Summary of floating cities: -Floating cities in every gas giant. -They act as tier 7 planets, but without craftable equipment. -Their structure is divided into a "safe zone" with NPCs, and an "abandoned zone" with both randomly-generated creatures and hideously mutated hostile NPCs. -Matter-manipulating vending machines! Unabridged version: Environment. Floating cities are found in gas giants. To make them appear, you´ll have to complete a new quest, which will be described below. The general look would be of a sci-fi floating city (Exactly what it is). It would be formed of several sub-platforms connected by bridges and skyrails, with the latter being more prominent. They are supposed to be divided into 2 areas: -A safe zone, which is filled with NPCs of all races, making it the second naturally-spawned structure with such a characteristic. The NPCs sell the usual things: Food, weapons... but they also sell furniture blueprints, which are exclusive to them, along with block blueprints, along with a new item related to vending machines, which is used to buy more things from them. The NPC dialogue would be related to the city, what it was, and what happened to the abandoned areas. -An abandoned zone, which has both randomly-generated floating creatures, which tend to be like hot air balloons or organic vehicles of sorts; and mutated NPCs of all organic races. The abandoned zone would look damaged, with such things as broken pipes, missing skyrail sections, rusty metal... It´s also worth noting that there are strange vending machines throughout the city which don´t accept pixels, but, rather, something else. They´ll be given more depth later in this post. The mutants. The mutants' look would be horrific, making them look like something badly mutilated them, with such "lovely" body modifications as: Partially or completely missing skin and flesh, open wounds and partially-exposed skeletons. They would wear armor from their respective species, albeit damaged, and with pieces from other armor sets, along with pieces of scrap metal, so as to show that they repair their armor with whatever they can find (Ex: Floran mutants would look at first glance like they are wearing Sentinel armor, but, if you look a bit at them, you´d quickly notice that there are some pieces of Seeker and Euphotic armor, along with miscellaneous bits of metal, including such things as pieces of advertisement signs, gun parts, wire...). The mutated NPCs are hostile, and their equipment is affected by race: -Mutated Humans: would spawn with assault rifles, shotguns, and sniper rifles, but wouldn't have melee weapons, meaning that they specialize in getting you to get hit by the others while avoiding their attacks, and on sniping you. -Mutated Florans: They would spawn with both ranged and melee weapons: They always spawn with either a pistol or a machine pistol and a shortsword/dagger or with two shortswords/daggers, meaning that they are dangerous both at range and in melee, but not as much as the rest. It´s worth noting that, as it's likely for the melee versions to not deal as much damage as other melee mutants, they make up for it by being faster. -Mutated Avians: They would spawn with 2-handed melee weapons (To be exact, Hammers, spears and broadswords), or a 1-handed melee weapon and a shield, making them fairly dangerous in melee, as they either deal a lot of damage per hit, or can block your attacks. -Mutated Apex: would spawn with either Rocket launchers, 2 grenade launchers, or Fist Weapons, meaning that they can deal a lot of damage, but their attacks would be relatively easy to avoid. -Mutated Hylotl: would spawn with randomly-generated staves, meaning that, while they are very vulnerable to attacks, they can deal a lot of damage if left unchecked. (In order to prevent them from being too strong, NPCs would now use their guns while moving, similarily to the player, and it would, obviously, not affect staves). Sometimes, they instead use dual Wands. If they have Staves, they'll use their secondary effects to either hinder the player or buff their allies. If they have Wands, they instead alternate their spells. Of course, considering that, as explained in the Lore entry, their mutation isn't normal, that means that they can fuse together, which leads to: -Mutated abominations: They look as if someone decided to poorly-stuck mutant body parts together, often having such things as multiple heads and arms. They are slow, but your weapons can´t harm them. In order to get rid of them, you have to employ environmental kills, such as pushing them out of the city, or making them walk into hazards, such as poison or industrial machinery. In the latter example, you'll likely have to activate said machinery. The abominations would have a higher chance to drop items other than pixels, along with dropping more pixels than usual (Think that a single one could drop almost as many pixels as you'd get from a minor dungeon, as they are tricky to kill, and the easiest way to do so won't give you drops anyways). They are rather rare, meaning that you won't deal with them very often. They also often drops several Manipulator Modules or Upgrade Modules, making them a relatively fast way to upgrade the MM. Vending machines: They are the core feature of the floating cities. They don't accept pixels. They accept Trianglium instead, which is dropped by mutants, with a 100% chance to drop a single unit, but with a chance to drop up to 10 each. Abominations would usually drop 15-30 Trianglium. Trianglium is also found in containers and sold by vendors for a high price. By default, they don't really sell anything important, but, in order to obtain anything worthwhile from them, you´ll need to obtain schematic-like items called "Vending machine codes", which unlock new items, such as weapons, costumes, tech cards... The tech cards wouldn't be blank, but, rather, they would be used to obtain new techs which can´t be obtained from blank tech cards in the Outpost. Another feature, which requires Prislite Stars (Obtained simalrily to Trianglium, but is rarer), is to be able to enhace the player´s existing gear. This requires a Vending Machine Code to unlock. The player can give it abilities similar to that of the once-removed Bullet Types to his/her weapons, andt they would stack and interact with each other in the case of rarer guns (Rarer weapons can also stack more Bullet Types at once) In the case of armor, it would give different abilities, such as explosion resistance, increased walking speed, increased energy regen... Lore: The codex entries would be found as usual. They would detail the city´s purpose, the origins of the mutants, and how the vending machines work. They would also consist of journals, both written by the mutants and the survivors, and would relate how the former survived, and how the latter managed to get part of the city back to work. Acess quest: The acess quest would be given to the player after defeating Shockhopper mk1 and the Avatar of Kluex. To sum it up, it would be a Novakid-related sidequest. The quest would inevitably fe full of references to Western films. The quest would at first involve working with a Penguin/Novakid gang in order to rob a Novakid train that is known to be carrying lots of loot. After doing that, the player would have to deal with his/her former crew according to each one. The quest would have several parts.
