Long time lurker and fan here who finally made a forum account. I love playing as a bionic focused character but what always bothered me was that they seem overpowered in general. Many bionics come as sort pre-packaged suites with multiple functions and once toggled don’t have any sort of con to them besides power drain. What Id like to see and what I aim to do is get bionics to more of a (several bionics working together for maximum effectiveness) or (bionics helping alongside normal tools) point. It would be nice to see some bionics be more of a double edge sword when activated (like the claws CBM with not being able to hold stuff). There are many CBMs that work very well by themselves already and others that are already perfect and don’t need to be touch at all but some could use some balancing and updates I think. I have lots of ideas but first I want to focus on some easier ones to get my feet wet. It would also be nice to see some community feedback before I go charging off to github trying to change things. Feel free to leave your own ideas as well.
The flashbang generator CBM. This is one a my favorites actually but I think it should effect the player when you use it as well. Your emitting a huge flash of light from your skin and a deafening noise from internal speakers. Sounds kinda dangerous don’t you think? You should need to be wearing proper eye and ear protection or have the proper CBMs installed like enhanced hearing and anti-glare to beat the flash and sound damage to use this effectively. Or just take the vision and hearing hit in the hopes of escaping in the confusion.
Separating the sound dampeners and enhanced hearing CBMs. You get two CBMs with different functions for the price of one surgery. Pre-cataclysm the enhanced hearing CBM would have been used by the military and spies where the sound dampeners would have probably been used by construction workers or people who have trouble sleeping and things like this. The sound dampeners are good enough in there own right (sound dampeners + alarm system is great for sleeping). If you don’t have the enhanced hearing you could use the sound dampeners instead to mute large caliber gunshots and flashbangs at the cost of being completely deaf for a few seconds. I don’t want to change enhanced hearing at all besides maybe making it more rare just un-bundle it.
Dam this is getting long already, thanks for reading. Ill continue the list below.
3.Some sort of light blocking CBM. Something like the sound dampeners but for your eyes. It would help you sleep during the day without carrying a sleeping mask or you could activate it to block a flashbang blast then deactivate it. Light blocking CBM+Sound Dampeners+Alarm System could be quite powerful for sleeping actually. Sleep though a daytime thunderstorm. Just need a name for this new CBM.
Yes we have a anti-glare CBM but what i’m suggesting is a CBM with a blind option so that you can toggle full vision on and off like you can with sound with the sound dampener CBM.
Ya I saw that and it seems interesting. Another thing would be if you took a bullet wound or a massive cut or bash to a body part you could damage or destroy a bionic. Hell we could have a bionic for maintaining or protecting bionics. It should be a trade off. When your human and get hurt you need time and medicine to heal. If your more bionic you should be able to break and need to be fixed.
Well I submitted the player immunity change for the Flashbang Generator CBM and the name change to Active Camouflage CBM from Clocking System CBM so just have to wait and see if I did everything right and if everybody likes it. Which leaves 2 more (un-bundling the Enhanced Hearing CBM and the Sound Dampening CBM, and making a “blindfold” CBM) + an extra one I just thought of.
While the name Uncanny Dodge CBM is descriptive it doesn’t seen like an advanced cybernetic body modification would be called this officially. Most of the CBM’s have nice scientific sounding names so having one called this is kinda strange. I don’t have a new name but if you have a good one please post it.
I found this article about bullet time relating to the matrix. Don’t know how scholarly it is but I like where they were going.
“Our adrenaline starts pumping when we’re in danger, or when we’re scared. What follows is that more information is committed to memory by the brain (the amygdala to be specific) in an effort to help us keep safe. This memory overload makes our recollections seem richer and denser than they actually were.”
Basically what this CBM is doing is committing more information to the brain about your current situation making time seem slower and giving a lot more time to react. Like being able to start moving out of the line of fire before the attacker can even upholster their weapon or start to dodge a incoming slash before the attacker has even finished reaching for their knife.
I didn’t properly justify my name change for the cloaking system/active camouflage CBM. This is quoted from what I wrote on github
“If you look at the description for the CBM and the definition of Active camouflage they are very similar. More so active camouflage technology is currently in development for the US military and possibly other countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking_device#Active_camouflage This link talks about both cloaking and active camouflage. The definition matches pretty well where as cloaking is a different technology all together. The name Cloaking system is slightly misleading as your not cloaking your camouflaging with lights and cameras.”
While we’re talking about CBM changes and uncanny dodge, that CBM is entirely too powerful imo. It is basically a “get out of special attack free” card.
How about some sort of CBM that’ll manipulate the brain to make a survivor feel happy. Morale boost, starts small but can be stacked. Repeated uses will cause an addiction like drugs, and perhaps some other nasty effects. Hallucinations, blacking out, etc.
It is a supersoldier-class CBM. It’s also fairly expensive per dodge, though I suppose it could stand to be more so.
Things are named by the people who created them. How about creating something instead of arbitrarily changing what others created because you don’t like how it sounds?
What if had limited number of slots per body part, similar as clothes? Ex Uncanny Dodge CBM could come in different body part configurations. Like left arm version, exo skeleton type thing. Increases melee, dodge and hand to hand. Stacks with left arm.
Uncanny Dodge CBM
I agree that it should be renamed.
[quote=“RoboViking, post:16, topic:11021”]What if had limited number of slots per body part, similar as clothes? Ex Uncanny Dodge CBM could come in different body part configurations. Like left arm version, exo skeleton type thing. Increases melee, dodge and hand to hand. Stacks with left arm.
Uncanny Dodge CBM
I agree that it should be renamed.[/quote]
You want to take something cool (at least I thought it was cool) and turn it into a straight numbers buff? And how would you feel if something you created had its named or lore changed arbitrarily because someone didn’t like it? If anything, name and lore are the things that should NEVER be changed, unless they absolutely don’t fit the function of the creation anymore. That’s the creator’s mark on the game. It’s like saying, “I like this painting, but the painter put this awful signature on it. Let’s remove it!”
This game is constantly evolving, you can’t just say don’t change anything that’s already here. Doesn’t matter who put what where, if a better idea, name, stats, ect… comes up it should be considered. Uncanny dodge just plain doesn’t sound like the name a high tech military R&D prototype, it sounds silly.
I’m not saying don’t change anything. Don’t put words in my mouth. Don’t strawman me. But lore and naming are the primary identifying marks that are visible to the player. You shouldn’t change that arbitrarily. There is absolutely no reason to change the name except, “I don’t like it.” It’s not like it doesn’t do what it sounds like it does.
Disregarding applicability of the name, i.e. whether it’s misleading, explain to me how a name can be “better,” objectively speaking. Just because YOU think it’s better or even a majority think it’s better doesn’t mean it is “better” or should change. To quote (or paraphrase, I can’t be troubled to look it up) J.S. Mill, “If all of mankind minus one were of one opinion, they would be no more justified in silencing the one, than the one, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing all of mankind.”
A name change has no positive value. It is purely aesthetic and subjective. A creation, a mod, content added to the game, that does have value. It might be very little. But it is, unless it interferes with other aspects of the game, always at least zero. Changing someone else’s content might have positive value, but it also has negative value. It discourages them from adding content at all as it compromises their creative vision. Thus it should only be done in situations where that content truly has negative value, i.e. where it interferes with other aspects of the game, such as by being unbalanced, or by introducing bugs.
Well I’ve been thinking about another CBM recently. Someone kinda gave me the idea here https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/14334 The new CBM would be another eye enhancement. I kinda like the name Retinal Zoom for it but i’m not entirely sure yet. This new CBM would…
Work kinda like the binoculars but not as strong. I know binoculars changes the range of how much map is reveled while moving. But I have to read up on some other vision related stats(I know there is one for map reveal range, and one that has to do with crafting but I’m sure there are others). Basically this CBM would pad your vision stats.
Remove the far/near-sighted traits. Basically your eyes can zoom in and out and refocus now so you don’t really need glasses anymore.
3.(Maybe) Add some sort of loss in resistance to glare/flash without anti-glare or eye protection.
One thing this might clash with is the diamond cornea CBM. That one gives you +2 perception. I fine with keeping both actually but there is an argument that we don’t need two eye enhancements. So an argument would be for them to be merged or only have one or the other. I always like the idea that CBMs are like tools and have a specific function so it would be nice to see some other vision related values tweaked by a CBM besides just perception.