Make glimmer more HL friendly

[Sully669]

About the PR

• readded glimmer danger tier sounds
• removed main explosion from glimmer probers

Why / Balance

Glimmer being destructive as it is has the effect of rightfully scaring people to not experiment with higher glimmer levels, leading to the mechanic being largely unused. I removed the main explosion that increases the intensity with glimmer levels, leading to large spacings.
The removal of the main explosion leads to glimmer probers ONLY exploding at 1000 glimmer and their explosions not even being strong enough to destroy themselves on the first time. Unless probers are stacked, they should not cause big issues to ships beyond minor cosmetic damages. Multiple explosions will destroy the probers though.
This change leaves the glimmer to still be dangerous, but not "grief half of the playerbase" bad, unless people build their probers without security in mind.

I also readded some commented out sound files that change the sound of the probers depending on danger level

Technical details

Some C# some yml changes

How to test

spawn probers, do glimmerset 1000, watch them explode

Media

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• tweak: Changed glimmer prober behavior on dangerous glimmer amounts, making them safer

[jimmy12or]

I honestly think that the main explosions should remain. Glimmer is something that should not get too high or else can cause major issues for other people on the server that have no way of keeping it in check. I genuinely feel that the risk of someone losing their whole ship from the probers exploding is one of the only things preventing people from having a mass mind-swap or ghosts being constantly seen, or even glimmer wisps from haunting the station the entire round.

[Sully669]

Don't get me wrong. The probers still explode and are as dangerous as before below 1000 glimmer. They are just not "grief half of the player base" level of dangerous.

[jimmy12or]

All I'm saying, is with some ships having over a dozen probers, if they play irresponsibly with fire, they should be allowed to be burned.

[warcrazed11]

Renabling the sound is fine, However removing the main explosion isnt... as that is the main threat behind using probers, If you remove that then probers become an extremely effective, No risk point source which we dont want.

[fenndragon]

I goofed

[Sully669]

Renabling the sound is fine, However removing the main explosion isnt... as that is the main threat behind using probers, If you remove that then probers become an extremely effective, No risk point source which we dont want.

They still explode at 1000 glimmer and break at the second explosion, losing all the used bluespace except for 1 that drops on destruction.
The explosion is just not strong enough to rip a ship apart unless you put multiple probers next to each other.
Yes, right now there is a 'risk' for probers to explode, but has that ever happened on this server? They appear to only explode on 1000 glimmer and usually a noospheric storm wipes the glimmer out before it comes to that.
I would say that the risk just makes people buy more sinks to keep the glimmer low and the game mechanic useless for free research points.

They also still do lightning bolts and other dangerous stuff when glimmer is high. They are still dangerous, just not necessarily griefing levels of dangerous.

My main objective with this change is that people can have a little confidence in experimenting with higher glimmer levels. Keeping glimmer levels at below 100 for almost 100% of the time locks away some very interesting game mechanics because nobody wants to grief half the player base.
I think most players don't even know that revenants, getting additional psionic powers and more are locked behind the glimmer wall we have created on the server.

[Sully669]

How would you feel about replacing the large explosion with a large EMP?

[NotLivyathan]

How would you feel about replacing the large explosion with a large EMP?

Terrible idea. Warcrazed specified we want probers to be threatening, and not just free science points. Replacing the explosion with an EMP takes them from a major threat to a minor inconvenience that can be completely ignored because an EMP does fuck-all.

[Sully669]

Well as it stands right now, probers are free research points since you can just place a drain next to it and they are completely safe and the diamonds needed for crafting them have barely any other use than to make drains.

With "replacing" with an EMP i meant replacing the big explosion. The probers still shoot out lighting, damage stuff and explode on 1000 glimmer. The explosion is just not on the level of a macrobomb but rather of a potassium bomb.
The EMP would be a very large one, akin to EMP torpedos, able to shut down entire ships for a minute which can, depending on the ships/stations power supply, lead to teslooses, singulooses and reactorlooses.

How about also raising the glimmer production per prober, making them inheritly go into dangerous territories more often and requiring more than 1 drain per prober.

I could also additionally decrease the health of a prober, making it destroy itself the first time they hit 1000 glimmer, dealing quite heavy financial damage to the players using them.

[Sully669]

I get that the main idea is a risk-reward system.
Given the ability, players will optimize the fun out of a game.
This is what is happening here. Glimmer events can be fun and exciting, but the whole glimmer system is only used for free research points and the one psionic ability you can get via a perk because nobody wants to repeat the events of christmas day.

[Sully669]

Closing this since it got denied