New psionic ablility: Precognition

[ewokswagger]

About the PR

Adds a new psionic power: Precognition. Precogs can tap into the nosphere to predict the future giving mysterious omens of things to come. When used you will get a message corresponding to the next station event within 5 minutes. There may be a chance that the result will be random to simulate unreliable readings.

Why / Balance

Psionics are part of DeltaV's unique identity but can sometimes feel stale and ancillary. Psionic powers could use some more variety and give supporting systems more uses, and this ability could open the door to more roleplay and gameplay possibilities. People could play as oracles predicting the future and warning of ill tides and give fun interactions with reporters and chaplains. Telepathic chat can be a hub of rumors both current and future. A local seer may be consulted to warn the station of harm.

Technical details

TODO:

• Event scheduler changes
  • NextEvent
    • Component
      • Id
      • Time
    • System
      • Store new event
      • Return old event
      • Store new time
  • Schedulers
    • Prototypes
      • GlimmerEvent (Explicitly excluded due to lack of glimmer prediction)
      • BasicStationEvent
      • RampingStationEvent
      • MeteorSwarm
      • KesslerSyndrome
      • SpaceTrafficControlEvent
      • SpaceTrafficControlFriendlyEvent
    • NextEvent handling
      • Update
        • Gen events based on next event time
        • Integrate with NextEvent
          • Get stored event
          • Update with new time and event
        • RampingStationEventScheduler
      • Init
        • Gen event for initial NextEvent
        • RampingStationEventScheduler
  • Event Manager
    • Allow argument for gen events on a passed time
    • Method to return a generated event without running
• Precognition Ability
  • Sprite
  • Messages
    • Prototypes
    • Descriptions
  • Ability
    • Psionic Powers
    • Action
      • Basics
      • Do after
    • Functionality
      • Get next event
      • Deliver message
      • Random

Having the ability be able to predict the next event requires the next event to be pre-generated so that the precognition ability can access it. To hold this data a new component NextEventComponent will be attached to event schedulers and will contain two fields, EntProtoId NextEventId and TimeSpan NextEventTime. NextEventSystem will provide a method UpdateNextEvent which updates the id and time with the given arguments and returns the previously stored id.

NextEvent components were attached to the various event scheduler prototypes that will be using the new system. The RampingStationEventSchedulerSystem and BasicStationEventSchedulerSystem were updated to check if the scheduler has the NextEvent comp and will change its logic to utilize them. All the event schedulers are variations of the BasicStationEventScheduler and use BasicStationEventSchedulerSystem except for RampingStationEventScheduler.

I will refer to RampingStationEventSchedulerSystem and BasicStationEventSchedulerSystem similarly since they both have similar logic flow but slightly different names here and there (RampingStationEventScheduler could probably be made into a variant of BasicStationEventSchedulerSystem but it's not upstream). Started will now check if there is a NextEvent and will update NextEvent at the start since we have shifted the timeframe to be looking for the next event. In Update check for NewEvent and will then get EventManagerSystem to generate an event without running it. It will then call
UpdateNextEvent to update it with the generated event and next event time which is time till next event + current round time.

EventManagerSystem has had its generate event separated from running events so that the scheduler systems can call that to generate events without running them. TryGenerateRandomEvent will return false if it fails but outs the event otherwise. RunRandomEvent will now instead call on TryGenerateRandomEvent. Various methods in EventManagerSystem have had overloaded versions with a TimeSpan? eventRunTime so that the scheduler systems can generate for events in the future.

The precognition ability will look though all the NextEvent components and will compare the times to find the one that is the soonest in the future and will return a message based on a localization table.

Media

2024-11-19.21-13-14.mp4

Requirements

• I have read and am following the Pull Request and Changelog Guidelines.
• I have added media to this PR or it does not require an ingame showcase.

Breaking changes

I have included overloads to changed methods to allow for backwards compatibility but I have made changes to the following methods

• EventManagerSystem
  • RunRandomEvent now calls a new TryGenerateRandomEvent to generate an event to run
  • TryGenerateRandomEvent
    • logic that was used in RunRandomEvent
    • Added argument for TimeSpan? eventRunTime
    • Overloaded version with no TimeSpan? eventRunTime calls TryGenerateRandomEvent with null eventRunTime
  • TryBuildLimitedEvents
    • Added argument for TimeSpan? eventRunTime
    • Overloaded version with no TimeSpan? eventRunTime calls TryGenerateRandomEvent with null eventRunTime
  • AvailableEvents
    • Added argument for TimeSpan? eventRunTime
    • Overloaded version with no TimeSpan? eventRunTime calls TryGenerateRandomEvent with null eventRunTime
• BasicStationEventSchedulerSystem
  • ResetTimer(eventScheduler) happens before getting new event in path where entity has nextEventComponent
• RampingStationEventSchedulerSystem
  • PickNextEventTime(uid, component) happens before getting new event in path where entity has nextEventComponent
    Changelog

🆑 SolStar, chamomileteatime

• add: New psionic ability: Precognition - See into the future to get a hint about the next random event.

[LadyDanger2743]

This is fascinating. I'm personally a huge fan of more psionic options.

[ewokswagger]

I think you mixed up the urist swarm and immovable rod

You're right should be good now

[ewokswagger]

@LadyDanger2743 Would you like to look over the design/balance for the ability? I'll list the stats I can think of here.
Cooldown: 4 minutes
Do After: 8.35 seconds (same length of sound fx)
Random chance: 20%
Random message: equal chance for any event message
Window of time for considered events: 30-600 seconds

[Bonktrauma]

Any update on this?

[ewokswagger]

Review hell but I plan on trying to move some of these changes upstream so I can implement this a bit more cleanly

[ewokswagger]

No clue what is causing that error

[ewokswagger]

Oh i see its another file

[ewokswagger]

@deltanedas can you also remove the Changes: Documentation tag? It was added accedently

[Lyndomen]

taking in for direction review!

[ewokswagger]

The levers that are easy to change are the cooldown, do after, effects, random chance, the weights for random messages including which one have random messages, event messages, excluding a category of events from being detected ie. random shuttles, excluding specific events mostly works but since it only has a limited memory it won't look far past that excluded event if that makes any sence.

[Lyndomen]

Hi! Direction has wrapped up, I've tested this, and we've combed through all the info here. I am DELIGHTED to approve this. In my opinion, the atmosphere and mechanics of this ability far surpass all other psionic powers we have. Thank you to all the contributors who worked on this.

[deltanedas]

ill clean up nitpicks later