SuperSayu/-tg-station — pull request #116 by CollenN (2014-10-09 01:01:22+00:00)
Title: Ancient Alien Artifacts

This adds the long-awaited artifact system to Space Station 13.

Artifacts are ancient alien technology that can be found randomly on the mining asteroid next to monoliths. They have randomized shapes, sizes, use methods, and powers, but in order to use these powers you must activate their two mechanisms through a variety of tests.

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In order to get the artifact to work, you must activate both mechanisms in a certain order. Extensive testing is required to do this properly; if you fail, both mechanisms will close and you will need to do it again. When you preform a test on an artifact it will respond in one of several ways:

**Buzz and sigh:** You completely missed. Neither of the two mechanisms will respond to this test, so don't bother repeating it again.
**Buzz and whir:** The test is incorrect for the current mechanism, but it's correct for the second one. There's also a very small chance that this will happen instead of a buzz and sigh; although it's very unlikely to happen in reality, it's still enough to warrant preforming the same test twice if you get this response. Keep note of when this happens, because it will make testing the artifact much easier.
**Pleasant ping:** You activated the first mechanism! Now you can test the second one.
**Flash of light:** The artifact is now fully activated and you can now use its power. Activated artifacts can be switched on and off using analyzers. You can tell an artifact is activated because it will be all glowy and flashing blue.
**Clatters to a halt:** Testing on an artifact will slowly wear down its [b]integrity[/b]. Artifacts regenerate integrity fairly quickly, but if you're not bothering to think about what you're doing to an artifact, you might wear it down enough to break it. Artifacts break when their integrity reaches 0%.

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At the moment there are six possible artifact stimuli. An artifact cannot have the same stimuli for both of its mechanisms. Some of these will probably changed to be more complex in the future, but this is just the framework for the system at the moment.

List of stimuli:

**FORCE:** The artifact responds to a certain amount of force. This means you should hit it with an item and see if it responds. If the artifact appears to react but does not activate, then you might need to increase the amount of force you're using. There are also some other ways of activating this.

**ELECTRICITY:** The artifact must be placed on a powered wire node. Be careful, as this will shock anyone around it who is not wearing proper insulation.

**RADIATION:** The artifact will respond to being irradiated. The easiest way of doing this is by using the **radiation machine** in the Testing Lab, which has been converted into a lab for artifacts. The radiation machine can be used by putting the artifact in the machine and changing the intensity. The intensity is a number between 1-10 and must be exactly the number required by the artifact in order to activate it when the radiation is pulsed. If the number is too high, the artifact will emit a high-pitched beep. Too low, and it will emit a low-pitched beep. There are also some other ways of activating this.

**HEAT:** The artifact responds to being heated above a certain threshold. You can use the incinerator in the Testing Lab in order to try this one out. You can check if an artifact might respond to heat by using an upgrading welding tool on the artifact.

**EMP:** The artifact responds to being exposed to an EMP. Uranium from the mines is helpful for this.

**EXPLOSION:** The artifact responds to explosive force of any kind. The safest way is by going to Toxins and making a bomb in there, sending the artifact to the bomb test site, and then getting someone to retrieve it. There are other, riskier ways, however...

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Once the artifact has been activated, it can be used in a certain way. For some artifacts, you might need to click on it while it's in your hand. Other times it might use its ability on its own without your intent. Some wearable artifacts use their ability when you get hit by something. Others are used for attacking people, or for ranged purposes...

There are currently around 50-ish powers that artifacts can have. The possible powers that an artifact can select from at generation depends on what the type of the artifact is. The type of an artifact is, as with everything else, randomized, and determines the weight of an artifact. Also, the power an artifact has will determine what **prefix** an artifact might have, such as gentle, gooey, sharp, radioactive, flashing, sparking, electric, etc. The prefix hints towards the ability of an artifact without saying it outright.

As I've mentioned before, the Testing Lab has been converted into an Artifact Testing Lab with a number of new things in it which can be used for artifacts. Not to worry, it still has the same stuff it used to have as well.

I've tried my best to test all of these out, but of course, since the system is so large there might be some things I missed. Please report any bugs you find, as this is, of course, just the first version of this.