Cortical borer mini overhaul

[Cyiko]

Hello, in this I'm going to detail a few ideas that should change borers from their sad state they are now to a mid round antagonist role that actually causes issues while not being too dangerous for the station, all of the changes suggested should be relatively simple.

As they are now, borers and hosts come in few shapes. You either have great roleplay borers that make things fun, or shitters that take you over and make you bash your head in, fill you with fliptonium and generally troll. As for hosts, you either get in security/antagonists who want you for powergaming purposes such as infinite meth, someone who doesn't do anything, thus making you a glorified PAI or someone who will bolt to a vending machine the second you say "hi" to OD on sugar. My suggestions should hopefully make it harder to kill the fun for either side and have them work together as the symbiote the host now is.

 

First change, remove the ability for borers to take over their hosts, now you may go "Hang on, this is signature, why would you do this?" This has just lead to people hating borers, it doesn't promote any symbiotic activity, it just kicks the player from their own body for a while.

The second change however now gives borer hosts an antagonist flag and objective. "You never knew you were so alone, but now you can hear a beautiful chorus of singing! Everyone should experience this unity! Objective: Protect your borer and ensure the spread to new hosts." This addition will make borers slightly more antagonistic yet beneficial at the same time, hosts will now be encouraged to protect their borer and help spread borers to other people. Now that borers cannot control their hosts, they can reproduce without being in control and they now can also directly infect people next to them with a borer, provided they both stay still, similar to shadowling enthrallment.

The third change, let borers retain their psychic stun ability while in a host, this will give borers and their hosts a tag team approach to things as the borer will stun the victim and the host can cuff them. To prevent abuse and easy fleeing from security, it will take a hefty chunk of stamina from the host and leave them very slow. Meth cannot fix stamina damage.

The fourth change, borers and borer hosts can see other hosts, represented by an icon besides their head like thralls.

With these changes in place, borers should be a somewhat interesting antagonist that will spread like cultists but without the heavy negative effects. Borers will not remove current traitor objectives, only add theirs as a secondary objective. They will not trigger a round ending event but their presence on the station will be taken much more seriously.

 

TL:DR
Borers are now proper mid round antags.
They can't ruin people's rounds easily and neither can hosts
They shouldn't interrupt the flow of the round too much
They will be taken seriously
Borers can't control hosts, hosts can't purposefully get rid of their borer.
Hosts are encouraged to kidnap and force people to take in a borer.

Edited August 22, 2018 by Cyiko

[Coloss260]

I agree with all your ideas, would be really great !

[McRamon]

hm, sounds smart, i like it!

[farie82]

I like the idea for the most part. Only problem I have with it is that people will still want borers. Because then they can go kidnap people and convert them. Or probably in their case kidnap and steal their stuf in the name of making more borers. 

Maybe keep the mindcontrol thing and make it last longer. But give the borer disadvantages while he's using it. Slower movement speed or something. This will ensure that the borer keeps the host in check if needed without to much admin intervention. And it will keep the borer from keeping constant mind control because working together is more beneficial if the host works with the borer. (as he should due to the mindslave objective).

The idea is great yet it won't stop the crew from wanting borers in their head.

Edited August 28, 2018 by farie82

[McRamon]

Well, much like cult or slings, or even vampire and his metafriend - some people just want to be converted, even if ICly you become a slave. They just want to be antags. I believe it is not allowed to come to maint and get converted on purpose, borer thing should also be in rules. Hell, we can add an objective to people who were deconverted, dethralled or deborered - "Objective n# - you have experienced the free will once again. It was a nightmare for you when you were a thrall/cultist/had borer. You must ensure it doesnt happen to you again." And a small list of deconverted people of any sort to pop up when round ends - it may be public, may be admin only.

[Corocan]

50 minutes ago, farie82 said:

The idea is great yet it won't stop the crew from wanting borers in their head.

 

11 minutes ago, McRamon said:

Well, much like cult or slings, or even vampire and his metafriend - some people just want to be converted, even if ICly you become a slave. They just want to be antags.

Add an objective to people who were deconverted, dethralled or deborered - "Objective n# - you have experienced the free will once again. It was a nightmare for you when you were a thrall/cultist/had borer. You must ensure it doesnt happen to you again."

And that's the unfortunate part about cult/sling/vampirethrall is that you can't really stop this from happening because often times there's not really enough substantial evidence to prove that people are getting caught intentionally. The only real incentive is to make it more painful to be an antag than to be a regular crew member. Forcing players to partake in objectives that might go against their IC wishes is probably the safest bet to make the Borers a legitimate threat rather than a neigh infinite source of free drugs and power game. I know that a lot of the player base treats willing borer participants with much disdain and I think it's well deserved since from an IC perspective they shouldn't want this brain slug in their heads and the very notion of vomiting out the offspring of said brain slug should revolt them, but it doesn't.

 

In conclusion, I think the addition of an objective to sort of give the borer a legitimate goal that sets them against the crew is a good idea, however, this alone will be enough for the crewmember to desire to remove the head slug, so I think that keeping or removing the ability to Take Control wouldn't really sway anyone one way or the other. I think that it would actually be to the borer's benefit, as it should be in this relationship, to keep the Take Control ability. Great suggestion!

[McRamon]

Well, on the second thought, what if more than half (for example) of station has borers - game automatically ends, with the phrase: "Whatever was the meaning  of live, whatever the mission we had - it doesnt matter anymore. You can only hear borers singing everywhere in the galaxy."

This is wild and idea, i am not sure about it, but i think current antags, security and people enjoying the round would totally start to fight borers.

[TheClosetMailman]

I honestly like these suggestions, the only time i`ve seen borers was when one got squished under my HOP shutters by accident (I was unaware it was even there), dragged in corpses by loyal sec officers as the Warden or even watching the CMO move faster and mysteriously regenerate from grave wounds.

 

We could at least have a test of these suggestions.

[Pckables]

On 8/28/2018 at 9:01 AM, McRamon said:

Well, on the second thought, what if more than half (for example) of station has borers - game automatically ends, with the phrase: "Whatever was the meaning  of live, whatever the mission we had - it doesnt matter anymore. You can only hear borers singing everywhere in the galaxy."

This is wild and idea, i am not sure about it, but i think current antags, security and people enjoying the round would totally start to fight borers.

If anything, this would work just for the sole reason of it requiring at least a third of the server to be dead/observing, AND choose to play a borer, AND successfully infest someone.
For the round end to occur, the station would have to be in active turmoil and conflict against the borers to even be able to muster the number of borers required.

[EvadableMoxie]

This will only amplify the problem with borers, which is that by and large crew WANTS TO BE infected.  Yea, there is always a chance at a shittery borer but you can wrestle control back pretty easily and then sugar it down long enough to be removed.  Because borers are almost pure benefit everyone wants them even though they really should be a bit more wary of the idea.

But now you're removing their ability to take over their host, meaning the borer can't even in theory do anything to hurt it's host.  Then you're making borers even more powerful by giving them a stun. That's just... amazingly powerful.  Think how good vampire glare is, and you're just giving that out.  It's an auto win in any 1 v 1 situation. 

And then on top of that, you get antag status, which is going to be massively problematic.  The abductor objectives are very carefully worded as such to prevent violence and cause chaos without killing.  An open ended objective to protect your borer means you are an antag with full authorization to fight security once they know you have a borer since you can assume being detained would mean it's removal.  And unlike abductors, people would be actively trying to be infected by borers. 

So, think about how bad it is as sec to have to deal with graytide. Now think about having to deal with graytide with antag status allowing them to do a lot more than just resist non-lethally.  Now give them unlimited meth and vampire glare.  Does that sound fun to deal with?

If borers are 'broken' then the way they are broken is that people don't have enough reason to fear them and instead actively help them spread.  These changes would only amplify that problem while introducing a whole hell of a lot of new ones. 

And in all honestly, I think borers are fine.  Maybe not mechanically, but they're a great vehicle for roleplay and I don't feel like it's necessary for them to be anything more than that. 

Edited September 9, 2018 by EvadableMoxie