Confusing message label: "Psychic drone (male)"

Started by Elevator, February 01, 2017, 04:19:04 PM

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nccvoyager

Haven't been online in a while, so I apologize for it being so long since you asked that.
In answer to the question of how the effect is being created, I can only give theoretical answers, not knowing the actual story behind the "psychic" technology in the game, nor living in the game universe.

The best guess I can give is that at this point in time (in the game universe) strong and efficient psycho-kinetic technology has been created, and proven to work.
This technology can (in the game) effect the minds of sentient and non-sentient creatures, causing anything from a quick and powerful disruption of the electrical pulses in the brain resulting in a loss of consciousness, to an ongoing disruption of the pulses resulting in headaches, mood swings, violence, and even eventual death.

In reality, close and constant exposure to strong electromagnetic fields over periods of weeks has been shown to result in headaches, insomnia, mood swings, and violent tendencies as a result of sleep deprivation.
(Admittedly, the studies were of a small sample size, and were ended shortly after the harmful effects were recorded. As such, verification of the findings is difficult, especially since further research is unethical.)

While not exactly "psychic" this still relatively accurately mirrors the initial stages of the "psychic drone" effects in the game.
(Look at the drone only effecting males or females as a game mechanic that makes the psychic drone a little less punishing. Though, if you have a colony of the Valkyries, you're a little screwed.)

fiziologus

Quote from: Elevator on February 02, 2017, 05:58:11 PM
Hello, Tynan.
Thank you for moving this post to the more appropriate location.

We have "psychic drone" entry and separate "male"/"female" entry. I thing the clearer message can look like:

  "psychic drone (affects male people)"

For this case the template will look like:

  "{0} (affects {1} people)".

This template needs to be translated, of course, but on the other hand, the result message will be much clearer for players.

You say that there are some reasons not to make format messages modifiable, but translation files contain a lot of such lines. Maybe one single line will not be such a big deal?
If i'm wrong, maybe there are some other ways to do it?
As about use no-gender term here instead male/female. Like black/white broadcast in Prisoners of Power (Inhabited Island) Strugatsky. Say, "steel" is male affected, "flower" is female affected, or any other variants. Anyway this more folk nickname then science term.