Make IPCs (and others?) Able To Be Vampires/Changelings/Loners/Borer'd/Etc.

[dessysalta]

What it says on the tin. Now, hear me out: I understand (or at least, I figure) that the reason these antags are taken off IPCs are for either balance purposes or coding purposes (seeing as IPCs currently, and very soon will especially behave very different from organics). That said, I think these could allow for some pretty neat gimmick ideas, and ideally with the IPC rework balance won't be as much of a concern (if it even is now).

I think that being able to be a V1 ULTRAKILL kind of robot fueled by blood (see also the new biofuel generator in the rework), a horrid mess of meat and wiring or a great imitation of both, a combat-enhanced IPC with highly complex augments (armblades/spiderhead/adrenaline), or a fucked up amalgamation of psionics and technology (which has some amount of precedent with psionic-based pistols in the Federation, unsure what else) are all very barebones and surface level examples of what could be accomplished with it. I know awhile back there was a similar suggestion of turning borers into spiderbots that could infect every species, but it looks like it was locked due to inactivity. If it's worth anything, I'd also like to address what was said in that thread here, in case any similar opinions hold up 5y later. For the sake of readability I'll put it in a spoiler:

Spoiler

 

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 IPCs don't really have the emotional capacity to create a particularly interesting brain slug scenario

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If you want to play a borer round and get brain slugged, then play one of the majority of races that can support one instead of trying to get us to change the entire thematic to something awkward to support more inclusion.

Putting these together. Not to blatantly disregard the point, but I think they do. What about a brain slug that has otherworldly capabilities and considers all code, biological (DNA) or otherwise to be up for grabs? What about an emotional awakening in an otherwise owned positronic? What about the synthetic equivalent of a lobotomy from their new abilities? This kind of disregards the entire playerbase and species, writing it off as some kind of emotionless bucket of nuts and bolts when recent strides and arcs have been wholly focused on humanizing them and giving them a better place in the Spur to exist.

In terms of thematics...the changeling's whole point is to mimic and appear as other people. It's one big RP gimmick of looking like other people while being an otherworldly creature. That's literally the plot of The Thing. Why can't it mimic inorganics, too? Can already mimic clothing, seems like an outward appearance of a robot would be fairly easy to do. Vampires are an already generalized, vague mythos that has been commonplace in literature for centuries. Blood-fueled machines with magic go hard and are in the same vein, methinks. Loners are inherently a "don't make sense" antagonist, and borers can be argued to be just another body horror/fucked up invasion and violation of the mind kinda deal. I don't agree the theming past maybe changeling is a strict thing inherent to the antagonists, and even so there have been gimmicks whose core breaks the mold and ends up with some fun as hell interactions.

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People playing races that are non-standard, like diona and synthetics, aren't going to have the same opportunities

First, I think that we should be defining what "non-standard" is and how it relates to antagonists. Sure, IPCs are pretty unorthodox and are fundamentally different from other species. If you put most species in a box and raised them in the same environment they'd be pretty similar, except for IPCs and dionae. That said, so are Vaurcae, and they can be vampires last I checked. (If I'm wrong, consider this a point to allow them for the above roles, too.)

Even so, I don't think that opting into a species you like should disqualify you from coming up with your own gimmicks that revolve around certain tropes or abilities, particularly when it would be even more novel with that species in particular (organic vampires are a common myth, robot ones are not; psionic humans are of course unheard of and would be trendsetting, but a genuinely psionically awakened synthetic would be outrageous and contemptuous).

With a recent thread discussing the idea of making vampire/changeling be an uplink item, I think this feels in-bounds and in-line with what's being said over there. Aurora is already known for it's incredibly free-form gimmicks, so I think we should be extending that to every antagonist instead of barring them arbitrarily. 

P.S. It's currently 8 AM and I pulled an all nighter, so I'm a little tired when I wrote this. If my points seem bad, imagine I wrote them 10x better, thanks. For real though, I think it'd be cool.

Edited Sunday at 12:28 by dessysalta
me when i spelling mistake

[Sniblet]

Can’t count for you the number of times I’ve thought “hm, maybe I’ll opt into vampire/changeling for a change today” and then gone back to the lobby and noticed I was readied as an IPC and been like “oh yeah. damn.”

So I’d like to not have that happen to me anymore. I’m not impressed with the counterarguments presented by the borer thread.

 

> it is what it is, stop crying

I’m really sick and tired of reading this kind of argument deployed against all proposed change in all contexts like it’s an own. We know it is what it is. The question being asked is, what if it weren’t what it is? Man has asked himself this question since ere he took his first uncertain steps into conscious thought. Keep up sweaty.

 

> it doesn’t make sense for changeling (+others)

Wait, you know what a changeling is?

 

> it imba

IPC mercenaries are common. All-G2 mercenary teams have been done before. The only reason you haven’t seen me play a changeling bulwark yet is because it hasn’t rolled when I felt like doing it. Aurorastation 13 is not a competitive shooter; generally, our answer to something being powerful is to rely on players to use that power well, then excise swaths of potentially interesting interaction in fits of miserable exhaustion if they don’t.

Edited Sunday at 15:12 by Sniblet

[hazelmouse]

This would be cool. These antagonists aren't just unplayable as IPCs, they also have no mechanical interactions with IPCs. Between vampires, changelings, psionics, and borers, synthetics can feel very disconnected from a lot of gamemodes and gimmicks.

[Noble Row]

 

 

In all seriousness I personally don't like the idea of shoe-horning these mechanics in. I think some things could work, like a Changeling can take the form of an IPC, but it suddenly being metal or absorbing an IPC is kinda.. well.. stupid. It's metal. It's a robot. Robots being run on blood like a vampire is cool, but a vampire sucking the oil from an IPC is similarly stupid. Having psionic implements for IPCs would be cool though, and having psionics be able to interact with the advanceness of a positronic I think is a neat idea that can be interacted with and even built upon. But in my honest opinion, some of these things are way too far a stretch for already depreciated and arguably LRP in some cases gamemodes. Some of them are hard to take seriously as is.

Edited Sunday at 18:33 by Noble Row

[dessysalta]

13 hours ago, Noble Row said:

but it suddenly being metal or absorbing an IPC is kinda.. well.. stupid.

I think that what i suggested about borers can be a decent enough rebuttal to this, though I generally agree that it doesn't really make much sense. Either way, I could see there be either a special system for synthetic absorption or at least some kind of handwave (maybe they're absorbing their databanks/the emotions and memories tied to the parts themselves?). Turning into metal is still in-bounds methinks because The Thing could copy clothing and that definitely included some metal things. Or we could just make it so they can't absorb but can still copy the appearance of synths. I dunno, I think it could work with some justification.

13 hours ago, Noble Row said:

...some of these things are way too far a stretch for already depreciated and arguably LRP in some cases gamemodes.

I think these gamemodes have good use cases if arguably niche and reliant on buildup and crew interaction. Though more honestly, yeah, they're very old and underwhelming; good gimmicks for both of them I feel are a rarity compared to how often I actually see them. They tend to result in very "I am a God"-based gimmicks, and having that every single time is unideal.

However, I don't think that's cause to neglect something that could otherwise develop them for the better. A full rework of both (or at least vampires) would be ideal, but would be fairly large undertakings by the dev team when they currently have a lot more to worry about. That said, the idea has been discussed before, although to not much depth. I've however seen people suggest left and right that vampire would be better off with power selections and clans a la Vampire: The Masquerade, and I agree with those vehemently. If it ever does roll around, we could rework it so IPCs have a niche within it.

Last idea: if these would be impossible, how about we just come up with a couple similar, but not 1:1 antagonists that are considered as part of the same group? Say instead of Vampire it's called Bloodfeast, or some other weird name. If you're readied up for Bloodfeast as a human, you get vampire. If you're readied up for Bloodfeast as an IPC, you get vamIPCre, or whatever the equivalent would be. 

I'm spitballing, obviously. These would need heavy refining, but some kind of IPC-only antag that hits the broad strokes of and could be played as the antag they're complimenting would be neat.

Edited Monday at 07:50 by dessysalta
etc

[MattAtlas]

most if not all of the vampire/ling mechanics cannot interact with IPCs at all due to them lacking the mechanical basis for it, this is not possible without a super extensive rewrite. it's not just an if(ipc) return

[Fyni]

A lot of these ideas are good, but yes would require someone to actually code it and set it up. It's not a simple policy change.