Borg "Speedwagon" free access piggyback rides

[J_Madison]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Also jmad flashbangs are rediculous op get good lmao.

absolutely no way to stun a borg that knows you're trying to get them they have electronic control which is better than all access.

[PKPenguin321]

kevinz fix piggybacking to beat aggressive grabs in combat

[Lazengann]

Fix instant aggressive grabs and we'll talk

[Reece]

Make disarms auto break grabs.

[Cobby]

Remove grab if you are going to nerf it anymore than currently.

[onleavedontatme]

Pretty funny feature

[iamgoofball]

I'll replace it with fireman carry post-freeze

[FantasticFwoosh]

This is currently the bane of my existence within security, Mekhi the piggyback system for being flawed is ok but this is HORRENDOUS in play when borgs & players metafriend and you should be ashamed to have ever coded in this free access mechanic.

Ok lets say you have 1 engineering borg and a traitor, the borg is emagged or alternatively the AI has been put on freeform and the borg & rider are both shitters looking to cause trouble. Literally they can walk into the the armory or anywhere they want to go, the borgs items are at full disposal so a engineer borg with the help of its rider could shoot disabler bolts from the top of you, rob you then wall you in.

Spoiler:

Anecdote: I had a nasty experience on sybil where non-antags kidnapped me as the warden, by dodging the ION rifle after realising i COULDN'T flash the borg or dismount the rider easily due to the borg's speed to simply navigate away from threats. After getting disablered with a stolen taser (stolen ?) i was cuffed, dragged around maint and then nearly died in the bar from being force fed alcohol. I never made a full recovery to my position with all my things stolen & position compromised, and outside of any personal mistakes the borg rider did it very easily.

> The first option is to blow or lockdown the borg, if they are shitty they will have destroyed the console (this happened in my anecdote in spoilers above)
> You cannot flash the borg because of the rider ontop of it obscuring much of the sprite, the borg can drag a dismounted rider to safety
> If the rider shoots you with weaponry from the top of the borg you might not be able to maneuver to get out the way or counter-attack with a ion which is non-lethal to the rider who's still going to be applying pressure on you.

From other servers, a shitty cyborg shitter duo is now a every round (and especially every extended round with no admins) speedwagon that has unlimited access to every door on the station. Break into or otherwise wait for a very foolish head of staff to freeform law the AI, hop on (/in?) your cyborg metabuddy and get ready to go take whatever you want on the station.

- Has there been a incident yet with a entire syndicate squad mounting borgs to literally speed-run the nuclear disk? Id like to see that and the resulting salt from a combined fire SAW shooting op and the syndicate borg simultaneously murderboning the crew so fast they didn't know what was going on.

---

This honestly ought to go the way of the prehistoric secborg (i shudder to think of how a secborg would validhunt like this) and be forever removed from our coding and then concreted in a clause to never return as per borg-human interaction. - In my humble opinion

> Out of decency please address the problems without "Get good" because prior, "getting good" didn't wash with the widescale abuse versus secborgs, grenades and flashes are useless versus how fast the borg moves in open space and with its rider ontop (as i have previously said) and makes it difficult to hit with a ion rifle (which i was fortunate as a warden to even have access to i dont know how a lesser officer would have handled it, in that they wouldn't have been able to = see anecdote) ;thank you.

[J_Madison]

Closing my PR was a mistake. Remove effective immediately.

[onleavedontatme]

Basilman surfing on the back of someone buckled to a bed while pulling me in a rollie chair and using a fire extinguisher to move us all around was probably the most fun I have had in SS13 in 2017 thank you Kevinz

[Oldman Robustin]

People riding should be like skateboards and scooters. A gimmick that is more likely to fuck your shit up than actually serve a useful purpose. Stunning either person should stun both and piggy-backing shouldn't be instant (on a sidenote just about everything thats stupid in this game could be fixed if it had a channeling effect).

Borg riding should have projectiles hit the rider first unless the borg is specifically clicked on.

[cedarbridge]

Literally flashbangs.

refrences to secborgs is stupid because secborgs aren't removed for being "too strong", they were removed because administration at the time of their removal didn't want to deal with shitty secborg players.

Either losing the console to a borg or not knowing how to replace it is a personal robustness failure. Fix yourself first.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Do you not want to deal with shitty regular borg players either if this becomes a common occurrence? (I see 1 borg rider atleast every round)

If you were really going to take the flashbangs seriously, make the person riding the borg actually slow the borg down so it doesn't just WHIZZ AWAY with unrestricted movement (also in my anecdote the person suprised me by abusing the borg to enter into the security backroom via maint and shot me up and then the borg dragged me away faster than a normal sec officer can run with its default speed). Also prior point about the borg just dragging away the stunned user to safety, then mounting the borg again, and getting your weapons out.

> Hell a medborg could have just healed the user or a engineer borg walled in a escape route after they were through via a shitty application of their tools.

Engineer borg/rider either smashes the console into scrap and spaces the board or pockets it for themselves/decons & disposes. If there is no R&D up like how you might find on a round or the borg DELIBERATELY dicks with the research server to delete the cyborg console entry then you're screwed for that plan cedar. (if i wasn't there i think they would have spaced the ion gun too from my anecdote)

[D&B]

Blow the Borg while it's being ridden.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Blow the Borg while it's being ridden.

I mean its a bit of a tiptoe edge case on whether you should kill a borg being ridden by someone because at any time the rider could try to overpower you with the help of the borg and enter a KOS area like armory. I anecdotally could have ran back to my locker and shot both of them to death but i hesitated and decided to try and kill/disarm the borg (which was the real main central threat to getting inside) first and hopefully try to arrest the person riding it.

Really needs some policy urgently.

> It was my first encounter with this threat personally i wasn't even sure what was going on 100% but i knew it was a threat on freeform, that would have been amusing to watch but lockdown would have been more fitting.

[Atlanta-Ned]

they were removed because administration at the time of their removal didn't want to deal with a bunch of assholes caused a shitstorm over some shitty secborg players that should have been banned.

ftfy

[CPTANT]

they were removed because administration at the time of their removal didn't want to deal with a bunch of assholes caused a shitstorm over some shitty secborg players that should have been banned.

ftfy

"Some" secborg players.

It was literally 80% or so that just shit on non-harmful human antags instead of following asimov.

Ohw and that was if the captain didn't just upload valladin anyway.

[cedarbridge]

they were removed because administration at the time of their removal didn't want to deal with a bunch of assholes caused a shitstorm over some shitty secborg players that should have been banned.

ftfy

I mean, yeah, but I've banged that drum enough.

[PKPenguin321]

is "just use flashbangs" the new "just use EMPs"?

[cedarbridge]

is "just use flashbangs" the new "just use EMPs"?

Maybe, but at least there's a box of flashbangs on every map.

[PKPenguin321]

is "just use flashbangs" the new "just use EMPs"?

Maybe, but at least there's a box of flashbangs on every map.

>emps
There's an ion rifle on every map guys

fuck flashbangs are the new EMPs
>stupid overpowered mechanic that nobody likes
>intentionally made kind of hard to use/acquire
>because it exists, anything that it can counter is """justified""" by it because "it has counters!!!" <-- we are here
>somebody codes a thing that makes it much more common to justify it justifying other things
>nobody is happy

[Anonmare]

>emps
There's an ion rifle on every map guys

fuck flashbangs are the new EMPs
>stupid overpowered mechanic that nobody likes
>intentionally made kind of hard to use/acquire
>because it exists, anything that it can counter is """justified""" by it because "it has counters!!!" <-- we are here
>somebody codes a thing that makes it much more common to justify it justifying other things
>nobody is happy

>Flashbangs
>Hard to acquire
>A literal full screen stun
>Every sec officer has one in their belt and several boxes in security
>>>>>>>Hard to use
>Cooking the grenade in your hand is now "hard to use"

Jesus Christ just stop being bad at the game

[oranges]

What anonmare said but they said it faster than me

[FantasticFwoosh]

But they do jack shit against borgs, least with how fast they move and as prior illustrated having a incapacitated rider doesn't stop the hoss from dragging their master to safety.

[oranges]

They are getting nerfs, as soon as kevinzzz gets back I'm making him
a) require two hands to ride borgs
b) incapacitated people will lose their grip and fall

[FantasticFwoosh]

That would be nice, but i wouldn't like the core issue of being a remote speedwagon door opener at all for people riding in on borgs, sure the cyborg could do it without being mounted but the fact they occupy the same tile & basically the rider shields the cyborg from 1 flash shot (with your nerf before falling off) gives a emagged borg enough time to whip out a stun and be generally immune to flashes.

> Because screwy bucklecode when two 32x32 objects overlap it targets the rider first or some shizzle unless you move somehow into the hitbox of the borg which is much smaller.

[PKPenguin321]

>emps
There's an ion rifle on every map guys

fuck flashbangs are the new EMPs
>stupid overpowered mechanic that nobody likes
>intentionally made kind of hard to use/acquire
>because it exists, anything that it can counter is """justified""" by it because "it has counters!!!" <-- we are here
>somebody codes a thing that makes it much more common to justify it justifying other things
>nobody is happy

>Flashbangs
>Hard to acquire
>A literal full screen stun
>Every sec officer has one in their belt and several boxes in security
>>>>>>>Hard to use
>Cooking the grenade in your hand is now "hard to use"

Jesus Christ just stop being bad at the game

sounds an awful lot like what people said about EMPs!

[PKPenguin321]

watch this:
>how is it hard to acquire? just get it from sec!
people said this about the ion gun which was in the armory, flashbangs are in the sec gear room which is 1 room from the armory and will likely land you in just as much trouble
>you can make them in chemistry, you dont have to go to sec!
exactly what people said about EMPs too :V

you know im right

[FantasticFwoosh]

Sec flashbangs aren't actually shoddy chemical grenades though, a chemical grenade would be firstly hard to assemble delicately without A. miners being present in the round to prop up R&D (for cryobeakers, ease of making non- activation reagent reliant grenades or heating bollocks requiring also pyro grenades to just WORK), or B. Miners providing chemical components like uranium used in the EMP effect. They are a special blend of herbs and spices that can't be speed disassembled by a nifty traitor with a screwdriver.

You can't throw a flashbang at literally every problem, especially a problem like this where the other *Antagonist (citation needed) will probably kill you if you pull out your very specified weaponry that only affects one or the other.

> Here's me actually hyped up that sec's new electric bolas might stun & slow a borg but alas it just bumps off them.

[cedarbridge]

watch this:
>how is it hard to acquire? just get it from sec!
people said this about the ion gun which was in the armory, flashbangs are in the sec gear room which is 1 room from the armory and will likely land you in just as much trouble
>you can make them in chemistry, you dont have to go to sec!
exactly what people said about EMPs too :V

you know im right

There's a world of difference between an EMP grenade requiring Iron and Uranium and a flash grenade requiring Aluminum, Potassium and Sulphur. Just sayin.

[Anonmare]

watch this:
>how is it hard to acquire? just get it from sec!
people said this about the ion gun which was in the armory, flashbangs are in the sec gear room which is 1 room from the armory and will likely land you in just as much trouble
>you can make them in chemistry, you dont have to go to sec!
exactly what people said about EMPs too :V

you know im right

>Everyone should be able to have access to anti-antag gear
Let's not

[oranges]

That would be nice, but i wouldn't like

I don't care what you don't like

[Alipheese]

Counter features with features. Make spears force a dismount. Traitor knight with energy sword riding on his metal steed? Make him crash into your spear wall.

[FantasticFwoosh]

There's a world of difference between an EMP grenade requiring Iron and Uranium and a flash grenade requiring Aluminum, Potassium and Sulphur. Just sayin.

A combined sound & flash effect you cannot easily make because if you mix those chemicals together in a non- nonreactionary beaker (or have to waste unit space on stablizing agent & a way to heat to force the reaction) until you get bluespace beakers cannot make a strong combined flashbang out of those basic components. Its really reliant on R&D.

The most you can make out of cryobeakers is 50 reagents of each and in which case you'd need to perfectly fill each chamber of the improv flashbang with a cryobeaker of 50 sonic, and 50 flash to achieve a moderate effect. Which again could be broken with a screwdriver so it isn't the most effective application.

Also jmad flashbangs are rediculous op get good lmao.

absolutely no way to stun a borg that knows you're trying to get them they have electronic control which is better than all access.

Guess what, engineer borgs have screwdrivers.

[cedarbridge]

There's a world of difference between an EMP grenade requiring Iron and Uranium and a flash grenade requiring Aluminum, Potassium and Sulphur. Just sayin.

A combined sound & flash effect you cannot easily make because if you mix those chemicals together in a non- nonreactionary beaker (or have to waste unit space on stablizing agent & a way to heat to force the reaction) until you get bluespace beakers cannot make a strong combined flashbang out of those basic components. Its really reliant on R&D.

Its 3 reagents per effect, All are in any chem dispenser. Divide 3 non-reacting reagents into the two required payload beakers. Done. Chem grenades are not complicated.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Cola for sonic blast is not in the dispenser, and both of them need stablising agent that would require a pyro grenade (tech & plasma to just print) to activate on demand to stop it blowing up in your face immediately without a workaround additional chem which is going to lower your payload. Without static special R&D beakers (because just make the flash & sonic seperately to 50/anything between 300 units and fill it full in each chamber of the large grenade for 2 beakers duhh.) you can't do it within the starting levels of tech because cryobeakers explicitly got pushed back behind more tech.

> Flash & Bang grenade cedar is what im talking about, stop shifting the subject onto a pure flash grenade because prior points on grenade disarmnent & the borg literally just running away with its unrestricted movement still apply, especially relevant to the point of discussion in that if the human riding the borg has eye protection, you've just played your trump card and they will attack you.

I mean if the effect is not strong enough (by diluting your limited amount with stabliser & pyrosium which is also SLOW HEATING) then its a waste of time & metal too.

[cedarbridge]

Cola for sonic blast is not in the dispenser, and both of them need stablising agent that would require a pyro grenade (tech & plasma to just print) to activate on demand to stop it blowing up in your face immediately without a workaround additional chem which is going to lower your payload. Without static special R&D beakers (because just make the flash & sonic seperately to 50/anything between 300 units and fill it full in each chamber of the large grenade for 2 beakers duhh.) you can't do it within the starting levels of tech because cryobeakers explicitly got pushed back behind more tech.

> Flash & Bang grenade cedar is what im talking about, stop shifting the subject onto a pure flash grenade because prior points on grenade disarmnent & the borg literally just running away with its unrestricted movement still apply, especially relevant to the point of discussion in that if the human riding the borg has eye protection, you've just played your trump card and they will attack you.

I mean if the effect is not strong enough (by diluting your limited amount with stabliser & pyrosium which is also SLOW HEATING) then its a waste of time & metal too.

Fwoosh, do you actually do in-game chem or are you just quoting wiki pages at me? Notice I said it takes 6 reagents to make a flashbang. It does not require 6 reagents to make only a flash grenade. Additionally, you don't need a bang effect to handle a borg and occupant, which was your complaint in the first place. This does not require stabilizing because you're not attempting to stabilize the reaction. You combine them and the effect happens. No pyro grenades, no pointless stabilizing. And if you tell me that walking to a soda machine is too much work then I can't see how you rushing off to handle the borg was ever an issue in the first place. You're a bad chemist and you need to stop.

[Wyzack]

How easy or hard it is to make flashbangs is utterly irrelevant to these balance concerns as well as the comparison to EMPs. Regardless of how easy or hard they are to obtain justifying a bunch of overpowered bullshit by the existence of a single hard counter is shitty game design and no amount of "git gud" shitposting will ever change this.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Its not effective use to mix them seperately so they mix in the grenade, when you could make the full 50u usage of both with cryobeakers/bluespace

It's going to be piss weak and nowhere near the original sec article, if you're going to bother with them, make them STRONG.

How easy or hard it is to make flashbangs is utterly irrelevant to these balance concerns as well as the comparison to EMPs. Regardless of how easy or hard they are to obtain justifying a bunch of overpowered bullshit by the existence of a single hard counter is shitty game design and no amount of "git gud" shitposting will ever change this.

That's a fair assessment.

[cedarbridge]

How easy or hard it is to make flashbangs is utterly irrelevant to these balance concerns as well as the comparison to EMPs. Regardless of how easy or hard they are to obtain justifying a bunch of overpowered bullshit by the existence of a single hard counter is shitty game design and no amount of "git gud" shitposting will ever change this.

Its borg riding. Its not "a bunch of overpowered bullshit." The complaint is that borgs and their riders cannot be stopped. The counter argument is that a tool that is plentiful and easy to manufacture/order more exists and absolutely hardcounters the thing being complained about. Its not shitposting to point out that such a hard counter exists. Its also not shitposting to point out that the supposedly "overpowered" thing ceases to be overpowered in the presence of pleniful and easy to use counters. This is "borgs are OP because nobody uses flashes" argument all over again and its just lazy and dishonest.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Easy to manufacture is false, you exclusively need R&D and if the AI/borg is in control of science (or uh is fully rogue, kills the science crew & wipes the database) then there's not a lot you can do about it until your bog standard grenades run out and then its a case of co-ordinating to get more from cargo. A borg is vastly more in control of the situation than you will ever be.

> Its not that you can't use flashes; its that because of the way its buckled, you CAN'T target the borg, and still have to dismount the rider (if the rider is wearing full flashblang protection, besides from shooting them off, the bottlenecked hard counter of flashbang and flashes (without getting out super specific ion gun) are completely shut off, literally just a stolen/printed sec hud & security earpiece.

Borg riding, more like antag stacking with +speedboost & double utility (without oranges proposed changes which are a good start like double handedness)

[cedarbridge]

Easy to manufacture is false, you exclusively need R&D and if the AI/borg is in control of science (or uh is fully rogue, kills the science crew & wipes the database) then there's not a lot you can do about it until your bog standard grenades run out and then its a case of co-ordinating to get more from cargo. A borg is vastly more in control of the situation than you will ever be.

> Its not that you can't use flashes; its that because of the way its buckled, you CAN'T target the borg, and still have to dismount the rider (if the rider is wearing full flashblang protection, besides from shooting them off, the bottlenecked hard counter of flashbang and flashes (without getting out super specific ion gun) are completely shut off, literally just a stolen/printed sec hud & security earpiece.

Borg riding, more like antag stacking with +speedboost & double utility (without oranges proposed changes which are a good start like double handedness)

Last I'll say on the subject of flashbang construction, but you can produce a sec grade flash+bang grenade with two large beakers and a can of cola. No R&D required.

[XDTM]

First off, the fact that a hardcounter exists doesn't mean that the feature is balanced; worse, it leads to binary gameplay (borg rider --> go make grenade, nothing else works) that gets repetitive and annoying, and relies on players knowing of that single, unintuitive counter. Not everyone is aware of the tactical power of flashbangs or how to produce them.

Second, the person riding the borg is not inside the borg and thus should definitely get hit by projectiles.

[cedarbridge]

I don't think anyone seriously said that grenades are the only counter. Merely the easy hard counter that exists plentifully on most maps. A dude on a borg is not some unassailable force of nature. He's a dude on a 200hp borg.

The only thing that needs to be fixed is some of the overlaping on the rider/borg sprites to make targeting the rider consistent with the location clicked.

[FantasticFwoosh]

You're forgetting that combined on that engineering antagonist megazord borg it is a combined value of a self healing engineer borg & traitor of about 270 health with 3 working arms (borg has three slots for its 'hand'), and two independent players at the helm capable of making decisions, and unlimited access. Not to mention the antagonist rider can also heal themselves pitifully easy with or without help.

Yeah engineer borgs I arguably think are the shittiest for this kind of thing because of all the wild greifing tools that they have, wall in anywhere, self heal & welderbomb people, gets a stun when emagged. The peacekeeper borg despite having more generally sec orientated stuff is more likely to friendly fire the person riding it with its disruptive alarm signal. Medical borg has its chems and can kidnap + saw people very easily into chunks. Mining is adaptable and has brute force tools.

The rest of the borg types can steal (janitors & butlerborgs) for additional storage inventory while the standard borg just has a straight up esword to use while your traitor riding ontop of you can shoot tasers/ebow at people to knock them down.

> Yeah what are you going to do when some random redsuit bursts in, ebows you to the ground & then the standard borg it's riding is going to hack you into chunks while the rider chainstuns you with disables/ebow shots.

> All of the borgs now have the buffed variation of flashes.

The only thing that needs to be fixed is some of the overlaping on the rider/borg sprites to make targeting the rider consistent with the location clicked.

> On that point i agree entirely, but sprites are finnicky to hit anyway and only substantiates "get good" responses by running a skillcheck on flashing borgs with riders.

[J_Madison]

absolutely no way to stun a borg that knows you're trying to get them they have electronic control which is better than all access.

Please address my statement here.

Don't call it a git gud if the borg has already gone through the airlock and bolted it by the time you pull the pin on the flashbang.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Even better if it spacewalks, comes back around & walls in the doorway you entered trying to chase it.

[oranges]

Did you people forgot borgs can be locked down by the RD or the AI?

[ohnopigeons]

Counter features with features. Make spears force a dismount. Traitor knight with energy sword riding on his metal steed? Make him crash into your spear wall.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Engineer borg/rider either smashes the console into scrap and spaces the board or pockets it for themselves/decons & disposes. If there is no R&D up like how you might find on a round or the borg DELIBERATELY dicks with the research server to delete the cyborg console entry then you're screwed for that plan cedar. (if i wasn't there i think they would have spaced the ion gun too from my anecdote)

[cedarbridge]

Did you people forgot borgs can be locked down by the RD or the AI?

Didn't you hear them oranges? Borgs are unstoppable megazords with 3 active hands that cannot be stopped no matter what and always have a bolted shocked airlock between you and them but somehow manage to instakill you with an esword at the same time.

I want this anti-borg hysteria to leave. The thread has just become fwoosh inventing a more and more extreme scenario where a borg is loaded up on every possible upgrade (like the vtec that nobody even installs anymore) carts around an antag loaded up on every possible useful thing and using every form of preparation to prevent being stopped goes on some sort of juggernaut-like rampage. If all of this prep and all of these stars align, then they've done the work to earn the reward. Stop pretending that this increasingly hysterical story is anything even approaching typical or even correct.