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[Suggestion] Prosthetic "mechs" for micros to pilot

PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 7:37 am
by Lobo-Branco
It's simple as that, as a micro, you could climb into a "mech" that is simply a prosthetic body and pilot it around and interact better with normies (normal sized people).
This could ICly allow micros to work at physical jobs without having to make up some blue-space excuse... Micro miners, janitors, security... All career paths would be opened to micros!

As a side note, I think it would be really awesome piloting a prosthetic mech made for micros and then some predator robust my mech, break it, and patiently unscrew the cockpit and take me out for playtime and/or noms.


Now as an extra idea...
Some people would think it's overpowered thing, giving micros the edge in game mechanics, which trolls would love... But since micros would have these "mechs", like an extra "life", we could then actually nerf the micros, make them slow, have low HP, unable to carry big objects, etc.

There's a similar topic regarding micros piloting tiny toy mechs, available here.


This is how I feel micros on-station to be like at the moment... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc9_H7mZxCI

Re: Prosthetic "mechs" for micros to pilot

PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 7:45 am
by Vorrarkul
There was discussion on Discord about characters being normal-sized fully-body prosthetic characters and RPing that they were micros inside of a humanoid mech. While this seems to suggest implementing actual mechanics for such a thing, my intent was to suggest this as a largely-done-via-roleplay type of scenario rather than a suggestion for mechanics. There may have been a miscommunication since my understanding was at some point this idea (the one about RP, not mechanics) was shot down.
So, going on a bit of a tangential topic here, I want clarification on whether it's allowed to do the above mentioned idea as purely in-character roleplay, and letting the 'micro' and those who choose to scene with them deal with the lack of mechanics for it.

Re: Prosthetic "mechs" for micros to pilot

PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 7:53 am
by Lobo-Branco
Vorrarkul wrote:There was discussion on Discord about characters being normal-sized fully-body prosthetic characters and RPing that they were micros inside of a humanoid mech. While this seems to suggest implementing actual mechanics for such a thing, my intent was to suggest this as a largely-done-via-roleplay type of scenario rather than a suggestion for mechanics. There may have been a miscommunication since my understanding was at some point this idea (the one about RP, not mechanics) was shot down.
So, going on a bit of a tangential topic here, I want clarification on whether it's allowed to do the above mentioned idea as purely in-character roleplay, and letting the 'micro' and those who choose to scene with them deal with the lack of mechanics for it.


I understand you, we could indeed RP being a micro inside a mech while we're actually only playing a fully prosthetic body character, mechanics-wise.

But also... In theory, we don't even need the vore mechanics, with stomachs and such, since we could just RP that... but it does make the RP better, no?

Re: [Suggestion] Prosthetic "mechs" for micros to pilot

PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 8:33 am
by Arbon
Okay, we've had similar discussions like this years before, and if you want to avoid the extra life feature and the weird coding problems and the robust balancing features, what you do is

1: Make it so micros actually have some notable disadvantage that makes them less capable of working.

2: The "Mechs" should just be borgs. No, seriously. Any borg, specialized to a task, be it security or mining or janitor borgs, having only the specific built in functions of that robot body and not just a full extra life with no otherwise notable differences. Instead of putting a brain inside the borg, with all standard borg mechanics, you let a micro crawl into a borg and pilot it around the same way they pilot a mech. Micro problems in security? Give them wires and a blowtorch and say their job is to climb inside the security borg and use that as their muscle. Micros wanting to move around the station normally? Give them a service borg to hop inside and pilot.

We have half of the coding and half of the mechanics already here, though I suppose if you wanted to build something new then a blank slate "IPC body" a micro could climb inside that's basically just a mech with hands and no other functions could be a neat thing for science to build.

Re: [Suggestion] Prosthetic "mechs" for micros to pilot

PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 9:11 am
by Lobo-Branco
Arbon wrote:Okay, we've had similar discussions like this years before, and if you want to avoid the extra life feature and the weird coding problems and the robust balancing features, what you do is

1: Make it so micros actually have some notable disadvantage that makes them less capable of working.

2: The "Mechs" should just be borgs. No, seriously. Any borg, specialized to a task, be it security or mining or janitor borgs, having only the specific built in functions of that robot body and not just a full extra life with no otherwise notable differences. Instead of putting a brain inside the borg, with all standard borg mechanics, you let a micro crawl into a borg and pilot it around the same way they pilot a mech. Micro problems in security? Give them wires and a blowtorch and say their job is to climb inside the security borg and use that as their muscle. Micros wanting to move around the station normally? Give them a service borg to hop inside and pilot.

We have half of the coding and half of the mechanics already here, though I suppose if you wanted to build something new then a blank slate "IPC body" a micro could climb inside that's basically just a mech with hands and no other functions could be a neat thing for science to build.

I'd rather have a multi-purpose prosthetic mech but I'd be willing to go with the borg idea if it's what it takes.

Re: [Suggestion] Prosthetic "mechs" for micros to pilot

PostPosted: Fri Oct 21, 2016 7:02 am
by Lobo-Branco
Micros on-station being like this at the moment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc9_H7mZxCI