Blob
Superiors: Not defined
Difficulty: Variable, is the crew smart?
Guides: This is the guide.
Access: Varies on your human form
Duties: Expand, overtake the station, get nuked.
The blob is a creature which has infected a crew member, and shall eventually cause them to burst and begin attempting to overtake the station, using a mixture of strategy, and brute force. The blob will attain victory if it grows to a large enough size. To where it will be nuked. The blob has a good bit of time after the round starts to find a location to set up shop. This should helpfully prepare you for this role!
So, you've been selected to play the blob eh?
Welcome to this wonderful lifestyle! You might be unprepared, but that's okay, you have several minutes to read over this quickly and learn what things do.
To begin, you must find a good place to hide. There are three factors to take into account when deciding this location, and they are as follows:
| Factor | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Ease Of Entry | How easily can the crew attack you in this location? Think about doors and access required, space that the crew can fit stuff such as welding fuel tanks and emitters, and new areas of access you will create by expansion. A terrible example of this would be just north of the bridge, you have three wide areas that the crew can attack you from, and three more you will create by expansion. |
| Room to grow | Do you have room to grow? It takes resources and time to get through some tough items, such as reinforced walls, which might slow you down. You also need some safe locations to have factories/resource blobs so you can keep the front-line protected. |
| Stealth | Some locations are fairly obvious, and you might get detected quickly. The time you have before the AI receives it's new law and the announcement is declared can be quite useful. The construction area is a bad example of this; every blob chooses to spawn there! And there are windows in close proximity that you will break early, notifying the crew via atmospheric alarms. |
With this in mind, go find a place a hide! Please do not list any here as they will become useless quickly. Make sure not go to into space, this will kill you! Also don't exit the z-level, for example, don't go aboard the xeno-archaeology shuttle.
You're given three notifications as you run out of time, the first "You feel tired and bloated." pretty much says, you're transformation is beginning, but you have plenty of time before it happens. The second one "You feel like you are about to burst.", is around the halfway point, you should hurry up and get into position at this point. And finally "You are now sterile.", prepare to lose all your limbs, it's blob time!
Oh god what do I do now
Don't panic! You have a little time before the AI is notified of your presence. Use this to get some early growth going, you may be able to get at least a resource blob up before you are spotted. To prevent being detected early, consider removing blobs that are about to destroy any windows, this will IMMEDIATELY notify the AI of your presence.
Now look at your tabs, you should have a new blob tab, open it up, and you'll discover a wealth of abilities, their functions are as follows:
| Ability | Cost | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Expand Blob | 5 | This is pretty self explanatory, it expands your blob on one tile. It can be useful in quick succession to surround somebody, or to disable a specific target such as the AI. Normal blobs damage people standing next to them. |
| Shield Blob | 10 | This upgrades the blob space to be a shield blob, such as the ones that spawn around your core. They are much more difficult to destroy, and if you have a lot of money, this can go GREAT in conjunction with the above ability. Keep in mind you must place this over a blob |
| Resource Blob | 40 | One of the most important blobs to place, this increases the rate at which you acquire resources. It's VERY important to get a lot of these early on, as one very useful thing to have for the blob is early momentum. |
| Node Blob | 60 | Not as important as the above abilities, however if you have some resources you should place some of these. Node blobs expand your blob past your core without you having to do it, one important thing about these are is the fact that they will replace destroyed blobs for free if they're nearby. Saving you resources in the long run. Remember you have to place them near a non-normal blob, so near a node, core, etc. or it will not produce! |
| Factory Blob | 60 | These are also very useful to place, what they do is they produce floating blobs. Individual they are weak, and even in groups they are weak, but they make an excellent distraction, and will overwhelm players. If they are near a dead body they will actually land on their head and create a zombie, which is a pretty nice trade-up from the floating blob! You are also able to re-zombify it when it dies, as long as you can get a floating blob to its body. |
| Create Core Blob | 100 | This places another player-controlled blob! The only drawback is the hefty cost and the fact that you cannot communicate. It will find a dead player to take the reigns. |
| Rally Spores | 5 | This sends all your floating blobs and zombies to one location. Very useful for when some engineer thinks he's clever by attempting to weld his way in from behind. The floating blobs and zombies travel really quickly when you do this. |
| Jump To (Node or Core) | 0 | These two abilities are grouped together as they are basically the same thing. They jump your camera to a core or a node, selected from a list if you have more than one. You might not use this too often but it can be handy when your empire becomes large. |
| Remove Blob | 0 | I'm not going to insult your intelligence by explaining what this does. Uses could be to prevent your blob from destroying a window or a wall, preventing the atmospheric alarms from going off, or crew from gaining a new method of entry. |
In conclusion
Use all these abilities in conjunction to eventually defeat the crew. Unfortunately, the party poopers at centcomm will have the station nuked, putting a stop to your fun. It was great while it lasted though right? Template:Jobs