Ancient Boss Critter

Abstract

The Ancient Boss Critter is an event spawn that occurs during an average round of Space Station 13. The Ancient is a guardian unit created by the Ancient race and is tasked with protecting Ancient facilities. An inert Ancient has drifted towards the station and awakens due to the lifeforms on board the station.
The Ancient is spawned off the station and seeks out players to fight. Over the course of the event, the Ancient utilizes short ranged and long ranged attacks, as well as melee attacks to combat the crew. This event incentivizes crew cooperation and rewards players with unique loot and access to a new A-zone (Pending).

Goals

• Provide players a unique combat experience
• Give the crew an incentive to cooperate with one another
• Give the crew an incentive to arm themselves with many of the player made weaponry available mid-round

Non-Goals

• Cause a station wipe or create a cenario whith too few crewmembers to fight the Ancient
• Dissensentivise fighting the Ancient due to station destruction or player deaths
• Punish departments for doing day to day tasks

The Ancient spawns on the station Z level and tracks towards the station proper. A stationwide announcement is made alerting the crew of the Ancient's presence. From here, the Ancient has a number of attacks and abilities to aid it in combatting hostile lifeforms:

• Grab: The Ancient can grab a critter within a one tile radius of itself. This is an upgraded grab similar to the Changeling Horror Form Grab.
• Crush: The Ancient can crush the critter within its grasp
• Throw: The Ancient can throw the critter within its grasp
• Assimilate: The Ancient can infect dead or incapacitated critters with agressive nanomachines to convert critters in to hostile abominations that attack the crew for a short period before decaying.
• Short Range Beam: The Ancient fires a short range, 3 tile wide blast that can knockback players.
• Long Range Beam: The Ancient fires a medium range attack with piercing damage. This is used to pick off injured or fleeing enemies.

Passive Abilities:

• Pry: The Ancient can inherently pry open airlocks, both bolted and restricted.
• Self Propulsion: The Ancient can propel istelf through space.
• Self Healing: If the Ancient is not damaged within 5 minutes, it begins a self repair function that heals a maximum of 1/8 its total health. This process takes 30 seconds and can be interupted.

Upon the Ancient's defeat, its core will attempt to "flee" the crew, creating a portal to an Ancient Derelict. Specifically, it will open up the portal to the rewards chamber of the event: A room filled with ore and machinery that the crew would not normally have access to.

The Machinery in question would be a new Power Loader Mech, designed to traverse the hostile Ancient Derelict similar to the whip from the Biodome and VR Dungeon; However, it would operate as mode of transportation more than a tool for the player to use. This idea needs to be worked on.

The Ancient would not spawn on rounds that included less than 20 active players, nor would it spawn on Nuclear Operative, Revolution, or other Antag focused rounds.

Alternatives

The initial intent was to have the Ancient summoned via the research department. However, such methods might be too dissruptive for round to round engagement. Therefore, I have come up with a few alternative forms of the Ancient event:

• The Ancient is spawned off the station Z level and will only approach the station after 10 minutes of existance in the Depris Field or Mining Level. This would give the crew ample time to prepare for its arrival, or incentivize the crew to seek it out and destroy it before it broached the station Z level.
• The Ancient replaces the Nanite Asteroid Spawn. It would appear encased in an asteroid of Uquil Ore (Or Nanite ore) and it would be an active choice to summon the Ancient to the station. This would change Mining's gameplay loop by narrowing down the multitude of nanite enemies to one singular enemy that causes a lot of desctruction. The Close ranged nature of the Ancient fight also lends iteslf well to combad against mining's tools.

Potential Changes

If the event is too disruptive, the abilities and attacks of the Ancient are fluid enough that they can be changed.

Instead assimilating the crew with nanomachines, the Ancient could potentially summon backup drones as seen in the Void and Lava Moon.

In the event the rewards for beating the Ancient aren't lucrative enough, they can be reworked with player feedback.

The Power Loader Mech may be replaced by a different mode of transportation through the Ancient Derelict, as a vehicle of its calliber will be hard to pull off in Byond.