Increase limb malfunction damage threshold

[Crozarius]

Playing an IPC right now is painful for a variety of reasons, especially if you're playing an industrial IPC. The IPC rework is a pipe dream at this point, or at least until the IPC lore team is rebuilt and figures things out. What I'm proposing is a quality of life change which I hope will make playing an IPC a little less painful, and will hopefully be technically simple to implement.

 

Right now if an IPC takes 10 damage to its limbs, it suffers malfunctions which will cause them to randomly spark and drop items whenever you do something, compounding if both arm and hand or leg and foot are damaged. This damage threshold is frustratingly low and is met by very small amounts of damage such as any amount of electrocution no matter how minor due to IPC burn vulnerability (Yes, even getting RNG zapped charging at an APC), being knocked over by a rush of air has triggered it for me, I've had it triggered  by vending machines thowing things at me, etc. My point is that relatively minor damage is causing debilitating malfunctions that make it incredibly painful to play, and because of "balance" IPCs can't repair it thenselves, so you are shit out of luck if there's no roboticist. This is also compounded for any industrial IPCs who have to use a suit cooler and must carry their backpack: You're going to drop it.

 

What I propose is to simply increase the threshold for malfunctions occuring from 10 damage to 30 (which is the threshold for damage becoming 'extensive' and requiring the Roboticist to open the maintenance panel to repair the damage.) I don't know whether it's possible to make these values different for different models of IPC but if it is maybe make Industrials 35 and lighter frames 20 to be more in line with their supposed fragility.

 

There's a lot to say about how absolutely godawful it is to play an IPC if you aren't a validhunting powergamer. I understand that they've been made this way because of those people, but it's made playing IPCs akin to pulling teeth for people who aren't here to just click spaceman horizontal. Speed is an issue, self repair is an issue, suit coolers are an issue, a lack of meaningful flavor advantages for industrial IPCs is an issue, but these are more complicated problems that should be looked at in a full rework should that ever come to pass.

[Nantei]

Seriously, please. I would play my IPC's way more if it wasn't for this. They currently feel... unfinished, as a subspecies, more like humans but worse. Being damaged and unable to repair yourself is already a pretty nasty drawback, being damaged and having to stutter step your way or crawl your way to robotics is pitiful. Small change that would make playing IPC dramatically less painful. And make anyone with synthetic limbs similarly have less of a horrid time. I have no idea why the mechanical limbs that I imagine are supposed to be superior to fleshy ones 'break' long before human ones do.

Human bones break at 30 brute, are synth limbs made out of glass?

Edited October 28, 2019 by Nantei

[Carver]

Would be neat for people with prosthetics too. Always found it ridiculous someone can barehanded punch a metal leg twice and you can no longer walk on the damned thing reliably.

[furrycactus]

Big agree, especially on the prosthetics thing too. It feels like I'm made of paper mache half the time, whether as an IPC or someone with prosthetics. And if there's no one who can repair you, you're shit out of luck.