Synth Species Doc - #636
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Robot species without the contrived and unbalanced IPC mechanics? Very intriguing. Mechanically I think this species is very good, but I will say I think we have a few too many "Space Anthro Furry" species, to the point of the ones we already have starting to visually blend together a bit. Overall I think this species would benefit from a more outstanding visual design. |
At least on this point, Synth blood inside the body will contain nanites, but outside of the body, it will contain inert nanites, so mechanically, Synth blood itself only actually contains inert nanites, which only do small poison to organics when metabolized. So not nearly so lethal. |
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From a medical gameplay perspective I like these a lot more than IPCs. That being said, we're extremely backlogged on the docs repo right now so it might be a while before a proper review is done and decision is made.
In the meantime, you mentioned downstream implementations? I'm curious as to what those look like as while all this seems feasible, I could also see this being coded in a way where it wouldn't be accepted upstream.
| #### Multi-solution Bloodstream | ||
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| Synths feature a capillary system, consisting of nodes and connecting tubes filled with a purple-colored solution (fullerene), that is used for transporting nanites through a Synth's body. It is due to this system, that Synths bleed a mix of both fullerene (or carbon-based blood) and nanites. |
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Do you mean multi reagent? Cause multi-solution implies we're tracking multiple bloodstreams which would be a no-no
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Multi-reagent, yes. I realize “solution” is a bit of a broader term than what I meant here.
| Synths possess a CCU that functions as their brain. Functionally, a Synth's CCU is very similar to a Cyborg's positronic brain, meaning their consciousness remains active despite the CCU being removed. CCU's can also be inserted into a Cyborg chassis without the need of a man-machine interface. | ||
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| Currently, CCU's are also capable of speach and are essentially 1:1 with positronic brains in terms of mechanics. This will most likely change for balancing. |
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Silicon workgroup would need to weigh in on this, they plan to move borg laws onto the brain which this would conflict with.
| #### Hungerless | ||
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| Synths do not require food as organic species do, as they do not starve, but they still must consume material or nutriment in order restore lost blood. Synths do require water, however, as their internal systems require consistent cooling. |
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Probably shouldn't circumvent the service gameplay loop too much. Maybe they can still eat food to regenerate a small amount of energy? Not too big of a gripe though because cooking could/should be a lot better and more modular.
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This is a good idea, and also something I believe Synths already do in canon. I had intended to emulate this through exotic material giving them charge back, but I see no reason not to allow smaller amounts of charge from normal food, as well.
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What if instead, Synths required oiling. If they don't receive oil they'll slow down like hunger/thirst.
They can synthesize their own oil by consuming organic material or just consuming straight oil. Giving them both an interaction pathway with service and chemistry.
That’s perfectly fine. I’m in no rush to have a concrete decision.
All current code would need to be rewritten, since pretty much every aspect that was modified to work with Synths is dramatically different on upstream. With that said, Synths never needed particularly much code to make work. Most of it can be handled through YAML, and the rest is mostly just inoffensive instructions for how topicals and medical reagents should interact with Synths. The only complicated part is their bloodstream, and ensuring it functions as intended. |
Currently blood solutions regenerate and are calculated as being full using the same reference solution, the method would likely just need some arguments which make some blood reagents dependent on others since they currently regenerate independently of each other. |
Oh, and the battery. All of that would be completely new, since I haven’t implemented that aspect yet. |
-Robot species Honest thoughts after reading the doc, I think the mechanics proposed are interesting but I don't think it should be entirely 'synth' themed, it feels like all the mechanics could just be thematically reimagined to be some regular species unique biology. It feels kind of like what I think vox should aspire to be in that matter which is great. Also I do agree, sprites are not helping the furry rp allegations |
I want to redo the sprites, because I'm not personally as satisfied with how they originally turned out as I'd like to be. I'm not really an artist and I'm only really a semi-competent spriter. However, Synths are at their core a furry species, so I'm not sure those allegations are really escapable. |
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Food for thought, could this potentially be a trait rather then a round-start species, like what is being planned with dwarves. Allowing for stuff like Synthetic Humans, Lizards and Vulps. Having a synthetic human like from the Aliens-verse would be something cool and would help defeat the "furry" allegations. |
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I had an idea where IPCs/synths could choose between different body parts (robotic versions of other species) to represent how each race has their own robots. Somewhat similar to this https://paradisestation.org/wiki/index.php/Integrated_Positronic_Chassis_(IPC) |
In some downstreams, there already is a Synth trait. Specifically in the downstream Synths (the species) are already in, I had planned to rework the Synth trait to basically do all the mechanical things mentioned in this doc. Upstream doesn't really have these kinds of traits yet, but if they ever did come, this would definitely be doable. Ideally alongside Synths (the species), though. |
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Reopening, as things have calmed down and I am once again interested in bringing synths to upstream, now with all new sprites, simplified code, and a better ironed out vision. I’ll update the design doc when I am able to. |
My life is yours if you manage to pull this off! Got a question though, how does VaderSan look against it in regards to its usage in a project like Space Station 14? I couldn't really find anything on licensing in that regards. |
As far as I am aware, Vader-san is fine with Synths being added to whatever, really. However, I haven’t directly asked, but I do believe at least one other person has made him aware of what I’m doing. So to my knowledge, he at least knows that I’ve added them to several SS14 downstreams. |
Yeah you probably want to formally ask for permission on this one, just to make sure it doesn't end up being a problem later. |
According to the community wiki: |
Regardless, I've made an attempt to get in contact with Vader-San for assurance. I'll update if I get a response. |
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Hello! Vader is a good friend of mine and I happen to also have made the Synth Species website (which you're free to confirm by scrolling down to the footer on synthspecies.com). Though I can't speak for Vader, I do know the Synth species is absolutely free to use for any purpose and incorporate anywhere without the need to ask for any kind of permission. It even says so on the website in many places! |
I have spent an unreasonable amount of time on that site while working on Synths in-game. Thanks for making it, and for leaving a comment! |
Does that apply if the in-game mechanics doesn't match up with the lore |
Quoting the Synth Species wiki, written by Vader (bold emphasis his, underline emphasis mine):
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And to put any further question to rest, I have now officially received Vader-San's permission, with two incredibly based conditions, that people have fun and enjoy them, and that if we become millionaires, we buy him a coffee. Fuck yeah. |
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i don't really think these are a good fit for upstream, most species are already just "animal but human", having yet another anthropomorphic animal species is very boring, you could definitely take the concept here and spin it to be more alien and weird. i'm also not sure how a mechanical species would work, it kind of blurs the line between silicons and non-silicons, and becomes a weird grey area lore-wise (lore that doesn't freaking exist though grrr). vox are technically synthetic, but aren't really mechanical like these are. i also don't really like the idea of preexisting/established races being added to the game, kind of takes away a bit of the game's identity by adding unaffiliated stuff, if that makes sense. inspired stuff is great, but i think more original species would be super nice for upstream. |
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I finally updated the design doc to reflect all the new changes I've made as I reworked them. |
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if there's synths |
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| Synths feature a capillary system, consisting of nodes and connecting tubes filled with a purple-colored reagent (fullerene), that is used for transporting nanites through a Synth's body. It is due to this system, that Synths bleed a mix of both fullerene (or carbon-based blood) and nanites. | ||
| Due to the complexity of their chassis, normal healing sources are significantly less effective when used on Synths, including topicals. | ||
| However, internal nanites allow them to passively recover from Brute, Burn, and Cellular damage over time at the cost of satiation. |
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You cannot heal cellular damage, its supposed to be a "punishment" damage so if you can heal it it kinda negates that purpose
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You cannot heal cellular damage, its supposed to be a "punishment" damage so if you can heal it it kinda negates that purpose
As proposed, cellular remains a "punishment" damage, but instead of the way it works for organics, it stacks additional damage on top of shock damage for synths. It can only be healed over time, slowly (0.03 per tick), or with a relatively complicated reagent, nanites, acquirable from Chem.
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As proposed, cellular remains a "punishment" damage, but instead of the way it works for organics, it stacks additional damage on top of shock damage for synths. It can only be healed over time, slowly (0.03 per tick), or with a relatively complicated reagent, nanites, acquirable from Chem.
Them taking it seems fine, but they shouldn't be able to heal it. That would allow them to heal from stuff like failed implants or eating brains
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Them taking it seems fine, but they shouldn't be able to heal it. That would allow them to heal from stuff like failed implants or eating brains
Failed implants and eating brains would have no effect on them, as they are robots. Grey matter would do nothing to them and they would be distinctly immune to genetic damage caused from implant failures, due to a lack of genes.
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Originally, they were immune to genetic damage altogether. I thought this implementation would be an interesting way of making them not immune while also not not making sense.
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Failed implants and eating brains would have no effect on them, as they are robots. Grey matter would do nothing to them and they would be distinctly immune to genetic damage caused from implant failures, due to a lack of genes.
That must be changed, the damage was added so you couldn't spam it. You can't have a species that ignores it 🤔
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That must be changed, the damage was added so you couldn't spam it. You can't have a species that ignores it 🤔
With all due respect, if someone is spamming it to such a degree that death becomes a concern, they clearly don't have enough information to be attempting implant extractions. Would that specific scenario not be metagaming? Additionally, if synths did take damage from implant failures, they would still die like anyone else, since cellular heals incredibly slowly without nanites and the recipe is theoretically complicated enough that it wouldn't be viable to waste it on a wild guessing game.
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I get the feeling we'll have surgery and implant removal by the time we add synths (genetic damage from removing implants being a bandaid until then)
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With all due respect, if someone is spamming it to such a degree that death becomes a concern, they clearly don't have enough information to be attempting implant extractions. Would that specific scenario not be metagaming? Additionally, if synths did take damage from implant failures, they would still die like anyone else, since cellular heals incredibly slowly without nanites and the recipe is theoretically complicated enough that it wouldn't be viable to waste it on a wild guessing game.
As it stands now, that isn't against the rules - clearly at some point people would get sick of it but it would allow for "free" implant checking on even a slight indication of having an implant. From how it stands now it doesn't really work with upstreams design. You could think of other ways to go about this but cellular damage in particular wont really work
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One approach to making genetic damage work for synths is to model it as corruption/damage to internal software that notably is NOT their blueprint. Thus simply swapping blueprints would not resolve the issue (lore-wise).
Then a critical implant failure could be seen as unforgivingly destructive to their internal routines or software. Load an incompatible mod to a game and you get issues and failures.
Wouldn't be my favorite approach, as it feels a bit uncreative, and some other approaches would be far more interesting and complementary to their upstream lore, but this seems like a potentially decent middle-ground to satisfy those involved.
Protogens went extinct from starvation due to complications caused by inflated ram prices. |
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| #### Resistances | ||
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| Synths are resistant to most forms of damage, to varying degrees, and immune to Asphyxiation, as they do not breathe, but take extra damage from Shock and Pierce. |
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I don't like the "don't breathe" abilities, to me it feels like they invalidate a big part of the game! IPCs had this problem 🤔
Here are two alternatives I think are a lot more engaging:
1.) Require breathing but it doesn't matter the gas. E.g they could breathe plasma just fine, but cannot breathe in a vacuum
2.) When breathing they turn gasses into more interesting ones. E.g if you breathe oxygen it gets turned into plasma, when breathing plasma it gets turned into frezon (these are just random gases I choose no reason for any of them)
This way you still need the station to have air while also having some potentially weird things come out of them changing the gasses up
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Correct me if I am wrong, but the issue they posed on IPCs was the free or cheap space-walking.
Synths are mostly made up of biosynthetic tissue, so it makes perfect sense that would be compromised in a vacuum just like a humans.
If they just take damage from pressure, what issues does that leave with them not requiring air?
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Correct me if I am wrong, but the issue they posed on IPCs was the free or cheap space-walking.
Synths are mostly made up of biosynthetic tissue, so it makes perfect sense that would be compromised in a vacuum just like a humans.
If they just take damage from pressure, what issues does that leave with them not requiring air?
sue me I'm trying to make it more interesting
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Another thing you could do is add a unique gas that they turn it into that wont get sucked up by scrubbers so it says in the room 🤔
I'm unsure about the performance impact of that
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sue me I'm trying to make it more interesting
Let's not be divisive please.
Another thing you could do is add a unique gas that they turn it into that wont get sucked up by scrubbers so it says in the room
Assuming "it" is oxygen or all gasses, I can only imagine this would slowly fill the station displacing oxygen and nitrogen in the station eventually suffocating the crew. Furthermore I can't really think of an in-universe reason this would occur, pretty sure NT would not just ignore a gas on their scrubbers with such a consequence, either that or Synths would need to be canonically treated as perpetually brand new to the sector.
I'm unsure about the performance impact of that
Null if not a net positive.
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Null if not a net positive.
It will not be a net positive because your adding an extra gas, gas uses SIMD operations and it will have to do more work if you go over a multiple of 4(?)
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I expected not to like this at first glance but reading through the mechanics presented this looks actually really fun and good and dodges all the IPC related landmines |
Unfortunately, it seems like I'm going to need to rework more than half of it to make them not miserable to play once the expected changes I've been given are met. |
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| Additionally, despite being a machine species, they are still susceptible to Cellular damage, albeit not from the same sources as organic species. Instead, Synths receive small amounts of Cellular damage when receiving Shock damage, due to it affecting their internal nanites. | ||
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| EMPs are dangerous but not lethal, capable of completely depleting their internal batteries and dealing extra Shock damage to Synths, as well as disrupting basic functions. |
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My concern with this is that it will make it a big liability to be them on nukies. It really depends on how you do it, but don't feel forced to add it if you don't think it adds anything. One thing we discussed was it just being visual effect (like flash but a lot weaker mainly an esthetic thing) with minor downsides 🤔
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My concern with this is that it will make it a big liability to be them on nukies. It really depends on how you do it, but don't feel forced to add it if you don't think it adds anything. One thing we discussed was it just being visual effect (like flash but a lot weaker mainly an esthetic thing) with minor downsides 🤔
Does EMP resistance exist? It’d technically be easy to minimize the danger of an EMP by already having nutriment in the system, which would immediately begin recovering from the depleted battery. Ultimately, I don’t think EMP effects are quite as punishing here as they are on some downstreams, so it may only really make the experience worse, instead of adding anything.
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Does EMP resistance exist? It’d technically be easy to minimize the danger of an EMP by already having nutriment in the system, which would immediately begin recovering from the depleted battery. Ultimately, I don’t think EMP effects are quite as punishing here as they are on some downstreams, so it may only really make the experience worse, instead of adding anything.
Right now basically no, and if you have a battery that's internal to them is a really thorny glitch with them that will make it super annoying to fix (all EMPs will trigger twice on the battery). That is a neat idea though so if your hungry it does more, it could work 🤔
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| Nanites function as the most effective means of treating injuries in Synths, effectively serving as their Omnizine, and even works on the dead. It heals them at a rate slightly higher than Omnizine, but comes with a dangerous OD if the dosage exceeds 10 units. | ||
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| Additionally, organics suffer this OD regardless of the dosage, resulting in extreme lethal injury if metabolized by non-Synths, with as little as 10 units being enough to critically injure a Human. |
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also this is too powerful, power gamers dream. Tweak it so it's as no stronger than the strongest non traitor poison (I'm unsure what that is) but maybe a little weaker because its pretty easy to obtain
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Amatoxin? That deals 15 per unit but is kinda slow.
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So while I like the concept, Synths seem extremely overpowered when it comes to combat and other mechanically enforced limitations for playable species:
At this point Synths are basically a better, round start version of zombies. Give them insulated gloves and they are a powergamer's dream. While I understand that one would want to make their shiny new species awesome, the space station is still supposed to be a potentially dangerous place, a few design questions need to be addressed:
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You may have to go the FTL: Faster Than Light route where the Engi species shares similar characteristics as organics (affected by suffocation, fire, medbay healing, cloning, mind control) despite nominally being composed of nanites, which is handwaved as deliberate ambiguity. |
Not being injectable is a massive double edged sword, because while poisons can't be injected into them, neither can medicine, resulting in incredibly delayed metabolism since reagents must be digested, as well significantly reduced effectiveness of metabolisms because of the -50% modifier applied to reagents consumed orally.
Synth blood is just carbon-based blood. It's not even mildly toxic to other species. It's nanites (as a reagent) that is toxic to other species, which can only be acquired through chemistry.
With the caveat that the resistances they do have are extremely crippling, such as shock damage always also applying cellular damage. It's also taking into account the fact that healing sources were intended to be borderline useless on synths, since even topicals would have a crippling negative modifier applied to them when used, resulting in the only effective healing for synths either being the slow passive recovery, which requires food and a high enough blood level (>30%), or nanites.
Passive healing of cellular damage would've been 0.03 per tick, meaning one usage of an implanter would take 20 minutes to passively heal and require eating, since 50 damage effectively costs roughly 75 hunger.
An incredibly slow automatic recovery at 0.75 per tick for brute (0.25 blunt, slash, piercing) and burn (0.185~ heat, cold, shock, caustic) and 0.03 for cellular, with all passive healing stopping if hunger went below 50 (starving) and/or the blood level went below 30%, with 50 damage costing roughly 75 hunger when passive healed. None of this matters, since I need to change all of this anyway, but I wanted to clear up the misunderstandings and explain why they were balanced the way they were. I balanced everything very carefully, not to make them an "awesome and shiny new species," but an incredibly unique one that remained accurate to the original design of the species without removing them from multiple already established game systems, like IPC. It might seem strong on the surface, but every little strength came with massive weaknesses to even it out. |
So it seems I will. |
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Updated to better align with species expectations. |
Cellular damage isn't like other types of damage, it exists for gameplay balancing reasons such as limiting frivolous implant removing attempts. It's designed to be punishing and requiring complex chemicals to heal. While slow, Synths would be able to heal Cellular damage with regular food, and that's a big no-no.
I misread their bloodstream as naturally containing nanites on top of fullerene, my bad.
This I like. This adds some good flavor, and I believe this is a unique mechanic. As a side note, you probably shouldn't bother with actual numbers in a design doc (such as the exact nanite recipe), these are details that will require tweaking down the line anyway ^^ |
Naturally, everything is subject to change, I just have a baseline for examples to help with consideration. Simply so people don't see "passive healing" and automatically assume the worst. |
Speaking anecdotally from downstream implementations, Cellular damage is more of a bitch for synths than it is for organics. First off it takes forever to heal off, and second off you have to spend that entire time babysitting food. As an organic, it is treated like a medical emergency, for synths it is just as discouraged because you are going to fuck them up for a while if it has a critical failure. Granted, the nature of the discouragement is different. For synths, the disincentivization is more mechanical and enforced by the game, being it literally bothers you for a stretch of time, meanwhile for organics it is more RP derivative, as it is a medical emergency you must visit medbay for, and will likely require a short cryo visit. I do also find the idea of using breathing for cooling neat.
Another anecdotal point of experience, this IMO is almost exclusively a debuff/inconvenience. 96% of the time it is relevant is when someone is attempting to heal them, and finds they cannot inject them, and it is more of an inconvenience than you would think.
Doing so would be asking to basically cripple them for a while. I'm not sure whether I would be more upset as a synth or an organic, but I can say that the level of disincentivization is similar.
Insert most forms of generic damage as several answers. But if you want their greatest weakness IMO? slice and bleed, refilling their blood is a bitch and a half, and will require a doctors undivided attention for awhile. Unless you have reagents that are a pain to make, then you have to sit with them and spoonfeed them while they regenerate all their lost blood, which if you took care to drain, is a while. Other than that, ofc, other forms of damage apply. If they die, depending on the impl, they must be rebooted, so no hopping back up after being barely pushed over the edge of death.
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Not a direct answer technically, but a kinda answer that is relevant. One major caveat that you will notice, is often times med staff just don't know wtf to do with you. Say you died of brute and bloodloss, many med staff will see they cannot fix it with topicals, then grab a reagent and try to inject it, and win_err.ogg. Then the synth spends the next 20+ minutes dead in the OR until someone comes along who can tell them "hey goofball, pour the chem down their gullet!". All in all, speaking from experience with them in a downstream impl, they rarely posed any major difference when antaggery was involved. The major differences they posed were almost exclusively medbay (and the medical part of sci, like borgs) related. I personally would focus my scrutiny over there a bit more over antag balancing. Also as for powergaming, the only way I can think of to powergame with them is with salv, where longterm healing from short bursts of damage is very helpful. On stations, PCs will most often finish the job if they want to kill you, where while yes, you will heal post-mortem, doesn't mean you just hop back up. Most likely you will not be so lucky to have a full stomach when killed, and also (depending on the impl) will require someone gets you back up, albeit this detail is missing from the doc. |
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I do have one question, which might require an answer from upstream. Is synth tissue like, polymeric or biosynthetic? |
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As much as I love robots to death, it kinda does feel like another animal species with a robotic coat of paint over the top. For other forks like Starlight with a lot of bloat already, it is more fitting (even though I'm not a fan of their implementation). But I feel with upstream it probably isn't unless it's a really unique species. I was kinda hoping a synth would just be a trait you can add to any character that gives them different blood and voice, but still keeps their attributes the same just for combat/medical consistency. |
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This proposal is for the addition of Synths as a round-start species.
Updated now to reflect all changes made as I've reworked Synths downstream.