So I’ve kind of fallen in love with the whole mutations system lately, and I think there’s only one thing that would really make it even cooler than it already is: more variety. Basically, more ways to mix and match mutations, and more variety in their effects.
The classic mutants/animal-hybrid types are well represented, but there are some categories that could use some tweaking or expanding, some that could be added, and it’d be really cool to see more uncategorized mutations with mild-to-neutral effects.
I’ll be sort of surprised if no one’s suggested some of these, but here’s some of my ideas:
Feline and lupine could use some more differentiation from beast and each other.
Suggestion there:
feline as agile, stealthy, assassins. For starters, a non-threshold mutation like "graceful " that improved movement speed over rough terrain (stacking with the parkour trait) and/or lowered their noise production, and adding the “Inconspicuous” trait as one of their possible positive mutations would be nice ways to give them some unique flavor. A threshhold mutation like “feline charm” that countered some of the uglyness (but not visibility) of previous mutations might also make sense: well-adjusted catfolk can cross the uncanny valley back into “not hideous” despite having claws and fangs, whether that be by anime cuteness, barbaric grace (see Sabertooth from the X-men), or Catwoman style (“meow”) (I count her because she’s still got the “whole psychopath with her nails filed to points” thing going on).
-Lupine as “one with the land” hunters. Take away “high night vision” and give them a mild setting of the scent map thing from the debug menu as an activated-ability mutation with roughly the same cost as a threshold. Canines see with their nose, after all. The ability to eat meat raw and drink unboiled water with less risk would also make sense, and perhaps some sort of boost from being outdoors or in the woods as well.
other suggested mutations:
Small and petite size traits: inversion of the large and huge traits. You loose a little strength, but gain a little dexterity and dodge. The upgraded versions ditch the strength penalty like their counterparts ditch the encumberment (“Having learned to deal with a slightly larger world, you find your reduced stature to be more of an advantage than a hindrance.”. Would be a good fit for the rat and bird lines, too
-Serpentine Category: Somewhere between lizard and cephalopod; you trade your legs for a snake tail (movement penalty much less than tentacle legs, but little or no swim boost, and gives a driving penalty (it’s hard to work pedals with one appendage, but where there’s a will there’s a way), gain a tail strike/grab attack). Gain traits that slow metabolism for both good and ill, and increase the ability to eat anything that used to move. And some things that still do. Obligatory threshold mutation: ability to eat grabbed small animals, upgrading to just animals (fullness still applies as a limiter, but a once-every-couple-days instakill for anything you can slither close enough to isn’t too shabby)
Leporine Category: Bunny ears. You’ve got a hyperactive metabolism, overwhelming paranoia, and a massive craving for carrots…but you run like the wind, and you can dig, reinforce, and tastefully decorate a bunker nearly as fast. Also, you’re friggin’ adorable.
Limber: you take slightly less damage when being thrown into something.
Stripes: You have stripes. They make you harder to see when you’re in the woods, and look rather nice as well. (woods camouflage, +1 vis, -1 ugly, +2 mood with stylish trait)
Delicious: you taste and smell like bacon. People will find you slightly more pleasant to be around. In the good way. Meat eaters find you irresistible. In the bad way. (-1 ugly. Predators with a good sense of smell or which bite you will pursue you relentlessly. Potentially exploitable as bait for your own traps. Yay?)
Eye Mask - You have developed darker patches of coloration around your eyes. You find this reduces glare, and actually looks rather fetching. (glare reduction, +1 vis, -1 ugly, +2 mood with Stylish trait.)
Electric organ: you have developed an muscular organ which generates small amounts of electrical current. You find you can use this to trickle-charge your equipment and CMB power reserves, but it hurts a little and wears you out. (+10 pain, hunger, and tired/min, +10 charge to rechargable items and CMB power reserve/min) (might make great addition to Fish, and a threshold upgrade that let you electrocute things in water around you would finally give that one a reason to exist in addition to being awesome.)
Feline:
Inconspicuous does (almost) nothing. It should be dummied out at the moment.
Felines have all 3 of ugly, deformed and pretty in the tree. Meaning that you can instantly turn pretty from deformed.
No stacking with parkour. It is already a great trait.
Lupine:
You mean scent vision bionic? It is rather weird as it uses YOUR scent to sense things. Doesn’t really fit the theme. Same for debug menu: it only shows your scent.
Monsters don’t have scent at the moment - it would be too expensive to simulate.
Small:
No objections here.
Serpentine:
No eating whole anything the size of a dog. Eating a dog-sized thing would encumber a human-sized mutant rather heavily and for long. Eating whole tiny corpses could be a thing, but it would be very minor thing, pretty much just flavor.
The category sounds significantly more penalizing than useful.
Bunny:
Sounds like another Fish category. ie. something everyone avoids.
Limber:
Could work. Also could help with falling (in experimental z-level mode).
Stripes:
There is no such thing as camouflage at the moment. Special casing stylish here sounds kinda forced.
Delicious:
The only way this would really affect the game is if it worked like strong scent. Which would make this mutation quite redundant.
Eye Mask:
Not sure if dark patch near eyes should be enough to counter glare. It is not possible to just reduce the effect (-1 perception is -1 perception). Same deal about stylish as with stripes.
Electric organ:
Charging stuff with it is too fantasy. Having a biological tazer could be cool, though.
It might be interesting to rework Inconspicuous to have additional affects, I assume. For a “graceful” trait, it might be best if it cancelled parkour rather than stacked with it. An alternative would be granting some unrelated dexterous bonus that existing traits already do. I’m trying to recall if dodge-enhancing traits exist or not…
And if we added some emulation of tracking other creature scents, that would be useful. The debug and bionic versions are, as Coolthulhlu said, not exactly what you had in mind. Something that worked like the DF’s system, simply reporting what smells strongest at the moment, would be the easiest way to emulate it. It could be a lower-level version of the trait, implying the character isn’t yet able to track things by scent, whether due to being unused to the new senses or due to incomplete physiological development.
As for serpentine? Tempting as it is to make a vore joke, eating anything too large would be impractical, presumably. If size-altering traits were fleshed out and had broader effects, affecting how large a meal a mutant could handle might be one added effect. Still, I don’t see being able to eat NPCs whole being high on the priority list. o3o
On the NPC/serpentine thing, my head didn’t even go there.
Legitimately thinking “just animals without fussing around with cooking” ala python. NPC’s and zombies would just be OP.
On the electric organ thing, its really not fantasy at all, just science. You can run a low wattage lightbulb off a hunting electric eel just by running a wire between the water in its tank and a ground point. There are also several projects working on commercial development of Microbial fuel cells- basically super-charged potato batteries running off of anything from sunlight to raw sewage. The tazer thing, now that might be a little bit fantasy. XD
Yeah, even then eating zombies would be right out, without an “immune to tainted meat” trait. Which I’m fairly certain is a post-threshold trait and thus wouldn’t be obtainable as a snek, unless it was added to the serpentine category.
It would be rather close to feline and lupine but I would STILL be in favor of a vulpine (fox) mutation path, if for nothing other than flavor. Also unlike feline and lupine it would definitely have intelligence perks, though again this would push it towards elf-A. And yet as a dexterity class fan I would be ok with this. (always annoys me how much almost every RPG ever nerfs dexterity over armor types. And options are just nice.
All in all any class being pushed for better dodge, maneuverability and parkour abilities vs instead of straight movement speed would be just fine with me, pending it doesn’t go TOO OP compared with other perks and thresholds. Increasing max OP level of all thresholds countered by synced late game increase in z-levels/difficulty is not something I think I would frown at at all. (Though as I have not yet made it that far, my opinion means little)
You can’t charge a regular battery with an electric organ. It’s about as much “science” as trying to store electricity from a thunderstorm. ie. fantasy “science”.
Mutations are supposed to more or less imitate biology. Fuel cell mutation won’t happen for the same reason power armor port mutation and wrench-shaped claw mutations won’t happen.
What do electric eels use it for then? It’s not like they carry a bunch of batteries to charge with their electric discharges. They stun stuff with it, ie. taze stuff.
The difference is that they use water as a medium, which would make this ability useless in the game, as there isn’t much to do in the water yet.
A feline actually beeing able to leap on top of a building would be win.
Jumping over a tile would be cool to but. I have no idea how wide a tile actually is.
Doing a jump attack from the ground or from a roof/tree would also be yay.
Also getting mutations takes to many ressources.
By the time i can afford making mutagen i don t need it anymore at all.
How about we make syrings that give you a new mutation every night till purify it or will it to stop somehow w/e.
That way early game survivors could do some risky mutations to increase theire survival chance…
I actually don’t mind the idea of mutations being less ‘one shot lottery tickets’ and more daily raffles. Having no immediate effects (besides pain) but mutating you over the course of a few days. Serums could could just proc mutations more frequently (This could be good or bad) and push you past thresholds.
Agreed on incremental mutations. However, I wouldn’t mind speeding up the process with immediate effects if more mutagen is taken during the “metamorphosis” period.
I’d like to make the mutation progress somewhat more gradual as well. Probably you’d get generic “mutation sickness” after taking mutation with some token debuffs, then after some time passed you get a message indicating what the new mutation is going to be, then at some point it’s complete and you get the full effect.
I don’t think there would be much breaking down effects so that you get the benefits gradually, most effects only have single-digit numerical effect already, and special effects aren’t amenable to being broken down. On the other hand taking large doses of mutagen would have the effect of mutations cropping up at random over the next few days, which might be what Logrin is getting at with “daily raffles”. However large doses of mutagen would probably turn the “token debuffs” of mutation sickness into something not so token, hope you’re at a safehouse…
One serum for full threshold would require the mutations to be relatively balanced, though. For one, Robust Genetics would have to be reworked or removed.
Purifier should probably use the same mechanics as mutagen - take one purifier, lose 3 mutations in the next 3 days. With significantly stronger mutation debuff than when mutating.
I like the idea of taking purifier halting all mutation taking place, right where it is. Then taking again reversing. Though for better playstyle/ “realistic” perhaps split these into 2 separate items. Then the mutation “halter” could be used both on purifier and mutagen. Or even split it further and make a “mutagen halter,” and a "purifier halter."
If knowing whats going to come/go you could then halt it before you go in a direction you don’t want to.
All said and done I think work it step-by-step towards making it to where the final product is being able to take mutagen&purifier any time you can find/make it and halt it with halter would be nice. Especially if there was an advanced end-game device that gave you more warning in what direction you were going to be evolving, enough so that you could scan yourself and stop it before any unwanted changes ACTUALLY took place. Where as without you have to wait for “symptoms” to start appearing, at which case it may be to late to keep it from hitting a “threshold” point where a mutation stage takes place.
Being able to start and stop the process at will just seems unbalanced and doesn’t really fit lorewise to me. I feel like that would make mutation more of a “stop when you get what you want” system, instead of a grab bag where you have to take the good with the bad sometimes. Also, It implies that the people in charge of making this stuff had a much higher level of sophistication to the process than they really did. Most of the instructions on how to synthesize it are cobbled together from lab notes, which in some cases were literally cobbled together during the early stages of the cataclysm.
If you wanted to make it interesting, maybe something like that should work in the case that you once you build up your commune, you can set out trying to rescue scientists and settling them down at a lab you clear out somewhere. Then after a certain amount of time, they can come up with the recipe and will synthesize you some mutation halter after you bring them ingredients.