Lore based development into more diversified bionic products? Brainstorm thread

This is namely just building bionics to become less universal. Namely, by making it more Brand Name and specific products made by preexisting companies with different goals as part of lore. This would namely mean having a lot of variants of the same bionics, as well as more meticulous attention to things like

 Having slight differences between similar brands

Such as different forms of integrated armor with different material types that incur different encumberment and weight penalties for example. (Speaking of which, make most bionics incur weight penalties until they are uninstalled.)
Laser integrated weapons having variant powers, efficiencies, etc
Different brands generally having different ease of installation and durabilities, etc
Company exclusive bionics and companies generally having a specific preference in how they are built in terms how each bionic is balanced.

 Having some bionics have improved unity with similar brands depending on whether they're made for it.

For instance, having armor or structural bionics conflict or otherwise make more difficult installation of adjacent ones if they aren’t the same brand or otherwise cross-fitted for them to slot together properly.
Cross interactions for bionics, as well as bionics modifiers/addons that are easier to install if they can fit upon the previous bionic. For instance, a scatter lens for a hand laser, an exo-chassis frame that can have armor plates attached on it, hydraulic muscles needing a rigid reinforcement of skeleton to use to maximum potential etc

This could make the bionics get a feel more varietous and could even make more possibility to make them more prevalent in general society before the apocalypse happened without making everyone super soldiers, as well as giving enough variety to make every build feel unique.

What do you all think of such a developement path? It may need more collaboration and more of a development arc to do more than simply adding a bunch of different bionics to do new things, as well as some lore writing and such. Do any of you have any specific ideas to contribute to this? Writing short stories, lore of bionic manufacture companies, etc would be welcome (in this thread, in case it’s considered).
There would be slightly less focus on coming up with new shinier bionics, but rather making more varieties of the current ones we have. This still leaves quite a bit of room for new bionics that may be more relevant if due to more inter-bionic applications. I’ll post subsequent posts here when I come up with enough for a specific thing.

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Dvorak Enhancemens would like to introduce a expiremental bodily modification. The Asynchrous Neurolink. A specially designed weave of data cables stemming from the spine, going along side nerves and allowing more electronic control of key muscle groups. While active, at a small draw of energy you will be allowed to nearly completely forego the electrochemical lag of the nervous system via usage of electrical currents instead. Certain applications would include allowing movement that can ignore the brunt of pain (a fair deal of pain speed reduction is ignored while active). You will also be able to ignore reflex and other possibly impairing effects, reducing overall dexterity reduction affects (most importantly from Jittery. Thisbwould reduce dex penalties from outside sources in half.) It is also possible for you to force yourself to do mentally unpleasant or physically unwillableactivity at a large morale penalty ( devs know what i mean by this, but other similar situations may become prevalent during further developement). There is a noteworthy side affect however, in that dexterous actions are slightly inhibited due to muscular desynchronization (unmodified -1 to dexterity)
Make sure you only allow professional installation, else you inflict nervous pr muscular damage, or otherwise experience malfunction. Generally not advisable to control robotic muscles without proper reconfiguration.
More later…

Hyper-heuristic Nodule.

When activated, it speeds up the thought processes. Its effects are so powerful, that you not only think faster, but your experience of time will be much faster IE. time will seemingly slow down. Good to plotting decisions when time is short, and for reacting to things as well, though your body won’t be able to move any faster.

[quote=“Flare, post:4, topic:886”]Hyper-heuristic Nodule.

When activated, it speeds up the thought processes. Its effects are so powerful, that you not only think faster, but your experience of time will be much faster IE. time will seemingly slow down. Good to plotting decisions when time is short, and for reacting to things as well, though your body won’t be able to move any faster.[/quote]
Gameplay effect would be…?
I mean, we can sit and think indefinitely already. We’re always limited only by the speed of our character.

That being said, I’d appreciate more depth to the bionics system. I mean, it just seems weird for there to be things like CBM: Construction, but it’s apparently being developed and sold only by the government. I mean, jeez, where’s the cheap Chinese knock-offs? The extremely expensive and marginally useless Swiss versions? Plus, I just never understood why drug dealers would be carrying two fusion blaster arms. I mean, as amusing as the thought is, it just seems a bit out of their league to be selling high-tech government-produced goods.

Bionics, at the time of the fall, were, while not common, attainable luxury goods, along the lines of where a high-end Mac Pro is today.

The availability of Chinese knock-offs would be somewhat limited, due to the state of affairs on the world arena, and it’s not unreasonable to assume that CBMs would be fairly standardized.

Company profile:

Peace Incorporated.

Established at 2022 Peace Inc become notorious with two distinct product lines. “Peacemaker” line was landmark for easy-to-install robust physical augmentations targeted for third world armies and - a bit different customer segment - criminal gangs of the world. Peacemaker line was notorious for several reasons: really cheap price on product category, quick deployment, large production batches, 100% self-sustainability after install and most of all product guaranteed lifespan of less than 2 years. Peacemaker was intented for temporary use and Peacemaker line had a dark slogan : “This products service life has been matched to the life expectancy of your products.” - While often looked down by any sensible person it is still obivious Peacemaker line has seen more action in battlefields around the world than any other bionics so far and made a real impact on the outcomes of these battles - simply because it was so adaptable and available. Never mind the 5% of users that were rendered vegetables or paralyzed neck down after bionics removal process had “unexpected symptoms.” - they were never considered to get that far in life anyway.

Company’s second line called “Peace of mind” grew from the business-side success of Peacemaker line - Peace Inc. took over small company called neur.Net and added their core knowledge to Peace Inc’s roster - Peace of Mind had very little to do with the meatshop attitude of rest of the company, since it was very highend bionic. This product line was never made official due international laws, but at research side “Peace of Mind” product line delved into the reprogamming and interacting with central nervous system. There has been indications that “Peace of Mind” product line was actually being produced in pilot projects in small quantities and they were used in cloning business to skip the normal learning process of blank clones. Peace of mind line enabled full skillsets from basic bodyfunctions to higher end skills to be implanted to clones at speed factor of 50x - It should be noted that every Peace of Mind product became with remote panic button to fry targets brains due the fact that some 10% of bionics installed caused permanent violent psychosis on targets.

Oh boy, this could be anything.

Oh boy, this could be anything.

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An AI that chimes in and says demeaning things.
Ex. When you’re doing marijuana: "Impressive. I didn’t think your brain activity could drop any lower."
Ex. When your pain value is really high: “You’ll be pleased to know that your brain is relaying pain signals quite reliably.”

Pretty sure it’d have no gameplay effect, and probably shouldn’t be added for any reason, but I just felt like I had to write this.

What about the strictly cosmetic bionics? Designer eyes, color-changing hair, mobile tattoos.

These ads make me picture thousands of suburbanites who purchased, say, integrated camping tools to feel more ‘outdoorsy’ or ‘for their workshop’, even though the closest they get to doing anything outdoorsy is rearranging the garage and riding their mower. It seems to fit the tone of the game somehow.

On the other hand, it also makes me picture super-parkour kids and stunt-people (and police?) with built-in grappling hooks and Inspector Gadget limbs.

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