Baseline IPC's need actual drip, or just alternative sprites than TV head man

[Colfer]

If baseline IPC's looked anything like unbranded IPC's do, or if baselines had non-TV head alternative sprites for it, I believe that the population of baseline IPC's would increase, probably not substantially, but noticeably, as I am one of the individuals who do not play baseline very often because they are just ugly to me, their sprite is not visually appealing in any way contrary to how every other chassis in the game looks right now, and there's no markings or prosthetics, or anything you can do to prevent this from being the case, as using prosthetics causes floating limbs which looks even worse. If baselines had an option to inherit the unbranded sprite, they'd look SICK, perhaps a modified version of it.

If the unbranded chassis was made usable from roundstart, almost all of the baselines I have right now would instantly be switched without a second thought because I do not like baselines as they are right now. I'm not saying that unbranded should be made available roundstart I just think its a far more enjoyable sprite, and I wish something like it with baseline stats and lore was made available

My final thoughts: To add on, the reason why I mostly don't make IPC's is that baselines serve the niche of cheaper standardize chassis, while having generally ok stats across the board, while every other model is more expensive (bishop/shell), weak (zeng-hu), specialized (Xion/Zeng-hu), or slow (G1/2), so baselines dominate a very strong monopoly of robot characters, but to me, are visually unappealing to look at

Tl;DR this suggestion is asking is for alternative's to the baseline IPC sprite

Unbranded chassis looks like this:  

Edited October 17, 2023 by Colfer
Additional thoughts

[ElizabethDame]

I think it *would* look nice as an option, but it would definitely need some markings to go along with it, honestly. The TV heads at least have the screens for customization.

[Spungus]

I second the notion of Baselines getting alternative sprites, because TVhead has a time and a place and it's on none of my characters for the forseeable future.

[DeadLantern]

A secondary sprite is fine. I ask it to be unique and not super humanoid, to fit in with the cheap and ubiquitous and manufactured nature of baselines. 

[Carver]

Just make the unbranded selectable and refluff it to an NT brand or something less silly-sounding than 'unbranded' imo.

[Sycmos]

Mob sprites for IPCs are a time-intensive endeavor to both sprite and code as they are 11 pieces for a full mob sprite for just one direction, meaning that 44 total images are required that need to be parallel to each other from each angle and have severed parts hidden by layering, along with overlays for lighting and monitor displays for TV heads. Our spriters are intensely busy as it is with several projects given that we only have a handful of them available spread thin across the Konyang arc and other quality of life updates, meaning that we do not have available resources to dedicate to such a task.

If someone is willing and able to produce quality sprites for alternative IPC chassis then the synthetic team welcomes it, but as it stands this is not something that can simply be suggested be done from a forum thread.

[Colfer]

1 hour ago, Carver said:

Just make the unbranded selectable and refluff it to an NT brand or something less silly-sounding than 'unbranded' imo.

I asked for this exact thing once and was met with a "No" from the lore team. But then again, I was asking for unbranded itself to be made enabled with no changes to the lore, rather than asking for it to be enabled but reflavored to be more compliant.
Unbranded are mechanically weaker than, and have more weaknesses than other chassis, they'd have be restricted from mining work because it seems that suit cooler or not, you will still heat up in a vaccume. Though I'm not sure if I tested this with a suit or not. I'm pretty sure it was with a softsuit. Not to mention other mechanical maladies that could come from such a thing.

Search for "Unbranded shells being selectable?" in synthetic-think-tank on aurora lore for more information on the discord discussion, which is where I got these pictures from

[Aphelion]

I firmly disagree with you on them being 'just ugly' the screen is awesome. Also baselines are the most common body type outside of the shell frame. I think making robots look like robots is good, I prefer them over the tube frames immensely.

Make another cheap option, use unbranded, yeah. Tho personally I always thought Unbranded looked waay uglier.

[wowzewow]

As a spriter, I'd say : It's possible. But it's a lot of work. Not to mention whether people would use it in the first place. I'm not really sure if the amount of people using it will justify the cost.