V.O.R.E. Station

Hey all, it's your friendly neighbourhood Nightwing, proving that I do indeed use this forum!

The other thing I mostly do is program. The first thing I ever submitted was a simple chunk of code that allowed people to change their sprite's size between five presets. Alas, that was back in the day when it was simply an aid for roleplay. Now with the newer players joining up, mechanics are beginning to see more usage. And when a macro or micro enters combat, balancing issues occur. For instance, it's far harder to click on a micro than it is to click on a regular human (they take up one sixteenth of the space), whereas it's 2 times easier to click a macro than a regular human because they now fill two tiles. People are using these kinds of exploits, along with the ability to scoop people up, or to step-stun people, to get a major advantage in combat. It's extremely hard to actually click a micro with a ranged weapon to deal damage to them. So, we're gonna balance things better.

That's where you guys come in. I wanna hear your ideas, suggestions, anything you can think of that'll make a micro more balanced in combat, or a macro more balanced, so that no scale is inherently better than any other. Let me know what you think!

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Anything listed below is something that has been put up for debate. The following section will be updated as frequently as I can!

MACRO
+ Move faster
- Higher metabolism
+ Damage resistance (?)
+ Increased damage (?)

MICRO
- Move slower
+ Slower metabolism
- Damage weakness (?)
- Decreased damage (?)
+ Walk under (wooden) tables
- Get hit by mousetraps unless walking

I always thought that those who were smaller in scale would mechanically be physically weaker than those on the larger scale. I always found it hilarious watching a Micro take down a Macro in just a few hits with a decent melee weapon- even though on screen that melee weapon is just a toothpick.

I'm not really saying monstrous strength, here, but something noticeable. Hell, maybe even some form of damage resistance or weakness depending on your size.

Damage resistance / vulnerability? This one is a bit gamey, and it could bring heavy issues where doing anything to a micro is mortal, kinda like using emp with the peps that augment themselves.

Slowdown! I like this one, common sense, shorter legs make you cover less distance.

Metabolism! Being bigger makes you need more food!

Great, people are saying things I wanna see. I'm gonna edit the first page in a few minutes to include all suggested changes there for discussion later on, and for ease of seeing what we got there.

Love the thought about metabolism. You're right, the DR/V probably wouldn't work out. I still think that size = physical strength for most scenarios.

The speed is interesting, and I love the thought of metabolism!

orbisa wrote:Slowdown! I like this one, common sense, shorter legs make you cover less distance.

I like the slowdown idea. It's always annoyed me when I've wanted to shrink somebody to stop them from running away, just to realize it doesn't do anything. Though it can't be TOO slow, otherwise nobody will ever play micro characters. Just a little slower. Slow enough to let someone catch up.

orbisa wrote:Metabolism! Being bigger makes you need more food!

I dunno about metabolism. Hunger is already a kinda 'eh' thing. I mean it's a game mechanic you can fix by walking ~10 tiles, mashing your ID into a machine, and pounding back some ramen. I think hunger either needs to have more consequences, or just be removed. Right now it's in this weird middleground that just seems like the game harrassing you slightly.

arokha wrote:Though it can't be TOO slow, otherwise nobody will ever play micro characters. Just a little slower. Slow enough to let someone catch up.

This is an idea I've had before. I wanna make micros slow enough that they can be outrun fairly easily by a larger character, but fast enough that it really doesn't make that much difference. With similar scaling for macros.

arokha wrote:I think hunger either needs to have more consequences, or just be removed.

Be careful what you wish for. Without hunger, the chef would be pretty much out the job. I quite like the idea of a metabolism change myself.

Maybe not letting micros take/use bulky things? or be able to walk under tables?

first one might be possible, since we have the clumsy gene code around, and items a bulk value. (it could lead to some weird scenarios though, unless we invest a bit of time into the code)

second would be easy to code though

On slowdown, so people can picture it, Tajarans have a racial movement bonus, and most shoes give you a 1 movement bonus, if you want to see how much is a unit of movement, you can take off your shoes and see for yourself, just don't walk into glass

Nightwing wrote:
MACRO
- Move faster
- Higher metabolism
- Damage resistance (?)
- Increased damage (?)

MICRO
- Move slower
- Slower metabolism
- Damage weakness (?)
- Decreased damage (?)

well what i see here is this, macro is super great and micro is a super pain in the butt, im not sure how but i think they should have the same amount of cons and pros

Id say the metabolism would be good cause a burger could sustain a a micro and a whole turkey and like 3 servings of lasagna might feed a macro ya know? it'd give the chef stuff to do plus it'd make the experience different and a bit more immersive when you live off of a reasonable meal. plus I see micros takedown people and its like "How?" cause yeah... Although damage drop might be meh cause I do RP out my weak attacks as any kinda micro but might help in other aspects.