RELEASED Race Gameplay Variation 0.3.2

Woah, that's a lot of questions.

Floran regenerate health at a steady rate for balance reasons. I want light to make them more powerful, but not impossible to kill. Balancing the rate that light effects regen is also going to take some work and I would rather risk energy regeneration becoming egregiously underpowered or overpowered than health.

While machinery is effected by severe environments, I think it's fairly inarguable that it's effected much less by extreme cold or heat then flesh or plant matter is. While Glitch would naturally need to maintain optimal temperature to function, they don't have any risk of water in their bodies boiling or freezing, and their metal bodies wouldn't burn from fire. Perhaps radiation does effect machinery, but if there was no way around that then I can't imagine nuclear power would be particularly safe or sustainable in comparison to how things are.

I also wasn't particularly apprehensive of any of the decisions Chucklefish makes during development, regardless of my own opinions on the game itself. I have the utmost respect for them, especially considering they went out of their way to make modding the game so easy in the first place. The section I wrote on design philosophy is only there to help people better understand my thought process when implementing the mechanics of the mod. I felt it would make discussion easier, since I'm sure many people have many different ideas on what they want out of race bonuses.

 

They are plants so having their ability to self-regenerate would make much more sense if it were affected by light. Wouldn't a potential balance issue be rectified by putting a hard limit/cap on maximum health renegeration based on light level? Them universally regenerating health all the time is far more overpowering than that.

Also, what about meat?

Edit: I decided to unpack your files and I found a bunch of raw edits to vanilla files. Do you require assistance with patching? I can help you with that. As it stands, your mod has compatibility issues with More Farming and Yes Chef!, among others. I also believe there is a rule against releasing a mod which does not patch in any edits to vanilla files... I'm not going to report it.

 

Perhaps your right, and regenerating health based on light level is more reasonable than constant regen. There's no flaw in your logic on that point. However, I'm uncertain enough about making that kind of change that getting feedback on how things feel now before the next update comes will be the deciding factor.

As for the meat bonus, I absolutely agree that floran should gain more from eating meat. They are carnivorous, it might even be reasonable to prevent them from eating vegetable matter entirely. (Although I can't help but feel it would be more humorous to allow the option of having a vegetarian diet if the player chooses.) In fact, the restrictions I have set in place for foods are rather clunky, and at some point more complex changes should be put in place to allow for things like races gaining buffs (or debuffs) from specific foods.

On another somewhat related note, I've realized I accidentally added potential for a kind of symbiosis between the floran and novakid. Since novakid are basically walking suns, and floran gain energy from light, it might be interesting to see the two partnered together.

 

You do raise a good point... they were constructed to simulate the progression of organic civilization. However, their mechanical nature ought to provide them some measure of resilience against these elements. Resistance is not the same as immunity. Being resistant to radiation/cold/heat would not mean they're unfazed by them... so perhaps if they were simply resistant to all three environmental hazards... for the preservation of the experiment if nothing else... that would be more reasonable?

As for rusting... the only way they would rust is if they're made of iron. I'd like to think they're a little more advanced than that.

-Edit-

I'm definitely with you on this one. In fact, making their regeneration dependent on light actually could give them them a meaningful weakness. Energy regen being reduced/nonexisting in dark areas would make for very interesting in terms of ranged combat.

 

Actually, considering Boneboo and Pussplum and the various inspection texts for crops, I think a vegetarian/omnivorous Floran diet would be common enough. I'd say leave it, while adding bonuses to meat.

Also, I'd like to reiterate my comments on your unpacked files.

You are correct. I meant to say oxidation in general, rust being the oxide of iron.

 

Assistance with patching would be very much appreciated. I tried using patching initially, but couldn't figure out how to get the proper syntax. If I can avoid any compatibility issues with other mods (and avoid breaking any rules) I would prefer knowing how to get that done as soon as possible.

 

That raises a question: How glitch actually reproduce thenselves?

I mean, they are robots and that implies that they are made of advanced machinery and circuitry and yet the only surviving glitch communities (based on the ingame CODEX) you see in planets are those that have been stuck into a middle ages tech level, to the point of then having only crossbows as ranged weapons. That means an entirely lack of advanced production methods and materials and thus their metal frame could reasonably be made of simple iron...

 

When you finalize your changes to vanilla races, will you be taking requests for mod-added races?

 

Wouldn't Novakids react very poorly in a cold environment? I don't know how much energy it takes to break their outer shell thing, but considering a couple of sword strikes, monster attacks, or arrow penetrations burst the shell easily it can be assumed that it isn't very strong. Surely it wouldn't be able to stand the super cold temperatures found on the ice worlds found in game without some kind of protection. But that's just me pondering things, you can do whatever you like.

EDIT: You could actually make them overall more frail to puncture wounds. That would be interesting.

 

It depends both on how interested I am in the race itself and whether I can actually come up with anything unique for that race in particular. Races that are partly made as a gag or novelty, or races that are too similar to one of the ones in the vanilla, likely won't get any attention because their isn't a lot of room to work with.

A good example of the right kind of custom race is the Peglaci. They're distinct in both nature and appearance, just by looking at them I could derive ideas about what they might do.

We are talking about a walking talking fusion reaction. With bodies consisting of the same volatile reaction as stars, the concept of cold probably doesn't even register well with them. Even if the shell holding them together was somehow effected by cold, the intense amount of energy they generate passively would be more than enough to keep it warm.

Whether they take more damage from piercing or other physical damage will remain to be seen, until I know if there's a way to even differentiate that from standard damage, and as the mod becomes more complete.

 

I love this idea. Treating the shell around Novakids as being extremely weak against all kinds of physical attacks would be an excellent counter to their environmental invulnerabilities. Coupled with an inability to heal on-the-fly, and you have a very different kind of playstyle on your hands than with the other races.

 

I meant requests. I.e. I enjoy Pokemon-based races and have ideas for passive abilities they may have. Would you be interested in helping me transform those ideas into lua scripts and status effects?

Working on a passive for the Peglaci is fine, but I mean someone asking you if you can do something for them when I say "requests".

 

Looking at the .damage files for the different types of damage it looks like each of the different weapon types has a "kind" associated with it, so you should be able to differentiate between an axe/needle gun and a plasma blaster/flame launcher.

 

Taking a request for someone would imply that I'm doing work for something I don't have any investment in. And considering that modding is hobby work I don't know if I have the time to be doing something that I really get nothing out of in terms of personal satisfaction.

As for your request specifically, I don't really have any interest in developing a Pokemon-based mod I'm sorry to say. However if you're able, you're more than welcome to look at the code I wrote and use anything you could learn from that to wright your mod yourself.

 

Why Hylotl race is so disadvantaged compared to othe races? The thing is that you spend not so much time in water, so their abilities are quite useless most of time, IMHO. Maybe it would be better to add them something more useful? Due to their gills they could resist toxic atmosphere and stay longer without air in space (smth like that) and due to their thick skin they could get less damage in a close combat? Just my several thoughts.

 

Thick skin? Breathing in toxic environments? More time without air in Space?

Unless we are talking about a species evolved from sharks, whales or crustaceos I dont see why they would have thick skin.

Having gills dont protect fish from toxins in the water in RL so it makes no sense for Hylotls to have protection in that area too. The same applies to vaccum of space, gills wont protect you from sufocation unless you have a internal reservatoir of oxigen to draw from.

 

Suggestion: Hylotl regenerate health when in rain or underwater.

 

I was hoping to wait until someone else responded to respond again, but, due to your lack of patching, this mod is not compatible with the upcoming Glad Giraffe. You really should look into learning how to patch files - I tried to convert a number of your edits to the patch file format but I have only finished about fifty consumables before I remembered I had stuff to do.

Also, some of the decisions you have made are... questionable IMO. Wartweed and Pussplum, for example, have a lot of inspection text that implies many races can eat it, but this mod only allows Florans to do so. I think you should look at the wiki pages about farmables again before you finalize this.

 

The reason that I haven't replied to anything for a while is I've been hauling ass to get everything converted to the patch format. On top of that, when I put out the next update for this you won't have to worry about inconsistencies with inspection text. I've created a way to changed the effects food has on individual races without preventing them from eating it outright, so I could for instance simply reduce the effects that food like wartweed and pussplum has instead of outright preventing it from being eaten. I can even make certain food types cause damage if they weren't intended to be eaten.

 

Sounds like a plan! Good on ya, IncredibleMeh. Compatibility first, and then new features to buff up the Hylotl!