Ight so I took a little time to put together my thoughts, so hopefully I can write them down in a coherent manner. I apologize if I explained things weirdly or without much sense.
Many of the things raised in the summary are severely overcomplicating what actually needs to be done. Personally I enjoy species as they are right now, so I’ll address few points raised there.
Playable species do not need to be unique, they just need to look different.
While this is an interesting way to view the situation, this is not a good idea. Currently the main points behind people choosing certain species (to my knowledge) is for the looks, however species having their unique interactions and gameplay implications add a lot of depth and make the game more interesting, even if minor. Can you imagine a moth able to eat regular food? Or a lizard without a tail pull? Having everything be purely cosmetic gets rid of interesting gameplay depth.
This may lead to species bloat.
Personally, I do not believe such thing as species bloat exists. Making a species is a lot of effort and has plenty implications for the game itself.
Another point was raised that this may lead to elves who are just humans with long ears, or dwarves who are short humans. But things like this can be made simply into either a trait (ex. “Short” trait) or a marking (ex. “Long ears”). Wanting to play a human with long ears should not warrant making whole new species, and as such, if we have some guidelines, keeping species different enough should definitely be a point in the design doc.
Species should be allowed to have niche abilities as long as the combat balance is not horribly destroyed.
I definitely agree with this. As I said above, some niche abilities is what makes species have gameplay depth, HOWEVER adding said depth should not be something that ruins the balance of the game, or makes another aspect of the game pointless. If any abilities are added they should be something universal and not tied to anything specific that would benefit one department more than another.
Look at it from this perspective. Let’s say we add Vulpkanins with the sniffing ability but centered around forensics (as that was a popular point while talking about a sniff ability). What does it lead to?
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Security officers who wonna do their job will likely pick Vulps for an easier time doing their job.
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Leads to a more or less useless ability as nobody else makes use of forensics, meaning it is useful only for security.
What about some scorpion species? Let’s say their ability is injecting people with their tail like a hypopen.
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Everyone in medical now uses that species as it has something that makes syringes useless
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This absolutely destroys balance, as we all know instant injections are overpowered.
Now let’s look at some examples we currently have.
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Lizards are able to pull an object without using a hand for it. While it is a strong ability, it is not neccessarily one that destroys balance. It adds a niche but useful interaction that species would have.
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Slimes have an extra storage they can use. Having additional inventory slots is always useful, but by no means is it gamebreaking, it serves to give them some unique identity.
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Vox regenerate poison very easily. While this is more of an accessibility thing due to their oxygen poisoning, this is also something that grants them a unique interaction that adds interesting depth to their gameplay, while not being directly beneficial to any specific job or department.
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All species have their niche damage reductions or weaknesses. Personally I have not seen them define how species are played, but they still are a very interesting thing that should be kept in mind.
Abilities with downsides are forced even though people want to play that species just for the looks.
I do not see this as a bad thing. Some gameplay variety is definitely interesting between species, which I believe I already explained why it is a good idea.
Give people the ability to toggle species abilities on or off. Basically traits
No. If this was to be a thing, it needs to be more universal if anything. As it was pointed out, what would stop people from choosing simply the best ones? And if we make some sort of point-buy that leads to a positive trait system. And then what stops people from simply choosing the best upsides but very minor downsides? The point about this turning it into Project Zomboid is a very good one.
Custom species names
Now, this sounds very good on paper. But there are many systems in the game that would simply not work well with this.
One of the most important systems we use, namely identities, is based around your gender and species. Even if you conceal your identity being examined will still say things such as “She is a young human.”.
Now… What if we get custom species? “He is a young folf.”. Now this might not be innately bad, but consider this, how many people with such species are on the station? What stops security from immediately knowing it is you simply cause you are the only person with that custom species? Nothing. This would be metagamed terribly and is not worth allowing someone to simply pick a species their OCs are as it would lead to worse gameplay experience, as well as being confusing for everyone else.
Species that have custom mechanics should have exclusive immediately visually identifiable features.
Personally I see nothing wrong with this. But this may lead to questions like “How visually different should this species be? How do we show a specific mechanic through the looks of this species?”. If we have this as a requirement it should be a more soft one than a hard one, because it leads to more general confusion during development.
In other conversations, a sub-species system was mentioned
Subspecies is a good idea. But I think things that make subspecies can be simply made into traits and markings. A dwarf could be a “Short” human with an applied accent. An elf could be “Tall” with a pointy ear marking. There is really no need to make “subspecies” for such minor differances.
As Slarti said, if we take an idea like this further it will need some hard requirements, but personally I think traits/markings is the way to go instead.