Mutation Tree Concept: Metalloid

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

So I’ve been thinking about new mutation trees that haven’t been done yet. I’m already aware that equine (and something else?) is already in progress as a mutation tree, so I thought of something new: the Metalloid Mutation Tree.

The basic concept of a Metalloid is a humanoid with a shiny metal coating instead of their skin, making them slow, heavy and highly protected against attacks. They’re still able to walk and think normally, but they just have a shiny, metal skin layer. You can still make out eyes and such - and this has nothing to do with cybernetics - it just makes your skin naturally made of a flexible metal that you can move just as well as ordinary skin.

To craft metalloid mutagen, something like lumps of steel would be required. This idea may sound somewhat stupid, but it makes just as much sense as being a slime, for example.

Obviously there aren’t any other Metalloid creatures in the game, making this a strange and unique mutation tree. Overall the gameplay effects of the mutation tree are to largely increase defense, but it gives large speed (and on a rare occasion, intelligence) penalties.

Finding metalloid mutagen would be extremely rare, as would getting metalloid mutations without crafting metalloid serum.

Non-unique traits that the metalloid tree could give are things like tough, strong bones, clumsy, slow healer, slow runner etc. Although it’s a bit of a crazy idea, maybe once you get the metalloid tree, you could heal yourself with a soldering iron. But that sounds too hard to code and overpowered so…

+ Unique Mutation Ideas:

Thin Metallic Skin: (Evolves from rough skin), your skin is coated in a very thin layer of metal. Although it doesn’t protect you very much and gives your skin a strange, shiny quality, it weighs near nothing.
(Improves bash/cut res by 2. No encumbrance/speed penalty. +5 ugly.)

Metallic Skin: (Evolves from thin metal skin, gives threshold), your skin is coated in a layer of metal. It’s protective, but heavy and generally slows you down, and your shiny metal skin makes you quite a spectacle to look at.
(Improves bash/cut res by 8. +1 overall encumbrance. 6 ugly.

Spiked Metallic Skin: (Evolves from metal skin, replaces thick metal skin, requires threshold). Your skin’s metal layer is now covered in short spikes from the head down. Not only does this make you more protected overall, but it gives a chance to return damage when enemies hit you. However, this makes wearing normal clothes near impossible on your torso and below.
(Improves bash/cut res by 12. +1 overall encumbrance. Can’t wear non-XL clothing below the head.) 8 ugly.

Thick Metallic Skin: (Evolves from metal skin, replaces spiked metal skin, requires threshold). Your skin is of a thicker and stronger non-conductive metal, and protects from large amounts of damage. However, the thickness of the metal makes your body a lot bulkier and somewhat disturbing to look at.
(Improves bash/cut res by 16. +2 overall encumbrance. Could provide electricity resistance? 9 ugly.)

Bladed Arms: (Requires threshold.) Metal blades have grown out of your arms, which sometimes allow you to stab an enemy for an extra attack. However, they really get in the way.
(Chance for bonus cutting dmg, +2 arm encumbrance.)

Iron Lungs: (Requires threshold.) Although your lungs aren’t literally made of iron, they’ve become a lot stronger than usual. Although this means you’re more resistant to impure gases, it’s somewhat harder to breathe.
(+8 environmental protection, +1 mouth encumbrance.)

- Unique Mutation Ideas:

Heavy: (Pre-threshold, signals you’re starting to become a metalloid.) Your skin is more dense than usual, and a lot heavier. It doesn’t make it any larger, but it makes it heavier - making it harder to move around.
(-5 move speed.)

Very Heavy: (Requires threshold.) Your metallic skin is made of an extremely heavy, making it very hard to move quickly or perform dexterous movements.
(-15 move speed.)

Extremely Heavy: (Requires threshold.) Your metallic skin is made of an even heavier metal, so heavy that even lifting your arms or legs is quite an effort, making your movements not only much slower, but less dexterous.
(-30 move speed. -1 DEX.)

Metallic: (Required for threshold.) Pretty much all of your skin has been replaced by metal, completely changing the way your body works. Bandaging yourself or using first aid kits doesn’t have much effect.
(Not sure how hard this one would be to code. Highly reduces the effectiveness of first aid kits of bandages.)
[hr]

I might add some more things to this later, but the blood and organs of a metalloid is still quite similar to that of an normal human, it’s just that they have a metal ‘shell’ if you will which replaces their skin.

If this idea is considered, obviously people can add to it + change it so that it makes more sense. My ideas don’t have to be unchangeable, if something seems overpowered/uncodable then sure, it can be changed. I know making a new mutation tree is a lot harder to code than to just say, but it’s just a concept, that’s all.

If you have any further suggestions/changes, go for it. The basic concept of the metalloid tree is to be a very well protected, but slow and not very dexterous tank.

2

Does this mean I can become a Living Flashlight?!?

3

Heaviness line could boost carrying capacity, essentially becoming reverse hollow bones rather than boring purely-bad traits.
It should affect swimming negatively.

Healing self with a soldering iron could work if it caused a lot of pain and had a pain-based cap. It wouldn’t be hard to code. As a post-threshold (or at least near-threshold) it should mean something.

Metallic skin could resist fire on its own, but also greatly increase heat conductivity. This would cause metalloids to rapidly cool down/heat up when dressed inappropriately to weather or when next to fire. It could also make their entire body quickly normalize temperature, so that not wearing gloves would not cause freezing hands, but chilly hands, arms and torso.
Or maybe heat conductivity could be a separate mutation. It wouldn’t be hard to code - literally like 8 lines of C++ (not counting JSON stuff).

Metallivore mutation could allow the survivor to supplement diet with scrap, though I’m not sure how could it work (ie. how to prevent it from replacing all food).

4

This sounds a little silly to me to be honest. All the other mutation lines are at least organic based. I could see something like attempting to manually fuse metal plates to your skin (at serious pain) and the blob helps your body not reject it and grow around it, but having it spontaneously grow metal out of you seems a bit silly.

5

Blob’s got trouble with metallic components, and mutagens work by splicing DNA (which metal obviously lacks). However, it would work as labdelving-only branch with scientists working on making metal-utilizing bacteria or something, making you able to use said bacteria as DNA source.
Everything needs to be biologically doable, though, no “skin made entirely of metal” or “iron lungs”[sup][/sup] sort of things.
[size=8pt][sup][/sup]Unless you’ve got a mechanical pump installed or are Extremely Strong.[/size]

Or bacteria that naturally form nanocarbon structures. Nanotube bones and graphene skin, anyone?

Anyway, the consensus seems to be that inorganics is handled by bionics, not mutations - while mutations are Animalia and Fungi. Having a metal-based mutation line would be quite a bit silly, and for reasons described above makes MUCH less sense than organic slime.

6

Dumb question. Don’t leap at me…

While I agree that ‘metal skin’ may not be the most appropriate, I think there’s an angle to this everyone is failing to consider. The mutations are not literally x-men style mutations, its people basically changing due to exposure to the from another dimension thats terraforming our planet and universe, right?

Right?

So uh, it would seem to me as if a lot of the mutations are very…non-lovecraftian. How about one where you change into a Silicon-based lifeform, or a methane-based lifeform? Perhaps the silicon one -has- to burrow through rock to survive, or something, or the methane one needs regular exposure to slime pits, or something. Heck, why arn’t people turning into giant tapeworms, or gaining an extra-dimensional component (a 4th dimensional eyestalk, ala one of the Flatland movies) - there are a lot of cool things that have been done, but most of them are really working within the ‘x-men’ framework with some ‘unusual touches’ and not really …semi-voluntarily turning yourself into an extradimensional horror not completely obeying the laws of physics.

Under that guise, some of the above could work, if it was altered to be more ‘silicon-based biology’

Edit: On second thought, a ‘4th dimensional / bulk space’ mutation-line where you gain the ability to see through walls (via looking at them from the 4th-dimensional/bulk space axis) but have a harder time seeing things close up would be kinda cool. Offtopic, though.

7

I am Dale Jr, survivor of a hundred days past the apocalypse, slayer of a thousand zombies, destroyer of military hardware and the struggling remnants of humanity alike, and now I am become farts.

8

[quote=“secretfire, post:6, topic:8785”]While I agree that ‘metal skin’ may not be the most appropriate, I think there’s an angle to this everyone is failing to consider. The mutations are not literally x-men style mutations, its people basically changing due to exposure to the from another dimension thats terraforming our planet and universe, right?

Right?[/quote]
Nah, just exposure won’t change you in any way except for making you a zombie when you die (NYI).

To mutate, you need an energy source and optionally a mutation focus. Radiation, if radmutations are on, provides energy source, while mutagens and serums provide energy or both it and the focus (with specialized ones). Thus you’re not getting anything Lovecraftian, the Blob is working solely on the things it can get on Earth.
And it’s working in three dimensions on your actual body, on your body mass and your biology, so it (or Mycus) isn’t going to do anything crossdimensional or switch the base elements, so silicon or methane is out. Lack of tapeworm and the like mutation line is probably part inefficiency of these lifeforms and part squick factor, though.

If mi-gos, shoggoths, and the like have something that can work as mutation focus, you theoretically can use them to mutate. But I’ve no idea if they do!

Also, you’re confusing what the Bulk is. It’s not some dimension you can “see” or “detect” things through, it’s the space where all realities are. How good would you be at seeing things on Earth’s surface if you were a million miles away from it? Now imagine the same, except you’re million miles equivalent from our universe, from absolutely anything in it.

9

I think this sounds more like something that you would get through bionic mutations, i.e. having bionics and then mutating with them to get special mutations (which is something I’ve wanted to put in the game for a long time, but have yet to get around to), then something that you would just mutate directly into.

10

Does that mean that somewhere out there there could be Flashlight Elementals?

11

If you really wanna become a living flashlight, just install the Cranial Flashlight CBM.

12

@Barhandar

Regarding Bulk space - I’m not disagreeing with what you are saying, par se. But flatland-ish stuff is easier to visualize and work with from a game perspective, and also theoretically implicit in any brane cosmology where dimensions are not compact, as far as I understand.

@iam2roy

That is a badass idea.

13

If you really wanna become a living flashlight, just install the Cranial Flashlight CBM.[/quote]

I know.

14

Yeah, X-folk isn’t accurate–but isn’t THAT wrong. Mutations are the Blob triggering rapid reconfiguration of your body to adapt/incorporate particular genetics, etc: the energy source is both the stuff you inject and a healthy dose of hunger/thirst/fatigue from you.

Blob adapting to augs is the closest one could get to Mech-Aug mutations, short of the actual large-scale replacement proposed elsewhere.

15

Why am I thinking about a nanomachine experiment gone wrong, with this topic and mutations presented?

“Why is your skin made out of metal?” “Nanomachines, son.”

16

Personally I dislike this idea, Mutations are supposed to be biological, and it wouldn’t make much sense
for a human being to have metallic skin unless certain requirements are taken in, like what Darkfirephoenix suggested.
Also, having just a plain Tin-Man character seems kind of… Bland? Yeah. Honestly I would support a Nano-machine
mutation/bionic mutation, but a simple man with skin of metal seems too plain.

EDIT: What if we had a Bionic Mutation, where with Arm Plating etc, your body inside is completely blob-like(Or Nanomachines!), kind of like a mummy’s coffin. Could be very interesting…

17

A Nanomachine Mutation Tree sounds pretty awesome,actually.

18

I could imagine that nanomachines would be a good solution against the blob, mainly because nanomachines are kinda like the blob and could counter-control a body infected by blob.

Hrmmm… That could lead to PURE nano-“mutations” (more like improvements which combine flesh and metal) which offer the same affect like the nanosuit from crysis

And maybe even HYBRID nano-“mutations” (combination between metal, blob and flesh)…

I think a nano-mutationtree would have its own threshold and won’t prohibit a other threshold (so nano + ursine would be possible)

But now the twist:
Those nano-mutagens couldn’t be encountered in ANY normal lab/wild, ONLY in a special lab which you can’t tell from the outside and would only recognise them via some special enemies/things inside of them.
It would be a lab mostly populated by robots/drones, many turrets, special enemies like nano-zombies (think of them like a buffed up hulk but in normal size BUT controlled by the nanomachines) etc. and with a A.I. in the lowest level controlling all the lab. They A.I. would have most likely analysed the situation outside and concluded that humanity isn’t really worth saving/needs to be wiped out if they hinder the repairing of the damge. (which leads to a boss battle like the triffid heart)

Now how to get the nano-mutagen: Can be found in the lab as items, but making them yourself is impossible UNLESS you go down to the A.I. core, take out the A.I. and retrieve some kind of “nanosmelter” (a machine which contains constructor-nanomachines which can build all other nanomachines like stemcells are with the cells. Mutagen-nanomachines are only able to work in their intended “job”).

^Those ideas are rather rough but they MAY work. I’m not really sure about the A.I. part… Nanomachines ARE confirmed (nanorepair CBM) and I think that it isn’t that far off that maybe a SUPER TOP-SECRET lab has made a A.I. (and the A.I. controlled the robots ALL ALONG from the background! dun dun DUUUUUNNNNNN)

19

I’ve been hoping for some biomechanical mutation/CBM combo tree for a while.

Who doesn’t want bio-laser tit-cannons?

On a serious note, before we start blasting ideas on how to make this work, I do think it’d be smart to get the mutations and CBM’s themselves all worked out.

20

Ah, I didn’t realise bionic/mutagen hybrids were in development. That would make a lot more sense and such, and after all this is just a basic concept where you have some sort of metal plating on your skin to protect yourself. I’m not suggesting to be a walking lump of steel…

NANOMACHINES, SON.

Nanomachines sound like a cool mutation tree to have, too. It would be a very versatile mutation tree.

All in all, bionic/mutagen combo trees sound very interesting; can’t wait for them to be added. And yes, the idea of the Metalloid mutation tree sounds silly; I’m already aware of that, but it’s just a basic concept - and the addition of tech-mutagen sounds like it could make this work to some degree.