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Genetics with drawbacks - Printable Version

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Genetics with drawbacks - Darth Various - 03-21-2013

Dauntasa Wrote:I Can't Believe It's Not Hulk serum: 6-7 crystals
Geneticist traitor item. Once injected, for the duration of its effects you have super strength and can smash through walls and break things and all that shit. Grabbing someone will allow you to just beat the shit out of them until their head resembles a rotten cantaloupe that's had a brief yet passionate romance with a sledgehammer. It also makes you taserproof, but you can still be knocked out by hits to the head. You're extremely powerful, but there are 2 catches that go along with this. First one is that you're incapable of interacting with things in ways other than punching. Try to pick up a gun and you will instead crush it into tiny pieces, try to use a computer and you put your fist through the monitor, try to help up your traitor buddy and oh shit you've just reduced his head to pulp. Second drawback is that it doesn't actually make you the hulk, and after it wears off you'll find that apparently human hands are not meant to smash through metal walls and yours have basically been reduced to useless stumps with horrible bits of broken finger sticking out of them. Once the serum wears off, your hands are essentially useless and can't pick up, hold, or use anything, and if someone targets your hands and hits you you'll pass out from the pain.

I saw this in the traitor items thread and it reminded me of an idea I had. Genetics has been nerfed to the degree that the hard part isn't finding the superpowers, it's activating them because the best ones have a 15% chance of actually activating even with a proper DNA injector.

Maybe we could bring up the activation probabilities a bit if the powers had drawbacks? Something like:

Hulk gene: The quote above is a bit nasty. Maybe make it like brain damage where you occasionally smash things when trying to use them - breaking computers and fragile items, jamming analyzers straight through people's skulls and whatnot. HULK ADD LANGUAGE FILTER TOO (lots of people that get the hulk gene talk like that anyway).

Maybe even make you unable to wear certain pieces of clothing - I'm thinking shoes and gloves won't fit, giving you a vulnerability (broken glass) and removing subtle options (insulated gloves, leave fingerprints everywhere as if crushing a guy with your bare hands weren't obvious enough).

Fire resistance: This one's a bit hard. Something with cold vulnerability comes to mind, you'd freeze inside a block of ice after just brief exposure to cold. Or maybe you radiate heat and set things (paper and clothing, not people) on fire around you - justified by this being how you aren't affected by heat in the first place.

X-Ray Vision: Sensory overload! You'd "see" things happening just outside the visible area in the game window (it'd get reported in the text window). Or maybe add hallucinatory stuff like when you're pumped full of LSD, going from obvious illusory stuff like pigs to more believable things like assistants with random names the longer you have the power. Human brains just weren't made to handle that much information.

Or go nuts and make everyone look like skeletons, with two effects: Everyone with food inside them and no suit on looks gross and will randomly make you vomit, and you don't recognize anyone without an ID because you can't see their faces. Let's say changeling skeletons look no different from human ones or this becomes a benefit.

Remember that X-Ray is currently the easiest power to actually get, so it should be nerfed the least.

Telekinesis: Another tricky one. Maybe you'd occasionally bump into invisible walls because your power is pushing against a wall several tiles ahead of you. Eh.

Bonus suggestion: Telepathy: Congratulations, you get omniears like a ghost. Except there's no differentiation between machinetalk, normal talk and radio, so everything looks like it's being said within earshot. And no, you don't get to turn the range down like a ghost. Maybe a bit too good still?


Re: Genetics with drawbacks - MEOW POW - 03-21-2013

Fireproof is actually temperature immunity, just make it so you're more susceptible to beatings or something.


Re: Genetics with drawbacks - MEOW POW - 03-21-2013

Also, Temperature immunity is the easiest to get, with x-ray being second, and telekinesis and hulk being equally hard.


Re: Genetics with drawbacks - Darth Various - 03-21-2013

MEOW POW Wrote:Also, Temperature immunity is the easiest to get, with x-ray being second, and telekinesis and hulk being equally hard.

Oops. I blame the wiki.


Re: Genetics with drawbacks - atomic1fire - 03-22-2013

super speed

The crewmember becomes faster, with the negative part being that you can literally run into walls and stun yourself if you aren't careful. Also you randomly catch fire.


Re: Genetics with drawbacks - Klayboxx - 03-22-2013

atomic1fire Wrote:super speed

The crewmember becomes faster, with the negative part being that you can literally run into walls and stun yourself if you aren't careful. Also you randomly catch fire.

Dude, we already slide around at 48 ssph and with sugar its more like 248 ssph