Tips, Tricks, and Newb Questions!

[Random_dragon]

I could try if I was up to PR another mod, already turned down a suggestion to flesh out that fireteam-themed mod due to most of my modding efforts lately being invested in More Survival Tools recently. And I already have a few too many personal unreleased mods as it is. For example…

{
    "type": "profession",
    "ident": "dragonblood",
    "name": "Dragonblood",
    "description": "You are not human. Not entirely, at least. No, you have the blood of a dragon running through your veins.",
    "points": 0,
    "skills": [
        {
            "level": 3,
            "name": "dodge"
        },
        {
            "level": 2,
            "name": "melee"
        },
        {
            "level": 1,
            "name": "unarmed"
        }
    ],
    "traits": [
        "SCALES",
        "WINGS_BAT",
        "TAIL_THICK",
        "CLAWS",
        "FANGS",
        "LIZ_EYE",
        "FORKED_TONGUE",
        "HISS",
        "CARNIVORE"
    ],
    "items": {
        "both": [
            "pants",
            "longshirt",
            "socks",
            "boots"
        ],
        "male": [
            "boxer_shorts"
        ],
        "female": [
            "bra",
            "panties"
        ]
    }
}

[KA101]

Yeah, dragons are a perennial requested-category and would likely be something the PC could develop once we got that functional.

Fire breath, not so much, but perhaps flammable gas or some caustic chemical.

[Random_dragon]

Maybe. Not really sure about fire breath, though for one idea as to how that could be handled…RPs I’ve done have involved a half-dragon character who, being not fully draconic, injures himself when actually using his fire breath. So drawbacks like that could be interesting.

Having dragonlike wings that actually do something would be higher on my “do want” list though. o3o

[Coolthulhu]

Firebreathing is a bit too fantasy.

If bat wings are to be ever useful, you could make them give flight to the player. This would make them useful by letting you avoid mines and pits and later could be easily changed to let you fly up/down z-levels.

[Random_dragon]

Maybe, bird wings already have similar effects. Though since, if I recall, they don’t give drawbacks, simply making Bat Wings a mixed-result trait that gives you the benefits of Bird Wings plus its existing drawbacks would be interesting.

Also, coughing up a napalm loogie would be nice and non-fantasy. o3o

[deoxy]

[quote=“KA101, post:7422, topic:42”]Yeah, dragons are a perennial requested-category and would likely be something the PC could develop once we got that functional.

Fire breath, not so much, but perhaps flammable gas or some caustic chemical.[/quote]

Meh, there’s already a mini-flamethrower bionic, so if the “fire breath” didn’t really do more than that (or not much more), it wouldn’t really be a problem. Heck, in the short term, it could just piggy-back on the CBM code and take nutrition instead.

And the Chain Lightning and fusion blaster arm CBMs do so much more than any sane fire breath attack I can think of, I don’t know why you’re worried about it.

Firebreathing is a bit too fantasy.

As compared to full-on shape-changing into a giant squid/mollusk creature, great cat, giant wolf, bear, slime, mobile plant, or ELF? That’s where you draw the line?

[Random_dragon]

Exactly why fire breath doesn’t seem THAT odd, though since most mutations seem to be rooted in sounder biology compared to what bioncs can do, that might be a derpy comparison.

And again, giving fire breath logical drawbacks like burning yourself would both make it seem less fantastic and give a drawback that affords some balancing leeway for making it more effective than the bionics equivalent. I could’ve sworn that was more of a lighter than a weapon. owo

[KA101]

Sure, you can install machinery to do weird fire and gun things. Having your body do that is another story: shocker zeds throw lighining with faulty bionics.

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:7424, topic:42”]Firebreathing is a bit too fantasy.

If bat wings are to be ever useful, you could make them give flight to the player. This would make them useful by letting you avoid mines and pits and later could be easily changed to let you fly up/down z-levels.[/quote]

This has been considered, one of many mutations that I’ve not had time to transfer from concept to code. Hummingbird Wings would be the way to go for SMB2 Princess Toadstool* “flight”, at significant expense. Larger Bat/Dragon/Wev wings would be along the lines of a glider and would seriously benefit from z-levels.

(Basically, even if you run the wings off the humanoid arms, in similar fashion to birds, you can’t get enough lift for a human without a wingspan of around 3x the human’s height. Shoulder-mount wings are similarly Large, plus the infrastructure to flap them isn’t trivial. So winged humanoids have no chance on Earth of flying…the Nether might have places with denser atmosphere but similar or lesser gravity, though…)

*KA101 pulls up some tall grass, revealing a turnip as large as xyr upper body. Xe deadlifts it overhead and levitates off the ground. And anyone starting that “Princess Peach” crap, well, I’mma make you eat your vegetables. >;-D

[Random_dragon]

Gliding, yeah. Or simply enough floatiness to have toned-down effects similar to other wing effects.

Also…in Soviet Nether, vegetables eat you? No wait, that’d be Soviet Triffid Grove.

EDIT: More dumb questions ensue. Trying to recall where to take the military black boxes to scan them, if that’s even an option.

[deoxy]

[quote=“Random_dragon, post:7429, topic:42”]Gliding, yeah. Or simply enough floatiness to have toned-down effects similar to other wing effects.

Also…in Soviet Nether, vegetables eat you? No wait, that’d be Soviet Triffid Grove.

EDIT: More dumb questions ensue. Trying to recall where to take the military black boxes to scan them, if that’s even an option.[/quote]

The analyzer in labs - infinite books from that, by the way (fuel source/internal furnace).

Other than the NPC quest, is there any point to that, by the way? Every box I’ve found gives the same useless thing.

[Random_dragon]

Ooh, I’ll have to try that. I have bad luck mucking about with lab consoles, since my best characters for surviving a lab dive are often barbarians or other “Hulk smash!” types.

And I assume that would make them as useless as the crash sites in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat were. o3o

[Azrad]

Having the bionic that protects from electricity makes computer skill building pretty easy on labs with lots of turret rooms. Destroy turret, activate the bionic, hack the computer until it shuts down. Rinse and repeat and laugh as the electric shocks do nothing.

[Sehn_Knight]

Do solar panels generate electricity while its not sunny? If they do, is it at a decreased efficiency?

[Coolthulhu]

Do solar panels generate electricity while its not sunny? If they do, is it at a decreased efficiency?

Yes. They scale linearly. I think they should charge in moonlight too.

Having the bionic that protects from electricity makes computer skill building pretty easy on labs with lots of turret rooms. Destroy turret, activate the bionic, hack the computer until it shuts down. Rinse and repeat and laugh as the electric shocks do nothing.

You can also do it while wearing a hazmat suit.
Computer skill doesn’t do much, though.

[Azrad]

True. Aside from locked metal doors that can’t be picked, there’s no other purpose to it.

[Valpo]

True. Aside from locked metal doors that can’t be picked, there’s no other purpose to it.

hacking robots would be its most powerfull use.

[Azrad]

With regards to knuckle type weapons, it seems that boxing seems to be compatible with all of them. So, basically, which would be the better weapon? The steel knuckles have a bash damage of 8, while the punch dagger has a stab damage of 10 and bash of 2. So… that means that the punch dagger will be better, right?

[Random_dragon]

It depends. Apparently crit-stunning is based off of blunt damage, so steel knuckles would presumably be more likely to stunlock enemies, assuming the chance is based off of how much blunt damage is dealt.

I could’ve sworn Krav Maga let me inflict crit-stun with a punch dagger, so it could simply be having any blunt damage allows that.

[Azrad]

So far the punch dagger seems to critstun the ones I hit.

[Coolthulhu]

With regards to knuckle type weapons, it seems that boxing seems to be compatible with all of them. So, basically, which would be the better weapon? The steel knuckles have a bash damage of 8, while the punch dagger has a stab damage of 10 and bash of 2. So… that means that the punch dagger will be better, right?

Yeah, punch dagger is better in most cases. Bashing damage scales badly, especially unarmed bashing.

I could’ve sworn Krav Maga let me inflict crit-stun with a punch dagger, so it could simply be having any blunt damage allows that.

I just re-read the code that handles stunning with bashing crits. It’s even easier than just bashing: the stun depends on bashing damage and how much you “overshoot” the required accuracy. With 9 or less torso encumbrance and not-bad dexterity, you have guaranteed 10d8 melee roll against monster dodge roll typically around 4d10. For every 20 of sum overshoot+bash_dmg, there’s a turn of stun.
So even if you only deal bashing 10 dmg, but overshoot by 30, the target will get 2 turns of stun.

tl;dr Accuracy matters more than bashing when it comes to stun and pretty much all melee crits should stun