Zedahktur

Wow this is evil I love it

This was mainly derived from Mining borgs. I personally like the idea of being able to have module-specific upgrades for borgs, which can help accomplish a few things that bother some borg players in hopefully a healthy way. For example; Engiborgs can have the option of a few upgrades like... Being able to hold Plasteel so they can finally repair reinforced walls and not give the poor AI a bunch of normal walls when there's no engineer. Which can be a nice upgrade you can achieve way later to prevent malf AIs from having their engiborgs build a reinforced fortress early. With a side option of having borgs need to retrieve the material from the ORM instead of having them generated. Or an early upgrade to give engiborgs the ability to put god damn light tubes into the light fixtures they can already make (I will pay someone, anyone) With a smaller example going to JANIBORGS who have a majority of their equipment be useless due to their ability to auto-clean whatever they walk on. We could have that as an upgrade instead similar to the janicart.

Hmmmmmm

Big oofs but expected nonetheless. Still hoping we come back to Borers someday, hopefully revise them as either a complete revamp or something entirely new but still matching the parasite theme. From the ground up, of course, as the code for them is... Mmmm.... Yeah..... Considering how probably time consuming that is, I don't really see this happening anytime soon should it be on the table for consideration. What I would give to learn how to code funni spess gem

Borers. Some of us like them. Some of us hate the ones that grief with mind-control. Some of us hate how they play. And some of us hate how they can offer antags (or secoffs) free meth and heals. We all know how to treat borers. With vile unbridled hatred and hostility. But honestly, they don't seem as warranted at all. They are a very slow, very weak "Antagonist". You are forced to rely on hiding and snatching someone off-guard. Which is not a bad take at an antag at all, but it can be difficult to slither your way inside someone as your paralysis ability is shorter than your infest. Allowing the person to very quickly slap you with a toolbox. Let alone trying to find that one person alone that won't be spotted by someone else. Afterwards you have to pray they don't immediately go for the sugar, which will quite literally be very difficult to avoid considering the long mind-takeover time and the long time it takes to leave the host which also makes you even more vulnerable and practically a death sentence as staying still to vent will get you killed. Alongside that, you aren't very much allowed to violently attack someone even if it's to stop them from brutally delivering a world of pain and forcing you into medbay. Which makes their antagonistic status strange in my opinion. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How I view it aside, what can we do to improve our little parasites? What can we do to make it not a waste of a midround role? And what can we do to actually warrant one of the most bloodthirsty overreaction towards a defenseless grub? This post was created for me to vomit out whatever random ideas that could potentially stick or not. And to hopefully ensure we don't lose more antags like our beloved and heavily flawed Shadowlings. Do note that balance is not currently thoroughly thought out. This is just an idea dump. If by some miracle any of these come to pass, balance can be handled accordingly. So... What if....... Zombie Parasite: Actually make them a threat to warrant such a strong KoS reaction. Give a sense of urgency and maybe utilize the many missing biohazard numbers. This is a combined idea of borer mechanics and the zombie antag I've seen people want for. This version of the Borer would, of course, try to hijack the mind of their host (or perhaps corpses as well). Eventually taking them over entirely (This will kill the crew player). I guess think of Resident Evil parasites in a way. In order to bring the player back to life is to shoot the body until it is dead which will force the borer to crawl out and try to flee, restrain the body and surgically remove the borer, or blow them up and save the brain lmao. Afterwards revive them. Borer Brainwash: We keep the host + borer cooperation. But it'd be more like a mindslave/convert situation. The host player will essentially be mindslaved to their borer, following its desire to survive. This will make borers more dangerous than their current cruddy default state, as they will essentially have their host attack anyone who tries to kill the borer. And potentially providing extra biological defense mechanisms similar to that of a Cling's bladearm or tentacle. The key issue here is mistaking said host with a cling and having a wrongful perma-death. Borer Xenos??: This random idea is for the borer to infest the host like usual. But they feast on flesh and/or blood of their victim little by little. Reproducing inside and utilizing chemicals to create countermeasures. Eventually, the host victim ruptures with a small number of new borers crawling out to continue the process. Cordyceps Borer: Fuck bland beta worms. Fungal nightmares are where it's at. That fungus on the walls we keep ignoring? Have a random midround turn one of those patches into a severe biohazard. A moldy little wriggly bastard would grow out of the patches, hunting for a host. Once a host is obtained, they have a limited time to find a suitable location. Afterwards, the host will die and their body will rapidly grow patches of fungus. Very similar to a blob node. And from this patch of gross fuzzy badness comes fungal abominations for players to control. With more little moldy borers to create more nodes from more victims. And that's about it, for now. These are my random borer ideas that I just threw at the wall. Why? I wouldn't want to see them remove than improved. And I figured why not say my thoughts instead of just sitting on them? I highly encourage others to pitch in. My hopes is to turn these bland worms into something worthy of being called midround antag. It would be a shame to reduce antag roles further by removing them.

It's very mixed for me. On one hand, I like them. It's a nice refreshing look. On the other hand, the dots throw me off. It's too much noise for the floor and gives it a more industrial look rather than a fancy research space station. Alongside that, the white is very dulled out right now. It gives medbay and even research very sharp contrasts with the rest of their brighter equipment. The abundance of the 'dots' make them look like ceiling tiles rather than floor tiles. This doesn't mean the dots are BAD, but perhaps we could explore the option to have both an undotted style and a dotted style. It would also double the floor painting option for everyone. BONUS: I do like the new freezer floor.

Yeah! This is DEFINITELY not salt! Get moving, punks! i cri and mald

Here we'll talk about the very helpful guide on how to fight as a borg! This involves the simple method: Get flashed, die, get dabbed on because you thought borg combat was fun.

Can't wait for the impossible "Don't blow up scichem" goal for science.

That's why I always respect attempts at balancing. You have to take many things into consideration before attempting it. Make the AI chamber better? Makes stopping malf AI or stealing/killing AI objectives harder. Make the AI chamber too easy to break into? Clown walks in and turns the core yellow with bananium.

Don't worry about that argument type! You bring up an excellent point. I very much remember an RD who decided to use 5 max caps on me since my laws kept getting changed... Despite carding being a very viable option as a single maxcap immediately destroyed all the turrets. Maybe in the end the AI core chamber, at least on box station, needs some love.

*scream

I'll be frank. I don't like thermite at all, hahah. Nothing has changed my mind regarding thermite in any way. Personally, I don't enjoy the idea of a flammable chemical that's incredibly easy to produce. With said chemical being used to quickly break into the already rough designed AI core. Or generally anywhere... But, sprinkling some bias here, it's incredibly annoying how easy it is to grab some thermite and break into the AI core. With me favoring the AI role more than any, it's quite unfun to watch someone break through three layers of reinforced walls in a matter of seconds and proceed to quickly either kill or snatch me up due to how easy it is to disable or break the turrets without taking any damage. Thermite is the reason why I wish the turrets, or at least the core, were... Er... Better. It's a shame too, because the other turrets are rarely used as it's 100% easier and quicker to just quickly grab a bottle of thermite and break in from the back. Anyone and their mother can do it. It's especially awful if it's done by that one lone engineer or scientist who believe you're malf and decided to take matters into their own hands like a nerd. Then scream "AI MALF" when they get shot by the automated turrets.... This personal gripe aside, I'd still like to hear other's opinions on the one thing I 100% despise; What do YOU think of thermite? Thank you for coming to my ted talk

This sounds pretty fun. My only concern are counter-attack options. Like mech spam. I don't know how a swarmer would even be able to defend against a single mech. Other large-scale midrounders have either mobility (Terrors just moving nest) Or big mean blobber boys. There could be a mech-specific swarmer defense. Like some giant beefy swarmer that's expensive to make. Or ion traps. Just my opinion on this. Sounds like a fun suggestion, though!