Thoughts on Cephalopods

[jcd]

And I know Wikipedia’s hardly authoritative, but: “All octopuses have venom, but few are fatally dangerous. The greater blue-ringed octopus, however, is considered to be one of the most venomous animals known; the venom of one is enough to kill ten grown men.” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_attack#Venom

dang, i never knew that… round here, at any rate, we are lucky enough that octopus and squids are all edible and harmless to man.

Fried over a fire, and with a little lemon, they are a treat.

[Wanderer]

I was thinking tentacles could use a dedicated martial art perhaps, learned after a certain skill level.

Maybe Brawling should change to represent the differences between fighting with two arms and fighting with eight tentacles? The problem would be people with several mutations that allow different styles, so maybe some styles specific to a small number of mutations, as having tentacles.

[KA101]

Head of Mutations, responding.

Thanks for reporting the Threshold issue. I’ll look into implementing some of your suggestions re broken-out mutations, as folks who focus on one category should generally be able to breach within 5-10 injections.

Shell is about the toughest “natural” armor available, but I’m aware that barring Torso gear can be a problem. More to the point, its shape means the traditional argument for belted-layer stuff (just strap it around you wherever it now fits) may not work as well. (HUGE/_OK also bars torso gear, but then you’re a scaled-up humanoid Critter.)
If you or someone else can whip up a convincing gear rig or other necessary niche-filler for a squid-type critter, I’ll be glad to take a look; however, not everything can or will be accepted as an XL model. SHELL’s downside is the no-torso restriction, so that needs to retain some punch.

Tentacles: Conversely, Cephalopods get the Insane (+7) levels of +DX and +IN mutations post-threshold. The hand encumbrance comes from the fact that while your arm equivalents are far more flexible, you completely lack hands, fingers, and opposable thumbs. You might reality-check reloading, etc by locking your fingers together and your thumbs to the side of your hand. You may bend your fingers, but must do so as one unit: mitten style!
Any buff to the DX bonus would be paid for 1:1 with hand encumbrance. Sound good?
Tentacle/Crafting: perhaps post-thresh. Coordinating 4x as many limbs should need some mental adaptation for detail work.

Slime post-thresh trait crossover: probably not, at least not sharing the same trait.

Briefcase: Sure, those can be Oversized.

MA style: Ironically, that would be a LOT easier if we hadn’t JSONed martial arts. As is, I’d have to finagle some sort of check in the JSON-handler to make sure its techniques were only available if one has X tentacles. Not impossible, but not trivial and not a priority. Sorry.

And welcome to the forums.

[jokermatt999]

Well, I attempted to make a basic martial arts style for it and submitted a pull request. The way I did it was adding a style during ARM_TENTACLE in the mutations.cpp, but it would be nice to be able to base it around the number of tentacles. It’s currently nothing all that special, but I was mostly trying to wrap my head around using GitHub and coding for CDDA.

Any thoughts on what a tentacle style should do? I’ve got it adding a +1 dodge bonus on move, a small accuracy boost on dodge, gave it a rapid strike, a grab (later upgraded to longer stunning wrap), and a feint and a counter. I was mostly going for a dodgy octopus style more than anything, but I could also see a centipede style working. Honestly, just straight centipede with tentacles seems like it’d be amazing anyway.

[chevil]

Octopuses with their flexible bodies and many limbs would make awesome wrestlers.

[Solusphere]

One of my favourite character builds is actually a cephalopod with Ninjutsu training. It makes you completely, 100% silent when fighting in melee, and combined with nightvision allows you to roam around a town at night, backstabbing zombies largely unchecked

I’ve also gone a cephalopod Bionic Agent called Blasto, though that didn’t get very far

[Urist_McKoga]

Well, Distributed Neurology version of Cephalopods could decrease the hand enc? So you first mutation is tentacle arms is okay for a human-mind to control. The 4-arms should come with more penalty (because you don’t really have to focus for multi-tasking). After 4-arms you can get the Distributed Neurology.

[kevin.granade]

Being able to more precicely control your appendages doesn’t change the fact that you’re interacting with things designed for beings with opposable thumbs by using tentacles, there’s a mismatch there that just isn’t going to go away.

[pingpong]

Are there any abominations/monsters that should be cephalopods? Maybe a “sea” biome at least 15x15 overworld tiles, and the cephalopods hang out on the beach. A mind flayer could also be a horrific enemy to engage. You could forget visited map sections and recipes, have lower int temporarily until it rots your brain, etc.

[baldamundo]

[quote=“KA101, post:8, topic:7635”]Shell is about the toughest “natural” armor available, but I’m aware that barring Torso gear can be a problem. More to the point, its shape means the traditional argument for belted-layer stuff (just strap it around you wherever it now fits) may not work as well. (HUGE/_OK also bars torso gear, but then you’re a scaled-up humanoid Critter.)
If you or someone else can whip up a convincing gear rig or other necessary niche-filler for a squid-type critter, I’ll be glad to take a look; however, not everything can or will be accepted as an XL model. SHELL’s downside is the no-torso restriction, so that needs to retain some punch.[/quote]

At the risk of side-tracking the thread, I wonder if we could get some insight into the current logic/design philosophy/whatever behind which items have XL versions (both in terms of realism and game-balance)? So, for instance, currently there are XL versions of the vanilla survivor suit, gloves, helmet, boots and mask. There are also XL versions of the survivor fire-mask, dive-mask and winter-mask, but not any other parts of those sets. It’s not immediately obvious to me why that should be the case, so it’d be helpful to have some insight, not just for understanding the current situation, but so we know the ground-rules for further suggestions on the topic. Cheers.

[quote=“KA101, post:8, topic:7635”]Tentacles: Conversely, Cephalopods get the Insane (+7) levels of +DX and +IN mutations post-threshold. The hand encumbrance comes from the fact that while your arm equivalents are far more flexible, you completely lack hands, fingers, and opposable thumbs. You might reality-check reloading, etc by locking your fingers together and your thumbs to the side of your hand. You may bend your fingers, but must do so as one unit: mitten style!
Any buff to the DX bonus would be paid for 1:1 with hand encumbrance. Sound good?[/quote]

Yeah, that sounds very sensible.

Tentacle/Crafting: perhaps post-thresh. Coordinating 4x as many limbs should need some mental adaptation for detail work.

I don’t know how feasible this is code-wise, but perhaps it could be balanced by faster crafting speed but increased difficulty and risk of failure? So the effect would be to make tentacles characters good at mass-producing simple things, but poorer at complex things with fine details. E.g. you can very easily roast eight pieces of meat over a fire at once, but lack of opposable thumbs and such makes high quality electronics or tailoring much more difficult

Slime post-thresh trait crossover: probably not, at least not sharing the same trait.

I figured that’d be your answer. Maybe weaker cephalopod-only versions could be worth thinking about though.

EDIT: just stumbled across https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=949eYdEz3Es which sort of illustrates how something like ‘amorphous body’ could be appropriate

And welcome to the forums.

Thanks!

Another very minor thing - currently tentacled characters can wear handwraps, but not foot-rags. To my mind at least, that seems inconsistent. And with nothing on your feet but tentacles stockings it gets awful cold in the winter :c

Also, I guess this was a bug, but I had a character where I evolved padded feet from leg tentacles (which removed the leg-tentacle mutations), allowing me to wear boots and socks, but when I used purifier and lost the padded feet and regained the tentacles, it didn’t auto-remove my boots, so I could keep on wearing them as long as I didn’t remove them manually.

And on the martial arts front - it’s worth noting that the Zui Quan drunken boxing style currently works very well with the cephalopod intelligence bonuses. And if you’ve ever watched how an octopus moves, honestly I think ‘drunken boxing’ is hella appropriate.

[vache]

At the risk of side-tracking the thread, I wonder if we could get some insight into the current logic/design philosophy/whatever behind which items have XL versions (both in terms of realism and game-balance)? So, for instance, currently there are XL versions of the vanilla survivor suit, gloves, helmet, boots and mask. There are also XL versions of the survivor fire-mask, dive-mask and winter-mask, but not any other parts of those sets. It’s not immediately obvious to me why that should be the case, so it’d be helpful to have some insight, not just for understanding the current situation, but so we know the ground-rules for further suggestions on the topic. Cheers.

To further side-track, I find the XL recipes a little tedious and unnecessary. It would make more sense to have a new tag for clothes made by you, specifically for you and whatever mutated anatomy you might have. So, you’d have regular clothing, (fits) clothing (found, and in your size), and (tailored?) for clothing that you’ve made. This way, if you make an item that can accommodate mutation, it makes it tailored and you can automatically wear it, without having to learn a separate recipe for essentially the same item. The only caveat to this would be taking size into account for the components needed to make the tailored item.

[alRashid]

I think the other caveat–the one we’re taking for granted here–is the complexity of the code we’d need to write to revamp the clothing sizing code so that modifications for mutations would be made on a case-by-case basis.

[KA101]

XL stuff: has to be something that is needed for a particular purpose or to access a given area. XL gas masks are for the multitude of categories that can’t fit a conventional one over their muzzle, for example. An XL chest rig or armor rig would probably be acceptable: horse barding, etc is a real thing.

XL is not fashionable, nor is it widespread or available in stores. It’s something you or another mutant made to help you get through life.

Sure we could make a Tailored tag. Problem is that it would carry over: if I tailor something to fit me, take it off, and then become HUGE or grow a SHELL, that Tailored tag is still there and the gear still fits OK despite the fact that I’m about 5-20 sizes larger.

Originally I had HUGE just strip all fit-tags from worn gear (I realize the problem here would still remain), but that crashed DDA in testing.

[baldamundo]

XL stuff: has to be something that is needed for a particular purpose or to access a given area. XL gas masks are for the multitude of categories that can’t fit a conventional one over their muzzle, for example. An XL chest rig or armor rig would probably be acceptable: horse barding, etc is a real thing.

While I can see that explains the masks, why do vanilla XL survivor suit/gloves/boots count as needed?

[KA101]

[quote=“KA101, post:18, topic:7635”]XL stuff: has to be something that is needed for a particular purpose or to access a given area. XL gas masks are for the multitude of categories that can’t fit a conventional one over their muzzle, for example. An XL chest rig or armor rig would probably be acceptable: horse barding, etc is a real thing.

While I can see that explains the masks, why do vanilla XL survivor suit/gloves/boots count as needed?[/quote]

Cold weather protection and armor, generally. Someone wants to make better tentacle gear, by all means feel free.

[Logrin]

Been awhile since I had tentacles, but from what I remember they were already pretty damn great in melee. Fun fact: Muay thai is also known as the art of eight limbs!

I pretty much dropped by to offer up my suggestion on a tentacle based martial art. Personally I think that the extra attacks along with any MA style you’re actually using ((Even weapon styles if I’m not mistaken)) is powerful enough, but if someone’s going to put it in I’ve got a few suggestions.

*A counter-grab that activates should a monster–you guessed it–grab you.
*The ability constrict enemies, immobilizing them and doing increased damage every turn.
*The ability to constrict multiple enemies.

The problem I think would be removing all of a squidbilly’s extra slap attacks when they’re using ‘Octopus Style’, since it already represents them using their anatomy to their advantage.

Again though, I truly think mutations should only enhance martial arts, not replace them.

[baldamundo]

old weather protection and armor, generally. Someone wants to make better tentacle gear, by all means feel free.

I may try seeing if I can work out how to use github and have a go. Am I right in thinking that the way the code works, gear is either equippable with ALL awkward mutations or none? i.e. you couldn’t make a piece equippable by an incoveniently large ursine mutant, but not by shelled cephalopods?

[pingpong]

We really should be focusing away from more and more gear, and instead see if one can steal code from say, the gun system, and make it so there’s just like a dozen flags which default to 0 that an armor can have. This way, a piece of equipment could be modded to pass a flag check for mutation reasons, and suddenly, every piece of equipment could have certain mutation checks, with caveats drawn for certain pieces such as power armor. A piece of equipment could be modified using its own material as a type-check for a crafting recipe, though they could mean tweaking the crafting system to accept a base material + intention, which should have been done a long time ago. (only a slight offense to devs)

What I wouldn’t give for a properly tagged item system i.e. “hat” “1” “cotton” item + cotton rags = horn capable hat.
Edit: To be clearer, it’d be nice to c&p the rating system of tools, so while a baseball cap might be 1, a balaklava might be 2. Helmets might be a different class, with similar “ranking”/tier-ing for craft-cost or usefulness scaling.

[KA101]

[quote=“pingpong, post:23, topic:7635”]We really should be focusing away from more and more gear, and instead see if one can steal code from say, the gun system, and make it so there’s just like a dozen flags which default to 0 that an armor can have. This way, a piece of equipment could be modded to pass a flag check for mutation reasons, and suddenly, every piece of equipment could have certain mutation checks, with caveats drawn for certain pieces such as power armor. A piece of equipment could be modified using its own material as a type-check for a crafting recipe, though they could mean tweaking the crafting system to accept a base material + intention, which should have been done a long time ago. (only a slight offense to devs)

What I wouldn’t give for a properly tagged item system i.e. “hat” “1” “cotton” item + cotton rags = horn capable hat.
Edit: To be clearer, it’d be nice to c&p the rating system of tools, so while a baseball cap might be 1, a balaklava might be 2. Helmets might be a different class, with similar “ranking”/tier-ing for craft-cost or usefulness scaling.[/quote]

You’re the one not PRing it. None taken.

[pingpong]

You’re the one not PRing it. None taken.

Do you mean Public Relations or PRogramming? If the latter, I would like to do something to assist in anything I could.