A mess of ideas I'm planning to put into a Cataclysm++ style megamod

[harison86]

Feedback and even more ideas appreciated.

• New mutations:
  Dense Bones - cancels Light/Hollow bones; increases bash defense, carry weight, and strength; part of Chimera and Cattle categories
  Weak Genetics - cancels Robust Genetics; has no effect itself other than cancelling Robust Genetics but is unpurifiable; part of Chimera, Alpha, and Medical categories

• Transport crates: Craftable items similar to pet carriers, simply used to transport hacked medium-sized robots.

• More equipment:
  Kanabo - high tier bashing weapon, recipe found in The Swords of the Samurai
  Tabard - primarily cosmetic, to complete that crusader look
  Plague doctor mask - functionally identical to the survivor mask
  Skull gas mask - functionally identical to the survivor mask
  Self-defense (telescoping) umbrella - like the existing umbrellas, but made of steel, durable in melee, and has much better weapon stats
  Polehammer - high tier bashing weapon, has reach
  Scrap helmet - goes with the scrap suit
  Superalloy scrap suit/helmet - similar to the normal scrap suit/helm, but made of superalloy and therefore lighter

• More mutation categories and mutagen:
  Gryphon - cross of Beast and Bird
  Dryad - weaker form of Elf-A; has Antlers and Animal Empathy; does not have Hollow Bones
  Nether - has a mix of traits suggestive of different Nether creatures present in-game
  Phoenix - Bird with Regeneration, Minor Radioactivity, Radiogenic, Reptilian Healing; and without Hummingbird Beak or Woodpecker Beak

• More mutant clothing:
  XL cleansuit, XL plate armor, XL O-yoroi, XL versions of all survivor armors

• Reduce coverage of all survivor armors to 97%

• More survivor armors (using the normal survivor armor as a base unless otherwise stated):
  Superalloy - replaces the steel in heavy survivor armor with superalloy
  Cooled - disassembling power armor now also produces a ‘cooling unit’, which can be integrated into a custom suit with enough skill, and then powered by UPS to reduce warmth of the suit to 0
  Faraday - run a copper wire mesh through the suit, increasing encumbrance by 10 but providing immunity to electrical discharge
  Decorated - decorate with gold, silver, diamond, and any other valuable materials; makes the armor fancy, does not compromise defense

• Handbooks - books crafted by the player, recipes found in Principles of Effective Communication, five books for every 2 levels in a skill, not useful for self-teaching but has a low read time for teaching NPCs

• Underwater content (appropriate mutations or diving gear highly recommended for exploration):
  Underwater temples - similar to aboveground temples, contains traps and artifacts
  Flooded labs - similar to normal labs, likely to contain hydrogen canisters as extra incentive
  Sunken wreck - similar to normal shipwrecks, but flooded

• Endgame content:
  Greater triffid grove - multi-tile triffid dungeon
  Infested labs - in ruins, overrun with strong nether creatures; likely to contain plutonium, advanced mutagen recipes, and high end sci-fi loot as incentive
  Dermatik hive - located in swamps, similar to beehive, contains a queen
  Mi-go outpost - a simple interdimensional outpost from the mi-go’s perspective, a veritable stronghold brimming with loot from the survivor’s perspective

Crap, I didn’t mean to post yet. And I’m not even sure if this should be in the Lab or the Drawing Board. Oh well.

[Dante]

It so far sounds interesting. Would Weak Genetics replace Robust Genetics in the Medical line? And how would someone get Nether mutations? It seems like maybe having just regular mutagen/syringes for it would be out of place slightly.

I’m also interested in any more traits/mutations you come up with, as I find adding more to be interesting.

[mlangsdorf]

Please work on the XL survivor suits and and the underwater content first. It’s frustrating to spend time and effort to craft survivor swim gear and then have no reason to use it.

[harison86]

I was going to have Weak Genetics be in the Medical and Alpha lines at the same time as Robust Genetics. Contradictory mutations in the same category isn’t new, as Feline already contains both Pretty and Ugly.
Nether - that’s a fair point, and now I think I’ve got some vague idea. It could be achieved through tech found in mi-go outposts.

[harison86]

Will do, I needed a starting point anyway.

[Solusphere]

Sooo…why the weak mutation thing? The mutation categories that don’t have it are simply not worth using except for thematic reasons, and the ones that do have it have the downside of having rare recipes and being extremely time consuming and expensive to make. I really didn’t feel like the mutations needed a nerf. Especially one that permanently wastes points spent at character creation.

[harison86]

Because, as you said, the other mutation categories simply aren’t worth using. Alpha, Medical, and Chimera overshadow everything else in spite of their rarity and cost. I would honestly prefer to buff other mutation categories, but there isn’t a whole lot to do making new mutations with just json editing, other than straight stat buffs. If people are strongly opposed to Weak Genetics, I won’t put it in the mod.

And, it wasn’t my intention for Weak Genetics to be permanent. It would also be cancelled by Robust Genetics.

[Solusphere]

To amend my previous statement, I would say that Elf-A is also potentially a very powerful and viable tree, but it requires the aid of two rather rare CBMs in order to be so: The repair nanobots and the radiation scrubber. Once you’ve got those, Elfa becomes godlike.

Getting back to Weak Genetics though, Robust genetics is almost always gained at character creation. IIRC the only mutation categories that actually provide it are the Slime (which really, really needs it due to Genetic Chaos) and Medical. And if anything, weak genetics as it stands here even more strongly pushes for the Alpha mutation tree, as it has no serious negatives to choose from. It just mostly screws you over if you try a different mutation tree afterward.

I don’t feel like it really adds anything, personally. If you really want to make the other mutation trees more viable in comparison, in my opinion the best way would be to simply add more and better options for XL clothing, which it looks like you already have planned anyway. That levels the field enormously.

I do love the idea of pretty much everything else you mentioned, so I’ll be keeping an eye out here either way.

[druidniam]

Dense Bones shouln’t increase carry weight since your mucles are actually what does the work. If it’s modifiable it should instead reduce the pain effect from over encumbering loads since the denser bones would be under less stress of breaking. In addition to bash damage reduction, it should also increase bash damage as the primary method professiinal fighters build up tolerance is repeated microfractures that heal into a denser bone mass.

[psyxypher]

There is actually a case of a family who actually has a mutation on the 11th chromosome that makes their bones denser (about 8 times as much, as I remember correctly). One member got in a car accident, didn’t walk out with a single broken bone.

However, there is clear disadvantage to this mutation; they had a really hard time swimming. They sunk like rocks. That’s something that DDA never really goes into; all the extra weight these mutations and bionics are giving you.

https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/24344/title/The-world-s-densest-bones/

[harison86]

I was going off of the effects of the pre-existing Light and Hollow Bones mutations, which affect carry weight. However, it doesn’t appear that the effects of these mutations are actually jsonized. So what I’ll probably do instead is add the Strong Back trait to the Cattle and Beast lines ('cuz beast of burden), and Dense Bones will still be added to cancel Light/Hollow Bones, increase bash defense, and increase strength.

[psyxypher]

PK’s Rebalance adds Strong Back to Cattle, Trog, and Insect.

I don’t think Beast should get Strong Back. When I think of the Beast Mutation line, I think a generic mix of animals in the Order Carnivora, which is why the line is so combat based.

[harison86]

Oh. I’ve never used PK’s Rebalance, so alas I wouldn’t know. I probably should do a full playthrough with it at least once.

You’re probably right with the Beast thing, either way I won’t be doing anything balance-y until I get all of the content additions out of the way first.

[proxiehunter]

Speaking of the Trog mutation line, something it probably needs is claws or fangs (or both) on the mutation tree. The mutation tree has Venomous in it but it has no way to deliver the venom without dipping into other lines.

[druidniam]

You might also consider looking at pk’s and cata++ as a singular mod and see what you feel is missing or needs changing. The two mods do not conflict with each other and many players use both at the same time.

[psyxypher]

Too bad there’s only a limited amount of Overmap Specials the game can have, or I’d be using both at once. But because I have Urban Development, I can’t even get anything from PK’s mod to appear on the map, and when I used Cata++ I couldn’t find any Science Labs.

[druidniam]

I think that was fixed. I’m running pk, cata++, more buildings, more locations and urban development and i havent gotten the 72 limit warning since around build 6800~. @kevin.granade can tell us if he upped the numbers or if its a bug i’m not getting the error, but everything seems to be spawning ok.

[psyxypher]

Well, that’s really weird because I’m still getting it, and have been getting it since I installed PK’s Rebalance.

[pisskop]

urban development demands that each of its structure spawn at least once