[DEVBLOG#145] Powers and Weaknesses (Patreon)

Hello friends!

Today is probably one of the last development blogs about Ancients mod. Code-wise, it is almost finished and will be entering testing very soon.

With every power comes a weakness. That’s right. On the special UI provided, you can see exactly what power and what weakness the pawn has. These are always random and not tied to each other.

Upon hovering over the icons you get detailed description of what the power or weakness does and how they affect the game.

Active abilities do have a cooldown stat, which essentially means how often they can be used. If an ability is on cooldown, it is greyed out.

We have made some pretty unique, game changing powers, and we made sure that weaknesses prevent you from spamming superpowers on every single pawn you have.

GIF above, for example, shows you the Marksmanship passive super power - every shot always hits. This makes your shooters extremely powerful, as they are guaranteed to quickly dispose of enemies.

This superpower for example is simply called Self-control - whenever this pawn goes into a mental break, self control ability can be activated to instantly finish the mental break.

Telepathy works in quite a similar way but can't be self-cast, and is instead cast on other pawns. You can either send them into berserk rage, or calm them down using psychic energy.

Martial Artist superpower is a jack of all trades when it comes to melee combat. This pawn can NEVER be hit by enemies in melee, and will ALWAYS connect their shots - as in, they just never miss!

Glory kill superpower instantly kills a random enemy in melee distance by removing one of their limbs and spilling copiuos amounts of blood.

Electro-magnetic pulse will have your pawn detonate a huge EMP blast around themself. This temporarily disables all electronic devices, including mechanoids!

Summon Lightning allows you to target a location close by to summon several lightning strikes.

Electricity Blast creates a long chain of electrical detonations between enemies. Devastating when targeted against bigger groups.

Animal speech, when cast on a manhunting animal will calm it, and when cast again, tame it instantly.

Fire breath, very self-explanatory. Breathe fire onto the enemies, setting them ablaze and making them run around in circles.

A pawn can have up to 5 powers and 5 weaknesses, but please remember that using the Retractor device you can actually remove weaknesses one by one.

Shall we take a look at all superpowers?

Super Strength (Passive)

Effects: Doubled melee damage. Doubled Caravan inventory size. Doubled local map inventory size.

Martial Artist (Passive)

Effects: Never misses melee attacks. Always dodges melee attacks.

Regeneration (Passive)

Effects: All wounds heal themselves quite quickly. Cannot regrow limbs.

Super Speed (Passive)

Effects: +50% movement speed.

Bulletproof Skin (Passive)

Effects: All sharp damage dealt to this pawn changes into blunt damage.

Marksmanship (Passive)

Effects: 100% accuracy on ranged weapons.

Weapons Expert (Passive)

Effects: Weapon warmup and cooldown halved.

Eagle Eye (Passive)

Effects: Ranged weapon range doubled.

Plasteel Claws (Passive)

Effects: Powerful, retractable claws. Deal high damage in melee combat.

Plasteel Skeleton (Passive)

Effects: Immune to cracks and broken bones.

Genius Intellect (Passive)

Effects: Research speed tripled.

Super Jump

Effects: Jump over a short distance (10 cells) within line of sight to close the distance to the enemy.
Cooldown: 3 seconds.

Telepathy (Berserk) (Unlocked with Telepathy)

Effects: Cast on an enemy to turn them on their allies.
Cooldown: 60 seconds.

Telepathy (Calm) (Unlocked with Telepathy)

Effects: Cast on a friend to instantly snap them out of a mental break.
Cooldown: 60 seconds.

Psychic Shock

Effects: Fire a psychic shock on the enemy, rendering them unconscious.
Cooldown: 120 seconds.

Self-Resurrection (Passive)

Effects: This pawn cannot die, and as long as the body exists, 3 days after dying, the pawn will spring back to live. Only grave wounds are healed through this process.

Invisibility

Effects: Turns invisible for 60 seconds.
Cooldown: 120 seconds.

Self-Control

Effects: When activated, immediately stop any mental breaks this pawn is under effect of.
Cooldown: 2 ingame days.

Toxic Resistance (Passive)

Effects: 100% Toxic resistance.

Psychic Resistance (Passive)

Effects: 100% Psychic resistance.

Fire Breath

Effects: Spew fire up to 12 cells range in front of you, burning enemies and sending them running.
Cooldown: 120 seconds.

Ice Breath

Effects: Spew ice up to 12 cells range in front of you, slowing enemies and applying high hypothermia.
Cooldown: 120 seconds.

Overshield

Effects: Generate an impenetrable shield around yourself that lasts 30 seconds.
Cooldown: 180 seconds.

Laser Eyes

Effects: Fire an incredibly powerful beam of energy from your eyes. Maximum range is 35.
Cooldown: 60 seconds.

Metamorphosis (Tortoise) (Unlocked with Metamorphosis)

Effects: Turn into a Tortoise for 60 seconds, inheriting it’s Health, Attacks and size.
Cooldown: 5 days.

Metamorphosis (Warg) (Unlocked with Metamorphosis)

Effects: Turn into a Warg for 60 seconds, inheriting it’s Health, Attacks and size.
Cooldown: 5 days.

Cold Resistance (Passive)

Effects: Will never suffer hypothermia. Does not suffer Slept in Cold debuff.

Heat Resistance (Passive)

Effects: Will never suffer heat stroke. Does not suffer Sweaty debuff. Cannot be set on fire.

Matter Phasing

Effects: Turn on to phase through walls for 10 seconds.
Cooldown: 60 seconds.

Summon Lightning

Effects: Designate an area that will be blasted by lightning bolts.
Cooldown: 120 seconds.

Darkvision (Passive)

Effects: No darkness penalty or mood debuff.

Animal Speech

Effects: When cast on a man hunting animal, calms it. When cast on a wild animal, tame it.
Cooldown: 1 day.

Redundant Stomach (Passive)

Effects: Regenerate hunger passively, removing the need to eat completely.

Super Learning (Passive)

Effects: Triple Skill gain.

Regenerating Limbs (Passive)

Effects: Missing limbs and organs will grow back after some time has passed.

Empathy

Effects: Cast on an ally to give them a strong mood buff lasting 24 hours.
Cooldown: 1 day.

Heal Others

Effects: Cast on an ally to cure them of all their wounds.
Cooldown: 1 day.

Unstoppable (Passive)

Effects: 100% Pain resistance.

Electricity Blast

Effects: Fire an arc of lightning that bounced between enemies, burning them and disabling any electronics.
Cooldown: 60 seconds.

Glory Kill

Effects: Kill a random enemy in 1 cell radius, spawning large amount of blood everywhere, and removing a random amount of their limbs.
Cooldown: 5 days.

Speed Burst

Effects: 4x Movement speed. Melee cooldown halved. Lasts 30 seconds.
Cooldown: 1 day.

Acid Spitting

Effects: Spit a spray of acid at the enemy, applying chemical burn to them and their allies in close proximity.
Cooldown: 60 seconds.

Fireball

Effects: Send forward an explosive fireball, setting a small area on fire.
Cooldown: 30 seconds.

Electro-magnetic Pulse

Effects: Generate a large EMP explosion around yourself, disabling all electronics in radius.
Cooldown: 60 seconds.

Efficient Builder (Passive)

Effects: 50% chance that building something will refund 25% resources used to build it.

Masterful Craft (Passive)

Effects: Items crafted are always 2 quality levels higher, capped at Legendary.

Celebrity (Passive)

Effects: All social interactions are Kind Words. People tend to like Celebrity pawn 2x as much.

Master Hacker (Passive)

Effects: All hacking operations initiated by this pawn are instant.

Promising Candidate (Passive)

Effects: Chances of Experiment failed are always reduced to 0%.

Blast Resistance (Passive)

Effects: Takes no damage from explosions (damage type Bomb).

Loner (Passive)

Effects: Recreation replenishes if alone in the room.

Assassin (Passive)

Effects: All attacks hit vital organs (brain and heart).

Alright, that covers the super powers. As you can see, some are better, some are worse - but our main inspiration for it was The Boys TV series and it really shows how shitty some super powers can be.

Lets take a look at what weaknesses you will have to struggle with!

Weaknesses are always passive and whenever a pawn gets a power, there is always a random weakness attached. Weakness doesn’t need to be related to power.

Extremely Flammable (Passive)

Effects: 4x Flammability.

Unstable (Passive)

Effects: Psychic Sensitivity +100%.

Toxin Intolerance (Passive)

Effects: Toxic Sensitivity +100%.

Heat Intolerance (Passive)

Effects: Max Comfortable Temperature -10 degrees.

Cold Intolerance (Passive)

Effects: Min Comfortable Temperature +10 degrees.

Prideful (Passive)

Effects: When rebuffed, has a 10% chance to go into murderer mental state against the person who rebuffed them.

Blind (Passive)

Effects: Sight capped at 0%.

Mute (Passive)

Effects: Talking capped at 0%.

Deaf (Passive)

Effects: Hearing capped at 0%.

Pain Hypersensitivity (Passive)

Effects: All pain is tripled.

Immunological Disorder (Passive)

Effects: Immunity gain speed reduced by 75%.

Easily Enraged (Passive)

Effects: Pawn will initiate social fights every time they’re slighted.

Always Knows Better (Passive)

Effects: Learning Speed 0%.

Unsure (Passive)

Effects: Weapon warmup speed doubled.

Sickly (Passive)

Effects: Becomes ill very often.

Bloodlust (Passive)

Effects: Upon killing, might enter a berserk mental state (50% chance).

Paranoid (Passive)

Effects: If outside of the Home area, pawn suffers a mood debuff.

Audacious (Passive)

Effects: Pawn cannot be TOLD to do something (right clicking and forcing tasks disabled).

Bigot (Passive)

Effects: Wardening disabled.

Conscientious Objector (Passive)

Effects: Pawn becomes incapable of violence and won’t equip weapons.

Callous (Passive)

Effects: Mood not affected by sight of death, unburied colonists, prisoners sold into slavery, organ harvesting, butchering of humans or friendly chats. Essentially a vanilla psychopath.

Egotistical (Passive)

Effects: Pawn is incapable of all work.

Hypermetabolism (Passive)

Effects: Pawn Hunger drops at 2x the speed.

Psychological Paralysis (Passive)

Effects: Pawn cannot walk.

Hallucinations (Passive)

Effects: Casually enters a silent mental break called ‘Seeing things’, where they will walk around aimlessly, potentially pulling out a weapon and firing once or twice. Such a mental break only lasts a short while and will NOT produce a letter announcing it.

Finicky (Passive)

Effects: Global Work Speed 1/3rd.

Immature (Passive)

Effects: Majority of mental breaks are Tantrums.

Easily Bored (Passive)

Effects: Pawn Recreation drops at 2x the speed.

Lustful (Passive)

Effects: Constantly flirts with others, but Flirts are always rejected. This drops relations with the flirt subjects.

Zealot (Passive)

Effects: Will instantly kill all prisoners.

So that's it for Powers and Weaknesses. We are now working on visual effects for them, as well as fleshing out the new quests and the Ancient soldiers faction.

I can't tell you when the mod will be released, especially because I'm going on holidays in 3 weeks, but I plan to have it out for testing by then.

As always, let me know what you think in the comment section below!