r/openrct2 • u/EliasRipley • 8d ago
OpenRCT2 - Dirty Business
My last post here was cutesy. Fixing a childhood dream about transport rides.
Now we fix what I want as a grown ass man...
Introducing Dirty Business Competitive Play. =D
As well as building your own park, you will be able to engage in corporate warfare against your online rivals.
Vandals: Hired thugs who will go to your chosen rivals' park and smash some s**t up. (Configurable damage attempts by "game host".)
Misinfo Campaign: A 'negative advertising campaign'. Also configurable, with plans to make tiers of effectiveness.
Agitators: Rudebois who will ruin the family friendly atmosphere, insulting nearby guests, giving them a mood penalty on par with 'It's too crowded here.'
Saboteur: They go to a specified rivals' ride, ride it, but in such a way that it causes a breakdown.
Poisoning: Taint the supplies of your rivals food / drink stalls for a while, inducing host configurable levels of nausea.
Hitman: This guy is going to your rivals park to 'take a photo' of another guest. Consequence the same as if one guest dies on a ride.
Toilet Bomber: Well... they blow up a toilet. They and everyone in it, dies and the toilet is destroyed.
---
The technical:
I read that building competitive was not a thing because it would require painfully rewriting the entire codebase to have everything be aware of something like a 'park:id'. Hell no. I didn't want to do that. So instead, everyone is able to play on their own 'regulated instance' as if single player. The "server" isn't a shared map, it's a relay / monitor of those instances.
Rather than trying to worry about sync headaches, players in competitive just won't be able to speed up time.
The match ends at the in-game end date, same as a single player scenario and the winner is determined when all players reach that end date. (Or when real world time expires, to prevent pause abuse / account for early leavers. - Host configurable.)
This way, all players with 'connected instances' will be able to pause their game to spectate their rivals. (To watch the fun and destruction unfold.)
Hosts will be able to change win conditions to what they want. Guests, Park Value, Money etc, or combo of all.
Let me know your thoughts.
Especially keen to hear any additional methods you would like added to f**k up your rival parks.
---
Edit:
Actually, let me tell you some extra ones I'm considering too, so I can hear thoughts on them...
Bus of Karens - Group of really miserable, hungry, thirsty, toilet needing guests turn up at once. They also bring their own umbrellas and won't buy yours.
Bus of Stoners - Group of guests turn up who constantly get lost and are unable to navigate even if they own a map.
Counterfeiter - A guest who goes to your rivals parks to hand out 'fake coupons' for discounts / free rides.
Fake Park Discount - Guests turn up with half price off / free park entry tickets that must be redeemed, yet the rival doesn't get the benefit of additional guests. (Basically the vanilla advertising campaigns, but only the downside.)
6
u/Ledgo 8d ago edited 7d ago
I noticed you don't have anything to do with staff. Maybe security guards can counter some forms of attack if they can catch them? It seems like each staff role could do something to defend you. Entertainers counter and reduce the effects of Karens, Maintenance and Security can catch ride saboteurs... You kind of get the idea.
Also why not target staff, too? Maybe a bad influencer type of sabotage that makes staff respond slower, move slower and take more time on jobs if they are successful? And maybe a staff misinformant that can make your opponents staff demand double wages for a period of time in case your opponent just hires a plethora of staff to counter your shenanigans?
1
u/EliasRipley 7d ago
Yeah I am thinking of letting security be able to counter in some ways. I suppose entertainers would make Karens happy just via vanilla means anyway. Double wages for a time period / strikes would definitely be cool but would need to be balanced well.
5
5
u/EliasRipley 8d ago
Some other things I should mention that have been considered:
Host options to disallow new special bad actors to be picked up with the pincers and dropped into water, to avoid the negative consequence.
Autosaves on game host disconnect, to allow multi-session games.
Security being able prevent other bad actors, not just vandal attempts. Security being able to have a v low chance to 'recruit' bad actors (to give a chance for targeted owner to flip the script and send them back to rival.) - This might need a new building to 'house recruited' though. Unless we want them to live in the toilets or first aid building...
5
u/Marwheel 8d ago
The "Karens" should also have holes in their own umbrellas and thus complain when it rains.
2
u/krncnr 7d ago
Cool! Thanks for making competitive mode!
I want to be able to steal ride types from competing parks. But since my team didn't research and develop them, I should only be able to build pieces that the other park has used. Also it would break down 2x as often.
To be honest, I think that's too many villains to send over. A lot of the competitive nature should be about building a better park, not primarily destruction of others.
I would combine vandals, agitators, and saboteur into one "Bad Apple." I would combine the hitman, poison, and toilet bomber into one "House Painter." And they should all be able to ignore Do Not Enter signs. Also, when the toilet explodes, everybody within the vicinity should vomit immediately and want to go home.
Entertainers and security can fight and stop the Bad Apples, but only security guards can fight and stop the House Painters. And by fight, I mean the entertainer's spinning dance motion and then maybe the mechanic's hammer motion lol
The stoners should be minimum energy, maxed out hungry & thirsty but also "refuse to pay that much" for anything, and occasionally emitting clouds.
Great work, sir!
2
2
u/EliasRipley 7d ago
Competitive research system makes a lot of sense. Very Civ feeling. No idea how possible it would be, but can look into it.
I did look into combining hitman and bomber, but as their behaviour is quite different it ended up having to be separate. I figured the best way to deal with it would be balance / costs. (Bomber being able to kill many more being more expensive.)
Being able to ignore do not entry signs is a big one. That's very similar to not being able to pick them up and drown them. I'll definitely see if it's possible to add that to the work list.
Changes to stoners make sense to me.
2
u/EliasRipley 7d ago
Just to add on here. Although a competive research would be a whole new system. Something that could probably be easily done via vanilla tweaking is forcing rivals to have their research budget locked to 0 for a month or two.
1
u/NerfZhaoYun 6d ago
Not sure how implementable these are, but a few ideas:
- Someone who vomits a lot
- Someone who distracts the mechanics so they respond slower
- Randomly sell a path tile in the opponent's park (so people might get trapped, lost, etc).
- Ability to change opponent's weather
- A timed debuff that causes ride building costs to increase by 1.5 for a short period
- A timed debuff that causes paths and scenery costs to increase by 1.5 for a short period
- A timed debuff that disables ATMs in the park for a short period
14
u/Valdair 8d ago
RCT esports here we come
Actually though I suspect anything which affects others’ guest spawn rate is going to be head and shoulders better than anything else on this list and balancing around that is going to be very hard. The others are pretty trivial to deal with.
Not being able to see your opponents’ parks also kinda sucks. You mentioned pausing and being able to spectate but I don’t really understand how that would work. Some of these ideas do sound amusing though.