Zone creation help~
#
zone zone-help zone-contents~
^w^vZone Creation Help Contents^V
^pHelp Keyword Description
^G------------ ------------------------------------------------------------
^czone-builder ^CBackground information on the "Builder" race and the Anomaly
^czone-map ^CClose-up map of Anomay settlement & area.
^czone-skills ^CQuick blurb on skills, resistances, & combat
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zone-builder~
^w^vZone Creation -- Builder^V
^aThe Builder race lived about 860,000 Earth years ago. The Builder empire, or at
least the empire responsible for the Anomaly, lasted for approximately 60,000
years.
The Builders, unlike the human race, ventured into outer space late in their
social, cultural, and economic development. Their adaption to the isolation of
outer space was an easy one for them; by the time they began colonization of
other worlds, they had developed telepathic abilities and formed into a single
communal mind. The distances of time and space were of little consequence over
a few thousand kilometers of empty space.
Soon after their expansion to a few neighbouring planets, the Builders met a
sort of intellectual "critical mass". Their understanding of the universe
increased 10-fold in a relatively short amount of time. Shortly after, their
economic, social, and cultural structure was completely re-organized.
They left their settlements on their home world and their other colonized
worlds. They moved into artifically created and maintained superstructures.
Just as human technology has focused on extending their physical abilities
(cranes, submarines, space ships), the Builder technology invested in the
superstructures focused on extending the spiritual and intellectual abilities
of the occupants.
Of course, physical machinery was used to facilitate the unaided operation of
the superstructure, but this was seen by the Builders as little more than the
vessle within which they could build their spiritual constructs. However, as
the physical construct of the superstructure was a vital and integral part of
their new world, it was built with life as its central theme - not like the
great lifeless behemoths that humans usually create.
To be blunt, the superstructures were used to expand and amplify the spiritual
abilites of the Builders. Furthermore, the superstructures were themselves, by
the very nature of their design, 'alive'.
The Builders, created many superstructures to house their great population.
This time, however, their superstructures were scattered throughout time and
space, in contrasting dimentions, and in alternate realities. The
superstructures were linked by controlled singularities located close to the
superstructures. Through these singularities, travel and communication could
be accomplished. In our dimention, the singularity manifests itself as a black
hole.
The Builder civilization thrived for nearly 40,000 years, ever expanding and
growing in both number and knowedge. It eventually came to pass, however,
whereby they overextended themselves and their world began to collapse. They
tried to correct for their action, but momentum was working against them.
Slowly, bit by bit, their interconnecting links began to fail. Eventually,
all of their superstructures were isolated from one another and, for the first
time in 50,000 years the intellectual and spiritual "whole" was divided. They
struggled to suspend disaster, to save what they could of their civilization
and try to wait out their problems. Unfortunately for them, their problems
outlasted their ability to survive as a cohesive group.
Within a few short years, their world had collapsed into chaos and death.
The year is now 2799AD by Earth chronology. The Anomaly discovered and
investigated by GalCiv is one of the original Builder superstructures. It
used to be a squat ovoid, like a ball of dough pushed flat. After 800,000
years of being pummled by meteorites and comets, it is a thrashed up wreack.
The general shape remains, but little of the original surface remains.
The Builder race has not died out; descendants of the Builder empire remain
spread throughout the Anomaly, forming small, isolated communities. They have
retained little of their former power physically, intellectually, or
spiritually.
What has latsted is the Anomaly itself; it continues to this day to operate
as a spiritual and intellectual amplifier and aid. Furthermore, the
singularity has recovered and is once again operating as a link to other
superstructures. Most of the other singularities have also recovered.
Having said that, I think it's worth a note that, since the anomaly itself
is in a sense alive, it too has evolved over 800,000 years - not necessarily
for the better.
CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS - what's important to the zone creator.
The anomaly exploration takes place initially at the surface. The main Anomaly
power network (ie: heat, electricity, spirit) runs from a single generation
unit located at the centre of the anomaly; it's basically a huge cavern with a
ball of controlled who-knows-what in the middle which emits every known form
of power - heat, light, radiation, spirit - and a few we don't know. The
cavern surrounding this captures this energy and converts it, directs it, and
services the entire anomaly's needs with it. Everything from lights and robots
to plants and humans feed off this energy, whether they know it or not.
Players gain spiritual skills through interaction with native anomaly
components (ie couches). These seemingly non-descript devices are linked
directly into the anomaly power system. The point of quests or zones will
often be to reach, activate, and lay down (use) these couches. Builder
descendants, GalCiv people, and other races who have evolved in the Anomaly
will all be able to train in various skills.
Builder technology will also be an asset - to be used or sold to GalCiv
governemts for research purposes. In fact, one of the few universal GalCiv
laws is that any Builder technology MUST be turned in to the government
(whichever government the player belongs to) for money. If a player wants
to hold on to something, it'll cost them (bribe money) when they wish to
rent a statis chamber.
The Builder weapon-of-choice is the plasma weapon - a superheated stream
of particles shot at near-light speed. Damage is by both heat and concussion.
No GalCiv technology can figure it out or use it, nor can any GalCiv people
teach players how to use plasma weapons (as a general rule). Since the
original Builders didn't need or use weapons, plasma weapons are actually
Builder tools used for digging, shaping, cutting, and that sort of thing.
The Anomaly itself was made sort of like head-cheese; they took a bunch of
asteroids and other assorted chunks of "stuff" and glued them all together.
Therefore, although most of the Anomaly is organized according to some "plan",
there are parts which are just big hunks of rock (which can be bored into),
or huge empty pockets. The Anomaly settlement is one such pocket which was
"ignored" by the Builders - in this case a huge cavern squeezed inbetween two
Terarriums and a space dock (one of the few places where the original surface
remains intact).
For those who care, gravity is provided in a single direction towards the
"bottom" of the anomaly. The anomaly is not big enough to generate sufficient
gravity conditions, so the central power unit provides a uniform gravity
field in a single direction. Note that, to the amazement of GalCiv, the
gravity field doesn't extend past the surface of the anomaly. Heck, GalCiv
is still doesn't know anything about gravity except to say, "yup, it's there".
The anomaly is slowly rotating about its axis; Anomaly Station maintains
a geosynchronous orbit to the "east" of the Anomaly Settlement.
Here's a side view picture:
__________
_____/ \_____
____/ \____
___/ up \___
/ \
| west east | + <-Anomaly Station
\___ ___/
\____ down ____/
\_____ _____/
\__________/
singular
(black hole)
|
|
V
North would be into the page, south would be sticking out at the viewer.
In cartesian coordinates, east-west is the X-axis, north-south is the Y-axis,
and up-down is the Z-axis. The anomaly spins about the up-down, or Z-axis.
The anomaly is positioned with the singularity directly beneath, the
anomaly; the singularlity lies on the Z-axis.
If you have any questions concerning some part of Builder past/present
which you want more info on, ask Corbin and he'll make something up for ya.
~
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zone-map~
^w^vZone Creation -- MAP^V
^a
Anomaly | Space
|
Ore | (Anomaly Station spins
Ship | to generate gravity)
To | |
Terrarium Dock | __ __
Alpha | | / \ _ / \
| | \ | H1 | | | | H2 |
| |----- 1 | | |__| |__| |
| | / | Anomaly Station |
| | \ | __ __ |
<-------AnomalySpaceDock-|----- 2 | | | | | | |
(Anomaly Settlement) | / \__/ / \ \__/
| \ \ \___/
| ---- 3 | Docking
| / ring
| | N
To | W + E
Terrarium | S
Beta |
~
#
zone-skills~
^w^vZone Creation -- SKILLS^V
^a
Combat in Crimson2 is all based on a "open-ended" 100 sided
dice (or percentages). The open ended thing is tough to explain
but it basically means that every once in awhile you
can roll really bad (ie -50) or really good (+150) even though for the
most part you get a number between 1 and 100. Fanatic noticed this at
work when one of his beetles got in a fluke 2 attacks per round once.
For that matter (although its extremely unlikely) a beetle could roll
+2000 on its #of attacks roll and end up with 20 attacks in one
particularly lucky round, but again, that is REALLY unlikely. So what
does this mean to armor, weapons skills, resists etc.
For simplicity of example we're just gonna pretend the open-ended thing
doesnt happen (its not that common anyway, just keep the fact that every
once in awhile you can fluke out in the back of your mind)
First a sample combat round:
You have laser-weapon-accuracy 10
You have laser-pistol 20
You have laser-weapon-speed 30
You have laser-weapon-damage 40
You have speed 5
They have Resist-Laser 25
They have armor 35
They have Dex 50
First we determine how many attacks per round we get. We'll assume that
the rate of fire of our laser is 1. So thats are base rate of fire. Now
we get to see how many extra attacks we can make due to our speed etc.
So we roll our base, a number between 1 and 100 and get 12, pretty
lousy.
add in our bonuses:
+5 from speed = 17
+10 (laser-pistol/3) = 27
in a nifty table:
number xtra attacks
0-50 0
51-150 1
151-250 2
251-350 3
etc
Rats, we dont get any bonus attacks
Okay now we roll to hit for each attack we get, a number between 1 and
100... hmm we get 63 not great, not bad.
Okay then we get to add our bonuses:
We're using a laser so:
our roll is 63 + 10 (laseracc) + 20 (laserpistol) = 93
minus their armor 93 - 35 = 58
minus their dex/5 58 - 10 = 48
since 48 isnt >= 51 (the base chance to hit) we missed. jeez we
suck.....
Lets pretend we did hit though and our weapon does 1d6 damage.
Okay we do a lousy 4 points of damage
We dont get a strength bonus since we are using a laser pistol (we would
if we were using a club say - equal to strength/20)
We do +4 pts from laser-weapon-damage/10 = 8
we do +1 pts from laser-pistol/20 = 9
but wait the lucky SOB's have resist-laser 25 so we have to deduct
(resist/10) or -2 = 7
had we hit we would have done 7 pts damage.
The upshot of all this is that resistances are PRETTY DAMN COOL, if they
had had a resist of 90 or more, they would have taken a measly 1 pt of
damage (the minimum you can suffer when you are hit) Armor should only
give you bonus resistances in maybe 3 categories at max, anything more
is just being too nice. Also when assigning resistances to things keep
in mind what the item is:
* If it isnt metal (ie a lead shield) or electronic (some kind of
jammer/shield) how can it protect you from EMR weapons (ie
Electromagnetic Radiation e.g. radio, microwave etc).
* Anything metal (unless reflective) should not be ResistLaser since
lasers cut up metals really well (and conversely lasers arent all that
good against organic things becuz water (and me and you are 98% water)
can absorb so much heat
* etc and so forth
Area Writing Notes:
The default speed, pursue, flee etc skills for mobs is equal to 2
(speed) or 3 (mostly everything else) times level depending on the skill
in question. Default resistance is currently 0, but it will probably be
equal to level/2 or something eventually, I just havent decided what
would be reasonable yet.
You can explicitly override the mobs defaults by assigning specific
properties to the mob, generally starting with %:
ie
give the mob a property of "%Speed" that is equal to "200" and bingo you
have a mob that has a lot of bonus attacks (leave out the " marks....
and its case insensitive so %SPEED, %speed, and %SpEeD all work)
a quick list of this properties off the top of my head are:
%speed
%flee
%pursue
%RAcid
%RLaser
%REMR
%RHead
%RAcid
%RConcussive
etc all the resists...
misc. stuff
%security (give this to objects or rooms so they are harder to picklock
etc)
thats about it for this email, l8r all
Cryogen
~
$
