CBM upgrade stystem

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

What’s up guys? is been a while since last time I was playing CDDA, and it seem the 0.D version may waiting release forever…

anyway, I was notice that reactor CBM can be upgrade by install a upgrade part, so I want to know, can we get this upgrade stystem any further?

you know, like you can upgrade solar charging CBM to get extra speed and more energy to recharge

because I was very obsessed with the power armor, and it seem I can’t just leave it now, I always fight with this power armor, and even call my self the “power troopers”

I got very high fame on my friends, and they very enjoy I carry such powerfull armor to battle, but thing is, this armor take way too much power,

I feeling wasted about those battery no matter the normal one or the plutonium, so in order to keep running, I choose the CBM energy to activation the armor

problem is, the armor consume the energy are way too fast than that charging it, I mean, it really take a long time to recharge,

not to mention I have about 80000 enegry right now, and after 4 days later, it just drop to 40000 right now,

I got every charging CBM on my body, and still can’t find a better way to recharge the armor in a short time,

it really gives me a headache, so I wish if someone can make some upgrade stystem on CBM, not just the CBM that can charging, but also upgrade the CBM weapon for a better use, that’s all.

2

The Power Armor is supposed to be an extremely OP armour, for balance reason it has been made basically impossible to use continuously in the long term, it is for special occasions. Same reason why you do not use TNT, granades and mininukes for everyday zombie ethnic cleaning. Even before the Catacylsm, according to the lore, every Power Armor infantryman needed a decently sized logistic infrastructure behind him (first prototypes literally had to be plugged in to a source of energy all the time, clearly not doable in the middle of a battlefield).

It is also unrealistic, in my opinion, that you can somehow store so much energy in your body’s CBM that a car equivalent would need 250kgs of batteries to get the same max capacity.

Altough I do agree that plutoniom bars should be a lot more powerful and efficient. Maybe provided 3-4 or them you should be able to use the armour for a year never turning it off but then they would have to be a lot harder to find.

3

“Ethnic cleaning”

4

There are, IMHO, a lot of issues with CBMs ATM that trigger a lot of unnecesary crosstalking with mutations, mainly because of the way to access them.

The following suggestions pursue:

  • Address “balance” between Mutations and CBMs as a way to acquire “above human” performance at the ACCESS level, not at the effect level.

  • Provide a framework to divide CBMs between “commonly used” and “rarely used” to try to make them closer in player progression to Mutations.

  • Keeping the main differences between Mutations (Easy to trigger, Hard to control, Impossible to predict), and CBMs (Hard to Trigger, Easy to Control, Easy to predict).

  • Power Storage CBM ocupying slots. It’s really weird to see all the effort done in other parts of the game regarding resource consumption but at the same time seeing how the body of survivors is effectively turned into an infinite energy density storage device. Now that you can use your internal storage to power almost anything (Mainly through UPS links) and you can drain power from almost anything, it’s time to address this. Establish a body slot count for Storage Power CBMs, and if possible, ALLOW players to configure WHICH body part each installation occupies, so power setup can be adapted to whatever CBM loadout each player decides to take. To prevent massive invasion of the CBM display UI, just split power capacity per location and substract from the available slots whatever figure you decide to assign to each Power Storage CBM (I would start by something simple like 1 slot per Storage CBM and then operate with the storage capacity per CBM Type to deal with balance). Alternatively you can “stack” same Type Storage CBMs per location now that we have “Active” and “Passive” tabs on CBM UI (ie instead of having 4 lines of “Storage CBM Mk II”… You have a single line of “Storage CBM MkII x 4”).

  • Installation Difficulty. The current way to install CBMs has always made me wonder why every single “average citizen” do not have them on… The way they appear in bodies of specialized individuals USUALLY linked with top notch tech sites makes me think that they required specialized procedures by trained professionals, not just easy to “inject” devices any “average joe” reading a basic First Aid book could have any chances to achieve. I would extend the “Tier system” we see on Power Stotage CBMs to require a matching Implant Station (ie a Furniture). Tier I: Civilian Level (T1 Implant Stations appearing on Hospitals and/or rare “body boutiques” for the wealthy classes on cities… Based on how “cyberpunk” your pre-cataclysm society is depicted), Tier II: Specialist Level (T2 Implant Stations appearing RARELY on Hospitals, more common in Infrastructure buildings like Public Works, Pump Stations, Factories), Tier III: Military Level (Appearing ONLY in Labs or Military Installations). OFC, the current success check should still stay, the Furniture pressence is just another requirement for the process to happen (And to rationalize how you can install implants that replace the same body organs NEEDED to operate yourself).

  • Maintenance. CBMs should gradually damage themselves requiring maintenance at a matching tier Implant Station. This “damage” can be steady wear & tear, event driven (Electrical Shocks, damage on the location that holds them) or result of a voluntary OVERLOAD use (Basically a toggle per CMB that supports it, were the user gains better performance at the cost of damaging the CBM faster). Unmet maintenance per CMB should trigger results as when current installation procedures fail catastrophically, but ideally, linked to the offending CBM. When maintenance is peformed, bad secondary effects should dissapear. Alternatively (easier to implement currently ) Implanting Stations could be used to “cure” CBM malfunction effects. CBM removal, ofc, could also be done in matching Implanting Stations.

OPTIONAL: Each installation/removal (Not maintenance) procedure should damage the location affected so a rest period is needed between installations (No more insta Terminators in a matter of hours). Alternatively, Installation/Removal could induce sleep periods (Simmulating sedatives) that include the “Heavy Sleeper” effect so players really need to secure their environments before attempting CBM procedures.

OPTIONAL: Extra accesibility. Implant Stations can appear rarely in extra locations “out of place” like:

  • Black Market Basement (Highly controlled military equipment have ALWAYS generated associated “Black” markets and smugling organizations).
  • Mansions (Wealthy individuals always like to hoard “luxury commodities”… CBMs and the tools necesary to use them, are no exception).
  • Military Vehicles. Specops units augmented by CBMs would need to perform maintenance on-the-field… Makes sense Military Personal tried to develop portable stations mounted on vehicles.

OPTIONAL: Hard/Random accessibilty. Implant Stations can require a hard Computer check to activate/control, have a number of supplies to perform just X procedures before going offline and/or have an inherent chance to appear in a non-functional state.

5

As long as I can carry a full CBM maintenance and installation station in the Solar Roller, I support it.

6

I like that idea a lot. Currently CBM tend to be overpowered midgame. I second that. Very thought through and detailed approach!

7

I don’t like the Maintenance portion but other than that that’s a bunch to think about. I like the CBM themes idea- let’s say military, police, medical, tech utility, emergency services (fire dept). Maybe add a few odd misc ones too. And their corresponding auto-docs (implant stations).

One fun idea might be that too many CBMs could increase encumbrance in the relevant body locations, such as in case of going above the allotment.

The CBM installation auto-doc furniture sounds kind of neat, but it should in fact ease the installation requirements, if not perform the installation with 100% success rate. Of course the machine should require proper credentials (ID card) or hacking. A visit to the CBM auto-doc should put the user to sleep for hours, possibly for days, if not let’s say a full season. Certain modest CBMs could require just local anaesthesia and an hour.

The gripe I have with current CBM installation is that it’s always painless, and you can install ALL CBMs by yourself. Some should be installable by the user, others really should require extensive surgery… performed by another person or a machine, I mean.

8

The suggestion I made, at its essence, is an attempt to bring closer Mutations and CBMs desireability as a way to “make the character progress further” when you want to beat human body limits.

The trigger is seeing how ppl working/using different systems (Mutations, CBMs, medical, crafting) is gradually trying to split the effects as “mutation-like” or “CBM-like”. Spliting because of lore and to keep the “scifi” flavour closer to what ppl expects from “reallistic” concepts is perfectly fine, but been forced to “reserve” some powers to Mutations so players seeking improvement have a reasson to try the whole system is not.

The current issue is that EVERYTHING penalizes Mutations:

  • Locations needed to access them reliabily belong to the “end game”.

  • The “learning curve” INGAME of the system is very step… Usually requiring multiple playthroughs to get a grasp of the system by trial and error.

  • Resource, Training and Time investment are massive to reach a given “power” even when player knowledge of the system is good. Purifier “minigame” collaborates a lot here.

  • Extremely low chances to reach a given “powerset” a given player is satisfied with.

Meanwhile CBM system is just based on luck (Luck at finding the CBM you need)… And all preparation needed to reduce the chance to trigger bad effects while installing them. And due to how the “bad effect” table is configured, after a certain threshold the worse thing that can happen is loosing the CBM itself. The critical detail is that skill levels involved to reach this “reliability” on CBMs are less than the ones needed to “cook” the most common Mutagens (Not thinking in the exotic ones) due to the “recipe lock” system used.

In a shorter explanation, there is problem when the answer to the following question is straightforward:

If a “power” is available as a CBM or a Mutation… Which one is easier to find, use and keep?

That’s why my suggestion is taking Mutation “accessibility” as the baseline, and then proceed to make CBM require something similar but based on a different paradigm (ie “less mobility”) which means that the answer to the above question would be:

Depends on the facilities my character has around (Specially if you activate the option of limited ammount of installs/uninstalls per station).

Why maintenance? 2 Reassons.

  1. “Character Upkeep”. A player seeking to mutate will gain “bad mutations” that will invariably affect “character upkeep” in different ways:
  • Higher food consumption. Stricter diets.
  • Restrictions on available gear.
  • Penalties to NPC reactions.

CBMs, beyond the energy management (That can be effectively denied ATM by simply stacking humongous levels of energy reserves) has no extra “character upkeep” that can’t be avoided. Put in other words, there are no inherently restrictiver secondary effects into how a CBM character is played on the long-run (Besides the uses of each power, ofc). Put in other words… Is there a reasson TO NOT use CBMs at all?.

  1. “Overload System”. The only way to offer this distinct feature of CBMs is that the player has to go back and have some form of “upkeep” CBM system can’t deal with internally so when and how often to “Oveload” CBMs is a meaningfull decission. Why to allow “Overloading”? To be able to keep offering different “flavours” between CBMs and Mutations EVEN if the powers themselves are the same. A CBM user would have the option to increase a given power effect over short periods at the cost of more frequent maintenance.