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- Napoleon 38m
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And 22 more hiding and/or disguised

Drug Usage and Overdose Updates
Things are a little more clear and fair now

We've made some changes to the way drugs work both in and out of combat.

1. If you take a drug in combat you will lose two combat rounds (IE: you will not attack during that time), this is to simulate the fact that you are not attacking because you are literally stopping to take a drug.

2. There is a MESSAGE that shows the person backing off and taking a drug, specifically during combat.

3. Drugs have long had a 'overdose amount' where we defined how much a person could take before they start ODing. It wasn't used. We now use the amount of time the drug lasts + the amount of time the drugs after effects last, as the timebox for a 'usage'. If you have more 'usages' than 'overdose_amount' you OD. Toxin binders will still save you from OD.

There are some additional changes in the immediate pipeline, which Cerberus is working on and he will make a post here later to update you all.

-- S

There is some new messaging on drugs as well, you will prepare to take the drug, and this will be visible, then there will be a pause, the length of which depends on the drug, and then you will take the drug.
OD amount is different for everyone or is it uniform?
Does drug usage require wielding the drug and can it be disarmed/wrested to interrupt said usage?
For drugs with a longer than average consume time, if you freehands, or are disarmed or hand the drug to someone else-- you will not consume it.

So technically speaking if someone starts trying to take a combat drug you will have the option of trying to prevent them in ways that would work in the real world-- taking it from them or grappling them.

As such I've reduced the combat round penalty to 1.

Drug usage always requires you are holding it. If you know of drugs that this isn't the case for, xhelp and let Cerb or I know.
Overdosing is both different for everyone AND uniform.

There is a MAXIMUM CAP to the amount of a specific drug you can take during a period of time (as I stated above). No matter who you are, without toxin binders you will trigger an OD if you hit that cap. It's different for every drug.

There is also a variable overdose, which is dependent on your stats and them dropping to dangerous levels because of the adverse effects of a drug. That is different for everyone because everyones stats are different.

I would love scrapping the flashboost in favor of a cybernetic combat drug delivery system that could be loaded with various drugs in "slots" seems like it would accomodate this change and the drug system in place much better.
Phase 1 of Drugs 3.0 - THE STATS

These are some VERY significant changes, the drugs you think you know have been refuckulated to provide specific experiences in regards to their effects and after effects to your @stats.

RECREATIONAL DRUGS -

***********IMPORTANT**********

RECREATIONAL DRUGS DO NOT HELP YOU BEAT SEVEN ECKS IN SWORDS.

Th2-c, HP-2, Humbolt - Very much just weed products that alter your mind, outlook on the world, and charismatic disposition.

Lna-3z and Na-3z - Very much just acid products that alter your mind, outlook on the world, and charismatic disposition

Jackel and MRc - Marcy is what you take when you wanna laser focus on technical shit, and be charismatic while doing it, also seems to improve your outlook on the world in the process. Jackel is a mellowed out dose of MRc thanks to the addition of max-chill weed.

MEDICINAL DRUGS -

**********IMPORTANT***********

MEDICINAL DRUGS DO NOT MAKE YOU BETTER AT SWORDS THAN SEVEN ECKS

Endoprine is a fucking pain killer, it slows you down and toughens you up.

Dezraldin is a fucking anti-depressant, it slows you down and makes you more cheerful and hate the world less.

Nevadone is just adderall you laser-focused, twitchy junkie.

EverUp and SoberUp now make you slightly grumpy from use.

COMBAT STIMULANTS -

******* IMPORTANT **********

COMBAT STIMULANTS MAY MAKE YOU FASTER THAN SEVEN ECKS.

Ex-D7 - HULK SMASH, but hulk is sluggish and runs out of stamina faster.

V-202 - Muthafuckas was fast as lightning, but no longer as fast as lightning and as strong as the hulk, because that was dumb and there was never a need to use the other combat stims.

******* - it's rare, I won't tell you what its called cause it's rare. Get rekt.

I am going to be reviewing potency, overdose_amounts and such later tonight and making more adjustments after I get organized around the other props on the objects.

More to come. No code changes though, this is all done without any new symptoms, withdrawals, use scripts, etc.

I am looking into adding a drug delivery cybernetic item for a cybernetic limb module. Also a lower tech and less useful combat clothing type of object that needs to be manually reloaded.
All of this rules and thank you for it!
+1 for more Cerberus explaining things posts. Way to make change fun. :)
Nothing to add really, this is just pretty badass.
We will continue to make changes to this code and to the properties of drugs. Please, please, xhelp if you encounter something wonky. You might be told to @bug it, but it might also help us diagnose crazy shit that is happening!
What's the difference between the new overdose vs the old overdose mechanics? The old mechanics seemed just fine in my opinion and experience with drugs. Are overdoses now more frequent?
I like this update - especially now that they're classed and so on. Pretty great, will xhelp if I see anything worth @bugging.
Villa the difference is that someone with high stats can now overdose if they take a high amount of a drug all at once, despite it not lowering their stats to a dangerous level.

Od won't kill you most times. You just get really sick. But taking another hit when oding may kill you.

Yes, you'll overdose more often if you take a lot of drugs all at once before the drug has had time to completely elapse.

You know when you're good to take more when your stats are back to normal, it's an obvious indicator.

We did it this way because sometimes it's easier to OD on a shittier grade of drug than a higher quality one, in real life anyway.

So one thing will happen, you will either OD from your stats dropping, or you will OD from overuse within the amount of time the drug is affecting your system.

Two possibilities, covers both high grade and low grade drug use.

Ex-D7 has been updated to reflect it's new effectiveness in combat and is now as valuable and common as V-202 is.

I don't think there's any other drugs that need significant adjustments, but feel free to point any oddities out.

Further updates to this: drug effects no longer stack in the same way. If you take a hit and take another hit, you aren't getting 2x the drugs in your system until the first runs out. You're getting 1.5x the drugs, for the entire length of the second hit. If right before that wears off you take a third, you're getting something like 1.75x the drugs in your system for the entire length of the last hit.

This change allows you to string out your drug usage in interesting ways such that you can have a more consistent drug experience. You won't be able to get jacked up so high you can take on the Red Ike, at least not without mixing and matching, but that's a good thing. And the stacking based on drugs in your system, means you can extend the higher effects of stacking the drugs far longer than you could before with the same amount.

Without getting into specifics, I'd like to suggest that the comedown effect of Endoprine be shortened to match the duration of the high.
Also: Cool changes! I was thinking about this sort of thing not that long ago. Drugs are great but just dumping massive amounts of one single kind and never really needing anything else seems kind of boring.
I am actually going to re-balance all the after_effects and effect durations right now. I've been meaning to do it but haven't had the time.
Temporary effects. These effects are set on your character for things like drug effects and drug after effects (as well as your clothing if it's nice or shitty or a disguise).

The issue is that these things typically expire, like take some v-202 and 3 min later the effects expire. But we can't check every characters temp effects every second. It's not tenable so we only check it when the stats are rolled. It results in the same thing, expired effects are pruned, and non expired effects are applied. Much more efficient.

The problem I found was that after effects on drugs do not get applied until the temp effect for the drug expires and if say, you take v-202 and it lasts 3 min but you idle and no stat checks are done, then an hour later you type @stats, you only THEN trigger the after effects of the drug because only then does the system know the drug expired.

This was obviously not a huge issue since it took me looking over the code to realize it, along with Cerberus pointing out some wonky behavior. However, it was annoying. It's been fixed. We now pro rate the time of after effects on drugs based on the time the drug was supposed to expire (not the time we actually checked for expiration). So, this basically means the system should work as you expect it, and remove the couple of weird times drug after effects might have stuck around longer than you would have expected.

-- S

Weed benefits now give you a reasonable length of high, and the after effects last half as long, provided you don't extend the benefit timer by continuing to smoke.

Includes TH-2c, HP-2, Humbolt and Jackel pipes.

MRc has been modified to not have an after_effect elapse time of 85 freakin' seconds. They now last half as long as the benefits last, provided you don't extend the benefit timer by continuing to snort.

Acid benefits have been modified to have matching timers, and the after_effects now last nearly three times longer than previously. As like with any other drug, you can extend the benefit timer by continual use.

Includes NA-3z and LnA-3z

Medicinal drugs now all last the same amount of time, and the after_effects are a third longer than the length of the benefits, provided you don't continue to ingest the drug and prolong the benefit timer.

Includes Endoprine, Dezraldin, Nevadone.

I've also added effect timers and after_effect timers to SoberUp and EverUp cause they make you a bit cranky now.

Combat Stimulants have had their after_effect length increased by approximately 20% to add a bit more risk to the reward of utilizing these drugs in combat. Again, you can extend the benefit timer by ingesting more before the after_effects kick in.

Includes *****, V-202, and Ex-D7

You may have noticed I repeated myself four times about extending the benefits of the drug. It's because this is something I don't want to explain a hundred different times. Four is fine, a hundred is not.

Good luck.

Also, something I'm not sure we have previously called out, a BIG CHANGE:

Taking another hit of a drug clears the after effects of that drug. If you are coming down hard from 3 hits of V-202 and your stats have been butchered... the way to fix that is to TAKE ANOTHER HIT.

Lighting a smokeable drug no longer applies the stat effects for free. It now follows the same rules as smoking the drug after it's lit.

Sorry folks, can't game the system for free weed stats now.

Having tested this a few times, I'm finding that v-202 specifically seems difficult to use for its intended purpose due to the combination of its ingestion time, negative effects, after_effects, and mostly the short duration of the high. You basically have to know exactly where your target is, shoot up right outside, then run up on them immediately afterwards. There are drawbacks even if this goes well, and if you flub it you're -really- in hot water. On top of that, the effect of the high itself doesn't seem powerful enough to justify the drawbacks.

Yes, you can re-dose, but that takes time and when fights are decided in seconds at the upper end that's really rough.

Disclaimer: I can't see the actual math so it may be much more effective than I think it is, but there's my two cents and a suggestion that the duration of the high be a bit longer.

I'd like to also comment in support of Vera's post.

I have not experimented with Exy to any significant degree, so I don't want to comment, but I think that Vee certainly needs to be looked at and revisited.

The round penalty for using these in combat is absolutely brutal, and if it is expected that you use it once, or even twice due to the duration of combat, then the expectation of using a stimulant to enhance your combat experience is inverted- you wind up losing too many rounds to the point that winning would be the exception, not the expectation for using something designed to try and tilt the fight in your favor.

I think the challenges with combat stims fall into two categories that really prevent them from seeing use as often as I would expect them to be used ICly, especially given the constant ganger demand for these things.

1) The duration on these stims is simply too short. It might be edge case fine in one on one use cases that wind up being a stomp for one party, but if we're talking street fights with mobs of dirty gangers throwing elbows at each other, these fights tend to last on the order of minutes- or longer, if backup arrives. Gangers shooting up bathtub brew vee and five year over date exy to me, seems like the primary use case for combat stims in the first place.

2) In my experience, the more skilled and (and to a degree, geared) the fighters are on either side, the longer the combat tends to extend out. There could be numerous reasons for this, but generally speaking, in melee combat, which I have the most experience in, blocking and parrying tends to really drag the fights out if it's a fairly even fight. And again- I think this is another use case for people who might want to use combat stims in the first place, given the downsides present. If you know your rival is neck in neck with you in a fight, I think it likely that players might seek every advantage they can get, be it hiring other people, calling in backup, getting better loot, or searching for drugs to tip the balance.

TLDR; I'd suggest bumping combat stims up to last at least four or five minutes, in which case you're likely to start coming down either mid-fight, or in post fight-RP/activities, leaving you vulnerable, or requiring another hit of whatever it is you took. As of right now, even when attempting to use stims for their intended use, the clear downsides to them simply do not match up to their benefits.

Something to consider here would be drug auto injection cyberware to handle all of these penalties.

There is also a good point made here about who typically uses combat drugs that I really didn’t notice until now.

I’m gonna use myself as an example here. I had s max ue combat monkey with the best weapon in its class, best armor, top cyber/nano build, blah blah blah. I once walked into a situation where everyone realized they needed drugs to take me down. They lost so many turns putting their weapons away, taking out the drugs, prepping them using them, getting their shit back out, that I took like 2 hits before they were both dead. At that moment I was like damn I better do combat drugs a room over before rushing to a fight or not fuck with them at all.

V-202 and Ex-D7 now last 3x as long. Should make them easier to use in preparation for a fight, raid, gang battle, etc. Keep in mind you can still OD from taking too much at the same time.