Excelsior: Stage I

[AltHit]

Made by: Galaxy Cat & Deal <3

This is a port of discordia-space#8645 but a bit more polished

About The Pull Request

General description:

Update fixes bugs, introduces new features, fixes the excelsior abusable economy, and lays a foundation for a second excelsior update we planned for the future.

This update moves excelsior teleporter's power generation to excelsior Nodes (max energy is still on teleporter amount FOR NOW...)

Teleporter prices carefully remade using Excel spreadsheets (ha) for proper material:power ratio. (e.g. shoving any excelsior kit into autolathe was simply better than buying materials)

Added KOMPAK - a navigation tool when node net becomes too big to react to threats (will be used in the future, but is useful now too)

So what did we add?

Centor

centor.mp4

Excelsior AI core, responsible for power generation, turret control and equipment giving.

• [!] No power consumption
• Controls turrets through Nodes instead of teleporter
• Makes Nodes work (telepower generation and sentry activation)
• Repairable with welding tools (slow even with bst)
• Clicking on it makes it go away to give you equipment:
  • (once) Good old stash (remade what goes into it)
  • KOMPAK to every new Excelsior member (but don't you dare lose it!)
  • Node Package, every 3 minutes

Nodes

node.mp4

• [ ! ] No power consumption
• Collects telepower in a radius from turfs, as long as said turfs have tiles or low walls (so we don't have rewards for owning space). Cannot produce power from the same turf.
• Reports people not in handcuffs or those who crawling.
• Repairable with welding tools (slow even with bst)

KOMPAK

Has two modes: Influence and Pathfinder.

INFLUENCE MODE:

Allows to see what turfs Nodes use for power and what general working radius it has for reporting intruders and activating turrets.

PATHFINDER:

• Build Path forms holographic paths between nodes for navigation (and power as a reward for lack of bigger use than navigation)
• Find Path projects a path for you from your closest node to your chosen destination using holographic arrows, formed from all beforehand built "roads".

Intended use for pathfinder is Excelsior drone control, combat or civil, but we don't have sprites for them, so for now every path grants 0.25 power.

Oh and other stuff I guess...

fixed dist3D() typo breaking everything (it affected burrow migration and sentries)
added a commented playsound() test tool (we used it to make sure sounds don't kill antag relying on stealth)
added a commented excelsior node spawner (it spawns and deletes nodes... how evil)
changed minimal amount of excelsiors to spawn to 2 from 3 so they'd appear more often

Why It's Good For The Game

• No more infinite material generator
• Economy fixed without any PhDs
• Some bugs fixed
• Some debug tools introduced in a commented state.
• Territorial expansion gameplay introduced with consistent economy gains.
• In a perfect world (not ours) people wont get lost on Excelsiors base using Pathfinder!
• Excelsiors get home alert system

Testing

Numerous playtests commenced on local servers with around 4 participants in them

Changelog

🆑 Cat&Deal
fix: Dist3D proc Z calculations work correctly(e.g. excel turret or roach burrowing)
code: excelsior teleporter no longer: produces energy, controls turrets
add: added Centor - Excelsior AI core. Powers up chains, consisting of Nodes.
add: added Excelsior Node - Centor's order transmitter. Produces energy, reports intruders, controls turrets.
add: added KOMPAK - an Excelsior PDA. Capable of creating holographic lines and pathfinding
balance: very carefully changed Excelsior's order list prices (inside the teleporter)
tweak: Changed Excelsior's intro text.
code: added new css file to nano ui to be used with new Excelsior GUI
code: new komulink() function in nano helpers js file to create excelsior styled links
add: added new faction proc to communicate faction messages from inanimate objects (e.g. node reporting intruder to excelsior chat)
refactor: changed Excelsior file structure
balance: lowered minimal amount of excelsior roleset to 2 from 3
/:cl: