True that repairing a CBM is above and beyond what a survivor can do… is there any other way a CBM could require to be maintained, other than power consumption?
As for weighted CBMs deforming the body: I didn’t think of that. Maybe going with “slots” will be the only way to do this sort of soft cap.
[quote=“Shoes, post:61, topic:8665”]True that repairing a CBM is above and beyond what a survivor can do… is there any other way a CBM could require to be maintained, other than power consumption?
As for weighted CBMs deforming the body: I didn’t think of that. Maybe going with “slots” will be the only way to do this sort of soft cap.[/quote]
My suggestion was to do something similar, but with a volume system. The tradeoffs are pretty much the same, and volume can be increased or decreased with mutations. It might leave mutation+CBM still overpowered, but it can reign in CBMs in general a little bit.
And how many unhealthy choices we make every day for the sake of convenience?
Principle is the same (especially with “bionic patients”). The difference is in scale, not in the essence.
And how is this any better that Max HP reduction?
I honestly thought the whole Fault Tolerance was a really good point. It’s a shame nobody looked at it.
Having some kind of side effect to installed bionics might be a good ballancing factor but i don’t think anybody will like that either. Everyone seems to want CBMs that incorporate themselves flawlessly, but there doesn’t seem to be a general agreemento n restrictions beyond that point.
Because I think max HP reduction is a bad idea. I don’t think it fits gameplay-wise, it doesn’t really make sense realism-wise (and please don’t tell me what I don’t understand), and it would make all but the most powerful bionics completely worthless. HP as a limiter for bionics would just mean that everyone who wanted to roll a bionic type character would almost have to get as much strength as they could at the outset to boost their HP enough to where they can still function. This means that they would almost have to play a melee character because that’s the type of character that would benefit from it, and the sacrifices to support a large HP pool would be felt harder on a non-melee character.
Using a volume and body part system, every character would start on roughly equal footing at character generation, and some characters may be able to get an advantage later on if they find certain items or get certain mutations (and there may be some traits at char gen that could support it). Characters would still be limited from installing every single CBM they find, and volume amounts could be tweaked to where actual decisions have to be made (do I install 2 large CBMs or 1 large and 2 medium, or 1 large, 1 medium, and 2 smalls, etc) instead of just encouraging the player to install the biggest and baddest to keep the HP damage from permanently crippling their character.
i support the weight system as i suggested (in a more unintelligible way i guess) something similar back at page 1.
What i also suggested was to have HP penalties for getting over the limit.
After reading most of the thread here, i would suggest adding encumbrance for getting over the limit instead.
Generally because it’s nonsense. You don’t have redundancy in your cornea, and installing a diamond cornea doesn’t eliminate that non-existent redundancy. Same with replacing your stomach with three stomachs, or any number of other CBM changes. There’s a potential argument where CBMs act as immunosuppressants, but that becomes a bizarre nightmare of balancing and diseases are a pretty un-fun chore as it is. It could also reduce healing rate, but that’s another just un-fun annoyance rather than a serious game changer. Another option along that route might be to reduce the expressiveness of good mutations (i.e., someone CBM’d to the gills would almost certainly roll bad mutations), but that only works one way, has the same balancing issues, and is easily min/maxed by mutating before installing most CBMs.
And none of those really address the core issue of certain must-have CBMs being ‘must-have’. It would probably be better to reframe the question, since people are talking about managing the pile of CBMs they have installed. I’d look at it like this: if you, with no CBMs, and no mutations, found an Uncanny Dodge CBM (or whatever your personal favorite CBM is), what questions would go into your decision to install it or not? Right now, the only element that factors is the installation chance. Max HP cost, volume or weight management, immunosuppression, whatever, all just are drawbacks that you have to mitigate (and are easily min/maxed). Compare it to if you stumbled across a stash of Alpha serum. Your decision isn’t just based on the risks of injecting it, but also based on what mutation branches you’re closing forever to yourself if you gun for the Alpha threshold.
A couple of hit points can be the difference between life and death. If I lost health by adding CBMs, then I would be paranoid to install any of them at all. Different people will have different opinions, but in mine there is no such thing as negligible health loss when permanent character death is on the line.
Limited internal volume for CBMs, on the other hand, is something that I would like.