###### tags: Species, Protean, WIP # Proteans (and to an extent, synths, see below) I'm ~~being held at gunpoint because I didn't block PR #2700~~ doing this out of boredom because I have a lot of free time to ~~rebalance the most overpowered race in the codebase **by far** because it's gotten to a techwebs situation of I want to do it because I don't want someone who legitimately has a hard-on for hating proteans to be left to their own devices~~ make Proteans a little balance friendly without losing their uniqueness. ## DISCLAIMER **this is work in progress, things are up to debate.** ## A small note There's two ways I can see this going in the future - applying main balance to this species but heavily powercreeped (hey, I never said I'd make them not powerful, I just think the current state is **hilariously overpowered and awfully balanced**) aka starting with a human species, adding special features, advantages, disadvantages, etc, until you get a complete species. In this form, something like blobform would be a power of theirs but not anything significant - anything like regen would be possible in human form, and we'd focus on the species as just, that, nanite people - The reason I say heavily powercreeped is because I already wrote a draft for proteans for main and hahahaha I am by far more anal about species balance on main because there's constant interplayer conflict and we **absolutely cannot allow anywhere near this level of unmitigated advantages, or the glass cannon balancing proteans have, on main.** Since it's RP, this'll be changed by just me, consciously ignoring some of my own restraint when I wrote my design draft there and it'll *naturally balance out in the end ~~since I am still a science player who powercreeps their own department at my core, I'm just far more restrained these days because getting maintainer means you have an obligation to Not(tm) do that~~.* - The opposite. Instead of "person that happens to be made out of nanites and therefore has special mechanics and abilities", we start off with "Nanite race that just happens to mimick humans." This would be the closest to current proteans, and their balance would be hilariously wacky compared to number one, with stuff like blobform being an important part of their gameplay loop as well as other stuff. I guess both ways of thinking about this can result in some similar things but this will result in far more.. uh, wacky stuff. Like having their body just be dynamically formed out of nanites instead of even having a limb dismemberment/regrow system in a shared health pool that has a certain transfer rate between limb areas, having them have things like ventcrawl/other wacky stuff. - This can result in some fun lore stuff, but is by far going to result in more balance issues, because special abilities are.. hard to balance around, especially interactions with other game elements. I'm going to lean towards #1 a bit more in this ~~because a lot of this is literally memory recall, as I've already written Main's Protean design document~~. On another note. **This is not a rebalance document. This is a FULL REDESIGN DOCUMENT.** This is far more natural than me because in its current state, **protean code is absolutely a dumpster fire. If anyone changes them at all, it'll likely result in a lot of code being torn out and replaced, so let's just get this over with now.** - Assume all current abilities and upsides/downsides have been **completely removed from them, and we're starting anew.** ## What about now? - Obviously most of these is going to be work. Especially stuff like death/revival. On the tier of needing a serious refactor-tier coder to be writing. - For now, though, while this is potentially in the works, and yes this is a WYCI (**when you code it**) because **all of these are simple value replacements.** - Revert slowmod, darksight, max health buff - brutemod from 0.3 to 0.45-0.6. - conductivity mod lower to 1.1 to compensate. Yes, conductivity mod, **not burnmod**. - Ion damage stays where it is post-buff because instakills suck - Maybe don't have **full** radiation immunity, but that's another discussion - Add better self-diagnostics because going from "what radiation I'm fine" to "I'm now dying and unable to move properly and falling down" in the span of 5 seconds as you hit the 40 damage barrier is hilariously, hilariously dumb and I am extremely disappointed in whoever wrote synths to be like that.s ## Synths?! Some things like instability affect both proteans and synths. While obviously changes can affect one and not the other, I think it's logical to have some of the below changes affect both. - *If I actually do these things, it'd be a mild synth buff, by sheer nature of it was made while I was trying to write a Protean document.* Again, up to debate, many of the below stuff will require multiple PRs due to their nature and complexity. ~~Practice run for me for when I code main proteans/synthetics, anyways.~~ ## Overall - Proteans are currently both glass cannons and hilariously tanky. - The overarching goal is making them still harder to kill than usual but not be anywhere near as tanky for the span of their health pool that makes them combat effective - Mobility/Interaction kills vs full deaths, especially given that they can't just be defibbed. - Also, not giving them any ventcrawl, which is extremely game-changing - **Alternatively we can keep it and I won't lose sleep but we may need to rebalance it a bit.** ## Abilities ### Blob Form - Redesigned - Blob form is no longer a simplemob. Instead, it's just a sprite rerender. - They still have slightly higher damage in this state, but **will slow down at high damage to account for the loss of nanites.** This after all, will prevent them from being unstoppable in softcrit. - Damage to them in this state will reflect to full body - This is more powerful than you think. - They lose their ventcrawl. ### Nano-Refactory Materials, Buffs, Nerfs, Processing - Without nanite blood, materials are directly drawn from refactory - With nanite blood, materials are processed by refactory into particles held in nanite blood, while the blood itself is generated from steel. - Materials are only consumed when necessary, instead of always-on. - Movespeed buffs and actionspeed buffs are only consumed while moving - Dodge, aim, are only used while in combat - Armor is depleted by taking damage - **Everything but steel (regen/healing) will still drain at a miniscule rate, to discourage having it on always.** The current rates, are, however, high. ### Shapeshifting - Same as now. Can mimic anything in the game that is not transparent, per how their nanites would plausibly work. ## Health system ### Crit Thresholds? - No crit thresholds - Incapacitation would result if instability goes up too high. - If a crit threshold is really needed, consider having a state of high damage help build up instability. - **High brute/burn damage to chest will still eventually blow off limbs to serve as a mobility kill that forces them to blobform to escape.** ### Max health, limb health - Same *base, coded* maxhealth as humans, comparable limb health to humans (read on later, this gets interesting, as a full kill will require instability or destruction of their chest area). - change chest maxhealth to be higher and have high damages result in fast disables/incapacitation? ### Regeneration - Regenerate 1.5-3.5 brute/burn per second - Limb regeneration is separate and also costs metal - Instability goes down without a recharger at a very slow rate. - **No other way of healing other than their nanite-regeneration.** - Nanopaste/nanogel/NIF repair juice will directly feed into their steel/unprocessed nanite stores, and may boost nanite regeneration by a small-medium amount for a short time, but will not be available as instant heals. ### Wounding? Dislocations? Broken bones? - Not applicable. ## Chemicals - **Full immunity to all chemicals. Topical chemicals may still do damage, like sacid splashing, but otherwise they do not hold them.** ## Organs ### Refactory, Brain - Refactory and brain are absolutely needed for them to function. No dismemberment - they just die when this is dead. - So basically how they work now. ### Sight, Sound, Eyes, Ears - No need for ears/eyes to see/hear. - **No innate night vision.** The absolute most I'm willing to budge with this is +1 tiles, which is enough to make a difference but not be a gamebreaker (similar to Main's night vision) ### Everything else - No other organs. ## Limbs ### Applying Damage - WARNING - potentially quite OP - Only chest counts for their health. Other limbs can be freely destroyed without downsides (other than, you know, not having that limb) - Damage to a dismembered limb will reflect onto the chest in melee automatically to make sure people who aim for head aren't at a huge disadvantage should PVP occur. - Not sure if this should be done for ranged ### Dismemberment - Limbs are **slightly** easier to dismember than other species, and just ash when dismembered. ### Regeneration - Regenerate limbs using a set metal cost, works whether or not they're in blobform. ## Life, Death, Revival ### Death - Dying will drop their brain and refactory and destroy their physical body while dropping all their gear. - Posibrain will remain **active** post death like a real posibrain. ### Revival, Reconstruction - Brain is a hard requirement in revival, cannot be sleeved or anything similar (bodyswappers will still work because people want to ERP though). - New nanite chamber machine that can reconstruct a protean given that their brain and refactory are in it, at a cost of metal/glass. - If the refactory is missing, more exotic materials will be needed to reconstruct - Pop out at low health/nanite count, require materials to continue rebuilding. - Alternatively, slap refactory with rare materials + brain: takes more materials but is less location dependent (like slime core phoron revival) - Also spits them out with no limbs, low hp ## Blood? ### Option 1 - No Blood - How they are now - no blood at all, we leave it at that. ### Option 2 - Insane 'fun" Nanite Blood Idea I Had On Main - Nanite blood, regenerated by processing **steel**. They use this to regenerate health, regenerate limbs, etc. - /datum/component/nanite port - putting some of their upsides into a science thing with science outfitting them with nanite programs, but this probably won't happen unless people really think this is interesting because of the code effort needed to shift towards it. - Programmable nanites, basically. - **electrical stuns, electrical shocks, and ion/EMPs, as well as radiation would drain this as wel as doing damage.** ## Environmentals: Temperature, pressure, fire, etc ### Temperature - Immunity to cold temperatures and its effects - Escalating damage at high (>1000-2000C) temperatures - If this is not enough, at high (>300-500C) temperatures it can be made to give them escalating debuffs until they take burn. - Not final, values should be adjusted to be able to survive small fires but not full blown plasma/tritfires. ### Pressure - Pressure immunity ### Direct Fire - Immune - Tied into Temperature ### Radiation - High radiation resistance but not immunity, giving them system instability. - For an idea of how weak/strong, direct exposure to engine core for 1-2 minutes should cause severe issues. - For the love of god give all synths radiation warnings so they don't suddenly go from "no issues" to "dying" in the span of 5 seconds out of the blue. ## Damage ### Brute, Burn - No brute/burn mods. If really needed, at most 0.8/1.2. Brute/burnmods tend to result in issues because of how damage works in the game and how hard it becomes to balance things, so more than not likely to just be 1/1. - If they become too weak (DOUBT), could give their chest a higher limb health to make quick full kills harder (instead just blowing off limbs or something). ### Conductivity, Electrocution Damage - Higher conductivity - **Electocution damage results in burn and instability, instead of just burn.** This will, however, result in less damage than now - they will not have inherently super high electrical damage plus burnmod, see below for instabiilty. - All electrocution damage should be treated similar to how electrical stuns work, as they are basically made out of highly conductive material. ### Tox/Instability - POTENTIALLY FOR ALL SYNTHS Could do this for everyone or just proteans, but honestly it'd be neat if this wasn't limited to proteans. - More gradual, measurable changes in instability. - Escalating effects as it goes up. - Clear indicator for instability - **Decoupled from brute/burn/oxy damage for health calculations.** You can die of instability, you can die of damage, you can't die from mild damage stacking with mild instability. - The only real way to put a synthetic into a near-critical state - Maybe make this kind of damage more common in exchange. - If pain is left in, this should boost that (in addition to otherwise electrical stuns). ### Ion/EMP - Brute, burn, instability. They're a cloud of nanites, ions should absolutely ruin their day. - Not instakill levels. Balance towards 2-3 ion shots to near-incapacitate, but 5-7 to full kill. Numbers up to adjustment. - This is **a direct hit from an ion rifle.** In the below case of floodfill, this would result in 70-100 strength, depending on how we normalize EMP floodfilling and wave spread/dispersion falloff. - **All EMPs may be tweaked to use a wave-floodfill, to allow for higher granularity in EMP power from 0 to 100 (or above, but values will be normalized to 0-100 in most cases) instead of just heavy/light/none**. ### Oxyloss - Irrelevant, they do not breathe. ### Pain - I'd need to be reminded of what pain sources other than electrical (tasers, batons) and rubber/agony based ballistics exist in the game to have a good idea of where to go with this because we can either keep it entirely or do a new pain system for synthetics but that's potentially an awful idea. ### Stuns - See: Pain, for the most part, but. - Electrical stuns doing brute + instability + pain (damage split, rather than even more powerful, because tasers are hilariously OP and I will call anyone who thinks they are not a clown) instead of all their damage being put into pain? ## Nutrition, Food ### Power Draw - Charged from power, either from cyborg chargers or from APCs ### Bioreactor? - Unlike normal synths, they will not be able to charge from food. ## NIFs/NIF Integration ### NIF Specifications - No NIF durability, as it is quite literally themselves. However, cannot take armoring programs - those are already built into their material consumption system. - Cannot take pressure seals or heat sinks for reasons above. ### Built in programs - APC connectors for recharging. ## Misc: Languages, etc ### Languages - Builtin EAL - Standard languages otherwise ### Slowdown - Standard human slowdown and slowdown resistance in normal circumstances. ### Protean RIG - Removal. It's pretty garbage code and there's not much of a place for it in the new system. ### Other - **Give all synths, including proteans, a fast form of self diagnostics to just check basics instead of detailed.** Would help given that they won't be as instability immune.