Lynx's Chaos and Storyteller additions

[Lynx22330]

About The Pull Request

Introduces Chaos via incremental gains per hour based on how many players are currently present in the server (at a rate of (max_players * 0.1), if there are 8 players, it increases by 0.8 chaos per hour. Also includes the ability to vote for decreasing, or resetting chaos (So that the server can choose to balance how they want to play today, rather than make it something forced.) If there are 50 players, (which as of currently when this PR was made, may not occur for a long time), chaos will always be set to 5 during each hourly tick, but this should not be a problem thanks to high player count keeping everyone... Relatively alive. This could just as well be dropped to 0.05 as well if that ever occurs. The Warrior storyteller has been buffed to encourage more events to occur more frequently, being very aggressive, and is the only one changed for now. This can be asked to be removed and put into another PR upon request so that this can be tested separately. Yes. I have tested this locally. Voting works as intended, same with the timer. (which should work every hour!)

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Changelog

:cl:

[Lynx22330]

Since the changelog didn't work, here is the changelog simplified.

Added chaos gain overtime. Re-introduced some more passive mobs to the mundane events when infestations occur, to help offset the new chaos multipliers. Warrior storyteller has also been altered to be more... aggressive with events, to help encourage many more enemies. Added the ability to vote to change chaos, by decreasing, or resetting it to 0.

[EmilitiaEnnehrt]

I'm requesting that if this is to be merged, run a testmerge first.

1. Touching on balancing is a sensitive subject until the developer are fully knowledgable with the codebase and the feel without the feedback of actual players. If this isn't the guaranteed case, a testmerge should be run to get player feedback.
2. I have always been a fan of allowing PvE to be opted in, or at least the one that requires participation be either easy (burrow mobs in colony) or blob/hivemind (specifically require a number of combat jobs). How would this upset the balance of colony-side PvE suddenly being harder?
3. In the point made about the server wanting to play how they want today, would a zero hourly increase and Chaos Increase vote that already exist be more suitable?
4. How would this affect the late-joiners in terms of balance against mobs using starting equipment and stats?

[JoltzW]

I will comment that there is already a vote to up the chaos level if players want it. Another important factor is how many combatants there are. Max players does not equal the number of armed and willing to fight players there are. Some come for RP, some come to do low level jobs like botanist, cook, or other roles like that. With this i fear those players would be punished for joining a round with more people which is usually the best time to do their jobs. For a combatant, a random empress spawn is fun. For a non-combatant it can be rage inducing or even demoralizing.

[Lynx22330]

Closing this for now until I rework story teller a little more.

Plans are to move infestations/burrows/migrations into Maint Tunnels only, and to introduce new events within the colony itself that can offer new PvE encounters that do not rely on Burrows.

Burrows should only occur outside of the Colony as a whole, underground in maints. I would really like to go over maints and possibly add more areas or improve its size and make it feel more like a maze when people go down there. I know that deep maints is randomly generated iirc, and to reflect that, having a wide and spanning normal maints is something of interest.

[Lynx22330]

Here. The PR is up and should be ready? I don't believe there are any conflicts. Could be wrong.

[Lynx22330]

Should be good to go. Changes are set and ready.

Test merge when able to, thanks in advance. Im so tired after looking at damage calculations... ;u;"

[Lynx22330]

Did a 7 hour server test the other night with chaos raised to MAX from the START of the round. (Chaos should only start maxing out, for low pop between 10-15, around the 3 or 4 hour mark.) (2-3 hours with 20 or more.)

the MOBS SUBSYSTEM TICKRATE WAS SET TO 1

I set the Wait variable to 1, yes.

The Warrior, at 5 levels of chaos

Found out that spiders are definitely stronger than roaches, but

The colony was untouched. Only about 10% of the colony was really taken over with active mobs (and typically only associated with like 1 spider laying webs due to their ability to vent crawl naturally)

Now. The results?

Bluespace was everywhere. Portals, Bluespace leaks, some random guns here and there, bluespace roaches have a very high survivability rate due to their ability to teleport around and due to bluespace entropy having increased. Kaisers... They died to spiders pretty often, I had spectated one the other night before passing out and letting the server go. I don't know what killed it 100%, as there were a ton of roaches with them at the beginning, but I'm imagining it was due to spider venom.

(NOTE: This was an event summoned Kaiser. I did not spot any other Kaiser's throughout the colony nor inside of maintenence.)

Spiders were obviously, very dominant. I'm considering making a new roach variant that allows them to naturally cut down webs to act as a sort of 'frontline' when roaches and spiders to begin in-fighting, and to have it so that roaches prefer to not walk into webs (and should only be dragged into them), perhaps a new spider variant that prefers to stay inside of webs, and then drags mobs deeper inside after knocking them over to act like a sort of "capper", taking a lot of homage to cap secures in CM13, these variants should spawn at the tier 3 mark where attack varaints are spawned in, yet, for roaches, their variant at T2 for the utility spawns.

Learning from all of this... The... Storyteller was actually a lot less impactful than I had thought. There were no distinct areas that were split between roaches or spiders, and the storyteller had actually tried to spawn the Blob and the Hivemind in a LOT, and I'm considering making a new set of events specific for Colony Disasters (I.E. Blob, Hivemind), that tick at their own rate as to not be used alongside major events.

I'll be sure to give more input. I put time off on this to learn how armor currently works but it's all fucked to high hell, it does need a revert.

[Lynx22330]

closing for now until I feel like its ready, it's not intended for the hardcore gamer-game skill level or whatever it is

If you can please communicate with me on discord and DM me when things like this occur that'd be wonderful so I can hear feedback and input, I don't check this 24/ 7 and I don't want this to be test merged again unannounced without notifying me