Me when someone lightly grazes me with a lit welder (i die instantly)
How the hell are IPCs overpowered? Literally just pop EMP and they’ll go horizontal in seconds.
The radiation nerf for IPCs on NSV and austation made none of them do engineering again.
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oh mah gawd.
Das me!
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I remember we spray painted the SM hahaha.
This must’ve been at least 6 months ago, before I was mod even.
Moments like these are why I still play bee
Nobody walks around with an EMP bomb ready to go off at a moments notice.
That was December 2nd 2021.
My point was that removing rad immunity is stupid because rad lounges in the SM chamber are fun.
Oh wait, here’s my huge copypasta from 2020.
To add to this IPC’s are already the most powerful roundstart race by far.
IPCs in particular are something that people frequently shout at the top of their lungs that they’re balanced just fine, that their cons outweigh their pros, but in reality, IPCs are almost always a powergamer’s wet dream. In pretty much every codebase in which IPCs have mechanical differences from humans, the pros outweigh the cons, especially when two or more IPCs group up with each other. Oracle IPCs are definitely a step towards balanced IPCs, yeah, but there’s still quite a few glaring issues.
So let’s take each individual pro/con about the IPCs , and go into detail of what exactly they entail, and how they can maybe be improved.
- Con: Take more damage from nearly all sources (and can be dismembered by blunt objects if the force is high enough)
Combat on SS13 is stunbased. This is mostly irrelevant outside of casual play. This is made even more irrelevant in a tidbit I’ll cover later. This scores a solid gold star, “you tried” in terms of balancing attempts. If you want to make powergamers see this as an actual con, try making stun times be affected on top of this. A 1.25x multiplier for all stun lengths should be plenty enough to make IPCs be frail glass cannons in combat, even when played by seasoned powergamers.
- Con: They cannot be cloned or have DNA modified
Being unable to have your DNA modified is more of a pro than a con, but being unable to be cloned is actually a somewhat significant downside, since it means that if you fuck up, you’re gone for good. However, this is mitigated by a point that I’ll cover later.
- Con: Unique EMP effects!
Not that big of a downside. Since EMPs have inherent AoE properties that make them impossible to safely use around an IPC. And EMPs are still rarely ever used or even glanced at ingame, simply because the situations in which an EMP’s actually necessary are so rare it’s not even funny.
- Pro: Recharge at APCs
Not too big of an upside, it’s a nice fluff feature, but does help shave off some of the time necessary to break into departments via cutting power to the APC.
- Pro: REVIVESBYHEALING trait
This completely, COMPLETELY nullifies one of their primary downsides, which is their lack of cloning. Reviving a dead IPC should take a lot more than just welding and cable coiling their parts until they become vertical again, since one of their downsides is supposed to be that death is the end for them. Perhaps making their revival require putting their brain into a new body, accompanied with a lengthy surgery, can make this a little less of a nullification of one of their major downsides.
- Pro/con: They do not process most chems
This isn’t much of a con due to something I’ll be covering later, but this is a pretty significant pro. This completely nullifies the stuns and insta-death that chemists and bartenders are capable of pumping out via syringe gun, making IPCs a hard counter to chemists. This is just another support beam in their status as an upgrade from baseline humans. This would be fine if it were balanced out by sufficient cons.
- Pro: Re-attach limbs, anytime, anywhere!
This basically nullifies one of their major downsides, their being able to be dismembered with ease. This can be made a little less broken by making freshly reattached limbs simply not function until the limb’s “recalibrated” via paperclip screwdriver.
- Pro: They do not breathe
This is a significant upside, as this lets IPCs spacewalk indefinitely, something that other roundstart races do not have the luxury of. Being able to survive in space is a pretty significant advantage, as it allows for swift, stealthy hull breaches in a matter of seconds, and makes it pretty hard for victims to fight back. Not having to worry about internals means that IPCs can hang around space for however long they want, and no other roundstart species will be able to do anything about it. A better way to handle this would be to make it so IPCs still have to “breathe”, but not in the traditional sense. Make IPC body temperature match the air that they “breathe”, and make it so that they heat up the air they use up while “breathing”, returning the “breathed” air to the atmosphere/internals after their “breath”. This will add an interesting mechanic for IPCs to be wary of, and will add some extremely interesting emergent gameplay once folks learn what being a literal toaster entails, all while solving the problem of IPCs being able to spacewalk indefinitely care-free.
- Pro: IPCs are properly robotic - repair with cable coil and a welder.
This is their biggest pro. Cable coil and welding tools are insanely common. They’re a lot more common than medical supplies, and it’s pretty damn easy to drop by tool storage to grab a full toolbelt every round. This basically means that IPC healing is 100% free. All other roundstart species have to take a stop at medbay to heal up 90% of the time, but IPCs get the luxury of being able to heal any time, anywhere, all without having to allocate any of their inventory space for a medkit or equivalent. Combined with their REVIVESBYHEALING trait, this means IPCs can be brought back to life on the spot by any random joe with a welding tool and cable coil, and makes a pair/group of powergaming IPCs more or less immortal. This upside would be fine if it were balanced out by sufficient downsides.
TL;DR: Their pros far outweigh their cons
You forgot one.
They cant take nanites which is the bane of my existence.
Glad you didnt include are immune Viruses because they arent.
IPCs are instantly softcrit when EMPed by revenants by example. “Not that big of a downside” indeed
Three hits from a welder can crit you. One electric zap can kill you.
Do explain the “irrelevancy”.
Reattached limbs that have been cut or hit off already have probably hit the max damage and that’s why they fell off in the first place.
Thats the whole “make them not function” part
These points go together. Do organic races not have genetics?
Can they not get Spaceproof in a manner of 30 minutes?
That is better than not needing oxygen, an organic race can walk fucking naked around with just a mask on and be perfectly fine.
I can understand your point on revives, but everything else I think is far below “OP” levels.
P.S. as a final point
This would make getting stunned by an electric airlock basically guaranteed death.
See, you’ve admitted yourself that they have a lategame genetics ability as a roundstart trait.
Ha! now thats a good joke right there!
Spaceproof and not needing to breath is entirely different.
I think of it as an innate fixed small bonus for IPCs and a optional big bonus for organics.
IPCs are better than organics early in shift but get out classed by organics later on with nanites and genes
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Also gibbing IPCs are next to round removed other than being borged.
Also IPCs dead from Toxins are incurable. Since dead bodies do not process chemicals such as system cleaner they cannot recover from 200 toxins.
Has it been mentioned that if IPCs lose enough “blood” (oil), it is impossible to revive them without a stasis bed? They are loop revived and deaded until Chemistry (hah) brings 100u(just to revive)-300u or so of Oil. (The joke is chemistry is usually blown up or gone later on in the game, and especially on the evac shuttle when IPC revives are really needed)
what the fuck does this mean
u dont know abt esports ss13?
I propose a machine that works like a cloner, but it’s for I.P.C.s only (possibly also letting you put in regular positronic brains to make chassis for them as a tier-4 upgrade), takes as much time to clone an I.P.C. as it takes an Atmospheric Technician to leave their workplace, makes astonishingly horrible noises (dial-up modem + construction site), and needs refilled with some bullshit chem mix to work properly.
On a more serious note, while I can’t say if I.P.C.s are overpowered, I can say they’re one hell of a lot more reliable than humans are - you don’t need to worry about ANYONE else being competent, because you don’t rely on the Chef for food, don’t rely on Med for treatment, can fix yourself easily, and can be brought back to life without dealing with a cloner or any surgery. I used to play them on Golden a lot, because there were a lot of rounds where we were lacking a food supply or medical staff (or both!) and I didn’t want to have to do even more shit.
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