Lonely Shock

[66ee3580ab8b4sarge945]

A while ago, ZylonBane suggested a very interesting mod idea to make SS2 a lot more immersive.

I had some time on my hands, so I decided to give it a try.

This is a proof of concept version of the original idea.

A few notes:

• All objective-based CM's have been replaced with in-world equivalents, and all mentions of "transmitting" cybermodules are removed. How does one transmit a physical object, anyway? "Oh yeah sure just let me email myself a car"...
• None of The Many's speeches are changed at all. I feel like these aren't intrusive enough to really need changing
• A spreadsheet is included in the docs folder that explains the rationale for keeping or removing each email. If you feel something doesn't make sense, I might be convinced to change my mind.
• The mod has 2 versions, Standard and Extended. The Standard version keeps tutorialisation emails, a handful of objective reminder emails, and some emails that provide context for the world (like Polito's email about ghosts), while the extended version removes everything other than critical objective emails.
• One email (EM0715) had to be edited in order to work. The text has not been changed yet because I would like to find another way around this problem. Subtitle mods will need to be updated to work with this mod. It's not an issue otherwise.

I would be very interested if anyone could test this and provide feedback.

[66ee3580abd8avoodoo47]

How does one transmit a physical object, anyway? "Oh yeah sure just let me email myself a car"

just like nanites, the (cyber modules) object you see in the world is a container, with a various amount of "charge" inside. think a sim card that will allow you to do a certain predetermined number of calls, and becomes just an empty shell once they are all spent. and then it could be "recharged" (remotely) with more calls again if whoever has control over the system decided to do so - effectively "sending" the charges to the person who actually has the sim card in hands (or rather, in a mobile device).

the notion they are essentially ram modules that Goggles plugs into slots of his cyber rig to unlock more capacity is rather silly - imagine him running around with hundreds of the things sticking from his head. nope - you plug the cm module container into the rig, it slurps in all the code/charges inside, you disconnect the empty shell, done.

Shodan is either recharging one of the containers (SIM card), or sending the charges directly to the rig (eSIM card).

[66ee3580abf6dsarge945]

Yeah, I always saw them as physical containers of nanites. Shodan sending them to you makes no sense in that context, but if they are purely virtual (like an eSIM) and are just software that can be transferred between users then it begs the question why she doesn't just send you all of what she has upfront rather than sending them slowly. I guess maybe you could argue she's "finding" more of them (Maybe a CM is just a piece of physical DRM), but this isn't Citadel station. Outside of Goggles and Delacroix, she has no power over the Von Braun, so it's unlikely she would be able to send out units to find CMs for you.

I think the whole thing doesn't really make sense when you think about it for more than a second. I prefer to think CM's are physical objects that are plugged in, drained of whatever contents they have, then discarded. Like maybe they contain specialised nanites that integrate into your cyber rig, and then you throw away the empty container. The mod follows this understanding and things are *hopefully* more consistent in terms of the world making sense at this point. The only remaining question is why so many crew members have CM's on their bodies. They obviously don't have a use for them (they are unused/still full).

[66ee3580ac04dvoodoo47]

->eSIM

keeping him on a short leash, as mentioned many times.

[66ee3580ac287sarge945]

ehh, I don't buy the whole "they are virtual and she's keeping him on a short leash" thing.

Outside of Delacroix and Goggles, Shodan has no influence. She needs someone to set the self destruct so that she can manipulate reality. She NEEDS someone to do her bidding and you have to succeed, or she's finished. When you do accomplish her goals, she seems to genuinely believe that you have NO CHANCE of beating her when you're at your full power at the end of the game. The game makes it very clear that she has the ability to remove cyber modules from you (and, in SCP, she can manipulate your visual inputs against your will to force you to hallucinate), but she makes no attempt to stop you once you betray her. If your upgrades are virtual, she should be able to do all sorts of damage to you remotely.

To me, it doesn't make a lot of sense for her to purposely underequip her ace-in-the-hole to the point where she may not complete her primary objective and be doomed to permanently float on a ship run by annelids, all so that he doesn't get too powerful, despite seeing him as not really a threat in the first place.

If she sees you as a threat, why doesn't she act on it? If she doesn't see you as a threat, why not equip you properly for your mission upfront and give herself the best chance of success?

CMs being physical objects containing nanites or whatever to me makes a lot more sense, but it has it's own problems (if they are physical, why can she remotely give them to you and take them away at will?).

I just handwaive it away as being videogame logic and move on. This mod leans heavily on the "they are physical objects with physical components (likely specialised nanites) that you need in order to upgrade" interpretation, and I think the lore of the games universe is better for that. That's also what ZB wanted in the original specification, so it seems that he sees them as being largely physical upgrades as well, whether it's through nanites, or Goggle running around with 500 oversized USB sticks protruding from his forehead.

[66ee3580ac389sarge945]

Unfortunately, the game doesn't really provide any answers here either. All we get for an explanation is meaningless technobabble...

[66ee3580ac4edvoodoo47]

yes, but this does suggest they "contain" something, a "charge" of some kind.

and it makes sense to risk underequipping your lapdog if you plan to betray him later.


yes, that one moment where she is able to remove some modules just like that is an annoying inconsistency. but let me plug that hole real quick - not too far fetched to think the rig would have some adaptive anti-virus soft running, one that would detect such an intrusion and prevent it in the future (same goes for the ocular override). and why would Shodan waste such a one-time opportunity? well she hasn't been in her most sane shoes for a while now. like, for the entirety of both of the games.

[66ee3580ac64dsarge945]

So, basically, "because she's crazy LOL"?

Yeah, I'm sticking to the physical components explanation.

Honestly at this point I don't really care much about a back-and-forth on the nuance of how cybermodules work in headcanon. This is a mod feedback thread, not a lore speculation thread. The mod is made with the assumption that CM's have physical components that require the CM to by physically acquired and used. That seems to make the most sense to me overall and I feel that making this consistent improves the immersion of the game, at least since in my experience these kinds of questions can ruin the logic of the world. Let's see if downloaders agree or not whether making them a physical upgrade is the right thing for immersion.

[66ee3580ac724voodoo47]

yes but this is fun.

[66ee3580ac7f1sarge945]

People play System Shock 2 to have fun?

[66ee3580ac8c8voodoo47]

no, people invent lore to make sense of things and that is fun.

[66ee3580aca21sarge945]

Honestly, the whole CM issue seems so fundamentally nonsensical I don't think anyone will ever make sense of it without a severe amount of ass-pulls (antivirus, shodan being dumb, insert other nonesense here, etc).

The best thing to do is just roll with it, and either use a mod that fixes the inconsistency (like this one), or handwaive it away as videogame nonesense.

I generally find theorycrafting and inventing headcanon fun, but not if it's basically nonesense building on nonesense. At that point it's just mental masturbation and feels extremely dissatisfying.

The way I see it, the way CMs work in the vanilla game is basically a plot hole, and no amount of lore is going to fix it.

[66ee3580acb0avoodoo47]

it's a game that has zombies, monkeys and ninjas on a spaceship. whoever expects sanity is nuts.

[66ee3580acd04sarge945]

NO! You can't pull out the "it's a movie about magical space wizards intended for children" (SS2 edition) card. That's not how writing works.

Monkeys, Zombies (cough, Hybrids), and Ninjas may all be nonesense scientifically, but the game goes out of it's way to explain each one, often in extreme detail. The answers given may be silly (especially for the Ninjas), but if we accept the rules of the universe, they are internally consistent with themselves and with each other.

CM's are never explained, and they act in inconsistent and nonsensical ways within the world. SHODAN can take them from us, but doesn't do so when it's advantageous to do so. CMs can be transmitted via a network (the internet??), and yet crew members are constantly found holding physical CM containers. They seem to be very common objects, found all throughout the ship and on a significant number of crew members, but are never mentioned in a single audio log or referenced by anything else. Their entire purpose seems to be for upgrading cyber interfaces, which are also never mentioned, and IIRC most extensive cyber-modification is illegal to the point where no other crew member seems to have anything resembling any sort of cybernetic enhancement whatsoever. The whole thing is either completely unexplained or, in the worst cases, incoherent nonesense.

Irrational could have, if they wanted to, explained some of the lore behind Cyber Modules via logs discussing midwives. They have extensive cybernetic modifications and it would make a lot of sense for them to be used as a jumping off point to explore the lore of Cyber Modules. But, unfortunately, they didn't do that, and we're left with nothing to work off.

[66ee3580ace76icemann]

I think that if you take any game too seriously, then you totally ruin it. Vast majority of games out there, if you picked apart all their logic, there would be at least a thing or two that make zero sense.

[66ee3580acf8evoodoo47]

hence, game logic, game realism etc.

also potted plants are immune to fusion cannon shots, so there you go.

[66ee3580ad195Livo]

I assume "R-Grade Rigs" being banned, just means that only the vastly more capable R-Grade Rigs are banned, not the lesser P-Grade rigs, or whatever the permitted level of cyber-rig(s) are called in the fictional System Shock universe.

Something like "All P-Grade Rigs can only have a maximum of one or two upgrades ever installed at Official Upgrade Stations, and/or only small upgrades are permitted: hence their wide crew usage & availability on the Von Braun. However, your illegal R-Grade Rig can have multiple, far more intensive upgrades installed, thanks to its more intrusive cybernetic implants."

As for the "transmitting cyber-modules", that's definitely very video-game arcadey & harder to explain in-universe, instead of an physical item given to you. Perhaps to add onto voodoo's point, the "Transmitting Cyber-Modules" is really short-hand for "To actually install multiple modifications, you need a certain amount of DRM and/or bypass software to breach the Upgrade Station safeguards against non-P grade Rigs installing modifications: if you don't have enough DRM codes, or enough bypass software codes, it won't work." It'd be reasonable to assume that if R-Grade Rigs were banned, then Upgrade Stations would probably also have some DRM or safeguards to stop R-Grade rigs (or any unauthorized cyber-rig for that matter), from being able to install multiple modifications, or from doing more nefarious shennanigans, no?

But yes, anything more detailed than my rambling arse pull explanation, then it just causes  more problems & ruins the mystique.

[66ee3580ad299voodoo47]

to make it short, as soon as we agree that the thing that enables the upgrades is not hardware, but software, then anything is explainable, as you can do absolutely everything with software, and any limitations are completely artificial.

[66ee3580ad396sarge945]

Yes, but once they become software, it also undermines various story beats, because being able to do ANYTHING with software with no limits works both ways.

[66ee3580ad476sarge945]

But back on topic. Has anyone actually tried the mod yet?

[66ee3580ad594Echelon5]

Well anyway, I'm currently playing through with this mod and I love it. One of my major complaints about SS2 was the fact that there is always someone bitching in your ear versus the isolated feeling of SS1. I combined it with one of my own mods that silences several more Polito/Shodan/Many/Xerses lines that feel either redundant or are placed too close together so they end up overlapping.

[66ee3580ad79dtiphares4]

It sounds like brilliant mod again... it is right, System Shock 2 is way too cluttered with messages here & there, interrupting gameplay & atmosphere. Really was too gamey having
 SHODAN  and Polito bitching around & sending cybermodules everytime when you accomplished even the smallest things. You can't even go on toilet without receiving cybermodules.
I am prefering as much isolated atmosphere as possible for this game as well - being also a huge Super Metroid fan for example. : )

It is very nice having them all lying around now - the more items, the better - which begs question: is it compatible with randomizer yet?:l

[66ee3580ada6asarge945]

It is very nice having them all lying around now - the more items, the better - which begs question: is it compatible with randomizer yet?:l

Yes. Has been built in from the start.