Leanfrog

I have no particular opinion on how it's respawned, I just don't want it being randomly spawned like the disk currently is where some grayshirt can find it and squirrel it away for the rest of the round, with the disk you usually have the pinpointer, so this isn't as much of a problem.

Title makes it pretty clear, objective items should respawn if they're destroyed in some manner, E.G CE accidentally dusting themselves on the SM like 5 minutes in destroying both the boots and blueprints. Already got people willing to code this, just want a design team take on it.

I also like the idea of it requiring a cold room but as mentioned above by others I feel it wouldn't change anything since science already starts with one, and it'd be very easy for them to just shove a new one down in there, but if it requires a cold room and has a reset period like in Miravel's post that seems fine and would encourage actually setting something secure up.

So, as it is currently whenever Tcomms or any other major thing goes down, RND is capable of just shitting out a new version almost immediately, we'll keep the focus of this on Tcomms for now as to keep things brief, for example, a terror or xeno sneaks onto the AI sat and destroys the Tcomms hub, at first glance this is a really bad thing people can't communicate anymore but OOOOPS, RND has just immediately built a new Tcomms hub with no repercussions for it going down and comms are back up with effectively no downtime. So my suggestion is this, make Tcomms have a "rebooting" period whenever comms are taken offline, be it manually shut down or destroyed. This would enable the destruction of the Tcomms hub to actually be impactful, additionally this shouldn't affect Malf AI too much, the forced downtime of comms being shut off would reflect the usual bluff of "ions". Overall a minor change that should still create a reasonable impact on how things go down this also eliminates the potential of people pre-building tcomms hubs to just shut down breaking comms even harder, if you were to ask me I'd say at base the downtime should be around 5 minutes but the period of downtime is up for debate.

Right, I'm seeing a lot of objection to prods having the funky %battery stuff, I personally think it would add an extra layer of forethought for using them but I'm not the one making the actual code changes. I guess just making it bulky would be fine on its own, but I will still push for the belt slot I've been told there would be objections to just bulky in other discussion so I see the belt slot thing as a sort of compromise for that. (Do note that making prods bulky was actually PR'd before a while ago, but this was back in the era of instant stuns)

Can't load yellow cores into stun prods IIRC. I do kind of like the idea of prods potentially backfiring but I feel it may be too punishing for newer players, and if anything the backfire chance should be the inverse of the second option you've suggested, lower charge lower amount released in a dangerous discharge while a higher capacity cell has more to potentially dump into a user. Maybe specifically bluespace cells could have a few extra hits compared to the other cells due to the much later development of them compared to other cells. EDIT: Just thought of this as well, but losing a fight to RNG is kinda lame, there's no low tier alternative to batons other than a prod, and unlike modifying the detective revolver you don't exactly have a choice when using the prod.

This is intentional, sec batons should be better than prods, prods are makeshift weapons that just about anyone can make cheaply, and being able to carry more than two or three conveniently (one belt/back, 1/2 in hand or any other combination), would circumvent the downside of the high power cost and inability to hotswap cells midcombat. The %based battery usage is based on the fact that they're quite ramshackle (you don't even need to tools to craft them) and to give them a downside other than just their size, without it they'd pretty much just be bigger batons that are a bit harder to hide. If you want something better you should have to do a larger crime than just "Possession Of A Weapon", be it stealing a sec baton or being a contractor for the baton they get.

This is fair, I was generally thinking of it from an offensive perspective rather than potentially using it to escape an aggressor (cult, etc) and the degree of an at least experienced player. 25% does seem more fair overall. Back slot already exists, but I doubt anyone would actually give up their backpack or carry it around just to have a funny weaker batong stored, so belt seems fair. If it's too good though then it can be easily changed.

So, stunprods as they are now are in kind of a sorry state three hits to fully stun someone is kind of really bad, I don't think I've seen anyone use them seriously (outside of bald tiders) since the nerf. So my proposal is this, stunprods should be reworked, they will be a 2 hit stun/stam crit much like regular security batons however, instead of using a set amount of charge per hit their cells are drained on a percentage, 50% to be exact, additionally prods would now take a timer to add/remove a power cell, this is to prevent combat hotswapping of powercells, finally prods would be made bulky and able to fit in a belt slot, this is to prevent carrying around multiple to just ignore the other downsides presented here. Let me know below what you think, overall I feel this is a reasonable change that would give prods a niche while still keeping them inferior to batons. To summarize Prods are now bulky but gain the ability to fit in the belt slot. Prods stun/stam crit in 2 hits like a security baton. Prods now use 50% of their equipped battery per hit. Prods now have a timer on switching the equipped power cell.

Title says it all, kind of silly if you ask me that despite being able to protect against heat almost as hot as the surface of the sun (exaggeration), this itty bitty funny light from a star still bakes you through it. Additionally, gamma ERTs probably shouldn't be getting baked just for getting off their shuttle when there's a funny event going on. In general this feels like something that would make sense.

So, as it is currently whenever the hostile vendors actually happen, they make a lot of breaches all over the station, this of course ticks up atmos and can make things fucky, my suggestion is this, make their explosions have no devastation value (the part that breaches) but in compensation bump up the heavy values (the part that breaks walls, etc) a little bit. This way the event is still fairly damaging but doesn't make atmos explode and cause problems.

As already stated by General Do Nothing, engineering borgs are already effectively superior to engineers in many fields (infinite RCD, effectively infinite metal and glass, innate atmos and rad immunity, etc). They do not need more buffs. Additionally being able to outright print things on the fly, most likely at the mere cost of energy because of how cyborgs work which is a whole other can of worms, is an entirely different ability from having to go to an autolathe/circuit vendor, get a locker, then haul that locker out to where repairs are being done, as a side note there's nothing stopping an engi borg from just always having a circuit in their grasper. Maybe if this was basically just a personal case it'd be more possible but I doubt it'd be accepted to begin with due to the above mentioned reasons. Cyborgs are meant to have certain things about them weaker than their organic counterpart because there'd be no reason to not play a cyborg at that point.

It has been stated before that if you become a Xeno or Terror, your consciousness is subsumed by the hivemind and you are to work towards the goals of said hive. Syndie borgs are given the syndicate lawset as above, Outside of those instances people shouldn't suddenly start wrecking up the place.

Simple mob slimes are nuts, regardless of whether or not they're spawned by the SM, to list a couple things, adult slimes can do around IIRC 20-30 brute damage with their basic attack, if they have fed on something their attack can also stun people, their latch does genetic damage, completely immune to laser weaponry, have a "backup" life if they're defeated as an adult splitting into 4 slimes all of which are hostile mind you, and laser weapons/hot temperatures make them go faster than meth, it's not so much an issue with pyro slimes being too strong and moreso that simple slimes are busted but usually aren't too much of an issue because they can normally only become sentient via potions.

EMPs when used in large quantities, such as several separate ion guns actually handle mechs quite handily, they drain charge from the cell on top of damaging the suit, they also ignore the armor that mechs have, mechs crush just about anything lacking ranged attacks but the swarmers are equipped with ranged weapons and movement blocking structures creating opportunity for the swarmers to rail on the mechs from behind cover.

In regards to mechs I've already mentioned a solution, red swarmers will have their traditional high damage lasers as well as an Ion mode available via unlocks, in the event the crew is mech spamming the swarmers can rush out the ion upgrade to try and counter them as well as upgrading the cap on reds.

The biological recycler basically is the win condition, when the swarmers have overrun everyone and there's little to no resistance they'll be able to herd the last survivors and gather the bodies feeding them to the recycler, this should be when a DS is sent in to nuke and stop the swarmers from spreading or the crew transfer happens meaning people won't have to sit out much more of the round before a restart, and even if the crew does somehow claw back a victory from the swarmers at that point the sheer damage caused to the station would likely warrant a shuttle call.

Swarmers as they are now while an interesting concept really aren't fun to play against at all or even play as in some cases, it boils down to basically just going to a lone room, eating that whole room then burrowing into maints to eat all of the walls there and replicating all the while then eating a bunch of important structures with the sole goal of being really annoying. For the most part this will be co-opting the lavaland swarmer "megafauna" to overhaul the antagonist. My proposal is this, make swarmers into a full proper midround event in tandem with these changes. The swarmer event starts with a "prime" swarmer which bears a unique sprite and is capable of converting itself into a swarmer beacon which will then function like a swarmer AI with various abilities powered by harvested resources. The new beacon will then immediately spit out 3 swarmers one of each color, these will be offered to the ghosts to control, if one is destroyed after a brief period the beacon will produce a new swarmer of the destroyed type. The beacon AI will have access to various upgrades accessible via deposited resources, the primary upgrades available will increase the passive production limit of swarmers getting progressively more expensive with each upgrade, once a critical threshold of swarmers is reached the beacon will gain access to create a biological recycler breaking down bodies into resources while extracting the brain or whatever equivalent for a "later" use as dictated by their programming, their win condition is consuming the crew. Additional upgrades can be purchased enhancing the stats of individual types of swarmers such as health and resource capacity and new structures beyond what they have currently. All swarmers barring the prime swarmer will lack the ability to ventcrawl with the intended purpose of locking down one area then expanding outwards The blue swarmers function as a support type and will largely function as they are now as well as being the only type capable of building swarmer structures, however they will no longer be able to produce new swarmers individually instead they will act as resource ferries with the goal of balancing feeding resources to the beacon to manufacture additional swarmers and upgrades and producing defensive structures. Yellow swarmers will function as a robust melee variant without their traditional instant stun but rather dealing moderate amounts of burn and stamina damage with a weak overshield capable of blocking 1-2 hits(this includes EMPs), these will have a small resource capacity so in lulled times they can function as a lesser blue swarmer. Red swarmers will be the fragile ranged type with a potent laser weapon, upgrades will increase the projectile speed and add an incendiary, and EMP function to their weapon, resource capacity will be minimal with essentially the sole purpose of being able to preform repairs in the event they get damaged. New structures will include swarmer "tiles" which grants a defensive boost to swarmers on it while hampering the movement of crew, these can be pried up with a simple crowbar. They will also gain access to a simple disabler turret with a high resource cost as well as a matter compiler capable of breaking down resources that normally can't be deconstructed into resources for the beacon and, of course the aforementioned biological recycler. I'd like to hear your input and ideas down below so feel free to discuss things.

Sabotaging lights is actually quite easy considering you can just make a light switch and instantly turn off all the lights in an area for what is basically free on top of the incredibly limited number of janitors who actually bother to fix lights. And a flashlight isn't exactly a counter to the speed as all it really takes is breaking LOS with the source of the light, being in view range of security for a prolonged duration is always a bad situation for an antagonist as it leaves them open to getting blasted, in particular breaking LOS is incredibly easy in maints where there's many corners and doors to close behind you blocking light from disabling your cloak speed.

Nuka cola is a resource that is consumed when you drink it, sure it has no downside but my point is that every other method of going faster in the game consumes a resource, nuka cola and meth you have to drink meaning you can run out of them if you didn't prepare enough, adrenals are a limited use implant, and cling legs if timed poorly can leave you depleted of stamina as a side note I do think it should cost more for what it is but clings don't have much going for them as is so I'm just gonna say leave it as is for now. Why should vampires, an already potent antag get it for free?

So in my time observing as of late I've noticed that Umbrae has pretty much become the "meta" pick as its kit is loaded with mobility which in our current balance state is an order of magnitude better than just being good at fighting, in particular getting what is a free passive speed boost just for being in darkness, which is already a large advantage even without the rest of the Umbrae abilities is just a tad strong, I suggest making it an active ability rather than purely passive, split shadow cloak in two, let them keep the passive invis and give a new ability, shadow dash a toggleable ability that drains blood granting speed while the user is shrouded in darkness. Speed is a very powerful trait in this game and it being given as a free passive is probably tilting player favor towards it more than the other subclasses. Going fast should cost resources, it already does for every other method currently in the game, meth, adrenals, stamina damage, so why should this be any different?

It being a thing makes actual sense yeah, hence why I suggested just shifting them over to being something cargo can purchase and replace them with something a bit more interesting, having them in cargo would give Engis something else to do on top of the station goal, the station shields are incredibly underwhelming as a whole and feel unfit to be a station goal IMO

As the title suggests I am here to discuss the issues with our current station goals. I will be presenting my arguments in a mostly organized list going over each station goal, afterwards I will attempt to provide some potential solutions to the issues I've mentioned, so let's get started then. General Issues This section will cover a couple topics that affect multiple station goal, in particular the BSA (Bluespace Artillery), BSH (Bluespace Harvester), and Station Shields. Lack Of Tangible Impact On The Round The BSA, BSH, and Station Shields all lack a tangible impact on the round, with all the fanfare and name of "Station Goal" one would think that said goal would have a tangible impact on the round, when in reality the aforementioned station goals have a number of issues unique to themselves which prevent them from being interesting and impactful, I will go into further detail in each of their dedicated segments. Station Goal? More Like Engineering Goal Once again the BSA, BSH, and Station Shields fall short in their purpose, this time in the fact that these goals are all essentially limited to just Engineering. The name STATION Goal implies that they'd be a station wide effort, however the 3 mentioned goals outside of ordering from cargo or getting some parts from science have no other departmental aid. Solutions In regards to impact on the round I will go over in their own segments. In regards to involvement the three involved departments are currently Engineering, Cargo, and Science, this leaves out Security, and Medbay, these two departments could be implemented easily enough. Security could have interaction with the station goal by giving antags a new objective in the form of sabotaging the station goal in some form (note these would also succeed if the goal was never built in the first place), maybe to their own benefit similar to what happens if you emag the BSH, to implement Medbay involvement perhaps the various station goals could have more intense operational hazards for Medbay to treat. The Bluespace Artillery This section will cover my issues with the BSA in particular and some potential fixes, generally the BSA is not that bad of a station goal and can be fixed with some effort This Thing Is Too Niche The BSA while interesting on paper has very few actual use cases due to our ruleset, this isn't implying we should change the ruleset and is more so an issue with the BSA itself. Anything off station is either too durable or pointless to target to make actual use of the BSA on, while using it to fire upon a station based target would be a violation of our rules barring a select few niche cases and also requires far more effort to setup than it's worth. Solutions The BSA's general use case of "explode stuff" is hard to work with considering our ruleset, a potential implementation I can think of that would at least make the BSA more useable would be to have it produce low power targeting grenades as a secondary function, these would function very similar to what was proposed in PR#16275 albeit with a smaller blast radius than a standard BSA shot. Having the BSA be more useable in particular against mid-rounds would help make it matter in a typical round. Station Shields Station Shields, oh boy where to start with these things, if I were in a position to say so I'd say to just outright replace these with something else and let you order them through cargo at any time. The Opposite Of A Station Goal These things are so detached from being a station goal it's disgusting, unlike every other goal you just slam these things down randomly in space around the station then press a button on a console. How is this a STATION goal when it's literally just Engineering doing some minor EVA they were probably already going to do when wiring the solars. Extremely Underwhelming Function Station Shields serve one purpose and no other, blocking meteors, on paper this doesn't sound that bad BUT, meteors are both uncommon and underwhelming as an event, opinion incoming but I personally find that the meteors hitting the station is actually more interesting than just being deleted as it gives engineering something to do on a potentially slow round, okay opinion over. The ONE case where these would actually be useful would be during a Meteor round, funny thing about that? Meteors as a round-type are not in rotation meaning that these things are even less useful than one would think. And you want to know something extra funny? A meteor event isn't even guaranteed when you get the shields as an objective meaning they can be completely and utterly useless based off of pure RnG. Solutions As I said above I personally don't think these are salvageable but I'll still try to give some input. Shields could be upgraded to provide a larger coverage area with stock parts, and to give security some interaction perhaps these could either "upgrade" meteors or attack the station itself if sabotaged by an antagonist. And to make them more useful they could perhaps guard against more than just meteors attacking space carp and the like. DNA Vault Ah the DNA Vault my personal favorite of the four goals I'd say this one is actually what a station goal should be, it involves multiple departments, is generally accessible, and also has a proper impact on the round. I'll discuss the elephant in the room that is the actual balance of this thing below. Boy This Thing Is Busted The actual balance of the vault is at 2 extremes, half the genes are super busted and the other half are basically useless. In particular two egregious genes are Leg Muscle Stimuli (base movement speed increase) and Neural Repathing (halves all stun times) while on the other end of the spectrum we have Toxin Adaptation (no damage from breathing plasma) and Lung Reinforcement (can breathe regardless). Solution Simple enough on this one, balance out the various traits you can get, I have nothing in mind myself so if you have an idea leave it down below. Bluespace Harvester To be honest, I was very disappointed by this when it finally got in, first it was too hard to get the higher levels which was fine, it was better to be like that than to have it be baby mode where it is now. An Underwhelming Project The Harvester is in a bit of a weird spot and I guess this could be more of a critique of our current power system rather than the goal itself but regardless it is both A. Nigh impossible to reach higher levels with the SM due to the very low power output, and B. Far too easy to crank up to a very high level with an easy to make TEG setup. An Underwhelming Reward The earnings from this could've been so interesting considering that it's supposed to be tapping into an alternate universe, but in truth the rewards are all already obtainable for the most part barring the scarab eggs, the hat option is just a renamed crate from cargo, pretty much the only unique list of items on the payouts list is from the cultural artifact but even then there's a solid chance you just get some brass which to be fair at the time couldn't be made but is now just as easy as throwing some chems together. Incredibly Isolated Due to the nature of the BSH essentially requiring its own private powernet there's very little room to try building it in different places, this results in the BSH only ever being interacted with by Engineering/Atmos, for a Station Goal this is once again missing the point of a station goal. Solutions As I said earlier the power criteria on the BSH isn't so much an issue with the harvester itself and moreso the current power generation methods available to the crew, fixing this should be relatively easy, make the SM actually generate power, nerf the TEG or just nerf the TEG and reduce the power threshold on the BSH as the TEG is busted. In regards to making it more rewarding to use. And a way to encourage building it somewhere that isn't just engineering the addition of a remote power input device could solve the issue of it needing its own private powernet. Conclusions All in all I love the concept of Station Goals and only want to see them improved, I've had these issues with the station goals for a while and a lot of them leave me lacking any real motivation to do them only further draining the limited amount things that Engineering has to do in the first place. I'm up for discussion of things and would like to hear your opinion's down below.

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The Premise The Syndicate has hijacked a military grade cruiser capable of hauling a large amount of weapons and operatives, they plan on testing out their new toy on an NT station. The crew must defend their station while destroying the cruiser's experimental reactor and or damaging a % amount of the cruiser based on server pop. Or in event of being overwhelmed, escaping with as many crewmembers as they can carry. A Syndicate major victory is achieved by exterminating a % population of the station based on current server pop, a minor victory can be achieved by forcing the crew to abandon the station via the escape shuttle. A Crew major victory can be achieved by destroying the cruiser's experimental reactor core, a minor victory can be achieved by causing major structural damage to the cruiser but not destroying it via a reactor detonation. Syndicate Operatives will appear in spawn waves at somewhat regular intervals on their cruiser which is physically located on one of the more desolate Z levels such as Z7, they will have access to an expanded uplink compared to a standard traitor but less than a standard nuclear operative. The operatives will assault via drop pods and the crew will be given a shuttle they can use to launch assaults on the cruiser. The Goal This new potential gamemode would add a more "slow burn" style of nukies that allows further relevance of departments such as Science, Mining, Engineering, and other departments that currently are basically invalidated by the nature of War Ops and regular nukies as a whole. A prolonged siege style gamemode gives more purpose to station equipment such as the BSA or toxins bombs as well as the wide variety of weaponry available to the crew that often isn't used due to the length that comes in its creation. It also offers a new variation of the Crew V X antag as the crew in order to win has to take the offensive to a place that isn't their home turf in order to succeed. It is also something we don't currently have as a gamemode. The Work The actual amount of work sprite and code wise likely wouldn't be too large, a lot of the concept relies on already existing assets that just need to be put together into a structured gamemode and a degree of mapping to design the syndicate cruiser. Likely the only things that would be entirely new would be the syndicate cruiser's reactor, the altered uplink and the new shuttle dock for the boarding shuttle.