anoobindisguise
commented
1 year ago I agree with this heavily. Rubik's dialogue in particular is super hard to mimic and Erk doesn't have enough time to maintain it. It could be worthwhile toning it down somewhat so that Rubik uses some odd phrases and archaic meanings of words but don't lean in quite so heavily into the "you need above average intelligence to immediately get what Rubik is saying" bit. Even if the original Exodii group is mostly Slavic based on the "Mavrik 10-101 power core" description surely there should be a way to communicate with them. (Though that would require them to exist first) Exodii being almost entirely total conversion borgs like Adam Smasher also limits the number of creative influences the Exodii can draw from. Most cyborgs in existing media are still recognizably human, and the middle ground arguably leads to a greater sense of body horror than an entirely robot body with a human brain piloting it. (I think that cybernetics should lean into body horror heavily! It's one of the coolest parts of mutations). Only the oldest and most long-surviving Exodii should be full conversions as their human parts eventually broke down and failed on them over the decades. Rubik could potentially be one of those, but it should be clear that the rank and file Exodii are just people with a lot of implants. That would also explain why they bother to scoop up bronze armor suits and whatnot, because they personally can make use of them, rather than banking on them being good trade fodder for their next dimension. Also, Exodii being mostly human isn't incompatible with the "you need implants to survive the jump to a new dimension" bit. The Nether operates on a lot of psychic fuckery and it's not unreasonable to say "you need an implant to keep your self focused during the jump otherwise your psyche will shatter". That said, it's not even necessary that we need to keep that part of the lore. It would be good to try and get some finer numbers about how many Exodii there are on planet Earth. Is it such that there are multiple nodes who jumped per country or is Rubik's group the only one on Earth? Are there 100s, 1000s of members? How many zomborgs should there be? Do zomborgs come from their feral-powered drones dying, or was it a portal accident? There should be a better answer for the existence of Zomborgs than "it's from Exodii who didn't make the jump" because otherwise like you say the Exodii would just cease to exist from attrition alone.
fairyarmadillo
lcy03406
I-am-Erk
kilozombie
github-actions[bot]
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
The Exodii were introduced a couple years ago to try to and migrate cybernetics away from XEDRA and labs. While many (myself included) enjoyed the old system, I can get behind the idea that different character progression systems should be in different places. But in the years since their release, very little content has been developed for the faction, and this has left bionics in a super awkward place where you get 99% of them by selling cocaine to a single NPC with no risk or effort involved.
I've considered adding content to the faction, but I always hit a wall creatively when I try to get going. Here are a list of things about them that I feel don't currently make as much sense as they could:
Implants: Exodii are depicted as being made mostly of metal with just a few human parts in them, like General Grievous from Star Wars. They have sort of ship of Theseus'd themselves into reverse cyborgs, that is, robots with a few human parts. This is supported by the following descriptions:
Exodii Worker: A mostly humanoid robot equipped with various construction tools. Zomborg: A mix of dead human and even deader technology, this twisted mess of steel and flesh moves like a puppet in the hands of an angry toddler. Its robotic components seem to have shut down, and new bands of flesh have wrapped around them, tugging and pulling them in awkward directions. Bits of metallic skeleton and armor plating jut from its decaying flesh.
This is because their dimension hopping technology can only take a small amount of organic material. I find this explanation a little unsatisfying, and it also causes several problems.
1) Most of the CBMs in the game are small implants designed to interface with an organic human body. The Exodii would have little use for these items, as they don't have human bodies. Why would Rubik have an integrated toolset, bionic claws, shotgun arm, fingerpick, finger lighter, etc. when he and his friends do not have human arms? This isn't just down to replacement limbs either. Many of the other CBMs, like carbon filament, cranial flashlight, muscle augmentation, wired reflexes, etc. are clearly intended for human bodies. Rubik doesn't need a cranial flashlight CBM, he can just bolt a headlamp to his skullplate or whatever he has. CBM technology seems both orthogonal to and redundant with brain-in-a-jar technology.
Now, you could argue that they used to use these things, and now only manufacture them for trade, but that doesn't jive with the fact that dissecting zomborgs is meant to be one of the primary ways that the player can find new CBMs. I also don't see why they'd go to the enormous trouble of maintaining a surgical suite capable of implanting these CBMs into mostly-meat humans.
2) The Exodii sell a lot of clothing, or blueprints to make clothing, which they have no apparent use for. Why does the nomad gear have climate control, when that's already a CBM? Why wouldn't the robots just have coolant pods or something? Why is a robot even wearing clothes? They would just get in the way.
Personalities and Language: Rubik is the only point of contact, and he barely speaks English. There's no possible way to learn the Exodii language, which I assume is some kind of alternate-earth Slavic language. This creates a barrier for contributors as it's very difficult to write Rubik's dialog and anything you submit has to get approval from I-am-Erk. It shrinks the player's ability to interact with this faction down to a single guy and you can't write any characters with dissenting opinions, under-the-table deals, or anything else. This isn't an insurmountable issue, but I think it's a large part of why we haven't seen more content for what should be an exciting newish faction for contributors to mess with.
Hub 01, for instance, has the intercom guy, it has the ancilla bar, it has the mercenary in the front office, it has the merchants that pile into the back, and while the interior characters aren't currently interactable, they are slated to play a larger role. The refugee center has the beggars (who are themselves a diverse group with varied opinions), the guards, Smokes, the doctor, the trucker, the refugees which have names and quests and provide services etc. The Exodii have Rubik and Luliya, who can't even talk to the player.
Another issue here is that the Exodii are written as good guys. They might be isolationist, but if Rubik is representative of the whole (and he has to be, being the only point of contact), then they are good-natured salt-of-the-earth people who have sympathy for the people of the worlds they visit and other than the quadruped thing, don't ever commit any morally questionable actions. Contrast this with Hub-01, the Old Guard, and the Refugee Center, who are all very jealously guarding what little they have and can come off as huge assholes, even though they're also just trying to survive.
Made-up technology: The Exodii being from another world and have alternate earth tech, which means that aside from their guns, all of their stuff has to be thingamajigs and whatchamacallits with no actual function. This turns what should be high-value interesting items into cruft and set-dressing. This wasn't as much of a problem with XEDRA lab stuff, because much of it either did have a function, or could be readily understood by the player, or could be deconstructed for useful items.
It's a small faction: XEDRA was a nationwide conspiracy involving tens if not hundreds of thousands of workers who were partially integrated with government and corporate structures, giving them a robust footprint in the world. There are obviously way too many labs in each overmap tile currently, but it makes a sort of sense that you can find a subway lab, a TCL, and a central lab in the same state or even county. This organization is to blame for much of what has happened in the world and there was a large-scale gold rush underway to try to capitalize on the new scientific discoveries they'd made.
The Exodii, on the other hand, appear to be like, a couple dozen or maybe a couple hundred people who live in a single fortress. It does not make sense that there are zomborgs scattered across the countryside. If they're losing this many people every time they jump, then how are they still alive at all? Rubik makes no mention of this sort of huge attrition, and seems reluctant to even mention the possibility that people could join. There's also no evidence that any of the Exodii we see are other than the original stock of guys from Russia-2 or whatever their home country is called.
This means that it's pretty unlikely that the player would run into Exodii stuff other than their main fortress, and this is especially problematic when thinking of new areas to place zomborgs. For instance, I've thought of making a location that was a separate Exodii fortress that fell to the Blob and needs to be cleared out so Rubik's guys can salvage its dimensional tech, but in approaching this I immediately ran into the idea that if the faction is shrinking this quickly, then they wouldn't be nearly as successful as they appear.
Solution you would like.
Implants: I think it would be best to reflavor the Exodii as humans who extensively use bionics, and may in some cases have become unrecognizable, but are not a society composed entirely of General Grievouses. The "we can't bring a lot of organic matter" explanation has always been an extremely shaky one, and I don't think it's necessary to justify the faction's existence. If the goal is to make them difficult to join up with, then they can simply be suspicious of outsiders because they know how insidious blob psychosis can be, and they don't know the player from a Hell's Raider.
This is alternate-earth Euro-XEDRA after all. These guys are at least partly composed of government spooks and higher-ups that probably have plenty of experience keeping the public at arm's length.
This solves the twin problem of CBMs and gear not making sense for the faction. If they have members who still have their original skin and limbs, then of course those people would be wearing cyberpunk bodysuits and riddled with small implants. Consider 40k's Mechanicus, many of whom still appear to be largely human, though they have the ability to replace nearly all of their flesh if the need arises.
Personalities and Language: This could be solved with language-learning via the proficiency system, which could open the faction up a lot more to the player. This could also be a part of integrating with the faction in the hopes of someday leaving this Earth with them. As for their morality, it's fine if the Exodii are fundamentally decent people, but it'd be nice to see some more shades of gray, and more NPCs would help with that.
Made-up technology: I get that to some extent this is necessary, but it'd be nice if the player could eventually learn to do things with these items. Modifying or repairing CBMs is the first and most obvious use, but they also have a lot of devices that appear to be used for power generation or storage that might be fun for the player to play with, and could stand-in for some of the now-obsoleted atomic and other super-science items.
It's a small faction: I think this is a place where the faction has been written into a corner. They're aliens, and even rarer than the mi-go. It's extremely hard to justify adding locations for them unless you want to say that 90% of their people die every time they jump, in which case why would they bother?
I suppose one option might be to write in that the faction used to be thousands strong and normally the jumps go smoothly, but this time a catastrophe has struck and the majority of them were lost. This could put the player in a position to try to raid large zomborg sites and recover tech either for the Exodii or Hub-01, and would put the Exodii in a mood to do some recruiting.
Describe alternatives you have considered.
Exodii appear to be networked via what they call the Great Grey. They use this in lieu of AI technology. It would be interesting if this had a negative effect on their humanity/individuality, especially if the player was ever given even partial access to this network. Imagine if a coprocessor for example gave an additional +1 int while in radio range of the Exodii base or one of its relays.
Now imagine this is how the martial arts CBM works, or CBMs that give you access to skills or recipes you don't normally possess - you're drawing on the collective knowledge of the community, but carving out parts of your brain to do so. Some of the more drastic CBMs could even penalize you if you were outside of radio range as your ability to think for yourself was diminished. This would create a stark contrast between a collectivist faction and the Hell's Raiders, who seem to be more individualist.
Additional context
No response