Bionics (General balance and other issues)

Game Talk The Drawing Board
41

Not particularly, and if you read the OP that’s not what I intended.

I just want some actual depth to the mid-end game characters.

42

Yeah, and the original Cataclysm had bionics too. They didn’t require maintenance.

More generally, I guess others like to invest time and effort into their characters, and resent being randomly killed. As so I. IMO, only thing worse than putting in effort to develop a character and build a base is to have that effort shot to hell by a random roll.

[hr]

As for “depth”, well, I played GearHead and GearHead2. GH1 had soft-capped skill limits and allowed players to spend money for skill training. In practice, one character, played for long enough, could take practically every skill.

Because Temple of the Roguelike frowned on that, Joe Hewitt hard-capped skills when GH2 rolled around. Therefore, characters pretty much had to specialize from game start. If you wanted to take a flavor skill or give your character any life outside of mech-fighting, well, hope you picked the right one, because that’s all you’d have room for.

At the end of the day, I found GH1 far more rewarding than GH2, despite getting to the final boss in each. GH1 let me do things, experiment, and explore. When one aspect got boring I could switch to another–could even forget I had a skill, if desired. GH2 was a grindfest of the same shit constantly over and over and over, despite (if not due to) having the restrictions on what I could do and how my character could develop.

So in terms of “depth”: it’s what you make of it. If you don’t have an RP thread handy, mental-RP is better than nothing. Consider jotting down a character journal or notes or something?

43
character depth in a rougelike is GH2
Where in the OP did I say "I want grindy min-maxing"?
IMO, only thing worse than putting in effort to develop a character and build a base is to have that effort shot to hell by a random roll.
Where in the OP did I say "I want MORE yasd?"

Seriously. What the fuck are you guys projecting here.

Mutations, bionics, interact. Bionics nerfed. That’s it.

44

The random-death is a strawman, guys, no one suggested that.

Here’s the abridged discussion line for convenience:

[spoiler][quote=“GrizzlyAdamz, post:31, topic:3657”][quote=“infectedmochi, post:29, topic:3657”]Yes I figure that permanent damaged bionics that can’t be removed was harsh, still to somewhat even out with pure flesh, bionics should carry a different risk, my suggestion is once damage reach a certain threshold that bionic will cease to function and need replacement/repair. Ideally full bionic should still be better overall than full-flesh to reflect progressions in science.[/quote]
Yeah, bionics should be overall better, but only if it takes maintenance- mutations can accomplish close to the same results & require no additional equipment besides the mutagen & your body.
Bionics are targeted, modular, bleeding-edge effective but are both rare & costly to maintain.

Think rare/expensive replacement parts- (ie you can’t craft them- you have to rely on the RNG to repair damaged parts), & some kind of moderate hassle to maintain them- (bionics oil, craftable, have to administer it once a day to avoid wear/tear)[/quote][/spoiler]

So if you read that, infected kinda suggested permanent damage, (which was discussed and disagreed with), and also postulated that bionics should be overall better than mutations.
At that point I agreed, but suggested the caveat that they require maintenance & have rare parts.

Let me elaborate on that:
As far as rare parts, I mean that you would have to find these parts to repair damaged CBMs or cybernetic limbs.
—The obvious alternative—
Remove the damaged part and install a duplicate, or make due until you find one.
Keep in mind: this would only come into play if a CBM or other equipment becomes damaged/broken.

As for maintenance, I suggested a craftable recipe that you’d have to apply once a day or incur a small chance to damage your machine bits.

This is all to counterbalance having CBMs being more powerful, overall, than mutagens. Which is, itself, a suggestion that isn’t realized at the moment.

My attitude regarding CBMs & mutations is that they should each be a distinct branch of character development, but not be mutually exclusive. I and the OP differ on this, (I think), because my view favors the absolute freedom of the player to operate within reasonable bounds while the OP wants hard classes & whatnot. But I shouldn’t be talking for him.
Just wanted to make that clear.

Now that’s said, I’d like to point out this is all tangential to something else I’d really like to see happen: a volumetric rebalance of the CBM system.
Currently the PC can install everything they get their hands on, which doesn’t make sense when you’ve got internal storage, an internal furnace, an expanded digestive system and a whole host of utility CBMs & stacks upon stacks of storage units in one torso.

To fix this, two clear suggestions were made- the first being to limit them with a max number of CBMs per limb, and the second to limit them with a max volume per limb.
I advocate the latter, and would suggest ask, please reread the thread if you’re hazy on it.

45

I wouldn’t mind some limitations to the bionics system - but only if those limitations serve to make the system more fun by presenting interesting choices.

There’s been a noticeable trend in the game recently to add and change things simply because we can, and without bothering to think about the effects on gameplay. I see this as a serious issue, and some of the suggestions in this thread strike me as that sort of thing.

Others, however, could certainly add to the experience instead of detracting from it. Adding limitations on which bionics can be installed can actually be fun - if you also allowing the removal of bionics, or the installation of “hot swap connectors” that allow you to quickly and efficiently swap bionics but have less equipped at, suddenly you’ve introduced a lot of interesting choices:

Which bionics do I want to equip, knowing it will block me from taking these others?
Do I want to install this bionic, excluding another bionic, because it will synergize well with one I have yet to find?
Do I want to take the risk of swapping out this bionic for another, more useful bionic, knowing I might botch the install and suffer penalties or destroy one or both?
Do I want to allow for more adaptability in exchange for a loss in overall effectiveness at any given time?

These are good questions for a player to be asking - they involve making real choices, with real consequences, and are the essence of gameplay. A big part of this game is about preparing yourself to overcome challenges, and this provides more depth to that system.

The system right now doesn’t have a whole lot of choices - it’s mostly “Do I think I have enough skill to not botch this installation?”

When you start talking about just, say, requiring additional tools to install a CBM, stop and think - “How is this improving gameplay? What interesting choices is this going to offer? What value will this change add to the game?”

There might be an answer, but the simply act of stopping and asking the question will be valuable, and depending on the answer you may realize a slightly different implementation can better achieve the desired goal.

Granade runs me through this sort of thing with my code all the time - he forces me to justify my changes by giving an obvious benefit to including them. I think this is something that is vitally important to do with the gameplay changes as well, and is currently lacking in some respects, and it becomes even more important when touching on an area like bionics, which for many players is one of the most enjoyable parts of the game.

Anyway, continue with the conversation, I just wanted to drop this reminder - your suggestions should include WHY we would possibly want to make such a change in the game, and that’s something I feel the original post did to a certain extent, but many of the posts that follow are simply glossing over that area. If explaining why a change would be good for the game is not a significant portion of your post, you probably need to spend more thinking about the ramifications of your idea before presenting it. On the other hand, I would like to see significantly more arguments about ideas based on the justifications and merits thereof of by those opposed, and that’s what I’m going to do next.

Let us summarize the arguments presented in the original post, as well as I can understand them, and what criticisms I may have with them

Part 1
1.a. Surgery takes more time Reason So player can be surprised midway through
Criticism: I’m not sure why this is a good thing - or convinced it’s even true. Most players thoroughly secure an area before doing surgery anyway, and I’m not sure what advantage this offers to gameplay. I’m not opposed to it for any particular reason beyond the fact that I have not yet been convinced that it would add value.
1.b. Surgery consumes resources. Reason Forces choices about use of resources.
Criticism - While this is technically a justification, are these interesting choices? Aren’t the CBMs themselves already rare uses that would be consumed by using them? Some of the resources suggested aren’t even consumed, just additional requirements, and are significantly more common than the CBMs involved. What are the alternative uses to using these resources for CBMs, and how do they compare, and why is this decision actually meaningful?
1.c. Better bionics require end-game access Reason None given
Criticism: This one doesn’t have a justification that I can find, but I do know that I do NOT want Cataclysm to start enforcing a locked in linear progression, which is the only built in justification that comes with this. I’m not sure what the value is here, and the value should be obvious or well communicated before someone even considers adding it to the game.

Overall opinion: The justifications given here are quite weak. I don’t support any of the changes suggested. If I’ve misunderstood any of these suggestions or their justifications, please let me know.

Part 2.
2.a. Exclusive bionics Reason More diversity in end results
Criticism: I think this is a fairly solid initial justification. Diversity is often good. However, it’s also inherently limiting, and doesn’t suggest what would the actual benefits would be for the players experience. Many players want to eventually become powerful - Cataclysm in the end game is, to many, about the wish fulfillment of successfully conquering the apocalypse and being able to easily overcome the things that originally challenged them. This rather explicitly harms that outcome - the amount of harm it could do to the play experience for a large base of players is significant. It needs a stronger justification than simply “more diversity”. Luckily…
2.b. Exlusive bionics Reason 2 More hard choices for the player
Criticism: Unfortunately, hard choices are not necessarily valuable choices. This certainly allows for the possibility of a better game experience, since hard choices and diversity allow the creation of potentially powerful characters where the player feels they “earned” it by making the right choices, and that the character is uniquely theirs. But the risks are that the right choices might be too obvious, or not obvious enough. It should be clear to players that they are making a choice, and they should be able to weigh the costs and make what they believe to be an informed decision.

Overall opinion: I think this change is justified, but that whether it is a good thing or not for the game depends quite heavily on implementation. It is important that players are still capable of becoming possible, and it’s important to provide them with the information to make decisions between exclusive bionics meaningful (by providing sufficient information for an informed choice, and sufficient but different reasons to take one of the choices over the other and vice versa). The second is a bit less serious in this situation, since “Should I go with what I have or wait for something better?” means a balance of options is less important, but it’s still worthy of consideration, and the first is one any implementation will have to treat as a central component of the design if we want good results.

I’ll skip 3, since it has the same justifications and reasons, effectively, as two. As i2amroy mentions, I think consideration should be given not just to making them exclusionary but also allowing for synergies.

46

Yay we’re back on topic.

I should have spent a bit more time fleshing out the OP, sorry:

Let us summarize the arguments presented in the original post, as well as I can understand them, and what criticisms I may have with them
Part 1 1.a. Surgery takes more time Reason So player can be surprised midway through
Actually this is just because of how strange it is to me that you can *zip* *zip* your guts with no thought to it.

I’ve installed bionics while being followed by a hoarde simply because I didn’t have the room to carry it at the time. I suppose the battery expansions make sense for that if you already have a few, but it’s just strange all you have to do is collect a few books to use CBMs. It’s as casual as finding an M72 launcher and not killing yourself with the backblast.

I guess some people don’t want that in the game, but it seems to fit the game given the level-of-detail already in (or planned for) other systems.

1.b. Surgery consumes resources. Reason Forces choices about use of resources.
In lieu of above. I don't have a surgery room while traveling.
1.c. Better bionics require end-game access Reason None given I do NOT want Cataclysm to start enforcing a locked in linear progression
I thought this one was obvious.

I’ve been playing since Whales was still developing and:
-I have literally NEVER had to clear out a hospital.
-The only reason to go into labs is to collect misc resources.
-The only reason to go into army installations is to collect misc resources.

Plus it’s an excuse for more mid-late game encounters.

As for linear: No no no. TOP tier stuff.

Don’t tell me Probability Travel ISN’T the most overpowered thing ever. It’s already kinda rare, but not really when you just blast through a dozen labs and bunkers in a few days with DIY splosives. There’s multiple per map easy. Road Map->Dead Ends->cheap-ass splosives->more CBMs than I will ever need and multiple Probability Travel CBMs.

There has to be some kind of additional road-block in place that you can’t break the game that readily. A random Mini-Boss encounter at any under-used location like the Mine encounters at the least to access an auto-doc.

Part 2.
The hot-swapping CBMs for a "load-out" as you mentioned would be OK I guess. As long as there's the opportunity to actually make a "bad" decision rather than being an unstoppable terminator 24/7

There’s the issue of making X really an equally good choice as Y. Otherwise you end up with the swimming skill a la Deus Ex.

I'll skip 3, since it has the same justifications and reasons, effectively, as two. As i2amroy mentions, I think consideration should be given not just to making them exclusionary but also allowing for synergies.
While I think both CBM and Muties need nerfing in general, synergies is good for deeper character designs. Sounds great.
47

Don’t get me wrong, this is one of the better suggestions, detail-wise, I’ve seen. The fact that it let me achieve that level of criticism is a good sign. :wink:

As for the weirdness of being able to install them on the go, I honestly always saw them as some sort of complex device that you literally just shove into yourself and it goes to work in a short but intensely painful process, and the image has always made me happy. Especially the image for the bionic blaster, which lops off your hand in the process. (I would really, really love installing this to make a loud whirring and ripping sound, and then create a “hand” item that counts as human flesh).

If the goal is to stop mid-combat installs, more time would work - but similar to the above, I find the idea of “oh god I need to shove this machine into myself to live through this terrible situation” appealing.

Perhaps there could simply be a reduction in risk for better preparation and conditions and a willingness to take more time with the installation. Provide options: “(a) Take your time and install carefully. (b) Use additional resources to aid in the installation. (b) Just jam in it already!”

If this happened, I would also like to see a sort of “delayed” risk - you install the part, but not correctly - still, it helps you out of your current predicament before failing in a hilarious manner.

There has to be some kind of additional road-block in place that you can't break the game that readily
But if you've gotten a butload of top-tier CBMs, it's unlikely the hospital will be much of a challenge. Is the goal merely to provide incentive for them to visit a location they wouldn't otherwise find beneficial to visit?
48
Perhaps there could simply be a reduction in risk for better preparation and conditions and a willingness to take more time with the installation. Provide options: "(a) Take your time and install carefully. (b) Use additional resources to aid in the installation. (b) Just jam in it already!" If this happened, I would also like to see a sort of "delayed" risk - you install the part, but not correctly - still, it helps you out of your current predicament before failing in a hilarious manner.
Yes! This is a decent. I would be happy with just this even though it is simple. That should be implemented regardless of the following: I do think though that CBM-surgery related consumables at clinics and hospitals would give those more of a reason to exist, seeing as you have a cornucopia of drugs and medical aid just clearing the first dozen houses in suburbia, and it would give you more of a reason to travel and secure other clinics etc if you've only the supplies to install a few CBMs per clinic.

What I pictured being that I might have a half a dozen power storage CBMs, a power supply, and maybe a couple of utilitarian CBMs raiding a single town, but until we hit the installation limit (if and however that may be implemented) there’s a supply limitation on what I can install so I’m not just sitting on my ass reading skill-books all day in a secure town for a week or more straight. That’s one particular long, dull segment of the game that really needs to be broken up.

But if you've gotten a butload of top-tier CBMs, it's unlikely the hospital will be much of a challenge. Is the goal merely to provide incentive for them to visit a location they wouldn't otherwise find beneficial to visit?
Hospital is a bit of a challenge if you can't install said top-tier CBM's without said Hospital. A small load of semi-useful low-tier CBMs can be had from so much as clearing a town which may not be particularly game changing for clearing a Hospital either. So, partly giving things more of a reason to exist. I should think even Clinics would have accommodations for cyborg patients. Specifically non-military CBM stuff actually. Construction related CBMs, low-level utilities and power.

Crazier experimental, military, and quasi-legal stuff should be auto-doc behind some kind of encounter. Then, partly because I think the game is lacking in semi-structured mini-boss style encounters. A room with metal doors (science ID card lock? Always have a huge surplus of those), and inside, crazed surgery robots around the auto-doc?

Right now the only real challenge encounters are for guaranteed artifacts (which aren’t usually that worthwhile) or a possible random pile of CBMs (Which you can get more faster elsewhere). Actually, speaking of which, I’ll get around to a topic on expanding challenge encounters and mid-late game threats in general eventually.

49
Granade runs me through this sort of thing with my code all the time - he forces me to justify my changes by giving an obvious benefit to including them. I think this is something that is vitally important to do with the gameplay changes as well, and is currently lacking in some respects, and it becomes even more important when touching on an area like bionics, which for many players is one of the most enjoyable parts of the game.
That's the only sensible thing to it in my opinion, and wrong choices can be a headache with programming. After you've looped the wrong decision twice or thrice, and even more with subtle mechanix like the bionics here, the change begins to malform into a sentience that lacks any vital improvement.
If the goal is to stop mid-combat installs, more time would work - but similar to the above, I find the idea of "oh god I need to shove this machine into myself to live through this terrible situation" appealing.
That's the thing, you're supposed to have a sterile enviroment for a trivial surgery procedure, and that's everything to it. On the other end, bionic installations can go rogue and have a certain portion of side effects. It's only fair to know the probability counts, gamewise. But there are more and more difficult procedures, and so the [i]What Can Go Wrongs[/i] : -Body goes to shock, but recovers from it; sophisticated gear is thoroughly functional, however, -Body goes to shock, but recovers from it; the multi-bionic or similar draws more power to function, as a fact, -Body goes to shock, but recovers from it; the gear is damaged and won't function properly most of the time, -Body goes to shock, and recovers with a condition; the damaged gear isn't consequentionally operational and causes pain, -Body goes to shock, and recovers with a condition; the malfunctioning implant is unreliable, messes with Storage CBMs and others, -Body goes to shock, and recovers with a condition; the installation is further hampering to the body if there's enough power, -Bodily functions are compromised; the multi-bionic or similar degrades health on a delayed basis, causes pain, -Bodily functions are compromised; a steady decay to bodypart health with side effects, pain and ceasures -Bodily functions are compromised; frequent ceasures and bodypart immobility, requires proactive medical attention and correction. *

  • could imply that the player character has to obtain access to a Lab or Hospital facility of a specific nature (“CBM ward”)
    Note also I haven’t stated the obvious and the current negative effects CBMs have, I assume they’re obligatory in such cases.

50

What about separating the bionic installer from the component? Make CBM into a container for a raw bionic. You would sometimes find bionics loaded in CBMs (as now), but often find them unloaded (butchered from shockers). That would mean you’d need to find an empty CBM to put them in or unload a different CBM.

That would give meaningful choices (install this bionic or that) without imposing arbitrary caps or forcing people to deal with additional hassle if they didn’t want to. It could also reuse the current container code, so it’s be more practical to implement.

You could take the idea further by allowing a surgeon’s kit to install (additional risk/time/damage, but no CBM needed) and giving hospitals CBMv2s which would improve your odds and be the only non-risky way to install advanced bionics (lab finale might have 1 CBMv2 and several unloaded advanced bionics, so you’d have to pick one until you loot a hospital). Unloading and reloading a used CBM might be risky and require electronics checks, giving you an incentive to look for new empty CBMs in doctor’s offices. Or you could have an autodoc as suggested earlier. But I think the existing system works well for many, so I’d like to see addition rather than subtraction.

51

One idea to hold back on being a superhuman cyborg as soon as you find a handful of CBMs but still allow the player to put the time into become one would be to have a starting CBM cap (excluding power sources), and allow the player to raid military bases or science labs for items that allow them to increase their cap. It could be explained as something like the body only naturally accepting so much modification before it starts to reject new modules, but with special “CBM anti-rejection modules” that you install alongside the extra CBMs, you can prevent the rejection. Instead of being a hard cap, it can be a soft cap, and CBMs past the cap have a much higher chance of malfunctioning without a module.

52

I like this if the fair devs decide to go with a ‘number’ cap for cbms.

btw, /necro

53

Recently I’ve been thinking, how about adding accessories to power armour that function like CBMs? Have something like a cranial flashlight or an air filter accessory added to the power armour and when you wear the armour, you gain the benefits as if you had those CBMs installed. Downside is you’d have to be wearing and powering the power armour for the effect, upside is because they’re meant to be easily plugged in and installed you don’t need much in the way of electronics or first aid skill, and no chance of permanently damaging your body. Maybe there could be a way to convert them to/from CBMs as needed.

54

Posting in this thread since much of this old discussion is still relevant.

How about prerequisites for certain CBMs?

For instance, how, exactly, does uncanny dodge suddenly make me better able to dodge darts and bullets? It seems like a reasonable prerequisite would be to have Wired Reflexes installed first, and also possibly Diamond Cornea. Once my nervous system is enhanced with the passive bionic, the active bionic (uncanny dodge) can now make use of that infrastructure to make my body react even faster. (Diamond Cornea might be a prerequisite because enhanced perception might be required to notice exactly when a bullet is being fired/seeing the bullet flying at you) Similarly, Hydraulic Muscles should require Muscle Augmentation first. (The name and description for Hydraulic Muscles should be changed too make the dependency make sense).

It strikes me as a good way to balance some of the more powerful CBMs that are available.

55

Most CBM’s should come with installation kits. Make CBM’s themselves smaller and lighter but if they come with a kit they should be bigger.

Do you want a finger mounted laser? Here put your hand in this box. Cranial flashlight? Put on this helmet and don’t blink.

Of course in order to use these devices successfully you will need adequate understanding of biology, electronics and mechanics.

After a successful/failed install you would have a spent CBM installation kit that you could throw away, use to craft some simple CBM’s yourself or maybe you will find a CBM that you can put in the kit for installation.

The kits themselves should be different depending on what part of the body the installation takes place. Some rare or full body CBM’s would require surgical machines found in labs or hospitals.

I also like the idea that each body part has certain volume for CMB’s. Successful CBM removal surgeries should also give back your CBM so a survivor could change his/her bionics.

56

I really, REALLY don’t want there to be forced changes to Bionics. It’d be like forcing one of the intelligence-skill-deprecation options, especially to one of the higher settings which were mega-broken a while back.

There’d inevitably be aspergian min-maxing before long if it was invented, and although I could understand more time being needed for implants, especially based on difficulty, but in order for a decent build there’d be mandatory restrictions from the beginning, especially if you couldn’t remove bionics, and obviously with the clusterfuck of how stuff could interact, you’d have to spoil yourself to figure out a decent build, and have to discard useful bionics because X impairs Y, for some stupid reason.

Edit: I also forgot, part of the reason I like bionics is because I HATE being human. If you get choices in bionics being hard as hell, why can’t I go straight robot? Screw being human, I want to be a shambling robotic abomination where I have to carry radioactive rubble and water to power my breeder reactor turbine, or I’ll start using batteries and run out of power and halt. I should have that choice. If being bionic is supposed to be “realistic” I definitely think being a straight robot should be an option (caveat of brain container because science fiction blah blah magic humans)

57

So, first post here being a suggestion makes me feel like a bit of a dick, but what the heck.

Disclaimer: I haven’t read this thread in its entirety, so if anyone’s already suggested this just ignore it.

I would think it makes sense for bionics to be installed as they are now, but you would require some groundwork to be done first. Now, this groundwork would need to be of varying complexity depending on what you want to install. For purely passive bionics such as the ally plating or the integrated tool set you would only need a basic bionics container, basically preparing your relevant body part for implantation.

I think that no bionics groundwork should be possible to self-administer without machine help (or possibly NPC help in the mists of the future). The basic container groundwork could be performed by a fairly simple machine/robot found in hospitals, doctors offices, pharmacies and perhaps even more widespread places, like shopping malls and large offices perhaps. There could maybe even be a portable unit for this. I envision that the machine would target one body part of your choosing to install a container. Any given body part could then take a certain number of containers or slots, depending on its size, so that the torso could contain more slots than one of the hands. This potential slot amount could also possibly be reduced by certain mutations, but that’s for the future. A certain bionic would then take a certain amount of slots. E.g. the tool set would take one entire hand and the fusion blaster arm would take an entire hand and an entire arm while the blood filter would take one torso slot.

For bionics that need power you would need a central power routing system. This would be a one-time thing that could only be installed by slightly more complex machines, maybe restricted to hospitals, pharmacies and doctor’s offices.

The next step would be neurally activated bionics such as the blood filter or the alarm system. These would need a spinal neural interface, something that can only be done by fairly complicated machines, maybe restricted to the ones in hospitals. This category would include bionics that can’t reasonably be assumed to be possible to activate through some external button or specific normal muscle use.

Finally the offensive, experimental or otherwise military bionics would need a military grade neural interface/power routing system. These would only be installable in labs or high-security military installations. These bionics would be things like chain lightning, artificial night or teleporter.

The machines themselves could then use batteries as power and possibly need resources for the procedure, based on balancing. I’m thinking success should be guaranteed with the machines, having to endure random chance after actually finding one of them is a bit much, I think. Random injury with the CBM installation itself could still be there, I suppose, but with an underlying framework with built-in limitations I don’t really see the need.

Since it’s getting late I won’t go into detail about how I imagine the underlying code could be laid out (I have some minor experience with coding, but almost none with any C language), but I might expand on this if the idea is not completely shot down.

58

Fairly sure your first post was wasted on a semi-dead topic, Silfurdreki.

59

Well, if it doesn’t garner any attention here in a couple of days on the front page, I’ll just repost it as a new topic.

60

How is the topic “semi-dead”, dope? Now you’re encouraging multiple threads on the same topic.