[Alt Cults: Fire Cult]

 

Well, in general I think cults could use a bit more variety (different flavors/objects of worship, slight mechanical differences) but here's a specific idea: Fire Cult

 

Worshiping the Eternal Flame, dedicated to keeping it ever-burning and spreading its warmth through the ages. Mechanics wise, I'm thinking fire magic instead of blood magic. Perhaps making bonfires to cast spells, whether being just renamed runes created with a lighter and a wad of something flammable instead of a book, or casting spells by burning specific things. The most concrete ideas I had for this being killing people by burning them in effigy, and fire elementals instead of constructs.

 

We could probably swap a bunch of sprites and names easily, though they should be somewhat mechanically different than the standard cult.

 

[Sprite Request: Terror Spiders]

I might just take a crack at spriting those, as long as you don't need the sprites this week

[Species code questions]

 

So, tinkering around with stuff on a private server, I have a few questions

 

How do I get the species to show up in the chargen menu? I've gotten them into the game, as I can spawn them with admintools

 

How do I get the species to have hairstyles? It's just a copy of humans with some extra flags, still learning after all, but none of the human hairstyles are available.

 

Where is the codes for diet/reagents kept? Let's say I wanted a species to have a reaction to a particular reagent, or that they had to eat a particular reagent to get nutrition.

 

[Non-IPC Synth People?]

 

Yeah, I wouldn't want to replace IPCs. I think there are a number of different race ideas in mechanical/artificial creatures that could be exploited to add to diversity (since a common, though not always justified complaint is that the only new ideas people come up with are "why not [earth animal/bug]-people?") Another idea I'd had for a mechanical race are creatures made of nanobots, who instead of acting like grey goo, they form sapient colonies roughly the size of most intelligent creatures. They start out mimicking the people they meet, but eventually form a personality of their own based on a mish-mash of those. Gamewise, stuff like eating metal sheets to heal.

 

Anyways, as for Synths-Wot-Look-Like-Organics, mechanicswise, I'd just want them to be different enough from IPCs so as not to be "IPCs with Synthflesh" or "IPCs-Wot-Look-Like-Organics."

 

[Non-IPC Synth People?]

 

Ah that's right, you can't print torsos. And yeah, they'd probably be fixed using the same methods as IPC. Though I'm not sure about bringing them back to life just by bringing their brute/burn down low enough. Maybe they'd need a defib to jump-start them?

 

I suppose, also like IPCs, if gibbed they'd have to choose between going organic by having their posibrain put into a monkey body and cloned, or going into a borg chasis/AI monitor.

 

Or (though this is highly unlikely), we could have an alternative to cloning (similar to the botanist pod people) where a science and/or engineering prints out a synth designed to look like someone, then downloads their personality into it.

 

EDIT:

Also, looks like another sever has essentially this, with some differences in mechanics, so perhaps there is something to port: https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/13122

 

What version of the mechanics do you like more?

 

[Non-IPC Synth People?]

 

Finally back online after some major delays \o/

 

Anyways, I must confess I was thinking of the synths in Aliens when I thought of this idea, but it occurred to me that if people are making androids, they probably wouldn't build them to just resemble humans (and if there was a "kidnap an android" antag, that would make ruling people out pretty easy).

 

I didn't have it in mind as an antag thing, more crew can be replicants/synths rather than "There are robots that are disguised as crew members, they are antagonists."

 

Also, the cloning situation hadn't really occurred to me when I wrote the OP. Do you salvage a posibrain from their gibbed remains and turn them into an IPC?

 

[Non-IPC Synth People?]

Actually, I did have an idea for a blade-runner-like game mode where a number of antagonists try to identify the synthetic crewmembers and kidnap one of them. Though new gamemodes might be asking a bit much.

[Non-IPC Synth People?]

 

Well you could call them something else, like Simulants, or Replicants, or Doppers, or w/e. Though I think the "android" name for borgs is a misnomer, since most of the time borgs aren't designed to look remotely human.

 

I think androids designed to look like normal people could be fun for RP/diversity/gameplay reasons, though.

 

EDIT: Yeah, I know about Bishop. And there'd doubtless be bishop-alikes. But I think people would also be original with it, and there are other hyper-real androids to immitate anyway (blade runner, anyone?)

 

[Non-IPC Synth People?]

 

Yeah, I realize this might be a bit pie-in-the-sky, but bear with me

 

What if there was a checkbox in the character screen that, when enabled, made your character an android modeled to look like whatever race you have selected? Some races would be out of course (Plasmamen, IPC, Slimes), but the rest could be mimicked.

 

The androids would play differently from their organic counterparts, but wouldn't just be like IPCs with fleshsuits. I'm not sure about the breathing, but like organics, they'd be vulnerable to to temperature/pressure, and like other Synth's they'd be vulnerable to EMPs. They'd probably need to eat, too, I'm thinking recharging chemical fuel cells by drinking welder fuel/alcohol.

 

However, I think a major balance question comes from their anonymity. Androids who are not obvious as such may face accidental EMPs, or may be saved by enemies trying means against them intended for their organic counterparts. Should they share the protection of IPCs from shadowlings/changelings? If so, what's to prevent everyone picking android to avoid having to deal with such? Perhaps a medihud could out synthetic crew members (as the question of medical being confused by robotic lookalikes also arises)? Perhaps they could bleed some kind of synth blood or coolant that's a different color?

 

Perhaps they could be extremely vulnerable to emags, though that might be overcompensating. Or perhaps a traitor objective might be to identify and capture a synthetic crew member.