Species Stats & Redesign

# Species Redesign: LankLTE It's no secret current species design is somewhat controversial and not done the best- nearly all of them are "humans but worse," combined with a lot of oddly hidden stat changes that you practically have to look at github to understand. This not only leads to a lot of complaints, but leads to slimes and dionas especially being "RP Races" with hardly any active players compared to the rest. The ultimate goal is to make each race different mechanically, but not so much so as to discourage players or end up significantly better or worse than humans overall. # Overview: I will be going over what I feel would be a fitting redesign for most of the races that need one, namely slimes, diona, and lizards. I'll first start with an overview of **everything** each race currently has differently and why it's problematic, as I feel it's somewhat scattered at the moment, and this will allow for better discussion and outlining of the problesm I've addressed above. I'll then show what the updated race differences would be, how I feel it addresses the problems I've outlined above, and just anything else I need to say about it. This will be combining my own ideas, that of maintainers in issues like [#19109](https://github.com/space-wizards/space-station-14/issues/19109), and just general ideas I've heard from people that I thought were fitting and good. # Current Race Differences: Do note that I'm likely to miss something. Dionas and slimes have some niche upsides that I'm just learning about now- which I feel is problematic but an issue for another day- so it's not unreasonable that there are others I've missed. ## Humans I don't intend to change anything about humans, they're designed to be the "basic" race and I think they do it quite well. ## Dwarves Dwarves are incredibly similar to humans, and should mass context be removed, they're *arguably* just humans but better. That said I think they manage to serve their nice well. ### Pros - Heal (very slowly) from alchohol. ### Cons - Lower mass. ### Neutral - Smaller hitbox - Can metabolize 5 chemicals at once ## Lizards These are, in my opinion, one of the most egregious when it comes to "minor stat changes for no reason". They take very slightly (+- 15%) damage from most damage types, but it's not clear ingame that they do at all, or what types they take it from. Their cold weakness is notable as it's quite a large downside, making them die far faster from spacing and rendering emergency suits near-useless for them, not to mention any external station circumstances that might make the air cold and freeze lizards as a result. ### Pros - Takes heat damage at 126C (compared to 86C for humans) - Has a higher specific heat (temperature changes slower) - Walks 0.2 units faster (2.7 base walkspeed compared to humans' 2.5) ### Cons - Takes cold damage at 11C (compared to -13C for humans) - Takes more cold damage from the atmosphere (0.2 instead of 0.1 for humans) ### Neutral - Take starvation damage as entirely cold. (1 cold instead of 0.5 bloodloss and 0.5 cold) - Has an animal stomach (able to eat raw meat, cannot eat chocolate, tea or coffee) - Does piercing instead of blunt damaged with unarmed attacks - Has the following damage coefficients: - Blunt: 1.1 - Slash: 0.9 - Cold: 1.5 - Heat: 0.9 - Poison: 0.9 ## Slimes One of the aforementioned "problem races", they not only have odd & unclear damage modifiers, but are also plagued by very relevant downsides and plainly irrelevant upsides. They're one of the least played races in the game, and a lot of people (myself previously included) actually thought their only upside was suffocating slower. I shouldn't need to explain why that's a problem. They have a lot of pros, but they're all very niche and not even remotely close to their downsides, namely breathing nitrogen and a really awful set of damage modifiers, which is certianly a contributor to their lack of use. ### Pros - Takes no cold damage from starvation, effectively halving how often they starve (0.5 bloodloss instead of 0.5 bloodloss and 0.5 cold) - Takes Aphyxiation damage slower (0.2 per second instead of 1) - Has triple the max hunger (15 instead of 5) - Do not rot after death (missing the Perishable component, might be a bug) - Unaffected by Nitrous Oxide ### Cons - Breathes Nitrogen instead of Oxygen - Exhales Nitrous Oxide - Takes more barotrauma damage (0.45 per second instead of 0.35 per second) - Takes damage from touching water (2 heat per unit) ### Neutral - Has slime instead of blood. - Can metabolize 6 reagents at once - Has the following damage coefficients: - Blunt: 0.6 - Slash: 1.2 - Piercing: 1.2 - Cold: 1.5 - Poison: 0.8 - Cellular: 0.2 ## Diona The fun one. The second real problematic race alongside slimes, their issues are similar. They're slower in a game where combat is everything, but have no real upsides to help mitigate this problem- they also can't wear shoes and find themselves in a very rough spot as a result. ### Pros - Can breathe carbon dioxide (in addition to oxygen) - Takes no cold damage from starvation, effectively halving how often they starve (0.5 bloodloss instead of 0.5 bloodloss and 0.5 cold) - Do not rot after death (missing the Perishable component, likely a bug) - Able to heal from plant chemicals (ie. Robust Harvest) - Gets hungry 2x slower (0.0083 instead of 0.0166) - Gets thirsty 12x slower (0.0083 instead of 0.1, likely a bug) - Take half aphyxsiation damage (0.5 per second instead of 1) - Ignores Kudzu Slowdown ### Cons - Significantly slower (1.5 walkspeed and 3.5 runspeed compared to 2.5 and 4.5 respectively for humans) - Take damage from plant killer and weed killer - Has no shoe slot ### Neutral - Has water instead of blood - Can metabolize 6 reagents at once - Has a higher mass - Has the following damage coefficients: - Blunt: 0.7 - Slash: 0.8 - Heat: 1.5 - Shock: 1.2 ## Moths I'll keep this brief, mostly because I ~~without any bias at all~~ think moths are, for the most part, in a good spot. The only thing I dislike about them is the random weaknesses they have- not because people complain and say it ruins the race for them (because I think anyone who says that is just whining about something that hardly makes a difference), but in an attempt to move away from the random resistances mentioned earlier. ### Pros - Significantly faster acceleration in zero gravity (Accelerates 1.5x faster with a 1x multiplier compared to 0.7x) - Do not rot after death (missing the Perishable component, this is a bug) - Takes cold damage at -43C (compared to -13C for humans) - Takes half damage from freezing (0.05 per second compared to 0.1) ### Cons - Takes more damage from fire (1.5 per second instead of 1) - Takes heat damage at 61C (compared to 86C for humans) - Takes double damage from overheating (0.2 per second compared to 0.1) ### Neutral - Has to eat cloth instead of food - Can metabolize 6 reagents at once - Has the following damage coefficients: - Blunt: 1 (not sure why this is included) - Piercing: 1.15 - Slash: 1.15 - Cold: 0.7 - Heat: 1.3 - Poison: 1.1 ## Arachnids Not my cup of worms- I won't be touching them at all in this redesign. Pixel is going through that balancing hell already. That said I do think they're probably overtuned, but I'll leave the balance discussion for somewhere else and just put the raw stats down so this is still a comprehensive list. ### Pros - Gets hungry slightly slower (0.0125 instead of 0.0166) - Gets thirsty significantly slower (0.0125 instead of 0.1) - Unarmed attack does slash instead of brute - Able to create silk at the cost of hunger ### Cons - Takes 1.5x aphyxiation damage (1.5 per second instead of 1) - Heals aphyxiation 50% slower (-0.5 per second instead of -1) ### Neutral - Has spider blood instead of blood # Race Rework Proposal: ### Should be done. Read the Closing as well. Now to go through every race I want to change, what the new differences will be, and why I think it's better than currently. I'll actually be touching over every race, just for clarity (and because there's only two/three I won't be changing at all). The basic goal with all of them is to give meaningful mechanical differences and move away from weird & random stat changes Note that I think things that serve a races' identity, like moths taking more heat or slimes taking less blunt, are okay- so long as they're backed up by meaningful mechanical changes and there isn't a lot of them. ## Humans (Probably) unchanged. The idea has been raised of giving all races a very small passive regen, probably only for natural damage types (burn / brute) and for less then 30 damage- but that way you don't need to go to med for the 3 damage you took after slipping. ## Dwarves I don't *like* dwarves in their current state. They're just humans but shorter and with an accent- and the first part could be a slider while the second is already optional anyways. Thing is I don't have the slightest clue what to do with them, so they'll remain untouched. ## Lizards Now, for an actual rework. Lizards are already very, very similar to humans gameplay-wise and I think its' probably best to keep it that way. Hence, them having relatively few pros/cons. The cold-bloodedness is an interesting trait (and honestly quite a bad downside) which, alongside the stomach (which is 100% a downside despite being *technically* neutral), I think makes room for better dragging and better heat. The higher max hunger is to hopefully help prevent lizards from starving constantly. ### Pros - Takes heat damage at 126C (compared to 86C for humans) - Able to drag without using an arm (tail) - Has a higher hunger cap (10 instead of 5) ### Cons - Takes cold damage at 11C (compared to -13C for humans) ### Neutral - Lizard stomach, can only eat meat and fruit (raw meat included) - Does piercing instead of blunt damaged with unarmed attacks - Has the following damage coefficients: - Cold: 0.7 - Heat: 1.3 ## Slimes My basic design principle with slimes comes from their high blunt resist and their (previously unintentional) inability to rot. Slimes are malleable, made of liquid, and have a core. Thus: they're hard to kill, and hard to *keep* dead afterwards. This will hopefully keep them relatively normal in gameplay. Their downsides will remain mostly unchanged, because they're already pretty bad. ### Pros - Has small passive regen (probably ~10 damage a minute) - Do not rot after death (intentionally) - Able to reform from their slime core (brain) after 15-20 minutes of being dead - Has the following damage coefficients: (they're slimes this one just makes sense) - Blunt: 0.6 ### Cons - Breathes Nitrogen instead of Oxygen - Exhales Nitrous Oxide - Takes damage from touching water (2 heat per unit) - Takes more barotrauma damage (0.5 per second instead of 0.35 per second) ### Neutral - Has slime instead of blood. ## Diona The fun one. The general idea is to make them like 13- I've heard they're good there. This should be not too intrusive, but still manage to be fun. I'm keeping the slow as it's kind of part of their identity. EDIT: Removing photosynthesis from the plan, as I have no idea how to implement it and think they already have enough going on. ### Pros - Can breathe carbon dioxide (in addition to oxygen) - Able to heal from plant chemicals (ie. Robust Harvest) - 2 minutes after death, split into 3 nymphs, one being player-controlled. Player-controlled ones can grow back themselves after some time (probably like 10 minutes). AI ones can be grabbed and ~~kept as pets~~ cultivated (likely by botany) to eventually become a ghost role. - Diona should be able to "shed" a nymph to grow more. Need some way to discourage this from, likely by having a long cooldown and reducing max HP for the duration of this cooldown (or longer). ### Cons - Slower (2.0 walkspeed and 4.0 runspeed compared to 2.5 and 4.5 respectively for humans) - Has no shoe slot - Gets fire stacks from heat damage (Probably 2 fire stacks for any heat damage over 15 in one go) ### Neutral - Has water instead of blood - Has a higher mass ## Moths As I mentioned earlier, I'm pretty happy with the state of Moths. All I'm going to tweak is remove their inability to rot (this was a bug), and their odd damgage modifiers, keeping the heat and cold modifiers as its' part of their whole "cold lover" thing (and significant enough to be interesting imo). ### Pros - Significantly faster acceleration in zero gravity (Accelerates 1.5x faster with a 1x multiplier compared to 0.7x) - Takes cold damage at -43C (compared to -13C for humans) - Takes half damage from freezing (0.05 per second compared to 0.1) ### Cons - Takes more damage from fire (1.5 per second instead of 1) - Takes heat damage at 61C (compared to 86C for humans) - Takes double damage from overheating (0.2 per second compared to 0.1) ### Neutral - Has to eat cloth instead of food - Has the following damage coefficients: - Cold: 0.7 - Heat: 1.3 ## Arachnids As stated earlier, I have no *real* intention of reworking arachnids. That said, since I've given my opinion on the problems with every other race here, I'll do it with arachnids too. I think having 4 hands is a really fun upside- but it comes with a **lot** of problems that makes it so, in my opinion, it shouldn't be given to a roundstart race. Inhands being invisible, quad-wielding guns, space being *even* stronger (for a race that it's supposed to be weak on) just to name a few. The issue is, it's also so powerful, that it needs a lot of downsides to even it out. I'm not certain it's possible to come up with mechanical downsides equivalent to having 4 hands that don't make arachnids miserable in one way or the other, so my idea for them would just be scrap it entirely (ideally something else could take its' place, but I really don't know what to do there). TLDR: 4 hands too good, I would scrap it, **I'm not actually going to change anything.** ### Note that this is outdated and was made before arachnids were updated. ### Pros - Gets hungry slightly slower - Gets thirsty slight slower - Able to create silk at the cost of hunger ### Cons - Takes 1.5x aphyxiation damage (1.5 per second instead of 1) - Heals aphyxiation 50% slower (-0.5 per second instead of -1) # Closing I will probably try to do most or all of these. Some might end up being impossible to code, some might end up unfair, some things might change. The overall idea of this document is to get a strong basis for how each race *should* work in an ideal world, and give me (or anyone else who wants to change anything) something to go off of. If something is bad, yell at me. If something is good, yell at me.