Hey guys, we’re not going to be releasing a patch this week, so I thought it would be a good time to touch base on where we’re at and let you know how things are cooking in the titty-kitchen.

First off, the return of the away team! Adjatha’s ISP has stopped yanking him around after spending 11 days banished to the no internet zone, and he’s already shared several lovely sketches with the devteam (and the public discord!) Jacques00 has also returned from vacation, though other commitments have kept him from fully dialing back into TiTS mode in a major way yet. Nonetheless, he’s already chipped into the bug pile with me and provided valuable feedback while I’ve been burrowed deep into TiTS’s guts, chewing on the wires – more on that later. Gedan is still tangled up in API-land. Some of the assumptions about the ease of conversion may have been overblown, and she’s having to work harder to square up the similar-yet-different Patreon data that we have access to. I’ll share more as soon as I have more to share.

My own personal progress this week has been… different than I expected. The original plan was to sort out Syri’s tentacle feeding scene (thanks for the NPC voting in the poll btw!) However I got quickly sidetracked adding an option to remove the tentacles for last Friday’s patch and trying to catch up on bug reports. Jacques00 and lowercase donkey had done a lot to keep the bug pile down to a reasonable minimum, but a substantial amount of reports had started to accumulate that required attention while Jacques00 was away. I waded in as best I could, and in true Fen fashion I wound up burrowing into a new rabbit hole that consumed me for the last couple days: racial transformation perks.

Those who have followed my games since the original CoC know that these have been a thorn in my side for a long time. At first, I wanted to reward transformations with new kinds of thematic attacks when appropriate – goring for minotaurs, constricting for nagas, and stinging for bee-folk, as examples. However, that wound up escalating with community submitted transformations like Kitsune that came with ever more abilities (3 spells), and resulted in players feeling like they needed to be deep in certain transformation paths to feel like they had the strength in combat to really win when they needed to. I desperately wanted to avoid this in TiTS.

One of the early decisions I made early on in TiTS was to avoid associating significant combat bonuses with specific transformations. I did want to allow appropriate perks for cosmetic options, sexual options, and convenience options. For example the equine TF having a “Mane” perk for hair (before hairStyles were even introduced), or perks like ‘Nuki Nuts that altered the function of sexual anatomy in interesting ways. Those kinds of perks wouldn’t compromise combat balance or make anyone feel like they had to transform a certain way, but would allow players who did transform in certain ways to have the game react and enhance the experience thematically for them. I also wanted to encourage irreversible perks that altered the lust portion of combat with their own sets of boons and penalties, like the Treatment. I don’t have any issues with how those have turned out, and in fact, I’d be jazzed to see more permanent character corruption opportunities find their way into the game.

But right now I’m not talking about the corruptive lust combat perks. I’m focusing on species-based power creep and inconsistent perk removal conditions.

As time went on, more and more transformations got added, many with their own perks, often with variable methods of removal (if there was a removal method at all) that made some transformations outright more desirable – or at least desirable for picking up a perk you would keep even if you transformed into something else. Some of these were my own fault, particularly the pheromone-related perk boosts that have built up over time. Others came from long time community authors, carved into transformations like cerespirin to outright add a pair of new abilities (though I did keep those nerfed fairly hard… I’d like to revisit those two perks later, as I still have not conceived of the best course with them yet.)

All this is to say that after tangling in some bug fixing, I decided to take a look at transformation-applied perks and give them a comprehensive going-over:

First off, let’s talk musk & pheromone perks. For a long while now, they’ve provided such a massive boost to tease effectiveness that they basically felt almost mandatory if you wanted to excel at that style of fighting, yet they were often only available from a limited selection of species-based transformations like Laquines, Wolves, or Lions. Given those perks are clearly meant to tie into having the body and genetics of those species, I’ve added restrictions that will cause them to disappear should you transform into a wildly different biology. That means “Alpha Scent” will go away if you aren’t very wolfy anymore, and “Musky Pheromones” will go away if you lose your fur or penis.

But do not fret!

The weight these perks placed on the balance scales is being reduced to make them feel less like “must haves” and more like a nice little bonus. Enemy lust defense is being decreased to increase the lust damage potential of all player characters, hopefully resulting in a similar damage ceiling with a higher damage floor that penalizes players less for not playing chimera-perk-collector. I may have even been a little too aggressive with the enemy nerf, so let me know if the enemies get a little too weak between the knees once next week’s patch hits.

Additionally, many other racial perks with obvious ties to alien genetics and body shape would stay no matter what you turned into. This is being corrected. Perks like “flexibility” will require you to maintain at least a sliver of cat-like DNA (or some battiness, if you got it from the bat transformations.) “Amazon Scent” will go away if your tone drops too low (below 50%). “Hollow Bones” won’t persist if you lose your avian anatomy and get too THICC for them to properly support you.

It’s not all bad though – “Black Latex” will be getting a bigger bonus to escaping grapples, since it’s one of those “permanent corruption-style transformation” and gives you an effective 10 point minimum lust penalty, and the gabilani cybernetics perk should actually be obtainable before you have implants now – and function properly to increase your maximum intelligence by a few points while you have implants. I know this one kind of violates my own “cosmetic racial perks shouldn’t give significant combat boosts” stance, buuuut… it’s basically the passive perk I wanted to give the Tech Specialist class before Savin argued against it, not wanting to feel bullied by his class into adopting the chrome. So for now… I’m gonna let it slide.

There is one more thing I want to take a crack at: adding small attribute bonuses and tweaks for different major body changes – things too small to be build-defining or necessary, but thematic little “nice to haves” that make transformations feel like they have a little more substance. For example, I’ve come up with some variant stat tweaks that tie in to the current range of skin types in a way that shouldn’t make any of them feel necessary but should provoke a sort of “oh, that’s a nice little appropriate change.” Part of the challenge of coming up with these was settling on attributes that felt natural and simple without getting over-complicated and trying to reflect every possible advantage and disadvantage. Let me know what you think about them:

• Regular Skin / Latex Skin / Goo Skin / Gel Skin / Plant Skin:
  • 2 evasion
• Body Fur:
  • 1 defense
  • +2.5% resistance to freezing & electric damage.
• Body Scales / Body Chitin:
  • 2 defense
  • -2.5% resistance to cold damage. (vulnerability)
• Barkskin:
  • 2 defense
  • -2.5% resistance to fire damage. (vulnerability)
• Body Feathers:
  • 1 evasion
  • 1 defense

I have some other ideas kicking around too, but I’m only going to pursue them if I can ensure that I do it in a way that makes sense for the various options without tipping the scales too hard in any one direction. Things like clawed feet maybe increasing maximum reflexes by 1, or taurs having bonuses to avoid being tripped. I just have to make sure everybody has equally radical traits if I’m going to do it!

Anyway, that’s my ramble. I know some people might not enjoy some of the racial perks being able to be lost, but there is still some hope on that front. One of the folks on discord has come up with an idea to have Dr. Lasseu have an option to help lock in a racial perk in a more permanent way, and if it’s executed well enough, I’m not averse to bringing that into the game. It would actually be a nice bit of kit to add to his utility while reinforcing the heavy biomodification themes of the game itself.

See you next week,
Fen