Asteroids: Animation Rework needed + Big Opportunity for Game Mechanics

Hi,

few things have irked me as much as the Asteroid Impacts.

Animations:
1) Screenshake: The big reason is the screenshake, which is far too violent. I know you want to get that feeling across that this is really something and dangerous, but instead it is just annoying. The camera always move to the right unless I "hold on to the screen" - which I guess was a nice idea, but especially when 3-5 of this event type happen in short succession, you just want to throw a meteor at the game eventually.

The second issue with Screenshake is, and I don't like to bring this up, nothing in this game gets my photosensitivity/migraine out, but this. Migraines are in the wider family of epilepsy type disorders; you could say the mildest and most common form of them. That is due to the screen shaking so violently that it just turns the screen into random quick flashes of varying colours and brightnesses. You get a bad combination, you get a headache (people react to different colour combinations and frequencies differently, it's not a super universal homogenous thing. The worst of those are full screen flashes, which is one of the cheapest special effects still used by Hollywood while daring to still be condescending towards Japan for that one Pokemon episode (in which most kids faked it after they heard they could get a day off of school, obviously). Best example is the expanse that did everything well until Amazon picked it up and then did... *that* for muzzle flashes of space ships. Thanks, big caring Megacorp that totally never only pretends to care about this or that political thing for clout or whatever reason... I'll be in the dark room, with earplugs, and a blindfold, just in case there's a wild photon in there, for the rest of the day! Just to discharge this neuronal nonsense that won't process any information much - and this is the best way to get rid of a migraine as quick as possible: Sensory deprivation (I want one of those tanks!). Doing anything else, even reading, just draws it out)

(Hey, here's a (pre-)treatment idea for future content...)

Just tone it down to a standard screenshake. I promise I won't try to hang up a picture of an exploding moon during the next shower.

2) Asteroid-Animation: Or Tomatos. Or whatever else you find flying around.

It's too quick. The animation frames can barely be seen. It's not really necessary to have them to have them crash in at light speed (that should cause holes in the ground to be honest... After all, it somehow got through the ceiling and the athsmophere is fine).

Especially when zoomed it, it is night impossible to see anything but the last frame when it happens right next to you on screen. So it's really just a big screenshake event. Which is just annoying.

Just slow it down, let us appreciate our impending doom.

And this leads right next to:

Mechanics:

The asteroids don't really do anything but minor damage to rooms that is instantly fixed. I think it might have hit and killed a patient once, but that might just have been sound cue synchronization. I didn't see it happen.

They don't leave any debris.

3) Add debris.

Stuff that keeps lieing around, stuff that the Medibots have to get rid of first before they can even get to the damaged or even destroyed equipment.

That would bring some actual downtime to the hospital and cause issues. In Sim City, the destructive disasters are also not just mild inconveniences.

3.1) Debris of different types can have different effects. While asteroids only block passages, space vegetables goop onto the floor and makes it slippery, causing patients to slip and Medibots to whirr around. Now think of a bot coming for cleanup and spin-crashes into a wall needing repair himself! Hilarity!

3.2) Damage to patients and doctors. Not just health-drops, but actual sickness. A broken bone would be the least. Tomato-allergies? Parasites in the vegetables, which is why they were ejected into space? Cabal Drones hiding in junkballs starting fights with the staff, Medibots, trying to brainprobe people? Simply: Additional diseases to what people have already.

4) Interval: Especially in its current state, the event happens way too often and successively. Events in general should have more downtime before the next is started. The game gets no time to breathe, unless I decide to wait out the three way to fast reminders about the giant unmissable glowing Las Vegas button.

I'm not talking about the player needing a break, but the game. Because if I only ever look at the UI and never get to take in the actual hospital shenanigans, what am I playing? The hospital or the UI?

5) Defense: This would have to be solved through additional rooms. You want the option for a semi-functional asteroid defense? You can have it! Your hospital has space cannons? Use them. Rocket-thingies? Use them. We have military grade equipment repursed as medical equipment to being with. Have an extra workshop for drone control to change the courses of asteroids or destroy them. The medibots can operate those (something to do for them!) But that would have to be charged by something, so we'd reroute the energy from some equipment, like one of those nuclear or tesla things. The Impact Medicine can provide the charges for ammunition). This would hinder other parts of the hospital for treatment, for a reduction (not necessarily total prevention) of impacts. So to speak: preparation now to prevent harm in the future. It would force the player to make decisions about resource balance in an already cramped hospital.

Alternatively we just do boring glowie energy shields, like those around the big cannons, though those probably only keep the athmosphere in.

Limited maximum charge for that thing and you'll still have some coming through.

It would also give the Medibots something to carry. Unless it's the boring self-driving canisters for everything.