Travelling Merchant

So recently a popular discussion on the forums and in the discord chat are Kidan. On paper, they seem cool. They have a rich lore with some cool brute resistance and scratchy punches. The downside is they bleed out from the slightest damage and they also cant wear glasses. You would think lots of people play them, right? Wrong. It's more common to see Plasma People walking around than it is to see a Kidan. I know of two regular Kidan players. One of them is myself. Their abilities don't fit their species well. The lack of any sort of glasses have been thoroughly discussed in the special Kidan glasses thread. The opinion is that for a big bad predator race who are excellent miners, its extremely weird that they cant do either mining or security. If you would like to read more about this part, check out that thread. Kidan really need a redesign to make them actually fun for people to play. First I started with overhauling the stick-insect sprites that they have now for these big armoured beasties. I re-drew them from the ground up to give us these. The eyes are also colour able for a small part of customisation. Support for the sprites so far have been positive, but sprites alone wont be enough. There is a reason that Kidan are never played. Kidan need something fun to actually have people play them. We played around with a lot of ideas for them last night. Here are just a few that could be considered: (Please note, that these are just completely separate ideas to be discussed.) 1: Kidan can't be slowed by movement impairing effects like certain shoes, being attacked, or pulling someone with the grab intent. This is a minor change that gives them some use. 2: Kidan can't be put into a soft crit condition. Soft critical condition is when you drift in and out of conciousness. Kidan, lore wise, are worker drones that throw themselves to their deaths to protect other Kidan nobles and their empresses. Being able to keep fighting in soft crit would suit them. 3: When taking damage, Kidan could release a pheromone as a genetic marker that other Kidan can smell when nearby, as smells are a massive part of their lore. One of their two naming systems normally includes a smell in their name. The pheromone does't say who got hurt or why, it just lets other Kidan know something happened there, should they stumble across it. For all they know, someone could have just been murdered, or perhaps just punched themselves. 4: Possibly my favourite idea that doesn't alter balance of the game in any way. Kidan have music being a large part of their culture. Kidan are also bugs, so what if they could play music by rubbing parts of their bodies together, a bit like crickets? It would work in the same way that guitars and other instruments do. 5: Kidan could be able to tell someone's intent using the worker drones low-physic powers. This could either pop up in the examine list, or as a square above someone's head. 6: Bring back their old armour, but make Kidan take twice as long to heal and possibly harder to fix in surgery in some way. 7: Kidan could let out a slightly louder scream than others, being heard slightly further away. These are just a few of the ideas we came up with last night. Please discuss these. Lets make Kidan actually fun to play and not just a karma waste.

As someone who just got a Kidan, I gotta say, they do suck. They suck hard. I love the Kidan lore and even drew up the new sprites for them, so why not overhaul them in general? Up the armoured ability but make them really, really slow and difficult to heal, perhaps? Or what about an ability to spit slippery or damaging acid? Think how cool that would be. They ARE bugs after all. Lots of bugs can spit stuff.

Not all Kidan have wings, but lore wise some are born with wings. Sometimes the wings are strong enough to let them fly, most of the time not though. Didn't know that was a thing, that could help!

I did play around with it and it on the non-winged Kidan. Since they are in reality, the same size sprite wise as humans, it shouldn't clip. But bare in mind, the original Kidan's head antenna clipped with almost every piece of head-ware already. Since these antenna are in the same location, this will not be different. I'm not sure if the winged kidan will clip or not. Front/back view wont clip, but the sideways views I worry the wings miiiiiiiight slip out the back. Actually, I did draw some horn/spikey bits on them to see how it looked, but didn't save it. It would be perfectly possible for me to draw some cosmetic customisations. Someone in discord suggested the "hair" part of a kidan is just the eyes, allowing us to change the eye colour using the hair colours button, which I know a lot of people want to do.

So I've spent the last month or so saving for a kidan. Got one tonight, its amazing. One thing puts me off them though: For a big armoured predator race, they shouldn't look like the slightest breeze would snap them in half! So I've spent the last hour or so drawing up new Kidan sprites to really show they are absolute badass bugs. I re-sprited the entire thing from the ground up to give you these chitinous beasties. There are two styles there, one with wings and one without. Here they are on a black background to contrast the wings for viewing. I've given them a more beetle like look, larger tougher plates and more distinction between flesh and bone.The exoskeleton has nice reflections of light on it. If these get added, I've left room for possible customisation too, which I'd love to make some styles for. EDIT: I know no coding, so if someone wants to add these, feel free to contact me on paradises discord chat or on here. I can send you the sprites.

Lord Sparkles is a noble clown, he had a privileged upbringing where he was able to eat all the bananas he ever wanted. After studying in clown college for five years, he got a job on the NSS Cyberaid. Lord Sparkles considers himself a higher tier of clown, not wanting to resort to too many bad puns and slipping people up as jokes. Instead, he tries to play to the situations going on during the shift to brighten peoples moods. He is particularly fond of self deprecating jokes, because who doesn't like to laugh at a clowns misfortune? Sparkles is also known to be a bit of a flirtatious clown, often flirting with literally anyone or anything, he doesn't often follow up on it though. A good flirt always brightens someone's shift! You can often see him wearing his noble clown robes or striding around in a fancy suit, his rainbow coloured hair bobbing as he walks. He can also tend to be a bit overly trusting of anyone. Because of it, he tends to keep medical busy after some not so savoury scientist gives him happy pills or quarantined for hugging a virus infected individual to make them feel better. The highlight of his career was making friends with a xenomorph queen in xenobiology, before jumping in disposals and getting maimed, impregnated and accidentaly letting the xenomorphs breed and over-run the station.

Update: Crazylemon should hopefully be working on this!

I think QM should get a pet. The QM seems to often do a lot more work than most other jobs on the station. He deserves it. Everyone else here seems to agree too.

Sounds like a plan! Damn that was fun before. And thanks everyone else! Happy to be here!

Used to play three years back, but only for a short while. I'm a friend of Tully, who introduced me to SS13 when we met on plantetside 2. I've recently returned to SS13 and become addicted. Sorta consuming my every thought right now. My main characters are Conner Shelley and Lord Sparkles. I hope to see you on shift and to have a wonderful time!

I was thinking about this the other day. If the Chickenbot gets added, one of those would be great for QM as a pet. Especially near disposals.

Here ya go. One of the normal chickenbots.

Here you go!

Made some walking sprites as well as a bonus syndiechicken Bonus penguin re-colour for Qinetix. Any other sprites I should make for this?

I thought so too, but its impossible to make them good when smaller. Too low detail.

Complete sprite set overlaid on the human ones for size reference.

After a long discussion in discord, we came up with two ideas. An normal one that has the job of eating pests and also eating leftever food waste and such, and a security one that does slightly higher brute damage and also "grabs" whoever its biting, stopping them from moving. (A quick resist can shake them off) Thats some quick sprites I drew up. Edit: Bonus spiky one

Not a bad idea. I think if you get emagged as one of these, you could become loyal to the syndicate member that did it, who can then order you to do things perhaps? That way, if they have the storage space rather than the grinder, you could steal stuff with them. Or syndicate users could order them to bite people to make a distraction, etc. These robots should definitely work as cute little pets that you can play with and feed and stuff when not tearing into flesh. Sort of like dogs. So being loyal would fit them well!

So I've been looking up all these different styles of robot concepts lately and come across some interestingly cute things called Mousers, from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Ratchet and clank also have robots that look very close to them. Here's a few examples of what they look like: Their entire purpose is to deal with out of control pests. Now, it being space, pests can be very, very troublesome indeed. Be it a mouse, a lizard, or xenomorph larva. These little robotic critters can snatch up and devour those tiny little pests. Wherever pests are, they can be sent to brutally deal with them bite by bite. Metallic chomps echoing down the halls. Perhaps these "Mouser" style robots (which need an awesome sounding name like "chompers") could also be able to enter vents. For balancing reasons, they should take a little bit longer amount of time to enter vents then most things. They could probably work for two types of other jobs. Portable disposal robots that shred/grind up anything they consume, or they could have a small storage space inside them for whatever they eat, which can be accessed by someone later on. (Perhaps certain not so savoury individuals could use them as a way to secretly steal items?) An example of a grinder like mouth for disposing of food, junk or useless stuff that I made inside Garrys Mod. Now these little robots could either be player controlled, or work like a Securitron. It would be much more fun to be player controlled for players after death. Perhaps someone with a job that disposes of a lot of junk could have a specifically named one at the start of the round as a pet. (Called something like Nom-Noms or some other cute sounding name!) Damage wise, they should be able to instantly devour small creatures like mice and lizards. Slightly larger beasts like Xenomorph Larva, Diona nymphs and borers should be robustable and take a little bit of time to kill/eat. Anything the size of a human it should still be able to damage, but not eat or generally kill. Another option is that they could do reasonable brute damage to human sized creatures, but be extremely weak and die very fast. If this turns out to be a good idea, I'd happily invest time in drawing sprites for them. Cant be too hard, touch wood. Edit: To add to this, they have no arms. They can pick up a single item in their mouth. If they have internal storage rather than a disposal grinder mouth, then they can consume the item to store inside of them Edit 2: Decided to call these Chickenbots!