Spiral Knights: Mew Missions: Radar Pings
These would function exactly like alerts in a game called "warframe." For players who play warframe, skip the General Description of this post, cause you get what I'm talkin bout. For readers who do not play warframe, read that section.
=== Mission Lore ===
We have crashed. Have YOU guys seen any bits of the Skylark? I have not. Certainly not, other than the piece in the lab. And escape pods if you count those. But there's a reason for that! (besides the obvious one, sk is developing as a game still. lel).
A new mission type: Radar Pings.
The Skylark is made of very specific materials, which we believe are not found naturally on Cradle (WE COULD BE VERY HORRIBLY WRONG ABOUT THIS). We've recently developed a scanner radar (of limited range) that can penetrate the confusing energies (mineral, mist, etc.) of Cradle to find radiation signatures from these materials. These signatures register as pings, and could very well indicate the location of a chunk of the skylark. Before now, static was what we got, and our field cameras ended up in the bellies of kleptolisks. But not today. And not tomorrow.
The Clockworks is always moving. Even though we might have crashed on the surface, wherever the bits impacted might be miles away and very deep within hours...or minutes. Some places in cradle are VERY difficult to get to, if not impossible. Some realms only rotate into accessibility once a millenia. So we see these pings, and if we see a way in, we see hope. But so fleetingly. We ask you..knights...to help your race find find these missing pieces. We might find out why...truly why...it exploded. And rebuild it better. And go home.
Fear not - you will not get stuck in these places. We have given your Emergency Revive a teleportation device specifically for these missions. Once you come in contact with the source of the ping, or if you lose too much health (die), you will return to your ready room instantly for cleansing and recovery.
Still, the work is very hazardous. We only want you doing at most 3 of these a day.
(honestly I love cradle to death, I don't want to leave as a player, it's just lore).
TL;DR: skylark parts are being detected, but they're in parts of cradle that move fast, so a knight has to be quick to try and get the piece before the area is impossible to get to again, which will happen, absolutely.
=== Mission Type General Description ===
Yeah that's right about the emergency revive - Sudden Death missions. If your ER is gone, you don't get to get up again and use SoLs. You're done. No rewards. You keep whatever you might have picked up, though.
These missions are issued by Sprial HQ. Their successful completion is rewarded by Spiral HQ.
These are only available for Vanguards. Spiral HQ wants knights to focus on their rank missions before dabbling in the dangerous.
These missions are incredibly difficult and short, but the reward is worth it. If you think so.
These missions show up randomly, semi-frequently - about 3-5x per hour.
These are limited-time missions: about 10 minutes per mission is all the time you have to get into them, before they become unavailable/you can't start them. Whether or not you get into one has absolutely no effect on how/if you get into others.
You cannot invite people into the mission who are not vanguards.
If you somehow finish the mission once before the time is out, you can't get into it again, even if you are invited.
If you're in a Radar Ping mission and the time expires while you're in the Radar Ping mission, you may finish and get your rewards, you just can't invite others into it.
You cannot do more than 3 pings daily (successfully, failures don't count toward this number) , so wait for the reward you want...even though that's contradictory to finding the pieces before they potentially rotate out of accessibility for another thousand years. Hey, someone else will do it, right? This lets rewards be larger/more valuable.
These Radar Ping missions will have their own tab button on the far right in the rank/prestige/expansion/arcade list.
The screen for these (via that button) is usually blank, but it will have a mission card icon if a Ping is active, with Agent Kora saying stuff about it in a text next to it on the left. Rewards will be to the right. Delicious rewards from Spiral HQ. Rewards have a wide variety.
The moment a Ping shows up on the radar, a bright orange text shows up for all online vanguard (only) ranked players anywhere, similar to the pinkish server reboot text, announcing that the ping is available. The orange text will speak again with 5 minutes left, and then 1 minute left to start. This means that a player messing around in a mission as well as haven will get the notice. They can simply press M to get into the menu to start the mission. If a bunch of materials are being grabbed by the knight and blocking the text box, the ping orange text shows up three times, making missing the mission less likely.
For players with 0 interest in Radar Pings, they can turn off the orange text in the options menus.
A player can easily press M+Radar Ping button to see the ping, and if they're not interested in the reward, they simply don't start the mission.
sound potential: same as party invite/trade request, but a higher noise? Mebbe. Also have this turn-off-able, noises like that are annoying even if they are fitting.
=== Level Types in these Missions ===
These missions are single floors with a single objective: find the source of the ping, and if relevant, bring it back to Spiral HQ. These pings could be signatures from materials used to build the skylark, which means the pings on the radar could be actual chunks of the skylark.
The floors are generally solo-able, but a few of them would be better done with a squad.
you start the mission right in the floor, there's no lobby or arsenal station. The elevator area you come in on always looks absolutely wrecked. Have a loadout prepared to GO! GO! GO! But read the description first, seriously, so you know what to wear to the party.
Kora sent a little scanbot to the ping first. These fast robots relay information, so there's at least some telling what you'll be going into. Some. Hence Kora's text next to the ping card in Missions. Spiral HQ would never send a knight to absolute death, not even for a bit of the Skylark. So they spend a few precious moments investigating the area remotely.
There will ALWAYS be kleptolisks in these missions.
You can complete a mission one of three ways:
-find a glowing bit of metal (skylark chunk) and press attack to pick it up. Bam, you're done.
-find out that the ping was a mimic, and fight a nasty bunch of monsters. Once they are defeated, you're done.
-find out that the ping was a...crashed escape pod. The knight was in cryo the whole time, don't sweat it! Or they were turned off, whatever. I don't know what we as knights are...robots, alive, cyborgs, avatars, don't care. I prefer the mystery. anyway, simply finding them completes the mission, you teleport out together.
=== Ping Mission Types ===
1) Ping: Emission: ??? malfunction
Floor Design: deconstruction zone-like, very large. The entire floor is pretty much a floor hazard/trap, with very narrow 1x1 pathways through it blocked by debris (some of the rubble is also on the traps, yes) in the form of 1-hit junk blocks or 3-hit boulders.
These emission missions constantly drain your hp slowly, acting as a sort of timer... about half a pip every minute. So, equip more HP boosters for this type of mission. The bit of the skylark is having issues containing itself due to damage. So a cryogenics core malfunction (warframe reference) would cause the floor to have a Freeze theme. Monsters in the area will have adapted to the influence of the Skylark emissions by now, cause sk is over 3 years old. Tundralisks ahoy!
Ping: Emission: Cryo Malfunction (freeze)
Ping: Emission: Combustion Malfunction (fire)
Ping: Emission: Radiation Malfunction (poison)
etc.
Goal: find the piece, random spawn location. pick it up. Teleportation back to your ready room (the place you go when you log in initially) for cleansing of radiation etc. occurs instantly. You delivered the dangerous material to Spiral HQ en route.
Advice: hp boosts and MSI boosts, don't fight monsters.
2) Ping: Candlestick Arena: Noxious Night (etc).
An arena (arcade arena) floor, with grimalkin. Yikes! That's too dangerous for even Krogmo to watch. Candles are in the corners, and the fireball thing is bottom center. the skylark bit is where the end elevator would be...after the THIRD arena. there is no option to leave otherwise, besides...DEATH. (dramatic).
3) Ping: Graveyard: Trojan Travesty
a trojan was stargazing when a chunk of the skylark slammed into his back, killing him on the spot instantly. Sadly he was stargazing amongst his fellows, who are sleeping. This area of the clockworks encourages trojans to contain their tempers, and so they sleep almost constantly. Some have slept so long that their spirits are at rest, their bodies truly stone and dust. But not all...and no trojan woken up isn't grumpy.
souls constantly float around the area, and they'll blow up on players. these are freeze souls...the theme of this place is standing...still...in the dark...forever...and nothing is colder than the void of the soul. Souls will not break trojans.
Goal: travel around the trojan resting place (which is a graveyard tileset without phantoms), breaking trojan statues. One of them will have the skylark piece. Some of them will be dust. Some of them will wake up and fight you. Soon as you break the trojan with the skylark piece, the mission compeltes instantly.
trojan missions will never have crashed escape pods.
=== Rewards ===
Upon mission completion (success), you'll get the reward in the mail.
A Radar Ping mission will always let you know what the reward is.
It will only have one reward of the following:
A) 1000 crowns
B) one orb of alchemy
B1) 1-star
B2) 2-star
etc.
C) a set of 3 forge crystals, with c1/c2/c3 etc. being star level.
D) a material
E) a weapon slot
F) a trinket slot
G) 5 spark tokens (g1/2/3 forge/grim/primal)
H) a hall of heroes recipe
These rewards are delivered bound, except materials.
each squad member gets the same reward, it's not divided up.
So, you'd see ONE of these to the right of the ping card. You would go "meh" for 3 cracked fire crystals, but will probably go yay! for 3 radiants, or whatever it is you want.
-would add some variety to the game
-would take away some RNG farming effort, a little bit, with the rewards being known and guaranteed upon success.
-we don't pay for elevators anymore! So more missions/gameplay with short/story floors could be a thing and not hurt your wallet/time in the game.
-would actually match up with all that Skylark lore and the "goal" of Spiral Knights - get the ship fixed, get some energy from the core, get out. (Which, again, I don't agree with).
TL:DR:
New missions that last only a few minutes that give a lot of lore to the game.
But...I was going to make a Champion hipster alt .-.