Bionic Installation Problem & Possible Solution

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

Currently there’s two sides to the whole bionics view: Nerf the fuck out of them, or make it so you can only install so many.

Here’s an alternative idea:

Don’t nerf them, but rather make them conflict with eachother.

For example, go ahead and install the toolkit and the water extraction unit, both use the palms in their operation. However whenever attempting to use either, give a chance for a malfunction. (Like one of the malfunctioning bionics, but a single-time effect)\

Have a set of flags that determine what area a bionic installs to (Excluding fingers because even with all the “finger” bionics installed, you still have one “human” finger and it’s unlikely to have all them, but possible to have a couple but they won’t conflict regardless.)

Something like conflict_
palm
skin
eyes

and so on, and so on.

The odds of bionics conflicting go up the more bionics you have installed that share confliction flags. With only one other bionic installed to a conflicting area the chance is low, the more conflicting bionics, the higher the chance of something going wrong.

On top of this, I’d like to suggest that besides the malfunctioning bionic effects, a SMALL (as in this is the least likely outcome) rather than using one bionic, you use the other one that’s conflicting.

I’d also like to suggest that non-power drawing passive bionics should be excluded from the ‘conflicting’ list to prevent ‘rolling for conflict’ every turn.

Lastly, downsides to bionics:
having skin made of metal in the winter or summer is gonna suck don’t you think? Let’s run with it, when cold a chance for ‘exposed’ bionics (toolset, fusion arm, etc) You have a chance of small pain, etc.

Thoughts?

Example:
Electromagnetic Pulse and Toolkit, both “install” to the palm. You attempt to use the heating element to cook you up some meat because why bother with spices and shit when you can just eat unseasoned meat every day for the rest of your life. Something goes wrong and your heating element malfunctions, causing pain and power loss. (Your hands get burned because the power ment for the EMP was sent to the Heating Element.)

“Something goes wrong with your Bionic Toolkit and your hurt yourself!”

2

Malfunction being a function of your electronics/DX/IN, etc (so basically you can get better at making sure you’re routing properly, over time and with practice), yeah, then it’d be a good way to dial back installing everything in the hands.

Adding similar infrastructure to mutations would permit the intra-body conflict which some folks seem to want.

3

I assume you mean bionic/mutation interaction and not mutations interacting with each other

4

I assume you mean bionic/mutation interaction and not mutations interacting with each other[/quote]

Indeed.

5

Instead of laboriously adding conflicting areas with each bionic, might suggest bionic slots and have the code decide which can conflict with which?

6

If it’s a small chance that can be mitigated with high skill levels, otherwise it’ll be maddeningly tedious and aggravating to spasm and collapse every time I try to repair part of my car. Also, if this is done then the bionics page should be updated to sort your bionics into locations so you can tell where any potential conflicts might arise at a glance.

7

I don’t like the idea of two bionics being permanently messed up like that, as being the bottom line, and I also don’t like the thermal conductivity of bionic parts being a factor. Several years in widespread use, they should be a little more immune to that sort of thing by design. And I don’t think bionics should deviate from being high-risk, high-reward like they’ve always been, because it provides an interesting avenue of progression for the player. I’d be rather discouraged from trying to be bionic if there was a hard limit on what I could do to upgrade myself.

I think that having the ability to uninstall bionics and reinstall them, with due chance for failure, and breaking the module, and all that good stuff should be the first priority before we worry about setting hard limits on what the player can do with it. But when we get to that point, I’d be more comfortable with conflicting modules, only if there was a chance for failure, based on your skill. A skilled technician should be able to fit more modules per body part, or at least have the chance to try.

This is where we can fit things into late-game content, by raising the bar as you slowly acquire more implants. You can have the toolset, and your barbeque lighter, and your massage wand and laser-based butt-scratcher, but you need to be some sort of machine god to be able to get it all to work in harmony. Before then, you can expect to be trying to remove and reinstall implants, and messing them up, and then breaking your modules unless you get lucky.

8

I don’t like the idea of restricting the player either, this was just something intended as a compromise. It’s also been suggested that with higher skill comes less frequent confliction malfunctions. while I didn’t come up with it, I like the sound of it and it seems skill based failure rates are something you approve of, I just don’t like the idea of artificially limiting the player which is why I approve of the conflicting installs over “You’ve got a torso bionic already, you can’t have another torso bionic.”

9

Im like bionic to be a bit more like mutations, the really power full mutations need a few less power full ones to unlock them.

Bionics should be the same with support bionics for higher level one.

I.E. Reinforced bones to better mount Hydraulic Muscles

10

Yeah, having a type of “slots” which bionics can use is definitely on the dev plans (and would provide a good start for having mutations and bionics interact with each other).

11

If mutations could be as amazing as bionics when you first get them.