Tweaking swarmers is fine, but removing them is just lacking creativity on fixing a problem. Hate them for rushing silo or exploiting? Player report them (and remove silo). Hate how numerous they become? Increase cost of replication. Hate their mobility? Make them unable to vent crawl but add a reasonable accommodation. Test-merging allows you to see if the change works with the server or not. No one wants to do it because no one wants to code so the easiest option is just removal.
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As CoffeePanda said, tweaks are far better than outright remove them because any antag is gonna do that… antag, and those who are too gamers are the one who should be player reported, something OP hasn’t done with those swarmers.
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tell that to my beloved revs!
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I do not acknowledge that this is a meaningful majority of players at this time. My opinion can be swayed on this, and I’ll get more into that in a future post.
What I do want to get into here is where I draw the line:
I care what the player base thinks about individual changes and future plans of the server and believe all maintainers should take player input into account at least to an extent.
I do not care what players think the purpose of the server should be. That is for exclusively staff of the server to decide because they are deciding what they want to pour themselves into making. Staff are the artists behind what a server is supposed to be and players should be drawn to the server for that core purpose, or leave if they disagree with it.
We all see what a server with a 100% focus on bar RP is like (Skyrat) and it isn’t what we want Bee to be or become. Bee will always have action oriented antagonist roles and at least a partial focus on mechanical gameplay.
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Bee is trying to thread an awkward needle between TG and SR while also trying to original and avoid any and all TG features like the plague…
Rounds keep getting pushed longer but you expect people to take death on the chin and just die for the sake of story… but when rounds are 90-120m long… thats never going to happen. Self preservation is going to come first if you dont give the dead an option that isnt “become antag” or leave.
Slightly more on topic…
Idk if removing the silo would change much… Theyd probably just switch targets and eat the protolathes when no one is looking, Sec and med boards seem especially vulerable to this… and unlike the silo, you only get 1 replacement unless thats also taken.
Same result, Swarmers snowball and the rounds ends or the swarmers eat something important and the round stalls…
Feels like the same result for a mostly stealth antag… Just turn them into the planetary variant with a central hub and no way to self replicate or something…
Which is why I’d explicitly like the option for what is essentially crew respawns. The implementation isn’t something everyone can agree on however. I’d like cloning and/or genetics in general to be the source for them personally. I also really liked the suggestion for buildable IPCs and think they’re a great way to do it - I’m only explicitly against them being silicons with laws.
Players do need to accept death as part of the game, and I agree that there should be a way to get back into the round directly as crew when this happens.
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If I play the game and I see that medical, security, cargo, and service techfab have all been taken without collateral damage (ie. Tables being eaten or other stuff). I wouldn’t say they are playing for fun but to win and can just ahelp that. And in my general opinion the average person would have more reaction time to know something is going on when a lathe is missing in one of the departments. And like you said, there is a replacement for the lathe ready in the lockers.
Also a thing to bring up is that when you do lose your department techfab the other departments don’t lose their resources. Xenos, spiders, and swarmers can destroy a silo and immediately cause resource problems.
Xenos and Spiders shouldn’t have a reason to target silo tbh, unless the broodmother happens to put their main nest on they vault and they’re destroying stuff to make space, they’re not smart enough to understand that the things being printed(which they don’t even see since they are on their nest or doing small near-by huntings) come from the oresilo if a spider does that it’s purely metagaming
Xenomorphs are the same, while they’re highly intelligent i’d say as far as they can go is something like ‘‘There’s a strange vibration coming from somewhere… it’s messing up with our hivemind, please find it and destroy it(telecomms)’’ a Xeno immediatly rushing vault is just… gaming mode, most Xenomorphs in all media take some time to adapt, understand and apply their tactics they don’t immediatly know everything and are the apex of the planet so… same reason if you see any of them rushing vault they probably don’t have a very valid IC motive and should be ahelped.
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I was thinking about this. What if we add like uh… A 10 minute (?) timer to vent crawling, like a special ability on cooldown instead of a passive.
Timer starts when you spawn, and when you leave a vent (don’t want people waiting inside the pipes).
This deals with quite a few problems!
Eating the ore silo is now dumb for swarmers to do, since you probably wouldn’t have time to leave the vault with all those materials.
They wouldn’t be as hard to wipe out, since they can’t spread to every room instantly, or go into rooms, setup hidden shells and vent away.
But swarmers still have the ability to pick a nice place to eat + have the option to migrate safely, or use their once in a bluemoon free get out of jail card.
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TEN MINUTES? i think that’s way too much lol and doesn’t make that much sense since every other small creature can vent for free, if that were to be present without adding anything else to balance the Swarmers they would be very easily annihilated and the midround wouldn’t even manage to impact the round at all, swarmers are already easy to dealt with since they’re fragile and they need to stay in one spot to replicate and you can eventually corner them and they’re only powerful when they’re many which is quite rare to have unless it’s a long shift and a lot of ghosts are waiting around
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You’re right, 10 minutes is quite a lot, I just kinda threw it out there randomly. Maybe we could have the taser swarmers available somehow to balance them a bit more while still being non-lethal? However, I personally still think that swarmers have some hidden strength if they stick together that most people don’t take advantage of.
aren’t these bots legitimate Bluespace crystal creators?
How about a verb that lets them target a wall and teleport 1 space past it. Now the swarmer has to stick to maint and to walls if they want to escape and the chase isn’t immediately over when they do break line of sight.
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Just add heat/cold vulnerability and heat/cool atmos a bit to flush distro of swarmers.
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I find swarmers Fun when they Do not eat vital parts of the station. earlier today, We had swarmers and one just attacked the brig straight on eating the doors and the walls moving closer and so on.
Anything that isn’t one ate your lathe or silo would be better. I’ll love it if swarmers only ate walls, doors, anything on the ground/tables chairs. but limit them to those and not Lathes or Other vital parts of the station.< Just an example could be changed to fit Requirements
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As an Engineer who would have to fix this, I disagree. One of many reasons people want to leave the station is because it looks like shite and works like shite.
solution is to make all maps barely held together piles of scrap.
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i hate to say this, but the discourse here is meaningless. ruko has made it clear that they’ll not be swayed on the issue, and their tone suggests that either no-one else on the staff team is opposed to them or their opinions are irrelevant. just cryo if swarmers fuck up your round too much.
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That’s typically what I do. Swarmer? Call the shuttle!! Or cryo immediately.
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I think having a ghost / dead player station that they can choose to spawn on to learn basic mechanics or atleast have something else to do. Similar to ash walkers or dwarven miners. But instead of it being random if they roll its an option in the death hud.
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We had one called Charile Station. I loved it because you learn, engineering, Combat and how to use meds. Start off with no power you must restore power by a pac-man open the bridge lift the lockdown and then setup solars. after all that you get to clear like 80 some monsters from the science part of the station.
Sadly, due to space ruins being the way they are you can only take a spawn if someone goes to it now…
There was also the Russian station that was falling apart with 3 drone spawns as well.
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