With this latest PR that just merged spiders have gone through some changes again. I’ve already updated my guide with relevant info about this update, but I still feel like a general thread is a good idea to help propagate the most important changes.
This thread won’t cover every single change, but it will cover most of them. Click the PR link above if you want all the finer details.
Tarantulas are no more.
Sort of anyway. They’ve been given a new name and a new ability too - meet the Net Caster
The new ability takes the same amount of time to prepare as laying a web on the ground, but can be thrown to place the web on a distant tile, or inflict a somewhat short knockdown. The most notable property of this projectile is the fact it will pass through other spiders and webs, allowing them to impede attackers from deep within a nest, or from behind frontline guards/hunters.
Net casters retain all of the stats that Tarantulas had otherwise and remain a pretty well-rounded spider overall.
Nurses can heal themselves now
Spider venom has been buffed
Nanites are now completely corrupted by spider venom
Paralysis grace period has been shortened from 20 seconds to only 8 seconds.
Web interactions have been completely overhauled
Web no longer blocks entry to the webbed tile and instead applies a very brief immobility debuff on entry. This means players can easily enter a webbed tile now, but will then be trapped within it for a moment.
The above change means a spider can very easily drag players adjacent to webs into them now, and doing so will completely immobilize the player so long as they continue to be pulled through webbing. the immobilized player is still fully capable of attacking when this happens
Attacking webs with a melee weapon (excluding those that do burn damage, like welders and lighters) has a chance to snag the weapon in the web, removing it from the hands of the attacker. The item can be picked back up right away (after standard click cooldown anyway) but this gives defending spiders an opportunity to steal weapons and wrap them in web deeper within the nest.
And most importantly of all, mechs are no longer completely immune to webbing. They’re still a very formidable force and good counter for spiders due to their high durability and immunity to venom, you’ll just have to cut through the webbing instead of charging right in at high speed.
Yes. Explorer mission spiders (and glowstation wild spiders) aren’t sentient though - it’s a lot easier to purge them through conventional medicine without major risk of being continually attacked while it works.
Even in the case of explorer spiders, being able to permanently immunize yourself to the venom completely trivializes them as a threat.
You should. They should be a genuine issue that you need to put work into resolving, not just a bump in the road. If purging them is THAT bad just use carthatoline once they’re away from combat. It’ll solve the toxin AND purge the venom.
Because this was a much more interesting effect to go for on multiple levels:
Spider venom isn’t smart, so it shouldn’t only target a specific program.
Spider venom is definitely a venom and as far as I can imagine spiders are a known threat as well. It doesn’t make sense for nanites to just ignore purging the venom.
There are not many things that fuck with nanites themselves, they are usually applied once and then active permanently unless incompetently programmed or on a chance when exposed to an EMP. So spider venom causing all nanites to malfunction was chosen.
It was also the cleanest from a coding standpoint to implement when compared to adding either of the first options which involved hard-coding a snowflake exception.
They need to spawn with all their gear equipped and internals turned on as well for that matter. There are numerous issues beyond the slight tweaks I made to venom for these roles on top of just being bland and uninteresting.
They were very poorly equipped before this as well and not much changed about that with this PR. If they were bitten enough for the venom to be a problem it was going to be a problem regardless of this update.
This is false.
This is in fact sometimes true, after being convinced it was not in prior digging. It is only usually false, and I have issued a hotfix to correct this.
There are five types of software error:
Delete the program
Set activation, deactivation, kill and trigger codes all to zero
Toggle the program on/off
Trigger the program if it has a trigger
Program is transformed into a “glitch” program.
Currently spider venom forces the fifth option, the hotfix changes this to force the first option instead after being enlightened to the fact that not all programs become /datum/program/glitch as I had initially been lead to believe - it’s just the default and what most programs turn into.
Is it possible to allow mobs to push off webbed tiles when gravity is off? Gravity being turns off severally reduces any spiders ability to vent crawl when the majority of vents don’t have walls around them, leaving spiders stuck in the middle of hallways while people just walk around them
Yeah, though in the end that’s something for Bacon to adress when they have time to overlook Explos, their objectives and such, for now from purely spiders perspective you can’t tweak them much just to balance explorers/the random VIP’s and Assasination targets, they’re a pain to deal with but the explo gun is more than capable to fight, and they’re usually spread, if the spiders were to be all tucked together akin to the nether portal that spawns 6-7 mobs and they all swarm together that would be another story
