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Broken/prototype cyborg rebalancing #2920

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chaosvolt
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Summary

SUMMARY: Balance "Update broken/prototype cyborg profession"

Purpose of change

A long-running issue with the broken/prototype cyborg profession has been that it has the same point cost as the much-better-off failed cyborg profession. Back in the old days this was fine, in fact it was Coolthulhu himself if I recall who suggested it stay at a 2-point bonus. Some things have changed since then to make this less tenable, however:

  1. You can't attempt an uninstall with just a knife and a first aid kit anymore. You have to seek out an autodoc and un. I'm not sure if the roll is on average more or less difficult than it was in the old days.
  2. The acidic discharge+leaky bionic combo is much more of a looming threat than it was in the old days. Broken cyborg was added back when bandages healed you instantly and your overall healing rate was way faster. Healthiness trends towards normal at an insane rate so that bionic may or may not play as much of a role.
  3. My original idea behind it was honestly just "lol what if you had every faulty bionic in the game" which I stitched together into something halfway coherent afterward. We've since got the glowy thing fault, and Port shutdown module bionic from CDDA #2836 will likely lead to a few more being ported over in the future. Unless we want to keep dumping faulty bionics on it and rebalancing it whenever a new on is added to the game, it no longer makes sense to have "meme role with all faults installed" be its main focus, which means we have room to take off a few of the bionic faults.

Describe the solution

  1. Changed prototype cyborg's name to defective cyborg. My assumption is the name was changed because broken cyborgs are now exclusively the undead version, but the name doesn't really convey that the profession is basically a poorly-put-together wreck of medical malpractice.
  2. Lowered point bonus from 2 to 3. 4 I feel would be just a hair too much and would reinforce its secondary issue of also feeling fairly same-y with Cata++'s -4 failed bio-weapons.
  3. Removed the itchy metal thing (3), electrical discharge (5), and overcontrol stimulator (11). This tones down the number of random interruptions during gameplay to a more sensible number, lowers it from 18 faulty bionics to a nice round 15, and reframes its loadout more around the following central gameplay complications:
  • Leaky bionic steadily tanks your healthiness, making damage from acidic discharge more dangerous in the long run.
  • Power builds up uncontrollably over time due to JTR, power overload turns it into a drawback, no power-consuming bionics so no way to keep your power below the limit.
  • You start with natural weapons and armor, but with all forms of bionic encumbrance, thus hindering your ability to effectively exploit your primary positive bionics in the early game.
  1. Removed the relevant bionics from cyborg_harvest itemgroup and from the prototype cyborg NPC.
Profession Point bonus Postive CBM value (by install diff.) Negative CBM value (by install diff.) CBM score
Prototype cyborg 2 -> 3 29 113 -> 94 -84 -> -65
Failed cyborg 2 6 24 -18

Describe alternatives you've considered

  1. Saying "fuck it" and rebalancing defective cyborg around having all the faulty CBMs again, including porting over all the ones in DDA.
  2. Replacing faulty CBM spawns in cyborg_harvest with a comparable weight of just a burnt-out bionic because faulty bionic item forms being obtainable in normal gameplay is fucking weird and I still want to fix it so that uninstalling them just drops a burnt-out bionic instead.
  3. Bringing back the name broken cyborg because it was cool.

Testing

Checked affected files for syntax and lint errors.

Additional context

@github-actions github-actions bot added the JSON related to game datas in JSON format. label May 31, 2023
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@Firestorm01X2 Firestorm01X2 merged commit 7340dcf into cataclysmbnteam:upload Jun 1, 2023
@chaosvolt chaosvolt deleted the broken-cyborg-balancing branch June 1, 2023 06:12
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