about new cloning changes

[mab]

thread i had promised to make to discuss the new changes to the cloner, since discussions on discord get confusing.

personally i dont have a strong opinion, i think its a good change to add some downsides to the cloning process. still have to see it in game tho. what do yall think?

this is the commit: https://github.com/goonstation/goonstati...020487dfb1

[JebSvS]

Haven't seen it ingame yet either. Remains to be seen... Heehee

[Lord_earthfire]

I was kinda always an advocate for cloning consequences. So i am happy that it is now a thing.

Cloning is easier at times than actually healing a person, and i think that should simply not be a thing. With actual consequences attached to it, people are encouraged to at least try to heal the person (especially on classic, where people tend to waltz into medbay and ignore doctors).

[Silent Majority]

I think the explosion chance is far to high as well as the puritan chance. Those should either be something genetic treatment can be done to prevent or take 3 clonings before they show up. That's just my personal opinion. We have antrait to be puritan, if cloners going to have a 33 percent chance of failing why have puritan?

[Honeybree]

I think the change will be good to get other departments more involvement in the game, as robotics outside of borgs and replacing all their own organs struggles to get patients (at least on rp), same with genetics sometimes and doesn't really have a tie to medical in healing people. This also gives SR a use again outside of just being faster than cloning occasionally, as this will skip the downsides of cloning. However, I feel the chance to blow up the cloner changes this from being a punishment for dying to being a punishment for others attempting to fix you, as if you don't have the botanists available it makes getting honey for the new cloning pod much harder.

Also, I wonder how this will affect the mindhack cloner as it feels like an even bigger waste of TC if it keeps these downsides.

[George_Manning]

I think the dude the other day I helped that spawned with legs with arms was a bit extreme, at least give him arms for legs too so it’s just a simple swap instead of bothering robotics for limbs

[Meowgical]

Personally I like a LOT of it. I like the idea of it being more likely that maybe you have an organ missing or go colorblind, hell maybe with a more bonkers dangerous mutation like producing alcohol or being radioactive. This said, I’m a little worried about the percentages? 
66% for minor mutations well. Sure. You have color blindness get a mutadone. At worst you got a doc putting in a liver. 
But the 33% for major mutations is worrying. It’s a mix of, this feels too high for the chances of dying right out the gate or even exploding. Maybe if they knocked that down to 10% that’d be alright. Especially if you can be puritan despite not selecting puritan trait. Say what you wanna, dying happens but it’s not always fun for either patient or doctor, especially if you’re starting out, just started the round and already lucked out with death and bad mutations, or people worked really hard to save you. This said, at least on the luckier end you can get cloned again and on the less lucky side at least it’s just a mess. 
This said microbomb isn’t really funny and idk why that’s a chance event. It doesn’t really make sense, it doesn’t improve gameplay, it’s just kind of extra annoying with the tidbit of damage causing. 
Cloner did need work, I think the suggestions of stacking mutations for multiple cloned was a REALLY good suggestion I heard. This is also good in concept of just upping mutation chances. Just really don’t like the percentages, some of the mutations (especially microbomb), and that it was directly implanted without a pr so the change could be discussed.

[Bartimeus]

I enjoy the fact it makes it so that doctors are now more likely to be the ones cloning people, as a regular crewmate likely cannot deal with the more severe defects that could come with the cloning. I also enjoy the fact that it makes death matter more without completely screwing over the people who died. It also drastically reduces the chance of people prefering to just die instead of asking to be healed. Cloning should never be prefered over trying to save the person in my opinion. Also adding new cloning defects appears to be a quite easy system, so we could get a bunch of nice new defects to keep you guessing.
Perhaps we could introduce new hidden away cloner upgrades that decrease the chances of cloning defects? And i do think the syndicate cloner should have a much lower chance of defects since the cloner generally has little medecine or ways to deal with massive damage/missing organs.
I'm all for this change overall.

[Bilo216]

I am a bit torn with this one tbh. I have played with this change, and while it was fun at the beginning to have people come out wrong and treating them, it became hellish pretty quickly. Its true I played a couple of particularly chaotic rounds in rp with many dead and more hurt people, running from side to side, and having people come out of the cloner in crit with 200 burns or 150 toxic damage was rough. I had to keep an eye on the cloner and the other dying people that came in. Medbay can become overwhelming sometimes, and the cloner malfunctions seem too common and severe in many cases.

  On the other hand, I also get the whole “death has more meaning now”, and that you can respawn in 10 minutes at least in rp servers, and that cloning was a strong feature. Many times I have seen on discord discussions about nerfing it in some way, and I am not against it. I think my main issue is how common and severe they can be, from being in deep crit to “there, you explode now”. As Silent Majority said, there is already a trait to explode when cloned if you want that to happen. I always thought of cloning also as a way for newbies doctors to not worry much about fucking up their treatment or having people die on them. It kinda ends up falling on the doctor, and even though it was fun and interesting at the beginning it ended up becoming pretty annoying and just another chore to keep an eye out in case they come out dying, by the end. At least in highpop rounds. In my opinion, I would at least lower the chances of this malfunctions.

[aloe]

I haven’t read everything on discord but here’s addressing some of the concerns:
- These aren’t the same as mutations exactly. I call em “cloner defects” but if someone comes up with a better name I’d be down to change it. Pretty much a totally different system.

- The “explosion” one isn’t enabled. To be fair it’s the only one that isn’t enabled and that’s pretty unclear (only hint is that it’s set to CLONER_DEFECT_SEVERITY_UNUSED). I understood that it was a bad idea lol

- Defects are applied after you exit the pod, not when cloning starts. The way this is accomplished behind the scenes is kinda jank, but that’s beside the point. If they were applied when cloning started basically any damage would kill you instantly (or at least cause cloning to fail). This pretty much means that you’re guaranteed to be alive when you exit the pod, unless you somehow died so many times that you managed to stack like 6 of the “take some damage” defects. Also, rolling the “you’re a Puritan now” thing won’t kill you immediately, it just means if you get cloned again it becomes a Problem.

- Related to the above, I’ve tried pretty specifically to prevent instant death on leaving the pod, since the idea is less “instantly kill people because they got cloned” and more “make it more work for the doctors to clone people”/“make the game a bit harder after you get cloned”. The brain damage ones can’t stack, the major organ loss can’t roll brain or heart (heart was added after the initial changes because someone mentioned that it sucked), etc

- The “clone defects carry forward” thing is very intentional since the idea is to cause more issues if you get cloned more times. Basically the old “lose max health if you get cloned more” system but more interesting/punishing. I also set it up so the exact numbers/choices on defects are maintained, so if someone comes out missing a left leg, and they get cloned again, they’ll be missing a left leg again (plus whatever new issues). This means if you clone someone and they’re missing a lung and they die again. Go get a lung they’re gonna need it!!!

- Related to the above- basically the way it works is when you scan someone, alive or dead, their existing cloner defects are saved with the other data (like their name and appearance). This means that data disks probably work as a way to circumvent defect stacking? as in, if I make 5 data disks of myself before being cloned at all, I can be cloned 5 times without stacking up defects- each time will have a single roll of defects and that’s all, because I’m being cloned from a “clean” version of my DNA or whatever. If you make a data disk of someone after they’re cloned then yeah they’ll be a little screwed up from the initial cloning.

- idk if anyone is actually using this, butt the scanners geneticists have give a full readout of all the cloning defects that are on someone. This also works for bodies, so you can scan and see “hey this person is missing 2 limbs” before you even clone them. I suppose I could add more specifics to the descriptions, like what limb/organ the person is missing. I also added one of the scanners to each NanoMed (not the portable one).

- mindhack cloner is a good point, I’ll make those defect free. The syndicates actually pay for the good hardware. I’d also be fine with upgrades which reduce the odds/severity of defects, would be easy to implement. Just need a good place to put them.

- I’m fine with how SR currently works. Takes some chemistry, doesn’t fix organ damage or missing organs, requires you to heal the dead person before reviving them.

- Weights are relative, so a major defect with a weight of 20 is 1/5 as likely as a major defect with 100 weight (which is default).

- I’m happy to add more defects or remove/rework/adjust the weights of existing ones. I do realize that a lot of the defects are a little dangerous, so I’ll try to add more that aren’t directly hazardous to your health- I already added a small stamina regen penalty as a defect which should be annoying but doesn’t need medical attention (unless you consider a coffee IV medical).

[Silent Majority]

thank you for addressing this , Aloe. My concerns are now allieved.

[Bilo216]

Ah, thank you for clearing up some misunderstandings and explaining a bit about it!

[TDHooligan]

i think RNG % for puritan, something that is just a non-negotiable "no more cloning" isn't adding anything, everything else is amusing like having arms for legs etc.

Besides that, I really like the idea of making cloning a progressively more punishing ordeal though.

[Mouse]

IMO if you're gonna make cloning this hellishly punishing you might as well remove it entirely.

I also see a shitton of toxicity coming from this because it moves from "if medbay is incompetent you die and get cloned" to "if medbay is incompetent you die, get cloned, and end up in a neverending clone/death loop until you set DNR out of spite because if they couldn't save you before they sure as hell aren't saving you now".

[Kotlol]

Wasn't cloning originally convieced as is Cryo tubes to make medbay slightly easier to handle?

Every time cloning nerf's come up.. the next up is the cryo tubes.. then menders and hypo sprays.
The reason Medbay was made easier is cause it's so vital to keep you in the game.

And while cloning mishaps are fine in my book. I still hold onto the rule of: "1st cloning is free, with maybe something minorly goofy happening, bbut after that it will be RNG."

But at the same time most death's happen OUTSIDE OF MEDBAY. Mostly in places where medics do not roam the station.

Essentially put if you nerf medbay... you buff antagonists at the same time... since it's harder for players to survive or come back.
I will wait and see what this cloning changes will do, but I know on Classic this will be a source of anoyance for a while as people die really fast there.