SS2 Shard Hybrid

[666822835ef25voodoo47]

Tags: °mesh °SS2 °dml

Load the mod with the modmanager, and you need to activate it before entering ops for the first time for this to work. Then either trigger an alarm, or kill the pre-placed AIs in the level and wait for the random spawning to kick in (or open the console and type summon_obj og-shard to receive thine pounding right away). The hybrid shard is unlootable for the moment (will probably stay that way), lootdrops are same as the pipe hybrid, plus a chance for a large beaker to promote the worm guns a little (also, a grenade hybrid now may drop a small beaker, because why not). The shard hybrid has 24 hitpoints just like the shotgun hybrid, and hits HARD.

SS2tool patched install required, the Rebirth version also requires Rebirth to already be active.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi5Cj8AXCF4

[666822835f14bVegoraptor]

It has been a while since my last play-through, but wasn't there a log about how frail the shards are?
Maybe you could make them shatter (or just despawn with a glass-breaking sound) a few moments after the hybrid hits the ground, something something psionic stabilization field collapsing after death, to keep the immersion up if you can't collect them.

And yes, they do hit hard.

[666822835f39eJML]

I second @Vegoraptor 's suggestion concerning the glass shattering sound when the hybrid drops. Tells the player that it's kaputt. Nice idea on the shardhybrid, thanks vodoo. Maybe make them spawn only at a 5 % rateor do, since shards are supposed to be rare.

[666822835f58avoodoo47]

the idea comes from Secmod, though the implementation is completely different. also, this is actually something I wouldn't mind including in the main build of SCP - the existence of shard hybrids is hinted/confirmed in at least one log, so they definitely are canon to the SS2 universe.

the fragility mentioned in the log is an inconsistency we will have to live with (we can duct tape it with something like "he had a small/incomplete shard not doped with germanium so it was fragile, unlike the fully grown shards which are sturdy") - not planning on doing anything fancy like shatter the shards once the hybrids are slain, it would be just weird and also pose a technical problem (solvable, but still).

the current upload is basically just a techdemo, meant to test whether all the dml gears turn as they should, working this into the game in a balanced fashion will come later, but I'm thinking basically replacing all pipe hybrid spawns on ops and higher with shard hybrids - surprisingly, that would make them quite rare.

[666822835f6fcZylonBane]

Veto on SCP inclusion. That would be a Major Change to the enemy design.

[666822835f7ebvoodoo47]

yeah yeah, I know, but a man can dream.

[666822835f8ecZylonBane]

However, a minimod could probably manage it. Perhaps a script that checks the current map and replaces pipes with crystal shards at Ops or above.

[666822835fa93voodoo47]

definitely, and actually the purpose of this topic - once I have the final setup figured, writing a few mission dmls that will modify the spawnspoints will be trivial (there are no more hybrid spawns at command and above iirc, so we are talking just about ops and rec, unless we want to add them, which is also easy).

the loot and damage is pretty much all that needs attention, if everyone is ok with the standard pipe hybrid loot plus low chance of a large beaker and two times the bash force of a pipe hybrid, and shard hybrid serving as a pipe hybrid replacement late in the game then we are ready to go.

but will let it sit here for a week or so, maybe someone will come up with something interesting.

[666822835fba5ZylonBane]

Wrench hybrids.

Pool stick hybrids.

Umbrella hybrids.

[666822835fcb5voodoo47]

don't tempt me.

[666822836013cRoSoDude]

This is a great addition. Not that there aren't other emerging melee threats (and after you encounter shotgun hybrids, other enemies supplant them), but it's quite valuable to have the basic melee hybrid buffed up a bit for the later parts of the game. And it's directly implied by the audio logs.

Just how much damage does a single shard hit do on Impossible? The quick hit from pipe hybrids was already quite deadly (this is not a complaint, I'm rather excited for the added challenge).

[66682283602e8JML]

Well as voodoo said it's 2x dmg.
One could argue that goggles is indeed mostly flesh and therefore should take extra beating from the shard, one could also argue that at that point he would already have standard armor. I wonder if 2x dmg on him is realistic, since his organic parts shouldnt be exposed that much. Is a shard hit that much more painful than a pipe hit?

[666822836042dvoodoo47]

I don't think "realistic" is what's needed here, it's just a question of whether 2x is good, or too much, or too little (for reference, it's the same as a rumbler). also, AI damage output doesn't change with difficulty, iirc.

[666822836083bsarge945]

This is awesome. Would fit into SCP really well.

Now we just need a crazy cat lady hybrid who throws cats at you to replace the grenade hybrid on higher levels

Seriously though I think you need to gather up all the SCP minimods and add them to the main SCP thread. It can be annoying to hunt them all down on the forums

[666822836099evoodoo47]

they have a tag you can click on.

[6668228360b08sarge945]

People looking for SCP might not know about the tag system or about the existence of that particular tag.

Maybe add a link to that tag search to the SCP post?

I'm just trying to help out people who haven't played system shock in years and someone just told them about this cool new SCP mod. They might go on here, find SCP, click on the link and then install a few other mods they would have otherwise not known about

[6668228360e9eunn_atropos]

Next up: Cyborg Assassins with laser rapiers (though the poor things keep severing parts of themselves) ?

[6668228360fa7voodoo47]

prototype already exists (somewhere) on my hdd.

[66682283610d8voodoo47]

update - ops should now be in a playable state (pipe hybrid spawns replaced with shard hybrid, also had to replace spiders at two occasions to include shard hybrids into the normal spawn setups as well).

[666822836129evoodoo47]

hey, look what I forgot even exists for about 3 years.

I think I'll modify the spawns for the rest of the maps, call it proper beta1, and attach to the first post.

[6668228361773RoSoDude]

prototype already exists (somewhere) on my hdd.

This reminds me -- I experimented with adding Laser Rapiers to the Cyborg Assassins for SS2 Scary Monsters and had it all working save for the actual rapier attachment. However, I ended up cutting it from the mod for several reasons:

• It's not that faithful, and the goal of Scary Monsters was to retain each enemy's core identity while making them better at doing what they're supposed to
• Changing "AI: AI Core: AI" from "ranged" to "rangedmelee" has the unfortunate side effect of making them rush the player constantly to get into melee range, which is a downgrade to their AI behavior in my opinion
• Figuring out how to get the dang rapier attachment working on top of the above didn't seem worth it

I might try to finish this up as a DML addon (happily, no additions to motiondb.bin are necessary to support it). It's possible that I could fix the second issue with changes to other AI properties like desired attack range which which I wasn't familiar at the time. Using a script to flick between ranged and rangedmelee is a bad idea since that caused crashing when I tried to do it for other purposes.

[66682283618e7voodoo47]

I've abandoned it mostly because it's only doable on the vanilla model, and even there, I was not able to prevent the rapier from very obviously going through parts of the AI model sometimes (which, funnily enough, is consistent with the problems Korenchkin was mentioning).

maybe I'll revisit this once the SS2EE AI models are up for grabs.

[6668228361a88tiphares4]

Haven't seen that this mod exist.. brilliant.

[6668228361ba6voodoo47]

because it's not-yet-a-mod, hence, the Engineering subforum. anyway, it will be later this week.