The P-WAULS 1 Piloted Battle Harness

Development Ideaguys
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I HAVE TO MAKE THE ORIGINAL START OF THE POST A WHOLE NEW SECOND POST BECAUSE I HIT THE CHARACTER LIMIT…

WAITED AN HOUR TO SIT THERE TOO AND POST IT TOO…

TH-THANKS…

Optional Reading for the Meticulous, the Bored, or Deep Diving Lurkers
Foreword

When looking at your pieces on the field as a marine, you have a generally, linearly increasing order of strength.

Riflemen/Corpsmen/Engineer

  • Red-blooded, belly chockful of reheated chicken tenders and packaged brownies, boots on feet, gun in hand. AMERICAN. The meat and potatoes of your fighting force. If there aren’t a few dozen of these guys around, you’ve either lost, badly, or the party hasn’t started yet.
    • Though they can vary wildly in skill, they’re on average not a big threat, one-on-one, to many castes - maybe most. To some castes, alone, they’re little more than punching bags that scream.

Smartgunners

  • Automatic, IFF blaster toting lynchpins in the squad that can lay down constant suppressing fire, see in the dark, detect motion, and switch to armor-piercing rounds for the hard targets. Like Specialists, there’s four at most - unlike Specialists, they severely lack real burst damage and killing power.
    • Constricted to a loadout that precludes even a backpack or real secondary weapon, they’re heavily reliant on their attachment to a solid team - and go further as a mid-lining boost in firepower, and a watchful eye over the medics, wounded, engineers at work, and those busy using their eyes to find coordinates.

Specialists

  • Highly trained killers with expensive toys they’re itching to use. These guys are rare, and their combined strengths are almost necessary to win.
    • While individually threatening, this bunch is much more dependent on Specialist sub-role as well as player skill level and team support to maximize effectiveness and secure kills. Many castes, even the Queen, mostly tend to avoid repeated and sustained interaction with certain kinds of them - but being focused down is still a quick and painful death for all of them.

But then what?

The APC/ARC? The Tank? That’s a massive step up. In order to go from grunt, to specially trained soldier, to the next logical level of firepower, expense, and threat generation - we now have to go to these vehicles.

And some vehicles they are. Maybe the APC was once a punchy little ride with some utility, some durability, some heat, some speed. Once, it was a threat - not enough to stem the entire wave - but it could certainly hold its own. What now? It’s all but useless. Nerfed into a sad little APC shaped pet grave.

And the Tank? Oh BROTHER. Awkwardly shuffling its way through the tight corridors of pretty much EVERY map, I seethe as it chugs by, honking and rolling over every marine it sees. The Tank is not a Tank. It is a tank shaped scaredy cat that has to either sit waaay back behind a CADELINE and “shoot” (See: FF) or dart up and down or side to side, KITING, in a TANK. Because otherwise it’ll fall apart. It is a several tile wide and long body-blocking, friendly-firing machine. A useless, budget eating burden that to boot has the insidiously concocted effect of flattening and trapping friendlies under it, while only just barging Xenomorphs out of the way. One of everything off the marine menu in the form of a Foxtrot Squad + Foxtrox Specialist combo is pretty much better in every conceivable way, and that shows, considering our so called “Armored Support” - not far ahead of the APC in the race to one day enter total, event-only oblivion - is a last/non-pick pretty much every single round.

Finally, to the periphery of all this, you have JTAC. Mortars, CAS runs, and the almighty OB - the most powerful and oppressive projection of the USCM’s forces. I include these three as well because, in a way people almost anthropomorphize the individual elements JTAC. The coordinate-caller, the coordinate-dialer, and the platform used to deliver on those coordinates all form together to become a singular sort of entity in the abstract that people then admonish, or praise for its actions - competency, failure, results. They have a presence on the field, they can be more or less active and more or less effective, just like individual marines.

But at the end of the day, these aren’t active on the field, not in the direct, in-your-face kind of way a guy with a rocket launcher evokes as he screams his lungs out and blows the top half off a Ravager off - or when someone throws a grenade and it bounces back off a wall, JUST long enough for everyone nearby to go “uh oh” before it all goes dark and dead silent.

And on a personal note regarding aesthetics, I think more importantly, JTAC doesn’t even really lend much to the setting, or the gameplay philosophy (which is also in direct relation to the aesthetics, but I won’t get into it now). Where’s the “cassettepunk” in launching mortars? How high-tech really is an airstrike that never ends up doing much, anyway? How do you honestly make explosions appearing “from the air” in a 2D game (after a series of occasionally finnicky noises and chat warnings) truly fun or fair?

This isn’t to neg on the current JTAC system mechanically or anything, just pointing out a fundamental, unfixable flaw inherent to the design of the game itself.

And but, to make the point that all of this said, even in a perfect world: where the gunship casts a massive, increasingly darkening shadow as it approaches the target zone; and Tanks and APCs roam and frolic freely through more spacious maps, with the boredom-staving luxury to at least see all around the tank at 50% visibility without looking out a window, and automatic avoidance for marines that are on the edge-tiles and would realistically have the opportunity to move; and even in this perfect world where everything is perfectly useful while also being fun, and balanced for both sides - there would still be a glaring hole in the middle of the game’s escalation of war. That hole, that missing middle step between man and vehicle, may just be… POWER. ARMOR.

Note to Coders, Anyone Who Has a Clue How the Engine Works, Etc

“Do you realize how much code would be involved behind THIS and THAT? THAT and THIS?”

  • Heehee… no… :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

No, but seriously, I don’t even know what coding language the game is written in. I don’t have a CLUE how to code. But I have tried to seriously consider all abilities, mechanics, stats, values, and so on in my hypotheticals and not just flippantly conjure up hare-brained ideas.

You’ll find the real girth of what I imagined it would entail to pull this off in the “Principles of Balance and the Pursuit of Roleplay and Gameplay” section, under “POSSIBILITY”, where I try to go into detail on the fundamental mechanics.

I’ve tried as well to keep what could be possible regarding all the weapons and capabilities of the P-WAULS, as is outlined within, not just inside the realm of possibility in SS13 itself - that has a whole host of crazy things it can pull off - but more specifically what is possible and USUAL for CM13; what could be possible, when considering those extant abilities and mechanics and weapons, and the atmosphere and aesthetics, and then from there what is cogent, what is balanced, what is fun.

If you enjoy(ed) reading through this monster of a post and you have any coding acumen or have contributed to the CM codebase successfully whether it be straight code, sprites, total additions, or in some other way, please let me know what you think. I’m interested to know about anything that’s just straight up impossible and why, especially; along with your thoughts on balance, looks, other design principles, etc.

This is all obviously a WIP and entirely conceptual, and it’s probably the fattest WYCI the Ideaguys board has ever seen, but hopefully it depicts the scope and the gist of things well enough. Also - in some instances I use shorthand or informal rhetoric over hard and fast numbers, even if I’ve described those numbers elsewhere, and that’s just a matter of ease of reading pretty much. If the two are somehow described in wildly different terms of time, effect, or other stats, please assume the more reasonable one is the correct one. If the numbers are just wack in general… well, it’s all in the concept stage anyway. I now have well near 200 unique, PNG and sized up duplicate, alternate, and directional still images and several gifs, and three documents for all this madness - which I’m partially copy and pasting and then cleaning up huge blocks of text from as well. It’s very likely I cooked up random “seems alright” numbers or loose measures in word-form as a placeholder, and then later wrote down the improved, balanced figures more exactly once I looked into equipment with similar stats and uses.

Of course, for anybody with any authority regarding the development path of the game, I’d love to know for the sake of humoring the effort at least (and possibly the impetus of me learning to code, should pursuing the idea bear fruit for CM13) what the actual viability of putting something like this in would be - even regardless of the form it may have to take for the sake of functional, clean, non-buggy code or balance or something else.

Principles of Balance and the Pursuit of Roleplay and Gameplay

So, if you’re the scrutinous type like me and you’ve started with this cut and dry, theory-crafting section first, I’ll give you a quick rundown of what’s going on and then we can get into it.

This is a massive, hybrid-powered suit of smart-armor - that in order to be formed would require you to go through a visceral, highly customizable process of quite literally building it up piece by piece within a maintenance bay - before finally climbing in, booting the whole thing up, and piloting the war-machinery off into the field of battle.

Now, I think it’s fair to say that sounds pretty cool right off the bat. But…

Aesthetics Digression

Digress with me if you’d like for a moment: on aesthetics, preferences, and a meta-analytical look at them in the scope of CM13.

I would wager four major groups make up most of CM13’s player population, let’s look at three and their relation to aesthetics.

Dress'em'ups

A lot of people like armor, helmets, cool masks and outfits - that’s in one hand. This may be more particularly, medieval kinds of armors, helmets, masks, and outfits - but it could be specifically the modern/sci-fi flavors of these things, or maybe they simply like both. These people are your most aesthetic marines, usually. They are just… epicurean, particular, with their tastes. They deliberate and won’t settle for defaults. They have a wide range of hates, dislikes, neutrals, likes, and loves - when it comes to looks, colors, color schemes, and general aesthetics. They may switch things up often.

Shoot'em'ups

A lot of other people - who may not always necessarily overlap with the first crowd - like the grindy, military-industrial looks of the bandanas, the boonie hats, the gasmasks, the shades of “tacticool” in certain gear or weapons or attachments like the silencer, the grim or the stoic or the wisecracking killers - that’s all in another hand. These people are not the same as the “literally just wants to play SS13 but with more shooting” crowd, which is outside of this current topic, but they are in some ways adjacent to them. While they may not have a particular care for the aesthetic side of the game, they do have preferences that fall in line with the shoot-'em-up crowd aesthetically. And furthermore, regarding not the aesthetics of characters, items, and the environment - but the aesthetic of the GAMEPLAY: how it FEELS and how it looks as THEY INTERACT with the world and the OTHER PLAYERS - THAT is what they really care about. If they aren’t getting that immersion, that heat of the fire and that shake of the explosion, burning gun smoke, they aren’t going to enjoy their time.

Beam'em'ups

A lot of people in the third and final hand of this weird mutant three-armed baby - your third crowd, who again, may not have any overlap with the first two - likes the general sci-fi elements, and possibly in more specific ways, the Alien IP’s and consequently CM13’s brand of sci-fi, its residual 80’s shades and “chunkiness” and analog, geometric, retro feel and look. There’s Star Trek medicine, Star Wars cryo-cells complete with a little floating man inside, various other bits and bobs and easter eggs - conglomerated from the Alien IP, niche fiction, and SS13 itself, which has a treasure trove of history and lore.

What is the point of categorizing or… mentioning these things? Well, people want to look at something they enjoy. They want to play something they enjoy. People want to be happy; and when they play a game, they consider that game a good game if it combines gameplay, looks, and sounds along with more subtle but equally fundamental elements between these primary things, like the UI, balance, and progression - all into a pleasing product… FOR THEM. Graphics may not be so critically important, but the look, the aesthetic - the concept, as it continues off the screen and fills the unique spaces of each player’s imagination - is all a combined pillar to enjoyment.

And what is a visually customizable suit of power armor if not a really heavy, really mean, grindy and military-industrial, planetary and space-faring, set of futuristic knight armor?

So while it’s safe to say that for all three depicted “crowds” I believe make up the majority demographics in CM13, the concept of power armor alone overlaps with them all, and I think the effort I made in its design is solidly - at least as a first run - pleasant to the aesthetic sensibility of your average player among the demographics… there are considerations to be made.

…Like any role, caste, strain, weapon, or secondary equipment, inevitable considerations must be made in regards to certain key elements:

  • Is it BALANCED?
  • Is it BLOAT?
  • Does it FIT and BENEFIT the GAME and GAMEPLAY?
  • Does it FIT and BENEFIT the SERVER LORE and ROLEPLAY?
  • Is it even POSSIBLE?
BALANCE

Regarding the most primary aspect of adding new content to a player vs player team-based game, balance, I think the best way to start is a straight forward list.

We’ll be assuming it is our “base model” power armor set; and they’re using what is pretty much the “quintessential” gun among some of the few weapons unique to the power armor, the Vulcan-Super 10.

Let’s set the tone for this entire balance schema - and the role in gameplay the P-WAULS is actually meant to take - with the meta-preface of a total look at its matchups versus all castes, one-on-one.

TIER 1
Drone vs P-WAULS

What does the P-WAULS facing the iconic Drone look like? Simply put: don’t get caught by the scary “turtletall”, but with smart plays and a spot of good luck it’s anyone’s game.

  • When it comes to a regular, lone marine, it’s a very high risk, but high reward matchup for the Drone: if they can get close enough before being noticed, or totally shot down, if they can get their tackles off, they can win, be it a cap or a kill. But if the marine has just those few tiles of reaction distance to start actually unloading - it is over for the Drone if they don’t retreat; and its health, damage, armor, and speed on/off weeds is nowhere near allowing them to stand and bang with a fully alert marine, let alone several. This goes doubly, triply, quadruply so with the P-WAULS. No weeds, 2-4 tile range, dead on shot, no cover, not watching your health? You will get smoked and they won’t even break a sweat to do so.

  • There is something to be said though on the tactic of running circles around it - not actually attacking it head on, but avoiding it, weeding around it, and slowly walling it in by abusing its low base mobility. A good Drone could pull this off, shorten the distance it has to react, and then continuously wear it down. If they REALLY managed to trap it and disable it, then they’d have the opportunity all Tiers have: to go into help intent behind the suit and metaphorically “peel the can open” after several seconds. Healer and Gardener Drones lose all of these advantages in building though, and are thus easy targets.

Runner vs P-WAULS

This matchup is actually one of the more dangerous ones for a lone P-WAULS. The slow mover and slow turner fears the Runner.

  • The P-WAULS is meant to be a strong player on the field, essentially near the threat and the killing power of a living, thinking mortar; an M56D or an M2C, a sentry with a load of health on legs - the step above Specialist in some ways - but they are in absolutely no way meant to be alone. Like a mortar, without not only the person USING it, but the people GIVING THE PERSON USING IT COORDINATES, it is a useless, expensive piece of steel decor. The operator needs SUPPORT or their suit’s inherent weaknesses will become critical points of exposure that the Xenomorphs, who counter-operate in nearly the diametric opposite, will use to very quickly bring them down.

  • The P-WAULS needs to be supported then, exactly because of castes like the Runner. A half decent Runner will be able to continuously hit-and-run a lone P-WAULS again and again and again until its disabled. Simple as that. It’ll TAKE A WHILE… but it’ll happen if they don’t head out. Unless the pilot runs their back up against a wall in a room with only one entrance, it simply cannot turn fast enough to catch a Runner that knows to alternate its direction of attack.

  • Acid Runners are going to have about the same go of things, with the added benefit of being able to leave the standard acid DoT as a parting gift between their slashes. The P-WAULS “roll” is a self-extinguishing system that forces them to cease all action for a time, same as a marine, so no worries of unstoppable, acid-proof enemies there.

Sentinel vs P-WAULS

The Sentinel is almost worse in some ways than a Lesser in this matchup.

  • I think this is less a statement of the P-WAULS being overpowered and more to say Sentinels are just weak - and we all know it, they need a buff.

  • That’s why I’m saying now that Sentinel’s Slowing Spit, uniquely, can block the visor and either blur the screen or outright lower the tile visibility range - until maybe the pilot uses some sort of “windshield wiper” ability linked to the “roll” self-extinguish that takes a couple seconds, or SOMETHING.

  • They can’t build, and thus surround and cut off the P-WAULS; they aren’t particularly fast, nor can they pounce or burrow or go invisible or even speed up like their direct evolution can; their spit doesn’t even do damage. So, either aiming at the eyes and sprite-clicking your Slowing Spit obscures the pilot’s view, or hitting them with Crippling Strike “knicks a coolant line” and forces them to run a “diagnostic reboot” (see: the power armor equivalent of trembling and then falling over paralyzed for a few seconds) - or, the Sentinel loses every time. Sorry. Sentinel sucks and isn’t strong enough. Same goes for it fighting pretty much every Specialist, the APC, the Tank, and any decent marine that’s ready for it.

Defender vs P-WAULS

This matchup is almost evenly set, but tenacity and skill in greater measure from either side can easily turn things in one’s favor.

  • The actual point where you start seeing the strengths of the P-WAULS, and get to enjoy imagining the stand up fight between these two. Unable to be knocked over by the base Defender’s Tail Sweep or the Steel Crest’s Headbutt, the pilot can get right up in the Defender’s face without fear - but that’s also exactly what the Defender is going to want. With the Vulcan-Super 10’s reverse falloff, keeping hostiles at about mid-to-max screen length is where most of their DPS comes from, with the various ammo types it can use changing that effective firing distance too. A base ability for the P-WAULS is even a short cooldown, no-damage “push” that works on up to Tier 3’s, to facilitate keeping Xenomorphs from coming right up into melee distance and halving the damage they’re taking.

  • A good Defender could spar with the P-WAULS, taking some manageable damage as they close in and then, with footwork, put some damage of their own on the suit, and try to encircle the suit to avoid further damage - and using their abilities will of course still cause harm to various pieces and components.

  • This is all nothing to say of the Defender having the sense to just attack orthogonally or at the flank, which like for any HvX matchup greatly improves their position and their odds of surviving, or actually winning the fight. The Defender lowering its crest is going to also have a similar effect with the P-WAULS as it does with other marines: the pilot uselessly wasting ammo on it as it takes no damage and “/me stares”. With their crest lowered, pushing them DOES NOT move them, nor force them to raise their crest - melee, fire, or simply ignoring a guarded Defender is plenty enough for the sake of balance.

TIER 2
Carrier vs P-WAULS

A matchup simply bound to be in the P-WAULS favor.

  • This one is pretty obvious, it’s a huge suit of armor with high-tech systems and assisted locomotion meant to be used in hazardous environments and theatres of war - the most skittish, least aggressive, least physically threatening caste out of all of them is going to lose a stand-up fight 9 out of 10 times. 9 out of 10 because, of course, there’s always those “absurdly bald SADAR/demo/scout/etc getting the work from a half health carrier or 1-health-from-crit runner” cases or something along those lines.

  • Hugging it won’t work. Hugger traps and huggers are trampled and squashed instantly under its feet. The Carrier itself is much too slow, even attacking directly from behind, to then escape the P-WAULS turning around and blowing away the low armor, low health caste.

  • I do think though, that after 2-3 direct lunges from a player-controlled hugger, from BEHIND, the hugger would be able to “crawl on top” of the suit and melt its way through the helmet and visor - something huggers are shown to be able to do from time to time in Alien related media. I just imagine the necessity of multiple attempts is first, a requirement for balance, and two, a representation of the fact that an alert pilot would very quickly try to swat this thing off their helmet, and would likely succeed the first few times before the particularly tenacious hugger managed to wriggle past their defenses.

Burrower vs P-WAULS

Like the Runner, this matchup would be an EXTREMELY annoying and inevitably losing one for the P-WAULS.

  • Even against several marines actively searching for it, a decent Burrower can be an absolutely piss-boiling thorn in the marines’ side for an entire round - with multiple instances throughout the span of the battle where they’ll use just a smattering of indestructible walls, a small room, even a particularly circuitous section of cades - in order to burrow back and forth and back and forth, knocking marines down and getting slashes and tailstabs in a piece. Sometimes they’ll even manage to CAPTURE someone doing this. If they can do this to marines in armors light to heavy, they can absolutely do it to a P-WAULS.

  • It stands to reason then that the Burrower is just going to be able to play the world’s worst game of Whack-A-Mole with the P-WAULS, popping up, damaging it, going back down, popping up again somewhere else and damaging it, burrowing to escape and heal for a moment if need be, until the suit is disabled and the pilot is screaming bloody murder as he gets cracked open and scooped out of their like a yummy Vienna sausage.

  • Burrowing up directly on top of the P-WAULS - a rarely pulled off tactic on usual marines due to their speed and unpredictable movements, but slightly more doable against the suit. I would supposed there could be a brief stun as the suit auto-stabilizes and tries to keep itself from falling over in the shifting earth, but it should definitely also SLOW if not MICRO-STUN the Burrower, considering they’re having nearly three tons of metal drop onto them.

Hivelord vs P-WAULS

A Drone, but better. This matchup is still fairly even, but the Hivelord can have a much easier time than its inferior evolution.

  • There isn’t too much to say here - a Hivelord has the specific advantages a Drone does against the P-WAULS, plus the added benefit of stronger resin constructions.

  • A Hivelord with good sense will quickly realize that frenzy pheromones + resin walker active + weeds and that combined, massive speed boost makes them akin to a Runner that can also box the P-WAULS in. Very nasty.

  • Resin Whisperer, the ranged-building Hivelord strain, would be even more of a nightmare for the lone P-WAULS than it already is for a cadeline of marines. Ever play one of those “Trap the Sheep” puzzle games where you take a turn laying a wall down, and then the sheep takes a turn moving a tile - and you try to trap it before it can escape off the board? This is that game for the Resin Whisperer Hivelord. On Easy mode.

Lurker vs P-WAULS

Strong against lone marines, middling-to-poor against the P-WAULS, this matchup is a risky waste of a Lurker’s time.

  • As the Lurker can go invisible, they’ll have an easier time of getting closer to the P-WAULS unseen and doing some damage, but they’re not particularly high damage, high speed, or high health enough to continuously attack this thing - likely getting the tail-end of some heat from the Vulcan every few forays.

  • Their version of Crippling Strike, tuned as Lurkers already are, should not do anything, just as it doesn’t to a standing marine. Maybe a Crippling Strike from the back forces a diagnostic reboot?

  • Vampire Lurkers are also at a disadvantage here because they, being reliant on gaining health back through their damage, aren’t actually hurting something flesh and blood, and thus don’t gain health from harming the suit. They still do damage obviously, and their Headbite should be constantly available from the front, WITH at least a somewhat longer windup time than usual - the first one breaking the visor and the second busting their braincase open.

Warrior vs P-WAULS

Possibly the truest matchup; this is where you see it, live, in action, Mano a Xano: knock-down, drag-out, slobber knocker fights.

  • The Warrior’s quintessential Lunge does not knock the P-WAULS over, but does cause them to enter a “grapple” that unequips and stows their weapon - or in the case of some hand-carried weapons, dropping them - forcing them to have to resist or use their push to break free.

  • Both the Warrior AND the P-WAULS can drag each other around after a Lunge until the other one actively resists, and if they’re both pulling in opposite directions… then they’ll both just be standing there… hugging each other, pretty much.

  • Aside from that, the Punch slows and damages as usual, but does not knock back. Their Fling is another new risk, as though it WILL push the pilot back 1 tile, and stun them briefly, it will also SLOW the Warrior for a short period - an implication of it recovering from the sheer exertion required to shove the suit off balance.

Spitter vs P-WAULS

This matchup is strongly in the Spitter’s favor, thanks to its combination of short-to-mid ranged and melee attacks, as well as its speed bursts.

  • Speed, damaging ranged attacks - and strong ones at that - with a Tier 2’s worth of solid armor and health. The Spitter is absolutely a threat to the lone pilot; it can run circles around the suit, damage it, and disable systems at range possibly all from the cover of darkness, and the P-WAULS is of course much less maneuverable against Acid Spit attacks than any other marine.

  • Worse yet, the Spitter’s Spray Acid ability, primarily best used on cades as it can apply multiple acid melting effects - is not only just about completely unavoidable for the suit, but Spray Acid applies the same cade-acid effect to the suit, requiring a self-extinguishing period. This is partially a move of logic - the suit is a big, metallic surface, getting splashed with acid is going to catch a lot of it like the cades; balance-wise though, this allows the Spitter to use Spray Acid and apply the effect, while maintaining their Charged Spit for the speed boost, whether that be used offensively or saved for an escape is up to them at that point.

TIER 3
Boiler vs P-WAULS

An awkward matchup that puts neither in any real position of advantage or disadvantage - best to stay away from one another.

  • While slow, the P-WAULS aren’t THAT SLOW, they would be sitting ducks to every cloud of acid. And just as well, Neurotoxic Gas does nothing to the suit or the pilot.

  • A Boiler, like with any other marine, is generally going to want to stay away and use their sight-range advantage, cover, and darkness to continuously try to lead their shots and catch the suit in a bad position - same old same.

  • Trapper Boiler’s toolbelt changes things up by a fairly large amount though - along with the possible chances of success. With the P-WAULS slow speed, even though Deploy Traps only slows the P-WAULS and does not root it, in repetition with Acid Mine uses and maybe even a cheeky Acid Shotgun here or there, the Trapper Boiler would very likely come out on top more times than not in this 1v1. They’re certainly fast enough to tail the P-WAULS and continuously pepper it over and over with Acid Mine.

Praetorian vs P-WAULS

With some of the most diversity in strains, the Praetorian matchup can vary wildly - but in general favors the Praetorian greatly.

  • Base Praetorians are, essentially, even nastier Spitters - and will wreck the suit sooner or later with repeated, accurate Acid Spit, Acid Ball, and Spray Acid ability uses at range; the P-WAULS also has no way to DUCK so it simply will never be able to avoid the grenade-like Acid Ball projectiles unless it’s lucky enough to be close to cover to step behind, or it uses a marine as a body shield, which of course, isn’t possible in a 1v1.

  • Vanguard Praetorians cannot fling the suit, but can push it back 2 tiles, slow it, and micro-stun it without a retaliatory self-slow incurred; the alternate root ability also works as standard. Between a Vanguard Praetorian’s Warleader shield and good footwork this is probably a solid 65/35; as though while lacking in a full array of high damage abilities, or ranged attacks, it’s still a Tier 3, and its movement capabilities will help close the distance.

  • Dancer Praetorians very likely going to be doling out a brutal, frantic death for the lone pilot every time, a good Dancer Praetorian is simply way too fast, does way too much damage, and has enough health and armor to withstand whatever desperate fight the P-WAULS may be able to put up as it tries to even turn about. Tail Trip instead stuns the suit for a commensurate time equal to the total daze + trip/daze + knock down, instead of tripping/knocking it down.

  • Oppressor Praetorians are another instance of the implied weight of the P-WAULS giving it the advantage: neither the Tail Seize nor the Abduct ability will move the suit from its place, and the P-WAULS acts as an obstacle for OTHER marines being grabbed as well, though Tail Lash will stun it briefly, and Dislocate has a 20% chance of “shattering” whatever piece of the suit it hits, causing massive damage to the piece of armor, and guaranteeing the disabling of any corresponding modules - as it will cause critical damage, up to total destruction, of a fair portion of modules.

  • Bulwark Praetorians… Meh, not much to say. Maybe 50/50, 60/40, in the P-WAULS favor in a fight head on - the Bulwark Praetorian just doesn’t have enough in the way of direct combat abilities. Though, with enough uses of Xeno Spit, patience, darkness and positioning, and possibly the skill and the guts to finally get in there and take some heat as they finish the suit off when it tries to flee, it can be done.

Ravager vs P-WAULS

Among all castes, the Ravager will brutally punish this matchup the fastest. Even supported, and decently positioned, the P-WAULS is at a massive disadvantage; alone, the Ravager could not lose.

  • There are SOME caveats though. Particularly, the Hedgehog Ravager’s shrapnel-based attacks and reflections are obviously useless against the suit. Though once again, an all-call sort of “diagnostic reboot” cycle the pilot has to initiate could be opted in for balance. The Berserker Ravager’s innate healing from its attacks, like the Vampire Lurker, do not work against the P-WAULS.

  • The P-WAULS is tanky, has a lot of firepower, and is made to go toe-to-toe with the big dogs, but the Ravager is the caste that can and will make short order of the suit and soon after the soft, squishy pilot inside.

  • Already possessing the “Cutting Claws” passive that does double damage to vehicles, which applies to the P-WAULS, the Ravager too can enter Grab intent, and with about the time it takes to open a bolted airlock, peel individually targeted pieces of the armor off.

Ravager vs P-WAULS Digressions

  • I would like though, for the sake of balance and partially for aesthetics, to necessitate that the Ravager only be able to peel off certain pieces based on the current layer.

    • Starting with the boots or groin (waist-plate) which gives access to the legs (greaves); or starting with the arms (pauldrons), which gives access to the hands (gauntlets); however, the chest (cuirass) - requires both the waist-plate AND the pauldrons be removed - which then, when the cuirass itself is finally removed, gives access to the head (helmet). Would a Ravager or its usual swarm following it bother spending 30-40 seconds peeling EVERY, LAST single bit of armor off? Would it even get the chance before the pilot got hugged or slashed to death through the exposed spots? Maybe not, but the times it would inevitably happen where the pilot is just stuck there screaming for dear life over the radio, and Overwatch sees the whole thing go down on the camera until the helmet finally comes off and the feed dies sounds HILARIOUSLY brutal and perfectly fitting.

    • What else is there to say? The Ravager has high damage, high health - a surprisingly high speed. The P-WAULS is meant to be surrounded by marines, taking heat, generating threat, laying down heavy fire - but all solely in the advancement of their FIRE-SUPPORT, the team of marines that are just as much COVERING IT as they are being passed up for the larger, scarier target - or maybe they are actually literally hiding behind it at times. It needs back-up, like any kind of heavy-armor unit; it can’t independently tank all the damage, and neither can it produce ALL the DPS necessary to take down a Ravager alone. It can’t even run away and do the whole “kite it with AP” method. Even with a team of marines, the P-WAULS is more there to eat the guaranteed damage instead of somebody who can more easily get split open. They might as well, at least - trying to run away in the suit is only going to award them a more cowardly death - and maybe if they ALL turn and burn, the Ravager will get scared off.

      • Because it’s such a brutal matchup, I really need to further expound on the Tier 3 vs the P-WAULS + fire-support weakness, since we’re talking about the big daddy of all Tier 3’s: so - the Ravager attacks the pilot, the pilot has to face forward in order to shoot, push, and defend against the Ravager with the suit’s directional armor; that armor being weakest in the back. All the pilot’s fellow marines are likely behind it or flanking it to the sides, meaning when the Ravager comes knocking on that big bucket, they’re either going to have to step right into the cross-fire, Ravager-ability-distance, possible module/suit explosion hell zone… And uhhh… they’re not going to do that. They’re likely going to panic, start blasting, and unload on the weakest part of the P-WAULS, which is… admittedly by design. It’s partially why the bullet rating is its highest stat, but the sheer amount of times this kind of thing will happen will still result in plenty of balance-necessary, entropic disasters and friendly-fire blunders worthy of the Hall of Fame.

Crusher vs P-WAULS

While the Crusher is a serious threat, with the far greater advantage in the matchup - there is underdog potential for the P-WAULS yet.

  • Strong, absurdly durable, and set with brutal movement abilities, the Crusher is to the steroidal, peak fighting bull as the suit is to the dairy cow - they’re both big, heavy, and when one knocks the other about, neither hurt much… but it’s pretty obvious which one can easily turn the other into paste, too. Like the Ravager, the Crusher possesses the ability to enter Grab Intent and break pieces off the suit after a small windup - though, uniquely to the Crusher, doing this will incur serious brute damage to the corresponding body part of the pilot as well.

  • Base Crusher’s quintessential, windup Charge ability will, upon hitting the suit, push it two tiles out of the way, and root it for some time after, but will not knock it over. Doing this will also slow the Crusher for a short period. A Stomp in range will briefly stun the P-WAULS, as it is forced to perform gyroscopic righting maneuvers.

  • Charger Crusher will also find its ability sandbagged by the P-WAULS, as their momentum during the toggled Charge will be halved, and their Tumble can also be prematurely halted should they run into or side-step into the suit. These both will however stun the P-WAULS for some time, variably, based on momentum when struck, for both abilities.

  • Charger Crusher’s own Stomp will instead slow the suit instead of stunning it. Ram will push the suit back 1 tile and then stun it for a brief period.

THE QUEEN

The Queen is of course, the Queen.

  • Though these suits have heavy combat capabilities, they’re not meant to be overpowered, and they’re certainly not meant to be thunder stealing, all-in-one war machines that can ruin the game of one of the most hectic roles there is. In my eyes, the only person who has and will ever have the luxury and the honor of physically going hands on with a Queen (and at least winning) is the one and only Ellen Ripley. There will be no Combat Power Loader moment for YOU. There will be no secret insta-Queen death easter egg with a 1% chance on melee hit.

  • Seriously though: uniquely, being heavy and large enough, the P-WAULS actually CAN bodyblock the Queen… until she goes into Harm Intent - shirking her poise and mystique to unleash several tons of body mass and hostile alien rage. Bodyblocking the Queen on every Intent but the one where she can start making new holes to pour you out of your suit from - that’s literally the only advantage it has to the marine next to it, power-armorless, pissing himself in terror. Enjoy the view inside your Xenomorph wet food tin as the Queen breaches from around a dark corner, stuns you with a screech (because the suit can do just about everything but make you braver), and sets her horde on everyone. YOU’LL be good though, right? You’re in big boy armor. You’ve got the big boy gun. Uh oh, is that the Queen stomping your way?

  • The P-WAULS 1, crown jewel of close-quarters combat; a street-sweeping nightmare of all guerillas and terrorists who may roam wherever this urban, rural, exurban, amphibious, and space-capable war machine in the order of several million dollars stands watch; a UA funded work of nearly 20 years - still CAN BARELY GET UP ON ITS OWN! And guess what one of the only two things in the game that can knock you down are? It’s not Freddie Mercury and his boys. And it’s not a direct HE/Cluster OB strike or HE mortar - which are the only 2 other things.

  • All above would apply to the King - only, the King’s additional EMP like suit-light disabler would TURN OFF the entire suit.

  • Overall, I’d say the almost guaranteed to be fatal knockdown is fair for the Queen/King. The two biggest, meanest, most authoritative, 1-of-a-kind Xenomorphs on the field need special privileges afforded to their Tier for one, and two: if the Queen or King is knocking you over, either you 1. massively overextended and deserve the consequences of a terrible play, 2. cornered the Queen/King and victory is imminent, or 3. got knocked down as the Queen made her way to go turn the DS into her new foster home and everything is FUBAR anyways. The best mercy you could hope for is a quiet, peaceful, slow death as the Xenomorphs forget to pop you open like a fresh jar of strawberry jelly and you slowly suffocate inside the suit planet-side as the power runs out and the oxygen filtration system turns off.

BLOAT

This section boils down to a few simple arguments, some conditional, some fundamental to the design. No need for musing layers upon layers of topics and sub-topics.

What is bloat? It’s 40gb uncompressed sound files in a contemporary video game. It’s 95% of all U.S. legislation. It’s your weather app and fart noise soundboard app needing access to your phone’s contacts and photo album. In SS13, it’s mostly referred to in terms of JOB BLOAT.

Job bloat, if you’re picking up on these metaphors, may sound like this:

“Do we reaaally need Nurses if we have Doctors that can actually perform surgery?”
“Do we reaaally need multiple Corporate Liaisons if one barely gets to do anything already?”
Or…
“If marines could be Mini-Medics, there’d be too many overdoses, too many people applying medicine!”
“Chef is useless, they serve no real purpose when there’s MREs and FoodVendors everywhere!”

I’m not particularly taking a stand on those opinions, or even saying they’re all necessarily real. I’m actually, as I think of it, pretty hard pressed to come up with a job that feels like actual bloat, other than maybe the Nurse and MP role - the former being a quasi-doctor with no useful surgical skill and an RP standards license to sit about doing absolutely nothing, and the latter being pretty useless when 95% of the things you do that would get you in trouble by the accordance of Marine Law will quicker net you in actual trouble with the admins, while the other 5% is just nit-picky, nonsensical, frankly tyrannical, and mostly irrational impressment of the niche rules of law by an MP with either a bone to pick with you or just pure boredom to fight off with you as the punching bag. But you get the idea.

So.

  1. Is the P-WAULS and the appropriate operator role BLOAT?
  2. Does it encroach upon another role?
  3. Does it affect the role of a position ship-side with any kind of total progression, or round-consistent prep they perform, in a negative way?
  4. Does it have too much overlap with the equipping and/or logistical needs that will cause the pilot players and players of other roles to butt heads
  5. Does it affect the position and gameplay of a role planet-side negatively? I’ll argue these very simply in the same order I’ve provided them.
Answers
  1. Is the P-WAULS bloat?
  • Well, in a literal sense to start, and to put it short, no. This would be a direct replacement for a tank crew of 3. Otherwise, starting at 100 pop, I’d imagine you’d get ONE pilot. 150 sees 2, and 200 sees 3 - this could be subject to change. One Tank, 3 power armor suits, one Tank, 3 power armor suits, hmmm… Decisions decisions. Hell, make it so you can actually only have one or the other. I think it would be a pretty top pick. Is it bloat if could be BETTER? I don’t think it would be.
  1. Does it encroach upon another role?
  • Depending on how you want things to go, it could, yes. Force the decision between Tank or Power Armor, “Armored Support” or “Armored Pilot Team.” Is that a good thing, to offer a choice that precludes another? Kind of the entire design around the whole game, isn’t it? Pick the wrong thing in your locker? Suck one. Want a shotgun, M41A, AND a pistol? Enjoy having a solid 2 magazines/full cycles of ammo for each of them, no utilities, and no first-aid for self-rescue. It COULD literally encroach upon another role, by superseding its position in the value:effectiveness ratio (not hard when compared to the Tank or APC) - but in any way being close enough to sitting inside the Tank and performing any of those roles, acting like a Specialist, being better at someone else’s role than they are - that is not happening here and hopefully will not happen.
  1. Does it affect the role of a position ship-side with any kind of total progression, or round-consistent prep they perform, in a negative way?
  • Unless they’re rampaging in their suit and need to catch a job-ban or a 3-hour, no, most everything they could possibly NEED will come from their own devices.
  1. Does it have too much overlap with the equipping and/or logistical needs that will cause the pilot players and players of other roles to butt heads?
  • High-Capacity batteries may have rounds where they’re scarce, but Universal Fuel cells are just about coming out of the walls in the Almayer’s Engineering section, and most planets have Universal Fuel cells in similar areas as well. Those are the only two absolute NEEDS of the P-WAULS, regarding ammo, incinerator fuel, building materials, meds, tools, and so on - what they need there is far more commonly found than they’d likely need to worry about. But, because of some caveats and accounting for basic entropy, I would say maybe, but leaning toward no.
  1. Does it affect the position and gameplay of a role planet-side negatively?
  • It’s really the exact opposite, so no. As the name implies, this suit can act in several different capacities, it’s not just all combat. Lots of solid Riflemen - I.E. too many cooks in the kitchen to fight well - and plenty of Corpsmen, but no Engineers? Load up some engineering relating modules. You’ll never be as wholly effective as an Engineer, just like you won’t a Corpsmen with medical modules - or as dangerous as an instantly burst damaging, stun applying, SADAR with good aim and a nasty rocket. But you can get CLOSE. You can fill in the GAPS. You can COMBINE certain modules, weapons, and defenses to form your OWN BUILDS and hybridize abilities - using the full acronym of Weapons, Armor, Utility, and Logistics to provide a well rounded, enduring, mid-to-mid/high DPS support member with certain, semi-unique downsides among the marine line up that would lead naturally to a totally different playstyle to use it effectively - for the pilot AND the fire-supporting team with the pilot.

We’re talking POWER ARMOR here. Retro sci-fi, military-grade POWER. ARMOR. It would by design fill a totally unprecedented, currently non-existent role for the marines: an actually slow moving, actually tanky, man-to-vehicle stepping stone that can FIT ON ALL THE MAPS, and provide the pressure needed to break hellchokes; with added modular utilities that - aside from being ALL visually recognizable for aesthetics and balance’s sake - allow it to take up a very wide variety of tasks as decided by the player; and furthermore, maybe informed too by the request and advisement of CIC and what the ground is saying the situation is like - should it be a mid-game purchase and a late wakeup for the pilots.

Bloat? I do not think so.

THE GAME AND GAMEPLAY

This particular section in a hundred small ways is discussed throughout this entire document, but I want to reorganize the GAMEPLAY PHILOSOPHY surrounding the P-WAULS for an easier to read, hopefully, easier to understand summation of it all.

What is this section really about? What do I mean by “gameplay philosophy”?

Explaining Gameplay Philosophy

In the shortest possible explanation… “gameplay philosophy” regards a SPECIFIC GAME’S boundaries - what can the player do, what can’t the player do, what is expected of the player; and thus, what allows the player to “win” and what causes the player to “lose” - and further then, what does “winning” and “losing” actually mean in the context of the game. Consequently too - what feelings that created gameplay evokes in the player.

Wanting to ramble further on the topic, if you will…

A fundamental tenet in the game design of most games is that you are not invulnerable. You do not have every ability, at least all at once. You can attain a FAIL STATE, a game over, a death cutscene, what have you, by not OVERCOMING THE OBSTACLES that by design, every single game has. Because what would be a game without obstacles? A story without antagonism? Nature and life itself without any form of inherent competition?

But with the endless variety of games - beyond these most elemental requirements, of which some still are not always necessary - we enter a massively complex third-position regarding the quality and state of a game.

The first position is the game PLAYER. For our case this is our marine, and our Xenomorph. The second position is the game MAKER; again, our developers, coders, maintainers. But that THIRD position is the game DESIGNER. It’s also a position that those often already in the second position regularly elevate up to, between returns to the second.

What’s the difference in the second and third, exactly?

The third operates in theory, and big pictures, and road maps, and must consider all aspects possible and non-possible.

The second is much more literal in that they are focused on what is REAL, what is POSSIBLE, and often acts based on what has been outlined from the third position; they are the filter of “that can’t be done in this engine” or “that’s too buggy” or “this will cause compatibility issues with that” to the more raw, more experimental initial concepts put forward from the third position.

In other words: the player, the first position, plays and reacts either positively or negatively to the game that is created by the developers, the second position; the second position, in order to build and maintain the game in a successful, efficient way, relies on the third position - designers or authoritative figures in the coding team - maintaining a roadmap and a general sphere of possible and/or actually planned gameplay mechanics within the reasonable boundaries of what they can expect; and the third position itself relies on understanding what will either please or aggravate the first, and generally what is possible for the second, and what is reasonable in terms of work load and timeframe, and what is consistent to the experience of the game as is.

Let’s look at a few other games for an example.

Gameplay Philosophies as Seen in Other Games

  • Sid Meier’s Civilization, the Total War series, the Age of Empire series - are all RTS/Grand Strategy genre games that follow a pattern certain pattern of rules and expectations: the player leads a people with a distinct culture, and thus playstyle, to “victory” by “painting the map”, or, successfully interacting through means of warfare, diplomacy, subterfuge, or other means to conquer or win over opposing nations. There are economic elements to consider, allies and enemies with varying strength levels and differentiating methods of warfare to consider; there is usually an equal, linearly increasing ratio of complexity to their nation that grows with the strength and size - increasing corruption, disloyalty, slowing of cultural assimilation, or just plain old logistical issues with distance and scale, which all have to be dealt with or they’ll cripple and ultimately defeat the player.

    • They take the ROLE of a LEADER. They are forced to make hard decisions. They are forced to take certain losses in order to make certain gains. They are punished for failure with the loss of power, or wealth.

  • Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, Battlefield - are all among the highest echelons of the gaming world… at least in popularity. They are simple, fast paced, thrilling, monkey-brain-pleasing First Person Shooters; but the player must think fast, know their environment, and understand the strengths and weaknesses of their weapons - or be fragged by a much more involved, and consequently more skilled player. They are expected to gain game sense over time, being given certain weapon unlocks with level ups over repeated rounds - where they then will be tested through the efficacy of their builds; there’s also encouragement here for individuality in the variety of customization that can be done to weapons, player models, gamer tags, and so on. However, though they are individuals, they become part of a whole, as a team, in team-based modes, and also become brutally honest when someone can’t hold up their slack.

    • They take the ROLE of a SOLDIER. They are forced to subconsciously recognize the distinct shape enemies can take standing, crouching, or prone. They are forced to play in the manner indicated by their style of weapon, their “perks”, and the state of their team’s chances of success, the current map they fight in, and the skill level of their opponents. They are punished for their failure with, usually, a short wait to respawn - and possibly verbal or textual beratement from another human being.

  • Amnesia, Days Gone, Five Nights at Freddy’s - are all Horror games. Survival Horror, Open-World Horror, Action Horror, Psychological Horror, “Haunted House Ride” Horror - there’s all kinds of horror games, but all with the operative word being of course, horror. The player must face their fears to proceed, and keep their wits about them too - looking the terrible creatures and monstrous sights right in the face in order to make it through. In this genre, the player is a victim, a survivor, often partaking in “flight” over “fight” when the time comes; and whether the “opponent” in question can be fought or killed or not, the player tends to have few means to do so, and limited opportunities at that.

    • They take the ROLE of PREY. They are forced to run, forced to hide, forced to look through the slits of their fingers when they aren’t shambling inch by inch through the darkness. They are punished for their failure with terror, and a game over state - but a chance to try again, a little less scared, and a little more knowledgeable.

All games. All possessing of similar fundamental qualities: learn, grow, overcome to win - fail, and lose. But they are wildly different in how they play, how they are won and lost, and what type of person likes to play them - and what they want to see and what they don’t want to see in them as development progresses. The Call of Duty player will fail, rushing headlong toward the unkillable monsters in the horror game; the Amnesia player will fail, trying to make allies with or ignore and avoid an aggressive, warmongering faction in the grand strategy game; and the Total War player will fail, trying to take things methodically and slow right there in the heat of a fast-paced gun battle, or not realize that barking orders to his team only falls on deaf ears without the credibility of a scoreboard topping K:D, even if they’re good calls.

So, what does the general gameplay philosophy of CM13 entail?

Well, it’s actually kind of a mix of all three of the examples. In my personal opinion, CM13 is a VERY complex game - or at least it has the INHERENT DEPTH to become very complex over the course of a round. It’s a truly profound multiplayer experience, maybe one of the greatest of all time: hundreds of people all fighting over the same colony, the same world; dozens of support staff, dozens of Xenomorph antagonists that vary wildly in their strengths and weaknesses and tactics, dozens of marines that vary wildly in their purposes in supporting the greater whole, all moving and working their way across massive maps with certain points of control that need to be defended, or attacked.

You pull a magazine out of an ammo box on the ground? You snag an MRE from a crate? You take some gauze out of a dropped backpack labeled “MEDS”? SOMEBODY HAD TO GATHER THOSE RESOURCES, ORGANIZE THEM INTO AN APPROPRIATE CONTAINER, AND SUCCESSFULLY DELIVER THEM. It is NUTS. It is actually NUTS when you think about all the moving parts in each round. In higher pops, rounds see more combined Requisition, Command, Medical, Military Police, Engineering, and Flight Crew staff than some COLLEGE CAMPUSES have faculty; or enough fighting men to make up several REAL LIFE PLATOONS; and every, single, last round has more invigorating Survivor vs Xenomorph action than the last three Alien IP movies to come out - and the Almayer’s crew NEVER EVEN SEE IT! There is an ENTIRE STORY happening on the planet while you’re still eating your breakfast! Then you add in ERTS, predators, zombies, Research’s homegrown Xenomorphs, the WEALTH OF EVENTS the admins host. I mean, SERIOUSLY, this game runs 24/7, and never drops below 60-70 player count. CM13 is LAS VEGAS. CM13 is ROME. CM13, for better or worse, I would bet legitimate money on being the LAST SERVER REMAINING if and when that hopefully distant day of reckoning is for SS13 - as death comes for all things.

CM13 is COMPLEX. CM13 is HARDCORE. CM13 will PUNISH ALL MISTAKES. CM13 is a MASSIVE-MULTIPLAYER environment with elements of SHOOTER, HORROR, and STRATEGY games.

Can you shoot your enemies? Can you win by fighting? Can you put yourself in advantageous or disadvantageous positions based on your build, your build matched off against your enemy, literal physical positioning, and other kinds of game sense? YES.

Can you coordinate military units? Can you win by having better short-term tactics and long-term strategies? Can you lose indirect resources like men, domains of control, and literal necessary resources without directly dying yourself - but all take you closer to a total defeat? YES.

Can you be frightened? Can you overcome fear to win? Can your fear of certain gameplay elements keep you alive? Are certain obstacles unable to be overcome through facing it head on? Is it dangerous alone, and in the dark? Are you vulnerable? YES.

But - CM13 also subverts all three of these. Yes, it’s a Shooter: but it’s asymmetric, your enemies are melee-oriented while you are ranged, and they don’t just fall over dead after your first few shots. Yes, it’s a Strategy: but the “military units” you’re “coordinating” can run off at any time and ignore your orders, and every last single “unit” is an individual with individual skills and fighting styles. Yes, it’s a Horror: but in certain instances, it’s a total reverse of who’s doing the running and who’s the bloodthirsty maniac, in certain instances, it’s a comedy - you aren’t being hunted mindlessly by a rudimentary game AI with the model of a Chuck E. Cheese animatronic either, you are fighting thinking human beings that don’t want to die and lose either.

Now: how does the P-WAULS fit into the silhouette of the gameplay philosophy this beast of an MRP-TDM possesses here?

It’s your slow, but strong trebuchet in Medieval 2: Total War. It’s your valuable, but precariously placed city in Civilization.

It’s your blimp in Battlefield. It’s your guy with the big gun and the riot shield in Call of Duty.

It’s your power-limited, but protective doors in Five Nights at Freddy’s. It’s your “hindrance at times, vitally important at others” light source in Amnesia.

A powerful, threatening, mid-level skill ceiling role that still possesses logistical needs, still brutally punishes failures, still requires game sense and player skill, and still needs support from the team - all while diversifying the marine roster, creating new possible strategies and tactics for Command, and giving Xenomorphs a new target to deliciously torture and terrify. Hopefully, enough said there.

THE LORE AND ROLEPLAY

This is where things get a little loose. I’ve done some brushing up, but the wiki is old - possibly outdated regarding some things in the server lore, just as some things are regarding gameplay mechanics - and I’m still not 100%. And, of all the subjective statements made here, statements on specific qualities of roleplay, and statements on lore that I have only given a cursory reading to and have personally written none of - are the most subjective at all. So I won’t bore you endlessly about it all. But some of these things are worth mentioning, in my attempt to try and cover every possible head and tail of the whole idea.

Touching on Lore

Generally:

Do I believe this is too “high-tech” for CM13 and the Alien IP? No. Not even close. Synths, lathes, casual space-to-ground flight and back, matter compression and elemental generation, I could go on.

Do I believe the concept of “power armor” is too out there for the USCMC? The answer is the real question, and the real question is, WHY DON’T THEY HAVE IT ALREADY? Technically of course, they do, in several comics, the AVP: Extinction video game, etc. In said video game, the Exosuit, essentially a combat-P5000, is described as a “‘micro-scale’ heavy armor solution” - and, well, the P-WAULS would be like the “nano-scale” heavy armor solution.

Do I believe power armor or “mechs” mechanically fit into how the Falling Falcons operate as is explicitly or implicitly stated regarding their budget, strength in numbers in firepower, and “situation” lore-wise that leads to our roundly distress signal business? OKAY, you KINDA got me here. MAYBE the P-WAULS would be too expensive or too fancy a machine for such a dogged crew to have, but… we can afford useless tanks and APCs, can’t we? Surely, the world’s most expensive fighter jet doesn’t come close to the price tag on the world’s cheapest nuke - which is something they somehow manage to often purchase. OB’s probably aren’t cheap either. Neither is having TWO dropships. Neither is having a two-deck battleship. But I’m nitpicking here - as are you - if you seriously think a space-faring military hosted by the American military-industrial complex couldn’t spare a single printable, modular design of cheaply fueled heavy battle armor, that ALSO can function in several other non-militarial ways, to even its worst battleships… WHICH THE FALLING FALCONS AREN’T, BY THE WAY. I know people like to press the joke (mainly informed by LRP) that the Almayer is some sort of garbage can with nothing but felonious half-wits on it, but in the LORE, we are more like a ragtag group of hitters that have been taking blow after blow in a losing sector. Yes, the Almayer has some penal conscripts. Yes, the Almayer is a little torn up. Yes, not always having a full or totally competent set of staff members is somewhat predicated by the lore.

But no, overall. I don’t see any problem with the P-WAULS concept. It exists already in other forms - it exists already now in unborn spirit, every time some bald MT tries to hop into a Power Loader and duke it out come hijack. It is reasonable within the universe, both of the server uniquely and the universe the server is then based on. It is reasonable within the specific lore regarding our player characters and their situation - and if that isn’t actually the case, then… force the pilots to start with pretty much nothing but the armor on their back and a singular weapon, then. Give them no free modules, make everything expensive, make everything hard to procure. Hell - edit all the maps a little bit and leave certain resources hidden about that they have to survive finding in order to bring back and make upgrades - make it a total, laborious, progressive pain for them to become even half as scary as a SADAR - all in the name of staying true to the notion that the Almayer is absurdly understaffed, underpowered, underbudgeted, and on the ropes.

Touching on Roleplay

Discussing roleplay will be short and sweet.

Can/will it bring players together? Yes, during prep, when MTs/Engies and the pilots work together to build the suits. When Command sends someone down to talk to the pilots about their builds and decisions to figure out where they stand on the roster. When marines gather to the P-WAULS as use it as a focal point to defend, attack, or just hang out with and make a conversation piece.

The preparation period is something especially to be expounded upon: no competition for ammo and attachments, no need to run straight off to the Requisition line - no squabbling and no metagaming or min/maxing. The pilots will have plenty of time to get all their work done, chat, possibly meet new players through asking Engies, MTs, or other PL trained staff for help, and just hang out. Without any real pre-drop duties other than getting their suit ready, they have the luxury of a shipside role to take some time to TALK, to ACT, to REACT - without the BLOAT of remaining on the ship post-drop, sitting in a corner and watching Youtube in another window while they wait for stuff to do.

FOB Doc? Why not now, in addition, a FOB TECH? A necessary “doctor” of sorts for the P-WAULS, keeping on hand a Power Loader, some spare fuel, batteries, and parts, all the tools needed for repair, so on. Maybe they can even build the necessary Bay down there somehow? That’s one less MT roaming, bored, on the ship - likely to create gnome-like mischief as they tend to do - and now working in the FOB, roleplaying in the FOB. Having a legitimate PURPOSE, and new avenue to express their character’s quirks and personality and behavior.

There’s also of course, a proposed max of 3 pilots; 3 randoms all rolling Power Armor Operator together, building their suits together, comparing builds and customizations together, sparing their batteries and fuel cells with each other on the field, commiserating with each other over the weaknesses of their suits - celebrating their strengths and victories - and mourning the loss of a brother, as they find a bloodied, knocked over, empty suit in the dark, half the pieces torn off. It’s a guaranteed friend-maker, memory-maker.

As a final aside in this very brief section, I’d like to quickly bring up IMMERSION.

In the act of roleplaying - immersion is inherent; playing a role, roleplaying, it’s in the name. You immerse yourself into a character, a world, a situation, and then you act and react as that character would. What helps with immersion? What helps with roleplaying? Interactivity, choices and freedom, reactions from the world, an enjoyable goal with a real sense of progression. The P-WAULS has got it all: the building process, the repairing process, the upgrades, the custom spray jobs and different weapons and consequent playstyles.

POSSIBILITY

Like I said in the “For Coders” section, if you ACTUALLY made it from there to here in its entirety, I don’t know the first thing about coding and more especially, I don’t know anything about the code for SS13 or CM13. I don’t EXACTLY know what is or isn’t possible, but I have played an unhealthy amount of this game, and I’ve seen every single weapon, ability, and piece of unique equipment there is - all the stuff that is used on a regular basis anyway - and with all that prior game knowledge, I have tried to cook up a very rough basis of how this could work, that I will now outline.

First, briefly, I have to say - I never played much in the way of REGULAR SS13, not enough to get into mechs. Apparently the Power Loaders are pretty much SS13 mechs, codewise, but in this particular instance with the P-WAULS, I don’t know if the Power Loader and the general mecha code could or would work in the way I had imagined this to work. Maybe it does, and this entire following list of steps and rationalizations is useless and made redundant by something far easier - but if I couldn’t come up with SOME possible way to do it other than just saying “use mechs lol” then I wouldn’t have even bothered with all of this to begin with.

This is how I imagine it fundamentally:

The Power Armor Operator wakes up.

  • This could be from the Tank Operator’s little boarding south of the Tank Bay, or the Auxiliary Cryo-Storage…

    • Or who knows, maybe they can even arrive on a ship, along with some sort of “handler” character that is kind of like this sniveling, hands-on customer support military-rep - a power armor jockey, who follows them around with very paltry armor, or better yet, no armor at all, fixing their boo-boo’s and juicing them back up. NOT a combat role, more so a minor support role with roleplay elements - one of those primarily being that they are obvious red shirts and are doomed to die the second the fighting starts. Admittedly this is a spur of the moment thought, and pretty bloat-y. The pilots, nearby engineers, and deployed or shipside CE/MTs are meant to be the ones, in that order, dealing with their “injuries” and logistical needs.

The pilot or pilots make their way to the Tank Bay.

  • Printing the pieces, building the suit, and procuring the necessary power and fuel refills won’t take long, and there’s plenty to go around - pilots will have all the time they need to chat with others, discuss strategy with the other pilots and Command, or do whatever else they like.

They find…

The Power Armor Access Terminal

  • For viewing suit stats, damage, installed modules/weapons/defenses, customizing the suit, and viewing the cameras of other active suits.

The Power Armor Bay

  • For building and maintaining the suit.

The Power Armor All-In-One Lathe

  • For printing the armor pieces, modules, weapons, and anything else you’d need P-WAULS related. This can be fed necessary materials.
    • An MT can hack this similarly to the ASRS terminal to allow access to disallowed, high-risk high-reward(?) PBG module and weapon designs.

The pilot will begin building the suit, needing help to make use of the power loader, and will require some construction and higher engineering skills.

  • The pilots can of course build the suit themselves, but as you’ll understand in a moment the help of someone with Power Loader training or just an extra set of hands if not is very helpful.

And this is where it may get weird, and impossible.

  • Printed from the lathe is the Body Rig.
  • This Body Rig, armor overlay deal is like a controllable mob, a man-vehicle.
  • You click-drag yourself into it to wear it, to “climb inside” of it. You are essentially a giant cortical borer in a semi-transparent wireframe man-vehicle.
  • You then walk into while wearing it, or drag the Body Rig near to, the Power Armor Bay. You click-drag yourself wearing it, or the Body Rig itself, into the bay - to “buckle” it in, simple enough so far, right?
  • Each armor piece, I IMAGINE, would then be added on similarly to a SURGICAL OPERATION.
    • The BAY is your required OPERATING TABLE.
    • Your surgical tools are a POWER LOADER CLAW, a CROWBAR, a WELDER, and in some cases a SCREWDRIVER and a WRENCH - with the wrench and crowbar being your alternative to the Power Loader’s claw, a slower one at that. The pilots are not trained to use Power Loaders, ironically enough.

I mean, you can amputate limbs, and fix up stumps with prosthetics, right? So…

The Body Rig is a mob, a vehicle, for your own player mob to sit in, with abilities that are added on an as per basis with the corresponding upgrades and parts - like Xenomorph strains or Specialist/Smartgunner gear, but instead you climb in to it.
You perform industrial grade “surgical operations” - mechanical operations - on the Body Rig, just like it’s shown on the health dummy/targeter:
You add individual BOOTS to the left and right foot, individual GREAVES to the left and right legs, a WAIST-PLATE to the groin, a CUIRASS to the chest, individual PAULDRONS to the left and right arm, individual GAUNTLETS to the left and right hand, a HELM to the head, and a VISOR to the eyes. Essentially full-body, systemic prosthetics on an unliving mob that never had them in the first place - or at least, only had invisible placeholders.

And no, it’s not like some CRYSIS thing where the raw Body Rig can be worn and just allow some PAO PFC+++ run around in superhero mode. It’s a nearly useless piece of eye candy without the full harness, that provides almost zero protection and slows you down immensely, that is also - one, really for visual reference so you know it’s even sitting there; and two, was an obsessive must I had to include in this idea.

I feel like it’s critically important to have it all work this way, or at least somehow maintain the smallest ILLUSION of this progression from Body Rig, steadily into a full suit of armor, and ending a winning game as a decked out, upgraded war machine. If it didn’t, then it just wouldn’t have the depth mechanically, roleplay-wise, or aesthetically - neither to the look nor the tone of the Colonial Marines, cassette-punk, military-industrial thing going on.

And, with this proposed method, you can still use an “inventory” to create hard limits for modules, forcing them to take up certain slots of the body, allowing you to view them or interact with them in some way - it allows specific pieces to be targeted for attacking or repairing, it allows modules to maybe somehow work like organs and be damaged/destroyed should the corresponding body part on the armor take too much damage, etc.

Its “head”, the helmet, holds a lot of important, expensive computational components - its “body”, the cuirass, with the same kind of internal-process-maintaining computers, and the placement of storage of all the fuel and battery power - these are both just as important to the suits “life” as it is to a living marines. If adding pieces of armor with corresponding increments of armor-value stats are to in this add limbs to a living body, then to damage it enough would then “kill” it, turn it off, disable it.

What happens if your rig is “killed” then? Like a Synth, there’d be some way to “revive” it, through mechanical means though. Likely just repairing broken parts, like fractures; though you may have to totally replace shattered or completely burnt out parts, like brute and maybe uniquely here burn (fire/acid) equivalents of having to get a prosthetic for an arm or leg. A broken module would be like adding a broken organ step to surgery - to use the living being metaphor and maybe literal code as a reference again - where you’d have to expend maybe a new power control module, computer module, or maybe both, to fix it. Maybe in worst case scenarios you just have to print a new one entirely, but wouldn’t know unless you hooked it into the terminal to see the exact damage, or cracked it open to eyeball it with varying descriptions of damage based on skill level while out in the field?

To get the “dead” rig going again, you’d finally use some boot sequence ability to “defibrillate” it while inside, and that could be any amount of time really, 20-30 seconds seems fair.

Directional Armor, Armor Values, and Total/Additive Health

This is obviously something I’m also not too sure about. The Crusher has directional armor, it loses the ability to directionally lock - can it then be done with a mob with actual limbs, health values, etc? Not too sure as a layman.

But the idea generally would be that, since each individual piece is added on or removed/ripped off, and since they’re essentially prosthetics with prosthetic “organs” as modules or total replacement “limbs” perhaps as modules - and those clearly have individual values on marines - then each could also have unique, individual health and armor. Then… some sort of coding magic applies damage reductions or increases based on the cardinal/orthogonal side the part was hit on? Or maybe the part has some kind of actual set of 4 states that proc based on direction? Again, I don’t know. I just know it exists in other ways already, and would hope it’s possible here.

If each individual LIMB or PIECE of the armor couldn’t have its own health with included armor values, then something akin to a total health/armor value with directionality, essentially a Xenomorph, could work too. JUST as long as adding the pieces individually in the visual sense could somehow still be done. But I’m pretty confident in what I have surmised about the engine as a whole that it is possible. What’s the difference, right? The arms and legs especially. I know the head = helmet, chest = cuirass, groin = waist-plate, eyes = visor thing could somehow be trickier but the legs, arms, feet and hands are literally just beefier prosthetics.

Can non-simple mobs and their limbs have inherent armor values? Could their organs? If yes, then we’re in the green.

If no, then maybe some half-way point? The limbs THEMSELVES don’t matter, but their addition or subtraction to the whole of the Body Rig additively raises its health and armor? Maybe an easier alternative?

AND THAT’S IT!

If you’ve actually read all of this creative venting, the almost insane ramblings they are, that I’ve aimed at CM, and are meeting me here at the bottom - thank you. I hope it’s been an enjoyable foray into several topics of thought beyond just the one immediately at hand. And I hope you enjoy the following, tighter, flashier presentation as well.

And so now at last, I present in concept for your consideration, ideas, and idle viewing pleasure:

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