Lizard benefits vastly outscale their drawbacks

This is partly a continuation of the ‘Too many Species are just Human but Better’ discord post. I decided to make a topic here to better incorperate discourse and use the proper channels for this type of discussion. Please feel free to read the discord thread below for more information.

(Discord)

Moving on to my findings on Lizard pro/cons

So i did some testing earlier to see how the differences between lizards and humans are when it gets cold. Comparing this drawback to their buffs:

Lizards start taking cold damage at around 2c.
Humans start taking cold damage at around -14c.
Lizards have a slightly higher body temp than humans so, on paper, they get colder slower. Cold damage seems to scale the colder you are. So since lizards have a higher internal tempature, the base cold damage increases slower than other races. (Im not 100% sure about this but it seemes to be true)

at 246K (-26.7c):
7:00: lizard time to crit due to cold damage.
16:11: human time to crit due to cold damage.

at 206K (-67.15):
4:27: lizard time to crit due to cold damage.
5:20: human time to crit due to cold damage.

In space with an emergency EVA suit:
3:14: lizard time to crit due to cold damage.
3:27: human time to crit due to cold damage.

Realistically when a part of the station gets cold, its due to spacing. When this happens the temperature drops VERY low and everyone will start taking damage, thus the drawback of lizards taking damage at warmer temps is almost negligent.

The time to crit is very forgiving at warmer temperatures. The time to crit is almost similar in extreme cold temperatures.

The drawbacks of lizards taking more cold damage due to spacing is hardly a drawback. It is offset with a single piece of equipment, one injection/pill of cold medicine, or by walking to a warmer part of the station. In extreme cold situatiuons such as full spacing, lizards crit 13 seconds quicker than humans. That is about 6% faster.

Cold damage is one of the rarest forms of damage when it comes to PvP.
Heat damage is one of the more common forms of damage when it comes to PvP. Lasers, explosions, hot air temps due to fires.

The heat resistance by itself is more beneficial than the drawbacks due to cold damage.

Lizards also have:

  • Better melee
  • The ability to get free food/hydration by drinking blood/slime or by eating raw meat, critters, or gibs
  • The ability to drag something without using a hand. This is a HUGE buff now due to guns needed to be wielded. The ability to drag something while wielding a gun now is a large advantage over other species. (think about dragging a locker behind you to block bullets, or the ability to drag a body while still remaining at full combat effectiveness.)

Looking at this comparison I believe that the benefits of lizards vastly outweigh their drawbacks. Please feel free to correct me on anything or leave your thoughts and comments.

Edit: I was mistaken about the slime. Every race can drink slime to replish hunger, not just lizards.

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Removed discord

Actually, everyone can drink slime just fine. Slimes are station designated emergency rations and were even used as part of medical mixes before limited chem change because of this to offset The Doctors Delight penalties.

One of the main characters I play is a Lizard (not for powergame reasons, but because I think they’re cool).

I’d not be against making the Lizard cold temperature vulnerability much harsher especially considering how easy it is to get access to winter coats.

Also wouldn’t be against removing tail pulling. It seems like a cool gimmick but it allows Lizard players to get around a lot of hand management that other species can’t for the sake of a gimmick.

No reason to remove tail pulling, just give hands free pulling to everyone, “realism” be damned, that alone would make the game more fluid for all races and put lizard into a relatively balanced state without much further issues or balancing.

There are only two small cons to giving hands-free pulling to everyone: 1. “It’s not realistic” and 2. Lizard uniqueness

Other than these two complaints there’s absolutely nothing wrong with making pulling hands-free and would legitimately just be a inventory management quality of life change with the added benefit of once and for all balancing lizard to a perfectly reasonable state as a side-grade to humans. Non-hands-free pulling does not add anything of value to the game other than on rare occasions annoying players usually in niche combat situations.

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I honestly think that making pulling hands-free for all species like how ss13 does it would be vastly more fun in the long-term. Especially because “it’s not realistic” is a non issue considering i’m pretty sure you can pull a crate with your hands full as long as you can dig your fingers somewhere. Lizards would still maintain their raw-meat abilities and their better melee.

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Tail dragging isn’t the issue, being able to drag LUBED items and lockers being bullet sponges are the reason why this mechanic can be a problem.

I also believe the cold damage on lizards should be way more severe, i can just wear a hardsuit and/or winter clothes the moment i start the shift and this “nerf” is now gone while still keeping all the other lizard traits.

I don’t know how feasible it is to code this, but what if lizards were truly cold blooded, with slowdowns based on lower temperatures? I know a few SS13 servers had this, though it was spaghetti code (what wasn’t, though). The way it worked was insulation slowed down your temperature loss, but wouldn’t provide you additional warmth, and hardsuits basically just froze your temperature where it was, so if you were dying of heat, you would remain in that state.

Lizards don’t really have a “better” melee, as unlike other melees, you can’t actually break windows with it. Its better on paper, but people don’t really crit people with their hands, they will use literally anything else. The main use of an attack with nothing in your hands is generally to break a window when you’ve been put in jail. Even if you are going to jump the warden in perma, you are better off making a shiv or a bat as they are easy to make. There is no use case where an unarmed attack from any race is of benefit versus picking up or using an item.

I think part of the reason cold doesn’t feel that impactful on lizards is that there is no weapon or reagents that actually do cold. Like, you can exploit a moth or a slime or a diona’s weakness. You can’t really intentionally exploit a lizard’s. Screwing up atmos is the only way, but it effects everyone to the point it doesn’t matter really.

Chemical damage does not care about resistances. Everyone will take same damage from poisons which is why its possible to permakill+poison zombies by infecting them with romerol, give them 200 rads and so on.

Sci would need some kind of freeze ray or something.

Lizards don’t really have a “better” melee, as unlike other melees you can’t actually break windows with it.

I kinda consider that more of a bug/inconsistency(I don’t think unarmed melees of any type should do structural damage but it’s a matter of making the warden do his job), but other than that lizard melee is slightly better as when it comes to fighting qudzu and plant anoms without the need for a welder or other tool

I’ve always thought Svalinns should do freeze damage because its literally named after a shield that protects the world from the sun’s heat. Also, giving them a blue effect would make things better for readability, as everyone would know the crew was being armed up with Svalinns when one was shot rather than not know if someone has the cap’s laser gun or whatever.

closed due to content freeze :confused:

I personally think they should be weaker to cold and keep the tail pulling to reptiles. That cold blooded idea is a good one tbh

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Species balancing will generally always have arguments around it, personally I would rather have cosmetic species over unique mechanics, while I see the appeal of unique mechanics and advantages and drawbacks, many times it feels like it ends in a powercreep where whatever is considered the default base species ends up being underpowered compared to other options.

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