[Scenario/Challenge] 1213

Game Talk The Bunker
1

A proposal for a challenge mode, as well as a guide for how to play it in the meantime.

First off, find the “Bionic monstrosity” profession in cataclysm\data\json and paste this over the code already there:

"type": "profession", "ident": "cykotic", "name": "Bionic Monster", "description": "Completely overtaken by bionic-induced psychosis, you are a deformed posthuman monster who had no place in society. But now, where once you were forced to hide in the shadows, you find in this new desolation a world where even a creature such as yourself might find its niche.", "points": -4, "CBMs":[ "bio_deformity", "bio_voice", "bio_power_weakness", "bio_drain", "bio_shakes", "bio_stiff", "bio_pokedeye", "bio_nostril", "bio_thumbs", "bio_leaky", "bio_trip", "bio_ankles", "bio_noise", "bio_hydraulics", "bio_spasm", "bio_itchy", "bio_sleepy", "bio_dis_shock", "bio_dis_acid", "bio_batteries", "bio_power_storage_mkII", "bio_adrenaline", "bio_painkiller", "bio_razors", "bio_nanobots", "bio_digestion", "bio_water_extractor" ], "skills": [ { "level": 1, "name": "melee" }, { "level": 1, "name": "unarmed" }, { "level": 2, "name": "survival" }

Yes, this gives you every defective bionic, along with a few positive ones to aid in surviving. With that out of the way, let me introduce the idea: You awake to the sound of a shuddering metal. You find yourself in some unknown area (preferably this would be in a hospital or lab, but current limitations means you will just spawn in a house somewhere), suffering from amnesia and having no knowledge of who you are, and no clue besides the tattoo you find upon your left arm reading “1213”. Next to the tattoo you see some kind of bite-mark that itches and aches painfully. You are a hideous bionic monstrosity, upon further self-inspection, and terribly crippled in a variety of ways - and with only feint memories of fighting your way out of some underground complex with nothing but your bare hands. Your goal is not only to find out what happened to you and the world you found yourself in, but to repair your horribly damaged self and maybe, just maybe, turn around your pitiful existence.

World generation:
FAST ZOMBIES ENABLED
Size of cities: 6
Spawn rate scaling factor: 5
Item spawn scaling factor: 2
Static Spawn: False
Wander Spawn: True

Scenario: Infected

Stats:
Strength 15
Dexterity 8
Intelligence 10
Perception 8

Traits:

Scenario objectives:
Remove ALL of your defective bionics
Install every possible non-defective bionic
Acquire full suit of heavy power armor
Achieve Alpha thresh

SPECIAL RULES:
-You cannot wear glasses to alleviate the penalties of far-sighted. The pair of glasses you start off with have to be dropped. The visual impairments you experience are not due to your biology but due to your faulty bionics.
-You cannot wear noise-canceling gear or earplugs to alleviate the effects of the noisemaker bionic. Your constant spasms, electric discharges, and general nervous-system chaos, should generally result in you being unable to sleep for more than 2 hours or so.
-When you remove certain bionics, you are allowed to open the debug menu (or just edit your save file) and remove the negative mutations that correspond with those defective bionics. See the table below.

BIONIC/MUTATION TABLE:
Clumsy = Motor Control Overstimulator
Slow Runner = Wire-Induced Stiffness
Bad Knees= Squeaky Ankles
Ugly = Bionic Deformity
Slow Healer = Leaky Bionic, Acidic Discharge
Chemical Imbalance = Endocrine Enervator, Leaky Bionic
Schizophrenia = Endocrine Enervator, Visual disruptor, Short Circuit, Electric Discharge
Heavy Sleeper = Noisemaker
Insomniac = Noisemaker
Sleepy = Endocrine Enervator
Far Sighted = Visual impairment, Visual disruptor

2

Just one question…
Don’t you actually LOSE strength gaining the Prime strength with starting strength of 15?
Haven’t played that much with Alpha mutations, but isn’t there a chance to gain some strength increasing mutations on the way to threshold?

3

Prime Strength boosts 15 Strength (considered great in human terms) to 18 Strength (the maximum of human potential). It’s a Post-Threshold +3 boost, however if you lose Prime Strength (or other 15+ point stat) at any point after getting it for another strength boosting mutation it’ll drop your base stat to 8.

4

Having both the leaky bionic and acid discharge means the challenge is heavily RNG dependent, to the point of it being less of a challenge and more of a “luck roll”.
You’d need to find a first aid kit before losing too much hp from torso and then succeed on the first or second roll to remove it. Failure on removal roll is likely to either cripple or kill you.

Leaky bionic (especially with slow healer) will prevent any regeneration, acid discharge will slowly destroy hp.

5

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:4, topic:9897”]Having both the leaky bionic and acid discharge means the challenge is heavily RNG dependent, to the point of it being less of a challenge and more of a “luck roll”.
You’d need to find a first aid kit before losing too much hp from torso and then succeed on the first or second roll to remove it. Failure on removal roll is likely to either cripple or kill you.

Leaky bionic (especially with slow healer) will prevent any regeneration, acid discharge will slowly destroy hp.[/quote]

The idea I had was that this was meant to pressure the player to constantly find new medical equipment (First aid, bandages, disinfectant, cotton balls) to add a sense of the player slowly falling apart and needing to be constantly maintained in order to survive. Kinda like the disintegration mutation.

Item spawn scale factor being 2 should help with this, but I debated with myself if I should set it up to even 3

6

The problem is the start:
With fast zombies+huge spawns, exploring the city fast enough isn’t really possible, meaning you need to luck out and get good item spawns at the edge of the city.
Since hp healing drops are quite rare, you can’t really depend on them satisfying hp rot from acid, let alone any damage from combat. With dex as low as 8 and not enough time to craft any armor, any combat will cause heavy hp loss.

Meaning that the only real way to win is a lucky drop of a first aid kit and lucky roll on removal of acidic or leaky.

With just the leaky bionic+slow healer, the pressure would be enough. Leaky bionic eventually makes sleep stop healing any hp, meaning you only get as much as you can get from bandages and cotton balls. Slow healer makes this no-healing happen much faster.

7

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:6, topic:9897”]The problem is the start:
With fast zombies+huge spawns, exploring the city fast enough isn’t really possible, meaning you need to luck out and get good item spawns at the edge of the city.
Since hp healing drops are quite rare, you can’t really depend on them satisfying hp rot from acid, let alone any damage from combat. With dex as low as 8 and not enough time to craft any armor, any combat will cause heavy hp loss.

Meaning that the only real way to win is a lucky drop of a first aid kit and lucky roll on removal of acidic or leaky.

With just the leaky bionic+slow healer, the pressure would be enough. Leaky bionic eventually makes sleep stop healing any hp, meaning you only get as much as you can get from bandages and cotton balls. Slow healer makes this no-healing happen much faster.[/quote]

Maybe the character should also start with repair nanobots? Also near-sighted seems to be a real killer, maybe I should just leave it to far-sighted

Also it should be noted that you start off with the Infection Resistant trait, so being infected at the start isn’t really THAT bad.

8

I’d say that repair nanobots + metabolic power would make the character quite good. As in - strong.
I didn’t check the exchange rates on food vs. power, but I recall them being around 25 power per 5 food/water, meaning one use of nanobots per 25 nutrition.
It could be good enough to allow feeding off zed corpses to regenerate.

Infection wouldn’t be a huge problem - it hurts and interrupts sleep, but this character wouldn’t sleep much anyway.

Also, another important RNG dependency here: lack of sleep means mandatory coffee binges. No coffee for few days could be deadly due to all this inability to sleep.

9

Huh. I’ve mentioned a similar idea of “all the faulty bionics” before, though as a separate profession from the bionic monster, and with an array of passive augmentions like armor plating and fingertip razors instead.

10

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:8, topic:9897”]I’d say that repair nanobots + metabolic power would make the character quite good. As in - strong.
I didn’t check the exchange rates on food vs. power, but I recall them being around 25 power per 5 food/water, meaning one use of nanobots per 25 nutrition.
It could be good enough to allow feeding off zed corpses to regenerate.

Infection wouldn’t be a huge problem - it hurts and interrupts sleep, but this character wouldn’t sleep much anyway.

Also, another important RNG dependency here: lack of sleep means mandatory coffee binges. No coffee for few days could be deadly due to all this inability to sleep.[/quote]

Maybehaps metabolic interchange should be switched out with another power system, say, battery or internal furnace?

11

I tested the idea of carbon-filaments plus all of the alloy plating CBMs, but it ended up being a bit OP. Even stark naked, the armor plating meant that you basically never took damage from zombies other than brutes / spitters / shockers. You’re effectively invincible to lower tier monsters with full armor CBMs

12

Let me find the post where I suggested it…

EDIT: Refenced and code-posted in a few different threads.

http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=14.msg235370#msg235370

http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=19.msg235348#msg235348

http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=3310.msg235271#msg235271

13

Battery would make it very RNG dependent: you’d need to get ~500 batteries per day to offset the rot from acid.

Internal furnace would be very cheap to use in cities, but quite weak in the wilderness.

Ethanol burner would probably be the best, but it is a bit rng-dependent (unless you spawned with a bottle of vodka or something like that). Drinking alcohol causes heavy penalties, but also a painkiller effect. This would make it not free to use.
Plus, it would make the character an obligate alcoholic murderous bum.

14

Battery would make it very RNG dependent: you’d need to get ~500 batteries per day to offset the rot from acid.

Internal furnace would be very cheap to use in cities, but quite weak in the wilderness.

Ethanol burner would probably be the best, but it is a bit rng-dependent (unless you spawned with a bottle of vodka or something like that). Drinking alcohol causes heavy penalties, but also a painkiller effect. This would make it not free to use.
Plus, it would make the character an obligate alcoholic murderous bum.[/quote]

Acid discharge doesn’t happen enough to warrant more than 250 batteries a day for nanobot repairs, and it shouldnt be difficult to find those batteries from radios, PDAs, laptops, cellphones, flashlights, power tools, electronic stores, and drops considering the x2 item spawn rate

Beyond that its not excessively difficult to craft batteries, since you only need 2 fabrication and 1 electronics - the only problem is that I dont know if batteries are an auto-learn recipe or if you need a book to learn it, which you can’t read because of near-sighted

15

Still, a combo of passive bionics and just taking the fast healer trait will mitigate this. Strength dragon from the power overload will be an annoyance otherwise.

16

Can’t start off with fast healer, you gotta mutate it if you want that. See the OP.

17

Ah derp. That sounds a bit…hmm. Personally I like my take on it more. =w=