Possible Dragon-like mutation line

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

From what I gather from various posts many seem to want a dragon-like mutation category, myself included, but it’s seen as potentially too fantasy. I have a possible solution for 2 physics problems that have been brought up, specifically concerning the idea of dragon wings flight, and a fire breath weapon.
Animal Planet did a special about dragons where they suggested that real dragons might have been able to both fly and breath fire due to bacteria in their system the built up hydrogen, which their body would store in a gas bladder. Hydrogen reduced their weight since its lighter then air, and by chewing platinum ore and having residue of it in their mouth allowed them to breath fire, since hydrogen ignites on contact with platinum.
It seems simple enough to make a mutation that gives the wings, which on their own would have drawbacks like the bat wings, more in the way then helpful. Then another mutation for the hydrogen bladder, which negates the wings penalties, and replaces them with the same benefits bird wings have. and then the third which lets you expel the contents of your gas bladder in a gout of fire, but negates the bonuses of the gas bladder mutation for a set amount of time and gives you back the full penalties of the wings until it has time to recharge. Possibly also include some requirement (and ability) to find platinum in game and eat/wear/something it in order to be able to use the fire breath this way.
Other mutations that would seem logical as well would be a form of night vision, infrared vision, claws, a bite, dragon scales armor which might also include some protection from fire, a tail.

on an unrelated note, this is my first post, I love cataclysm, have been playing for over a year so far and I hope to see it continue its steady improvement and possibly help with some brainstorming and ideas myself in the future

2

It’s funny, I was just thinking today about starting a “hybrids” thread, specifically for dragons. You’d pick and choose from Lizard and Bird mutations, along with a Mini-Flamethrower CBM to represent fire breath.

3

Mutagen sorta needs the dna of something living or once living in order to be made. You could get reptile wings from a pterodactyl perhaps, but you surely aren’t going to find a gas bladder that works like a flamethrower.

Anyhow, I think it would clash rather badly with the scifi-postapocalyptic style of the game.

4

Yeah, an actual fire breath mutation is not very likely at all. (Though it might show up as a future CBM “hybrid” mutation that you could only get if you already had the proper CBM’s installed).

5

[quote=“John Candlebury, post:3, topic:9426”]Mutagen sorta needs the dna of something living or once living in order to be made. You could get reptile wings from a pterodactyl perhaps, but you surely aren’t going to find a gas bladder that works like a flamethrower.

Anyhow, I think it would clash rather badly with the scifi-postapocalyptic style of the game.[/quote]

unlike the shogoth and masturbatory aids, which are perfect for both tone and setting?

e: Or the literal elves.

e2: Or the Zlaves.

e3: Or the rat wizard in the sewers.

e4: Or the troglobite mutagen (it’s a bit of a stretch, but still.) We should really just be going for rule of cool and fun. Make it an offshoot of snake, which have venom bladders already, and instead make it gasoline, and allow you to milk yourself.

(Cobra’s spit venom at eyes with perfect aim, national geographic: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/02/0210_050210_cobra_2.html)

6

Another point is that gas bladders like I am suggesting do exist in nature today, many marine creatures have flotation bladders that work exactly like these would. The difference is they fill it with heavier gases, only needed it to float on water. In fact several species of real marine reptiles have such flotation bladders, so it’s not a huge stretch at all for them to fill with naturally generated hydrogen as I suggested.
Also, considering the existence of things like elves, shoggoth, etc, I don’t see it being too hard to justify a “dragonoid” mutation line, hell you could justify it by saying they were trying to genetic engineer a monster with reptile, feline, and marine reptile dna. It would even be justifiable to add in rare Dragonoid enemies in labs or the wilds which breath fire, move quick, and have natural scale armor, claws, and night vision.
All in all it honestly would be easy to justify as a mod at least considering the other outlandish things the game already includes.

7

In the original storyline of cataclysm this simply did not happen. It would be altering the lore. if your goal would be to make a good game it would then also require to balance all other mutation paths against this new one.

8

Nothing is set in stone though, any lore can change, it’s just a .txt and a couple of .json away from being different.

9

Its as set in stone as the ones coding the game want it to be. And if it happens to be included id like to have a backround story like with elf-a.

10

[quote=“Turtlicious, post:5, topic:9426”][quote=“John Candlebury, post:3, topic:9426”]Mutagen sorta needs the dna of something living or once living in order to be made. You could get reptile wings from a pterodactyl perhaps, but you surely aren’t going to find a gas bladder that works like a flamethrower.

Anyhow, I think it would clash rather badly with the scifi-postapocalyptic style of the game.[/quote]

unlike the shogoth and masturbatory aids, which are perfect for both tone and setting?

e: Or the literal elves.

e2: Or the Zlaves.

e3: Or the rat wizard in the sewers.

e4: Or the troglobite mutagen (it’s a bit of a stretch, but still.) We should really just be going for rule of cool and fun. Make it an offshoot of snake, which have venom bladders already, and instead make it gasoline, and allow you to milk yourself.

(Cobra’s spit venom at eyes with perfect aim, national geographic: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/02/0210_050210_cobra_2.html)[/quote]

I can’t believe how much fight you are putting for those dragons.

Anyways, shoggoths are from the Cthulhu mythos, which are totally plausible here. And if you don’t masturbate, hooray, but most people do. No idea about elves, unless you are talking about a creature from the nether, in that case is possible. Zlaves are ok. No idea what you think about it that is wrong. I don’t remember seeing any rat wizard, and consider I had to see each and every monster of the game to make tiles. And troglodyte mutation is basically a night crawler.

If you want dragons, you have skyrim.

And hey, OP, welcome! Your list got a lot of thought an everything, but sadly mutations are DNA of things that already lived in the world, iirc.

11

Also, take note that there is noticeable difference between an organ that works like a ballast tank or mouthparts that allow you to spit a small distance and an organ that can hold pressurized gas and then release it in a controllably enough manner to create a jet of flame.

Perhaps you could have the ability to spit some sort of inflammable substance, and then set it on fire once its in the ground.

12

[quote=“StopSignal, post:10, topic:9426”][quote=“Turtlicious, post:5, topic:9426”][quote=“John Candlebury, post:3, topic:9426”]Mutagen sorta needs the dna of something living or once living in order to be made. You could get reptile wings from a pterodactyl perhaps, but you surely aren’t going to find a gas bladder that works like a flamethrower.

Anyhow, I think it would clash rather badly with the scifi-postapocalyptic style of the game.[/quote]

unlike the shogoth and masturbatory aids, which are perfect for both tone and setting?

e: Or the literal elves.

e2: Or the Zlaves.

e3: Or the rat wizard in the sewers.

e4: Or the troglobite mutagen (it’s a bit of a stretch, but still.) We should really just be going for rule of cool and fun. Make it an offshoot of snake, which have venom bladders already, and instead make it gasoline, and allow you to milk yourself.

(Cobra’s spit venom at eyes with perfect aim, national geographic: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/02/0210_050210_cobra_2.html)[/quote]

I can’t believe how much fight you are putting for those dragons.

Anyways, shoggoths are from the Cthulhu mythos, which are totally plausible here. And if you don’t masturbate, hooray, but most people do. No idea about elves, unless you are talking about a creature from the nether, in that case is possible. Zlaves are ok. No idea what you think about it that is wrong. I don’t remember seeing any rat wizard, and consider I had to see each and every monster of the game to make tiles. And troglodyte mutation is basically a night crawler.

If you want dragons, you have skyrim.

And hey, OP, welcome! Your list got a lot of thought an everything, but sadly mutations are DNA of things that already lived in the world, iirc.[/quote]

That thing in the rat caves that gives you a bunch of mutations? I’m not putting a fight up for it I’m just saying this is inherently a silly game with tons of clashing genres.

Elf-A http://cdda.estilofusion.com/iv_mutagen_elfa

And where did they get the Nightcrawler DNA?

If you think Zlaves are “ok” that’s your perogative, it just doesn’t fit the “lore” that the blob wouldn’t immediately leave or regenerate when the arms are removed. (Not to mention the overall weirdness.) I’m not sure why cthulu mythos is ok, but some other fantastical fake thing isn’t.

13

It’s rather unlikely that we get an out-and-out dragon category. It pushes the line too close to “magic”, which we try to avoid. That said once we have working bionic/mutation combination mutations I could certainly see you working yourself into a combination build that would base itself off of lizard with some bionic combo muts to fill out the more “dragony” parts of it. (Alternatively we might see something like this when we get an eventual “subcategory” mutation system, where building certain main category combinations might cause you to thresh to a unique subcategory).

As for the other questions:

  1. Elf-a was unauthorized research by a single researcher into an attempt to make “superhuman elves”. Once it was found out about the majority of his notes were quickly burned and he himself was disposed of.
  2. Zlaves actually make quite a bit of sense with the lore. The blob can’t just “leave” a host body, elsewise you’d be seeing it abandon the corpses of zeds you killed. Similarly it takes time for the blob to regen; currently the game abstracts away the player occasionally doing “touch-ups” where they take out any parts that are starting to grow back. I don’t know if it’s in the game yet, but the eventual plan is to have Zlaves that spend too long away form the player develop back into normal zombies as they “heal”.
  3. As for the rat king… well he got sort of grandfathered into the game. He’s back from the original old whales days where there wasn’t near as high of a “realism” barrier to jump over, along with a handful of some of the other more “magical” things. (Though you might be able to rationalize it away as a strange reaction between a normal “rat king” and the ooze, but yeah, it doesn’t have that good of an explanation).
14

Yeah, I was mostly pointing out these things exist, and you can justify pretty much anything lore wise if you want too. Either way, I’m always going to be on the side of more features, unless they’re really gross or weird. (I try not to talk about Zlaves, even though it’s definitely in the weird and gross territory.)

15

I agree with Turtlicious that we could explain almost anything and glue it to the main lore. Assumnig that community want such feature to be present in game.

[quote=“i2amroy, post:13, topic:9426”]…

  1. Elf-a was unauthorized research by a single researcher into an attempt to make “superhuman elves”. Once it was found out about the majority of his notes were quickly burned and he himself was disposed of.
    …[/quote]

So there could be another (unauthorized or not) research when some scientist decided to make some next generation soldiers capable of performing airborne assaults (wings) , clad in natural armor (scales), good in hand-to-hand (claws/fangs) and with some “extra” features taken from nature (Bombardier beetle for example), then upgraded and which resulted in fire breath.

16

Woah, woah. What kind of dragon-kin are we into here?

Having some scales, a horn or two and some infravision is not really the thing going on with most of the Ancients, who are immune to all the elements and most of the sorcery the World of Men can throw at them.

It’s the reason for considering dragonling mutation branch in relation with uncommon mutation tree.

The archetypical roguelike classes made it into CataDDA through modding, and that’s the reason why I can see the mods organisator / coordinator couplin’ some of those “flavored” mutations up - thus making a nice edition to the game, once all the requirements had been met.