Reroll player traits upon cloning

[gleb09]

How many of those traits are considered a dealbreaker?  How likely are you to keep playing if you wake up blind?  Deaf?  Unable to speak?  A combination of the above?  How likely are you to tell a doctor to scan and clone you all over again because of those traits?

So obviously you could just easily ignore giving some traits like puritan. How many of those traits have workarounds? Blind and deaf even have medical solutions. That sounds pretty fitting.

[Technature]

True as it is, those traits come with their work-arounds.  I could easily see average doctors having no idea how to actually get them.

[gleb09]

True as it is, those traits come with their work-arounds.  I could easily see average doctors having no idea how to actually get them.

Do average doctors use the cloner instead of trying to fix people?

[Sundance]

I'm not sure if I truly buy the argument that by "making cloning worse and punishing the patient" it therefore invalidates Franks idea.

It's important to strike a balance when it comes to the cloner. Right now, i'm of the opinion that it's currently just too good. This has a knock-on effect - it cheapens death for one, makes things frustrating for antagonists for two and makes it an absolute prime target for three. The latter has another knock-on effect, in that it being a prime target will almost always depressurize medbay.

But let's look at the core issue here: The downsides to cloning (outside of your stuff getting potentially robbed by ne'er-do-wells) is nothing that the doctor can actually fix.

You have a reduction in your health pool (stamina also? Idk, it's not documented on the wiki) and if cloning goes awry it means you potentially have the following:
1. Your name gets a prefix
2. Vomiting blood and you're a general mess
3. You have a stubby arm (??? this appears to no longer happen?) which can't be reattached

This only occurs if the process is interrupted, which now due to the speed it is actually not that often. (sidenote: more methods of cloning going awry would be rad)
Then the good ol' MD gives you some mannitol and some antitox and off you go. But there's no further engagement after that, because again there's nothing the doc can actually fix.

I genuinely think we should take a different route here altogether. I think everything, from the prefix, to the health pool should be reversible, and we should slap on some extra reversible "punishments" too. This will hopefully make the process much more engaging. Such as:

1. Your prefix can be fixed. This could be done through something like this
2. Vomiting blood / reduction in health pool can be fixed through some cold Cryotherapy.
3. Instead of stubby arm, you can be missing a limb, but another can be attached.
4. You also have a seperate chance to be missing a single organ (including an eye, but not the heart).
5. Instead of simple tox damage, you may have a common poison inside you, such as histamine, neurotoxin. acetaldehyde, etc.
6. Instead of the suggested traits, you may have a random mutation or two.

What this all means is that the doctoring just doesn't simply end when the cloning is finished.

[gleb09]

What this all means is that the doctoring just doesn't simply end when the cloning is finished.

I like the idea that doctors should be more involved in the cloning process. My idea was to have the involvement before cloning (on the dead body) and yours focuses on having the involvement after cloning (on the deformed/damaged new body). Why do you prefer having the extra doctoring after instead of before?

[Sundance]

Why do you prefer having the extra doctoring after instead of before?

Because the patient is alive, primarily. Being alive gives them agency to fix themselves if needs be. And living things are more fun to treat than dead.

That said, your idea of doctoring pre-cloning is something that could be looked at. I had mentioned that "more methods of cloning going awry would be rad" - having an extremely damaged corpse could cause these complications and as such treating it could reduce it.

[Drago156]

Remember how the current cloning method came about because everyone was complaining about the old cloning method, that being caused by tick lag n such... I find it a little ironic.

I'll concede and agree that current cloning is incredibly good, but messing with traits is just a huge NO NO in my eyes, I mean the person already has to decide what they want to have and what they choose to balance out their positives. Traits have also very recently been linked to mutantraces, and specifically skeleton comes to my mind for this, because it's just as bad as puritan in that you can't be cloned at all.

Personally I think just nerfing the actual cloning process to not involve pre-cloned bodies is the best way to go, considering this just enables even more shenanigans with vampires/changelings being able to get free food, but I'm probably in the minority on this.

I do want to mention that maybe our current medical system is very punishing to victims and patients, and overbearing for doctors. Currently getting about -200 is pretty much instant death for anyone, and having almost any of your organs almost dead or dead is equally instant death from the actually insane amount of toxin damage it racks up, outpacing most tox healing methods and chems. Maybe if we want our doctors to be doctoring instead of cloning, we should look at the overall flaws in the current medical system as well, and consider how actually difficult it is to heal certain conditions that are more common than others.

After all this then I would say Sundance and gleb09's direction is the next best step towards this, but I think that these conditions need be reasonably quick or timed out enough that it doesn't make the person have to wait say 20 minutes to be fixed, because that's an incredibly long amount of time for the main and main overflow servers, and it should also be something that can't be used to completely disable the cloned person, because that would make an antag's murderspree just that much easier for them with less consequence and worry about someone they killed coming back.

[Frank_Stein]

I think my general notion was something to make the process of being cloned feel a bit roguelike, in that you'd get a new set of advantages and disadvantages to work with on a second life. Traits seemed like the current mechanic best suited for that.

Like your current set? Don't die.

Need to tweak or offset some of your new body traits? Visit the doctors or geneticists

---

There should also be an element of luck, with getting traits that are unique to this method that are better than you could normally have

[KikiMofo]

People talking about the cloning traits having puritan and skeleton and instantly dying from it doesnt make sense. First Im pretty sure those traits would and can just be off the cloning trait whitelist. Second you already died. Your game was already finished and over. You don't get the right to complain you didn't get the same traits you had when you died and don't have now that you are cloned. You should be HAPPY you get another chance to join the game instead of being a ghost or a critter.

[vampirate]

Guys if you die you die. Game over. Its just a happy little accident that you get another chance. If you get another chance you should be happy with what you get not complain that it's not what you wanted. Same thing I tell people who complain about getting borged instead of cloned. Also maybe if cloning wasnt a pure resurrection people would put more thought into saving someone from dying and maybe more thought into figuring out the OTHER ways of bringing someone back.
I've always thought cloning was just too easy and with the premade body you can make in cloning nowadays it's even easier where its literally faster to just kill them or have them die and then pop them into cloning than it is to bring them back from moderate crit.

Kiki this the same group that gets mad if they get borged. We came up when you died and getting cloned was a lottery. Lol remember when it was up to geneticists to stop working on powers and drag people to cloning?

Newer folk take cloning as a given

[KikiMofo]

Yeah I know. I just kinda wanted to remind them about this fundamental part of the game.

[Technature]

My main point is that I don't like people being screwed over because the game decided it just doesn't like you today. Anything random chance should be a minor inconvenience at worst.

I mean, this isn't D&D we're talking about here. Cloning should definitely be balanced, but trait changing isn't the way to do it.

I kind of agree with the Pre-made bodies thing. It makes death a minor inconvenience at worst if you scan yourself ahead of time and have reliable doctors and a small waiting list.

[zjdtmkhzt]

I definitely think that cloning could use a nerf, just so killing people and cloning them to bypass our fun medical system is not a good option in most cases anymore.
I think that rerolling traits (with a whitelist) sounds fine to me? Sure, some traits (clumsy, etc) are pretty damn annoying, but I think it will lead to funny situations.
And like some other people said, you can always just ... not die.

Also, for the record, the premature clone bioeffect can already be fixed with cryo. (Even if the name will probably not be changed back.)

[Ion Mage]

Maybe limit the extent to only getting one trait rerolled, and keep it to a list that keeps out the more catastrophic options.

Or make it so the list expands on consecutive clonings, with stacking effects.

There needs to be a compelling reason for people to not die. And I've seen the "dont bother treating them, let them die and clone them after" shpiel more times than I can remember, which is ridiculous to see on an RP server.

[Drago156]

I think it's important to rebuttal the whole don't die argument: There are too many ways to die or be murdered that death is inevitable, and common for most of the crew. There are a lot of things that can and will instantly kill someone, not even counting things that insta-gib. Plenty of chem mixes, kinetic and traitorous weapons, antagonist abilities, natural game mechanics, random events, the sheer will of a robust person/mob to cave your head in with a toolbox, and plenty of other ways and things to die to. It's also not a fair argument to make for newer or unrobust players, or those who get ignored while being killed by an antag, who through no fault of their own have died because of it.

I think my general notion was something to make the process of being cloned feel a bit roguelike, in that you'd get a new set of advantages and disadvantages to work with on a second life. Traits seemed like the current mechanic best suited for that.

Like your current set? Don't die.

Need to tweak or offset some of your new body traits? Visit the doctors or geneticists

---

There should also be an element of luck, with getting traits that are unique to this method that are better than you could normally have

Except ss13, and especially goon, is not a roguelike. Mucking with traits, a currently completely player determined part of their character, is changing a fundamental part of character creation, and arguably a core aspect of any given character. It's not something to take lightly, or throw the idea around and about like there isn't a major consequence to it. Traits are a way to change how one's character acts or appears from other characters and distinguish them as unique, and making it a giant lottery spin upon cloning fundamentally changes that character, the player's intent, and even the fun in how the character was built. Traits should NOT be luck based in cloning nor be even altered in almost any way by a standard game mechanic, because at that point I would argue you lose the ability to make a unique character that can and will only be that character.