As of current experimental, bionics installation system suffers from some major peculiarities:
you can install all of your bionics at once
installation failure below 21% chance carries practically zero consequences (you just never install bionics when some pain or damage is highly undesirable)
installation failure of 21% and above immediately carries a chance of catastrophic consequences (that is, destruction of ALL previous bionics)
While technically the whole system can probably we redesigned, below I try to outline several suggestions that can be implemented by rearranging a few lines of code:
make some pain and damage (~35% of body part max HP for most bionics, ~10% torso HP for power storage) obligatory side-effects of CBM installation irregardless of success (prevents chain installation of gorillion bionics at once)
make some heavy irradiation lowest-tier bionics installation failure effect instead of damage/pain (makes sense thematically with CBM’s being all powered via plutonium-containing units)
move mutation to second tier of bionics installation failure effect
move faulty bionics to third tier of bionics installation failure effect
move damage to existing bionics to highest tier of bionics installation failure effect
maybe add extra damage to limbs (that can potentially break then outright) as some medium/high-tier effect
maybe allow effects from lower tiers be applied together with the highest tier rolled
In the end I hope this will allow for bionics to be worth the risk all the way up to highest tier of bionics installation failure effect instead of current system with practically a hard-cap at 20%. Plus it will make chain installation much less viable.
What if the “module” part of CBMs was like the “swappable” part of a swappable storage battery, where you could install some base bionic that would allow for somewhat easy interchange of compatible bionics similar to how the storage battery case works on vehicles. This base bionic would be the riskiest and most difficult to install and it could be the installation affected by your proposed change.
Having a “bionic case” implanted in a character would allow someone to make use of a diverse range of bionics without becoming a bionic god. This would also work well with the space restrictions that are not fully implemented yet.
Maybe, to aid the swapping of bionics, a player could make some sort of rig for vehicles or static bases that could also streamline the process of installation. Similar to how welding rigs are a more efficient way of controlled welding, while being way more difficult to build and install than just an all around makeshift welder. I imagine some sort medical station that has robotic arms for precision, one that is tailored for a certain use so it is not just a cheap way to bypass the first aid skill. And in this case it would be used to aid the installation, or removal, of bionics (maybe even just the swappable ones).
Now I don’t think that every bionic should be the swappable kind, for balance reasons and because some replace entire organ systems. I just think it would help to reduce the amount of installed bionics (at the same time) that play a very specific role in the game, one that is so specific that you will not use it for the entirety of your play-through until that one time you need it, in which case it becomes very important. Some examples could be: Electromagnetic Unit, Remote Controller, Infrared Vision, Enhanced Hearing, Railgun, Sound Dampeners, Weather Reader, and Terranian Sonar to name a few active ones.
[quote=“jacob.exe, post:2, topic:14425”]What if the “module” part of CBMs was like the “swappable” part of a swappable storage battery, where you could install some base bionic that would allow for somewhat easy interchange of compatible bionics similar to how the storage battery case works on vehicles. This base bionic would be the riskiest and most difficult to install and it could be the installation affected by your proposed change.
Having a “bionic case” implanted in a character would allow someone to make use of a diverse range of bionics without becoming a bionic god. This would also work well with the space restrictions that are not fully implemented yet.
Maybe, to aid the swapping of bionics, a player could make some sort of rig for vehicles or static bases that could also streamline the process of installation. Similar to how welding rigs are a more efficient way of controlled welding, while being way more difficult to build and install than just an all around makeshift welder. I imagine some sort medical station that has robotic arms for precision, one that is tailored for a certain use so it is not just a cheap way to bypass the first aid skill. And in this case it would be used to aid the installation, or removal, of bionics (maybe even just the swappable ones).
Now I don’t think that every bionic should be the swappable kind, for balance reasons and because some replace entire organ systems. I just think it would help to reduce the amount of installed bionics (at the same time) that play a very specific role in the game, one that is so specific that you will not use it for the entirety of your play-through until that one time you need it, in which case it becomes very important. Some examples could be: Electromagnetic Unit, Remote Controller, Infrared Vision, Enhanced Hearing, Railgun, Sound Dampeners, Weather Reader, and Terranian Sonar to name a few active ones.[/quote]
Interesting idea, but I was trying to propose changes that can be done with minimal alteration to the code (in the best-case scenario by simply changing order of some lines in the code).
Definitely something I want to happen, it’s a major surgery with extensive tissue damage for even the smallest CBM. It should require significant healing time, and come with noticeable debuffs, both pain related and not (even if you’re a masochist or have extreme pain-modifying traits, you can’t simply shug off major surgeries)
I’d say not all of them, but some for sure.
I’m tempted to simply remove the mutation thing if we overhaul this. It doesn’t have any viable mans of occurrence if we’re moving away from magic self-implanting nanobot whatevers toward physically implanted devices.
Both of these sound reasonable.
Possible, but that’s a pretty severe effect. Alternately, we could have some novel effects that are somewhere in between (though this does go against your self-imposed restriction of rearranging effects instead of adding new ones).
I’d like to apply the rest and see how it shakes out before trying this one. In particular we need to make sure we don’t end up with any outcomes where “some Tier 1 effect” + “some Tier 2 effect” = “instadeath”