Since I am in a rather big organisation, I have the chance to see and attack aliens during the invasion to our city. I definitely understand the feeling of newcomers when they heard about AI. There is just no way to approach those aliens without (1) joining guilds and (2) building expensive towns. This does not make any sense at all, aliens only attack rich people but not the others? Please enlighten me after seeing many years of X-Files. I guess there should be a part of... abduction.
Summary ::
- Abduction
- Alien Mission / Mission for non-guilded characters
- Temporary dyna-camp as "Investigation of alien crashed ship'
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Abduction
Whenever you are in an open OUTDOOR areas, there is a chance that you may be abducted by aliens. There are two factors that affect the possibility. (1) The number of monsters you kill in the same session you stay in outdoor area, [Aliens abduct you for research, killing monsters reflect your expertise in combat]; (2) Aliens just attacked a city in the same playfield and on their way of leaving. As of their retreat, they abduct you for studying human and plan better attack in the future.
Being caught :: A message appear on your screen, "You heard some strange sounds in the sky. You turn back and look. Oh God, a massive alien ship! This is the time to escape if I don't want be caught by them." If the selected player is already in a team and all other team members are in close proximity, then all of them will be taken to the ship as a team. If a single player does not possess Alien Invasion expansion, he will be ignored completely by the aliens. Y/N option available, click No if you don't want to escape. (Suggested by some people, I had re-designed this.)
Possibility of escaping the abduction :: Run! Don't let the alien's teleporting beam targets you. The ship travels at high speed, so you better equip your yalm right away. (By Kaghelion.)
Abducted :: You found yourself being a prisoner on the alien ship. The surroundings are strange and unpleasant as the whole environment is plain-green. This awful feeling makes you want to leave the place as soon as possible. "Ding" You received a mission.
Mission :: "Escaping the alien ship" - What an awful day, I am abducted by aliens! Nevermind, they did not kill me at least. Probably I am a good research object so they lock me in this room. "To escape the apartment, unlock the door using lock-pick (requires Lv x 2.5 skill in Break & Entry), if not, bash the security system and release the control of the door (requires melee weapons and Lv x 2.5 in strength or ranged weapons with Lv x 2.5 in agility) ('Ranged weapons' comment by "Charfbiz2"), however this will certainly arouse the attention of the alien guards)."
Outside the prison :: "Ding" You received a mission. There are two paths in front of me. One to the left and the other to the right. Fortunately my map sensor is still working on this ship. The path on the right-hand side is less guarded. Which way shall I go? [All calms, roots, snares, drains, initaitve debuffs, range debuffs, damage debuffs, charms and stuns work on this alien ship. Since you are the only one here, there is no reason to decrease your chance of survival.]
On the way to the exit :: Several types of machines you can use to unlock benefits / advantages.
(1) Security console, use B&E skill to hack this console will decrease the aggressive range of all aliens to 1 metre. [Aliens have no eyes, they use sensors to feel your presence, by removing your image in the security system will make you invisible. From now on, sneak-mode is effective, thus aimed-shots are usable. And now the aliens are not 'social' so you can attack them one by one.]
(2) Nanobots container, a box that fills with nanobots, use Nano-programming skill to retreive these resources and gain a small Heal-over-time + Nano-over-time effect (effect varies to your total amount of HP and NP, it could be a 3% buff, having 2k HP will gain a 60 HoT per second). This buff replenishes as long as you are on the ship.
(3) A mal-functional alien in the corner, use Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering skills to dis-assemble the alien body and gain access to their central communication system. Now you have the knowledge to the way they attack, let's shut down their offensive and defensive capabilities. [Result is the drop on aliens' damage and armor-cost]
(4) Garbage bin full of unknown chemicals, aliens have garbage too! This box contains unknown substances even to an expert chemist like you. It is believed that these chemicals are not from Rubi-Ka. You use your sensor to test the element of this substance and found that they are actually severe toxics to aliens, yet harmless to human. Now you know why they are going to throw this away. As a skilful chemist, you recompose the chemicals and refine them into 'better' toxics. [A special buff is received, this will allow the player to 100% stun ANY aliens upon the use of weapons. However, you can't stun a single alien twice, because their adaptability is so high that they evolve in 5 seconds to be immune to the toxics.]
(5) First-aid kit, why is here a first-aid kit on the ship? Do aliens even need bandage? You open the box and find that there are only a few tubes inside. Out of your pharmacy knowledge, you realize that these tubes contain a mixture of notum and an unknown material. Well if it's notum, it's Rubi-Kan, and it's good. Drink it at once and now you are not affected by DoTs or Drains. [Effect lasts until you leave the ship]
(6) Should be more... according to each skill.
Guard boss :: "Ding" You received a mission. Now, you have eliminated all aliens who dare to approach you. The last 'object' is huge and you think it is the boss of the security guards. Nevermind, kill him and I will be free. [Killing the boss will spawn a portal, click it to go back to Rubi-Ka. Location depends on the route of the ship, however, this location will 100% not be any area near the cities because aliens do fear humans.]
Loots :: There will be NO items left on aliens which are useful to the building of cities or tools. This is because those low-ranking aliens are only security guards and they possess no such right to carry expensive items. The items you get are mostly useful to the creation of weapons and armors. Item quality varies with aliens' level. And aliens' level varies with the player's level.
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Aside from the abduction concept, the Alien Mission is a good idea to me. Idea came from a similar suggestion by "Small" at this thread and by "Diemax" at this thread.
Mission NPC in cities :: Place a NPC in the cities and give out missions to hunt down aliens. Locations must be in the same area as the NPC, since there is no way the NPC knows about what happens in other playfields. [The NPC itself does not give out missions, he just directs you to check the machine next to him and pick any targets they already found. Owning organisation of the NPC will get a commission when a player finishes a mission.]
Alien Missions :: Missions will NOT only contain aliens. Those aliens are probably doing some kind of research to Rubi-Kan inhabitants secretly inside the caves. So before you find the alien, you should see monsters guarding the caves as usual. Do monsters know about the presence of that alien? No, they don't. They are not as smart as the alien, so a simple jamming tool will make the alien invisible to the unintelligent monsters.
Last Room :: The mission consists of several floors. Each elevator is guarded by an alien assistant. Kill it to activate the lift. The usual boss room houses the alien researcher, he is fragile as a scientist, but his assistants are not (These two guards are immune to ALL kinds of crowd control, drains, debuffs, charms, whatever, so as to pose a challenge to the player and not just blitzing.) The mission layout needs to be tweaked. Alien mission should be something in-between individual mission and team mission, with smaller layout but several floors.
Loot :: Assistants and guards do not have loots. The scientist drops a lot though, everything you can imagine, ranging from weapons to armors. However, no items are for the building of cities and tools, again.
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Missions for unguilded characters. Original suggestion by Zagareth at here.
To simplify the whole process ::
- Go to a location
- Gather invasion plan
- Report to mission NPC
- Go to invasion site and report to city guard
- Receive reward and provides defensive bonus to the players fighting over there
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By the way, I like the idea of Temporary Alien Dyna-camps by "Diemax". However, there are two things we need to consider.
- Location of Alien camp :: Where should the camps be? Random? Many camps may disappear without being found at all. Fixed? Same worse result of dyna-camp. Also, what are the levels of the aliens in relevance to the playfield? Should lv100 aliens appear in Greater Tir County, for instance?
- Loots :: If this is implemented following my above suggestion, these dyna-aliens should NOT drop anything for the building of cities or alien tools, or else, you can expect large organisations like St__m etc farm camps like mad. Instead, these aliens only drop items for the creation of weapons and armors.
First, let me rename this as "Investigation of crashed alien-ship".
Serve-wide announcement :: A possible solution, this is just like the "Lv220 enlightenment message". 'An enormous sound was heard by the local citizens in Varmint Woods, clan officials reported that an alien ship just crashed at 1343 x 3434. Pioneer reports revealed some very limited information about the crashed site. We recommend clan citizens who have combat strength of level 100 to level 150 go to the site and catch injured aliens.'
Level-locked :: Make a level lock to the crashed ship playfield, or you will very much expect Lv220 people kiling grey aliens for loots.
Generating the crashed site :: Place an NPC outside the crashed site and he will be responsible for teleporting adventurers to the ship entrance. Each team, whether an individual or a 6-man team will enjoy a seperate GS. However, there needs to be a mechanic to prevent players from killing the boss twice. (Out of role-playing concern plus imbalanced gameplay, imagine people keep blitzing to the boss, killing it and repeat) Play a 'hostile tag' on the player upon entering a crashed site, he is forbidden to enter the same area until it's gone.
It was suggested a time limit to the ship but I think it's not good. I'd say that we make the ship disappear within 10 minutes after ALL aliens are killed. If no one kills anything, the ship continues to stay there. Agamundos' comment is better than mine so I rephrased the above idea.
Difficulty :: God! I think I had an excellent idea here. Level of aliens and quality levels of loots vary with the level of the player, NOT the playfield. First, let's make the magic number be "1.25". Now, a Lv100 player goes to the crashed ship, he will see aliens from Lv80 to Lv125 and these aliens will drop items from qLv80 to qLv125 as well. If a Lv150 goes inside instead, aliens from Lv120 to Lv187 will spawn and drop items from qLv 120 to qLv187.
Lv100/1.25 = 80; Lv150*1.25 = 187.5
If players enter the ship as a team, the designated difficulty is taken from the average level of the whole team, not from the highest or lowest player. Suggested by If6Was9.
How the mission ends :: When the captain of the ship (boss) is killed, all players in that particular GS will be evacuated from the site at once as the officials start to transport the remaining ship components to the laboratory for further study. Now, the teleporter NPC will stop functioning, 'I apologize but it seems that we already gathered enough helpers and we are going to leave soon.' How about players in other GS? Unaffected, unless they kill the boss as well.
Loots :: There is a possiblity that the crashed ship could be a high-ranking mothership. So all loots are present there, ranging from weapons, armors, tools, tradeskill items etc.
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Conclusion
- Casual player / Not in powerful organisation / Don't have cities / Go get alien missions or being abducted and get items for weapons, armors and tools
- Hardcore player / In powerful organisation / Have cities / Get missions to gain items for weapons and stuff, while also kill invasive aliens for items to build more advanced strctures
No one is conflicting with anybody.
Related threads ::
http://forums.anarchyonline.com/showthread.php?t=331170
Edit 6-Sep :: Thanks for comments. 'Ranged weapon for opening prison's door', re-phrasal of crashed ship details and level-lock idea added. Also added 'Diffuculty' to Alienship crashsite.
Edit 16-Sep :: Thanks for comments again. 'Escaping abduction' added.
[New Content] Alien mission and Abduction
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Originally Posted by Yamaeda
