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Give Blooming Synthorgans Perks that scale with Potency
#1
After some discussion on the forums, I’ve come to conclusion that synthorgans could use a bit of a once-over. While I love that botany can make organs, and think it’s neat that they can hypothetically make ultra-tough superorgans with very high HP by juicing up plant endurance…let’s be honest, synthorgan transplants basically never happen. With the immediate availability and immediate benefits of cyberorgans, if anyone gets an organ transplant, they’ll be doing it with cyberorgans – even with the risk of failure from EMPs, cyberorgans are apparently strong enough to justify breaking into Medbay to try and do self-surgery to install them yourself.

I’d like to propose that Blooming Synthorgans have special effects distinct from either regular organs or cyberorgans that scale with potency.

For reference, Synthorgan plants can either produce non-blooming or blooming variants of synthorgans, and from my experience healthier plants will produce more blooming organs. With my proposed changes, synthorgans would only bloom once their parent plant has over 50 Potency, whereupon their special powers can first appear. Non-blooming cyberorgans would be identical in function to regular organs and would be what Kudzupeople spawn with.

Each of the blooming organs botany could grow would have effects that would get stronger with potency, with all effects maxing out when the plant hits 550 potency. Additionally, the health of synthorgans would be capped at 500 HP (obtained from having 400 endurance, where 1 endurance = 1 additional HP), which I feel is a reasonable limit – very robust, nigh unkillable in normal gameplay, but not invincible. It'd also give a sizeable amount of effective health to your organs even when playing with the Frail Constitution trait.

Why is this needed? Although synthorgans are useful in theory, they are rarely grown because, aside from use in certain cooking recipes, they are largely superseded by the cyberorgans that Robotics and Medbay can produce in-house. This is made no better by surgery currently being a complex and cumbersome task, and because patients with organ failure are more likely to be cloned than to undergo successful emergency surgery. Giving these organs special effects may encourage botanists to try making them and give another interesting option for players to gain powers besides genetics and the existing cyberorgans. The high potency required for a maximum-strength synthorgan also gives more experienced botanists a goal for the shift, similar to making good potato batteries or complicated splices. It also allows these organ powers to be quite strong while remaining reasonably balanced, as unlike cyberorgans (which are available at round start), there would be a significant time and resource investment needed to produce the most powerful synthorgans.

Before I list my ideas for these effects per-organ, I’d like to gauge interest in this idea. No use in posting a mammoth wall of text if nobody thinks it should happen. Also, chip in your own ideas if you have any!
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#2
I agree synthorgans have alot of untapped potential, but I'm not sure if giving every single organ a unique bloom would be worth it in the long run. There's only so much space in botany, and chefs will still want their plants on top of whatever weed or meth your coworker is working on. You can't ask to hog 12 trays because you want to ask medbay to replace all your organs, especially on some maps like Clarion.

I'm also a proponent of making these things weird instead of just straight up better. Like yea, blooming stomachs COULD make it so you digest well, OR it could make your vomit into compost! Or a synthheart that slowly (and healthily) replaces your blood with THC and CBD!
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#3
(02-12-2023, 06:10 PM)Dhaidburt Wrote: You can't ask to hog 12 trays because you want to ask medbay to replace all your organs, especially on some maps like Clarion.

This is definitely true. I don't play low population maps very much, but tray economy is always something to keep in mind.

I would like to add that, as the ideas are written right now, each individual blooming synthorgan gives some pretty significant (albeit potentially situational/niche) buffs when at the 550 potency limit; you wouldn't need all of them to get a cool effect or gimmick going. Admittedly, some of the organs can synergize well together, so if you wanted to have someone permanently jacked up on Ammonia (no, I will not explain what that means...yet) you might need 3 trays. Secondarily - and this plays into why I set the maximum potency to be as high as it is - all you need to get any one of these max-power organs is one synthflesh plant at the required potency and the required infusion chemicals for each individual synthorgan plant. Swapping out the synthorgan plant after one or two harvests should allow for tray economy, especially with how many organs you'd get per harvest with the level of yield you'd be at from infusing over a thousand units of saltpetre.
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#4
I don't think synthorgans need a special variant woth sprcial effects. I would say add special effects on the baseline synthorgans.

Thing is we had the suggestion for effects for synthorgans on multiple occassions and most people agree they need some. The problem is simply someone has to code it and slog through organ code.
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#5
(02-12-2023, 08:59 PM)Lord_earthfire Wrote: I don't think synthorgans need a special variant woth sprcial effects. I would say add special effects on the baseline synthorgans.
I'd agree that adding more clutter by making "special"/"non-special" synthorgans is generally unnecessary. The only reason why I have done it here is for balance with Kudzupeople, as they all spawn with synthorgans by default and I don't want to have to balance synthorgans' abilities around that fact. And since sprites exist for blooming/non-blooming organs as is, having two variants wouldn't necessarily require additional spritework.

(02-12-2023, 08:59 PM)Lord_earthfire Wrote: Thing is we had the suggestion for effects for synthorgans on multiple occassions and most people agree they need some. The problem is simply someone has to code it and slog through organ code.
Haha, good point. I've never touched SS13's code, and the work required with giving each organ special effects would be mammoth. This post is extremely aspirational in that sense - just so that we as a community can discuss some things we might eventually want to add.
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