Xenoborgs #432
Xenoborgs #432
Conversation
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This was asked at somepoint during the vulture admeme but how are xenoborgs supposed to interact with regular borgs? |
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To xenoborgs, crew and borgs are considered the same thing, a sentient being, which brain can be extracted to make more xenoborgs |
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I hope this is the appropriate place to just say how much I loved playtesting this antag and how it fills certain niches no other antags do. They're encouraged to use lots of strategies and tactics that say, nukies don't, requiring horror movie ambushes in the beginning and evolving to a full scale invasion. Unlike zombies, which is pretty routinely OOC station destruction and LOOC chatting outside of MRP servers, I didn't observe people /ghosting out of their new xenoborg bodies, whereas people /ghost when zombified reasonably frequently, but xenoborgs are actually a fun antag to roleplay as, so people kept playing. They are also unambiguously "evil" or at least a faction you can never ally with for longer than their exponentially increasing need for steel, which is to say, not too long (even on an accidental nukies xenoborgs crossover, the xenos figured out to defuse the bomb for station steel and creepily followed the nukies on their exfiltration insisting they needed xenoborg "help" lol). I will say I fear a xenoborgs round where they die out early, maybe in that case since it's already proposed as a sub game mode, sleeper agent activations can happen if all xenoborgs die out before a reasonable round length |
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This seems pretty cool but personally I'd love to see this combined with Malfunctioning AI whenever that gets considered or added, since it's also an antag that benefits from converting crew and silicons to its corrupted laws. |
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mabey there should be a way to "spontaneously" generate xenoborgs to either bolter your starting numbers. or to try and recover from a borg extinction but they cant reach your core. |
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sounds like a fairly fun sub-mode major antag, but how will crew be expected to win if the borgs come from a shuttle that has a permanent pilot? I imagine that would lead to very cancerous scenarios, it also forbids any crew outside of the few with hardsuits from attacking xenoborgs where it matters, and even then it forces them off of the station which I dont think is desirable. this also runs into the issue of being a conversion antag that cannot be reversed which every wide-spread conversion antag has in the form of ambuzol, mindshields and in the future, holy stuff for magic users. Theres another thing thats ive just forgotten but ill get back to you on that |
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Pretty nifty antag in vein with typical sci-fi Borg/Cybermen vibes. I'm a fan. As far as the standard "conversion antag" stuff goes, this one feels pretty flavorful and fun. I'd probably want something like this to scupper Zombies and other kinds of weakly-implemented conversion antags. overall cool premise. doc needs to be shorn up and have the fat trimmed off, but the premise is cool. |
Very good question, I am thinking maybe if all xenoborgs are dead or crit, the mothership shuttle will have its IFF console and shuttle console turned off. this just strands the mothership waiting for someone to jetpack there and kill it
While true you can't be reversed back to your normal character, you can be reborged into a crew borg (which is better than zombies, the only chance zombies have is cloning and that is NEVER available in a zombie round, so if you die as a zombie you are just perma dead) and you can fight the xenoborgs, as they are not crew |
Perhaps the mothership should have an inbuilt self destruct switch in this event? |
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Good idea, the core already explodes once is destroyed but it could also explode if all xenoborgs die also, the xenoborgs should also explode each one if the mothership core is destroyed |
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On that note, I wanted to pass by the idea of possibly allowing the shuttle to sap its power from the station itself? The basic idea would be thus; the xenoborg mothership has X minutes (25?) of onboard battery and must occasionally dock with the station to drain its power supply for itself. This would usually most easily be accomplished by docking with solars and directly tapping into its dedicated SMES. This would accomplish a few things:
I think overall this addition could add more depth to the xenoborgs and make them feel more of a station wide parasite, which works in line with their motto of assimilation. Primarially it would be aimed to help combat degenerate strategies (Hide in Space, throw borgs at station, Win?) and give crew a shot at leaping into the ship itself without needing to jetpack out to it. |
I don't think this solves the issue of having to go into space to solve the threat which is really not ideal for a myriad of reasons but it's something
That's true, but a deconversion method would still be needed, the same is true for zombies but zombies are very uncommon right now and they have plenty of warning of time to get the cure unless you outright die The thing I was gonna ask earlier, there should be more clarification on the xenoborg kits, the support borg is very vague |
What's the punishment for just losing power in space? I feel like you could have it so the ship is "jamming" Nanotrasen countermeasures, and if the ship loses power completely it has x amount of minutes to get power back or get hit with a bluespace artillery strike or maybe the ship just enters an emergency self destruct. |
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I think is a very good idea, maybe a special type of power sink that can toggled to provide power that it stole, then ther Mothership could produce those and the engi borgs would carry into the station to steal power |
Well, the ship is stranded is space and can no longer be a mobile base of operations for the xenoborg, which would effectively be a death sentence for them unless they somehow bootstrapped a new powersource to the ship. In effect a form of lose state for the xenoborgs that would be exceedingly hard to come back from unless they happened to run out as they were approaching the station. |
Details on how the round will end during this gamemode, what would be displayed in the round end summary and what would be considered win to the crew or the xenoborgs
"ah there they are. fuck you" but yeah something where it isn't being just stranded and waiting. a quick, flashy death is nice. |
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I will try to make a toggleable powersink for the xenoborgs to use and test it later |
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I think that Xenoborgs sound interesting as a conversion antag and thematically I think they work well within the setting.
Some notes:
- I think the main thing I see lacking in this document is something that reinforces the uniqueness of the antags being borgs. The antag as described is a "kidnapping conversion antag" where the goal is to kidnap a player to a specific location and convert them. This is a kind of behavior that could also be mapped onto cults kidnapping crew to convert at an altar, or xenomorph-aliens that kidnap crew to incubate alien eggs. I think Xenoborgs have a unique opportunity to stand out from those conceptually on account of being borgs which are very strong thematically.
- Requiring steel to build borgs is good, but it's also the most plentiful item on the station. I think you can lean more into the borg construction aspect by making glass and plasteel required items - perhaps something more? Plasteel and glass might be a way to pace the assault since those are easily accessible on the perimeter of the station, while a material like plastic could require delving deeper into the station.
- If requiring a rare material is of concern, the ship could start with some roundstart.
- Custom curated xenoborg ion storm laws. Nothing that ruins the antag, but adds some flavor to a chasis.
- You're going to have at least one round where the mothership goes to vgroid, grabs a circuit printer, makes a robotics lathe and uses that to print positronic brains. Not necessarily a bad thing.
- Might be nice to give the xenoborgs a passive sound that makes it possible to hear them approaching around a corner? Just something to add that level of fear and "OH SHIT"-ness that tells you to get the hell out of dodge. As borgs the xenoborgs already have a decent amount of mobility, so I would consider it worth playtesting. Might be possible to leave it out of the document though.
- I think a key point of balance is going to be the welding speed for the borgs. As seen with Syndicate borgs, downing one is not the end of the battle, and the ability for one to go from 0 to 100 in a relatively short time is a strong strength of antag borgs.
- Something something borgs act as cameras for the mothership core, providing vision on the station.
- Don't let them equip flash-resistant things probably.
To summarize, I think this antag proposal is good, just needs something to make it stand out in terms of gameplay that make use of the borg part.
Considering that there's now a lot more debris in space round-start, you could have them require gold silver and plasma. Would also allow people to play non-combat versions of xenoborgs that collect minerals for war. Salvage could also use some antag threats to justify their arsenal as a treat. |
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I am afraid that making the xenoborgs too expensive will make them overall weaker and will be boring for the players that got gibbed but can't be borged since the mothership doesn't have materials Maybe I can make the recipe of the heavy xenoborg include some plasteel, it is a very plentiful material on the station since every reinforced wall has 6 of it. It's just hard to extract. What do you think of the heavy xenoborg costing 30 steel and 10 plasteel? To mirror that I could make the scout xenoborg require 10 plastic and 30 steel. Of course a stack of plastic and plasteel would be included on the mothership so they can make those types of xenoborgs roundstart.
I would love some suggestions, from anyone in this thread
This is a GREAT idea, I am gonna look for the sound to use
Combat xenoborgs (heavy and scout) have a custom tool module with a custom welder, I can make so that welder is slower. This also makes the engi xenoborgs more viable, as they can heal faster with their experimental welder
Maybe in the future, when the mothership become a actual AI
Until now i have never seem them try to equip welding masks. Much less in a large scale. I know it will probably happen some time, but since it will probably be one or two, I don't think it will meaningfully change the balance of the conflict. And I want reward players that remember of this specific interaction about borgs. |
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I tested the power idea
It doesn't work very well, not only it distracts from the main idea, making the mothership have the juggle more stuff, the players in control of the engi borgs are not very good with engineering, SHOCKER, so I think unless a better way to sap power from the station into a grid is made, i will have to scrap this idea |
Zamn... |
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Yeah, that goes to the pile of future plans™ |
That or you steal substations and SMESs |
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A lot of these are interesting ideas and may need to be explored based on how the game mode ended up "settling in" with the "meta" knowledge base, as most of the playtesting has been with an unsuspecting crew. As it's ostensibly a "shadow/stealth" (at least until it becomes powerful enough to become obvious) antagonist something as simple as a sound effect they generate (considering the sparseness of the game's current soundscape, every sound is significant, noticeable and means something, e.g. sec will hear emags through walls and react with that full knowledge) could significantly affect the survival rate of the stealth phase which is already fairly reliant on finding one, maybe two people alone at first from limited ambush opportunities. If it's loud/far enough range, every single person (which will mostly just be salvs, engis and cargo techs) will learn to turn around/get back on the shuttle and shout xenoborgs on the first hint of ambush. Not to mention what it might sound like in a snowball event of 2 dozen borgs might want to be considered. Because while they do have jammers, if you can hear them around the corner, you're just not going around that corner, and even "mythical" nukies are called out by name upon first indicative sight, and they don't even make sound while sneaking around the exterior. Also on jammers, while the heavy borgs have the module, even with multiple of them and consistent direction, they're almost always forgotten about as well. There ideally should be an indicator for the xenoborgs specifically to know that jamming is on or off, whether or not you're a heavy borg. We planned a whole ATS ambush just for nobody to activate a jammer and I only found out in the replay. Maybe the mothership can have some control over this in some way since most heavies will not be switching back and forth between their module and toggling it on and off. While there's likely to be someone curious about doing something like the vgroid positronic factory idea, that can fairly easily be solved by slightly adjusting xenoborg laws, even just their order: putting "bring the brains of sentient beings" above "make other xenoborgs" would directly prioritize seeking existing brains from competing forms of life, this combined with the fact that there's multiple xenoborgs likely wanting to kill things, seems like it'll mitigate the idea naturally. As we immediately asked "what's to stop us from salving forever" and the answer so far has been boredom/desire to just go kill salv instead. Similarly, the need for steel and brains as it is seems to be a pretty powerful motivator currently, as the snowball effect pretty much makes it so. Maybe more playtesting reveals need/use for the other mats involved for balancing but I only remember having a surplus of steel once when the cargo techs happened to be getting a steel shipment (and we lost our combat footing/momentum so we needed brains more than anything). The power idea is interesting but seems ultimately like it might just be adding hassle to the life of an antag that's already got clear motivation to be hit and running the crew as is. However, I would like there to be some kind of value proposition or something to preserving the station's electric grid since I somewhat worry about the stray xenoborg deciding to tesloose or something that is obviously not in our interest. But I don't see the mothership/borg as requiring more motivation, once you get up to 5-10 people after a couple hit and runs, there's a ton of desire to keep the snowball growing and I worry power siphoning might just be a distracting chore from the real show. Maybe at a certain point, there can be infrastructure that the borgs start building/installing on the station that the mothership couldn't sustain, which they obviously need the station's power grid for, to expand their factory in the grand scheme of things. That would actually be good incentive to eventually choose a spot to start a hard invasion from, although this will likely end up funneling a lot of expectations to a few "prime choices" of favorable invasion spots. Still worth considering since station takeover would seemingly be valuable for the xenoborg IC. I am curious how flash balance would end up working with this antag, since once it's more commonly used knowledge, you may have entire squadrons of borgs simply being flashed and swept out of the station, perhaps scouts can be specifically unflashable since they are likely to be leading the charge and recovering damaged borgs. Similarly if borg specialization continues, the welding tool situation might want to be available but in small emergency quantities on scouts/heavies, mostly relying on the engi borgs but with an option for say, unfortunate meteor snipes of your only welder borg. As currently the only time I've seen full scale xenoborg fighting, it was a LOT of flashing and downing of borgs, saved only by a conga line of welders. I believe those who've been crew fighting the xenoborgs feel they're extremely powerful, while having only been on the side of xenoborgs, I can say we're quite weak and our only real strength in full combat was numbers and the ability to sustain them with welding. I can easily see a few more rounds of playtesting ending up with entire waves of borgs flashed and lecter'd once people "figure it out", especially since if i remember right the heavy's blaster doesn't go through glass, so even unarmored crew with spare laser weapons can bolster the crew's offensive front, where we're currently limited to chokepoints that are perfect for getting flashed in, making us more similar to animals with a couple fancy tools than technological killing machines. Also, I kind of love the idea of the mothership somehow exploding after a set timer under crew win conditions, it'd be VERY much like the Alien 2 "gotta kill the factory/queen and get out of here" movie ending vibe. |
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Regarding the sound, I will make so they don't make their unique noise so often and reduce the range of the sound Regarding the jammers, unfortunately there is nothing i can do at this stage, maybe in the future the jammer system can be upgraded to show a icon in your sidebar if you have it turned on, or maybe also some frequency blacklist that the jammer can't jam
The reason is in that order is so xenoborgs have a body ready before getting the brain, so the brain doesn't sit idle, however even as it is, that still happens so I doubt changing the order of these laws will significantly change how the players play xenoborgs
For now the motivators to avoid doing that are the need for brains (which will get deleted in case of a teslaloose) and the fact the teslaloose can very easily harm them and the mothership
I think they are pretty strong as it is, I don't want to make them unflashable since that is a distinct weakness of every borg and if any borg were to be unflashable, it would penalize players that are aware of this weakness and try to exploit it. the mothership can try to make welding masks to midgait that, but i have not seem it happening yet. if the mothership getting a normal lathe and equipping all xenoborgs with welding masks becomes some meta strat, i will try to look into ways to balance that
Thats already how is implemented, they have less total fuel, weld slower and waste more fuel per weld than the engi borg. so their welders are mostly just to heals in safe locations, or getting steal, a combat borg doing the healing midbattle is pratically impossible
I think I will change the heavy initial laser to a normal kinda of laser
Regarding balance, is gonna be hard, crew always says xenoborgs are too powerful, and xenoborgs always say xenoborgs are too weak, for now the winrate seems to be pretty even however, this kinda of discussion regarding balance should happen after the design doc gets approved I believe |
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btw @SlamBamActionman what is still in need of change in the doc? |
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I think that (xeno)borgs should be immune to flashes. it isn't like they have biological eyes or a brain(yes MMI exists but I am going to assume the machine part does some basic filtering) to process stuff. |
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I mean, normal NT and even syndicate borgs also have this issue you could say NT made their borgs weak to flashes on purpose for security reasons, but what about the syndicate assault borg? is literally a war machine and it's weak to flashes |
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lazily copied designs with little RnD added to them. vs Shadow borgs which have clearly researched and upgraded themselves (see: entire new type of borg with no similarities). so obvioustly they would get rid of the glaring weakness of flashes. |
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Hesitant about the stealth borg (nocturine is so strong!) but that's what playtesting is for after all. Looking good to me!
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Well, the injection has a very limited amount of nocturine and it refills very slowly In the first playtest I did players actually informed it was very difficult to actually get kills with the stealth borg given the low amount of nocturine (it was 10u) I increased to 12u and I still going to playtest it again |
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I like the idea and concept but i hope this doesn't step on the toes of a theoretical future xenomorph-style antag. I think the mothership being a separate area off the ship is enough to distinguish that though (as xenomorphs use the station as a hive instead of having a separate homebase) |
The combat xenoborgs absolutely should be immune to flashes, but the engiborg, mothership core, and stealth borg should be punished heavily for taking head on fights so i think they should be vulnerable to flashing Overall this is a very cool antagonist, and i think will make an interesting and engaging challenge for security to deal with, i can see security asking chem for EMP chemical mixture grenades and having gravity be disabled so the borgs suffer from nograv slow |
i thought all borgs had basically built in mag boots? |
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my current proto that I used for some playtests, the borgs didn't have built-in mag boots |
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Add a design doc for a new antag based on an admeme I made and people really liked it