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VaultRaid 2 wip conversation
It's been an excessively long time since I created the VaultRaid management engine, and as happy as I am that it is relatively stable, its long past time to get overhauled. Within overhauling the event engine, i'll also be adding new features to VaultRaid, which i'll explain below. If you have your own concerns or ideas, i'd love to hear them too.
Vaults can now have a faction tie-in!
So far, Vaults have been owned by unnamed companies, and while that can and will continue, there is always the chance your next vault contains data owned by TPG or Xang Xi or whoever else. These "major faction" vaults will be the ones with big payouts and challenge keys, but also a chance for a lot more wacky and exciting things. More on that in a bit...
Defenders have been (re)implemented!
One of the original designs of VaultRaid was to have a pre-selected team of up to 6 individuals (reliant on being in a group) who's job was to defend the disabled transport and prevent the Vault from being completely copied. This worked... once. I'm pretty sure it did, because while I don't remember it, other people do remember it working. It definitely doesn't work anymore in the old codebase...
So anyways, that's all fixed now, and you don't HAVE to be in a group (though for gameplay purposes the number of hirable defenders will remain low). Now, however, instead of just being just another potential threat, defenders will cost you 20% of your Vault progress (up from the 10% that normal raiders steal when they kill you). Their own rewards are mostly calculated by job success/failure and by kills, and can actually include faction standing points as a bonus reward. As a raider, if you kill them, you get a bit of a benefit as well...
Vault download progress is now affected by modifiers!
Previously, you would download Vault data at exactly 1 chunk per second as long as you were within range, and that was all you could get through passive downloads. Going forward, however, there are going to be some changes to that. First and foremost, you can increase your download rate (or have it penalized) through a mixture of events and target prioritization! This affects the passive download and the "static" bonus given on top of the 10% you steal per kill.
For instance, when you kill a Vault Defender, you will obtain a +100% modifier for 20 seconds. These personal modifiers can stack, but their effective time does not; it is instead overwritten. As such, if you kill a defender, and then kill another defender at 8 seconds remaining, your new modifier is at +200% for 20 seconds. When time runs out, your modifier is set to +0%. If you manage to go over +200% then every second you lose 10% of that modifier until it gets under that amount, to prevent some of you certain individuals from racking up rather insane amounts.
On the other hand, there are also event-wide modifiers, which occur based on certain shenanigans...
This event is now capable of having random events...!
I've got the magic powers, and its high time I start looking into incorporating them into my events, and see what I can do to spruce things up. VaultRaid lasts an hour, and I think sometimes a little juice is needed to help that last quarter staleness. What mini-events can occur? Well, who knows! Its also not guaranteed any will happen at all. They obviously need to be possible, but i've been thinking on incorporating these examples:
Faction Ambush: The faction owning the Vault sends in an NPC military convoy to retrieve the Vault and destroy the raiders! These guys will mean some serious business - if you die during the ambush, you can lose up to half your entire progress in a single go! The fighters will also respawn in waves as long as their trident captain(s?) is(are) alive. Destroying the ambush will provide a permanent boost to all download progress for the remainder of the VaultRaid.
Solar Ejection: Damaging exotic solar winds are especially bad in this sector! If a raider is not within the passive download range of the disabled transport, they'll actually lose progress as their vault copy slowly corrupts! Getting positive modifiers will also halt this effect. if multiple Solar Ejections occur, then the original Vault can become damaged, lowering its potential value.
Demolition Crew: Unlike in the ambush mini-event, the focus of these NPCs isn't the raiders - they're also after the Vault, and intend to destroy it so no one can obtain the data contained on it! The disabled transport's invulnerability is lifted in this mini-event, and hacking progress is frozen until the demolishers are dealt with. The value of the Vault will probably be incredibly high, given that people were hired to keep it safe with a nuclear option 😉
These are the kind of things i'm working into the engine and are certain are possible and will very likely occur. I've also got a whole bunch of other ideas i'm prototyping, but am a lot less certain on making them a reality. Even so, how does all this sound? Have any ideas of your own on potential improvements or mini-events or whatnot?
At this point, its going to be a while before I can host VaultRaid again. I've got the engine to work on, plus I've got some tie-in stuff to work on (lore lore lore! __VaultBreaker shows again!), and i've always gotta see the extent of my magic and how to tie it into the event. I *could* just keep hosting on the old engine, but I think that last match is a great place to pin things for the moment, and i'm getting more than a little frustrated with the rigidness and unreadability of the old code.
Vaults can now have a faction tie-in!
So far, Vaults have been owned by unnamed companies, and while that can and will continue, there is always the chance your next vault contains data owned by TPG or Xang Xi or whoever else. These "major faction" vaults will be the ones with big payouts and challenge keys, but also a chance for a lot more wacky and exciting things. More on that in a bit...
Defenders have been (re)implemented!
One of the original designs of VaultRaid was to have a pre-selected team of up to 6 individuals (reliant on being in a group) who's job was to defend the disabled transport and prevent the Vault from being completely copied. This worked... once. I'm pretty sure it did, because while I don't remember it, other people do remember it working. It definitely doesn't work anymore in the old codebase...
So anyways, that's all fixed now, and you don't HAVE to be in a group (though for gameplay purposes the number of hirable defenders will remain low). Now, however, instead of just being just another potential threat, defenders will cost you 20% of your Vault progress (up from the 10% that normal raiders steal when they kill you). Their own rewards are mostly calculated by job success/failure and by kills, and can actually include faction standing points as a bonus reward. As a raider, if you kill them, you get a bit of a benefit as well...
Vault download progress is now affected by modifiers!
Previously, you would download Vault data at exactly 1 chunk per second as long as you were within range, and that was all you could get through passive downloads. Going forward, however, there are going to be some changes to that. First and foremost, you can increase your download rate (or have it penalized) through a mixture of events and target prioritization! This affects the passive download and the "static" bonus given on top of the 10% you steal per kill.
For instance, when you kill a Vault Defender, you will obtain a +100% modifier for 20 seconds. These personal modifiers can stack, but their effective time does not; it is instead overwritten. As such, if you kill a defender, and then kill another defender at 8 seconds remaining, your new modifier is at +200% for 20 seconds. When time runs out, your modifier is set to +0%. If you manage to go over +200% then every second you lose 10% of that modifier until it gets under that amount, to prevent some of you certain individuals from racking up rather insane amounts.
On the other hand, there are also event-wide modifiers, which occur based on certain shenanigans...
This event is now capable of having random events...!
I've got the magic powers, and its high time I start looking into incorporating them into my events, and see what I can do to spruce things up. VaultRaid lasts an hour, and I think sometimes a little juice is needed to help that last quarter staleness. What mini-events can occur? Well, who knows! Its also not guaranteed any will happen at all. They obviously need to be possible, but i've been thinking on incorporating these examples:
Faction Ambush: The faction owning the Vault sends in an NPC military convoy to retrieve the Vault and destroy the raiders! These guys will mean some serious business - if you die during the ambush, you can lose up to half your entire progress in a single go! The fighters will also respawn in waves as long as their trident captain(s?) is(are) alive. Destroying the ambush will provide a permanent boost to all download progress for the remainder of the VaultRaid.
Solar Ejection: Damaging exotic solar winds are especially bad in this sector! If a raider is not within the passive download range of the disabled transport, they'll actually lose progress as their vault copy slowly corrupts! Getting positive modifiers will also halt this effect. if multiple Solar Ejections occur, then the original Vault can become damaged, lowering its potential value.
Demolition Crew: Unlike in the ambush mini-event, the focus of these NPCs isn't the raiders - they're also after the Vault, and intend to destroy it so no one can obtain the data contained on it! The disabled transport's invulnerability is lifted in this mini-event, and hacking progress is frozen until the demolishers are dealt with. The value of the Vault will probably be incredibly high, given that people were hired to keep it safe with a nuclear option 😉
These are the kind of things i'm working into the engine and are certain are possible and will very likely occur. I've also got a whole bunch of other ideas i'm prototyping, but am a lot less certain on making them a reality. Even so, how does all this sound? Have any ideas of your own on potential improvements or mini-events or whatnot?
At this point, its going to be a while before I can host VaultRaid again. I've got the engine to work on, plus I've got some tie-in stuff to work on (lore lore lore! __VaultBreaker shows again!), and i've always gotta see the extent of my magic and how to tie it into the event. I *could* just keep hosting on the old engine, but I think that last match is a great place to pin things for the moment, and i'm getting more than a little frustrated with the rigidness and unreadability of the old code.