ERECTING TELEPORT SHIELDS
by Hazed
One of the things that stops you from teleporting is if the location you are porting into, or out of, is teleport shielded. Maybe you don't want to erect any barriers on your planet, so will leave every location open to teleporting visitors. But otherwise, you need to edit your planet map to add those shields on all the locations you want to keep free from porters.
You add a teleport shield to a location by setting the No-Teleport property using the location editor. (This property has been there all along, so you could have already set it had you been thinking ahead.)
There are lots of different reasons why a location might need a teleport shield, and here's some of places you will need to consider putting the property on:
- Expensive shops, private offices, bedrooms, and anywhere else that would logically have a teleport shield to stop intruders from avoiding security.
- Half-finished areas on the map which currently don't have any physical link to the main map.
- Storeoom (location 0).
If you got me to write some custom events on your planet, or if you're one of the tiny group that has been allowed to write your own events, then you also need to teleport shield these places:
- Locked rooms, ie any location or set of locations that cannot be reached without an object, or a password, or by doing something else.
- Any location or set of locations where entering or leaving triggers an event that makes a change, ie removing an object or setting/clearing a variable.
- All puzzle areas.
- Dummy locations.
Teleport shields on LPs are ignored - it is always possible to port to the planet's LP, unless the system has been closed or you are an exile. However, putting a shield on the LP means people can't port out from that location.
You don't need to put any teleport shields on your space map, because you can't port to space anyway.
Some examples in Sol of locations which have been shielded, and why:
- Gallagher's - "As you walk through the door," you are told, "your skin tingles as some kind of security scan is performed..." teleporting in would avoid this scan, and the management wouldn't like that at all.
- Chez Diesel and the roof garden - I wish I hadn't had to shield these rooms, because it would be a lot more convenient for me if I could just port straight from my bar stool and back, but there are a number of events that happen when you walk into the bar - checking if you are bringing a firework down the stairs, checking if you are doing the Magellan puzzle, checking if you are carrying a marsrat, and so on - and you could avoid those checks by porting in. So I will have to walk downstairs to the road before I can port. Sigh!
- Earth's Wilderness - the whole wilderness area has been shielded, because it is important that the only way to get there is by hopper. That's because part of the hopper ride makes a modification to your comm unit to stop the wild animals attacking you. If you wander around the wilderness without that mod, you'll get eaten.
- Graveyard - if you don't walk from the LP and talk to the first mobile you find, you won't be set up correctly for the puzzle. So porting straight into the middle of the planet would not be a good idea. In addition, there are a lot of death locations on Graveyard, and it's easier just to shield the whole planet rather than pick out the few safe porting spots. Also, I don't want people to be able to take shortcuts when doing the puzzle... you have to walk up and down the corridors getting the stuff you need and taking it to the right place to use it. Yes, I want to see you suffer!
This should give you some idea of whether you need to bother with teleport shields on your planet.
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