Lavaland Rework

This is a design doc for Lavaland Rework, it has the main picture of how it should look like and be played on practice. It will be split in 2 parts: first part will discuss the general gamedesign perspective of lavaland, and the second one will suggest some specific content ideas for Lavaland.

Chapter 1. Gamedesign

The Salvage Dilemma and Wizden’s view

Since the beginning of time, in Space Station 14, Salvagers were always a huge hole in the game’s design. Their job is to basically be far away from the station and do singleplayer stuff, so they are a corrupted role from the very beginning. (Later on this will be referenced as “Salvage Dilemma”)

This was an issue even since SS13, so Wizden tried to fix salvagers by proposing an idea of Expeditions. They still don’t save salvagers from being detached from the station in their current state, but if Gateway expeditions will ever get finished, they should THEORETICALLY solve the issue by making expeditions available to everyone on the station and not just 4 people on a shittle.

Wizden’s idea still has some flaws to it, since it basically just supresses the symptoms of the problem that lies much deeper in the gamedesign.

So, how can we actually fix salvagers?

Why Lavaland

So actually, SS13 already has some kind of solution to the Salvage Dilemma. It turns the main flaw of salvage into their own feature, and this solution is called Lavaland.

Lavaland is a planet map that has various ruins and fauna on its surface. Shaft miners are already detached from the station and basically they are playing their own mostly single-player game about exploring an alien planet, mining and killing monsters and bosses.

So, the solution to the problem is turning a problem into a feature.

Gameloop

Salvage and the Station has a very thin relashionship in the core idea, that’s why Lavaland requires some very strong foundation in order to work the best.

• Shaft miners have the main motivation to work in form of Fun that comes from fighting with megafauna and getting better and more interesting equipment - basically an RPG or Metroidvania or whatever term you like the most. This is THE MAIN PILLAR and GOAL of Lavaland, if it’s weak then everything else will FAIL.
• To get to their goal, shaft miners have to help the station and get some equipment from it. So there’s always should be a reason for salvagers to come back to the station, bring and take some goods, and then get back to lavalanding.
• Main departments that salvage will have to constantly interact with are science and cargo. Cargo always needs materials to distribute across the station, and Science has to get research points and materials to give some gamer loot to salvagers back. This scheme should work well-enough to keep salvagers interested and the station supplied with mats.

Issues with Lavaland

And now lets talk about the current state of Lavaland. We’re so damn screwed.

• There is a HUGE deficit of content on Lavaland. There’s almost nothing to actually explore, you can get everything possible from it in your first 2-3 hours. Basically it’s still in its alpha-version and there’s just nothing to do.
• That leads to the Gameloop just not starting, because of the non-existent reward for mining.

In general, currently Lavaland struggles to satisfy its own goal. That’s why we need to add more content to it to make it an actually enjoyable experience.

Chapter 2. Content

In order to “revive” lavaland we have to add a lot of content in a way that will grant it with replayability.

Gamer Loot

Lets start from the end goals of every salvager - Gamer Loot. This is the reward given to shaft miners for doing their work properly, and it should be as interesting as possible to be worth the effort.

Weapons

• Basic (roundstart) equipment has to be very simple and the weakest when compared to everything you get later.
• Improved equipment (better types of PKAs, new types of crushers) are only unlockable by RnD and are not just stronger, but also are providing new types of combat styles.
• PKA and Crusher upgrades can be applied to basic and improved versions of these weapons, and they usually just make stats better.
• Ancient weapons can be created only by collecting specific items and combining them with improved equipment. When created it gives lots of research points to RnD, and these are the most powerful versions of Crushers and PKAs. The parts are obtainable only from specific locations and megafauna.
• Some Ancient weapons may be combined together to create the endgame weapons, which are strong even for the station, but require hours of hard work to get. They should be extremely rare and be available only after ~2 hours of a round (… or basically never on high pop goob)

Armor

Right now there’s basically only one type of armor on lavaland, being explorer’s suit and 3 goliath plate upgrades. Goliaths are strong enemies, but it’s too lame to get basically the best armor by just killing noraml mobs.

More armors that have specific focuses on some stats may artificially create Classes, which is a VERY, VERY good to appretiate Team work.

So, all Lavaland armor should be basically divided into 3 groups:

1. High Brute OR Heat+Fire resist, high slowdown (Tank)
2. Decent Brute OR Heat+Fire resist, decent slowdown (Damage Dealer)
3. Low brute AND heat+fire resist, 0 slowdown and high storage (Healer)

Also to encourage classes, we have to add some special effects to these armors, so we can avoid cases where you can just equip everything at once and be OP.

• Anger priorities for armors: Tank gets attacked first, Healer gets attacked last. This should apply to basically all bosses and aggressive mobs.
• Damage buffs: Tank is better with Crushers, DD is better with PKAs, Healer is better with pistols and daggers. They should be active only on lavaland’s surface, since these buffs are too strong for the station.
• Storage: for example, Healer’s armor can have some storage inside for an additional aid kit. Storage has to be balanced in a way that will encourage classes to have only what’s required in one outing and specifically for their goals.
• Speed modifiers: While tanks should always be slow and DDs should just have enough to keep distance, healers can get even stronger damage buffs from their armor or chemicals in order to quickly get to patients and pull them out of a battlefield.

Armors also should have diffirent sub-types that has high resists against SPECIFIC types of damage. When you craft new armor you can choose to focus on heat or brute resistance depending on what you want to do on lavaland.

New crafting system

Instead of just collecting the materials and combining them together, there has to be more interactions here in order to make aquiring it more exiting.

To make the crafting chain more complex we can include interaction with other departments, specifically Science.

RnD gets a new machine called A.R.C.H. that is used for recieving points or even unlocking secret technologies, while (sometimes) crafting useful materials as the result. The only issue with it is that it takes some time to scan an item inside before making an output. This machine will also take away the normal craft for an alien artifact in the crafting menu for it to have an every-day use.

In the future ARCH may require to complete some mini-game before outputting an item, so scientists don’t just work as purple cargo techs.

Shaft miners instead of just crafting more equipment out of raw materials have to bring all required ingredients to science, so they can put that inside a machine and recieve points and technologies, and then give back an upgrade kit that then can be used on some armor to craft an actual item. While applying the kit salvager can also choose the type of the upgrade if there are multiple options.

Healing items

Healing should ALWAYS take some time on lavaland. Medipens and hyposprays have to be unusable or unobtainable on lavaland, since healing with 0 losses in a moment is awful for balancing mobs and bosses.

Salvagers start with normal topicals that take a lot of time to use properly, so they are not suitable for in-battle situations and used only after they passed.

Then with technologies they should be able to make some reagent-injectors that take a couple of seconds for a full use, but can heal high-enough amounts of damage. In the end-game not without using A.R.C.H. they can create some of the best healings available in the game.

Salvage auto-injectors should be incompatable with normal cartriges, they should use their own reagents that work only while in certain pressure.

Megafauna

The real fun is actually the obstacles we have gone through along the way, so it’s important to make the best loot available only with the greatest effort. And the traditional way of making getting something very exiting is to add a boss-fight as a requirement.

Biomes

Lastelands

A basic biome that looks like lavaland that everyone knows. Has a balanced amount of everything everywhere: lava lakes, ore, mobs, and also Ruins appear there most often.

Ashlands

A nuclear-grey forest that has a lot of ashwood trees, some mushrooms, and a thick layer of ash everywhere on the floor. There are not much of hostile mobs, because it’s the coldest biome on this planet. Ashwalkers usually place their settlements here.

Great Lakes

Lava is basically everywhere. Lava. Everywhere. There are no hostile mobs, but the lava is everywhere. There are only small islands and basalt pillars that have a lot of diamonds in them. And they’re surrounded by lava and more lava. The floor is lava.

Deep Caves

A long net of tunnels with a decent amount of hostile mobs. Has the biggest mounts of ore in it, but chasms also appear there often, so salvagers should be careful to not to fall in them. Mostly it’s just a biome for mining with some risk.

Flora

From the gameplay perspective, Lavaland as a planet requires only some kind of easy food source and some kind of wood. Everything else will probably just be here for immersion and don’t have any specific purpose.

• “Ashwood” is a mutation of normal trees that have found a way to convert ash back into nutriments using an endothermic chemical reaction. They don’t have any leaves and are small in size, since they get water only from dewdrops in small amounts. Ashwood’s wood is much more durable than a normal one, and it doesn’t burn so easily.
• Also some kind of mushrooms as food would be nice, but I haven’t thought about possible lore yet, sooo… TODO

Mobs

Normal enemies on lavaland shouldn’t be life-threatning on their own, since it sucks to die against something that looks like just an ordinary fauna. So they have to be relatively easy to deal with to keep salvagers cool, but still be fun to fight against for a minute.

Ashwalkers

They’re an ancient tribe of lizards that adapted to the low-oxygen enviroment on Lavaland and leads a sedentary lifestyle in the Ashlands biome.

After player picks ashwalker through the ghost-role menu, they can start to upgrade their nest in order to protect it from intruders.

There’s only 1 Ashwalker nest per round, and in the center of the village is a tendril that helps Ashwalkers to reproduce and quickly grow up. When destroyed it drops the best possible loot that is available from normal tendrils, so shaft miners are motivated to confront them and not just go around.

Ruins

Ruins should have some very special loot, so finding them is also rewarding. Some important ruins should have GPS signals so they are possible to locate if you check them all.