I had searched and searched for a new mud to play. I'm not new to MUDs, having played them for a long time (20+ years), but I was looking for something new. I'm a big Sci-Fi fan and went on the lookout for a Sci-Fi MUD. I wanted to fulfill these criteria: * Futuristic/Sci-Fi * Crafting * Adult * NON-RolePlay * Projectile based weapons, in addition to melee
I had stumbled across some really cool MUDS (MUSH's really) that had everything I was looking for, but they were Role-Play servers. Luckily I found CyberAssault, and I'm really glad I did. You can role-play if you want, there's some stuff to support that such as housing, but it's not necessary.
CyberAssault is small. There are usually 4-10 people playing at any time. The admins are really cool people, and very responsive to player feedback. The userbase is newbie friendly, questions will get answered if people aren't AFK.
The setting is future, post-apocolyptic, Mad-Max meets Shadowrun. There are simulations that you can enter to go to some different settings though, such as Doom, the Starship Enterprise, or Highland where Beavis and Butthead live. If you get sick of the future theme, jump in one of the SIMs and go clear that area. The admins have been really receptive to player suggestions. The MUD runs TBAMud, which is one of the most popular codebases right now, it's being actively developed and the version that CyberAssault runs is highly customized. I had asked about weapon attachments and within a week we were testing out some cool new red dot scopes for our guns. These will then be distributed into the world as blueprint drops.
Here are the features that CyberAssault has that were exactly what I was looking for:
* Theme: Futuristic/Sci-Fi/Shadowrun/Terminator - CHECK * Crafting: There are blueprints you can buy or get from mob drops. You can then prospect materials from different places that randomly pop up across the map. Some of these prospect claims you'll have to defend while your drill does the work. Do you have a lot of junk taking up bag space? You can donate it, but you can also salvage it and break it down into its base components. * Quests: Lots of quests. You'll run into a lot of NPCs that will give you quests, some are retrieval quests, others are goals like setting off M-80 firecrackers in different places to stick it to the man. You'll get currency, XP and also questpoints that you can spend on quest items. * Vehicles: There are myriad of different vehicles in the game, and the main advantage of a vehicle (beside it being neato keen to be riding a motorbike down the street) is that you can use it's GPS system to set different destinations. * Progression: The classes (Mercenary, Crazy, Stalker, Borg, Caller, Predator, Highlander) each break down into 2 remort classes where you can focus on either defense or offense, and then after reaching another level goal each of those breaks down further into more specialized roles. You can then keep remorting as you grow.
Here is just on example, showing the Stalker class: +---Terrorist +---Sniper-----| | +---Spy Stalker-----| | +---Striker +---Saboteur---| +---Assassin
Core class: Stalker Calling classes for Stalker: Sniper, Saboteur Focus Classes for Sniper: Terrorist, Spy Focus Classes for Saboteur: Striker, Assassin
* Areas: New areas are being added pretty frequently. The headbuilder is always on and they are running a contest for users to submit ideas for blueprints. * Bionics: You can replace part of your natural body with bionics, this comes at the cost of your humanity in the form of less PSI. Being a sci-fi mud, there is no mana, but instead your mental power resource is Psi, short for psionics. It's the fuel for your extra-sensory abilities (just like mana is for magic, psi is for psionics). * Weapons: There are melee weapons, there are even now some melee weapons that have souls. These weapons are able to be leveled by bathing them in the blood of your enemies. There are also a lot of projectile weapons, each with different types of ammo and then each ammo can be different within the same type. You can have incendiary bolts, or thermite bolts for your crossbow. Lasers, launchers, assault rifles and more, they're all here or collect all the pieces from drops and build a lightsaber. * Explosives: These are really really cool, I just got this skill and in learning it have blown my self apart a couple times. You can use grenades, mines, and C4 plastique explosives. You can use the C4 to blow open some doors and safes. I didn't have a key, so I just C4'd the door and - *boom* - I'm in.
* Misc cool stuff: Drugs, there are a bunch of different drugs that you can inject that will buff you up, but be careful, don't get addicted. Food will heal you a bit, and maybe give a buff, but you don't need to drink or eat, which is nice. I play on some other muds and always set up triggers for the hunger/thirst messages because they pop up so often. There are random events that take place, and also happyhours with double XP, or/and double gold/QPs.
Best thing for me is that it's not role-play enforced. Sure, you can role-play, maybe I'll even role-play with you, but you don't have to, and you can just shoot the breeze and have conversations about whatever on the regular gossip channels. Or use your radio and have a few friends tune into the same frequency and you guys and gals have your own radio chat.
The community is mature, very helpful and friendly. I highly recommend CyberAssault. I still login to some of the other MUDS I play to say hi but CA is a nice change of pace from the large MUDs, where there are wikis and speedwalks and everything is blogged and logged and been explored already. If you're looking for something new, and want to explore a world unlike any other then come to CyberAssault, cyberassault.org:11111 - come chillout, blow stuff up, and explore the world.
Post a comment