Making lizardmen more unique

Suggestions
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As it is right now, Lizardmen don’t differ from humans much. They have the funny lisssp, a cosmetic tail and a meat diet, that’s really about it.

And so, I decided to make Lizardman gameplay more unique by making them truly be coldblooded and have body temperature play a major role in their moment-to-moment life.

So, to start -

MAKING BODY TEMPERATURE MATTER

Instead of humanoid bodies magically generating heat, ORGANIC humanoids now have to rely on their heart to sustain a constant temperature. This doesn’t include IPCs, Golems, Plasmamen and Undead mobs.

All humanoids slowly loose their body heat, but the atmospere and the internal heat production is more than enough to offset it.

If a heart is damaged, it produces up to 0.4 less bodyheat.
Hearts that are not beating do not produce any heat.
The Advanced Cybernetic heart is 1.5 timed as effective at producing body heat as the normal one.

Lizardmen hearts do not produce any body heat at all, meaning they have to depend on the atmosphere’s temperature and other factors to keep them warm.

Worry not, a hardsuit completelly protects you from the coldness of space, keeping your temperature steady.

I also propose several new items to manage your body heat .

One of those being a sort of Thermal Stone - an item which can absorb temperature from the atmosphere and would heat/cool you when in your inventory. It would be only craftable by Lizardmen as a long-passed recipe, and those with the Family Heirloom quirk could spawn with one. Ashies would be able to craft a primitive one out of available materials.

Another one would be “chemical heating packets” - one time use items, which after being activated in hand would heat you up while held for a short while, and could be attached to a jumpsuit. They could be created out of chemicals and other materials, and a premium version could be ordered through cargo.
I also propose that lizardmen would get a crappy emergency version inside their internals boxes.

Yet another one would be a pocket heater/fan combo, produceable by Science, with it housing several stock parts and running on a battery. It would also regulate your body temperature when worn and could be attached to a jumpsuit.

Another tweak would be that standing next to a space heater/bonfire would heat up humanoids and Thermal Stones(name pending) nearby. Laying ontop of Heat Exchange pipes would have the same effect.

Showers would be make to actually stabilize your bodytemp to room temperature and would recieve some other tweaks.

BUT WHY SHOULD I KEEP MY BODYTEMP HIGH
Well for one, you’d be incurring a mood penalty, scaling with how cold your lizard body is. High temperature on the other hand would keep you happy - as long as it’s not melting your scales off.

Being could would have other downsides - becoming more sleepy and tired. It would deal some stamina damage but not to the point of stamcrit and make you nod off slightly but not to the point of falling asleep.

Additionally, the metabolism rate of lizardmen would depend on their body temperature - meaning healing chemicals would take longer to do their effect the colder you are. Yes, this means cryoxadone would be way less useful for lizards and Medbay would get creative.

TAIL LOSS AND REGROWTH

Lizardmen gain the ability to “snap off” their tail, which drops it on the floor and makes them run a bit faster for a period of time.

However, loosing the tail through any means would make walking a bit difficult, like you are slightly drunk. This effect would become worse the longer it went on.

Regrowing a tail could be done through molting. The process would drain a heafty amount of nutrients and make you take more brute and burn damage for a period of time, but would regrow your tail, heal up some brute and burn damage and would leave you with some lizard hide.

TERRITORY OF “MAYBE”
Perhaps, lizardmen would gain unique stomachs that would heavily decrease or even make them immune to gaining diseases from eating maintenance rats.
They could also gain adjusted mask sprites that would fit their snouts better.
Digitigrade legs could possibly have socks be displayed on them.

The maint rat disease immunity and warmth appreciation could also be applied to Felinids, if approved.

I am open to any feedback and suggestions, please feel free to l

11 Likes
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Also I’ve already started working on some of these changes here

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:lizard: :lizard: :lizard:
yippppe!

How would this process happen exactly?
Also something of note that could be related to lizard stomachs is that they don’t need to eat as often as humans would?

Irl lizards/snakes only really need to be feed once or twice a week. Perhaps there is chance we can add a simliar feature with the drawbacks?

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I really feel like the debuff for the body temp thing is just going to impact lizards way too heavily, like, “sleepy and tired” stam damage is straight up way too much of a debuff.
I also think a lot of it is very ambitious and makes lizards way more unique but the proposed solutions to help body heat could potentially be really annoying to deal with ngl, if I’m a loud antagonist and I have to rush to robotics to get upgraded heart or have to gather a bunch of items to be able to not instantly get fucked by sec, I don’t think it’d be cool. That’s my main worry here.
(also family heirloom being replaced with the stone is bad, it’s supposed to be a negative quirk, not a positive)
Don’t forget about the existence of winter coats btw, these could be really useful in this situation

Overall I think there’s a lot of good ideas in there but i mostly really dislike the “taking in stamina damage” debuff, mostly. Unless you need significant buildup before it starts or something, I don’t think I want to do micromanagement of body temp in order to not get downed super fast by sec and become super slow.
I feel like it could work regardless, though, but would need some testing/testmerges to see how common the stam damage intake would happen and how much lizards would have to worry about “oh shit it’s been 5 minutes i need my drug packet”

I also really like the tail removal thing, it’s pretty funny too and enjoyable, alike moth’s wings and apid’s fly dash. Very unique and funny although cargo is going to harass lizards so much in order to get their tails

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Not necesarrily replaced. Moths have a change to get a lamp instead of a related job item, and some of the job items actually are useful. But sure, I’ll give it more thought.

I’ll definutely have to mess around with it on local and see if it’s not too overbearing

Hmm, I could introduce a species uplink item - syndicate warming shoe soles or something, but this wouldn’t help other antags.

The drawback there is that they also sleep for days and sometimes weeks while digesting their food, so I don’t really think it would be engaging. Plus hunger barely mattters as is, I don’t think we should make it even more dismissable.

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It can just be way too busted. A single temperature gun freeze ray would be an instant win button against lizards, is the thing. And having to spend tc at all costs in order to not die would both be super annoying AND ignores the fact that lings, cult & wizards who happen to be lizards are just fucked in that regard, sadly.
Forgot to include heretics in the list who will also be instafucked over by a single temp beam lmao

Also yeah, that, there’s barely any incentive to clean off a cook’s tray by eating all of it, so most of their work is just mostly useless. Let’s not make it worse

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EMPs and ion rifles already hard counter IPCs and screw over Ethereals, and Temp rifles shut down Oozelings, mind you

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Sure, but with the proposed changes, the temp beam would be a debuff that’d last for a very long time, completely slowing you down for all that time and causing massive stam damage. It is, again, a straight up “instant win” button with consequences lasting a long time and i don’t think that’s good design.

Btw, digitigrade legs only and i will advocate for it forever

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the ion rifle in question

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I don’t know man, IPCs get pretty good bonuses from being so weak to a few things, like extremely fast revival from death, while with this pr, lizards get what - a minor dash speed boost? In exchange for being insanely vulnerable to one (1) item that will slow them down for several minutes while lowering their overall damage threshold before being stamcritted heavily
I understand that it’s cool for lizards to be different and all, but there shouldn’t be a straight up instant win button with 0 advantages besides it, like, I understand “you chose to play non-human lol” but like, come on, this is way too strong

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Lizards would also get a substantial mood boost + chems healing way faster at high body temperatures.
I’m not looking to make lizards stronger or at the same level as humans, I want their gameplay to be different from humans.
As for the temperature gun - does it really ignore any and all heat/cold protection from clothing? If so I’m down for a rebalance of that.

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I can boost my mood to max within 2 minutes even as antag while running around, mood is a very forgettable mechanic

Reliable ways to reach that while not overheating too much and ending up taking damage would just be super annoying to micromanage, in exchange for a speedup in chem tick speed because every single type of antagonist has easy access to chemicals to profit from that boost
I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem balanced at all. Again, IPCs may get stunned super heavily from EMPs, but it just takes a few welder/cables to heal them back to life.

This is the entire reason why I’m complaining, temperature gun freeze ray is absolutely busted because no matter what you’re wearing, it’s an instant HUGE slowdown for like 10-20 seconds putting you at lower than walk speed, already impacting lizards much more strongly than other races too. There’s no counter besides dodging it, and the fact that it’s a bulky item fitting in no inventory slot

Reworking the temp gun in the way you suggest would also mean having to consider giving a lot of outfits heat resistance and to different degrees, which will be a huge balance change worth its own PR

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Consider the following: Coffee.

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Does not counter temp gun freeze ray considering one bullet will instantly drop you to low temperatures, and they can just keep shooting after hitting you once. People dismiss the temp gun as a meme gun, but when fighting with a few others on your side, you’re ensuring no escape for your opponent and way less ability to dodge. Even on your own, it’s super robust.

Also, watch all coffee vendors empty within 30 seconds of a shift starting.
Although, you could imagine adding straight up near infinite (or easily refillable) coffee machines in workplaces where employees could meet near it and talk together while drinking some coffee, which will be surrounded by lizards at nearly all times. Honestly, that would be really cool, gives some purpose to the water tank & paper cups too

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Also, maybe out of scope, but please consider adding in sounds for a bunch of lizard emotes, we don’t even have one for *laugh !

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I want one for licking your own eyeballs. The lizard equivalent of the *stare.

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This would be quite cool, though I suggest making winter coats also increase or insulate body temperature if possible.

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Winter coats already do this for every race.

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as a cargo main and lizard wine enthusiast, thank you

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I fear the day that Quatermasters farm lizards for their tails.

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