Exactly what it says on the tin. What would add flavor or be a cool way to introduce an idea?
Personally, I’m in love with the Hub 01, especially after I found out that certain loot items found in Lab finales can be brought back and used to make cool stuff by them. Similar to the reward template found in Light Retrieval mission. I’d really love to see:
More rewards related to lab loot. Perhaps something could be done to improve the Migo plates and Second Skin? Integration into the Modular system seems obvious, but I could also see the Second Skin finding use in the Hub 01 hazmat suit.
A mission to study/destroy the massive creature discovered underneath the Light Retrieval tower.
A way to rebuild/modify salvaged power armor using the nanofabricator and their technical knowhow.
Expansion and availability of energy weapons. Even just selling the ammo more frequently would be amazing.
Perhaps less important radial missions to restock on lab chemicals. A way to turn some of the more esoteric and nearly useless chemicals into currency, essentially.
Now with the apparent addition of the Portal Storm dungeons- A mission incorporating these!
Some sort of interest in artifacts. This coupled with a solid lore explanation of what they may be.
An interest in lore items from other places. Things like certain correspondence or pieces of info from Trans-coastal logistics as well as the extra-planar substrate.
More Yrax and Migo missions. I’d love more lore and weird/awful goodies from these
This is obviously loose spitballing, but I’d happily expand on any of these if someone is interested. Please drop some of your own ideas for any of the factions currently in the game. I think they could all use some expanding!
I would like to see missions that you can get from non-human entities. Think something like if you are part of the mycus than the hivemind gives you targets to eliminate or certain spots that it want you to colonize. Maybe you could do mercenary work for the triffids or maybe they want you to get rare artifects for their collection.
A really fun one would be to do missions for and protentially trade with some sort of nether entity that only appears during portal storms. Really would allow for some occult vibes.
Yeah! I actually think some of this is already planned. Each triffid heart is itself a nation, so mileage may vary at attempts to trade or work with them, but I’ve seen it discussed.
Migo seem like they probably would be unwilling to trade or work with the survivor, but I could see a small group willing to offer stuff for human test subjects (i.e. NPCs in the survivors employ that get assigned to it as a job and permanently disappear) or maybe freedom of a captured migo? I’m not sure if there’s any real lore regarding the Migo, beyond what’s implied by their body and item descriptions, so they may be willing to trade their tech or modify the player’s body… or not. I don’t know what’s planned with that.
As far as nether creatures making trades I have no idea what an intelligent nether presence would even look or act like.
As silly as it sounds I think the Yrax may be the most willing to trade. They want to study the Blob and nether and if the survivor is willing to delve into all that awfulness then that’s less risk for one of their probes. I’d imagine they wouldn’t have much they’d be able to offer other than what’s on the probes though, so it might offer information or recipes or perhaps an amputated part of the probe that could be rigged into some sort of weapon.
All of this could probably be faction competitive elements. My guess is the Yrax and Migo would be pissed if they found out you were trading their tech to Hub 01 to be studied. I would imagine each triffid heart would have different opinions about how you interact with other factions. I would bet nether presences could not give a fuck what you do with their goodies- as more nether in our world can only benefit them by weakening the barrier a bit.
Something I would like to see are some more refugee center missions. They got a lot of unused fenced-off land around them, so I could imagine missions like:
Help transform some of it into farmland (get some seeds, an axe to cut down trees, a machete or something similar to cut grass and vegetation)
Make an orchard, you need to procure some triffid stuff which lets things grow rapidly and any fruit which can grow into a tree, e.g an apple
More fortifications, e.g transforming the outer fence into a palisade (requires a great deal of logs, might not be realistic)
The first two would ensure some more independence and they can always trade what they do not need. Since they thrive on trading, I could imagine that fortifications include a trading “outpost” near the outer fence so most traders (the survivor excluded) can not really cross the perimeter and thus the risk of robberies and similar is lower. Also would ensure that traders who are infected in any way can not carry diseases into the facility by physically being there (the goods still can but this is another story).
Some food production (although Tacoma is intended for that)
Some industry production (for trade as well as to improve their own facilities)
Triffid magic to plant orchards that won’t take a decade or two to yield fruit would definitely be of interest to me as a player…
However, that would probably require some faction (or character) with some science background to send you off on missions to acquire samples and perform tests for them.
This might also allow for a quest line that ultimately fails (possibly fatally, for one or more NPCs) to get anything useful out of the mycus.
A quest line for some science oriented faction (Hub01?) to investigate the mycus, Mi-go, triffid, and slime (and possibly nether). Again, acquiring samples might be involved, including whole bodies, possibly complemented with immediate autopsy (i.e. required to be performed too quickly to be performed on corpses delivered) carrying a McGuffin.
It might even be that faction interaction could be needed to get Hub01 to perform science on triffids and the Refugee Center to use it practically (since traders from the Refugee Center show up at Hub01 that should at least be possible).
Quests for Rubik. Those would probably mostly be “fetch this from here or elsewhere” type of quests, since they seem to be gaining resources (with external lore indicating they’re performing research elsewhere). One low hanging mission type might be to get rid of zomborgs at designated locations, which would also allow for Rubik to provide the player with some info about these sites, the Quad/Zomborg presence, and their relation to the Exodii (there’s nothing currently, apart from similar looking things present in Rubik’s facility).
Info from Rubik about the other non terrestial factions. It seems they’ve familiar with them from other worlds, so he may be able to provide the player with some lore about them, possibly with some hints on how to deal with them as well. It would be cool if that could be combined with quests, such as e.g. clearing up the area around a drop pod that happened to end up in triffid/mycus/slime territory, or even reclaim something taken by the Mi-go from such a site. A “fetch this from here or elsewhere” quest might also have a target infested by one of the otherworldly factions. In fact, the Exodii would probably be familiar with giant insects as well, and so have some insight into how to deal with those (which probably wouldn’t be anything revolutionary, but hints about insecticides might still be useful).
Considering all of this I’m sure a Migo representative could be a thing for the survivor, then. It would be awesome to receive grotesque organic technology from them as well as probably body modifications, either in the form of mutation or CBM-like mods.
It occurs to me they probably would wildly dislike the exodii as the CBMs from them are doubtlessly related to the migo. I could see
Them viewing the exodii as inter-dimensional fugitives who’ve stolen their secrets and religious artifacts. It would be great to have competing interests between these two factions and probably make some sense. I could see rubik describing worlds where migo have much more of an active presence- which I would imagine is nightmarish.
I was thinking about how the migo faction would “look” so to speak. Perhaps the way they end up actually communicating with you is through implantation of an organic translator/receiver. Think a black wormlike tendril that can tap into the migo network to understand them. It worms it’s way into your ear and replaces the audio-vestibulocochlear nerve. You can communicate with migo who are interested- only a few likely- but it feels like an awful buzzing that gives you a roiling headache each time. The best part is this would lock you out of the exodii path and vice versa. If either finds the other faction’s handiwork (like the cybernetic neural network) then they will refuse to work with you.
It might be interesting if Migo could give you a way to incapacitate living creatures. I imagine they aren’t too interested in collecting reanimated or mutated biodiversity, so they may have you capturing everything from chickens to moose to tigers. I’m not really sure what their missions would entail beyond that though. They sound surprisingly laid back beyond a hate for CBMs.