Capture the Core:
A new PvP mode, in addition to Blast Network and Lockdown.

General Description:

Two teams repair their crashed ships (or shuttle, whatever) and seek to power their ships up with a mysterious energy core. It's Capture the Flag! Er, I mean, Core...

Came up with this cause lockdown is horribly unbalanced and caters to people who brown nose to that gremlin character named Punch, and Blast Network is a lagfest. Also, I feel that we've lost sight of our Spiral Knights roots with all these aesthetic promos. Not that I have anything against being sexy, I'm sure some of you have seen my ...many...posts on aesthetics.
“Capture the Core” PvP has the feel of a minigame, imo.

Scenario:
A large flat-ish area, similar to the "grasping plateu" level. Bits of your ship have landed around here after you exploded in the atmosphere. There is one power source at the center of the map, but you can only pick it up and move it if you've repaired your ship. This power source is like a tiny glowing “core.”

Another crew has crashed here too...who will repair their ship and get the core to it first?

Lore:
Spiral HQ developed this game to help knights hone their "exploration skills" in the face of combat. It is a sort of training developed on Cradle, for Cradle. King Krogmo heard of "Capture the Core", and implemented it in his arenas due to the training's high entertainment value.
Alternative Naming:
"Core Capture!" "Crashed!" ……Any suggestions?

Player Vs. Player:

Work as a team against one other team.

Teams:
1 to 3 members in a team. Game will not start without at least 2 players. Game will not pit a team of 3 against a team of 2, etc. Choose the tier number to que in to choose the number of players you want as a team. (This can be modified later, it's really to deal with the PvP que system for now). You’ll have to equip relevant star equipment for the system to communicate with you properly, even though you won’t be wearing it during the match. So...

------ Tier 1 = 1 vs. 1 ------ Tier 2 = 2 vs. 2 ------ Tier 3 = 3 vs. 3 ------

I’d like for the que system to have these options: prioritize matches with friends: options: On same team or against, choose one. If you and your friends que up, then you’re extremely likely to at least be in the same match, depending on the options agreed on (allies or enemies) and the slots available.
Idle loading screens:

Primary Loading Screen: similar to a danger prestige mission lobby. There is some idle time while everyone loads, then a 10 second countdown when everyone's loaded. During this 10 second countdown, there's a lot of rumbling and screen shaking, and then a whiteout. DID WE JUST CRASH!?

Secondary loading screen: next to your ships. Your crashed and damaged ship at least generates a protective shield, forming a "locker room" area that the other team cannot enter or fire into. The protective shield becomes two-way for the team after a 3-second countdown, signifying the official start to the match.

Krogmo is entertained by any valiant struggle. You can bribe him during the primary loading screen.

Gameplay: Fundamental Aspects:
The match is on a (max) ten minute timer. See Gameplay: Victory or Loss for details.
You do not take damage or obtain/inflict status in Capture the Core, ever. This means you do not die. You only get stuttered/hindered by the attacks of other players and entities. Oh, there's ways to spend your energy other than on revives...see below. This is to prevent teleporting to your ship as a strategy. There is no friendly fire. Also, this area is barely T1 qualified, stuff is super weak – you only LOOK like you’re wearing 5* azure guardian, wielding 0-star weapons that LOOK like 5* weapons. So lack of damage makes sense. You’re all basically playing with paper swords. It’s training, remember?

You cannot pick up the core until all parts have been returned to your ship. No point in spending energy carrying energy, if you can’t fly. (This is also to prevent VERY gamebreaking camping behavior).

Search the area for parts. Parts will be visually EXTREMELY OBVIOUS. They are color coded for the team.

Pick parts up off the ground and carry them back to your ship. The part will poof into the ship as soon as it's in the Protective Shield area. The ship looks a little better (less damaged) each time a part is given to it. Picking up and carrying the parts/mini core is like interacting with a statue, one hit and you drop it. Difference: THE PLAYER THAT WAS CARRYING IT can't pick it up again for 3 seconds.

There are a total of 5 parts, not including the ship. They fall randomly around the map, in designated “zones” (see tileset images below). While their actual location is random, parts will ALWAYS fall in this general manner: 1 near your ship, 3 farther away, and 1 very far away...very close to that other crashed crew... Go find them. Some of them are easier to get to than others. All of the parts can be obtained alone, but it's easier to get some of them with teamwork than it is when solo. See tileset images for details. This is to prevent matches from being overly repetitive and predictable.

The parts to the other team’s ship are incompatible with your ship, and cannot pass into the Protective Shield area of your ship.

Once you pick up a part, you cannot put it down unless you’re forced to drop it by an enemy entity. Yes, you can pick up the other team’s ship parts. However, doing so drastically decreases your movement speed (picking up your ship’s parts does not do this). Feel free to carry/camp the other team’s ship parts next to your ship. Mean. Oh, right, it’s stuck to your hands until you get hit. HAHA. This means you can’t help your team carry parts to your ship if you’re holding the other crew’s part, doesn’t it? HAHA.

Alternatively, make it so you just can’t pick up the parts to the other ship. I feel this is unrealistic and limits strategy.

Parts not found yet show up on the minimap for the team, ONLY if at least one person is standing in the radius of the Core – idea is that you are directing some of the core’s radiant energies into your team’s scanner (which is carried by all members, and each one communicates to all members – it’s not like we’re remotely charging a phone here). This is to keep the game from taking "freaking forever" (another defense against the "eternal match" is the countdown timer).

Alternatively, someone can activate their ship's scanner for 3 energy (at their team’s ship) - this lasts for 15 seconds and doesn’t need someone to stand still in a place for a long time. HOWEVER, this will reveal the part locations on the minimap ONLY to the person who used the energy. The ship’s scanner is a ping, different from the minimap scanners players carry with them (though they use the same minimap). Hopefully you have good memory and communication skills! Using energy in this manner can give an edge to your team, just like using energy to revive can give an edge to your team in lockdown.

Once a part is PICKED UP, it stays on the minimap for your team, no matter the circumstances. Once the correct part is brought to the correct ship, it poofs entirely.

The team has an X/5 indicator for parts collected on-screen.

Parts show up on the minimap as triangles colored the same color as your team.

Once the last part is returned to the ship, all crewmates must return to the shield area to authorize “foreign energy consumption – high risk factor.” Once this is done, anyone on this team can pick the core up from the center of the map and carry it to their ship. Highly recommend you all get the MSI boost for this.

Enemies:
There are only tiny baby turrets around this map. They deal no damage, but they'll make you drop what you're carrying if you get hit. Something to note, these tiny baby turrets fire 5 bullets in a spread, not just 1. Weird...these respawn very quickly. Let’s call them spewpuppies.

Equipment:

Choose ONE: bomb, gun, or sword. Wield only one. These are modified nitro, valiance, or leviathan.
Choose ONE: max MSI, max CTR, max ASI. These are granted via a battle sprite (the non-evolved ones, greyish things with two eyes, need pic). The sprites do not attack, they just grant the boosts. So they’re not so much Battle Sprites as they are Utility Sprites. This boost is permanent until you choose a different sprite.

Boosts show up under your teamates’ health bars like they do in PvE.

See the image for an idea about how the basic sprites might look for Capture the Core.

Choose these your weapon/boost by walking over their location next to your ship (see tileset images below), similar to choosing Guardian/Striker/Recon in Lockdown. You’ll always be given leviathan and ASI boost to start.

You all wear a modified Azure Guardian set - including a modified Aegis shield. These sets have only normal defense, and register as 0-star items. They just LOOK like the 5-star set.

All items are basically level 1. You just crashed. No innate CTR boosts. No UVs, like Blast Network.

The prismatic parts of the set max your team color, as they do in BN/Lockdown. This set emphasizes the story bit behind this entertaining pvp competition. We are Spiral Knights, crashed here on Cradle, trying to repair our ship, the Skylark.

Gameplay: Victory or Loss:

Once all the parts are found for at least one team, a 1-minute count down timer begins. If the other team doesn't get all their parts to their ship in this amount of time, then the first team wins. If they do get the parts, then the following 3 minute countdown timer is implemented:
If both teams have all their parts at around the same time, there is a 3 minute countdown timer that overrides the general countdown. If the Core isn't brought to either ship in this time, the match ends in a tie. Yes, this means easy bribing of the Krogmo and working together to let all people win that bombhead, with a decent waiting period to prevent speed bribing.

"yeah, our team found all the parts. We'll just hold ours outside of our ship until you guys find all of yours."

The teams have 9 minutes to find all the parts. If neither team finds the parts in this time, the team with the most parts wins. If a team has 0 parts, Krogmo disqualifies the entire team. If you don't move around at all, Krogmo disqualifies you. YOU HAVE JUST CRASHED. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? NOTHING!?

Since one part of your ship is always very close, it would be extremely difficult to have both teams be aggressive enough to disqualify each other.

The Tileset:

SCREW INDIVIDUAL LINKS. HERE IS AN IMAGE WITH ALL RELEVANT IMAGES.
Aesthetically, the tileset is similar to the surface, or grassy areas.

Gameplay: Minor but important Aspects:

Parts and Core occupy 1x1 tile space, physically.

Capture the Core gameplay ignores trinket slots. Ignores pet perks. Basically ignores your entire loadout, other than using it for the Tier Que.

There are always a few blast blocks close to your ship that regenerate. These represent smoldering hunks of metal that the ship doesn’t really need to fly. Aw, that was our bowling alley…

The parts to the other crew’s ship will never show up on your team’s mini-maps. Their colored dots will only show up if they’re nearby. Team member dots are always visible.

Once your team has authorized foreign enemy consumption, you cannot pick up anything but the Core.
Unlike other pickups, which have a 3 second delay from being picked up again by the same person, the core has a 5 second delay if it’s dropped. It’s a bit harder to get a hold of. Very volatile.

You can only hold onto the Core for 10 seconds before automatically dropping it. This means it’s best for the team to work together to bring it back to the ship since you can’t pick it up for 5 seconds. You’ll have a countdown at the bottom of the screen, indicating when you can pick the Core up again.
Carrying the core has no effect on movement speed, or any boost given by the Capture the Core sprites.

Alternatively, the core could have a 50% chance of disabling the sprite boost you have on you until you drop the core. Adds more dynamics to the game. If you find your MSI boost is no longer working, get hit by something and let someone else carry the core.

The Core always shows up on the minimap for all players. It’s a large golden triforce. Just kidding. It’s a sky-blue circle with a solid circle in the center (same color as energy). Of course, if it starts moving, that means you should probably head over to it. Oh, yeah, there’s giant numbers counting down on your screen if it’s moving, too.

Your ship always shows up on the minimap. It’s the same color as your team. It is a large golden square, similar to elevator lifts/keyhole indicators. Needs new art to look like a tiny ship? Or just a small house?

The other crew’s ship never shows up on your minimap.

The spawn location of your ship is randomly in 1 of 3 places. See tileset image for details.

Hitting a player with the gun/sword will only have a 50%/75% chance of making them drop what they’re carrying. Bomb blast has a 100% chance.

Notes and Strategies:

Sure, movement speed seems like the prime choice, but some parts of the ship seem to have fallen in the middle of a bunch of three-hit boulders...or in a mechanically derpy area, that has four switches that must be hit at the exact same time...nitro or leviathan would let a single person get this part. But any given puzzle might not spawn every time.

Scenario: There's a group of baby turrets! Fellow crewmen, shield me while I carry this part of our ship out of here.
There are decisions to be made. Find the pieces of your ship first, and win. You can choose to be aggressive to the other team, not allowing them to carry things to their ship by hitting them or picking their parts up... or be passive searching for parts. One person could choose to camp the Wayward Piece (the one that always falls the farthest away) of the other team, and leave it alone as soon as the rest of your team has all the parts, but this means one less person is searching if they’re camping.

A good Strategy: have people scout with msi, and communicate to the team. We need a gunner over here!
Camping the core to grab it for your team is pointless, since you must all return to the ship to authorize using the core in order to pick it up. The other team can camp it to prevent it from being picked up (remember the core cannot be picked up and moved by a team member until all parts are given to the ship for that team), but because the team without parts loses to the team with all their parts within a certain amount of time, only so much aggression preventing the core from being picked up will work. In 1 vs. 1 not finding all your parts in time is pretty much Game Over.

Tier 1? Someone was flying a ship alone, and decided to investigate a planet alone? REALLY? Well, someone else was at least as silly as you...and now you've both crashed. Well, 3 on a ship isn't much better, logic-wise. Let's just pretend you guys are on a Star Trek shuttle or something. These shuttles could look like miniature skylarks, or have totally new art.

Regenerating blast blocks are central to certain strategies. If a blast block detonates next to you, you’ll drop what you’re holding. There’s no friendly fire…but if you’re holding on to a part from the other team, you can’t put that down…and you can’t enter the Protective Shield of your own ship. Therefore, your team cannot authorize foreign energy consumption, and cannot pick up the core. This could lead to a forced tie in many cases, should you be evasive enough to avoid the aggressions of the other crew.

Since there’s more ship parts than there are players, it’s impossible to prevent every Part from being returned to any given ship at any given time.
Reason for this to exist: just more variety in the realm of PvP, which I feel is sorely needed. It’s something to do with a friend or friends (or strangers) if you’re bored with the clockworks (easily, almost no waiting - since it can be 1 vs. 1), and encouraging the game’s lore. Another source of krogmo coins.

General thought: it seems that ship parts are extremely incompatible, since you can’t use the other crew’s ship parts to repair your ship. I suppose Spiral Knights have the same problems we do with different models. Why does every new generation of phone HAVE to have a different shaped charger port? Ugh.

Okay, there it is. Lots of words. I like words.

Edit: Sprite Abilities and Energy

Someone mentioned that walking back and forth because you "brought the wrong weapon" in 1v1 would be extremely unfun. I agree.

Let's give these basic sprites some abilities. These are sprites used by Geo knights to explore, or something...and they've been modified for use in Capture the Core.

Their first ability is always activated, and it is the boost. Since it's constantly activated, there is no cooldown. The "cost" of this boost is whatever it costs to que up for this PvP, if you want that sort of consistency.

Second ability is the scanner ability, and costs 3 Energy to cast. It lasts the 15 seconds, and has a 1 minute cooldown. Pressing w/e you have keybound to "sprite ability 2" will bring up a "spend energy?" prompt.

Third ability is a teleport pad. Say you found a part that needs a gun to get, but you brought a sword. And you don't feel like walking ALL the way back, cause you don't have the MSI sprite. The teleport pad will be placed, warp you back to your ship for 5 seconds, then bring you back to where you placed the pad. This will fail if you're carrying anything. (And you can't cast while you're carrying anything anyway, but if you somehow manage to pull it off...). This costs 3 energy to use, and has a 3 minute cooldown - which means that you can REALLY only use it effectively twice, per match. This gives you just enough time to switch to the weapon you think will better solve the puzzle. Honestly, the map isn't THAT huge, but some people just don't like walking back and forth (though in a crash scenario this is realistic).

Sprite abilities affect the user only, and other than the first ability, every basic sprite has the same 2nd and 3rd ability.

Edit:
Allow costumes in your loadout to show up. Though I feel this would interfere with the lore (why would you have, say, a chromalisk outfit BEFORE crashing on Cradle?), as well as potentially being confusing to teamates by having an outfit that colors weirdly (making them think you're on the other team at a glance), costumes are a huge part of spiral knights, and people love to wear their costumes.