Currently, most of our species are kinda badly designed. Most are very similar to humans, only having minor damage number tweaks, and barely affect how you as a player make decisions. In my opinion, the different species should all be distinct and different, with strengths and weaknesses that create interesting decisions to be made and interactions to be had between players. I want to rework most of our species to fit these criteria, and I plan to do it using this design:
The Points System:
Species strengths and weaknesses will be divided into five categories:
- Combat: How effective a species is at fighting.
- Durability: How well a species is able to withstand environmental hazards, such as space or radiation.
- Job: How well a species is able to perform specialist job tasks. This covers features like ethereals recharging batteries.
- Social: How well a species is able to cooperate and coordinate with other people. This would cover things like extra languages or other things that would help in non-combat interactions with others.
- Needs: What a species needs to eat, any other special needs to live, etc.
Being strong in one of these categories would add one point. Being weak in a category would subtract a point. The end goal would be for all species to have a net total score of 0 (if we wanted to preserve human supremacy, weād balance humans to be at a number between 1 and 3). Combat skills should never go super high because being inherently super good at combat isnāt fun for anyone trying to fight you.
Additionally, each species would have a preferred department, which their skillset is tailored to make them better at, along with a unique game mechanic for each (roundstart) species. To show you how this would work, Iāll give two examples based on ideas I had (NOT FINAL):
Lizards:
Combat +2 (Reptilian Rage mechanic)
Durability 0 (vulnerable to cold temperatures, resistant to heat)
Job 0
Social -1 (Reptilian Rage mechanic)
Needs -1 (Uncommon food tastes, L- blood type)
Their preferred job would be something like security or mining. Races that are above average at combat should be rare, and their advantages should have downsides.
Mechanic: Reptilian Rage
āIt was not long ago that lizards were denizens of lava planets, living in hard climates with little technology. As such, they needed to be tough. In a time of crisis, their ancient anger can boil to the surface. Donāt pick a fistfight with a lizard.ā
As a lizard takes damage, their anger builds up, represented by a scale from 1-100. They gain one point of anger for every point of damage they take. Upon reaching 25, they become frustrated, and will change their speech verb to indicate their frustration. At 60, they become angry, punching somewhat harder, and gaining strong grabs, but also randomly lashing out at nearby people and shouting anything that they say. At 80, they become furious, and attack faster than normal, but lose the ability to talk entirely, only being able to growl and snarl. At 150 (which shouldnāt normally occur because that is the crit threshold) they become enraged, moving faster and becoming immune to damage slowdown. Anger slowly dissipates over tie, but can be dissipated faster by using chemicals such as nicotine and is reset by being put into hardcrit. A unique traitor item, exclusive to them, should rapidly increase anger for a short time, bringing them up to the final level. This would be the only way to reliably reach the final phase of anger.
Ethereals:
Combat 0
Durability 0
Job +2 (Charge mechanic)
Social 0
Needs -2 (Uncommon food tastes, liquid electricity blood type)
Preferred Job: Medical
Mechanic: Charge
Who knew that a creature made of pure electricity could be so useful to power generation?
Unlike the current system, an etherealās charge would depend on their health. The lower their health, the faster their charge would drain. Charge drain would halt at 95% health, and actually slowly recharge at full health. Ethereals would then be given additional things to expend charge on. They can still recharge batteries and APCs, but can also use an ability to use their hands like a defibrillator or overload a door, forcing it to open if it is powered and bolted. If the charge rises above a certain threshold you will start to randomly discharge electricity, shocking both you and nearby people. Excess electricity can be discharged manually to prevent this, having the same effect. To prevent this being used to cheese combat, you are stunned for longer than anyone caught in the radius.
I plan to expand this to all roundstart species (yes, even felinids), but I need a: a design for each before I start coding and b: maintainer approval. Feedback would be appreciated.
