Swarmers are not fun for anyone.
They destroy the station 4noraisin, they have ZERO roleplay opportunity, and can cause an otherwise well-enjoyed round to go to shit in a way that nobody enjoys.
Trying to kill swarmers is nigh-impossible, unless you manage to catch the first one spawning in the gateway and kill it there. They leave shells everywhere, and there’s no way to know for sure whether you got them all or not.
Meanwhile playing as a swarmer is just basically a boring version of cookie clicker…
I don’t think many people, if any at all, would be too sad about swarmers just going bye-bye entirely.
No we wouldn t be sad if they were removed but let s improve ! Not remove !
Make swarmer ghost controllable in the sense where they need ghosts orbitning them and voting for their moves !
I don’t mind it if it isn’t THREE ROUNDS IN A ROW! And if we have something called variety. What happened to Xenos? I’ve had like one Xenomorph game in the past month or so. Blob? Same thing there.
Maybe a rework instead? I fully agree with the cokie clicker comparison. I tend to be really successful swarmer and what it boils down to is just a lot of really boring clicking and having to many click server warning appear a lot and then running away as soon as someone sees you and doing the same thing again. It just isn’t fun but I think properly done this antag could be at least fun to play.
A simple idea to start: make the resource gathering automated in some way to avoid the clicker problem
I like swarmers.
I also like cookie clicker though so…
But i would absolutely be down with a rework though. As it stands now either they get found early and killed with no effort - or they get found after replicating to the point nothing can be done.
I think they should have a cap of inactive shells available. Maybe a mechanic that when they spend long enough on the station they can be seen using a GPS. Or make them make a lot of noise when moving so we can know where they are more easily.
it would be a shame for swarmers to be removed. the gameplay is kinda fun.
Maybe have swarmers centered around a swarmer beacon. it spawns some simplemob swarmers, and also deadchat controllable swarmers with some sort of marking.
Their light disabling feature should be removed, and like eloda said give them a sound cue. Think replicator walking sounds from stargate.
Centering swarmers around a swarmer beacon could make it a tower defense antagonist, with swarmers harvesting resources to make stronger defenses for their beacon.
Literal ided post. Swarmers are nowhere near as bad as xenos. If you want a way to deal with them permanently just dont let ghosts respawn infinitely. Boom, instant nerf that solves all your problems.
Personally I’m not a big fan of swarmers, if only because the amount of options you have as one is drastically less than when one plays as a cultist/traitor/wizard or something like that. I think if you made them somewhat more engaging, made them somewhat less annoying, and perhaps gave them some RP abilities/incentives they could be fine.
Give swarmers and swarmer shells active GPS beacons, or some other traceable signal.
Also fix the intended ghost cooldown so it applies to swarmers. No role is supposed to be accessible within five minutes of death, but the vast majority are.
I feel like these two ideas could be combined for great affect, requiring swarmers to return back to their beacon in order to drop off supplies. I think any other types of swarmers can only be unlocked by a certain threshold of materials harvest that has to be delivered to the beacon in order to count.
I think there should be three main casts; regular swarmers, “organic” swarmers, and guard swarmers.
Regular swarmers just consume inorganic materials, the main drones of the beacon and use defensive weapons and structures to protect themselves and the beacon.
The “Organic” swarmers are meant to go after organic’s, kill silicon crewmembers/cyborgs, and consume organic beings for materials and If they consume stunned/live targets, they obtain more materials. They are a bit tougher and faster than regular swarmers, and should have some abilities that aid them in taking down prey. Should be balanced out by them only being able to get materials through organic matter, and they can’t print out any organic swarmer shells. Requires a certain threshold of materials to be delivered to the beacon in order to be unlocked as a option. Regular swarmers can upgraded themselves by spending 100 mat’s. Organic swarmers are able to deconstruct dead cyborgs/IPC’s into materials (and their posibrain/MMI/brain). Has a few minute cooldown between every organic swarmer, and has a pop limit.
Guard Swarmers are meant to guard either area’s that regular swarmers are getting materials or the beacon itself. It’s much tank-eir compared to the other two with a beefier health pool, faster stun laser cooldown, resistance against lasers, and beams are able to damage cyborgs from a distance. Main downside is that it requires other swarmers in order to heal itself (swarmers with materials stored in them can “hit” the guard to slightly heal it) and can’t harvest any materials. Meant to be a end-stage swarmer that requires a decently high threshold of obtained materials to unlock, a max of 2-3 can be around at any point, and has a long cool-down between when the beacon can create more
As I’m typing this out, I wonder if the beacon itself should be player controlled? Treating it like a combination of a blob core and AI. While it’s able to see in a area around itself, it can only see outside of that range through other swarmers/shells. It’s abilities would be like printing out shells (including the special swarmer ones), being able to place down walls around itself, maybe having some higher costing abilities like releasing gases or other defensive actions
Honestly this is one of the few antitags that I would just fully remove, there’s no practical way to improve them by either giving them a massive advantage or a massive flaw due to their nature (aka expand untill all resources are wasted).
