Remove martian chance from salesman spawn

[cyberTripping]

What it says in the title. There's a slim chance that if you pick salesman, a roleplay heavy job, you'll spawn as a mutantrace which hasn't been touched in fucking years, can't wear jack shit, and cannot understand or differentiate the voices of humans, so you instead get to go around desperately hoping a single other soul pays attention to writing, or that genetics starts selling telepathy so you can at least talk on what, one minute intervals?

I wasted 5000 spacebux on a mail delivery entry gimmick because of this shit.

edit: apparently tourists (both special and friday versions, but apparently with different odds????) and diplomats can also be martians, which i have to imagine being equally as miserable.

[Rilor]

i think a better solution that would improve all jobs with a chance to spawn as martians is to give them a special translator headset (maybe it could looks biopunk since it was made by the martians) that lets them communicate as long as they have it on

[zcrow]

i think a better solution that would improve all jobs with a chance to spawn as martians is to give them a special translator headset (maybe it could looks biopunk since it was made by the martians) that lets them communicate as long as they have it on

bee-bel fish.

[cyberTripping]

i think a better solution that would improve all jobs with a chance to spawn as martians is to give them a special translator headset (maybe it could looks biopunk since it was made by the martians) that lets them communicate as long as they have it on

I'm not convinced this wouldn't be more work for still having a worse experience than just removing it. You'd still be stuck with the problem of martians being unable to wear basically anything: no hat or mask to add a bit of personality, no jumpsuit (so no pockets or ID slot or belt), no shoes so you'll step on glass shards despite appearing to be floating(?).

There's the problem of martians still seeming to work on human limb logic somehow (non-visually indicated synth arms, for instance), which I'm sure has a host of issues at this point.

And finally there's the problem that martians just kinda look bad, both compared to the new fancy humans and because the few clothes you can wear, like in the back and glasses slots, obviously don't fit right.

I do think all of that could conceivably be fixed, but for what?

[GORE]

I believe it is every martians duty to hand out martian mutagen pills to convert the station - so that martian speak becomes the norm!

[Eagletanker]

And finally there's the problem that martians just kinda look bad, both compared to the new fancy humans and because the few clothes you can wear, like in the back and glasses slots, obviously don't fit right.

I do think all of that could conceivably be fixed, but for what?

The Martians are cute! You take that back!

[Rilor]

idea: perspective martians

---

despite being one of the few artifact races able to be played as there is surprisingly little done with them, that should be remedied

[cyberTripping]

And finally there's the problem that martians just kinda look bad, both compared to the new fancy humans and because the few clothes you can wear, like in the back and glasses slots, obviously don't fit right.

I do think all of that could conceivably be fixed, but for what?

The Martians are cute! You take that back!

Their design is cute, they're just a really aged sprite that doesn't really work with a lot of stuff. Could definitely afford a perspective resprite like other playable races if they gotta stick around.

[TheRealFlapJackson]

At least let the martians wear translators.

[Mouse]

Give them anaerobic since they can't wear masks.

[cyberTripping]

yeah, i've been mulling this over for a while, and I guess here's my thoughts on how martians could be more fun now that i am less salty:

• some sort of translator that goes in the headset slot or similar, which just allows hearing spacemen properly (and talking properly, if that's an issue for martians). It might be funny if martians still didn't differentiate between human voices, not because they can't but just because they don't care.
  
  
• natural slots for pockets/ID slot, maybe with some flavortext about how grody and unsubtle it is compared to normal pockets, which don't give storage messages normally. The otherwise lacking storage options a martian has really fuckin hurts, so this would alleviate that a tiny bit while still maybe being flavorful.
  

• The longer a martian is in a round, the better they understand the humans even without their translator. They start like currently, where messages are illegible, but by 1 hour in, only a third or quarter of letters could be dropped, enough that a player could squint and understand the gist of a message unless they get unlucky.
  
  

and additional, less important stuff:

• resprite to make them look fancy?
  
• a couple unique sprites for worn satchels, backpacks, etc?
  
• give martians the rename prompt at the start of a round, since if they don't understand english it's a little silly to have an english derived name
  
• let them ignore floor hazards since they can't wear shoes, maybe give them some amusing allergy to compensate
  

[THISISANICEGAME]

Could give them many arms to account for lack or pockets and make monkey translators work with them.

[Flaborized]

I for one think if Martians are gonna be resprited they ought to also be redesigned, since the actual design of them is ripped directly from Metal Slug. We can be more original than just taking a different game's martians !

[Splints]

What if martians were made to have a energy boosted or no-cooldown telepathy by default? That would let the players talk and that seems like it would fit their lore a bit.

[cyberTripping]

What if martians were made to have a energy boosted or no-cooldown telepathy by default? That would let the players talk and that seems like it would fit their lore a bit.

Wouldn't solve the issue. I wasn't able to fully figure it out, but I think humans can already understand a martian character's speech. Even if they can't, the more pressing concern is martians being unable to understand anything, almost like an incurable deafness. I mentioned telepathy in the original post on the basis that if genetics sold it at the gene booth, the humans would also be able to buy it.