Swarmer Rework Suggestion

[Leanfrog]

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.

Edited October 10, 2021 by Leanfrog

[Zedahktur]

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!

[Viz]

I've talked about a similar idea before, I think it's pretty cool. Though instead of gibbing people how about some analogue to tspider cocoons? Have the people plugged into the thing like in matrix 

[Leanfrog]

3 hours ago, Woje said:

I've talked about a similar idea before, I think it's pretty cool. Though instead of gibbing people how about some analogue to tspider cocoons? Have the people plugged into the thing like in matrix 

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.

[Leanfrog]

13 hours ago, Zedahktur said:

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!

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.

[Viz]

41 minutes ago, Leanfrog said:

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.

First Charlie's mech rebalance PR woulda need to be merged because currently ions don't actually do almost anything to mechs funnily enough.

[Charliminator]

1 hour ago, Woje said:

First Charlie's mech rebalance PR woulda need to be merged because currently ions don't actually do almost anything to mechs funnily enough.

I closed that 

[Leanfrog]

2 hours ago, Woje said:

First Charlie's mech rebalance PR woulda need to be merged because currently ions don't actually do almost anything to mechs funnily enough.

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.