Augmentations seem mundane, awkwardly balanced
Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2016 1:42 pm
I'd really like someone to ration this out with me because I legitimately can't tell if they're good, trash, or just another thing.
Augmentation is foremost a relatively time and resource intensive process; a full body augmentation contains ~108 seconds of waits, which is a little faster than the fastest the process could possibly go assuming we're in Sybil 20XX - that is, assuming frame-perfect hand-switch-item-swap-interact inputs from a surgeon who has memorized the process without the need to access the surgery computer or wiki between steps, has already made all of the requisite cyborg limbs (which itself takes a significant amount of time assuming R&D is unupgraded) and placed them on an adjacent tile, the surgeon is non-interactive, verbally or otherwise, with the rest of the station during the process, and all players involved are playing on the same network that the server is hosted on.
More realistically it's going to be about a full stack of metal (not too bad a resource cost) and five minutes of busywork/sitting quietly for two people - which is a significant amount of time, given recent round length, for something that affects a single person and requires someone else's full attention. What I've found myself unable to figure out is whether or not it's worth it, whether being fully augmented is as fun as it sounds (I wasn't the only one thinking Adam Jensen/Robocop/Raiden until they actually tried it, was I?), and whether any of this is actionable at all. As of now, full augmentations:
+ Give you slightly increased durability.
+ Allow you to heal with wires and welding tools, which are relatively unbound by inventory constraints assuming you're carrying a toolbelt or box (This is pretty nifty.)
+ Make you spaceproof (I didn't know this until just now - this is actually pretty good and arguably the best thing, but seems neither obvious nor properly exciting; does this make the process worth it on its own?)
However:
- The durability increase is minor, applies to brute damage only (correct me if I'm wrong?), and is relatively irrelevant, before even considering an abundance of armor piercing weapons (energy swords, chaplain blades, cult blades, carp fists, and the armor increase doesn't affect stamina loss or change the hits-to-crit for most ballistics)
- Healing with tools, while useful, takes FOREVER; applying cables to a burnt limb takes several times as long as using a bruise pack or ointment (probably ten seconds or more by my guess, don't know where to look for this in the code) and infinity times as long as using a patch, and the amount of damage healed per application isn't even that high. It's to the degree that it's not even worth doing in most situations.
- You become ridiculously susceptible to EMP. An ion bolt, flashlight blink, disable tech talisman, or resonant shriek will reduce you to below half health, and render you functionally unconscious for an extended duration; during the resulting stun you are unable to act, see, talk, or hear. This is considered the main drawback of full augmentation and there isn't a real way to protect yourself against it; aside from this you're still equally susceptible to everything a normal human is.
- You're immune to the chaplain's healing (Another particular interaction that might actually be bugged right now, but this is one of those fun little NetHack corner cases that should probably stay the way it is).
Sadly, you have none of the benefits of being Jensen/Robocop/Raiden, but all of the downsides (susceptibility to electromagnetic interference, constantly forgetting that you aren't human anymore).
Humor aside, though, and as Robotics augmentation is currently the only intentional and reasonable way to regain lost limbs (unless something has changed since I last played), it's a little difficult to mess with the balance of these things in terms of things like changing the amount of time/research required. Paprika has suggested medical prosthetics, and I've talked about/heard ideas for biological prosthetics, a means of cloning new limbs or organs from an individual's DNA, which would replace the "secret genetics technique" that I believe is currently classified as an issue - these are notable ideas because they'd put Robotics augmentation in its own regime, making it more flexible in terms of what's required to get it and what benefits it would confer.
But this isn't an idea thread. Rather, I've heard "full augmentation" thrown around a lot as a theoretical benefit ("science should get a fully augmented officer"), a potential answer ("a fully augmented miner can beat the ash drake easily"), or have just seen people (very rarely and probably without knowing fully what it entails) do it for fun, and am curious as to what people really expect from augmentations and think about their balance state.
Augmentation is foremost a relatively time and resource intensive process; a full body augmentation contains ~108 seconds of waits, which is a little faster than the fastest the process could possibly go assuming we're in Sybil 20XX - that is, assuming frame-perfect hand-switch-item-swap-interact inputs from a surgeon who has memorized the process without the need to access the surgery computer or wiki between steps, has already made all of the requisite cyborg limbs (which itself takes a significant amount of time assuming R&D is unupgraded) and placed them on an adjacent tile, the surgeon is non-interactive, verbally or otherwise, with the rest of the station during the process, and all players involved are playing on the same network that the server is hosted on.
More realistically it's going to be about a full stack of metal (not too bad a resource cost) and five minutes of busywork/sitting quietly for two people - which is a significant amount of time, given recent round length, for something that affects a single person and requires someone else's full attention. What I've found myself unable to figure out is whether or not it's worth it, whether being fully augmented is as fun as it sounds (I wasn't the only one thinking Adam Jensen/Robocop/Raiden until they actually tried it, was I?), and whether any of this is actionable at all. As of now, full augmentations:
+ Give you slightly increased durability.
+ Allow you to heal with wires and welding tools, which are relatively unbound by inventory constraints assuming you're carrying a toolbelt or box (This is pretty nifty.)
+ Make you spaceproof (I didn't know this until just now - this is actually pretty good and arguably the best thing, but seems neither obvious nor properly exciting; does this make the process worth it on its own?)
However:
- The durability increase is minor, applies to brute damage only (correct me if I'm wrong?), and is relatively irrelevant, before even considering an abundance of armor piercing weapons (energy swords, chaplain blades, cult blades, carp fists, and the armor increase doesn't affect stamina loss or change the hits-to-crit for most ballistics)
- Healing with tools, while useful, takes FOREVER; applying cables to a burnt limb takes several times as long as using a bruise pack or ointment (probably ten seconds or more by my guess, don't know where to look for this in the code) and infinity times as long as using a patch, and the amount of damage healed per application isn't even that high. It's to the degree that it's not even worth doing in most situations.
- You become ridiculously susceptible to EMP. An ion bolt, flashlight blink, disable tech talisman, or resonant shriek will reduce you to below half health, and render you functionally unconscious for an extended duration; during the resulting stun you are unable to act, see, talk, or hear. This is considered the main drawback of full augmentation and there isn't a real way to protect yourself against it; aside from this you're still equally susceptible to everything a normal human is.
- You're immune to the chaplain's healing (Another particular interaction that might actually be bugged right now, but this is one of those fun little NetHack corner cases that should probably stay the way it is).
Sadly, you have none of the benefits of being Jensen/Robocop/Raiden, but all of the downsides (susceptibility to electromagnetic interference, constantly forgetting that you aren't human anymore).
Humor aside, though, and as Robotics augmentation is currently the only intentional and reasonable way to regain lost limbs (unless something has changed since I last played), it's a little difficult to mess with the balance of these things in terms of things like changing the amount of time/research required. Paprika has suggested medical prosthetics, and I've talked about/heard ideas for biological prosthetics, a means of cloning new limbs or organs from an individual's DNA, which would replace the "secret genetics technique" that I believe is currently classified as an issue - these are notable ideas because they'd put Robotics augmentation in its own regime, making it more flexible in terms of what's required to get it and what benefits it would confer.
But this isn't an idea thread. Rather, I've heard "full augmentation" thrown around a lot as a theoretical benefit ("science should get a fully augmented officer"), a potential answer ("a fully augmented miner can beat the ash drake easily"), or have just seen people (very rarely and probably without knowing fully what it entails) do it for fun, and am curious as to what people really expect from augmentations and think about their balance state.