Robofac reloaded

[John-Candlebury]

Summary

SUMMARY: Content "Adds the Robofac"

Purpose of change

This is the initial work on adding the robofac, as mentioned on #27479

What this PR adds is still a bit bare bones, contains only a single trader, a single mission and a basic, small location (of which the underground is still not done completely) however I think its enough to start with.

Describe the solution

So lets talk about the lore this PR tentatively adds to the Game:

The in-game name for robofac is "Hub 01", after the lab its headquartered on. Hub 01 was the easternmost regional hub of the pre-cataclysm Melchior system. Since it was mostly dedicated to Robotics/Computer-Science and executive work, instead of the more dangerous blob or dimensional research of other labs. Hub 01 survived through the cataclysm event without completely collapsing, but this also means that Hub doesnt actually have (at least initial) access to mutagen, teleportation, cloning and other neat stuff other labs have, the player will have to get access to these by claiming other labs in name of the Hub.

Since the Hub has sufficient resources for short-midterm survival, the remaining staff is very isolationist and distrustful to outsiders. Their interactions are mostly limited to trading lab trash and surplus weapons with survivors that make a very very good argument, or hiring people to do dirty surface based work their own robots cant do. Members of the hub also show their surface paranoia in the few cases when they leave the lab. Their standard surface outfit is a unnecessary hazmat uniform.

This attitude is reflected in the first mission. They interact with you only through a door intercom (after forbidding you access to their lab) and hire you to find what happened to a prototype robot they were modifying to scavenge and fight surface threats. The great reward for surviving this jabberwock tier foe is trade access, and a debt in your favor of 5 dollars. Initially, the Hub is only interested in using people from the surface and their first handful of missions will reflect this, with the player being kept outside of the lab, and being given meager rewards for their dangerous work.

Initially, its not obvious that a mayor player within the Hub is actually the AI Melchior IV. Initially Melchior might even be malfunctioning and bringing it online will require the player to clear a dangerous part of the lab, that is dimensionally unstable (AKA full of Nether foes) due to Melchior's multidimensional OS.

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Redone without the commit mess

[I-am-Erk]

I'd love to see some screenshots of your locations. The content looks great. You will make @curstwist's life much more pleasant if you put a roof on the surface structure to begin with though.

[faefux]

@John-Candlebury Hey, if you want any help with this i'd be happy to help with this. I have no idea how to message people privately on github though, sorry.

[John-Candlebury]

Heres the map:

Surface Access

This is were the player takes the first series of missions. Has a perimeter wall and a sofa to sleep in. Might later become a small robotic farm or become infested with fungaloids.

Main Chambers

Still inaccessible during normal play so empty and prone to changing. This will be the main room where the player, once made a proper Hub member, interacts with quest givers and can live an idyllic and sheltered life. Missing a subway connection. Roughly from top left:

Crafting rooms, Cafeteria/Kitchen, Elevator, Reception, Central room, Directors office, Dormitory, Library, Directors Quarters.

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@faefux I could do with some help doing the exterior missions, ideally with some cool unique interactions, if you want to help me with those it that be awesome!

But you can also help with other stuff if you want, the only things I have partly done are the Hub Director and Security Head NPCs and the rest of the Hub mapgen. So if you want to do NPCs you could do the head of robotics or lab hydroponics or similar.

I'm Candlebury in the discord, and John_Candlebury in discourse, if you want we can discuss over there.

[faefux]

@John-Candlebury Would be happy too!! Do you use IRC? It doesn't seem that github has a messaging feature (that or i'm an idiot.) and not really sure how else we can collaborate.

Incidentily, I'm writing some missions for a hacker NPC i am building and have been thinking there could be at least one crossover mission here. :)

Discord link doesn't work for me and last time i tried to join it the mods were very very rude and accused me of being a troll because discord struggles to run on my machine and i couldn't do whatever they expected me too, i couldn't even get into the main rooms, so 'd prefer somewhere else than discord, if that's okay.

If we used the IRC we could just set up our own room, or use /msg there. I try to leave my irc client on as much as possible.

[John-Candlebury]

@faefux Sorry, I dont use IRC.

That said I saw you post a topic for npcs in the Discourse forums, you can PM through there if you want, I'm John_Candlebury over there.

[kevingranade]

This pull request has been mentioned on Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/robot-npcs-for-bases/20117/5

[faefux]

@faefux Sorry, I dont use IRC.

That said I saw you post a topic for npcs in the Discourse forums, you can PM through there if you want, I'm John_Candlebury over there.

The machine i'd dev on is pretty dead at the moment so i'm currently just writing a lot of notes and very rough psuedo-json from memory, that said i'll try to message you over there with something solid and usable within the next week or so.