Repel Boarders

by Dean Henegar

  Secret Door, Level 1: You can now attempt to camouflage any hatch on your derelict. Blending the design of the hatchway with the surrounding bulkheads makes the actual hatch difficult to spot with a casual glance. A secret door requires 15 salvage.

  Interior Trim, Level 1: Interior trim allows you to place basic furnishing and décor within the compartments of your derelict. Typically, the décor is used as a method of storing excess salvage and does not have a cost associated with it. Should the derelict run low on salvage, the interior décor will be consumed as a final measure.

  “Uh, boss, sorry to barge in, but you really should get cracking on building out the derelict. Our improved core is going to be pinging away like crazy now that we’re upgraded to level 1 and we need to be prepared for visitors,” Pixi interrupted.

  Slater did not trust the parasite in the least, but he supposed he did need some of the knowledge Pixi had of their new existence. He would have to remain guarded and refuse to ever give him too much control.

  “Okay, what are you suggesting?” Slater replied.

  “Well, first off, we need to set up each compartment as a challenge. You unlocked defenses that, along with our MOBS, will help us make everything the appropriate difficulty for anyone or anything that might want to check out our new digs. I recommend you don’t do anything with the first chamber where the boarding hatch is located. It’s common courtesy to have that as a safe area for explorers looking to clear the derelict. Of course, if they want to try and kill us, all bets are off and we can send our MOBS anywhere we like to pursue them.”

  Slater focused on the corridor at the far end of the derelict, where the boarding hatch was, finding he could set a boundary for his MOBS, preventing them from pursuing past that point. It only seemed fair to not have something jump folks right when they entered the derelict. That task complete, he looked at the structure tab and saw that he could place standard furniture, decoration, etcetera in the compartments. Not sure about it, he begrudgingly asked Pixi.

  “Pixi, what should I do with the chamber itself? I can see the option to put furniture and things in there, but is that something I should do?”

  “Yeah, boss, you want to set up the joint so that each compartment isn’t just a boring open box with a few MOBS waiting to fight. The entrance to the place is fine to leave clear, but the other rooms need some flair if you want to do this right,” Pixi advised.

  Slater found that he wanted to make the derelict something special and unique for those exploring it. He wasn’t sure if that was a valid desire or something forced upon him by his new existence.

  Thinking for a moment, he decided to place the ship’s name on the entrance passage in homage to what the derelict once was. He could feel the nanobots moving about the walls and coloring the ship’s name so that it was prominent on each side of the passage leading to the first chamber. To his disappointment, the nanobots also allowed the orange smiley face to appear on the hull, something he was unable to reverse.

  “Hey, boss, what are you doing now? You know I can’t see anything, don’t you? How about you bump my restrictions up to level 2 so I can help you out more,” Pixi pleaded.

  “Not a chance, parasite. You’ll stay just where you are for now,” Slater replied, turning his attention to the first room past the entryway. Since he didn’t place anything in the entry passage, it left him with three compartments and a passageway to work on, other than his core room.

  “Now, how do I go about assigning MOBS to a room?” Slater asked, wondering if Pixi would reply. They were still connected to some degree, and he could feel that the parasite was not a happy monster after being rebuffed on raising his restrictions.

  A long pause followed as Slater waited for a response. “Fine, I’ll answer your question, boss. You can either assign the MOBS you currently control or have the drones print up some new ones. I suggest you make it more difficult the farther they get into our derelict. It’s kind of a thing with derelicts to work that way and it’s what explorers will expect. Try too hard to kill them too soon, and they just might want to take it out on our sorry hides. Well, not hides but instead . . . You get what I mean, Captain,” Pixi rambled in reply.

  “The other thing you’ll be asked to do when you assign a MOBS to a room is to set its reward level,” Pixi continued. “Depending on the level of reward, the rooms will also now require some salvage that the nanobots will use to form rewards. Remember what I said about not being too stingy or too generous.”

  Slater looked at the first room—where he had fought the taskmaster and other kobolds—and figured that some rats would be a good first challenge for explorers to face. Some vague memory of old games he had played in his youth came to mind, games where the first challenge tended to be killing rats in a tavern basement. He experimented first with the structure of the room, choosing to add some debris, and made it appear as though a battle had been fought within. The look was authentic, complete with nanobot-generated scorch marks on the walls and a few fake bloodstains—at least he thought they were fake bloodstains. With the nanobots and their ability to work at a molecular level, the bloodstains and other debris could be authentic. Broken crates would be scattered about, and he hid a couple pairs of bilge rats inside the debris. With his choices complete, he had the drones begin their work, first printing another pair of rats to join the pair he already had. The expected reward prompt appeared as he hit confirm on the MOBS’s assignments, binding them to the room.

  Reward Level Interface: Select a reward level for this compartment. You can set each compartment individually or assign a consistent level throughout the derelict.

  Level 1: Miserly. Only the bare minimum of a reward will be issued and there is a strong chance that nothing will be produced upon the defeat of your MOBS. Salvage required is 2 per room.

  Level 2: Poor. The lowest-quality rewards are produced, yet every MOBS unit will result in something being produced for the explorer. Salvage required is 3 per room.

  Level 3: Normal. Normal amounts of rewards will be produced and there is a very slight chance of a bonus reward being offered. Compartments with normal reward levels will very rarely spawn crates with an assortment of valuable items and gear for explorers. Salvage required is 5 per room.

  Level 4: Good. The good rewards level has a higher chance of dropping improved loot. Bonus loot is dropped by any boss creature, and a moderate chance exists for crates full of rewards to be created. Salvage required is 8 per room.

  Level 5: Exceptional. Exceptional rewards settings have all MOBS drop an improved reward. Boss MOBS will drop either multiple improved rewards or a significantly upgraded one. Each compartment will house a crate full of improved rewards in addition to any the MOBS leave behind. Salvage required is 15 per room.

  Slater decided to go with Pixi’s suggestion and set the entire derelict to normal. He could fiddle around with individual rooms once he saw the process at work. Once his decision was confirmed, Slater noted that thirty salvage was deducted from his supply, which brought up a question.

  “Pixi, it took salvage for all the rooms, even the entry chamber. Why is that?”

  “Yeah, the nanobots will set aside loot for that room even if it never pays out. Don’t worry. It’s a one-time deal unless you start placing extra rewards in there. Don’t worry too much. We’ll leach way more from the attached ships than we’ll pay out in rewards,” Pixi replied.

  The answer made a kind of strange, logical sense. Even though he had shaken off Pixi’s influence, he still was changed into something new and was more willing to accept what should have been odd and difficult-to-understand concepts.

  “Okay, that makes sense. On to the next room,” Slater said.

  “Hey, wait up, boss. What did you do with the first room? Can I see it? Come on, how can I help you not screw this up if I can’t even see what you’re doing?” Pixi whined.

  “Nope, behave yourself, and one day, just maybe, I might let you take a peek. For now, consider your
isolation a small punishment for trying to consume my very being,” Slater replied.

  “Way to hold a grudge, big guy. That was all the way back in time, like several hours ago.”

  The next room Slater worked on was the large compartment his rats had fought the first pair of kobolds in. It was the biggest compartment on his derelict, so he wanted to make it a decent challenge. He decided to go with a mess hall vibe, re-creating a large mess hall in the entire chamber. A kitchen area and several rows of tables were created. The room would be perfect as a challenger’s first encounter with his kobold MOBS. He assigned four of his normal kobolds to the room, his drones printing up new kobolds as needed now that he had enough core power to run them. The assigned MOBS moved about the room as though they belonged there, sitting at random tables and moving through the kitchen like they were having a meal break.

  It struck Slater that he was essentially having his drones print up living beings when he created the kobold MOBS. Was it right to do this? Why hadn’t he considered this before?

  “Pixi, when I make a kobold, is it, you know, a real person?” Slater hesitantly asked.

  “Here we go. You shake off all my influence and here come the unending crisis-of-conscience episodes. For your information, no, the MOBS you make, whether they’re kobolds or anything else, are not sentient. They are only a meat bag controlled by a biocomputer that is, essentially, controlled by you. Your MOBS may perform and look like a kobold, but there’s nothing upstairs but some programming to make them appear realistic. No souls are involved, if you believe in that stuff. No kobold version of heaven or hades is waiting for these chaps. The only afterlife that your MOBS face is that of being reprocessed into new MOBS. Think of the whole thing as derelict reincarnation, if that helps you handle it.”

  Slater wasn’t sure if the answer was comforting or disturbing, but it was now his lot in life. Knowing the MOBS weren’t created as real beings, but rather as a simulacrum of what they resembled, assuaged any guilt he might be. Slater added a few finishing touches to the room, deciding to be devious and have a pair of rats stay inside a trashcan near the entrance. The extra MOBS wouldn’t increase the difficulty too much but would let the explorers know they would face a few twists and turns in here. After he printed out the pair of trashcan rats, his core power usage was now at twelve. He would need to keep an eye on it to make sure he saved enough for an exciting final fight.

  The next compartment after what he was now calling the kobold mess hall was the narrow passageway. The dimensions of the corridor made it the perfect place for Slater to test out a couple of the trap designs he had unlocked. Slater pulled up his build interface, happy to see that the traps only took salvage and not any of his precious supply of core power. The pit traps would cost him fifteen salvage. The tripwire traps were slightly less expensive at ten salvage each. When they eventually triggered, he would be out another five salvage to reset them. Filling up the place with traps would be an expensive proposition, so he would have to go easy on them.

  The pit trap was what he expected: the floor underneath was hollowed out by the drones, leading to a five-foot fall that ended on a set of sharpened metal spikes. When he tried to queue up a pit trap for installation, several areas on the deck became grayed out, indicating where there wasn’t enough space below the compartment to place a trap. He still couldn’t see the exterior of the ship and was getting curious as to what the whole thing looked like if random ten-foot-deep pits fit inside with no problem. Wanting to get this done, he pushed his curiosity aside. The restrictions left him only enough room to place two of the traps. Thankfully, the areas where he wanted to place them—one just in front of each hatch—were unobstructed, and the two were queued up for installation.

  “Come on, Slater. At least tell me what you’re doing if you’re not going to let me look,” Pixi whined. It was a fair enough request.

  “Fine. The room after the entry hatch is a debris-strewn mess with a couple pairs of bilge rats hiding inside. The big room after that I’m calling the kobold mess hall, and it has four kobolds assigned to it. It has been set up as, well, a mess hall. As an extra touch in the mess hall, I dropped a pair of bilge rats in the trashcan near the entrance. The hallway after that has a pair of pit traps, no MOBS. I’m still trying to decide on what to do in the last compartment, the one right in front of our core room,” Slater explained, taking pride in his setup and actually curious to hear Pixi’s thoughts on what he had done with the place, though he wasn’t quite curious enough to let the parasite actually look.

  “Nice so far. Not super-imaginative, but not bad considering you didn’t have my expert input. Couple thoughts, though. The mess hall may be a little tough with the rats added. Give your kobolds a handicap. Maybe have their weapons stored on a wall near the seating. That way, the explorers have a chance to get set up before laser bolts start flying. Also, we need to talk about a boss,” Pixi advised.

  “What exactly is a boss?” Slater asked as he worked on Pixi’s suggestion, setting up a weapons rack close to the seating area.

  “We pick one of our MOBS and elevate them. The nanobots do their thing and the boss will get stronger and develop special abilities most of the time. The boss challenge lets the explorers know their run is complete. They’ll usually poke around for a bit to see if there’s another level to the derelict, but normally they will make their way back to their own ship at that point. I should also mention it’s considered bad form to attack them as they are leaving. Unless they’re backtracking to explore a compartment that they haven’t been in yet, you want to always let them fall back when they choose to.”

  “How about I make the last room like the bridge of a ship with the taskmaster as a boss and use whatever core power I have remaining to make regular kobolds in there as the rest of the crew?” Slater asked.

  “Yep, sounds good. A difficult but survivable final challenge. You should have also unlocked a secret door template when we hit level 1. That’s typically used to hide the actual core chamber. We’re a small derelict, so it won’t be a big surprise where our core is, but hiding it will buy us some time if we face explorers that are of the core-murdering variety.”

  “Another thing, Pixi. Why doesn’t all the stuff I’m building like the mess hall and the bridge area cost resources?” Slater asked.

  “Yeah, one of the vagaries of being a derelict core. Conventional wisdom is that the items are part of the hull and not something to kill or loot, so the drones are just extending out some of the hull material to make them. Since our skin is so dense, using a bit to build the furniture doesn’t hurt. Of course, if explorers start cutting chunks off to haul out of here, that may cause a problem,” Pixi advised.

  Slater spent the fifteen salvage necessary to have the drones replace the hatch to the core room with a secret door before building out the fake bridge. Inside the bridge room, the secret door blended perfectly with the rest of the compartment. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out where the door might be since each door in the place was lined up directly across from the other, but it might throw off the careless.

  “Another question, Pixi. How come my hatches aren’t made with the same material as the rest of the ship? If hostile boarders try to kill us, I could just seal them in until they starved to death,” Slater asked, thinking of several devious trap ideas based on that possibility.

  “It’s another no-go. The ‘signal’ our core gives off is actually the energy releasing from the derelict. If we seal ourselves off completely, the energy will build up inside and eventually start harming the nanobots themselves. Think of it as radiation contamination of a sort. As long as the core energy has a way to slowly bleed off, we’re good. Bottle things up with our nanobot-infused hull material . . . and we poison ourselves.” It was yet another restriction that prevented Slater from doing what he wanted, but this one he at least could understand.

  With his immediate concerns allayed, he was all set to create his first boss. Slater started by ha
ving a drone print up a taskmaster. The process of printing up his MOBS still seemed a bit bizarre and was kind of disturbing to watch, especially when the body was halfway done. The way the drones worked, they somehow were able to keep the guts and runny bits in their proper places until the entire body was complete. When he zoomed in, Slater saw that the drones could project a small stasis field while they worked.

  It took another thirty salvage and fifteen biomass to promote the taskmaster into the boss of the derelict. The kobold grew a few inches and his body bulked with muscle. The thing was no bodybuilder, but it was noticeably stronger than the normal taskmaster kobold, who, in turn, was stronger than the standard kobold MOBS. Slater found he had no direct control over how the boss was designed, but the automated process his core followed must have drawn heavily from his memory, creating a boss that resembled—at least to Slater—a futuristic pirate captain.

  Slater detected a gleam of intelligence in the kobold’s eye as the newly designated kobold captain stood up to take his seat on the bridge. The boss had a brace of laser pistols in his belt as well as a pair of swords—copies of Slater’s original cutlass—rigged in sheaths over his shoulders. His new MOBS’s weapons explained why the boss had cost salvage in addition to biomass, something Slater was wondering about up until the drone began printing out the equipment for his new creation.

  New Boss Pattern Created: Kobold Captain. The kobold captain has enhanced strength, endurance, and skill. It wields its weapons with precision and is an all-around deadly foe. This boss pattern provides a small bonus to accuracy and aggressiveness to all other MOBS in the compartment. Due to the increased load on core resources, the number of boss MOBS is restricted based on the power of the core. You are currently able to field 1 boss MOBS. Level up your core to increase the number of bosses you can control. In addition to the salvage cost for their gear, the kobold captain MOBS requires 25 biomass and 5 core power.