Makes Skrell more alien

[PhantasmicDream]

If you haven't noticed already the Skrell are my favourite race we have,  and thought it'd be fun to have a few more minor tweaks to them to make them a bit more different, but nothing too crazy.

Number one,  from what I remember back with the old virus system the Skrell had a bit more immunity to the random viruses that were let out on station, but I believed was changed and now viruses affect everyone the same.   I think it could be interesting to bring something like that back.

Number two,  it had been said that Skrell can't take meat into their diets,  because their bodies cant handle it that well maybe they take a bit of toxin damage or something a long the lines of that when they eat it

Number three,  making it so Skrell don't have a gag reflex,  so instead of throwing up they'll take more toxin damage.


Tell me your thoughts, maybe you have your own ideas!

[Malphystoh]

But if they can't eat meat based protein... erm... never mind

[PhantasmicDream]

[EldritchSigma]

I am all for more race diversity, and those changes would make sense after all. Except that gag reflex thing, that sounds lewder than it should.

Edited May 26, 2017 by EldritchSigma
2 Lewd. -Sigma

[Malphystoh]

I mean I'm all for it. Keep the toxin health kits handy... I mean.... I .. I need to leave this thread lol.

[Hylocereus]

4 hours ago, PhantasmicDream said:

Number three,  making it so Skrell don't have a gag reflex

Jokes aside these are actually good suggestions. I would really like to see more racial diversity so that races feel more like actual aliens rather than, y'know, humans with fur/tentacles. Much like Skrell being unable to eat meat, I think it'd be cool if Tajaran had something similar with vegetables providing no nutrition. Cats are obligate carnivores, after all!

[TheDemonic]

I've always wanted more diverse races and I think the immunity to viruses thing should be quite strong. viruses don't happen often and having a race that is very resistant to both catching it and the virus progressing would be awesome. it would give them a very big sense of presence when ether the station is dying from a virus or to traitors looking to spread a nasty virus around.

[PhantasmicDream]

27 minutes ago, Hylocereus said:

Jokes aside these are actually good suggestions. I would really like to see more racial diversity so that races feel more like actual aliens rather than, y'know, humans with fur/tentacles. Much like Skrell being unable to eat meat, I think it'd be cool if Tajaran had something similar with vegetables providing no nutrition. Cats are obligate carnivores, after all!

I never brought this up because I have a make skrell that is gay
cough cough cough

But yes, I find just little things added to different races could help them be a little more different. 

[Tayswift]

7 hours ago, PhantasmicDream said:

from what I remember back with the old virus system the Skrell had a bit more immunity to the random viruses that were let out on station, but I believed was changed and now viruses affect everyone the same.

Maybe Skrell would only be able to contract viruses through blood and not contact or air? Not sure if that would be considered overpowered by the player population, but not being able to eat meat and taking toxin damage instead of gagging sound like really great flavorful ways of "nerfing" them to compensate.

[Malphystoh]

3 hours ago, PhantasmicDream said:

I never brought this up because I have a make skrell that is gay
cough cough cough

But yes, I find just little things added to different races could help them be a little more different. 

<3 's

[FalseIncarnate]

As it stands, Skrell have DIET_HERB, meaning they cannot gain nutrition from protein. This doesn't prevent them from trying to eat it, just as nothing seems to stop my dogs from trying to eat grass when it simply makes them throw up, but they get no real benefit from doing so. I considered a number of approaches when I made the species diet system, including making them outright incapable of metabolizing the reagent (which was bad since they'd be able to literally fill their reagent capacity with protein over time and it would never deplete) and making them suffer toxins from "improper" dietary reagents. Ultimately, I decided that the toxin idea was also bad since it was punishing people for eating mixed reagent foods like stew (due to reagent inheritance from ingredients, this ends up with nutriment, plant matter, and protein in the same food item) and pretty much demanded that you eat only a handful of "safe" foods like jerky or raisins if you were a non-omnivore.

 

On the topic of you point regarding virus immunity, this is a tricky thing. Technically, under the old virus system, skrell were not inherently immune to disease as a racial feature. Instead, viruses would have a list of species they affected, which would be randomly determined when the virus is generated. A virologist, with enough samples and patience, could collect virus traits (or whatever you want to call them) for each of the virus-vulnerable races and splice together a virus that affects almost every race on the station. The random event viral outbreak would simply generate a random set of virus traits (with a couple blacklisted symptoms like gibbingtons, if memory serves) including which races were vulnerable to this. This means you could end up, due to RNG, with a virus that affected every vulnerable race except skrell, a virus that ONLY affected skrell, or some other combination of affected species simply BY CHANCE.  Our new virus system doesn't support racial virus targeting like that, so we'd have to either adjust it so they start resistant to certain pre-defined diseases or give them a sort of "racial resistance" which simply lowers the chance they contract a disease (but still could) when exposed to it.

 

As for the gag reflex... that just seems weird. Vomit on its own actually doesn't cure toxins. This is a misconception.