Vehicle Teleporters - every scavengers wet dream, but hard and fun

[Pakislav]

Inspired by Knossos’s idea.

What they solve - Hoarders anxiety and frustration in regards to moving far away from their base with their vehicle.

What they add - An exciting end-game feature that plays well with both the lore, gameplay and existing content.

How they work - Players can construct two connected teleporters that allow the player to move between two locations with everything they are carrying on them.

What are the downsides:

• Rarity. The player needs to find TWO teleporters, which are rare and in hard-to-get places.
• Difficulty. The teleporters are hard to install, require VERY high skill and rare components.
• Danger. On failed installation they may create a black hole killing the player and destroying literally everything within 10 tiles. Same if they get damaged.
• Danger 2. Teleporters are unstable. The player can never be sure where they will end up… and with what mutations/all their limbs/radiation.
• Cost. It takes 5 or 10 fully charged storage batteries to power one jump. This forces a wait period before jumps and stops teleporting from being an easy escape route since batteries don’t recharge outside of reality bubble.

[Solusphere]

Blazemod (AKA the Vehicle Additions Pack ingame) already has a vehicle part similar to this, called the Stabilized Portal. While I’ve never made one, I think it basically acts as an infinite or near-infinite storage tile.

[ppanda0421]

@Pakislav.You’re kidding me right? Who would want to play with this when there is a chance they can DIE just by installing it? Also, danger #2 contradicts the main feature. Main feature is player can construct two connected teleporters and travel between those two locations. But then ‘the player can never be sure where they will end up’ If I go through teleport #1, shouldn’t I end up with #2 if they are connected?

Sorry but you need to rethink this mod and what you are trying to accomplish.

[Pakislav]

Sorry but you need to rethink this mod and what you are trying to accomplish.

Nah, you just don’t know what !!FUN!! means.

[tarburst98]

no, he’s right. here is what would happen “build thing to do something” “it fails to do that something” “thing is never made again”

[harison86]

I can see two-way teleporters being used by endgame players to connect their base to distant resources, or allowing players to set up the portal in the field, teleport to base to stock up using static things like farms and breweries, then portaling back and picking up the portal and moving again.

A couple problems though…

• As has already been said, absurd RNG risks that can’t be mitigated. Teleporting to a random location (e.g. into a wall or a damn minefield) instead of your destination, or instant death AND destruction of your nearby vehicle/base? Hell no! That is not !!FUN!!. !!FUN!! is when the player makes a mistake and they get to watch everything spiral hilariously out of control. Using a feature for its intended purpose and then losing everything instantly is not !!FUN!!.

• The energy cost. I’m no quantum physicist, but I feel like you are severely underestimating how much energy it would take to teleport something as massive as a survivor’s multiton deathmobile. The teleporter would probably need to be charged with plutonium cells at the least, and would be unsustainable for the player beyond a few teleports.

[Pakislav]

multiton deathmobile

The what now? Have it somehow glanced off of your cerebrum that what’s being discussed is only the teleportation of the player character between their base and vehicle?

And yes. Teleporting into the middle of a minefield, or to the bottom of a lab is very, very, very fun. Well, not a minefield because that’s like… nothing. The hell is supposed to happen? You harvest 20 mines? They rarely explode when you even step on them. >.>

The explosion that would take a couple of tiles off of your vehicle or base is just that - an idea. You people are way too invested into this bs.

[harison86]

Ah. Yes evidently it did. I misinterpreted “vehicle teleportation”. That is entirely on me. My apologies.

Even if minefields act as you say they do (they don’t from my experience, pretty consistent in annihilating most things that step on them, but I’ve never tried to walk through a minefield), there’s still plenty of other dangers the player could be RNG’d into - hordes, locked rooms, magma/lava… However unlikely, any random chance of an instant loss renders it unusable as far as I’m concerned.

And the black hole/explosion - it’s a bad idea. Which I am telling you. We call this “feedback”.

Why not just base the teleporter on teleportation tech that already exists in-game? Specifically the Teleportation Unit CBM. Only give the player teleportation sickness as a consistent consequence, and teleport to a random space within the targeted map tile if they somehow randomly misalign.

[Pakislav]

However unlikely, any random chance of an instant loss renders it unusable as far as I’m concerned.

Then don’t use it.

teleport to a random space within the targeted map tile if they somehow randomly misalign.

So is RNG death ok or not? Teleporting inside a wall hurts.

I’ll keep the idea as is, just make the risk of fatal… mistakes non-existent when the portal is not damaged. If it’s damaged and you charge it, it might explode, possibly after teleporting you. If it’s damaged and you use it, you won’t be sure where you’ll end-up. Maybe 5 meters away instead of 5000. Maybe in front of that Hulk you wanted to run away from. Maybe at a bottom of a nearby lab whose portals interfered with the frequency of yours.

[psyxypher]

Such a mod would not be lore friendly. According to the Lab Notes, XEDRA research was unable to get anyone past the 30 meter mark (and for some ungodly reason directing the location of the teleportation is also beyond them).

No one will use this thing if there’s a random chance of unavoidable death just from installing it. Think in the idea of “Opportunity Costs” and “Risks vs Reward”. It’s much safer to just drive across a vast distance instead of risk blowing yourself to bits to get from point A to point B quickly. As others have stated, the best deaths are when you are the cause of your own undoing, not the RNG. Its not fun to have some BS death that you couldn’t have prevented.

[NuG]

I also wouldn’t use it with the chance of it killing me. Though, if the only way it could happen is if the portal is damaged beforehand, that could maybe work. Just have to make sure to never use it unless it is repaired and in top condition.
Also, people might just abuse re-logging if it kills them , so making it have a condition for no death would be nice.

[kevin.granade]

This is very much the kind of tech that’s findable but not craftable according to lore. If you’re talking about a mod, feel free to make it craftable anyway, but if you’re talking about mainline inclusion, there would be some serious limitations…

• Findable installations. Lore says this kind of thing was under development, but it’s not craftable by the player.
• Broken by default. More as a game balance and challenge issue, there would be a series of mini-quests to get the thing operational.
• Un-movable, long-range teleportation would presumably have rather high power and equipment requirements, as well as require special tuning to reach other teleporters. Moving it away from its lab would not be possible.
• Resource intensive. It would pretty much eat plutonium cells like candy, possibly based on the weight the player is carrying.

[ppanda0421]

Nah, you just don’t know what !!FUN!! means.

Yes I do. I’ve played many games in my life including Dwarf Fortress. This is also a permadeath game. You are telling me that !!FUN!! is a chance of dying and losing ALL PROGRESS and THE GAME just because I craft/install something? Umm no, mister. !!FUN!! in your mod is death. You need to rethink your design. I am a software engineer and I know a bad design when I see one.

Your mod has the potential to be a good one for end game, but instant death for the player should not be part of it.

[Murphy]

One should first think of less convoluted ways of implementing fast-travel.
Perhaps building a helicopter.

[Pakislav]

Is that sarcastic? Because adding helicopters to the game would be the most convoluted thing possible. There’s no Z-levels.

[kevin.granade]

You wouldn’t actually fly the helicopter to the destination, it would be a piece of terrain you’d enter at one location and then exit at another location after some time has passed.
From a game point if view it’s teleportation, but from a narrative point of view it’s a helicopter.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Random chance to die/explode/make everything FIRE for using or even installing a device is absurd. Now, if you try to go through a teleporter which is damaged, that’s on you, but just using one that’s in working order or putting it on a vehicle? No.

Nobody would use it.