Safe house features
Author
In a general single/non-mmo-multi player role playing game, what type of features would you appreciate having for your home base/safe-house/club-house? The player might be able to upgrade the area with some of this stuff, or it could just come with an original setup.
My game is set in the near future, but feel free to wander outside of that theme, to be beneficial to others. Here are a few initial ideas:
Wall displays
A large wall with snaps to let you hang your favorite weapons or rare items.
Suit swapping configuration dummies
Mannequins. You basically equip yourself with whatever clothing, armor, weapons, gadgets, tools, and devices you want, then you can walk up to one of these and swap everything with it with a single action. Or you could just use it to display cool looking armor. The player might be able to buy these, and could have around 5-10 of them in an armory area.
Stores
When buying items at a shop, you can choose to directly mail things to your storage area instead of having to carry them back. You could also throw heaps of collected junk in it that you find on your travels.
Quick travel system
A taxi phone, a horse stall, or some way to quickly get around without running too far to get there.
Any ideas are appreciated.
Depending on whether or not your safe house can be attacked:
Outside Monitors
Monitors for hidden or placed camera's around the area, both outside or ajacent to the entrance. These sorts of things help give you a heads-up on any uninvited guests, giving you time to escape your Safe House before they reach you.
Booby Traps
These can range from laser triggered warning systems, to nerve gas, flashbangs, or explosive mines. These could be equiped with triggered arming systems to help surprise potential intruders (and keep common civilians from accidentally setting them off).
Dedicated Utilities
Satelite Communications and a spare Generator suite separate from the buildings tele-communications and power grid. This is in case any potential attacker cuts the power or telephone lines to cut you off or disable any defensive measures you have installed.
All-Clear Call
This is a small safety measure designed to indicate whether a Safe House has been compromised or not. The player calls his Safe House from anywhere in the city and connects to an automated answering machine rigged to a door trigger/laser. If his safe house has been compromised (the doors been opened for example) the message on the machine will change to reflect this.
On a more generic note:
Medical Suite
A small operating room built into one of the bedrooms of your Safe House. This is in case whomever maybe trying to kill you (police, CIA, mafia, etc) maybe watching any nearby hospitals for you. This can be made even more useful if you have a trusted doctor/friend/teammate you can call/bribe to make a house call to patch you up if your injuries are too severe to do it yourself.
Outside Monitors
Monitors for hidden or placed camera's around the area, both outside or ajacent to the entrance. These sorts of things help give you a heads-up on any uninvited guests, giving you time to escape your Safe House before they reach you.
Booby Traps
These can range from laser triggered warning systems, to nerve gas, flashbangs, or explosive mines. These could be equiped with triggered arming systems to help surprise potential intruders (and keep common civilians from accidentally setting them off).
Dedicated Utilities
Satelite Communications and a spare Generator suite separate from the buildings tele-communications and power grid. This is in case any potential attacker cuts the power or telephone lines to cut you off or disable any defensive measures you have installed.
All-Clear Call
This is a small safety measure designed to indicate whether a Safe House has been compromised or not. The player calls his Safe House from anywhere in the city and connects to an automated answering machine rigged to a door trigger/laser. If his safe house has been compromised (the doors been opened for example) the message on the machine will change to reflect this.
On a more generic note:
Medical Suite
A small operating room built into one of the bedrooms of your Safe House. This is in case whomever maybe trying to kill you (police, CIA, mafia, etc) maybe watching any nearby hospitals for you. This can be made even more useful if you have a trusted doctor/friend/teammate you can call/bribe to make a house call to patch you up if your injuries are too severe to do it yourself.
practice area.
Have ranged weapons and a combat system that uses player input to determine hits rather than just target and dice roll? Let the player learn to aim in peace.
Workshop, let the player either customize just the looks of their items with a built in feature, or actually change values on the stats of their items.
If you have a large world, let the player buy several houses.
If you can buy several houses, maybe allow NPC factions to raid you if you are getting too powerful and are impacting their efforts. Rather than a purely safe place to run to, they become something you can manage. Throw in being able to hire guards and run little fortified areas, and you could have a cool little side line to your normal RPG.
Have ranged weapons and a combat system that uses player input to determine hits rather than just target and dice roll? Let the player learn to aim in peace.
Workshop, let the player either customize just the looks of their items with a built in feature, or actually change values on the stats of their items.
If you have a large world, let the player buy several houses.
If you can buy several houses, maybe allow NPC factions to raid you if you are getting too powerful and are impacting their efforts. Rather than a purely safe place to run to, they become something you can manage. Throw in being able to hire guards and run little fortified areas, and you could have a cool little side line to your normal RPG.
Author
All of these ideas are very clever. Here are a couple less useful but somewhat fun features:
Recreational area
Some of your most recent off-duty lackeys and soldiers can lounge around, relax, and have fun here. They can watch movies, play video games, play drinking games, pool, cards, or whatever. Any time you need to use or hire one of these guys, you only need to look in this one place to track them down. Plus they would automatically help defend your safe house if it was attacked.
Laser Tag and combat games or "Danger room" (similar to Talroth's practice area)
You can load up all of your current party members and off-duty lackeys with non-lethal weapons and play combat games. The games could increase normal combat skills by a certain fraction of real combat. There could be several types of games with varying rules. It may be a way for skilled NPC characters to spread skills to non-skilled NPCs.
Recreational area
Some of your most recent off-duty lackeys and soldiers can lounge around, relax, and have fun here. They can watch movies, play video games, play drinking games, pool, cards, or whatever. Any time you need to use or hire one of these guys, you only need to look in this one place to track them down. Plus they would automatically help defend your safe house if it was attacked.
Laser Tag and combat games or "Danger room" (similar to Talroth's practice area)
You can load up all of your current party members and off-duty lackeys with non-lethal weapons and play combat games. The games could increase normal combat skills by a certain fraction of real combat. There could be several types of games with varying rules. It may be a way for skilled NPC characters to spread skills to non-skilled NPCs.
I always like to see a way to review information or plot you've experienced earlier in the game. Whether a bookshelf to store documents you've found, a TV to rewatch cutscenes, or a computer to review enemy data, some way to view backstory pulls me deeper into the game.
a pet of some kind
maybe if you have a snapshot element in the game you can take snapshots from your game and put them in photo frames
Mini games are often quite good
Teleportation module. Teleports you back to home when you're about to get pwned by a bad guy.
Personal computer. To access mail, the internet and what ever else you need to access on a computer.
Radio/ CD Player: ... for music
maybe if you have a snapshot element in the game you can take snapshots from your game and put them in photo frames
Mini games are often quite good
Teleportation module. Teleports you back to home when you're about to get pwned by a bad guy.
Personal computer. To access mail, the internet and what ever else you need to access on a computer.
Radio/ CD Player: ... for music
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