Making Humans more Alien.

[Tadpolesrcold]

Humans as it stands lack anything to make them Unique as a race compared to the other Species. Unathi are the mighty brutes of the galaxy, IPC's have tons of different models to choose from with different playstyles making each unique. Diona have tons of fun tools to play, turning themselves from a tiny exploring nymph to a mighty gestalt, Tarjans are the antithesis to Unathi with a fast and agile playstyle and Skrell have fun psionics to play with. 

Humans understandably as a non-whitelisted race can't be given powerful attributes like some of the other races get but that doesn't mean that they should be completely ignored, Humans are written throughout history as powerful, adaptable, and enduring. While giving out combat enhancing features is out of the question, we can still enhance their base feature to make them more unique as a species more than just default.

 

1. Human Culture throughout all our written history venerates athletes and their capabilities. As persistence hunter's Human sprint should be much longer or regenerate much faster to exemplify this trait. This ability would make sense to both regular and off world humans.
2. Humans go through Adrenaline rushes when faced with pain and pull off tremendous feats when under the effects of it. So, a higher tolerance or OD threshold for Adrenaline for Human would be fitting.
3. Humans have amazing muscle efficiently in the animal kingdom compared to our size. Having less of a debuff when fireman carrying or grab dragging people could show this off.
4. Humans are very hard to kill besides our vulnerable head, as a brick to the head would do in pretty much anyone. However, heart, liver, kidneys and other bodily organs asides from the brain take a lot of beatings before they give out and stop functioning. We can show this in game by having a resistance added to their non brain organs.
5. Minor things like adaptability are hard to show in game. But humans are known for living in snow blasted cold environments to scorching, blistering desserts and still find a way to survive there. It can be shown with minor improvements to both heat and cold temperature changes.

Whether none of these are added or all of them are added I really hope we can move to make humans their own unique, Alien race compared to the others. I'm not great at balancing or anything like that so if anyone has any better ideas feel free to comment them!

[whitewolftamer]

I'm on board with this simply because its an excuse to make the other races more powerful aswell

+1

[Chada1]

Some of these make more sense for regular humans and less sense for Offworlders, which could make them more distinct from each other as well, I'm onboard and I'm also willing to attempt to code these features in, as said previously on Discord, but let's get some feedback and see if we can get any extra ideas/etc before we go that route.

[Marlon P.]

54 minutes ago, Tadpolesrcold said:

Human Culture throughout all our written history venerates athletes and their capabilities. As persistence hunter's Human sprint should be much longer or regenerate much faster to exemplify this trait. This ability would make sense to both regular and off world humans.

This is so. I remember agreeing with this thread and having human sprints be the longest lasting.

The rest would be good sans the resistance to damage. I think its already difficult to kill people with brute? What mechanically would you want to see?

[Colfer]

I honestly think that human sprints should passively regenerate faster than they can be used unless their thirst is in the orange or their hunger is in the orange. Thirst and hunger usage while sprinting is an already serious limiting factor so abusing your sprint as a human can lead to long term consequences if we are solely talking about combat activity, such as lower base speed and seriously impacted stamina regeneration. (I believe that without thirst and hunger, stamina regenerates at 2% of the normal rate?)
Basically, im completely onboard with humans having a longer, or ridiculously long sprint as thirst and hunger mechanics already limit this sprinting ability, and it should not require another limiter in the form of a stamina bar.

[Tristan63]

Overall I agree. Perhaps we could even include a mechanic during rapid decompressions, the ability to not blowout your lungs as easily? 

I especially love the adrenaline idea.

 

+1

[Tadpolesrcold]

On 03/01/2022 at 19:50, Marlon P. said:

This is so. I remember agreeing with this thread and having human sprints be the longest lasting.

The rest would be good sans the resistance to damage. I think its already difficult to kill people with brute? What mechanically would you want to see?

Pretty much stuff to represent human endurance and adaptability. Longer sprint or increased stamina regen would do it. The organ resistance would apply to all things. Lungs wouldn't pop as fast, livers not crashing as fast, hearts surviving drugs sorts of deals. They can still be beat down and attacked like anyone else, but humans have a knack for surviving to what most would be life ending injuries due to strong organs. I don't touch medical so I'm not sure what will come of the adrenaline thing. The resistance to heat and cold are just flavor mostly since humans live pretty much in any environment.

[Butterrobber202]

I approve of this. Humans having all their settings set to "default" is less interesting than giving them advantages, as it allows us to be much more free with what we give our exotic aliens.

[Marlon P.]

49 minutes ago, Tadpolesrcold said:

Pretty much stuff to represent human endurance and adaptability. Longer sprint or increased stamina regen would do it. The organ resistance would apply to all things. Lungs wouldn't pop as fast, livers not crashing as fast, hearts surviving drugs sorts of deals. They can still be beat down and attacked like anyone else, but humans have a knack for surviving to what most would be life ending injuries due to strong organs. I don't touch medical so I'm not sure what will come of the adrenaline thing. The resistance to heat and cold are just flavor mostly since humans live pretty much in any environment.

Ok im convinced. I like this.

[TrainTN]

A longer sprint and slightly sturdier organs seem like enough to me. Basic, but useful,

[Desven]

On 07/01/2022 at 16:42, Butterrobber202 said:

I approve of this. Humans having all their settings set to "default" is less interesting than giving them advantages, as it allows us to be much more free with what we give our exotic aliens.

Not only from a code perspective, but OOCly even if humans were changed, it just means the default changes. It ultimately means nothing to do these, unless there were more human subspecies added, which I don't think would be a good idea.

[TrainTN]

2 hours ago, Desven said:

Not only from a code perspective, but OOCly even if humans were changed, it just means the default changes. It ultimately means nothing to do these, unless there were more human subspecies added, which I don't think would be a good idea.

This is a good point I didn't consider. Humans are the default, there has to be a default to compare everything else to. Changing humans changes what the default is, they're still going to be the default. Ultimately I don't think humans need anything to make them special, and on further thought, the only thing I support is giving them a somewhat longer sprint or maybe a faster-recharging sprint instead. But even that much isn't necessary.

[Chada1]

4 hours ago, Desven said:

Not only from a code perspective, but OOCly even if humans were changed, it just means the default changes. It ultimately means nothing to do these, unless there were more human subspecies added, which I don't think would be a good idea.

This is untrue because none of these changes will carry over into the other species (Tajara etc), all of these changes would be human only, the only way they would carry over to anything other than human is if a new species entirely was added. So it isn't ultimstely nothing at all.

[Chada1]

Furthermore -- Humans are only the default because they are the only species that doesn't require a whitelist, this doesn't mean that they're the default statwise/mechanics-wise, only that they're the default species. This is an important distinction to make.

[Captain Gecko]

I get what you're meaning, but I don't think this will work, really. It's not all bad though... Let's just go point by point. To make it more easily understandable, green text means that I agree with the listed point, yellow that I don't have any strong opinions, and red that I don't agree.

 

> Gameplay-wise

Beyond being a baseline species, it is also every new player's first species they play. Other than the fact that's it's something that they should be familiar with (I'm assuming that we're all human in real life) meaning that they won't see a special mechanic they wouldn't get used to (something unique like breathing Phoron or having Psionic powers). Keeping humans as simple as possible, compared to other species, is I think very important... Especially when new players are probably overwhelmed by everything else. That and some of these mechanics aren't really needed... In other words, keeping it simple is for the better.

1. Extended/faster sprint? No, unless we rebalance the sprint from other species I don't think this is needed. Relatively speaking, Humans are probably one of the fastest species on the station. Yeah sure, lizards can sprint hard, but they probably won't reach the other side of the station before Billy-Joe-Bob because he's got the Stamina. In truth, besides some Tajara subspecies, humans are probably the fastest, at least in overall speed in reaching a destination (and not in sheer speed, no matter how long they can sustain said speed).

2. The same goes for Adrenaline. Now, I'm pretty sure we already have Adrenaline in game, although I'm not sure about the exact extents of its effects in game... But if we were to buff it, we would have to do so for other species having Adrenaline as well (Because other species have it too!), pretty much nullifying the point of this upgrade.

3. Yeah okay that would work actually... I mean mechanically speaking I don't see anything wrong with that. In fact, along with the "new player-friendly human" idea, having this to encourage teamwork, and just helping each other in general, which is kind of an important part of playing the game with most jobs... It's kind of a stretch, I know, but there's also the lore arguements, don't worry.   I mean, Skrells are weaker, Tajs are smaller, Unathi have next to no Stamina,

4. Once again, this would also kind of mess-up the balance. The problem, I guess, is that we're seeing other species from our human-centrist view... Unathi have tougher skin (or... Scales), while Skrells are squishier! If we are to change human stats in this way, we would have to change these stats with other species to keep the balance (and the logic behind these speices)... OR, we upgrade the organ resistance for humans, BUT we also lower the overall defense of their body due to their squishy skin? Something to balance things out, just on the Human species' scale.

5. Mmh... I guess it could work too, but once again it would be nice to find a way to balance it... Since, you know, once again, other species being described comparatively to humans in the lore, and thus being made, in-game, along these lines (or the other way around!) If not, we could always just make it something to generate flavor text (the same way Unathi get a message about how cold they are if they don't wear enough clothes in normal temperatures, even though you don't get cold mechanically, IE: you don't see a blue thermometer even though flavor text tells you that you're cold).

 

> Lore-wise, or kind of... Historically wise? Culture wise? Yeah I don't know, but you'll get what I mean. I've talked a lot about other species above, and I will even more here. May it be in gameplay, or in the lore, there is a balance between all species. No matter how "basic" humans seem, they have some special things that other don't already, they are, well, humans, and the others are not. More importantly, when, say, the Wiki tells you about a species, when it describes it to you, it does so as an article written by a human, for other humans... Thus, directly or not, all species are more or less compared to humans... Changing one species, especially the Humans themselves, shakes everything...

1. "Human Culture throughout all our written history venerates athletes... This ability would make sense to both regular and off world humans." Right, but wouldn't the proud and honorable Unathi have something akin to this? I mean we even have the Zandiziite Games for them... And as far as the Tajaras go well... They did win said games at some point, among other things. I don't think other species would be any-less interested in athletics than Human's, at least, some of them... Or at least enough to see a change in mechanics.

2. On Earth, today, almost anything that lives can have Adrenaline rushes... You, your pet cat, some crab on a beach, a spooky-weird jellyfish from the abysses... Why wouldn't most other species have Adrenaline? In fact, THEY DO already. Now we can speak say that, yes indeed, most could have Adrenaline rushes but that it's just stronger with humans, and to that I disagree too... Because there are the lizards! Akin to actual lizards, Unathi are generally slow, and have these sudden burst of energy to rush to an objective or flee from danger, and in this case, it would be better to have stronger Adrenaline rushes with them too! (Yes I speak a lot about Unathi, mostly because it's the alien species I know the most about, but valid points could be made with other species too, who knows).

3. I agree! That's pretty much it.

4. Basically what I said in the gameplay section about this point stands in the lore too. Humans exists in relation to these other species. If we were to make humans tankier, then so would the Unathi do since they have to be stronger/tougher than humans (which could give us some pretty broken stuff). I guess the Skrells would grow a tougher skin then, too... But you get my point. Most importantly, it would mean that nothing would change for humans, as they'd still be the baseline in a universe of now slightly tougher people.

5. Yeah it makes sense.

 

Overall I'm not too into this whole project, but some individual points could be interesting to explore, though... I'd like to conclude on one thing, is that yes, comparing humans to aliens and assuming we actually want to balance things between species in the first place is me taking a liberty... But that's not out of nowhere. Putting aside the obvious gameplay aspect of trying to keep species balanced, the thing is that making humans "more alien" in a setting where there are already five other diverse alien species (plus synthetics) would only make them more redundant in the end. Humans STAND OUT by their "simple" nature... They don't need to have a ton of unique features to be unique, ironically enough.

[Chada1]

On 10/01/2022 at 16:49, Captain Gecko said:

I get what you're meaning, but I don't think this will work, really. It's not all bad though... Let's just go point by point. To make it more easily understandable, green text means that I agree with the listed point, yellow that I don't have any strong opinions, and red that I don't agree.

 

> Gameplay-wise

Beyond being a baseline species, it is also every new player's first species they play. Other than the fact that's it's something that they should be familiar with (I'm assuming that we're all human in real life) meaning that they won't see a special mechanic they wouldn't get used to (something unique like breathing Phoron or having Psionic powers). Keeping humans as simple as possible, compared to other species, is I think very important... Especially when new players are probably overwhelmed by everything else. That and some of these mechanics aren't really needed... In other words, keeping it simple is for the better.

1. Extended/faster sprint? No, unless we rebalance the sprint from other species I don't think this is needed. Relatively speaking, Humans are probably one of the fastest species on the station. Yeah sure, lizards can sprint hard, but they probably won't reach the other side of the station before Billy-Joe-Bob because he's got the Stamina. In truth, besides some Tajara subspecies, humans are probably the fastest, at least in overall speed in reaching a destination (and not in sheer speed, no matter how long they can sustain said speed).

2. The same goes for Adrenaline. Now, I'm pretty sure we already have Adrenaline in game, although I'm not sure about the exact extents of its effects in game... But if we were to buff it, we would have to do so for other species having Adrenaline as well (Because other species have it too!), pretty much nullifying the point of this upgrade.

3. Yeah okay that would work actually... I mean mechanically speaking I don't see anything wrong with that. In fact, along with the "new player-friendly human" idea, having this to encourage teamwork, and just helping each other in general, which is kind of an important part of playing the game with most jobs... It's kind of a stretch, I know, but there's also the lore arguements, don't worry.   I mean, Skrells are weaker, Tajs are smaller, Unathi have next to no Stamina,

4. Once again, this would also kind of mess-up the balance. The problem, I guess, is that we're seeing other species from our human-centrist view... Unathi have tougher skin (or... Scales), while Skrells are squishier! If we are to change human stats in this way, we would have to change these stats with other species to keep the balance (and the logic behind these speices)... OR, we upgrade the organ resistance for humans, BUT we also lower the overall defense of their body due to their squishy skin? Something to balance things out, just on the Human species' scale.

5. Mmh... I guess it could work too, but once again it would be nice to find a way to balance it... Since, you know, once again, other species being described comparatively to humans in the lore, and thus being made, in-game, along these lines (or the other way around!) If not, we could always just make it something to generate flavor text (the same way Unathi get a message about how cold they are if they don't wear enough clothes in normal temperatures, even though you don't get cold mechanically, IE: you don't see a blue thermometer even though flavor text tells you that you're cold).

 

> Lore-wise, or kind of... Historically wise? Culture wise? Yeah I don't know, but you'll get what I mean. I've talked a lot about other species above, and I will even more here. May it be in gameplay, or in the lore, there is a balance between all species. No matter how "basic" humans seem, they have some special things that other don't already, they are, well, humans, and the others are not. More importantly, when, say, the Wiki tells you about a species, when it describes it to you, it does so as an article written by a human, for other humans... Thus, directly or not, all species are more or less compared to humans... Changing one species, especially the Humans themselves, shakes everything...

1. "Human Culture throughout all our written history venerates athletes... This ability would make sense to both regular and off world humans." Right, but wouldn't the proud and honorable Unathi have something akin to this? I mean we even have the Zandiziite Games for them... And as far as the Tajaras go well... They did win said games at some point, among other things. I don't think other species would be any-less interested in athletics than Human's, at least, some of them... Or at least enough to see a change in mechanics.

2. On Earth, today, almost anything that lives can have Adrenaline rushes... You, your pet cat, some crab on a beach, a spooky-weird jellyfish from the abysses... Why wouldn't most other species have Adrenaline? In fact, THEY DO already. Now we can speak say that, yes indeed, most could have Adrenaline rushes but that it's just stronger with humans, and to that I disagree too... Because there are the lizards! Akin to actual lizards, Unathi are generally slow, and have these sudden burst of energy to rush to an objective or flee from danger, and in this case, it would be better to have stronger Adrenaline rushes with them too! (Yes I speak a lot about Unathi, mostly because it's the alien species I know the most about, but valid points could be made with other species too, who knows).

3. I agree! That's pretty much it.

4. Basically what I said in the gameplay section about this point stands in the lore too. Humans exists in relation to these other species. If we were to make humans tankier, then so would the Unathi do since they have to be stronger/tougher than humans (which could give us some pretty broken stuff). I guess the Skrells would grow a tougher skin then, too... But you get my point. Most importantly, it would mean that nothing would change for humans, as they'd still be the baseline in a universe of now slightly tougher people.

5. Yeah it makes sense.

 

Overall I'm not too into this whole project, but some individual points could be interesting to explore, though... I'd like to conclude on one thing, is that yes, comparing humans to aliens and assuming we actually want to balance things between species in the first place is me taking a liberty... But that's not out of nowhere. Putting aside the obvious gameplay aspect of trying to keep species balanced, the thing is that making humans "more alien" in a setting where there are already five other diverse alien species (plus synthetics) would only make them more redundant in the end. Humans STAND OUT by their "simple" nature... They don't need to have a ton of unique features to be unique, ironically enough.

Tougher Organs wouldn't shift balance that much, they'd enter crit just as fast as they do rn, they'd just take longer to die while in crit on the ground. Don't worry too much about balance, and making humans take more damage would make them enter crit quickly and still die slower. (So it's not a good idea unfortunately)

The rest of the points I agree with, but please understand that Unathi, Tajara, Skrell, etc are already stronger than humans in almost all of these ways. Humans getting a simple increase in organ resistance or the like wouldn't shift balance.

Unathi's scales are represented already ingame by a brute resist.

 

Humans are only the baseline species, they aren't the baseline mechanics/statwise, as said previously... And they're only the baseline species because they're the only ones that don't require a whitelist. If Unathi, Tajara, or Skrell etc didn't require a whitelist, Humans wouldn't be the baseline species anymore.

 

In conclusion here, if Humans would need concessions to get a simple increase in organ resist etc, then unathi and tajara would need massive decreases across the board to balance, it doesn't add up.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Chada1