User:Studenterhue/Sandbox
Half-Assed House: Home for "Projects" That Studenterhue Didn't Think Had Enough for Their Own Subpage
make table from this shit Likely will go Artifact Type Name -> Examine Description -> Effect Possibly room for x-ray clues like "segmented" or "hollow"
Possible Effects
So, what happens when you actually activate an artifact? That's the fun of it, it's entirely random. Aside from the artifact's size, you'll have no way of knowing just what it will do until you activate it. What we can tell you is what the potential abilities of the artifacts are:
Bulky Artifacts
These are giant-looking things that you can't pick up, only drag around. Note that pulling or pushing them doesn't count as a TOUCH stimulus, you must click it with an active hand for that. This lets you drag it around safely. You can also force someone to touch artifacts by putting them in an aggressive or higher grab (click on them with Grab intent, click on the grab to upgrade it) and then clicking on the artifact, triggering its effects. Obviously, don't wordlessly grab random people and force them to touch artifacts (especially if it's one of the harmful ones), or similar, unless you're an Antagonist.
- Forcefield generator: The artifact will produce a shiny forcefield of varying size and duration. Until it powers down after a random amount of time, nothing short of teleportation will break through its stubborn walls.
- Lamp: Emits a bright, permanent light. Harmless, unless you're a vampire or something.
- Darkness: A cloak of absolute darkness will envelop the artifact and area around it, preventing any actions short of walking around in it until it powers down. Having Thermals or Mesons can make it easier to navigate.
- Healer: One of the few benign artifacts you'll come across, touching it will heal all damage types.
- Damage: The polar opposite of the above, if this is within half a screen's length of you, you'll take damage of a randomly-selected type constantly until you get away from it. This can eventually be fatal if you're not quick.
- Prison: Not as bad as it sounds, the artifact will drag you into it and lock itself for a minute or two before spitting you out again. Handy for trapping people or jumping into for protection. These are one of the few artifact types that don't require activation, and will only do the "lit up" animation when someone is inside of it.
- Human2cyborg converter: The above's much meaner cousin, this one pulls you in when you touch it and painfully turns you into a generic light Cyborg! It gibs your old body as well, losing you everything you had on your formerly fleshy self. If a Cyborg touches it, they'll receive a mysterious message declaring something like UPGRADE COMPLETE. You'll know one of these is kicking around somewhere on the station if you suddenly see a lot of borgs with weird names.
- Note to Cyborgs: forcing people to touch a Converter artifact against their will is considered harming a human! Don't do this unless your laws allow it!
- Mutation: This silly artifact will give you a certain mutation when you touch it. Sometimes this is bad, other times it's beneficial! Usually they only last for a limited time either way.
- Injector: This picks a random cocktail of up to three chemicals and injects anyone who touches it. This is usually never good, though if you're careful and lucky enough you can harvest reagents from it; some very rare reagents can only be found from these.
- Gravity: A mildly annoying artifact, this will either pull things towards it or push them away from it.
- Noisy thing: Harmless, unless you consider the grating noises they make as "harm". These will incessantly play a random, looping sound until destroyed.
- Container: When activated and touched, this artifact will vanish and leave its contents behind, which can be anything from items to weapons to critters to mobs. Be on guard in the case of the last two!
- Warp: Touch the artifact. Now go run off somewhere and wait a couple of minutes, and you'll suddenly be warped back to wherever the artifact is! This one doesn't need to be activated to work.
- Bomb: If you see a message about an artifact catastrophically overloading, GET RID OF IT IMMEDIATELY! This means it's about to light up like the fourth of July, going off in a spectacular explosion and likely gibbing anyone who stands too close when it does. Artbombs take a while to get up to critical mass, at which point you'll be given another message stating as such; if you're wandering around and suddenly see that second message, run.
- Due to a bug, the second message doesn't always reliably follow the artifact and instead plays from the tile where the artifact was activated. Just in case you start panicking from an invisible artbomb or something.
- Turret: When these artifacts are activated they reveal an array of GUNS. The artifact will automatically 'turn' and shoot nearby people/monkeys. They deactivate after a while if there is nothing to shoot. Be warned, these can and will shoot you soon after you turn it on for the first time, so run away and come back after a while, the artifact will probably have turned off.
- Plant-helper: Boosts the health and growth rates of nearby plants in hydroponics trays, like some really weird alien UV Grow Lamp.
- Wishgranter: Make a wish! When activated, a booming voice will give you a choice of either great wealth or great power. Depending on its mood (which to say, completely randomly), it may do exactly as you intended, bestowing great wads of credits or fabulous genetic powers (or a great power cell if you're a robot). Or it might just pull a literal genie and just kill you in suitably ironic (and irreversible) fashion.
- Surgery: Replaces one of your limbs with a snazzy new robot limb when you click on it. Certain limbs will always be replaced with certain augmentations, and you can use it as many times as you'd like. Just have a few styptic patches ready.
- Generator: Click on it while it's over a wire (insulated gloves recommended) to connect it the station power grid, and it'll generate anywhere from 5kW to 5MW of electricity. If it spontaneously bursts into flames/rumbles, do not be alarmed; it's normal engine behavior.
- Air: Will constantly pump out a (usually negligible) amount of hot/cold air. Can be useful for repressurizing areas if you're willing to wait a long time.
Hand-held Artifacts
Smaller artifacts that you can carry around. These will come with extra messages such as "having a handle to hold it by" to tell you it can be picked up.
- Teleporter: Make your problems disappear! Whatever you whack with this will be teleported away in a random direction and distance.
- Self Teleporter: Click the floor, any floor. VOOM! You are there.
- Melee: Well yes, you could technically whack someone with any kind of handheld artifact, but these specific ones inflict way more of a certain damage type than normal. You'll know if you have one of these if it makes a bizarre sound when you hit someone with it.
- Gun: Like the Melee artifact, but ranged. It picks a random damage type, damage amount and number of bullets fired in one burst. Depending on how the RNG rolls, these can be amazingly deadly.
- Forcewall: Like the bigger artifact, but it only makes a wall in one direction.
- Mining: Cuts through asteroids like nobody's business. The Miners will love you if you toss one of these their way.
- Beaker: A Scientist's best friend, these things have obscene reagent limits and come pre-loaded with massive amounts of obscure chems (usually Saltpetre, which means happy days for any Scientist or Botanist). These can fit into any machine that a regular beaker can, and don't need to be activated before they can be used. Note that these do not have the "has a handle" message when examined, so you'll have to pay attention to whether it looks like it can be picked up or not.
- Magic: Comes with a very random effect, such as shooting out lightning or stunning everything within a certain radius, and does so wherever you click with it. Needs to recharge itself after each use.These can be very deadly even to the user, so be careful with them!
- Instrument: Click on it/activate it in-hand to play...something that can probably be called music.
- Activator: Quite possibly the holy grail of artifact research, this will activate and sometimes deactivate any artifact of its type (Eldritch, Wizard, Martian, Forerunner, Robot), and sometimes every type. If you obtain this, then throw your hands up in the air you lucky bastard, because you are really goddamned lucky.
- Note that while they're handheld size and (usually) have the sprites for such, they're have a "It kinda looks like it's supposed to be inserted into something." message when examined. Makes sense, they are, technically, activator keys.
- Lightning: Not to be confused with the lightning that can sometimes occur in Magic artifacts, with these you aim at an area and the artifact will zap everyone within, causing a variable amount of burn damage. Careful not to use it too close! Mostly, if not always, less powerful than its magical brother.
Tiny Artifacts
Similar to handhelds in that they can be picked up, but they'll look pretty small. They come with an extra "It kinda looks like it's supposed to be inserted into something." message when examined. These will already look activated when you find them.
- Cell: The ultimate power cell, having an absurd charge limit as well as charging on its own without need of a charger. A Cyborg with one of these is unlikely to need a recharge ever again.
An attempt to incorporate Manta's custom detonation sequence into the Nuclear Operative page. Uploading image to wiki gives a "413 Request Entity Too Large" error
Trigger the nuke
Your side has the upper hand? Great! Now trigger the nuke:
- Load the nuke into one of your pods and drop it off near the station.
- Move the nuke to the designated area. If you've forgotten, use the notes command to remind yourself.
- Click on the nuke with an empty hand to activate it. That will prompt a station-wide red alert, stating your exact location. Needless to say, stealth is no longer an option at this point.
- Insert the authentication disk if you have it.
- Defend the nuke for 10 (or 7 with the disk) long minutes. It's all or nothing!
- Gloat over the radio and vanish in a cloud of radioactive fire!
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| Total Syndicate Victory - The operatives have destroyed the NSS Manta! |
Prototype for a possible page on the Atlas ruins that were part of the Spacemas version of Horizon
Atlas Ruins
Cargonia, Secstotzka & Civilechia (North)
Engiers (West)
Scientopia/Researchica (South)
Free State of Siliconzig (Center)
United Command (East)
Remnant of a draft for the Geothermal Capture System section for the Powering the station, now a possible start for illustrating how to decipher results from overlapping hotspots
Powering the station: the geothermal capture system
All about Hotspots
These quakes cause particular effects within a certain radius of the center
Hunting for & Centering Hotspots: The Hard Part
For example, if you plop a rod northwest of the your previous spot and get an estimate of 8 when your previous one was 9, you should continue northwest. Conversely, if it's 10, you should head the opposite direction, southeast, and if it's 9 again, you should try another direction entirely.
Overlapping Hotspots
With a bit of intuition and some simple math, you can still decipher where the centers are. If you manage to find a corner of one hotspot where there isn't overlap (that is, readings of 10 and nothing above that), you could intuit the center based on which corner it is (i.e. if you've found the northwest corner of a hotspot, then the center is 10 tiles to the southeast.) From there, since you know where one hotspot is and thus how far you are its center at any point, you can use to decipher the dowsing rod readings. For example, if you get an estimate of 5 and know that there's a hotspot 3 tiles directly north of you, then that means there's another hotspot 2 tiles away in some direction.
Alternatively, you can ignore the distance estimates entirely and rely upon indicator light alone. Theoretically, you could use a single dowsing rod and find the center by the light alone. However, it's usually easier to make a grid of dowsing rods over an area, and