Anomaly brainstorming

I’m relatively new to SS as a whole, been playing almost exclusively sci and the more interesting(potential wise) discipline overall is anomalies so I’ve naturally brainstormed some ideas for them, I’m not good at thinking of what they’d look like so feel free to provide any input ideas:

Monkey island anomaly:
(Looks like a portal to an island but is one way?)
Pulses: monkeys, bananas, seawater, and at higher severity hostile gorillas can be spawned.
Supercrit: Multiple gorilla spawns and liquid potassium

Honk anomaly:
(Big holographic clown nose?)
Pulses: random spray paint in an AoE that coats everything/everyone in random colors, peeled bananas, throws cream pies, and of course clown spiders
Supercrit: Lube everywhere, transmogrifies everyone in an AoE temporarily, all nearby machines eject contents, all doors open

Light anomaly:
(4 pointed bright star)
Pulses: light flash on everyone in line of sight, brightens lights, heals like chaplain, at higher severity shoots lasers in diagonal direction pattern with increasing frequency, being too close to it is the same as using a welder without mask.
Supercrit: flashbangs everyone in line of sight, LSD spikes everyone, destroys all lights, sets objects/people on fire

Ghost anomaly:
(Some kinda purple ghostly entity)
Pulses: Makes ghosts visible for a brief moment(no ID/no talking), makes everyone gasp, drops nearby entity health by one stage with a random damage type, (if it’s not too much make whoever has the core protected by a holoparasite?)
Supercrit: Kills everyone nearby instantly and has moderate chance to make them into a revenant, can make eligible nearby objects available as ghost role

Tell me if these are any good please, I can handle honesty

2 Likes

I like the idea, but feels like it’s missing something for pulses. Maybe it can be able to spawn banana trees on top of soil. You’d probably also find parrots and butterflies there since it’s an island. Hell, maybe even crabs and snakes too.

I love this one. However, clown spiders should be for when it crits imo. Ejecting contents and opening doors is too similar to another anom as well. Pulses can probably spawn “chaos donuts”, and other clown items like clown masks and shoes. You can even add bananium into the mix for either this anom or the monkey island one.

There is already a “light” anom that’s typically called electric anom. Since this one flashes a lot and seems to be the main thing of it a better name might be Flash Anom or just Star Anom to go with it’s appearance and blinding effects. This one seems like you tried to make a “holy star” that can heal like chaplain, but is still just a star so when a star goes crit it will explode in a fiery doom. It should probably also explode the area around it like the black hole anom when it crits, but not as big.

Also love this one. I don’t think it should be a round removal/ender though. Having ghosts be visible but no ID/can’t talk, +1. Making everyone gasp: is everyone around it losing oxygen? Is it sucking up oxygen in the area or is it just doing the text/sound of gasping? Instead of a random damage type, it should be a cold anom. Death is usually referred to as cold, so it would make sense that you could start to take cold damage over time, but not nearly as bad as an ice anom. About half the ice anoms power. A holoparasite would def be too much, since it’s contraband and would easily get taken away by sec. You could likely have a pulse of the anom be a “medium” type thing. Example being, the anom pulses and for about 30 seconds you can somewhat hear what the dead are saying through the anom, but it would be blurred out like radio chat. Making people into revanants: big -1 from me. However, opening up 1-3 revanant roles would be good. Also like the idea of making objects in the area ghost roles. Killing people instantly around it would also be good since it’s a death anom after all.

2 Likes

Good ideas especially on parrots. Sand would be cool too, as if it’s trying to turn the station into an island as well.

Spiders on crit is probably a better idea, but I wanted it to be similarly dangerous to the meat and plant anomalies despite the silliness. What about making held items dropped? I adore the chaos donut idea, didn’t even know those were a thing

Definitely going for a holy theme here(I like holy themes). Name hardly matters, I don’t even know if anomalies have official names, but I consider electricity and light two semi-separate concepts in games so I want them to be distinguishable from one another, but still conceptually faithful

Just the sound/text like you’re being scared by a ghost. Thought it could be funny. I considered cold damage, though I think it was better to bring the nearby players a step closer to death with no particular preference for how. I also considered poison damage as well, but I don’t love that.
And you’re right holoparasite is too much, I just found out about them and wanted to incoporate it somehow, so maybe that’s a step too far, haha

1 Like

Might want to rename it to tropical island or simian isle, since we may want to avoid a name overlapping so closely with another game’s name.
Or, to be funny: “Monkey Island” is a trademark of Lucasfilm Entertainment Company Ltd. LLC for the market of Interactive video and computer game software and instructional manuals sold as a unit.
Also, I don’t quite see the reason for this one, seems a bit basic. Upshot of that is, it shouldn’t be that hard to implement.

Might want to actually avoid the clown spiders for sub-critical and instead just focus on “funny” (read. annoying and inconvenient) effects.
Maybe making people mute for a bit or making their steps make clown noises.
Also, would be cool to maybe incorporate bananium for “funny”, utility and added danger.

Might want to add blinding/eye damage as a more passive effect.
But yeah, this seems like a fitting addition, very thematic.
Though as art design goes, maybe go for a bright sparkling sphere.

The concept of a ghost anomaly is a neat one, but I feel like you may have just overdone the sheer lethality of it.
Also, if it does do damage, it should depend on severity and should generally at least choose from a select few types. You kinda don’t want to randomly get hit with 30 genetic.
But opening more ghost roles is a cool direction.
Might also use just a bit more flavour.