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Author Topic: Mechanical Retina  (Read 930 times)

Valguris

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Mechanical Retina
« on: January 21, 2020, 11:41:50 AM »

I wanted to propose an item that allows you to see through walls (and machinery). It could be explained as a specialized retina that detects a wide spectrum of light (such as infrared, X-rays, gamma rays, etc...), including "light" that is not easily stopped by the material of Complex' walls.

I can imagine that seeing through walls at your usual view range would be quite OP. If X-Ray Retina (or whatever it will be called) were a common item, then seeing through walls at a range of only 5 would already be usable to find where you can dig safely (comparable to a terrain scanning setup) and would warn you against hostiles in a room (comparable to sensor setup). So some limitations should be applied, such as:
- range limitation, e.g. only sees stuff at a range up to ~5.
- multislot/heavy/high energy cost/etc.
- is still blocked by earth tiles
- only sees through up to X wall/earth tiles
- doesn't see everything (terrain, items, robots, machinery); e.g. can't see terrain (if it can see through terrain, then it can't see the terrain itself)

And of course there is an option to allow it to be OP, with range equal to your visual range, further enhanced by optical arrays. If it's a rare unique part, it might be fine. ;D
« Last Edit: January 21, 2020, 12:26:46 PM by Valguris »
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Kyzrati

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Re: Mechanical Retina
« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2020, 07:37:48 PM »

Does seem like it's more or less the same as having a sensor-terrain scan combo, so basically just reducing the number of slots to get the same effect (at presumably a shorter range). I wonder if people would really even want to use this since range is normally what's more desirable and emphasized.

Balance-wise I can see it as a unique item, and it would certainly be cool, although I wonder how that would work out architecturally... At first a second ago I was thinking it'd be a no-go due to the complexity, but now that I think about it it might actually be rather easy if done as a post-processing effect, preferably if nothing blocked it (because then it wouldn't be necessary to actually build an entirely different FOV algorithm just for this one part xD).

I've added it to the long-term list where there are many many ideas for stuff we might need for one or more of the new factions.
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