lol, I debated mentioning Quetzalcoatlus, But just looking at reconstructions you can see they are designed entirely for flight. Mutating a person to this point would be ridiculous, BUT it does show that creatures heavier than people are not only possible, but actually existed.
I stick with my earlier statement of a 40pound weight limit and a majority of your biology being dedicated to flight. (current bird wing mutations would add to weight, any trait that physically would alter mass would have a variable that does so)
but on a similar note: Giant squids do exist (although in the water) so its only a minor stretch for tentacle mutations to work.
But balance over content, so who cares if its possible if it completely ruins the fun of the game.
If you restrict fliers to extremely low carry capacities, yes it would not be OP, just as I outlined in the linked PR. The PR though did not do that, it didnât restrict carry capacity, it didnât meaningfully limit flight duration, it didnât restrict limb use, it didnât require extreme flight mutations, etc. Basically it just slapped vertical movement onto a character and called it a day.
So whatâs OP about it? Well as implemented in that PR, if approached by a horde, you could climb two levels vertically and just shoot indefinitely, or even make melee attacks with a polearm. Yes there are areas where that wonât work, but for areas where it does, you became essentially untouchable. without losing any ability to counterattack.
Wouldnât the implemented helicopter allow for the same? Especially when we get NPCs to steer them? You could just hover it and shoot/stab out of it - even more so without a stamina/calories/rest drain.
I mean, yes, it would be realistic, cool and it was used in some Zombie movies (World War Z, for example), but still, itâs extremely overpowered.
Of course, thereâs a bit of a difference, since youâll need to have your helicopter nearby and canât just escape immediately, but still, both of these are basically endgame stuff, and I feel like mutagens (especially after threshold) could use some improvements/love.
Well, that of course shouldnât be the case.
This (picture below), in conjunction with the title led me to believe that itâs only possible to stay in air for almost half a minute and than crash down exhausted, which wouldnât be enough time to aim the gun:
Since this question was not yet answered, as far as I can seeâŚ: I guess the limit of âhow highâ is / would be the sky. So, z-level 10 (the same as flying creatures)?
Helicopters eat fuel like crazy when hovering at low altitude, and at some point we might track maintenance needs, so youâre essentially consuming repair parts for your helicopter. Between the acquisition difficulty, fuel, and repair parts, theyâre not really comparable.
Then weâre in agreement and Iâm not sure what your point is.
How high depends on what kind of flight weâre talking about, so that needs to get sorted out first.
Before that, someone that thinks this is a good idea and is willing and capable of implementing it needs to show up, until then no amount of theorycrafting is going to get anywhere.
Well, my point was (and still is) to find an answer to @Gilliphâs question:
âWith work being done on helicopters and improved Z-level traverse-ability, I want to know if this will also potentially mean changes to flight mutations.â
Since it just turned into a heated argument about if humans could be capable of flight or not, Iâve just thrown in an other viewpoint, a different solution.
After you explained why you think that flying is overpowered, I wanted to know what differences you see between the implemented (and probably overpowered) helicopter and a new mutation. Which you explained very reasonable, thank you for that, by the way.
While I donât fully agree on the difficulties of the helicopter scenario about fuel (it can be crafted and is usually found easily en masse, unless it drains half a fuel tank a minute) and difficulty in acquisition (to get to a place where one can find or craft enough mutagen isnât a piece of cake either), the future repair costs is a very reasonable âadditionalâ cost that the mutagen lacks.
While it doesnât get us anywhere, it may prepare the ground for whoever has a go on this task by setting limitations and uncovering pitfalls which would halt a pull request beforehand.
restric it further by making it impossible to shoot or attack while flying (other than with you talons and beak) since you canât use you arms if you donât want to crash and i donât see you using you clawed talons to accuratly shoot a gun or wield a weapon in any meaning full way. swoping in to attack enemies should leave you open to a counter attack and should be fairly weak. the only other way i see you doing things to hurt enemies is dropping things on them which is limited since you can carry only so much and althow you could drop things from higher to do more damage this is also far more inaccurate. unless you turn into a living bomber and start dropping grenades and lit dymite on top of your enemies. (but why bother when you could just lure them away instead or hostile factions into one another)
also flying is less OP than many people think it is since everyone forget that you arenât safe from all enemies. those with ranged capabilities would be a significant threat to you especially if you have no armor to speak of inorder to fly. they would be able to shoot at you for aslong as you are in the air since there is no cover up there. so escaping form a zombie horde? sure, lets just hope there arenât to many acid zombies around or you might get seriously hurt. flying away form a mi-go scout? that might be a VERY stupid idea. then there is also the fact that althow you could turn yourself into a living bomber the moment you start using real explosives with scrapnal you might also be hit by that.
