## About The Pull Request
Since #90505 added another entry to it the Regal Rat Riot ability, which
turns maintenance creatures into versions loyal to the rat, has become
sort of unmanageable (and to be honest it was a bit gross to start
with).
Instead of having a big if/else list (which was making the same range
check multiple times...) that sets stats on a bunch of mobs, I delegated
it to the mobs themselves and instead of changing some stats of the
existing mobs we just turn them into a new mob which can be spawned or
placed separately by mappers or admins if they want.
Other stuff I changed:
Riot (the ability which transforms mobs into minions) no longer spawns a
mouse if it fails to find anything. Instead you have a chance to fish
mice out of disposals bins while digging out trash and items.
Domain is now a toggle which activates itself every 6 seconds rather
than a button you manually click every 6 seconds.
Riot makes a visual effect when used.
Rare Pepe randomisation is done via a random spawner instead of the mob
modifying a bunch of its own properties in Initialise.
A bunch of mobs now automatically follow you after being tamed. I wrote
this assuming I was going to add it to the rioted mobs but then didn't
end up doing that because you might want them to immediately attack
someone.
My rule of thumb is that if I think you'd want the mob to attack someone
the moment it is befriended I didn't add this and if you wouldn't I did.
I changed some of the regal rat minion names, and some of them can now
spawn from gold slime which couldn't before.
## Why It's Good For The Game
This proc sucked and now it's nicer.
As for the other changes;
- A tamed mob immediately following you is nice feedback and saves you a
click as it's likely to be your first action. Also removes some admin
panel shitcode I added.
- I changed Domain to a toggle because you generally want to use it on
cooldown and someone suggested it on this PR and it sounded like a good
idea.
- I saw someone in Discord complaining that the previous flow of
recruiting rats by hitting Riot with nothing around to summon one,
waiting, hitting it again to convert one rat, and waiting again was
tedious and annoying which I agree with.
This method improves the quality of life by separating these two actions
but _also_ as a side effect reduces a regal rat's ability to secretly
stockpile 50 rats in a hidden maintenance room because most disposal
bins are in slightly more visible areas, they'll actually need to go and
make a mess somewhere someone can see them.
## Changelog
🆑
balance: Regal Rats can now grab mice out of disposal bins, and no
longer spawn them with the Riot ability.
balance: The Riot ability no longer needs to be used once for each
slightly different kind of mob in your radius.
balance: The Regal Rat Domain ability is now toggled on and off.
balance: Several kinds of mob will immediately start following you once
tamed.
balance: Rats, hostile frogs, and evil snails can be created via gold
slime reaction.
/🆑
## About The Pull Request
Port of a feature I coded for a downstream ages ago and never bothered
PRing up here.
This event simply selects a department and then makes objects of various
types fall from the sky in that area.
The types of things it can pick from are:
- Fish
- Small animals (cats and dogs)
- Food
- Small change
Food is selected randomly from all foods and will get rapidly dirty if
not collected within the bounds of the five second rule.
Fish are selected randomly from all fish, and will be alive when they
land but likely to die quite quickly (as most fish cannot breathe on
land) causing additional emotional distress to people nearby. While they
are few in number, some fish are actually quite dangerous items.
The animals are a weighted pick from some curated lists of items. The
puppies survive their contact with the floor and can be adopted or
farmed for meat as desired.
The coins are also picked from a weighted list which is basically just
copied from one of our maintenance coin spawners.
This event is only active during Summon Events or during the first
couple of ritual circles a wizard might activate. As it's mostly a
social motivator rather than being inherently particularly disruptive
(although it can make a bit of a mess), it only appears around the same
tier as similar effects like the Hallucinatory Anomaly after which it is
replaced by more dangerous events.
## Why It's Good For The Game
By dropping potentially desirable items inside a department and also
telling people that there's (for example) cash just lying around on the
floor in the cargo bay, it may divert people from what they are doing so
that they will converge on that area of the station. This creates
opportunities for people to interact with each other, compete over these
resources, or take advantage of potential reduced oversight of
unaffected parts of the station.
Also the idea of a miraculous rain of animals (particularly fish, but
cats and dogs have their own saying) has a cultural basis and is the
kind of whimsical thing you can imagine happening as a side-effect of
magical spells.
## Changelog
🆑
add: Occasionally when a Wizard is around, strange things may being
falling from the sky.
/🆑
Jacquerel