LIXA 3: The LIXAning

[DPavonis]

Summary

Content "Added Hub 01 mission signposting LIXA"

Purpose of change

As mentioned in #72063 I mentioned I was intending for any work for signposting where the LIXA facility was to be done in a followup PR. This is that PR.

Describe the solution

• Decide on what exactly the Hub wants the player to do/get at LIXA.
• Figure out how missions work.
• Add mission to Hub 01's contracts that signposts LIXA.
• Properly fill out mission and related dialogue
• Actually write the end-of-mission debriefing
• Give the player a token monetary reward after completing the mission and being debriefed back at the Hub.
• Let the player recount this whole escapade as a story with the bar mercs.
• Debug shit
• Use more fancy checklists

Describe alternatives you've considered

Letting someone else do it or something idk

Testing

I'll cross this bridge when I get to it.

• Mission properly points to LIXA front gate
• All three entries on the experiment control computer work
• Standard debrief works
• Player ranting at the intercom works
• Bar encounter story works

Additional context

My thought on this is that this PR will encompass a Hub 01 contract the player can take after the collapsed tower contract. I imagine the dialogue between the intercom and the player goes something like:

Dialogue!

Player: "Got any work?"

Intercom: "Yes, we need you to go to this facility where they were doing research related to the cataclysm we totally didn't accidentally cause that would help us immensely."

Player: "k, how bad is this one going to be?"

Intercom: "Uhhhh..."

Player: "Oh god is this the tower job all over again?"

Intercom: "... Maybe?"

Player: "Sigh, what's in it for me?"

Intercom: "Some gold coins, and anything you can salvage from the facility. Our last manifest of the facility's inventory shows they had some fancy suits of armor on-hand, maybe that will be of interest to you."

Player: "Sold, be back in a jiffy."

... Or something like that. The player is then handed an ID card that will get them in the main foot entrance, told where the facility is and presumably the player is then off to the races. Or not. I'm not their dad.

Special thank yous to Renech and anothersimulacrum for holding my hand when guiding me through the structure of the JSON mines.

[github-actions]

Spell checker encountered unrecognized words in the in-game text added in this pull request. See below for details.

Click to expand

• "LIXA is based off a proposition for a device called LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory). It was originally designed to confirm the existence of Gravitational Waves, a spreading distortion in spacetime caused by ultramassive events. The design has been repurposed for the exciting field of exospatial research, where we already know we can find spatial distortions!"
• "LIXA works using the principle of LOCAL EXODIMENSIONAL FLUX, the phenomenon in which ambient spacetime around exospatial breaches moves through the "portal". LIXA is equipped with several LOCAL DIMENSIONAL COMPRESSORS. These devices turn 'portals' on and off hundreds of times a second, which results in the FLUX repeatedly drawing tiny segments of our local n-space into exospace. This creates a compression effect, 'storing' an enormous amount of 4d-space in those segments in the neighboring exospace."
• "LIXA, or 'Liza' as we like to call her, is the forefront of exospatial research. It has been confirmed that matter from our local n-space (the 4d coordinates in which we exist) can transit through exodimensions. But it cannot do it safely! To understand the behavior of exospace, we must first learn about how it works."
• &The expressions on both the mercs' faces are a mix of confusion and visceral disgust as you relate your tale. Finally, the younger mercenary blurts out, "None of us wanted to touch that contract since the intercom was being so shifty about it." "You're my kind of free-range lunatic!" The older mercenary interjects. "I'll drink to that!".
• A secured USB thumbdrive, containing a copy of the LIXA facility's research archives.
• During the Cataclysm, we lost contact with one of our sister sites, LIXA. Aerial surveillance indicates that the facility's inhabitants are deceased, and beyond the now-zombified security detail, the site should be sparsely populated. We want you to enter the facility and make a copy of what they were researching on the provided thumb drive. Additionally, we will be providing you with a keycard that should at the very least get you in the front door."\n\n"We're offering a standard 5 HGC for successful retrieval of the data. If that isn't enough of an incentive, we do have a manifest from before we lost contact with the facility showing a handful of specialized powered suits in inventory. You are free to take any that are left.
• Hoo boy, where do I even begin with this one? Let's start with the fact that your intel was about as useful as a screen door on a submarine!"Sparsely-populated," my ass! How did you lot miss the goddamn zombie mosh pit down the open elevator shaft!?
• I SAID SHUT UP! It teleported me to an infinitely looping corridor! INFINITELY! LOOPING! CORRIDOR! I mean, fuck, you ever see one of those Escher paintings? It's like that, only you don't just see the surface of what you're looking at, you see EV-ER-Y-THING, and friend let me tell you getting a first-hand look at the inside of my digestive system was not pretty. Oh, and did I mention the light? Yeah, when some of the laser tubes got broken, they spat out light THAT HURT! A LOT!
• Well, the ID card wouldn't strictly speaking be necessary if you were to find some way of breaching the facility's security doors." The voice pauses for a moment, "Buuut that said we only have the one ID card, so unless you're confident you can get in without it, please don't lose it. As for the memory stick I would highly recommend you not lose that as portable drives with the required hardware security modules to interface with secure terminals are in short supply these days. However there may very well be some on-site for you to scavenge if you're lucky.
• [Let them know how much of a trainwreck THIS one was.]

This alert is automatically generated. You can simply disregard if this is inaccurate, or (optionally) you can also add the new words to tools/spell_checker/dictionary.txt so they will not trigger an alert next time.

[chichit1044]

Hey hey, original LIXA author here, and I have to say, thank you so much. I was shaken off originally completing it by Interesting Times, and while I wanted to get back and finish it, the combination of motivation and opportunity never arrived. It's been bothering me for ages.

From what I can tell, you have perfectly realized what I was going for, added some delightful flavour of your own, and gone the extra mile to fold it in to Hub 01. I could not be more pleased with how it turned out!

[DPavonis]

Hey hey, original LIXA author here, and I have to say, thank you so much. I was shaken off originally completing it by Interesting Times, and while I wanted to get back and finish it, the combination of motivation and opportunity never arrived. It's been bothering me for ages.

From what I can tell, you have perfectly realized what I was going for, added some delightful flavour of your own, and gone the extra mile to fold it in to Hub 01. I could not be more pleased with how it turned out!

And thank you for coming up with and doing most of the hard work on such a cool minidungeon. 😄

I'm glad you like it, since in general I was trying to stay true to what I figured your vision was for it.