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Posts posted by Kyet
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Aug 30:
- Kluys (Game Admin) has retired from the staff.
- Guiltybeans (Game Admin) has retired from the staff.
- TheSardele has joined the team as a Trial Admin.
Sept 3:
- Harkness22 has left the staff team.
- Landerlow has become a Trial Admin.
Sept 4:
- DaDman has unretired and is now a Game Admin again.
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Briefly:
- Yes, your ban was significantly harsher than we normally are when enforcing the rules. That said, you were also a mentor, slagging off one of our senior staff in front of players. You had a lengthy note/warning history (yes, this is relevant, as it is in all other ban cases), and you should have been well aware that what you were doing was not okay. So, while yes, this was harsher than we normally are there are several other factors in play which very arguably justify us being harsher in your case.
- In the past, we have not been as strict with mentors as we could, or even arguably should, have been. Your ban was partly based on the idea that we're going to start holding mentors to a standard above that of players, even if we haven't historically. So, while there is a "policy is changing" element here, that's not really grounds for an admin complaint. It is within the powers of a headmin to pursue policy changes like this and generally act in such a way as to "send a message". In this case, the message is "no, we won't tolerate bad behavior from mentors".
While I can see why you might feel blindsided by this ban, even hurt and confused, that doesn't mean your complaint has merit.
You were in a position of trust, and you used that position of trust to insult and attack one of the hardest working members of our staff team, in front of players.
You also seem to be under the delusion that your previous note/warning history isn't relevant to this (note history is always relevant, to any ban) and that you are entitled to a warning instead of a ban (you aren't, this is just another manifestation of an entitlement mentality which isn't doing you any favors).
While I might have used a warning, rather than a ban, in this situation, by making it a ban I think Neca was trying to send a clear message that we aren't screwing around, and we really do hold mentors to a much higher standard than your average player. Issuing a ban instead, while it may seem harsh, does serve that objective, and the objective is a legitimate one.
So, this isn't misconduct, but rather, you simply not understanding a few facts:
- Mentors need to be held to a much higher standard than players
- You aren't entitled to a warning when you break the rules
- You aren't entitled to have your ban be considered separately from your existing note/ban/warning history
- While we historically have not always enforced this as strictly as we can - we can, if we choose to.
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Cyborgs should be stronger than normal sec officers, but they don't need further buffs on top of their existing advantages.
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15 hours ago, Kinnikonnie said:
Having played a lot of low tier spiders I think one of the most annoying things is for the natural health regeneration to take effect. You literally will just stay in pipes/vents or in a safer area and have to wait to heal to do something useful again. Try a passive regeneration in a certain radius maybe. Give them a stronger attack but also make them slower so they have to be defended especially against ranged attacks.
Grays already get a boost to health regen. Certain other classes (like Prince) have a worse health regen than normal.
If you want quick health regen, you need to work with other spiders to acquire a corpse, and then wrap it.
11 hours ago, xProlithium said:More on the point of unwrenched pipes, are there any reasons why spiders shouldn't be able to just re-enter the disconnected pipes? Why can they *only* enter vents and scrubber ports but not open pipes themselves?
Spiders (and everything else that can ventcrawl) really should be able to crawl into pipes that are wrenched open.
5 hours ago, Leanfrog said:Another issue I've noticed is when browns or purples spawn they tend to immediately break the wall nearest to them, this is an issue for obvious reasons, now we could make it so that they have a delay on their actions on spawning or make certain webs capable of blocking atmos, kind of like a holofan, I bring this up because far too often do I see purples spawning in turbine then immediately smashing the wall next to them which leads into space thus making the nest inhospitable after a period of time.
4 hours ago, Spacemanspark said:This is an issue with hostile mobs in general when they spawn in, oddly.
Spark is correct, this is a general mob AI bug. I have a fix up that fixes it in the terror spider case, so once that's merged, we should not see as many cases of perfectly fine nests being depressurized by a purple smashing a wall as they spawn.
4 hours ago, BryanR said:Make it an ability the player activates then when they're no longer on web it deactivates so the check process isn't perpetual and encourages lurking within the webs.
I think having it automatically apply when a gray is in a web, and not apply otherwise, is a stronger encouragement than having to use a button to toggle it.
14 minutes ago, Machofish said:[snip]
Queens: you make a good point that queens are already strong. My primary goal with queens is to give them a more active playstyle, NOT to just buff them. I'd ideally like them to have more things they can do actively, like incubate eggs, watch other spiders and advise them on tactics, or similar. Essentially giving the queen more things to do beyond 'wait for timer'. Queens are deliberately designed to be a doomsday timer (they're the most dangerous sub-type of the most dangerous biohazard). I don't want to change that, but I do want playing as a queen to require more active use of abilities rather than just sitting there watching the clock and occasionally making a new set of eggs.
Prince: another good point. Princes often require a group to take down, and giving them an anti-group AOE would potentially make them too strong. I feel like giving them a lunge ability might make them OP as well, seeing as they could line up their lunge, smash through a wall, activate the lunge and then knock everyone down (who weren't even aware they were there) and kill them before they get back up. I'd like to avoid adding any mechanic, like that lunge, that has no counterplay options and feels to players like an unavoidable death when it happens. The proposed change I have for princes is "one stun every 30 seconds" so they still have a stun, but its not RNG-based, and doesn't help them close the distance.
Gray: I think you're understating the requirements of playing a gray successfully. Yes, it requires skill and cunning. That is true. It also requires you to be able to find an unwelded vent next to an area the crew use, and often, you just can't do that, because every vent is welded. I'll make a point of playing some grays during terror spider infestations in the near future, to see if what you're saying about them is true. There are other reasons beyond players' unwillingness to play passively that I am interested in applying the "passive stealth on webs, full visibility otherwise" rule to them. The primary one is their AI coding, which, right now, is really long and perhaps unnecessarily complicated. Passive stealth is simpler for AI spiders to use, and having the same playstyle between AI and player spiders makes the away mission a better tutorial in how to deal with player-controlled grays. I wonder if there's some sort of environmental ability I could give them instead, perhaps "break lights in an AOE" that would encourage their stealth playstyle.
White: I have to disagree with you here, and say that yes, white spiders right now definitely are overpowered. You're correct that while 90% of white spider victims will be treated... even those that aren't will have the infection pass eventually. The thing that makes white spiders OP is that you only need one character (not even a player, a monkey or a slime suffices - or at least it suffices until my patch is merged) to carry the infection to term, and then you have a princess, which becomes a queen, and the infestation becomes very hard to deal with. More often you end up with 4 princesses or more, which is stronger than a queen infestation. In a normal queen infestation you can (and players sometimes do) kill the queen, but in a white scenario there can be 3 backup queens ready to take over if the first one dies, which is almost impossible for the crew to win, even with ERT. You do have a good point about the experience of the lone player caught by the white being terrible under a 'only infect one person' system, though. Perhaps that isn't the answer, and I should instead look to re-work princesses so they don't evolve to queens, and having 4 princesses isn't an instant lose condition for the crew.
Mother: mothers were removed from rotation awhile back due to various issues. I'm not going to give them an EMP ability, if I was going to do that there's an unused yellow spider sprite I could use for that. I was more thinking about giving them support abilities, like healing, spiderling transport, etc. Spitting webs to effectively web at a distance would be another option. I like that idea.
Green: I agree with you that while no terror spider should be "harmless" they shouldn't be guaranteed to derail the round either. Greens definitely are meant to be the easiest infestation to deal with.
"Boring" factor: You seem to be under the impression that I'm saying "some terrors are boring to play as, lets buff them to make them more fun". That's NOT my point. My point is more "some terrors have a playstyle that is so passive, many players don't enjoy playing them, regardless of how strong or not they are. To fix this, lets include more active things they can do, even if the new active abilities aren't very strong they at least make the player feel like they're actively playing rather than just waiting for timers".
Atmos/Space: I have been considering giving queens (and only queens) webs that block atmos. Currently their webs have a hallucinogenic effect (like their spit) which is nigh-useless. I don't think "bomb the nest" is a good solution for crew, non-antags generally aren't allowed by rules to use bombs like that, even to attack antags. At best you might be allowed to do it if you ahelped, but more likely the admin will say "if we allow crew to TTV bomb antag nests then no antag is going to be able to make nests anymore as they'll just get quickly bombed every time".
Terror Queen v Xeno Queen: while you're right that the terror queen has advantages over the xeno queen, the reverse is also true. Xeno queen has devastating stun and chain stun attacks. Not to mention the ability to place eggs as defensive structures that both stun and infect crew who walk near. She also has effectively a built-in taser... her ranged spit attack is an instant stun.
Overall player behavior v class: I am actually fine with the idea of having a stealth specialist spider that everyone knows is a stealth specialist and is only played by players who want that playstyle. The issue is that gray is one of the three ultra-basic T1 spider classes. As such, it is in this weird position where it isn't one of the T2 specialist spiders, but it plays like one. So it tends to be made in numbers, and most players playing it don't get its intended playstyle - and even if they do, its hampered by vents. Maybe I should just swap browns and grays? Have browns be the T1 basic spider which is straightforward to play, and have grays be the T2 specialist spider that's more dangerous but requires a stealth playstyle.
Outcomes: I'm interested in having outcomes beyond "crew wins by killing spiders", "crew wins by escaping", and "spiders win by taking over the station or forcing code delta". If you have suggestions for other end-states and how I could facilitate them, let me know.
Knockdowns: It doesn't really make sense to me that something bigger than a human, and with eight legs, could be knocked down easily. Maybe by being smacked by a mecha or a missile, yes, but aside from that I can't really think of anything that should knock them down. Even colliding with each other.
Mechas: Mechas already hard-counter spiders. They're flat-out immune to most spider abilities, such as all kinds of poison, infection, even hallucinogenic spit from queens. They have a huge amount of health, almost endless ammo, can have damage reduction versus spider attacks, etc. Making mechas even stronger against spiders then they already are I feel would be bad for balance, it would turn every spider round into "how quickly can we make some mechs?" The same argument applies to TS hit by mecha missiles.
Fire: Yes, I agree, it would be good if terror spiders could be lit on fire. Lone guy with flamethrower enters terror spider nest... that's how heroes are made. It makes for a good story. Heck, ideally all simple_animals would be flammable and programmed to stop, drop and roll if they're set on fire when controlled by an AI.
Beartrap: Yeah, it would make sense if these did massive damage to anything that stepped on them, not just bears. It would also make sense if terror spiders (with their many legs) have a massive penalty against bear traps.
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Currently I've got a PR up that does the following:
- Gray: gives them stealth (like xeno hunters) but only while they are standing on a web.
- White: removes their ability to infect slimes.
Mother I'd like to turn into a healer/supporter, or maybe a spiderling growth-booster and transportation spider, but I'm not sure on the details yet.
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@TDS
Mothers already create spiderlings that grow twice as fast as normal:https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/blob/379f4734aa30ae0f60d4565060ae9374b1c90bf9/code/modules/mob/living/simple_animal/hostile/terror_spiders/mother.dm#L50
I don't want them to be either "run up and die" spider, or "reskinned queen" spider. I've been thinking about giving them some form of spiderling-buffing ability. Perhaps they can scoop up spiderlings and carry them around? Or perhaps they have a 'here, baby spooders!' ability which calls all spiderlings in the area to them. The question really is - assuming the mother becomes a support spider for the queen, how do I make this gameplay fun and useful for both of them? Playing a spiderling-carrying-device isn't fun either, there has to be enough of a concept there that it is viable.
I do want there to be different types/progressions of infestation, some easier versus some harder, and some strong earlier versus some strong later.
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2 minutes ago, TDS said:
Personally, I quite like Grays because nearly invisible webs on white tiles are freaking hilarious. But yes, if crew's on guard their ambush gimmick gets really lame. I like the permanent stealth idea, but how about the effect is stronger/absolute while on a tile with web? As in, it can lurk invisibly within a webbed up corridor, then ambush the assistant with the welder that comes along to clean the webs? Alternatively, maybe make them poison webbed targets? Or a movement speed buff while on webbed tiles so they can dash in to ambush and then retreat? Coupled with the poison for extra nasty?
Yeah, you definitely should remove their ability to make princesses, IMO. Or just rework how higher-tier spiders are generated. It's a rather opaque system, maybe every T1 egg/spiderling should have a certain chance to instead create a higher-tier spider or something?
The special ability thing I can see many people missing nad misplaying them. Definitely agree on the monkeys/slimes thing.
Could you make his hits do stamina damage on top of the usual brute? That's like stunning hits but less RNG
I like the hybrid idea.
A passive regen buff for all nearby spiders sounds like a great idea. Another crazy idea I had was...what if instead of spawning spiderlings, a dying mother spawned fully grown spiders instead?
More good ideas from you, not sure how much I can add.
One other thing I'd like to address, let's talk about greens. Starting greens are pretty slow and weak (even if not compared to OP Whites) because they really need other spiders to get them corpses to wrap, and to open doors for them, etc. It's also not the most engaging gameplay to stay behind the frontlines and wait for corpses, but go out to get them yourselves and you'll get hated on by reds.
Gray: I could make it so that gray spiders have a similar alpha (transparency / hard to see) as xeno hunters do whilst on a web. Would have to test that idea. My main concern is that if I have to check "is this spider standing on a web?" every tile they move, that might be too many checks. We'll see. Something like a movement speed buff while on webs, though, that would be easier (because if it takes a few seconds to update after the spider enters/leaves a web, its not as big a deal).
Prince: I'm really not a fan of the stamina damage concept. I feel like if a prince gets enough hits on you to knock you down via stamina damage... then you're dead or crippled anyway before the stamina damage even has a chance to have an impact.
Mothers: Spawning a whole stack of fully-grown spiders on the same tile looks... a bit buggy. I'm more leaning towards the health regen buff idea.
Greens: the problem with greens is... if I buff them for cases where they're the only starting spiders, I ALSO buff them for cases where queens/etc lay them. Perhaps the best solution is to change the starting mix of spiders, either give the greens some reds/grays as backup, or something else.
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I think the time is approaching where I want to do another significant terror spider update.
For this update, I have a few goals:
- Improve the balance between different classes, e.g: whites will no longer be stronger than queens
- Improve the fun of playing certain classes, e.g: grays will no longer be considered trash, playing queen well should be less boring, and mother will no longer be a suicide class
- Improve the diversity of infestation types. e.g. end the concept that people can meta "princes always appear alone" and the fact that white infestations always turn into a queen infestation
Here are some of the changes I am considering:
Gray Spiders
Problem: they're not fun to play, as they rely on a 'hide and wait in ambush' playstyle that few players enjoy. Since most vents end up welded quickly, they quickly become useless
Possible solutions:
- Give them the ability to break open vents, but unlike higher-tier spiders with this ability, make it cost them, say, half their health to do it. So it isn't something they can run around doing a lot.
- Give them permanent stealth (alpha) so their sprite is harder to spot, especially in darkness. Rather like xeno hunters. They'd still be weaker in combat than other classes, but at least they'd have a use.
- If we just accept that they'll be weaker than other classes... discount their point cost so you can lay more of them as eggs for the same price.
White Spiders
Problem: currently, white spiders infestations are overpowered. Not only can they create more spiders in a shorter time than a queen can, but they can also hatch princesses which morph into a queen.
Possible solutions:
- Remove their ability to create princesses. Instead, make them create larger numbers of lower-tier spiders, like greens, as well as vent-breaking browns. So, the spider hive could still survive after the initial wave of infections, but it would be harder, and no longer always snowball.
- Re-work white spiders so that their infectious bite is a special ability rather than a standard attack. So, you can't spam it. Instead, you have to find an isolated human and bite them, which very quickly immobilizes them and knocks them out. So, each individual egg infection is much stronger, but far fewer people get infected with eggs. Maybe one or two people per white spider.
- Remove their ability to infect monkeys, slimes, etc. Their ability to do that is too cheap for the benefit it provides.
Prince
Problem: they have a 15% chance to stun on hit. I'm generally opposed to RNG and making spiders rely on stuns, so I'd like to get rid of this.
Possible solutions:
- If they need the ability to stun in combat, stop it being RNG. Instead, just have it always be used when available, and have it available once per 30 seconds or so.
- If they don't need the ability to stun in combat, give them something else to make up for it. Perhaps an AOE move like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urticating_hair
Princess
Problem: Right now, its trivial for them to become queens, which doesn't really develop the full potential of the class. It is also weird that they're the only class to evolve into another class.
Possible solutions:
- Re-work them into a hybrid of greens and queens. They'd have perhaps some ability to lay eggs without feeding (like a queen) but their egg-laying abilities would be boosted if they do feed (like a green). They could lay more types of eggs than a green, but less than a queen. Notably, they would not get the ability to lay purples to the same degree the queen does, if at all.
MothersProblem: they're not fun to play. Their entire playstyle is 'find an unwelded vent and persuade the crew to kill you near it'. That isn't fun.
Possible solutions:
- Give them a reason to stay alive - and to fight alongside other spiders. Perhaps all spiders (either in visual range, or on the same zlevel) get a buff to healing when a mother is present. Or perhaps she has an active ability that transfers regeneration points from herself to other spiders - and rebuilds them way faster than any other spider.
- Give her strong utility abilities which make her valuable outside of combat. Example: the queen's 'break cameras and lights nearby' ability, but re-usable.
- Upgrade her suicide-spawn-spiderlings attack so that it is harder to ignore. Make spiderlings created by this ability tear open vents, or have a high chance to create something nasty.
Queens
Problems:
- Queen play is boring. Good queens hide in a room and just churn out eggs like a factory. This isn't very engaging.
- Queen abilities are often not very useful. Being able to sense where your spiders are, for example, is useful, but if you can't see them or tell what is going on around them, its quite limited in effectiveness. Being able to create fake spiderlings might be spooky the first time, but it quickly loses its spook value once you realize they are fake.
- Queens aren't that strong relative to other types of spider infestations. They're the only T4 spider. They should be markedly stronger than all other types, and the most fearsome spider of all... but they aren't.
Possible solutions:
- Give the queen more interesting active abilities. An 'overwatch' ability that lets her remotely watch any spider under he command. A 'rally' ability that calls all spiderlings on the zlevel to ventcrawl to her (if they can). An 'incubate' ability which has a long cooldown but dramatically speeds up the evolution progress of a spider egg, and gives it a chance to produce an extra spiderling for free. A 'specialize' ability which, when she's sufficiently old, gives her the ability to lay either a prince egg, a mother egg, or a princess egg - each of which would support her in a specific way. The prince is a heavy attacker, the mother is a behind-the-front-lines supporter, and the princess helps create new spiders faster. She can pick one of these to help her out at high-level, but only one of the three.
General Balance
Problems:
- Welding all the vents on the station is arguably too effective at shutting down spiders. Unwrenching the pipes is even worse.
Solutions:
- More spiders being able to unweld vents, but at a heavy cost. So its still advantageous to the crew to weld vents, but it doesn't shut the spiders down completely as it does now.
- Some sort of negative atmos consequence for having all the vents welded up.
This list isn't finished yet, and its mostly just brainstorming at this stage.
Still, I'd like to put my ideas out there and see what people have to suggest.
Please try to avoid oversimplifying feedback, though, like "spiders are overpowered" or "spiders are underpowered" - the truth is usually quite a bit more nuanced by that, depending on spider types, numbers, the situation, etc.
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I'm locking this thread.
If you want to discuss changes to a race, you can, but you need to raise the topic in a constructive way.
Don't make untrue, inflammatory claims. -
Today, I discovered a bug in our Patreon integration system.
The bug affects about 6 patrons who registered their forum accounts between May 6th and today, and caused them to not get all the patreon perks for their relevant Patreon tier. Thank you to @JamesShekelstein for helping me chase down this bug.
All of the affected accounts have now been fixed, and now get all of their relevant patreon perks in-game automatically. You don't need to do anything to benefit from the fix. In addition, should any of these 6 contact me on Discord within the next week, I'll issue refunds for their June, July and August patreon donations.
As a reminder to all other active patrons, here are the steps needed to claim your Patreon perks in-game:
- Register a forum account
- Activate your forum account by clicking the link in chat in-game
- Associate your forum and patreon accounts using: https://nanotrasen.se/forum/index.php?app=patreonintegration&module=system&controller=patreonconnect
Assuming you have done all of these, you should get your perks in-game automatically within about an hour.
If you don't, contact me on Discord and I will help troubleshoot your case. The new patron who did this today was the reason that I ultimately discovered the bug and fixed all affected accounts.
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August 15:
- BrandonSacawv and FalseIncarnate have retired from the staff team.
August 19:
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25charactersorless (6thechamp9) has gone on leave from the staff team.
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Having tested newcrit today:
- If you simply attack someone until they die, the amount of hits required to kill them seems excessive. 2-4 full stetchkin clips. 24 esword hits. 39 egun shots. 22 dual esword hits. 43 welder hits.
- However, only a fraction of that (e.g: one stetchkin clip) is enough to deal someone a mortal wound that will kill them in a minute or so. During that minute they can get back up temporarily, even grab a weapon and shoot you.
- The advantage of this is that it makes fights more interesting, gives people a chance after they're ambushed, etc. I think it is actually a net benefit to the game.
- The disadvantage is that the more damage you are applying, the longer it subjectively seems to take for the person to die. Because the more hits you're doing, the more damage you're dealing, and the more it seems like you SHOULD have exhausted their health a long time ago. I had a few times when I VV'ed someone after they died and they had >500 brute or burn damage before dying.
- As such the main tweak I suggest to newcrit is that the threshold at which someone simply dies from accumulated damage should be significantly lower. It shouldn't take >500 points of brute or burn to trigger instant death. If you're already in crit and you take say another 100 combined new damage beyond what put you in crit, you should probably just die at that point, without any RNG involved.
That said, the system definitely has pros and cons.
It makes fights more interesting (less one-sided) but it also strains immersion at times. It feels a little ridiculous the number of bullets I can pump into someone in a row before they die. But, equally, giving someone the ability to surprise you in combat may help keep the game fresh and make fights actually better.
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August 10:
- Spartan and Shattaredcoyote/Dragonslayer932 are now On Leave from the staff team.
August 13:
- Alffd has retired from the staff team.
- @Norwest @xProlithium @MysticLiger @Dovixx and @Abydos have been promoted to Game Admin.
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My thoughts:
- Most notes are just a brief factual record of an admin's interaction with a player. e.g: "Warned for X", "Told they're not allowed to Y", etc. The idea is just to have a record that they were warned for something, so if they do it again, we know they were warned previously. There's really no reason to hide notes like this from the player. They don't contain anything the player doesn't already know.
- Some notes are the admin's personal impression of a player. "Has a really bad attitude towards admins" for example. These sort of notes might have bad consequences if revealed to players. For example, even a positive note like "did well in an event character role, consider for future event char roles" could have a bad consequence (player acting entitled to play event characters) if revealed. Conversely, they could help a player reform their attitude. Notes like this should probably be visible or invisible on a case-by-case basis.
- A very small number of notes relate to ongoing investigations or unproven concerns, e.g. "suspected of metacommunication with player X". These notes probably shouldn't be revealed.
- We can't make past notes public unless the admin who wrote them agrees, or (in exceptional cases) a head of staff approves it. To do otherwise is to betray the trust of the original note-writing admin who wrote the note with the expectation it would be secret.
My proposal (requires a PR):
- All players get a new verb, 'Show Admin Notes' in the OOC tab. This verb would only show notes specifically set as 'player visible'.
- All notes added BEFORE this PR is merged are INVISIBLE, unless the issuing admin (or a head of staff) goes back and manually changes them.
- All notes added AFTER this PR is merged are VISIBLE, unless the admin who is issuing the note chooses to make it an invisible note.
- After the PR is merged, some admins (such as myself) might choose to retroactively make every note they've ever issued visible. Other admins might selectively make past notes visible if they come up again during an appeal or whatnot. Some admins might choose to keep all their past issued notes secret. All admins will, going forward, decide whether a note should be player-visible or not when its issued.
Impact of my proposal:
- Already issued notes remain invisible unless the issuing admin (or a head of staff) decides to make them visible.
- Notes issued in future are visible by default, but admins can still set them as invisible when issued, or by changing the note's setting later, if they wish to do so.
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Forums/calendar/etc have been updated from version 4.4.4 to 4.4.5. Changelog here:https://invisioncommunity.com/release-notes/
Discord integration software has been updated from v1.0.8b to v1.0.9.
Both of these are minor bug-fix updates that don't add any notable new features.
If you do notice anything suddenly stop working, contact me and tell me what it was, when it happened, and provide a link to this post.
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- Your spawn point should be hidden, and/or easily defensible. "Hidden" means "crew won't easily be able to find you if you spawn there". A good example is the Incinerator, which is a low traffic area that has atmos-only doors, and thus is very unlikely to get checked. "Easily defensible" means lots of narrow corridors with sharp turns that prevent the crew bringing all their weapons to bear against you at once. Science maint near solars is a good example of this. Above all, avoid bursting in large, extremely visible open areas like Chapel - those are just an invitation to get shot by a half-dozen crew at once.
- You should NOT be using the attack/expand button much. While you do have to use it to clear a path to a new area you can put a node in, it costs points to use, whereas blobs created by nodes are free. Thus, blobs created by nodes are VASTLY cheaper in the long run - attack/expand is very inefficient. There are some good uses of it in combat (see below) but the #1 most frequent error by blobs is wasting their points by over-using this ability to fight, instead of just creating factory blobs.
- While we're at it, don't create blobbernauts either. They're insanely expensive for how good they are. They're single use, and die quickly.
- Instead, offensively you should be looking to create resource nodes and factories - factories to produce blobs to defend you, and resource nodes to increase your production capacity. Splitting is also an option, if you can spare the points.
- Defensively, your best play is to detonate welding tanks. This does a great amount of damage to crew, lights them on fire, may create breaches, denies them the ability to refuel their welders, and stuns them, which makes it the perfect moment to follow up by ralling your blobs on top of them. Doubly so if they're dying, as the blobs will then turn the crew into blob zombies.
- Your second best play is to find the rechargers they're using to recharge their weapons, and eat those. It largely nullifies the effectiveness of their weapons.
- Reflective blobs can be created by ctrl-clicking a regular blob to upgrade it into strong, then again into reflective. Its best to do this on narrow chokepoints (see point 1) or when facing space pods. Remember: if the crew can get to the reflective blob, they can kill it. Make sure there's a blob in front of it to protect it from cheap welder attacks.
- Borgs are very dangerous, but thankfully also very easy to kill with a couple of attack/expand moves into their turf. Take them out early.
- Place resource/factory blobs as close as possible to your nodes to increase their effectiveness.
- If someone throws a flashbang at you, expand onto that tile to destroy the flashbang before it goes off.
- If there is a water or plasma tank nearby, attack it. Slipped crew are easy prey, and you can block off plasma floods using strong blobs. Crew are not so lucky. N2O is even better, as it is utterly harmless to you, but can be permanently disabling to crew.
- Use atmos to your advantage. Create a breach into space in a corridor just before your blobs. Anyone trying to attack them at close range will be sucked out by the breach.
Feel free to add your own points below.
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July 25:
- Shatterdcoyote has stepped down from Community Manager to Game Admin.
- Xerdies is now Community Manager.
July 26:
- Normalyman has stepped down from Community Manager to Game Admin.
- Denthamos is now Community Manager.
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Thoughts:
- Doubling the number of surgery rooms may be significant balance-wise.
- Placing viro next to toxins storage is likely to result in flaming monkeys. I am unsure if this is good or bad.
- It might almost be doable to connect genetics maint straight down south to medical maint.
- Viro seems really big.
- What are the two tiny rooms south of the CMO office? If they're patient rooms, is the glass intentional?
- The maint area west of OR1 is weird. Single tile corridor?
- This removes the secret medical rooms from medmaint, which were nice to have.
- What do you plan to put in that lone blank square of maint just east of secondary medical storage?
- I wonder if the CMO's office should have a window to viro.
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3 hours ago, davidchan said:
This is a bad idea. The biggest complaint against security is they use their power to abuse people they don't like or find annoying. Making it a crime to criticize them only legitimizes that behavior, especially when no other part of your post implies any enforcement of security being professional themselves. This is literally going to lead to security players baiting people they don't like into vocalizing their distaste and critisms so they can arrest the person.
If security mains think security should get more respect, they need to actually play the role in a manner where they are respectful to the crew and not needlessly making the round worse for non-security players for their own benefit.
I'm against making it a crime to merely criticize security.
I'm for making it a crime or SOP violation to needlessly antagonize security.
There is a difference.
"Security confiscated my stuff when they shouldn't have" is a criticism, and fine.
"SHITCURITY ABUSING ME IN PROCESSING HELP!" (when security are simply processing you without actually doing anything abusive) is needlessly antagonizing security.
Basically, if your complaint is reasonable, and/or expressed in a constructive way, its fine.
On the other hand, if you're going out of your way to make life as difficult as possible for security, and you are not an antag, you shouldn't be doing that. Nobody should.
Even if security is bad at their job, making life extra difficult for them WON'T improve matters.
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I've informed blessed that "you can try" is going to be interpreted as permission to do something, and that players shouldn't get in trouble for doing things that a reasonable person would assume, based on the ahelp, that they have permission to do.
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In general:
- I think we should look to code-based solutions, not simply admin-policy solutions. Admin-policy solutions exist to do things we cannot do with code, NOT to do things we could instead do with code.
- I think that any solutions we do implement should be carefully thought out and aimed at (A) making security more fun, so more people want to play it (B) making security more competent, so it has a better reputation, and (C) making the crew treat security better.
Some specific ideas:
- I still think we should have a device in processing that automatically times how long suspects/prisoners are in there, and generates an alert on security radio when someone has been in there over 10 minutes. This would help cut down on people being left in processing far too long, which always results in a worse relationship between security and crew.
- I also think that batons should have an inbuilt sec radio, which generates a one-time message on sec comms the first time each baton is used on harm intent. This would help magistrate/HoS/Captain notice and stop shitty officers.
- I'm also inclined to believe that security should get automatic basic department access on red. This means security officers should be able to simply walk into medical, eng, science, etc on red. The airlocks should open for them. It doesn't make sense to me that security are supposed to have access to these areas... yet they usually don't.
- I believe that yelling 'shitcurity' over radio for no good reason, or otherwise needlessly antagonizing security, needs to be a crime under space law or a SOP violation. Security should feel like the crew will treat them with respect, and we should make whatever changes are needed to ensure that happens.
- I'm still keen on my idea of 'give the head of every department a medal in their locker that they can award to excellent crew from their department'. Something to reward players for being great at their jobs. In fact in this case I'd go further and I'd deem the magistrate a head for these purposes, allowing them to give out a 'Legal Excellence' medal to whoever they feel is the best at upholding space law each shift, including say IAAs who challenge unjust sentences.
- I am skeptical that security cadets would be a good idea, as I think they'd just end up as loot pinatas. Even with lesser gear, merely being able to get a stunprod, sec ID and sec comms from them is already reason enough for antags to kill them for their gear. However, I am willing to let the idea be testmerged and trialed, and willing to admit if the results of such a test prove me wrong.
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4 hours ago, Allfd said:
"Anti-social behaviour should not have a negative effect beyond one round, and positive behaviour should also not have a positive effect for more then one round."
As Alffd points out, this suggestion eliminates one of the biggest incentives we have for positive behavior towards other players.
That is not a good thing.
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June 30: DarkLordPyro (Game Admin) has retired from staff.
July 1: Twinmold has unretired and is now a Game Admin again.
July 2: Regen (Server Dev) has retired from staff.
July 3: Ping has unretired and is now a Game Admin again. -
Electrical maint is one of the most common spots for terrors, xenos, etc.
Its quite likely the engiborg just checked it out of habit, rather than them having any specific idea you were there.
R&D Superguide
in Guides
Posted
@John_bigless
I would like to update my
https://kyep.github.io/paratools/rndtool/RDT.html#
tool to use your list for its 'Recommended' status for items.
Please contact me on Discord and we'll sort that out.