[MOD](A9) Cybernetic Storm - Balances and Fix (v3.5 - 19MAR15)

Started by elStrages, December 11, 2014, 07:07:56 PM

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elStrages

Quote from: majesty on February 26, 2015, 12:53:49 PM
i really love the nano/cyber items and such, but i dislike how all it takes is a day of research to unlock it. i feel like we should have to work at it a bit more. for instance you would need to grow/refine/craft MANY components of a basic bionic arm (gears, servos, microchips etc etc) as well as researching the tech in order to craft the arm, which is essentially just as good as a normal arm but with more durability. then, if you wanted to upgrade to nano, you'd need to research more, create even more complex components, and lots of them, and use the bionic arm in the crafting recipe in order to "upgrade" it into nano tech. finally, after a crap ton more research and component crafting and growing and refining etc you would be able to turn that nano arm into a cyber arm. i feel like this kind of progression is a lot more rewarding as it forces you to go out of your way to actually craft these items individually and you dont have a million of them lying around. it really makes them valuable. i also feel that the cybernetic dealer should be removed alltogether and replaced with a tinkerer that would sell you some of the very BASIC components, like gears and switches and servos and chips for the basic bionic arm, but nano and cyber should never be sold. or perhaps sold at a high price for a very badly damaged and crafted set, which would degrade after a battle or two. this makes it so you cant just get rich off of other means and buy anything you want, it emphasizes the crafting aspect. this also needs to be applied to weapons and armor. finally, i feel like its silly to have your doctors repair tech limbs and organs with medicine and doctoring. this is why i feel like your crafter should be in charge of these bionic repairs. it would not require medicine, it would require spare parts that you can craft. the patient would not bleed out or lose a limb when its bionic, but it would shut down completely until repaired.  essentially what i am describing is a balance overhaul to make these items more coveted and useful. i would like to be able to play a game where after a year or two of hard work and dedication i would be able to turn my original 3 colonists into pure cyber machines.

i really hope you read this, and while i understand how you might feel about recreating your mod because of just one suggestion from a random user, i honestly feel like this has merit, especially in a game so highly based on micromanaging. if you dont want to include this into the main mod, perhaps an add on mod would do this. i understand its a lot of work, and no pressure, but please tell me what you think of this suggestion and the chances that you would consider it? you mentioned you had 3500 downloads, thats quite a large user base. if you still feel apprehesive about this idea, i would be more than happy to start a poll (or you start, whatever works) asking this user base what they think about this. thanks for reading!
I always read all comments left bud. thanks for your thoughts. So to rebut..

I do like your idea and honestly that was my first thoughts of how I wanted the mod to go.  The only problem is as you said your just done guy in a pool of people and I need to make the mod a balance for all people.  I would honestly like to add gears, servos, springs, pumps, hydraulic lines and pistons which would all go into making these awesome items.  The problem is I'm not sure how well it will be taken by the majority.  Now if people are in consensus, that they would find it more interesting then I would happily add a complex crafting system.
On your point about using medicine to heal mechanical limbs, tat is hard coded and without substantial and complex dll I will not be able to change the fact all medical healing is done with medicine and cannot be defined what would heal what. 
As far as research goes, my major drama with it is that items cant contain research properties to be unlocked only buildings, so unless I have a large amount of crafting tables, bulk recipes will be unlocked in a oner. Instead of after researching say gears research to unlock gear crafting.

Those are my thoughts, hopefully we can find a middle ground somewhere with all this. I hope other people will reply on this topic.

Viken

What about switching some of the crafting over the bulk instead of lowering the crafting speed? So far almost everyone is crafted 1 at a time, and that's good for somethings.  But nanomites, for example, are used in just about EVERY advanced recipe.  So why not up the materials they use to craft by a third and then have them craft in bulks of 5 or 10 instead of 1?

It would especially be handy for the smaller 'pieces' that Majesty mentioned.  Crafting 5 gears, servos, microchips, etc... at a time instead of one at a time.  Realistically, just the arm from the shoulder to the wrist would require tens of gears and at least three servos to produce a bionic/cybernetic arm.

Also, I noticed that I cannot use the cybernetic hands I've crafted. Are they used up when installing arms to my colonists?

majesty

definetely makes sense, so my solution to the many crafting benches thing would be to have multiple benches, but as you progress in research you would replace them with the newer benches, they would contain the new and the old recipies. or perhaps have one bench with all the recipies instantly unlocked, but require research to grow say, nanovine, or cybervine, or whatever. instead of having to unlock the research you would have to unlock the method of obtaining the ingredients to craft them. for example:
tier 1: bionic
requires bionic research, unlocks bionic workbench, tinkerers workbench.  can craft all bionic components, requires vanilla materials.
tier 2: nanotech
requires nanotech research, unlocks nanotech workbench, nanovine, tinkerer's workbench 2. can craft all bionic and nano recipies, requires nanovine to craft.
tier 3: cybertech
requires cyber research, unlocks cybertech workbench, cybervine, tinkerers workbench 3.
can craft all bionic, nano, cyber recipies, requires cybervine to craft.

crafting:  we'll use the same principal for all crafts.
you cannot make nano without first making bionic, as the bionic part will be part of the nano recipe. for for instance, bionic arm requires one human arm,20 gears, 5 pistons, 15 springs, etc etc. those will all require crafting time and metal. some silver, gold, steel, plastium. not too much but a good mix of that to ensure people arent making a cyborg army their first day.
once youve crafted the bionic part, you research nanotech. you replace those 2 workbenches with the next tier of benches, and grow nanovine.. the nano arm recipe would require you to make the same resources as the bionic, except now you make nano gears, nano pistons, etc. as well as the bionic arm. crafting this makes a nano arm.
next you research cybertech. replace 2 benches. you grow cybervine, craft cyber resources, use nano arm as part of the craft, and finally you have a cyber arm.

going through with this whole process is not an easy task, so it makes it that much more rewarding when you craft your cyber weapons/armor/limbs.
essensially what we have done here is replace a complex research system with a more complex crafting system, while removing the need for the player to own 50 henches

as for the dll thing, its quite a shame really. id like to petition for Ty to unrestrict whst can heal what for more modding potential. say someone breaks a leg or an arm, medicine is useful but you would need a cast for it, as opposed to someone getting sick and needing medicine and rest, or someone getting shot or stabbed, where bandages would make more sense. ill make a thread about this in the suggestions later today, I think its a neat standalone system for the main game anyway. while I know nothing about modding myself, I am assuming if he has a system in place for using different medicine for different limbs, it would give you the potential to heal mechanical limbs with scrap metal and toolkits.

edit: if you do happen to do any of this, I might be able to help out with the art. im a first year art student so I know what a paint brush is, at the very least. might be able to make placeholders if anything.

Dragoon

Quote from: majesty on February 26, 2015, 03:21:18 PM
bionic arm requires one human arm

HOW THE HELL are we supposed to get an arm for that hack off the arm of someone who alive we can't grow limbs?! We can't just take an arm off a dead body  and traders who do sell arms usually sell bionic ones already >:( !!!
Quote from: faltonico
I truly can't understand that sense of balancing a LOT of modders have, pouring more resources on something doesn't make it more difficult, but more annoying. It is not engaging, even if i'm swimming in silver at late game ¿why to bother?, why all the effort to get there?.

majesty

Quote from: Dragoon on February 26, 2015, 04:12:56 PM
Quote from: majesty on February 26, 2015, 03:21:18 PM
bionic arm requires one human arm

HOW THE HELL are we supposed to get an arm for that hack off the arm of someone who alive we can't grow limbs?! We can't just take an arm off a dead body  and traders who do sell arms usually sell bionic ones already >:( !!!
you dont dismember your prisoners before you sell them into slavery? odd...
besides, you'd put the limb back. it'll just be better than before.

Dragoon

No but what if your colonist loses an arm and you're not the type to just dismember a prisoner?  :(
Quote from: faltonico
I truly can't understand that sense of balancing a LOT of modders have, pouring more resources on something doesn't make it more difficult, but more annoying. It is not engaging, even if i'm swimming in silver at late game ¿why to bother?, why all the effort to get there?.

majesty

Quote from: Dragoon on February 26, 2015, 04:20:18 PM
No but what if your colonist loses an arm and you're not the type to just dismember a prisoner?  :(
well then you'd be pretty squeamish for a person in an environment surrounded by death. I think the prosthetics mod covers that, though. but like you said, a growing vat could make arms.

Kyos

I'm not squeamish, but my colony of ~30 goons are. The riots are not worth this crafting recipe.

PineyCreek

Hey I'm getting a glitch where the nanothread plants start to die. When it approaches 1.1 days to being fully grown it's health starts ticking down and dies about half a day before it can be harvested making it impossible to advance in the mod since I have to depend on the off chance someone is selling some.

majesty

Quote from: Kyos on February 26, 2015, 05:10:36 PM
I'm not squeamish, but my colony of ~30 goons are. The riots are not worth this crafting recipe.
well like i said, its fine to just grow them. it would just take longer. also, https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=10875 this thread would fit the riot thing perfectly.

sybreal

I'm getting errors when I try to craft some items. For example this one:
JobDriver threw exception in initAction. Pawn=JJ, Job=DoBill(A=NanoRiflingBenchCS278066, B=NanomitesItemCS440805), Exception: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object

They're all the same format, just for different items. I can craft some items in this mod like nanomites, no problem.

Viken

Heh.  I tend to skip right over bionics and nanotech-level stuff anyway.  I wanted the major boosts from cybernetics, and pushed until I could install/replace EVERYTHING on one of goons just to see what it would do.  Ooooh boy was I impressed.  At normal speed, it was like my goon was at x3 speed. Hahaha.

Most bionics tends to be more like implants though.  Muscle implant for muscle-twitch response speed and strength, bone replacements, installed weapons and internal batteries.  It tends to be rather rare to want to replace an entire body structure cause of the added weight and whatnot.

And yes, I'm a sci-fi nerd. Heh.  This is some of the stuff I love to think about when I get right down to it.

PS: I tried to write up my own three-part implant extension into the mod but kept getting errors myself. Heh.  I cannot say I'm big into coding, even in XML, so it isn't that surprising.  Its why I requested the new brainz and perhaps work on the extra implant slots. Lol.

Majesty: Perhaps instead of removing the arm for your bionics suggestion, its removed during the surgery and then 'used up' when installing the bionics instead of leaving an arm hanging around?  It makes better sense than cutting it off before hand.

Boboid

Be careful when considering adding what amounts to item -and by extension, interface -bloat to your mod.

It's thematically cute to add a bunch of arbitrary components in the creation of an objects that your brain can logically link together to make a piece of technology that's incredibly advanced.

"Oh three gears, a rubber band, four pieces of silicon and some teddy-bear stuffing, yep that's a bionic arm alright!"

But in practice it's a real ball ache to manage all those components, how much of each you need, comparing the output to the input and then after all that is done balancing the whole affair.



If you want objects to be harder to obtain, change your preexisting variables before trying to add more, gratuitous complication.

As for the interface implications, the proposed change to make previous benches superfluous, that's a nightmare in of itself. Rather than having compartmentalized steps to the crafting process ( Which Cybernetic Storm already has ) you end up with an awful blob with too many recipes per bench.



Long story short Rimworld doesn't have a robust enough crafting system to allow for intricate crafting steps. Something like Gnomoria does because they wanted to go that route ( To make a bed you need Wood->Planks->Sticks->Bed Frame, and Cotton->Milled Cotton->String+Padding->Mattress, and then those need to be combined into a bed ) but that's because when I give an order to create something in Gnomoria I also tick a box saying " Make all component parts " which automatically creates the associated bills required to do so.
A prison yard is certainly a slightly more elegant solution to Cabin Fever than mine...

I just chop their legs off... legless prisoners don't suffer cabin fever

shhfiftyfive

Quote from: elStrages on February 26, 2015, 04:36:34 AM
Quote from: shhfiftyfive on February 26, 2015, 04:25:35 AM
i'm still playing the old patch so idk if this has been improved in the new one, but a big issue i've always had with the mod is how long it takes to get things crafted at the craftsmen workbench. even if i have like 3 of them with 3 crafters working on them simultaneously and permanently.

can we either change it to output more than 1 synthread, plasteel, etc per work order? i mean make it cost the same amount of materials per, but gain more than 1 per job.

or really just make them craft much much faster? the plasteel is especially slow, but the synthread is also bottlenecking my production. i assume the other things are slow too but i haven't even been able to get to crafting anything else since all my workbenches are permanently stuck trying to produce the named materials. in bulk. one at a time...

Sounds resonable.  I will add it in to my proposed changes log, it is likely i did a copy and paste and didnt really think about the timings.  I will look at the crafting time of a cloth shirt and do soemthing like x2 x4 x6 Synthread Hyperweave Plasteel most likely.  I wont double output though, just lower construction time
i'd really suggest the output be more than 1 synthread, plasteel, nanomite per job.

imo, even if we're given drastically increase craft speed for synthread, plasteel, nanomites, etc. it is still going to take considerable trips back and forth from stockpile to workbench. 1 trip per ingredient just to get a single item output... that is enough to drive someone crazy. your crafters will spend most of the day hauling small amounts of items to the workbench.. i'd rather not have to min-max my stockpile locations to cut down on travel to compensate for that. which is why i was kinda hoping we could output more than 1 at a time for those particular items we need in bulk.

Quote from: Viken on February 26, 2015, 03:15:07 PM
What about switching some of the crafting over the bulk instead of lowering the crafting speed? So far almost everyone is crafted 1 at a time, and that's good for somethings.  But nanomites, for example, are used in just about EVERY advanced recipe.  So why not up the materials they use to craft by a third and then have them craft in bulks of 5 or 10 instead of 1?

that's a +1

JagenXI

I found a bug where my crafter would go to craft a nanotech rifle, finish and A) the bill doesnt say complete and B) The item being made doesnt get made, forgive the grammer. Attached is a screenshot of the dev log with the error. I hope this gets resolved or maybe you can tell me what im doing wrong, im almost a year in and I have everything exactly as I want it.