Merchants Simple Changes (Community meeting discussion)

[Travelling Merchant]

After being pinged in discord, I joined in the community meeting. I have suggestions, but I haven't played in awhile so some of these may not be for the best. That said, I hope some of this helps. These changes are designed to be simple, while improving game play. 

Xeno-biology change: Remove all natural slime breeding. Give Xeno-biologists a form of DNA sampler akin to the sampler used for the DNA vault. Make it take a decent amount of time to get a sample from people. Xeno-biologists must leave their room to acquire samples from crew. Samples are then used to breed slimes (or maybe other creatures too?). Crew get randomised DNA samples on spawn. Xeno-biologists get rumours akin to syndicate team mate rumours to find rare samples. An example would be something like "Super awesome sample possibly detected in a male Diona". Samples have limited uses, but can be harvested from the same players again. 

These changes force xeno-biology to leave the room, interact and roleplay with crew. You can even introduce a traitor item for a fake sampler that harms the target. 

Virology change: Make virology the go-to for all biological contamination. Introduce physical infestations onto the station, spawned randomly. These infestations aren't always dangerous, but can be. Think of it like a blob or fungus spreading. Virology must figure out how to combat it and act as infestation control. Sprays, hazmat suits, so on. This isn't the most thought out change, but its a direction. For the cases of sprays, this could force virology to speak to medical and maybe botany for specific items that lets them make these new infestation control sprays.

X- Ray vision changes:
If I remember correctly, X-ray just lets you see everything, correct? Well here's some possible changes: Upon standing still for X amount of seconds, everything in a cone of vision in front of you is revealed like normal X-ray. Any mobs being seen in this manner should get a message such as "Your skin feels warm" to signify radiation. Antag X-ray remains as it is, this change is just for augment and genetics X-ray.

Thermal: Thermal lets you see mobs through walls, but limits your actual vision range by a lot. Simple change, but good drawback. If needed more, put a filter over sprites so that it doesn't show the colours of whatever people are wearing, like actual thermal vision. 

Simple taser change: Tasers no longer knock down targets. Targets become massively slowed and can not release items from their hands. (Their hands seize up). Any firearms held when tased will automatically fire once. This means if someone using them is tased, but were aiming, they can still get a shot off. Tased targets can not turn for the duration of the shock. 

Digitigrade legs: Big issue with these is fitting them into human sprites. A few years ago, I did some pretty crappy test sprites of some Digitigrade legs that fit in standard body clothing. Here are two samples. One more angled, but with one pixel over humans, one that fits in perfectly.

 

 

 

Edited April 11, 2020 by Travelling Merchant