Can you make professions that start with mutations?

Game Talk The Lab
1

As the topic said. I was curious if you can make professions that start with a selection of mutations much in the same way you can with installed bionics.

Also another question because its been a long stretch of time from now and the last time I seriously got into Cataclysm. Can you also give characters a random selection of biotics or mutations? Kind of like how there used to be a perk that gave you as much. Wanted to have like. 1 point: Lab Guinea Pig that comes with say, three random mutations.

2

Been suggested a lot of times, don’t think it’s done yet.

3

it’s technically possible, but #1 doesn’t fit with game lore (mutations didn’t start until the cataclysm happened) and #2 is bad game design (encourages startscumming).

4

Hey kev, do you think it might be acceptable to do a profession with set mutations (both positive and negative) provided they do the maths to take the following into account?

[ol][li]Mutations chosen provide small advantages with significant trade offs (much like the medical cybernetic starter whose muscles and metabolism are as much weakness as strength)[/li]
[li]Mutations chosen either heavily skew towards a dangerous / weak category, or lean towards conflicting categories whose mutations fight each other, or are carefully balanced over many categories, depending on which is deemed most appropriate [/li]
[li]Mutations chosen are carefully screened to ensure character creation traits can’t significantly alter the above[/li]
[li]The cost of the profession takes into account potential time saved against threshold and is playtested to ensure it does not interfere with game balance or just as important, weaken any particular aspect of the game (making the search for armor or food less pressing for instance) [/li][/ol]

5

A Lab Guinea Pig profession (or some similar name) has been suggested and you didn’t say anything about it not matching lore, Kevin.

6

That said it still might be worthwhile to add the capabilities for modding reasons eventually, regardless of if they are included in any actual professions or not.

7

Because then they would have to code you starting at a lab.

8

I want it. Would make character creation so much more fun and interesting.

9

Could easily be fixed to “Escaped Lab Rat” for why they start at the evac center. Fled from a lab. Found shelter. Proceed to find pants.

Basically. I wanted to go with Professions with a few starting(positive and negative) mutations down a particular path. Like say, you want your character to definitely be some weird cat person and want to make sure your mutations are a little less random. Or maybe you just want a particular theme. Like say the ‘professions’:

Feline Abberation - 3 Points

You where human, once. But after the great cataclysm when everything hit the fan things began to change. In the onset of eldritch and scientific phenomena you have somehow mutated into a cat-like human creature. Your skin has grown a sleek layer of fur, your face now takes the form of a whisker-adorned snout and your ears stand up long and pointy atop your head.

10

[quote=“Zargen, post:9, topic:6049”]Could easily be fixed to “Escaped Lab Rat” for why they start at the evac center. Fled from a lab. Found shelter. Proceed to find pants.

Basically. I wanted to go with Professions with a few starting(positive and negative) mutations down a particular path. Like say, you want your character to definitely be some weird cat person and want to make sure your mutations are a little less random. Or maybe you just want a particular theme. Like say the ‘professions’:

Feline Abberation - 3 Points

You where human, once. But after the great cataclysm when everything hit the fan things began to change. In the onset of eldritch and scientific phenomena you have somehow mutated into a cat-like human creature. Your skin has grown a sleek layer of fur, your face now takes the form of a whisker-adorned snout and your ears stand up long and pointy atop your head.[/quote]

Pretty confident that Whiskers, Feline Ears, Sleek Fur, and Snout add up to more than three points. :wink:

Hasn’t been a priority. I think Anonymous had a mod for it; in practice just adding “starting_trait” : “true”, to everything would let you design from scratch. Just make sure that’s a mod as it would make for very Interesting balancing.

11

Actually we have basic support for changing starting location, starting in a lab isn’t out of the question.
The suggestions are going in two different directions.

  1. Carefully selected mix of good and bad mutations.
    This wouldn’t be terrible from a balance point of view, but does anyone actually want to play it?
    It would need to have a mix of mutation trees specifically to prevent biasing it toward a particular path, which in of itself is something you simply can’t get otherwise. Otherwise see 2.
  2. Set of mutations biased toward a certain path.
    This has several problems. One is that as I mentioned biasing you toward a particular mutation tree from the start is a considerable benefit in of itself, independent of the mutations themselves. Bionics don’t have this problem. In order to make a balanced profession, it could have one or maybe two themed mutations. This doesn’t seem like it would make anyone happy. It would simultaneously eat up a ton of character points and not significantly progress you toward your goal.
    The second issue is which mutation tree, do we suddenly have a dozen or more professions to fill this one request? It also hits the problem of just one mutation being seemingly balanced, but if you have your pick of mutations it’s a big deal. It’s the same reason we don’t want to start with a chosen item, but mutations are potentially much more powerful.
    Maybe a minor issue, but the cognitive dissonance of choosing a starting scenario predicated on having something done to you that the PC didn’t want because the player does kind of bugs me.
12

I’ve been playing as the Bionic patient and having a BLAST! Probably much more fun than i would as a regular survivor.

…That said. For use by hydraulic muscles my power supply is almost laughable. The hydraulic muscles themselves are rarely used, generally hardly tip the balance and can be a ginormous pain when I choose to use them sometimes. Not to mention my blood analysis has been nothing but a waste of power so far.

I love it because it gives me options, the challenges just make things more interesting, and… mostly importantly of all, i love the IDEA. There will be people out there who are the same about starting as an affront to the idea of evolution :slight_smile:

You had me really thinking here. You do make a really good point, and you want to be incredibly careful before you handling ideas about lack of consent… That said, read the description on Bionic patient again.

“Medical advances have saved your body from certain death. You are augmented with bionic muscles and sensors monitoring your blood powered by your own metabolism. Make the most of your second chance at life.”

It doesn’t explictly say that consent was given for the operation… infact ‘certain death’ certainly leans towards the possiblity of you having been completely unconscious. Despite that, it reads as morally gray or even white. Why? Because the narrative suggests it was either neccesary or chosen.

Is there an analogue for mutations? Probably, if not quite as clear. Say before the draft a prisoner signs up for experimentation, where the conditions are that if he survives he gets to serve his sentence in the military instead… Fresh air, much better food, enemies to take out years of pent up aggression out on… A match made in heaven, am i right?

Or after the cataclysm, with New England becoming a desolate wasteland in which the labs are one of the last beacons of sanity in a rapidly dying world… A lab-guard decides to offer his body and humanity, so that he can better defend the people he spent years working allongside. That one even makes it sound noble, am i right? :wink:

13

Hey, I’d even go for (limited and expensive) customizable bionics at character creation. I see how a purist would dislike it but it doesn’t have to be a forced feature. Everything’s optional. Having possibilities is nice. Gene pool points, body manipulation points… based on profession, stats? Just thinking out loud.

Classic and Advanced starts?

14
Actually we have basic support for changing starting location, starting in a lab isn't out of the question. The suggestions are going in two different directions. 1. Carefully selected mix of good and bad mutations. This wouldn't be terrible from a balance point of view, but does anyone actually want to play it?

This would be the best solution.

15

[quote=“Ice-o-metric, post:12, topic:6049”]

You had me really thinking here. You do make a really good point, and you want to be incredibly careful before you handling ideas about lack of consent… That said, read the description on Bionic patient again.

“Medical advances have saved your body from certain death. You are augmented with bionic muscles and sensors monitoring your blood powered by your own metabolism. Make the most of your second chance at life.”

It doesn’t explictly say that consent was given for the operation… infact ‘certain death’ certainly leans towards the possiblity of you having been completely unconscious. Despite that, it reads as morally gray or even white. Why? Because the narrative suggests it was either neccesary or chosen.

Is there an analogue for mutations? Probably, if not quite as clear. Say before the draft a prisoner signs up for experimentation, where the conditions are that if he survives he gets to serve his sentence in the military instead… Fresh air, much better food, enemies to take out years of pent up aggression out on… A match made in heaven, am i right?

Or after the cataclysm, with New England becoming a desolate wasteland in which the labs are one of the last beacons of sanity in a rapidly dying world… A lab-guard decides to offer his body and humanity, so that he can better defend the people he spent years working allongside. That one even makes it sound noble, am i right? ;-)[/quote]

  1. Medical law & ethics have the “unconscious consent” part pretty well handled. In the absence of orders not to save the person’s life, they’re presumed to consent to treatment needed to live. Formatting requirements in Pennsylvania (where I live) are a bit wonky–I need to have the order on orange paper, and a big NO REVIVE: DNR tattooed over my heart wouldn’t cut it–but that corner case shouldn’t pose an issue.

  2. Not sure that the US military would go back to the “take everyone” mentality. They’re pretty strict about MH/MR issues; autistic folks haven’t been permitted to sign up for about 8 years now, IIRC. Prisoners-as-subjects are more along the lines of the SCP D-Class: shipped off, possibly without trial (check the Amigara logs), and basically considered disposable.

  3. DDA starts 5 days after the Cataclysm. No time for that sort of “nobility”, IMO.

Can opine on the point-values required but the whole 1000-point option kinda makes that obsolete.

16

This is true. But mostly they have these because saving a person’s life is very hard to do immorally… That said, in America saving a person’s life only to have the hospital bills bankrupt them isn’t exactly morally spotless :stuck_out_tongue: But even then it’s difficult to argue against getting to keep living

Well I do recall something in the Lore about a peacetime draft and then later just shipping off the prisoners… So that’s where they went, eh? That said, shady deals to provide human subjects… with promises that were never meant to be kept is far from out of the question.

Does it? I just wasn’t aware there was a specific date. Honestly, looking out the Evac center window it could have been 5 hours ago or 5 months, depending on where you stick a little flag in the timeline saying ‘Now officially the Cataclysm.’… In some ways it could have been brewing for years or longer, the Amigara fault could have been there well before teleport technology, and infact be the only thing giving physics enough mystery-data to come up with portals and teleport (if we take the viewpoint that it only happened in New England and that there’s still a “safe” part of the world to go to.)