Slightly expanding character customization

[Argus the Manticore]

I think the customization at the beginning of the game is pretty well thought-out, with the whole 'rich man's designer baby' thing, but it always bothered me that you start the game fully grown, an adult, with several years of experience in the work force... and not a single mod. It's only after you start the quest that your character suddenly wants to start modding themself. This made sense in CoC, as transformatives simply didnt exist in your world, but in TiTS, mods are everywhere.

I'd like if there was one more choice screen before the bit with Victor's will and Celise's recruitment where you're given the amount of credits you made throughout your pre-spacer career and a list of purchasable mods.

Would not contain:
Mods exclusively dropped by enemies (ex. Zil Rations, Korgonne Snax)
Mods exclusive to planets Steele hasn't been (ex. the Treatment, Huskar Treats)
Contraband (ex. Throbb)
Temporary effects (ex. Condensol)
Non-item TFs (e.x. Buttsluttinator, Cunt Snake)

Would contain:
Vending machine items (ex. Twink Ease, Amazona)
Most mod vendor items (ex. Estrobloom, Galo-Max, Leitha Charm)
Some other vendor items (ex. Hornitol, Pickment)

You would have a limited, but probably sizable amount of money you can use. Enough to get started, but not perfect.

The UI would be simple, displaying your stats plainly. Since you're not really playing as Steele yet, there wouldn't be the paragraphs of descriptions there usually are, just a simple list of aspects of your appearance, with maybe the affected parts showing up in red for clarity, or something like that.

It'd be possible to O.D. on the mods that have that sort of effect, like Twink Ease and Amazona.

Stat-changes should probably take effect from mods that give them, like Horse Pills.

I think that's about it for my idea. I hope you like it. It would make early game more enjoyable, in my opinion, since I really get off on being a femboy/amazon, and until I reach that point, the game just isn't as fun. You know what I mean?

 

[Chaotic Neutral Taco]

That seems sort of fair, and I kind of like that idea. Maybe if you start off pampered, you could have a bit more money, but it doesn't affect your starting credits in anyway, of course.

EDIT: It could also change a little based on your class though. Like the smuggler gets access to contraband or Sera's TFs, and maybe Merc's get a little extra starting money. Something like that would be pretty cool.

 

[valk42]

Probs should only be gender and color mods or hyper-specifics like knot-a-problem. I am not a big TF fan but this is literally a TF game, y'know?

 

[Argus the Manticore]

Probs should only be gender and color mods or hyper-specifics like knot-a-problem. I am not a big TF fan but this is literally a TF game, y'know?

I see what you mean. So more like shape and color, but leave out species or genitalia changing TFs? I do like that idea, but what would the in-universe explanation be?

 

[Crablord]

it makes sense

 

[Theron]

The thing I see is you don't have your enhanced immune system yet. That would leave you more susceptible to Taint (which is what killed Victor Steele 'early'), and is what causes the TFs from alien food (Zil Rations/Ruskvel/Korgonne Snacks etc.)

 

[Kesil]

Taint (which is what killed Victor Steele 'early')

Vic died of DNA breakdown after decades of mutations.

 

[Argus the Manticore]

The thing I see is you don't have your enhanced immune system yet. That would leave you more susceptible to Taint (which is what killed Victor Steele 'early'), and is what causes the TFs from alien food (Zil Rations/Ruskvel/Korgonne Snacks etc.)

That's a really good point, and supports what I and Valkyr said, too.

 

[Theron]

Vic died of DNA breakdown after decades of mutations.

Exactly. That's what Taint is.

Victor Steele notably survived near record levels of taint, though cutting-edge medical treatments helped him to keep his symptoms to a minimum...

What could have killed him? He always seemed so big and imposing. Even when his back was bent by age, he still had vital energy about him, seeming as busy as a man a tenth of his age. You don’t know why anti-agathic treatments stopped working on him. Worse, he aged far more rapidly than he should have, losing his youth in a short decade.

 

[Kesil]

From the wiki: "He was mutated several times, both voluntarily and not, which over time caused the breakdown of his DNA to the extent that not even the youth-preserving treatments he regularly purchased could keep him alive forever."
Taint wasn't in the game until very recently and I'm not sure all TFs happened to bear Taint (even if non-refined TFs and rudimentary nanomachines were more prevalent in his time). And Vic... didn't survive anything.

 

[Theron]

“Anyhow, the immune boosters. Those micro-scale bots will reproduce in your body and safeguard it from some of the worst the universe can throw at you. They aren’t perfect, and more benign infections might slip through, but they’ll keep you from catching rot lung from a Trinerian. A word of caution: they’ll help you digest things that would normally be impossible for a human, but they’ll splice you to do it. You eat the wrong native foods, and you’ll wind up looking like a native. You might even start to feel like one, mentally. I’m told it’s like forced, convergent evolution. Point is, it isn’t perfect. Relying on it too often will build up too much Taint in your system, and you’re better off avoiding that.”
“Read up on it in your Codex if you haven’t already. I don’t want you winding up like me. You’re a good kid, and if you play your cards right, you’ll get to live three times as long.”

“Taint” is a slang term for a measure of the corruption of one’s genetic code (and/or microsurgeon subsystems).

It may not have been in the game until recently, but it is in the title, so I'm pretty sure it's meant to be retroactive. "Near record levels of taint" means he was tainted. And he lasted a lot longer than the vast majority of people who reached that level of taint, thanks to a ridiculous level of wealth, hence 'survived', even if it got him eventually.

 

[Evil]

The microsurgeons started being developed after Victor realised he was dying from genetic breakdown. It doesn't matter if he was taking various transformatives, the point is that he was doing it for 200 years, to the point where he wasn't sure if he was human anymore. The microsurgeons are a safety measure, pretty much made so you don't suffer the same fate as Victor.

But its all beside the point.

At the start of the game, Captain Steele is the child of Victor Steele and (to us) an anonymous woman. They can be human or half alien. But they've also only just become an adult, having just embarked on their chosen profession when they got word that Victor has passed away. It could be a case that transformatives are only available for sale to adults, or possibly in rare circumstances. Which doesn't fit with Captain Steele. They are literally a designer baby. There are no conditions that could be remedied by using a TF, no physical failings that could be fixed, because Victor had you designed when you were still in the womb.

Remember that in the game, there are characters who have had to work themselves ragged to get the bodies they wanted; Aina, Reaha, Sera are examples that spring to mind. They are prohibitively expensive, and while I imagine that Victor made sure their last child wanted for nothing, regardless of background, they probably would have restricted or maybe even banned their child from taking them.

TL;DR, I don't see the point in expanding the character customisation when you basically have a blank canvas to work on from the very beginning anyway.

 

[Theron]

Most communications were done via written messages, until even those became scarce.
You had assumed it to be a consequence of your different schedules and busy work lives, then...

The news of his death arrived in a brief missive, containing an invitation to a funeral as well as a travel voucher to get you there. You quit your job on the spot.

At the very least, you had a job to quit. Smugglers reminisce about an old job when encountering the Rocket Turrets on Tarkus.

At the risk of over-analyzing: it does seem kind of odd you'd only have 500 (or 1000) credits to your name at the start. What is minimum wage in this universe?
Doing some non-TF price comparisons, the cheapest drink seems to be 1 credit (Burt's Badass Mead Hall, Mhen'ga), and the most expensive is 120 (Fire Pepper at The Golden Peak, Myrellion), although that's clearly an outlier.
The cheapest food is 5 (Barbeque Pit, New Texas), most expensive is 75 (Bunny's Buns & Confectionary, Tavros).
A haircut is 100/200 credits, a new hairstyle is 1200.

 

[Evil]

Well it took Aina three years at a part-time job at a fast food place to pay for her transformation. Horse Pills cost around 1800 credits a pop and there is the random nature to the TF. In her case, it was probably three years of gradually developing by working, getting a Horse Pill, seeing how far the TF went, then working and getting a Horse Pill and so on.

These aren't essential items, they are by their nature luxury items. They're expensive as hell, they're meant to be. I mean, going back to Aina, she isn't going to buy one item. It could have been five or six or maybe even ten times to get the effect she wanted. That's anywhere from 9000 credits to 18000 credits. Assuming she worked 30 hours a week as a part timer, 50 weeks a year - that's 1500 hours a year. Three years, 4500 hours. Assuming she had no other costs (which is ridiculous), she could have been earning somewhere between 2 to 4 credits an hour. More likely twice that if she had other costs.

But its also a single player game where you make money hand over fist (and sometimes by fisting), the cost of items and services are going to be inflated just to make sure that things aren't too easy for you.

 

[Theron]

Horse Pill can't change 2 legs to 4 (for Steele anyway), so she may have had to take Taurico Venidae (Deerium) first (base price of 3809). Or maybe she got a 'standard' mod we don't have access to (she can't be the only human that wanted such a mod), or a custom one somehow. And if she didn't get the effect she wanted, she'd have had to use other TFs to reverse the change, and Terran Treats were developed relatively recently.

 

[Thebiologist]

We get to buy those cheap, generic, random TFs, but most people who want to look a particular way usually buy a custom mod, which tens to be much more expensive and usually gets them in debt. Anatae are the exception, as mods are paid by the government.

I'm pretty sure mods are limited to adults for a good reason. I think that Albino Ovir managed to get one dose of Estrobloom before she got pass the puberty and it backfired.

Steele I think is 19 years old at the beginning. Yeah that 1 year is enough to purchase mods, but keep in mind that Steele didn't have access to the family fortune, only the money they could get with their normal job. Which means it would be pretty hard to even buy one of the cheapest mods. Plus I don't think papa Vik would want their child to use mods before he finished developing the nanite system and would have probably warned Steele not to use mods until then.