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# System prepended metadata

title: Proteans

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# Proteans

## this is a first draft don't judge me i've accepted that balancing this is nearly impossible and is going to take a while

## WIP etc etc balance nightmare

basic premises, advanced fleshed out draft right after
Tehcnical docs: **[here](https://hackmd.io/xs_ShQPcQcOc7YNHjfzlFA)**

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- no healing other than with
    - built in nanite programs from roundstart, consuming materials
    - all bio healing programs would work to regenerate them even of synthetic
- need to find a way to handle the following without TRAIT_SYNTHETIC_SPECIES/whatnot, which was a working but not viable long term solution of dealing with synths since it basically was just made to appease people whining about everything not being a reskinned human
- The following things are going to need refactoring to work without a ton of shitcode:
    - System instability but not tied to a trait rather than species. species.synthetic? we could still use a trait even with that but it seems very silly to
        - abstraction between robolimbs/augments, robot organs, and the entire "body" being robotic like on hrp codebases?
        - fullbody prosthetics being people with every limb augmented but organic internal organs
        - impossible to have organic organs if someone is a true "synthetic"?
    - medical/limb stuff:
        - showing up on analyzer as synthetic, showing up on hud as synthetic, showing up on examine as warped/charred metal/wiring instead.
            - for balance reasons on main as funny as it is we can't have secret proteans/synthetics, examining should IMMEDIATELY tell people what base species someone is if their face/skin is uncovered (human, synthetic, slime, plasmaman, etc)?
            - or we can just do this if it actually becomes a problem, and hope damage description is good enough
        - limb status beyond synthetic: organic, synthetic, and nanoform bodyparts.
            - potential refactors to take/heal damage to have the "heal robotic/organic bodyparts" be a flag instead of booleans, for future support for whatever the fuck we have later
    - synthetic organs, being able to set organ emp resistances
        - organ flags for unremovable/synthetic if not already existing for proteans and slimes
    - for proteans some organs will need to just not be there, more on that later
    - limb dust system being changed? ash vs drop, for proteans their limbs should flat out ash when being destroyed
- various balance/health things
    - "normal" (slightly lower) limb health
    - limbs take a good amount of nanites to regenerate
    - instead of being rp's "metal in refactory is your resource", metal(s) slowly converted into bloodstream nanites, which are then used for regen/reforming limbs?
        - increases emp vulnerability without making them get instantly killed because emps destroy nanites, and their nanite component will be shielded but still affected
- nanite programs taking resources to maintain? armor, etc, for lategame
    - nanite component is both their blood and a resource they spend to heal/use nanite programs
    - some things like armoring may need to be rescaled when a protean is using them
    - we should probably hardsync nanite capabilities with tg at some point minus the armor buffs
- unable to take advantage of the following
    - genetics
    - virology
- in return there should be something late game for them to power ramp with
- early game healing: built in nanite programs for basic healing, as well as programs letting them cloud sync to any id at will as well as prevent console overwrites
    - there's already nanite programs in that will be able to "force" them to run certain programs to sabotage them
    - balancing healing: tracking time since last non-environmental damage and scaling down healing to prevent combat sustaining using it
    - limb regen unaffected, only applies to damage healing
    - nanopaste should augment natural healing/remove the cooldown for a while without being an instant heal?
    - per limb cooldown maybe
- no damage modifiers on species level, those are awful
- emps: 7-10 shots should kill, 4-5 direct shots with ion rifle should cripple
    - yes, that many. being instantly killed is pretty unfun and teak's emp stuff isn't enough for me to think that making it any less would be fine
    - given that it drains blood nanites which they use to regen this is a pretty good trade-off
- blobform:
    - NO VENTCRAWLING FOR THE LOVE OF GOD
    - literally slime puddle but resprited. we could give it effects, but probably a safer bet to just not because >balance
    - they should however not suffer a huge movement slowdown from it
    - if we really want we can give them a weak punch-level melee attack but imo just don't
    - fall into human form when entering crit, for balance reasons.
- system instability:
    - should be hard to gain but also hard to cure, this goes for all synthetics
    - with enough time synthetics should be able to fix themselves, unsure of what method
        - everyone else can fix radiation/similar damage by themselves, entirely requiring external surgery is awful.
    - emps should do low amounts of instability, same with radiation, etc
    - instability should contribute separately to slowdown (with a smaller modifier/factor)
    - this is infact going into general synthetic balance, now you can see why i waited so long to do this because so many things tie in
- entirely exempt from the chemistry system minus certain effects like holy water/similar
    - double edged sword. you will never benefit from powergame but you will never get chem warfare'd other than explosives either
- this falls apart more and more when we get to breathing
    - it would be a huge balance issue if they didn't die from bad gases, so
    - bad gas can be made to do burn damage or stam + paralysis for n2o, etc. it doesn't make sense but there's not really any othe way to balance this
- temperature regulation, space, etc:
    - synthetics should have a higher tolerance to heat (not by much though) but take damage even faster than humans when overheating.
    - the reason they can't stand vaccum is the lack of cooling. or at least, it would be this way if it was interesting. in reality, i cannot think of a proper way to handle this
        - coolant idea for synthetics where vaccum/too much heat boils off coolant before starting to melt them faster than it would otherwise. we could do the same but for nanite mass? either/or.
    - will be slightly more resistant to high pressures (400 instead of 300 or so) and low pressures (25 instead of 30?) but will die all the same
- transformations
    - same transformation abilities as slimes
    - obviously can't change their face
    - i'd love to let them change icon base but this might be too op given that slimes can't do it (or can they who knows)
    - whatever happens it needs to be not too much more op than what slimes can do as we don't want crew changelings minus the name change
- death
    - explode on death (not literally explode) into robot debris, dropping all organs
    - revived by putting special nano-posibrain into nanite chamber.
        - high material cost if orchestrator + refactory aren't recovered and working
    - no cloning, if you want to be a fetish sex blob get good and don't die
- organs
    - special posibrain - obvious
    - refactory - contains metal they eat, turned into bloodstream materials and also consumes regular steel to make nanite volume
        - regen rate should be faster than usual science nanites
        - maybe have functions like healing scale down with available volume, so getting shot by an ion is an actual problem (e.g. being at 150/1000 heals you far slower than being at 950/1000. obviously, consumption will be scaled down as well).
        - damage will slow down nanite generation
        - not having it means you don't get any at all, **unless you are in a nanite chamber**, which should be like a cryotube of sorts and rapidly refill nanites to proteans
    - orchestrator - responsible for actual control of each individual nanite. basically a glorified parallel processor in lore (RTX 3090 proteans..).
        - damage results in instability effects
        - losing it outright should be the equivalent of managing to get compound fractures on every bodypart as an organic. you're going to have a bad time and be barely able to move
    - robotics being able to manufacture more of these
    - thematically you should be able to just stick new organs in
        - if this is a balance issue, require blobforming or just make it so it only works if someone else does it and fluff it as integrating new parts paralyzes the user for a few moments
    - emps doing small amounts of randomized organ damage? would be interesting
    - normal, high damage attacks being able to damage these?
        - only if the other balancing factors don't work to keep long term sustain down, it should be pretty tolerable after combat changes as they won't have insane burst/sustain which means killing them should be easy as long as they don't get 2+ minutes to themselves to start to heal
- damage balancing 2 - timing?
    - 1-2 minutes before roundstart healing programs can start to properly heal, scaling up to a maximum of the equivalent of salacid/oxandrolane (-3-4/tick) at 5 minutes of no damage. at the very start, maybe -1-2/tick, and before that, either none or extreme slow -0.25/tick
    - damage that counts would be anything that isn't environmental damage (i'm personally fine with them surviing a slight bit longer in environmental hazards as long as they can't outheal it with roundstart). if it's an issue, remember that things like space (no air to cool them) or fire (it's fire) will literally be burning off their blood, so they aren't going to have a good time
    - maybe have something where proteans in specific get a slight boost to environmental resistance based on their nanite amount (will obviously consume it when they get to the point where this matters) so being attacked doesn't mean you're immediately going to die far faster to everything else
    - the point of this is to untangle environmental resistance from combat sustain in "direct" fights.
- nutrition
    - gets power from apcs
    - infact port this to all synths: no more synth connector, make it an ability without needing an implant
    - can be charged with inducer (give this to all synths
    - does not gain food by eating normal food
        - CAN still eat normal food because why wouldn't they
    - low power = the usual slowdown, lower regen rates for proteans etc etc, maybe even a bit lower melee damage and similar
- moodlets
    - **SYNTHETICS DO NOT GET MOODLETS.** It's an awful system anyways. Anything tied to it should just have effects separately
    - obviously they'll be exempt (see: cannot take) from all moodlet-based quirks in return
#### tl;dr
- before any of this can happen we are going to need to figure out the way to code different species/whatnot like this
    - the entire codebase is tailored to reskinned humans
    - bay snowflakes a lot and we can't have that
    - TRAIT_SYNTHETIC_NATURE is not a long term solution
    - having varied organ slots based on species is also a yikes
    - needing to refactor limbs as said, and damage procs
    - system instability, nutrition, etc
- wacky balance, should be aimed as a sidegrade-equivalent to humans
    - slightly more powerful early game if the human isn't powergaming because innate healing
    - **should** be equivalent late game but, in reality, not being able to powergame chemistry and genetics really limits you here
- unique revival/death
- slime transformation
- this isn't done yet but this is a good starting point and the ideas here can probably be applied to synths as a whole too at some point when we finally decide to stop beating around the bush and start implementing actual species mechanics
    - boohoo balance issues i'm sure we can find a way around most of these without making the game intolerable right :\)
- most "op" parts/upsides
    - self healing with ramp-up later on with nanites
    - potential for interaction with more systems (only chem/genetics/viro are locked from them, and two of these are a straight up boon most of the time)
    - >immunity to chemistry and virology's various effects
        - maybe inorganic biology/the one that lets it infect synths can work, who knows
    - you get to be the only species on the codebase with lots of thought and effort put into it
    - you get to transform like a slime does and to be a snowflake
    - you get built in nanite components and a bunch of unique features never done before
    - like a real machine you are slightly more tolerant of bad environments than humans
        - especially cold
    - cybernetics should probably be possible but maybe have them go in the chest instead
- downsides
    - when you go outside of your operating range you boil
        - no your nanites which you regenerate with literally boil
        - when you run out you die even faster both from no more regen to keep you alive as well as a damage multiplier being added
    - even nanopaste can only speed up your regen timers. you can't heal with any other means
        - have someone click metal on you if you are left as a limbless husk
    - you obviously can't use any limbs that aren't nanoform limbs, no augmentations
    - no cns rebooter/revival cybernetics
    - your combat sustain vs someone with meds is going to actually be worse in early game because of your slight limb health disadvantage and the fact that always-on nanite heal programs will only be available late game
    - if you die, you'll need science and mining (see: anyone who can mine and is smart enough to make a nanite chamber) to fix you
        - if you die and they can't get your organs back, you'll need even more (although material scarcity is a joke on every server)
        - if you lose your posibrain you have lost. no cloning for you.
    - ions are extremely crippling past or on the second or third hit (i don't want to make them so weak that no one in their right mind would choose a combat role as them either)
    - a lot of their disadvantages relies on niche things (just like some of their advantages do too), so if it really gets bad (which it probably won't given our average population/players) some other varied combat nerfs can be done to them
        - the point of this species is to **play smarter, not fight harder.** you'll never be equivalent to a human in sheer combat power in the current state of the codebase because chemistry/genetics/similar are simply too good, and they can use nanites too. if you play smart, however, you'll be better off than someone with similar equipment.
