On balancing out demideities: CBMs

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

At current moment many players on this forum complain, that late-game content transforms their characters into demigods without meaningful choices. The root of this problem is “constant power for one-time effort with no ongoing cost” that is present in the game since original Cataclysm times. Mutations are the least offending mechanic - at least the most powerful mutations makes peaceful interactions with most NPC and (expected) factions impossible. Also they preclude you from using most of “human” equipment. CBMs, while having many of mutations bonuses have no such downsides. Therefore, to balance CBM’s role in creation of demigods, such downside must be added.

1. Essence of CBMs.
Judging from current lore and in-game implementation, CBMs are complexes of intracellular machines, that infuse target tissues of subject organism and allow it to perform additional functions (generate EM pulses, detect infrared radiation etc). What is downside of such cybernetic design? - Adding new functions to the same set of actors reduces redundancy of said group of actors, and through it - reduces reliability and durability of the system.

2. In-game representation.

In game reliability and durability of character’s body is represented through amount of HP of said body. So installing of CBMs (except, maybe, power storages) should reduce that HP. There can be two approaches to such representation:

  1. Integral influence: this approach presuppose that even if functional outlets of certain CBMs are localised, CBMs itself modify the whole body to support their systems and so each implanted CBM should reduce Max HP of all bodyparts by the same amount.
  2. Part-by-part infuence: this approach presuppose that many CBMs are entirely localised in certain bodyparts (like finger-mounted lasers or flamethrowers) and therefore such CBMs must reduce only respective bodyparts’ HP.

Such approach will accomplish several things:

  1. CBMs, being bodily modification, will depend on modified body: stronger or larger bodies would be capable to accept more CBMs before crumbling due to functional overload.
  2. It would allow some players to play to the archetype of squishy wizard with lots of mildly reality-warping powers (no, really, lightning does not work this way IRL) but abysmal health =)
  3. It would make players contemplate on pros and cons of intalling each CBMs: does this CBM worth those HPs for your playstyle? Would you really use it if you already have some other CBM for similar situations? Should you, for example, simply use normal flashlight unstead of implanting one in your cranium?
2

Good idea, But how will we balance the CBM vs Mutagen spectrum, I mean you can have an endless amount of both with no drawbacks to it.

3

Can you elaborate on this? I am not sure I understand you correctly.

4

No, No I just mean why is it that mutations don’t effect/alter CBMs in any way, For Example:It seems to me that suddenly growing 5 times larger wouldn’t be good for your finger laser.

5

Same reason clothing and mutations do not interact with each other (other that simplistic blocking and XL stuff) - combinatorical explosion. If you have, say, 10 different mutations and 10 different CBMs - you have 100 possible interactions between them. It is just a lot of “fiddling” with little profit.

6

I guess your right. I still think that size should make CBMs harder to install though.

7

Quite to the countrary: having more redundant flesh avaiable for modification would make CBMs easier to install (as represented by HP-increasing mutations, especially - post threshold ones).

8

Not a bad idea, but I’d hope that the ability to remove bionics would be in place before this was implemented. I’d also suggest having some CBMS cost 0 hp (power) while other fancier ones could cost varying amounts.

9

Another one of these threads huh? Alright.

Well, credit to a new idea at least. Still, I kinda fail to see how reducing the player’s HP as they install bionics works out as ‘fair’ let alone believable. You’re not excavating chunks of your body and leaving it to the void, you’re installing new things.

I apologize for the rude attitude, it’s just these threads crop up with disturbing frequency. I’m almost certain it’s the most common “balance” suggestion with “Guns are too common” and “NERF ALL THE THINGS” in third. Personally, I find the problem is there’s nothing past the mid-game, it kinda just levels out mid-game leaving you in ‘god’ mode.

Think about it for a moment, to get to bionics in labs you usually need to first access the lab which requires surviving long enough to locate either a Lab ID (Fairly easy once you get past the “RNG has fucked you” stage) or some explosives (Bit harder, and more risky) Once inside the lab, you have to fight admittedly light “security” but to access the bionics you need either at least 3 computers skill to ‘hope’ you pass the check, 5 to pass it just about without fail.

Assuming you’ve completed the above steps, you now have a handful of entry level bionics. Power supplies, small batteries, a few tools, and maybe a couple Internal Storages. Not exactly CBM: God Mode, but still, they help. You then need to level your First Aid to around 3, or Electronics to around 6, or Mechanics to around 12 to have a decent chance of installing those low end bionics.

Now, if you’re a component butcher, you can start getting your hands on high-end bionics pretty quickly, however to do so you need to kill either Shockers, Shocker Brutes, or Bio-Operators. Which can be accomplished with moderate-end guns, or a melee weapon and the shock-proofing bionic. Both of which require some more survival time, as well as more skill and by the time you’ve started amassing your CBM: Armor to install and so on, you’ve pretty much already met (and killed) what is currently available for end-game content.

TL;DR High-Level bionics currently have no challenge to them, akin to hunting squirrels with a Barret .50 cal.

Now, some suggestions I’ve seen that seem plausible as well as might be worth implementing much later:

  • Bionics becoming damaged/destroyed in combat (Problem is it’s one thing to lose a Mini-Flamethrower, it’s another thing entirely to lose a Monolecular blade.)
  • Mutating after installing bionics risks damaging certain bionics (EG growing scales probably isn’t going to go too well with your ‘skin’ layer bionics, but suffers the same problem as above.)
  • Mutations conflict with Bionics (Kinda hard to have Lizard IR if your eyes aren’t biological)

That said, all of the above has one common problem: You’re restricting the player and frankly, we’ve got a lot of freedom in CDDA and I think that’s one of the best things about the game that keeps me coming back every time I think I’m done.

10

Then I suggest you learn the role of redundancy in engineering and in physiology of living beings.

You are not installing new things, you upgrade old things with new functions.

You do not need labs for this. Just level up archery, marksmanship and survival and go directly to hunting shockers, shocker hulks, bio-operator zeds and technician zeds (power stations are good hunting grounds for this).

[quote=“EkarusRyndren, post:9, topic:8665”]- Mutating after installing bionics risks damaging certain bionics (EG growing scales probably isn’t going to go too well with your ‘skin’ layer bionics, but suffers the same problem as above.)

  • Mutations conflict with Bionics (Kinda hard to have Lizard IR if your eyes aren’t biological)[/quote]

So not going to happen. Why? Again, because combinatorical explosion.

I do not restrict the player - all options are still available to him, just not all at once. I am making him choose and manage his character’s limited resources. Access to limitless resources is what makes one demideity. It is not much different from mutations and equipment: you cannot have all equipment (due to limitations of volume, weight and encumbrance); you cannot have all good mutations (mutation trees preclude that). None of this present any problem. Why CBMs must be any different and why character’s body must be some kind of character-shaped hyperspace storage which can accept limitless amounts of additional functions?

11

[quote=“Stretop, post:10, topic:8665”][quote=“EkarusRyndren, post:9, topic:8665”]- Mutating after installing bionics risks damaging certain bionics (EG growing scales probably isn’t going to go too well with your ‘skin’ layer bionics, but suffers the same problem as above.)

  • Mutations conflict with Bionics (Kinda hard to have Lizard IR if your eyes aren’t biological)[/quote]
    So not going to happen. Why? Again, because combinatorical explosion.[/quote]
    A part_affected property could be added to the jsons for both CBMs and mutations. With Ekarus’s example in mind: the Scales mutation would have a part_affected of [“skin_arms”, “skin_torso”, “skin_legs”, etc.] to represent that it changes every part of the character’s skin; the Mini-flamethrower CBM would have a part_affected of at least “skin_hands”, and possibly also something like “interior_hands”. Upon mutating, any CBM that shares a part_affected with the mutation might take damage of some sort.
    For mutation-CBM conflicts, a “REPLACES_PART” flag could be added. If Scales was given the “REPLACES_PART” flag, then CBMs (and possibly other mutations) could never be applied to the player’s skin because the flag implies that the player no longer has skin to modify.

[quote=“Stretop, post:10, topic:8665”]Then I suggest you learn the role of redundancy in engineering and in physiology of living beings.

…

I do not restrict the player - all options are still available to him, just not all at once. I am making him choose and manage his character’s limited resources. Access to limitless resources is what makes one demideity. It is not much different from mutations and equipment: you cannot have all equipment (due to limitations of volume, weight and encumbrance); you cannot have all good mutations (mutation trees preclude that). None of this present any problem. Why CBMs must be any different and why character’s body must be some kind of character-shaped hyperspace storage which can accept limitless amounts of additional functions?[/quote]
True, installing every CBM at once would severely compromise someone’s body, but installing one or two isn’t going to hurt at all if done properly. In addition to different levels of penalty for each CBM, there should be increasing (and stacking) penalty for each CBM installed on every part_affected tag. Installing an integrated toolset and only an integrated toolset will not reduce hand HP by more than a few points (if at all), and installing a mini-flamethrower and only a mini-flamethrower will do the same. A mini-flamethrower, in addition, will cause less damage than an integrated toolset due to relative complexity and size. Installing both at the same time will add a ‘multiple conflicting parts’ penalty IN ADDITION to increasing the penalty for each CBM.

12

[quote=“ThinkInvisible, post:11, topic:8665”]A part_affected property could be added to the jsons for both CBMs and mutations. With Ekarus’s example in mind: the Scales mutation would have a part_affected of [“skin_arms”, “skin_torso”, “skin_legs”, etc.] to represent that it changes every part of the character’s skin; the Mini-flamethrower CBM would have a part_affected of at least “skin_hands”, and possibly also something like “interior_hands”. Upon mutating, any CBM that shares a part_affected with the mutation might take damage of some sort.
For mutation-CBM conflicts, a “REPLACES_PART” flag could be added. If Scales was given the “REPLACES_PART” flag, then CBMs (and possibly other mutations) could never be applied to the player’s skin because the flag implies that the player no longer has skin to modify.[/quote]
Again, a lot of fiddling (and potential bugfest). I tend to suppose, that CBMs are by design capable of self-adjusting to user (since it can be used by any human and human bodies are significantly different; and since they seems to be intended for constant use and human body tends to change over time).

I am inclined to disagree. Damage would not be significant or intolerable but it still would be damage, as character’s body is infused with functions it is not adapted to carry out (that is another difference between CBMs and mutations - mutation adapt character’s body to new functions).

This comes very close to slotting CBMs, and slotting was declared by devs to be out of question when it was proposed last time.

13

Imo ‘slotting’ CBMs with your twist could work:
Eg:
Each bodypart has a number of slots, if the player installs more bionics than those allowed, the bodypart HP goes down.

This is better that reducing HP with each and every CBM, the rationale being that there is a limited number of CBMs that can coexist inside a bodypart, while going over this limit will negatively affect the body.

An even better way to implement something like this would be to give each CBM an affect value for each bodypart it affects.
Then by giving, say, 100CBM pts to each bodypart and having installed bionics use these up, surpassing the amount could lead to encumbrance and HP loss.
Some bionics could also consume zero points, simulating those not taxing the body at all.

‘Slotting’ could also make it easier to determine conflicts between CBM’s, injuries and mutations, as a simpler system could be devised to handle them. (rather than handling 1000’s different possibilities)

Problems of this approach:
Lots of work to rewrite and modernize the system.

Balancing all CMB’s for both gameplay (make all CBM’s worth it in some situations - cheap and weak, powerful but expensive, situational but very strong, etc.) and reality (how much a given CBM would tax the body, based on how it works)

Some loss of freedom for the player. (not necessarily loss of fun though)

How would we let the player know how it all works (i’m opposed to having the max points/consumed points of a bodypart shown, or even the numerical pts consumtion of a CBM)?
We’d have to create a new system to represent all of this in a simple way converging on what a person would feel (one should be able to feel that his body is overloaded with CBM’s)

Convincing the devs to accept it, even though they have rejected it in the past (can’t remember why though)

14

freedom is only fun within a set of defined rules.
the freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want without restrictions defeats the purpose of a game.

I aprove.

15

IMO this isn’t an improvement on slotting. I’m pretty sure that quite a lot of builds are going to simply ignore the increased fragility (mostly ranged combatants), and others are going to be crippled by it (mostly melee combatants). I don’t see many in a middle ground where losing some HP is a problem, but still an ok tradeoff to make, which is what you want.
It also fails internal consistency, if it made soldiers significantly more fragile, it wouldn’t have been used in the military, and therefore combat-oriented cbms wouldn’t even be available. Balance-wise, those are the specific cbms you want to reign in.

I’m not totally against a basic slotting system, both from a balance perspective and a consistency perspective. You can currently install multiple CBMs that claim to install to the same locations, up to and including limb replacement. The simplest thing to do is to allocate a number of slots per limb and location/size attributes to the cbms. The objection was to limiting choice, but as long as we don’t have a carefully curated list of CBMs (we never did and probably never will), every added CBM just adds to the power creep problem. mutations have a built in system of exclusions (as much of a pain in the ass that is to maintain), there’s no good reason IMO that bionics should be different. The extra tricky thing of course is making the two systems play nice together.

16

In that case, why not make the system of exclusions span from mutations to CBMs and vice verse? Some CBMs could exclude certain mutations, some mutations could exclude CBMs. I suppose the actual tricky part would be determining priority when a player mutates (does the CBM get destroyed by the mutation, or does the mutation fail because of the CBM?) - since installing CBMs is more ‘active’, a player could simply be prevented from installing a CBM if a mutation blocks it.

17
  1. because the mutation exclusion system is kind of terrible and hard to maintain.
  2. because the needs of CBM balancing are somewhat different.

For example you can never have two of the same mutation, but you frequently (almost always) have multiple power supply CBMs, so if we had a slot-based CBM system and the CBM didn’t specify where it was located, it would prompt for where to put it. If you use a large torso-mounted CBM, you might put your power supplies in your legs, if you use a lot of arm and leg CBMs, you’d put them in your torso.

18

Well, my aim was mostly on finding a way to limit CBMs with system with the least mathematical difficulty (and with the least amount of “fiddly variables”).

Ranged combatants usually do not max out strength, so they would have to choose their bionics more carefully.

That depends on what kind of melee combatant player want to create. Such limitations would lead to specialization: tanks, glass cannons, lightning buisers etc. It would merely prevent melee combatabts from intalling “all that may be remotely useful” at once.

It depends entirely on what HP-costs would be assigned to what CBMs.

It actually improves internal consistency. CBMs are relatively safe, useful in combat, do not require training to use, can be removed and can be mass-produced. Have you ever wondered why not every soldier was made bionics operator? Such system provides an answer: you must be very physically fit to handle more that pair of CBMs.

Then again: what about “whole body” affecting CBMs like subdermal armor?

But there is good reason, lore-wise: mutations are interconnected systems of traits, that XE037 assumes within the living body in response to mutagenic stimuli. CBMs, however, are completely separate cybernetic devices.

Like which ones, for example?

19

It actually improves internal consistency. CBMs are relatively safe, useful in combat, do not require training to use, can be removed and can be mass-produced. Have you ever wondered why not every soldier was made bionics operator? Such system provides an answer: you must be very physically fit to handle more that pair of CBMs.[/quote]

I have to agree with this. CBMs increase the human capabilities, but the human body can only take so many of them. So there should be a point where adding more hurts the body.
(The “how many?” part needs to be determined though - should also depend upon how advanced CBM tech was before cata)

Then again: what about “whole body” affecting CBMs like subdermal armor?[/quote]
These could take a little of every slot, or use their own slot.
eg. you can install subdermal CBM’s, so subdermal is a slot, exactly like torso.

20

I think that the bionics system could use some work, yes. After getting into the late-game with my previous character, I decided to increase the game’s challenge by moving over to a new map taking nothing with me at all. Temperature was not a problem because I had internal climate control. I still had a weapon because of the monomolecular blade, even though I could kill anything with my fists. If there was anything I was slightly worried about facing then I could cloak to get away from it, or phase through a wall, or use uncanny dodge or hydraulic muscles etc. If I ran low on power I would chop down a tree and eat it using my internal furnace. If I was hungry despite my recycler, I could cook meat with my hands. If I was thirsty, I could draw water from any dead zombie or even thin air. I think bionics as-is might be just a little bit in need of something.

I don’t like the idea of losing health to install bionics at all, but I do like the idea of a maximum limit to bionics.

I think that if done correctly, all options would still be available to the player. The difference being that not all options would be available to the same character. Just like mutation threshholds, maybe bionics shouldn’t be about collecting them all, but about building your character along a chosen path.

Over the last few weeks ive been writing up ideas for a mod/addition that addresses some of these problems. The driving idea of it is that to get some of the really high end bionics, you have to install prosthetic limbs, each allowing more bionics per-installation. These artificial limbs conflict with mutations that affect those limbs. Mutations that conflict would not have to check for individual CBMs, just check if you have two prosthetic arms/legs