Diversifying the races

[Purpose2]

 

I'm almost certain if I made the PR for that I'd get shot down without much thought. It's just one of those things... Keep that in mind.

Ping me on Discord when you do, and I'll immediately jump on that to support you.

 

[davidchan]

I'll have to figure out my git pass but I'd be game for new mechanics and diversity.

[flimflamm]

 

The potential impact of the changes I'm about to suggest could be vast, but keep in mind any specific changes I propose will be hypothetical examples. The focus of my suggestion is a specific principle which I think is at core of how to increase diversity between races.

 

The most unique humanoid race is by far the IPC due to the way they take damage, they way they get repaired, and the way they get revived. Diona are a possibly distant second because of their healing and damage system. Every other race is basically just a slight variation of the same meat sack that requires defib, cloning, or SR, and mostly or completely standard medicines. These mechanics are by far what make IPC and Diona stand out as different than other races, and so where appropriate these mechancis should be modified as much as possible for other applicable races (with race physiology and balance in mind) in order to better achieve diversity. As as aside, also keep in mind that by altering the mechanic required for revival (defib, cloning, and SR), the other damage and healing mechanics can be balanced based on whether or not reviving is made easier or more difficult by a given change.

 

Human, Vulpkanin, Tajaran, Unathi, Vox, and perhaps Skrell & Grey are all familiar carbon based mammalian/lizard life not atypical of what we might find on earth. Plasmaman, Kidan, Slime people and Drask however are all drastically physiologically different than the other races, which means contextually there is a lot of room for believable and creative healing/damage/revival mechanics.

 

Using slime people as an example, they are fairly robust when compared with the other races, but being unclonable makes them more difficult to revive (hard to kill, hard to revive compared to IPC being easy to kill and easy to revive). If we did things like make synthflesh not work on them (given they are water) and replaced it with a different harder to get substance that does the same thing for slimes, then we could give slimes an additional and unique revival mechanic that makes them inherently easier to revive (such as removing their core and injecting it with plasma dust (note: this is how grey slimes are created from slime cores)). Alternatively if healing mechanics are altered such that slimes can heal more easily, like regenerating broken bones at the cost of hunger bar, then we could drop defibbing on slimes, or core transfers, or SR, or all three, and possibly replace them with an inherently more convoluted process of revival. Personally I am for tying bone regeneration to the hunger bar and an increase in the hunger cost: this will make slime people ravenously hungry all the time just as they are in their natural environment: the xenobiologist's cell. Additionally we could cross off all traditional brute and burn healing chemicals (save things like omnizine) from functioning on slimes and make them also use their hunger bar to heal brute and burn.

 

Other races I am not super familiar with in terms of capabilities and balance, but for Drask, putting them in a freezing temperature environment and defibbing them would be appropriate as a revival mechanic. For plasma people, eating plasma directly could act like a medicine of balancable strength, and in order to revive them some sort of fire or plasma related mechanic (like a phoenix?) could be contrived. Kidan are bugs, bugs lay eggs. Maybe they could have an ability to start gestating an egg (which could require them to fulfill certain conditions while gestating or have drawbacks like a need for consuming sugar, obesity, and or other things, and also take a very long period of time to complete, at which point they could lay an egg which roughly functions like an autocloner, rebirthing them into a new body if they should die (note the egg structure should be layed in a safe place lest it be destroyed). This could come at the cost of being unclonable and other nerfs, but something drastically different like this is exactly the sort of thing that would really make the races feel actually unique.

 

There is potential for damage/healing/revival changes for the other races too, I'm just not creative enough to pick out the really good ideas from the many possibilities that changing these mechanics opens up. Hopefully this direction proves useful or insightful even though actually balancing these sorts of changes could prove too challenging.

 

[Allfd]

 

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/6123

 

Test case PR opened, effects vision of Vulp and Taj.

 

Yes, it changes vision to earth standard for those species, we are limited in imagination. Also its easier to lower the amount of cones a species can see then increase them above human standards for OOC reasons.

 

 

It can be opted out with mechanical eyes.

 

[fludd12]

 

I hate to Thread Necromancer, but

 

shows off how I think races should be balanced. Not that it'll be an easy change, but this is a good explanation of what I was vying for when I said not everything needs to be balanced.