Xenos are too common for how unfun they are

[FantasticFwoosh]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Swarmers only delay a round that is intended to finish since they are non-lethal (eat both consoles and auto call or leave people alive to call shuttle themselves), without a admin all the xenos can extend a hellish extension to a round by just dominating it until enough ahelps in admin IRC are called to just send a shuttle or activate the nuke for a hard reset.

> Xenos wait around the perimiter of arrivals to throw facehuggers to new latejoin hosts so they can join the xeno collective for free antag (or expect to kill/be killed by ERT)

[WJohnston]

> Xenos wait around the perimiter of arrivals to throw facehuggers to new latejoi hosts so they can join the xeno collective for free antag (or expect to kill/be killed by ERT)

Again, I addressed a way to make this less boring. I understand that xeno early game can be pretty boring for both parties. Giving xenos two xenos to start would let them go on the offensive almost immediately, which is where the fun kicks in. This IS a big xeno buff, admittedly, but hopefully the queen being paralyzed on an ovipositor (though still have blob/AI-like vision) will make it possible to kill them if they're not careful.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Thanks for blindsiding my point entirely.

Lol git gud, i know earlygame is boring so i want to add TWO fullgrown xenos/or larva so it can end the round faster!! Meanwhile the queen which isn't even the annoying part sits immobile dropping eggs from space, whilst also i contradict/admit to myself that they hard to kill without GIT GUD gearchecks

- Time out, WJ just have a cup of cofee/nap or something please to refresh yourself, i know what its like to post loose and poorly guided points when you're tired.

- Suggestion forum is THIS way, we already know about these plans from like last year, if you want to change xenos hurry up and complete the project. That is if you want to clearly put your ideas into words without being obliged to follow them through AS OPPOSED to talking about them here in a balance/criticism discussion. If there is already a idea thread there, just link it in URL instead.

> My point was if the round is already 'won' by xenos, admins need to intervene because the inevitable other outcome is endless camping of arrivals or awaiting a admin to get there, we can wait for atleast 2 hours because everyone is dead/bursted from xenos and it lapses into extended, without admins the xenos do not have a round-ending function because its diametrical antagonist vs crew behaviour and base building setup its fully incentivised to keep the round going rather than "end the round" it only ever happens by chance that the crew do it themselves or a admin does.

[WJohnston]

Rounds falling into extended because everyone is dead and there being no admins to call the shuttle is not a problem inherent to xenos, more that the game itself is physically incapable of recognizing a lost situation. If a traitor runs around killing literally everyone and recalling the shutle repeatedly (like cults love to do) then there's very little the remaining crew (if any are even alive by that point) can do to fix this. Xenos do have the problem more than most of being able to utterly and completely wipe the station clear of life, but they're so often an instant shuttle call that it's quite rare that you're left in a situation where the shuttle won't come for 2 hours (exaggeration, I know, probably).

As for the queen dropping in eggs from space-- what? What are you talking about? The queen isn't some invisible force that just SPAWNS eggs in rooms, if that's what you think it's going to be. She's literally going to be stationary in a room and creating eggs automatically in that room, right next to her. The queen can get off the ovipositor and relocate at any time, though this in itself takes a bit of time to do.

I suppose now that I have a lot of spare time, I can dedicate a lot of time to starting up xeno stuff again, perhaps I'll get to drawing that monstrosity soon.

[FantasticFwoosh]

- Suggestion forum is THIS way

Yes but xenos explicitly are fast & deadly round enders with slow maturation, and in not recognising that the round is 'lost' like you say, the continued existance of the xeno past that point is a annoying stalemate between the next round if admins or circumstances do not intervene.

[Slignerd]

At a point where their advantage is overwhelming, xenos can easily destroy both communication consoles to automatically call the shuttle.

[FantasticFwoosh]

But instead just wall it in and keep the xeno empire going forever.

- End your own round as a meme conversion antag, what a meme

[Lumbermancer]

I've played xeno for the first time in a while, and I must ask, who decided to make them run at sanic speeds? It's fucked up. I could just run around the escape shuttle with 5 people trying to hit me to no avail.

[Slignerd]

But instead just wall it in and keep the xeno empire going forever.

- End your own round as a meme conversion antag, what a meme

Then the crew can do it, it's not like xenos have any means of recalling.

[FantasticFwoosh]

they are dead, xenos by some means have won & the admin is so 'out of it' and probably stoned.

- WYD?

[Oldman Robustin]

I've played xeno for the first time in a while, and I must ask, who decided to make them run at sanic speeds? It's fucked up. I could just run around the escape shuttle with 5 people trying to hit me to no avail.

Since coderbus has managed to fail at every attempt to making xenos fun to play against/as I'll nerf hunter speed and slightly buff them elsewhere to compensate.

Hell if it wasn't conflicted to shit by now I'd just open last year's PR with a hunter nerf thrown in.

If by some miracle I can finish my engineering and cult PR's without getting totally burnt out, I'll revisit xeno evolution and introduce a CM-style tier system where all the tier 2's are available as they are now but tier 3's can be reached through the Queen's jelly. Tier 3's would resemble what CM uses.

[WJohnston]

I'd be okay with hunter speed being nerfed to human levels. They already have leap, which makes them insanely deadly in combat, so a slight speed nerf is fine.

But please don't use CM's shit in any form. I don't think anything on that server is even worth glossing over, it's a mechanical FAILURE of a server with entirely different combat roles and pacing. There's no telling how anything there would function here, so a straight port would be worthless, and otherwise you'd just be doing a massive amount of work to get these extra tiers.

Which, need I remind you, would only make xenos even more powerful, if these new forms are in any way an upgrade over their current 3.

Anyway, I personally think it'd be better to solidify the current 3 roles more in what they can do. I'd like to give drones the ability to heal other xenos, to cement them as a general support class.



also I'd like to remove xeno thermals k thx bye

[Incomptinence]

Most of the population in cm is heavily armed which keeps low tier xenos in check. Random crew would still drop like flies to their basic xeno forms fragile as they are.

It's just another I CAN'T 1V1 ______ AS AN ASSISTANT WITHOUT A WEAPON thread. Ruiner of all reducer of the game to grey pointless gruel an eroding tide of weakness.

Maybe hunters need a speed nerf beyond that what game have you been playing?

[iamgoofball]

come on folks lets be real here

shitposting aside we still only have these copyright infringing fetish fuel monsters because our art lead jerks it to them

they're not going away because he'd quit if we remove them, so we're stuck with them

[PKPenguin321]

come on folks lets be real here

shitposting aside we still only have these copyright infringing fetish fuel monsters because our art lead jerks it to them

they're not going away because he'd quit if we remove them, so we're stuck with them

but i think they're actually fun though and so do a lot of the players :V

[Armhulen]

come on folks lets be real here

shitposting aside we still only have these copyright infringing fetish fuel monsters because our art lead jerks it to them

they're not going away because he'd quit if we remove them, so we're stuck with them

but i think they're actually fun though and so do a lot of the players :V

Spiders do what they do but better

[iamgoofball]

come on folks lets be real here

shitposting aside we still only have these copyright infringing fetish fuel monsters because our art lead jerks it to them

they're not going away because he'd quit if we remove them, so we're stuck with them

but i think they're actually fun though and so do a lot of the players :V

Spiders do what they do but better

and also don't violate copyright

[ShadowDimentio]

come on folks lets be real here

shitposting aside we still only have these copyright infringing fetish fuel monsters because our art lead jerks it to them

they're not going away because he'd quit if we remove them, so we're stuck with them

but i think they're actually fun though and so do a lot of the players :V

Goof don't veil your hate boner with "they're infringing on copyright guys, that's why I want them removed!", you're convincing nobody.

[iamgoofball]

where did i imply that is my only reason, you furry trash?

[ShadowDimentio]

>Furry trash

Now you're just shooting wildly

[John_Oxford]

yeah, and what do you call meteors or blobs or radiation storms or spiders?

these also kill huge parts of the crew. whether they be given to players or not (blob vs meteors).

i dont think anyone should have a problem with side antags or side events that can potentially destroy the current round, because clearly we still have a lot of them. this IS a chaos simulator, get used to it.

blobs aren't side antags they're a game mode

radiation storms kill stupid people who don't know what maint is or are to stupid to get into it (pretty sure it automatically revokes maint access restrictions)

spiders are almost always from lings, which are a much bigger problem than sometime that moves at half your speed that does half your damage

meteors affect people who are to stupid to either a: call the shuttle or b: fix the damage or c: stand around the edge of the station while the event is occuring just so they can get btfo'd by a giant piece of ore

try again, xenofag.

[WJohnston]

Your answer to this is basically half the crew DIES from these and that they should call the shuttle immediately if these things happen.

YOU SHOULD DO THAT WHEN XENOS ARE CALLED? MAYBE?

Am I insane here for thinking xenos are pretty easy to keep under control just by applying literally the same logic for mass-death events to them, too?

Also radiation storms, from what I have personally seen, still kill like A THIRD of the crew. They may be stupid people, but said stupid people ALSO die to xenos (running into them) or fight spiders (and promptly get killed and egg'd for ~10 more spiders) or sit near escape and get completely annihilated.

why do i bother defending this shit? these kinds of things are clear as day to anyone who has ever played this game.

[Lazengann]

meteors don't run at you at 50 miles per hour in the main hallway but I would be very impressed if one did

[WJohnston]

except for the fact that they literally do. often. it might just be SUPERBLY bad luck but i swear that these things are actually targeted at you. i'd need someone to look into the code to see if that's actually the case or not.

again though, nerfing the hunter's speed to base human speed is fine by me.

[Slignerd]

How fast are alien sentinels and drones?

[WJohnston]

Those are both base human speed. Hunters have leap, so even if they were nerfed to human speeds, they'd still be the fastest at actually chasing people down.

[NikNakFlak]

Wjohnston defending xenos is like me shitting on wjohnston.

They both are heavily biased.

[Qbopper]

come on folks lets be real here

shitposting aside we still only have these copyright infringing fetish fuel monsters because our art lead jerks it to them

they're not going away because he'd quit if we remove them, so we're stuck with them

but i think they're actually fun though and so do a lot of the players :V

^

for all of my posts in this thread I would be extremely sad to see xenos be removed

[Cherrypone]

I don't see this problem but that's probably because of the server I play on. Personally if they're ending rounds too often I'd say just make them rarer or some shit, I dunno.

[Incomptinence]

They've gone to absolutes so to them it's a black effluence drawn from the deepest darkest abyss that they would want removed even if it was occurred once in a million rounds.

[Remie Richards]

it might just be SUPERBLY bad luck but i swear that these things are actually targeted at you. i'd need someone to look into the code to see if that's actually the case or not.

it is not.
they pick a spawn point on one edge of the map (current Z) and pick an end point on another side of the map, usually not making it due to cutting a path right through the station.
Rods, while not actually meteors, do something similar, find a spawnpoint, find an endpoint, walk between the two points.

[Thunder11]

Oh is THAT why rods that come in diagonally inevitably make a sudden 45 degree turn halfway through the station?

[FantasticFwoosh]

Most of the time xenos keep the crew alive to incubate them which would immediately prompt a calling, but otherwise kill threatening spare humans was what i am trying to get at. You can't fix the incubation problem by making it any longer or faster (faster means xenos steamroll even more easily, slower means incubation takes forever and delays the round)

Portal storm can be pretty intense sometimes, but all of those mobs are simplehumans (vendor virus also has a large mortality rate) which are predictably easy, the primary issue on the specific point is that you are fighting other carbon mobs controlled by players like yourself out of a pool of ghosts (supplimented by non ckey hosts like monkeys etc.)

I swear meteors have directly targeted me in the HOP office before, i had two Tunguska meteors dive for me in the same round. (Unless you are talking about wizards, turning into a rod, stopping then turning)

[Remie Richards]

Oh is THAT why rods that come in diagonally inevitably make a sudden 45 degree turn halfway through the station?

yes

I swear meteors have directly targeted me in the HOP office before, i had two Tunguska meteors dive for me in the same round.

nope. coincidence.

Having been there during that great moment where a person ahelped, after suddenly dying in the middle of space, with seemingly no evidence as to why, only for an immovable rod to fly around a few minutes later (meaning it had quite literally been PERFECT timing to hit him while he was drifting) I can confirm that this kind of thing just -happens-, but is still coincidence.

and before you ask/claim otherwise, this was before rod form, it was a truly great moment.

[Incomptinence]

some people are just unlucky like one time I set up an emitter to just shoot off into space because pchew pchew pretending it was a intership cannon or something. Some palooka ran right into the stream of shots on another z level (before a range limit I think they have was implemented) and got instantly fried. Admins laughed but eh what can you do?

[WJohnston]

There was one time as an engineering cyborg, we were all in escape holding off the meteors with field generators. One of them was losing most of its shields due to repeated meteor strikes, and would need to be turned off and on again to have its shields back.

In the ONE second window I turned if off.

A huge meteor slammed right past it.

Into a crowd of 5 people, instakilling/gibbing all of them.

I was a sad engieborg.

[John_Oxford]

Wjohnson arguing about xenos is redudant

it's like me arguing if we should keep riot shotguns in the armory

[Slignerd]

So, do you think my suggestion to split the event itself into two subtypes somehow plays into this?

[Scott]

No it's dumb and so is this thread.

[oranges]

started out bad, got worse and ended with a fizz

[Lumbermancer]

An idea to nerf xeno, not sure if it could be coded. They shouldn't be able to see characters behind the walls like therm-g's do, instead they should just see nondescript pheromone silhouette (similar to drone sight), like real xeno do in real video games.

[FantasticFwoosh]

An idea to nerf xeno, not sure if it could be coded. They shouldn't be able to see characters behind the walls like therm-g's do, instead they should just see nondescript pheromone silhouette (similar to drone sight), like real xeno do in real video games.

Thats actually no different to thermals, since while its true you might not be able to inspect someone like that, you can still distinguish its a person, through walls which was the actual complaint for changing it.

[Lumbermancer]

Changing what?

[FantasticFwoosh]

Going through with 'nerfing' it at all.

[Armhulen]

Reminder that spiders are just better xenos.
They are still...

• Conversion
• side antag
• Created by an event or by xenobio (vs miners finding xenos)
• Round ending
  
  But have the upside of...
• No stun spam combat, better combat in general with poison hit and run and different styles of hunting with each spider
• Counters
• Easier to make nests, which spiders don't have to stick to but has a nice bonus
• No fetish stuff here
• No copyright stuff here
• Lets goofball sleep at night

[Scott]

Were spiders nerfed super hard since they became a playable? Because last time I checked they overpowered the crew 100% of the time.

[Armhulen]

Were spiders nerfed super hard since they became a playable? Because last time I checked they overpowered the crew 100% of the time.

1. Yes, they did. They're still viable though.
2. They did, but then again so do xenos. They can still overrun based more on sheer numbers

[FantasticFwoosh]

^^^ to armhulens point

Spiders are under maintained with terrible code (recent fix of how re-webbing a person allowed you to spam eggs because a exploit was never patched up), while xenos are obsessively over-maintained, we can alter xenos literally forever but they are still going to be strong, fixing spiders is as easy as properly giving them UI buttons rather than having to work over the 'Spider' tab, and reworking the mechanics.

- Spiders are simple mobs and not carbon with their own suitable loot table, eggs foodtype is already dropped by spiders as well as legs & meat, we can probably find ways to make clearing out spiders profitable besides eating them.

- Story and narrative wise if you look at the native place where Aliens exist, they are not in the film Alien & Alien 3 onwards designed to be 'beatable' and more as silent solo antagonists that pick off the crew 1 by 1 (given that a entire crew cannot defeat 1 double esworder without a lucky circumstance) wheras the film ALIENS is a enjoyable but lore fallible movie where a heavily armed & gearchecked PMC blow away xenos into gunk shattering the illusion of the first movie of a invincible antagonist akin to what happens on Colonial Marines, it might be the wrong format for us.

Spiderlings reportedly are as structurally strong as webs due to poor coding.

> On xeno balance im leaning towards whether we should revert & remove carbon based xeno mobs entirely (carbon Drone, Queen, Sentinel) that promote base building and instead manufacture the xeno hunter to be much more reliable and balanced as a antagonist that acts by itself with the same kind of role as a Ninja but somehow objectify that the hunter needs to consume/kill X amount of people to greentext given that it will trigger a shuttle call if panicking crew doesn't do it itself.

Sligneris's suggestion of a hunter based mode would be a good idea to model this on, highpop drop 3 hunters during a "Bughunt" round and 1 hunter as a summoned admin button antagonist. Push the facehuggers/regular drone etc mobs either out of the code or so far away, nowhere near to close to the current events of the round and only in references so they don't cause such a shitstorm.

1 hunter antagonist that gets cut into a million pieces for tech, brains, organs plus a 1 time selloff of 15000 point hide when put through a meat processor that can also be caught & contained inside xenobio seems like a good trade rather than marking the station for death every time someone finds a facehugger like what used to happen on asteroid.

[Armhulen]

^^^ to armhulens point

Spiders are under maintained with terrible codeNot my fault they are not maintained (recent fix of how re-webbing a person allowed you to spam eggs because a exploit was never patched up), while xenos are obsessively over-maintainedYeah, we can alter xenos literally forever but they are still going to be strong, fixing spiders is as easy as properly giving them UI buttons rather than having to work over the 'Spider' tab, and reworking the mechanicsYees for UI and stuff but the mechanics are mostly okay. I kinda played around with the idea of planting webbing floor which would make nests much cooler but we do not want a repeat of xenos, the nest should be optional.

- Spiders are simple mobs and not carbon with their own suitable loot table, eggs foodtype is already dropped by spiders as well as legs & meat, we can probably find ways to make clearing out spiders profitable besides eating them. Yeah sure, i mean survival is a pretty big reward for killing them off since they are a round ender but hey i agree

- Story and narrative wise if you look at the native place where Aliens exist, they are not in the film Alien & Alien 3 onwards designed to be 'beatable' and more as silent solo antagonists that pick off the crew 1 by 1 (given that a entire crew cannot defeat 1 double esworder without a lucky circumstance) wheras the film ALIENS is a enjoyable but lore fallible movie where a heavily armed & gearchecked PMC blow away xenos into gunk shattering the illusion of the first movie of a invincible antagonist akin to what happens on Colonial Marines, it might be the wrong format for us.His goof is sweaty, knees weak, fetish is heavy, vomit on the sweater already, copyright spaghetti

Spiderlings reportedly are as structurally strong as webs due to poor coding. Yeah holy shit you hit them and they make metal noises??

> On xeno balance im leaning towards whether we should revert & remove carbon based xeno mobs entirely (carbon Drone, Queen, Sentinel) that promote base building and instead manufacture the xeno hunter to be much more reliable and balanced as a antagonist that acts by itself with the same kind of role as a Ninja but somehow objectify that the hunter needs to consume/kill X amount of people to greentext given that it will trigger a shuttle call if panicking crew doesn't do it itself. See beloy

Sligneris's suggestion of a hunter based mode would be a good idea to model this on, highpop drop 3 hunters during a "Bughunt" round and 1 hunter as a summoned admin button antagonist. Push the facehuggers/regular drone etc mobs either out of the code or so far away, nowhere near to close to the current events of the round and only in references so they don't cause such a shitstorm. I kinda like it if we are not removing them

1 hunter antagonist that gets cut into a million pieces for tech, brains, organs plus a 1 time selloff of 15000 point hide when put through a meat processor that can also be caught & contained inside xenobio seems like a good trade rather than marking the station for death every time someone finds a facehugger like what used to happen on asteroid.

Once again, survival is a pitty good reward

[Scott]

Assumptions. Spiders were balanced for never being player controlled, they were NPCs so they required some overpoweredness to balance their lack of intelligence, then someone thought it was a good idea to make them player controllable without a re-balance.

[Armhulen]

Assumptions. Spiders were balanced for never being player controlled, they were NPCs so they required some overpoweredness to balance their lack of intelligence, then someone thought it was a good idea to make them player controllable without a re-balance.

And they're weaker than xenos