit so that there's a canning area and it relies less on a would-be underwater pipe-line system which would make more sense if there were more of these out there - and I'm gonna be a little busy these next few days so it'll probably take up to a week to do so.

Thank you for all your feedback and help !

Don't make it globally unique right now because we need to restructure how the overmap generation tests work to account for Ocean only specials. And until those tests are working we won't have reliable ways to see if this spawns correctly. I'll add the blacklist flags needed to this tomorrow or this weekend so it starts passing tests, but I think this is probably ready for merge and anything further you want to do can be set as variants in a future PR? Up to you though. :)

[Peakwastaken]

Don't make it globally unique right now because we need to restructure how the overmap generation tests work to account for Ocean only specials. And until those tests are working we won't have reliable ways to see if this spawns correctly. I'll add the blacklist flags needed to this tomorrow or this weekend so it starts passing tests, but I think this is probably ready for merge and anything further you want to do can be set as variants in a future PR? Up to you though. :)

Alright sounds fine ! I just switched the tanks leading to the generators from salt water to diesel, something I forgot to do and goes back to what Adekema said. They're a little hard to get to, and I didn't make them full-full so if players want some good usable fuel it'll take a bit of work to get to it.

Let me know when I can set it to globally unique and then we're good to go if there's no further requests !

[Maleclypse]

Don't make it globally unique right now because we need to restructure how the overmap generation tests work to account for Ocean only specials. And until those tests are working we won't have reliable ways to see if this spawns correctly. I'll add the blacklist flags needed to this tomorrow or this weekend so it starts passing tests, but I think this is probably ready for merge and anything further you want to do can be set as variants in a future PR? Up to you though. :)

Alright sounds fine ! I just switched the tanks leading to the generators from salt water to diesel, something I forgot to do and goes back to what Adekema said. They're a little hard to get to, and I didn't make them full-full so if players want some good usable fuel it'll take a bit of work to get to it.

Let me know when I can set it to globally unique and then we're good to go if there's no further requests !

Hoping to merge it as is without being globally unique. It could take a significant amount of time before global unique works in the oceans so this is absolutely mergeable as is once tests pass. :)

[Maleclypse]

This is excellent and I want to thank you for making it!