Streaky Haddock Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 (edited) This is less an 'overhaul' suggestion, and more stating how I've always been led to believe Machine People, or IPCs are supposed to function. This thread comes from whenever IPCs have cropped up in conversations with coders, who seem to believe that because Machine People are immune to a variety of damages and states that they are overpowered. Positive Gameplay Mechanics (Hard Balancing): * Not Targeted by Viruses, except Alien Parasites * Immune to Radiation and Genetic Defects * Immune to Oxygen, Clone and Toxin Damage * Does not have organs, blood or bones. * Easily healed. Welder for Brute Damage, Cables for Burn Damage heal instantly. * Never Die. When their total damage reaches -100%, all their limbs come off including their head. Their body become IMMUNE to further damage (so that if an IPC has been in a fire for the entire round, the Roboticist doesn't have to repair 9123% Burn Damage) and is alive. Bringing them back to life is simple, use surgery or ghetto surgery to re-attach the head and limbs, then heal them back to full health. * Have Trinary as a Unique Language. * Cannot be Absorbed by Changelings * Drain APCs to refill Nutrition. * Do not need welding protection when using a welding tool. * Do not process reagants. Because of this, their bodies are infinite capacity beakers. * Does not feel pain, so never enters a pain coma, does not stammer when hurt, or suffer pain effects. * Is not knocked down by Toxic Weapons. I'm thinking changeling paralysis/death stings and alien neurotoxin. Negative Gameplay Mechanics (Hard Balancing): * Suffer 150% Brute/Burn Damage - Which is a Massive Drawback. They die faster than other races in areas of extreme temperature or pressure (except possibly tajarans in high temp and unathi in low temp environments), suffer more damage when thrown around by pressure wind, suffer more damage in fire, suffer more damage when shot, beaten or shocked. * Have Robotic Limbs - Robotic Limbs have 2/3 resistance to brute/burn damage but this has no significant impact when combined with their 150% brute/burn damage weakness. Lasers have the potential to shoot off full health limbs. Being electrocuted, thrown about by pressure has the possibility to instantly remove limbs as well. So does being EMP'd. Being hit with Alien Neurotoxin has a 100% limb removal chance. Being hit with thrown unstable goo has a 100% limb removal chance. Also Robotic limbs when damaged and holding something drop the item and throw off sparks. Sparks ignite welding fuel and plasma. Just a thought. * Cannot repair themselves. This combined with 150% brute/burn damage and robotic limbs mean that they suffer more damage and are entirely dependant on the mercy of their fellow crew for repairs and reassembly. This is a big deal. * Is not immune to Changeling Silence Stings. * Suffer Damage when EMP'd. Singularity and EMP Grenades take away a third of maximum health at a time. Ninja and Wizard disable tech abilities are instant kills. * The fact they do not die is a drawback as well as a boon. IPCs show as alive on medical HUDs which mean that Doctors may easily overlook your body lying under a pile of clothing. If you are decapitated before going beneath 0 damage, you may show up on suit sensors as living, with above critical damage and any Doctors who check the crew monitorong console will not suspect you're actually dead. Once as Captain, I was instantly killed by a Ninja's Disable Tech ability in the conference room. The HoP, HoS, CE and RD had a meeting to determine what to do in the conference room whilst I was lying in a fully lit room under a pile of my own clothing. When they left, they were annoyed I hadn't attended the conference and was asking 'Where is B.U.P anyway?' * As they are immune to radiation and genetic defects, they cannot benefit from super-powers at all. IPC Genetics will have to seek a willing subject to practice on. They also cannot be scanned into cloners, and they have absolutely no structural enzymes to speak of. Positive Lore (Soft Balancing): * Larger Capacity for Creativity and Knowledge than most. * Remain conscious when deceased and does not suffer from clone memory disorder. * Are largely used as menial labour due to their stamina and low maintenance. Though they are seen as emotionless machines by Nanotrasen, this means that the corporation is not against seeing them in powerful assessment roles such as IA Agent, Magistrate and NT Representative. Negative Lore (Soft Balancing): * Are a Nanotrasen Slave Race. This means they are seldom seen in Command Positions unless promoted by the Crew. They are also not diplomatically represented. Officially, their ambassadorial representative is the Nanotrasen Representative, who has Nanotrasen's interests at heart. * Do not have any sort of breeding instinct. This means few IPCs can grasp the concept of love and affection. Though, depending on the programming of the IPC, they may be capable of empathy. * Have no Gender Dimorphism beyond tertiary sexual characteristics. The only reason Nanotrasen recognises an IPC's preferred gender is because it'd be too much effort to put in a 'Sexless' option into all the bureaucracy it is already mired in. * Is Cheap to repair and reassemble, and their Positronic Brain functions like a black box. This often means that IPCs often draw the 'short straw' when it comes to who's performing suicide missions. * EMPs can scramble the positronic's thought processes, incurring memory loss or confusion. * They can be much easily mind-wiped and reprogrammed than an Organic Mind can. Changes that will have to be made. (TL;DR, give me the changes) Not much, a lot of the pros and cons i've mentioned are things that are already in the game. * Remove Overheating. The coder behind this is not part of the Paradise Server, it was implemented a month ago and was never completed and restricts IPCs from playing a lot of jobs, and screws them in multiple game-modes. They cannot wear hardsuits, they cannot use space pods, they cannot turn on internal oxygen if they're in a mech. * Make Chest and Groin external organs impossible to remove. As it stands, when an IPC dies, it throws off ALL its external organs. Including the chest and groin. This makes limb and head reattachment impossible. IPCs also do not die correctly if they overheat to death, die from pressure or die in a fire. Their body remains completely intact, and their body dies making revival without admin intervention impossible. * Make IPCs immune to Clone Damage. When an IPC is drained by a slime, he is permanantly fucked. Slimes remain dangerous to IPCs without their energy draining because they have a powerful brute and shock ability, both of which Machine People are very weak to. I lose limbs to hostile slimes regularly. BUT LOOK STREAKY, LOOK AT ALL THOSE POSITIVE MECHANICS YOU HAVE. YOUR RACE IS OP AND WHAT DO YOU EXPECT FOR 15KP RACE? I accept, yes. Virus, Radiation, Clone and Suffocation Immunity are all very useful, and very handy immunities. However, they are also very situational. Viruses are not released every round, Radiation Storms do not happen every round, IPCs will rarely have call to suffer from clone damage (because they never get cloned!). As a Grey or Human, I do not encounter radiation, viruses or airloss on a regular basis. As an IPC I get battered and burnt every single shift. So their strengths are offset or, as you could say, quite well balanced by three really, really, really rather significant drawbacks. They take 150% damage from all brute and burn sources. Your suffocation immunity means nothing if you have no hardsuit, you still take brute damage. Their limbs are very easy to remove by a hostile target. A Changeling doesn't need a paralysis sting, because a suitably strong weapon is not hard to come by. Silence sting the IPC, and beat the shit out of it. Changelings should seldom need to deal with IPCs anyway, as they are not viable absorption targets. Because the head is a limb, it can be removed whilst an IPC is at say 0-50 points of brute damage. Because their bodies aren't supposed to die, they will show as 'alive' on the crew monitor, and 0-50 damage is not a suspicious amount of brute damage. An IPC corpse can potentially go undiscovered the entire shift, and death alarm implants in the chest will not be triggered. They suffer EMP damage. This means that Ninjas and Wizards, who have an incredibly powerful, ranged area of effect EMP ability can instantly kill them. This is not a change, this is something that happens right now. I find this fair. Edited August 1, 2014 by Guest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spaceship2212 Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 (edited) . Edited August 4, 2016 by Guest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeterrentDevice Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 I think the gameplay mechanic comments here are pretty much spot on and that overheating needs to be removed as soon as possible. As it is now IPC's are pretty much unplayable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eldrin-Kanthos Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 Very much this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scrat Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 I completely agree with these, especially seeing as how my favorite race is unplayable right now! However currently they take about 20% more damage from brute sources, and raising it to 50% more would probably mean that a mean look would make a Machine Person explode. Dont even get me started about bullets! IMO their brute weakness should be either kept as is (which makes you fragile but still decent) or nerfed about 5%. Though currently EMPs of any sort, whether from ninja, wiz, or grenade, kill you instantly and I believe it should stay this way since if you were close enough to such a hostile thing that wanted to kill you, you'd be long dead anyway. I agree about removing all traces of an SE. Despite their overheat frenzy whenever they wear more than a lab coat (a sec armor vest must be removed and replaced every 20 mins or the unit will overheat), MP can host as many damn powers as they want and since they dont take damage over time that organic ones do, meaning you can pump one full of every power in the book to no ill effect. As for the lore sections, all of what is mentioned is already written or heavy implied. Overall machine people are broken and unplayable but with some time and love they could be a truly unique experience. If there is an issue with abuse, you could always up the KP cost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eldrin-Kanthos Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 This was more of a statement of what is currently on them, with a suggestion to fix. The lore and extra damage is already that high. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scrat Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 Is it? Explains why you're forced to run away from any threat whatsoever or else itll kill you right off the bat.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eldrin-Kanthos Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 Tell me about it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
block1 Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 Overheating definitely needs to hit the bricks, it's completely ruined the race as a whole. It's pretty much unplayable right now if you want to be an IPC and do any decent work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eldrin-Kanthos Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 Still no word from coding? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VampyrBytes Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 I'll be looking at sorting out the IPC bugs Streaky put above. Busy this weekend though, so there won't be a fix till sometime next week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Midaychi Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 Still no word from coding? what coding? last I heard snapshot and zuh might be somewhat working on a synthetic overhaul that involves ipc as well as cyborgs, but that can easily change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Streaky Haddock Posted August 2, 2014 Author Share Posted August 2, 2014 That sounds nice, mida, but we don't know when that'll be completed and until then, Machine People are still horribly broken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VampyrBytes Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 * Remove Overheating. The coder behind this is not part of the Paradise Server, it was implemented a month ago and was never completed and restricts IPCs from playing a lot of jobs, and screws them in multiple game-modes. They cannot wear hardsuits, they cannot use space pods, they cannot turn on internal oxygen if they're in a mech. * Make Chest and Groin external organs impossible to remove. As it stands, when an IPC dies, it throws off ALL its external organs. Including the chest and groin. This makes limb and head reattachment impossible. IPCs also do not die correctly if they overheat to death, die from pressure or die in a fire. Their body remains completely intact, and their body dies making revival without admin intervention impossible. * Make IPCs immune to Clone Damage. When an IPC is drained by a slime, he is permanantly fucked. Slimes remain dangerous to IPCs without their energy draining because they have a powerful brute and shock ability, both of which Machine People are very weak to. I lose limbs to hostile slimes regularly. I couldn't sleep last night, so done, done, done and done Ponies has pulled it, so it'll all be up next time he patches. Enjoy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scrat Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 VICTORRRYYYY! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Streaky Haddock Posted August 3, 2014 Author Share Posted August 3, 2014 Thank you. Thank you so, so much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eldrin-Kanthos Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 Blessed be the omnissah! Shame I will be unable to play until Thursday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Streaky Haddock Posted August 5, 2014 Author Share Posted August 5, 2014 IPCs don't revive when their head is placed back on, they remained dead. They are also spaceproof. It seems that when overheating was removed, regular pressure damage wasn't readded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VampyrBytes Posted August 6, 2014 Share Posted August 6, 2014 IPCs don't revive when their head is placed back on, they remained dead. They are also spaceproof. It seems that when overheating was removed, regular pressure damage wasn't readded. K, I didn't realise their pressure sensitivity had been changed when the overheating was introduced Was the head reattachment working before my fix? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Streaky Haddock Posted August 6, 2014 Author Share Posted August 6, 2014 No it wasn't. Before, you couldn't reattach the head. You fixed it, and now Head Reattachment is possible. However, if the IPC's body dies, it doesn't matter if the head is reattached, because the IPC is still dead. Can you code it so that head reattachment for IPCs brings them back to life, regardless of their damage? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VampyrBytes Posted August 7, 2014 Share Posted August 7, 2014 Ok, should be sorted now. Let me know if there's any problems Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Streaky Haddock Posted August 7, 2014 Author Share Posted August 7, 2014 You saint. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DZD Posted August 7, 2014 Share Posted August 7, 2014 Something that I recently discovered is that Supermatter hallucination does not go away for IPC's, or just takes an INCREDIBLY long time to do so. Even though they are immune to the toxin damage, the hallucinations persist, meaning that you will regularly be stunned or even knocked out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fj45 Posted August 8, 2014 Share Posted August 8, 2014 Ha, thats pretty funny. Wonder it anything else does that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Streaky Haddock Posted August 17, 2014 Author Share Posted August 17, 2014 Head reattachment doesn't seem to revive IPCs. I had my head reattached, myself welded and reassembled and I remained dead. Maybe give IPCs a 'reboot' verb that checks to see if an IPC's head is reattached and that they are above -100% damage before reviving? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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