[WIP] The Magitech Update

[chaosvolt]

New items:

1. A magitech-focused lab journal, for mid-high-level arcana detailing the research that enabled the various recipes contained within.
2. Three gunmods that can be applied to the barrel of any valid rifle. In exchange for increasing amounts of UPS draw, hindering automatic fire, and various effects on dispersion/recoil/etc, the devices impact each round fired with anomalous effects. Comes in a range-boosting electric railgun-type effect, a fiery plasma burst effect, and one that has quite explosive results. The last one has the additional downside of risking dimensional fatigue with every shot, due to the sheer dirsuptive forces involved.
3. Two high-powered ranged weapons exploiting otherworldly phenomena. The first creates a bouncing bolt of electrified plasma, capable of shocking and burning large numbers of enemies if creatively applied. It runs purely on UPS and is fairly inefficient in terms of direct damage vs. power draw, but obviously its effectiveness shoots up if used on enough targets. The second requires a bit of UPS power but uses crystallized essence as its primary ammunition, exploiting the same weaponized supernatural effects used by Shadowy Shield, life-draining spells, and a certain late-game boss monster. Like that last one if even takes the form of a laser that deals supernatural cold-type damage, with extremely high damage (as expected, crystallized essence has a LOT of energy), but any monster will COLDPROOF (robots, shadowy enemies) will laugh it off. On top of that, its impact has a chance of creating dimensional fatigue.
4. A device designed to convert electricity into essence, specifically crystallized essence. It requires modifying the essence surge device mentioned below, turning it from a vehiclepart into a tool and inverting its intended function. Needless to say, while converting essence into power is safe and perfectly efficient, the other way around is another matter entirely. Each use drains twice the power you'd get out of crystallized essence (meaning only large enough batteries can be used), and it has a decent risk of attracting unwanted attention from beyond The Veil (since you are basically dumping large amounts of electricity into the Beyond and coaxing essence out of it) on top of essence creation being hot, blinding, dangerous work. This can include the usual shadowy gateways associated with The Archon, or some risk of a Hound of Tindalos appearing to aggressively object to your clever use of mad science.

Vehicle parts and related items:

1. In addition to the below items that're meant to be vehicleparts, both the new ranged weapons can be mounted on a vehicle.
2. An electric motor exploiting anomalous principles to generate more power output that it receives, with some trickery to make it quite hostile to being exploited for true perpetual motion. You can get a lot for a little after all, but you can't get something for nothing. It can of course be stacked up to provide efficient power for something like a deathmobile, without triggering the multi-engine penalties, but each one can emit hazardous bolts of lightning while in operation.
3. A reactor part that generates power from essence. For technical reasons (I really wanted it to work with all essence types but powergen for reactors doesn't respect varying energy densities) it only allows regular essence. The good news is it translates the expected 120 kJ of essence into electricity with no waste and no weird side effects. As hinted at above, the idea is meant to be doable (it's translating non-essence energy into essence that's supposed to be lossy) but complicated, especially when dealing with more energy-dense material (i.e. steadily working dull essence into a single-use power cell is easier than creating a reactor that can constantly burn regular essence). The use of an essence gem implies some familiarity with arcanist items, plus an understanding that its ability to store and focus essence is useful for this application.
4. A simple, fairly easy-to-learn application of otherworldly energy to create a desirable, not-easily-replicated tool function. In this case it cuts metal, acting like an acetylene torch except being unusable as a welder, only able to focus dull essence into precise destruction.
5. A source of controlled teleportation. Yes, I said controlled, not just random. Arcana already has a limited solution to this absent feature in the Displacement spell, but this is on-demand, target-the-ground-and-go-there teleportation without needing to swap with an existing monster. Or course, SWAP_POS is still used for it (it's ), but in this case it creates a fitting bit of otherworldly FX that lingers where you last where, in vague mimicry of the scroll of discord leaving summoning shadows in your wake. It will also destroy any way you try to teleport into, not for telefrag-avoidance reasons but because SWAP_POS is a terribly finicky mechanic, and if it can't place the swap-target monster the game will outright segfault, so all measures have been taken to ensure it will always place your swap-target. One final thing to note, using this device also carries the risk of a few assorted, random side effects, as should be expected of something that lets you worm through reality with perfect precision.

CBMs:

1. Both the new magic ranged weapons have CBM versions, being less-powerful yet less destructive ranged bionics exploiting the same arcane principles as their beefier counterparts. The rift focus projector in particular loses out on a lot of the power its gun version has because it runs solely off of bionic power without burning crystallized essence, but it's still impactful enough to be useful, plus the rarity of cold-type damage gives it its own niche.
2. The essence surge vehiclepart also has a CBM counterpart, a version that generates bionic power from essence. Unlike the above, powergen CBMs can handle multiple different fuels without any weird bugs, so it can use all four essence types without issue. Also runs at no power loss and no side effects, being rooted in similar technology mentioned above.
3. A CBM that has a very simple speed and stamina-boosting effect, fairly efficient yet mundane in effect, albeit explicitly running on anomalous mechanisms. Side effects are fairly mild, mainly increased fatigue with overuse.
4. And in contrast, the last CBM involves a much more unique side effect when active, making it so that undead effectively can't see you. While fairly low-energy, it isn't perfect invisibility since undead will happily take a swing at you if you stay near them, and the mechanism behind it carries side effects that discourage only using it for short-term stealth. Suppressing the user's life energy actively negates natural healing so long as it's active, plus it increases hostility from most mundane wildlife, essentially trading one hostile for another.

Recipe stuff:

1. Most of the recipes involved are available either without the new lab journal, the electronics-focused one, or in the military cybernetics book. A few can also be learned from standard arcanist books.
2. Alternative methods of converting essence into usable electrical power, via batteries. This method mimics the existing recipes for alkaline cells, using ritual and less-exotic reagents to stabilize conversion of dull essence into electrical energy. Due to the fact I have to use standard batteries for them to be usable in any tools, and my current balance formula for how energy-dense essence is, it overtly has to use dull essence without allowing blood or regular essence, due to almost all the energy amounts involved being divisible by 4 but not 40 or 120. This does implicitly give it a thematic link to the Cleansing Flame via the Arcane Purifiers however, and hints at the effort that made it feasible to convert dull essence into electricity without essence surge technology.
3. In addition to recipes for all of the expected magitech items (all of which have the SECRET flag), the CBMs themselves are craftable with the right books and levels. You aren't making them purely from scratch however. Each one involves taking a similar mundane CBM (usually the higher-end stuff) and altering it, integrating arcane developments to alter its original function into something otherworldly.
4. All of the new items have uncrafts as well, all of them involved consecration into relevant scrap and dull essence since none of the items are specific to the Cleansing Flame. The dull essence yield also includes the calculated value of any monsterparts used (informed via 20 dull essence being an alternative to a monsterpart when making water talismans), in addition to the amount expected based on essence used in the recipe.
5. Allowed the new book to also teach you the recently-added alchemical method for producing blood essence. It doesn't technically count as magitech, but this hints at where the researchers were getting essence to tinker with these deisgns. (and references some ideas a friend came up with a while back).

Itemgroup additions:

1. Set the new book to spawn where the electronics lab journal can, at a reduced weight.
2. A small tweak to the loot in the Arcane Purifier basement hidden in the necropolis, making some scientific equipment spawn there.
3. Added the CBMs to relevant bionic itemgroups. They're very rare results in the generic bionics group labs use, with Magiclysm's magical CBM group being a more reliable source, and bio-operators rather rarely having some. Even a bit of Cata++ itemgroup stuff has been set up.
4. A couple rare spawns of certain magitech items, here and there.
5. A specific itemgroup for assorted magictech items, to be used for certain locations...

Location additions:

1. Added some variation to a couple parts of microlabs, allowing for signs of magitech in one room type, and rare activity implying (failed) investigation by the Arcane Purifiers.
2. Added a variation to part of the necropolis that fleshes out a small part of it just a bit.

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Todo:

1. Might work on more mod compatibility with Cata++, likely dividing some endgame spawns into itemgroups instead of single-item spawns so Arcana can inject magitech where desired.
2. Plans for a magitech-themed lab finale.
3. Possibly rare occurrences in normal lab cells too.
4. Should arcane purifiers start with the essence surge cell CBM?
5. Plans for a proper magitech-themed special lab that will be the focus of a mission chain.