Subset Games Forum

I've played about 40 games (and never won lol) with Kestrel or Stealth ships (because so far they are my favorites) and was really disappointed with talent absense of humans. This makes them the inferior (and cheapest) crew members. Everyone has a special passive ability and are more useful - especially Zoltans (free reactor cell, hell yeah!) and Engi (perfect repairers). Why no humans? I feel... really offended as a representative of human race!

So I have a suggestion: give humans a speciality learning boost!
They are smart and easy-educadable, aren't they? Why not then? This will be unique feature.

I think having humans be as generic as possible is actually fine. While engi are great at repairing and zoltan are awesome because they provide free energy, they both have hefty drawbacks which humans do not have (they can't last in melee, and are therefore fairly fragile), just like how the mantis are terrible at repairing things despite being complete murder-machines in combat. Slugs (and perhaps Crystals because the asphyxiation reduction and lockdown power don't have a balancing negative unlike the +25 health/-25% movement speed tradeoff) are the only direct upgrade class compared to Humans, and their upgrade isn't particularly significant, unless you really, really like Nebulae.

I think a new alien race that learned skills faster could work, although you'd need a pretty significant negative to counteract that. Maybe it would work if they learned skills at 150% speed, but had a 10% reduction in all stats at base? It would need some testing.

The first thing that came to my mind in that case are synthets. Replace one human in human-based starter crew with this guy to have a faster-learning crew member that though have a combat penalty and, possibly, a little less HP.

I was originally thinking of something like the classic alien "greys", with big heads and whatnot. It would make sense (to me at least) that they are a bit slower, a bit weaker, a bit unhealthier, etc, than other races but have the potential to learn quickly.

The other alien race idea that I had for that skillset was Amorphous Blobs (They can mold themselves to their tasks easily).

Greys actually would be great! But they need to be with lesser HP but higher movement speed. Why not?
Also for me greys are more like telepaths that could control mind.
OH! Another great idea! The more Greys you have in crew, the faster they learn! What do you think?

I had an idea for a race that would have a cumulative ability like that, although I wouldn't give it to the same race that had the faster learn speed. My idea for that was for a hive-mind kind of race that would start out with 90% of the skill level of other races and cannot gain skill over time, but for every additional one in your crew, they all gain a 5% boost. That way, you need to have three of them for them to be as good as humans, but if you had an entire ship of them, they'd all be at 125% in everything. Obviously that's a bit more powerful than normal, but I'd imagine they would be fairly rare so getting an entire crew of 8 would be impractical or unlikely.

As for what they'd actually be, insects jump to mind. The problem with that is that we already have the mantis and slugs. I think Grays would actually work out fine for this, but only if the faster-learning/weaker skillset went to a different race.

Other race suggestions anyone??? Or maybe special crew members?

Eltek
(or some other better name) Rare species related to the Zoltan, unknown if they are descendants or ancestors of the Zoltan, but they have a resemblance. Both are made of pure energy, but while the Zoltan grow Green, the Eltek glow blue. They are a rare species that can only be gained from an event (much like the Crystalman). They have 60 health but has 1.75x attack, will absorb a direct EMP attack from the room he is standing in, but will be immobilized for the duration of that EMP. He also has a special ability: force field which creates a mini shield for one ROOM only. Has a very long cooldown for this ability.

Mentat
what happens, when zoltan design meets human ingenuity and curiousity? The Mentat is a re-purposed Engi robot, redesigned by Human scientists. Deemed superior to the Engi, the science facility creating this was destroyed however, and only one Mentat has been saved by you. They are lumbering and big, but have their engineering processing ability is a technological marvel. Movement is halved. Has 1.5x repair speed. Unlike the engi, it does not have decreased combat damage. Immune to fire. Does not suffocate. Earns experience 1.25x faster. Special ability: Interface - the Mentat can interface with a damaged system and temporarily make it fully operational for 25 seconds, and can be used fully provided enough reactor energy is supplied to it. The Mentat will become immobile during this duration. Any attacks to the room will not damage the system, though it will still hurt the Mentat. Ability has 5 minute cooldown.

As much fun as it is trying to think of the kind of superpowers you'd want a crew member to have, it's important to try to balance them a little. I can tell you've thought about your characters for a good bit of tie, trying to work out their backstories, but they're both fairly massively powerful (more than the crystal crew by a large margin) in my opinion.

furyfire wrote:Eltek

They have 60 health but has 1.75x attack, will absorb a direct EMP attack from the room he is standing in, but will be immobilized for the duration of that EMP. He also has a special ability: force field which creates a mini shield for one ROOM only. Has a very long cooldown for this ability.

I'm guessing your idea for this unit was like a defensive emplacement: he can add shields to a room, absorb EMPs and can hold his own in a fight. The issue here is that he doesn't really have a weakness. Sure, he has 60 health, but the combat efficiency you gave him means he can hold his own and win against untrained humans/slugs, so melee isn't really dangerous to him. Sure he gets immobilized when he absorbs an emp, but you probably aren't going to want to move him anyway since you're already going to have him in the room you want to defend. Also, the long cooldown on the bonus shield power doesn't make a big difference: people can wait as long as they need to between rounds for it to recharge, just like the lockdown power, and if they already have level three or four shields, there's a good chance the enemy is going to have a hard enough time getting through your shields on a regular basis anyway.

The one thing I see being a problem is that he's somewhat fragile to taking weapon damage, although his ability to pop a forcefield to protect his room mitigates that somewhat as well. He's basically only susceptible to bombs and missile hits.

Long story short, neat character, but he might need some kind off balancing negative.

furyfire wrote:Mentat

Movement is halved. Has 1.5x repair speed. Unlike the engi, it does not have decreased combat damage. Immune to fire. Does not suffocate. Earns experience 1.25x faster. Special ability: Interface - the Mentat can interface with a damaged system and temporarily make it fully operational for 25 seconds, and can be used fully provided enough reactor energy is supplied to it. The Mentat will become immobile during this duration. Any attacks to the room will not damage the system, though it will still hurt the Mentat. Ability has 5 minute cooldown.

Now this one on the other hand... This unit is basically godmode. It moves at Rock-speed, but repairs as well as anyone but the engi, fights as well as anyone but the mantis, has the rock fire immunity, more than the crystal suffocation immunity, earns exp faster than any class, and has an absurdly OP special power...

Even though there's only one of them in the lore, they're still insanely powerful. You can basically use them to ignore ship damage at any time because they ignore fire and suffocation, so even if a vital system has been blasted into the ground you can just send this unit in to ignore it, use his power, and continue like nothing happened. Even if the power wears off, he can quickly repair the system without any risk of taking damage over time. Sure he's slow, but that doesn't really compensate.

Of course, I'm probably being far too critical since it's not like our suggestions are going anywhere anyway.

tl;dr Balance is important, yo. Cool ideas though.

Hi, thanks for the critique

I was aiming for those game changing events with these rare crewmen find, just like the crystalman, but after reading your post, I have to admit, I did go overboard

I was thinking of their rarity itself as a downside.

furyfire wrote:I was thinking of their rarity itself as a downside.

Well you know, slugs are pretty darn rare, and they aren't quiiiite that awesome.

It's fun to think up awesome powers and ways for races to work, but actually balancing those mighty forces of awesome is incredibly hard, which is probably why we generally don't find them in this kind of game: it's easier to just not include them than it is to make them balanced with everything else.

The problem with using rarity as a counterbalance for incredible power is that it weighs success heavily in favour of luck. If you have those hyper-powerful units or items in the game, it means that the best possible runs will always involve those same things. To use something else as an example, it's like how in an RPG, the people who are playing at the highest level will often be using almost identical sets of Legendary gear, because it's simply the best there is.

Don't let me stop you though: even the most insanely overpowered suggestion can have elements which lead to an idea that actually winds up fitting perfectly. And hey: fun things are fun.