Ludicrously short facehugger stun times

WJohnston · Post by **WJohnston** » Tue Oct 06, 2015 11:56 pm #123758

So https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/12163 got merged because I guess Razharas somehow didn't read that literally everybody was against this change and that it seemed to be a joke PR.

This PR cuts facehugger stun times down to 1 tick. This is a third the length of a telebaton stun, and in worst case scenarios will only make your model twitch for an instant (and drop your held items) before getting back up already. Then you can just pull the facehugger off and step on it (or ignore it completely because they have a 30 second or 1 minute cooldown before being able to leap again) and go on your merry way like nothing happened.

So I'd like to just list off a few reasons why this is completely ridiculous:

This PR was allegedly intended to make the whole drive-by hunter/facehugger throwing less effective. Ironically it completely failed at that because hunters do not actually really even rely that much on facehugger usage, and they can just leap in its place. So right away the PR failed at its job.

Next, this actually hurts early game xeno A LOT, and makes their power ramp even more vertical by virtue of their starting power being made even lower.
The starting queen massively relies on the facehugger's stun to ward off or catch low-hanging fruit (the idiots that run at the hive en-masse with no protection and only a wrench). This change means that they literally do not need any protection whatsoever to run into the hive and start piling on the queen faster than she can possibly keep them stunned. Basically we're regressing to the "disarm a nuke op, steal his c20r, murder every other nuke op in seconds" level of sillyness, but with xenos, and that's atrocious since at no other time can you simply melee xenos and be that careless.

Now, this is somewhat mitigated by https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/12000 which gives the queen and praetorian a tail sweep attack to deal with the above mentioned swarming. This does not however work as a reliable replacement, as it has a 15 second cooldown and the stun isn't very long (weaken 5). Praetorians are also when you start moving to mid-game, the queen won't get to start with this and trade places while cooldowns recharge.

I'd like to remind everyone that facehuggers aren't even dangerous to start with, even with their old stun times. Seemingly half of the hats available on the station will COMPLETELY protect you from them. If you don't have protection, stay out of the fight and you'll be fine. This doesn't however justify just randomly gimping xenos this hard, because there will still be idiots running at you who will attempt to swarm you. Now you won't even have the facehuggers to give you some breathing room, time to secure people to nests, or watch your back.

Also this PR was merged, and for whatever reason won't be possible to revert for a week because that's a rule we have apparently? So we'll definitely see some playtesting of this without actually using MSO's playtesting system.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 12:07 am #123763

That really got merged. What the fuck raz. Xenos are dead now.

Wyzack · Post by **Wyzack** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 12:45 am #123783

Aint that some shit. Why the fuck would you make it so you can take the hugger off before it plants the embryo? Seriously what the fuck why?

Scones · Post by **Scones** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 12:54 am #123784

Removes driveby bullshit, makes xenos have to use nests

Amelius · Post by **Amelius** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 12:54 am #123785

> Nerfing a stun from by 1/20th.

Horrendous grudgecoding. How did this get merged, aliens are MEANT to be roundenders.

WJohnston · Post by **WJohnston** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:02 am #123787

Scones wrote:Removes driveby bullshit, makes xenos have to use nests

WJohnston wrote:This PR was allegedly intended to make the whole drive-by hunter/facehugger throwing less effective. Ironically it completely failed at that because hunters do not actually really even rely that much on facehugger usage, and they can just leap in its place. So right away the PR failed at its job.

why do I even write these things if you don't read them

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:09 am #123792

I would like to know if Aran had played as a Human against a Alien prior to the PR being made.

As noted above this change essentially raises the skill cap for Aliens significantly in the early game. Queen's really relied on facehuggers to jumpstart a hive as they lack the speed to chase down Humans for implantation, now this change really demands that not only the Queen be very good in combat, but also be very lucky and get idiots charging her.

Mid to late game I don't think this change makes much of a difference. Its the early game this hurts.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:12 am #123795

I don't expect this to happen, but it would be nice if we could void the one week revert rule for this case due to it being merged without the majority consent of coderbus and the playerbase.

whodaloo · Post by **whodaloo** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:36 am #123802

this is good, actually
now queens can't just drop facehuggers in maint and receive babbies, now they have to go find braindeads or actually robust someone

nice job aran

Scones · Post by **Scones** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:52 am #123806

yeah wjohn but i don't agree with you

perma-observing doesn't give you a great feel of how things work but hey this is your fetish content so who am i to speak on it

WJohnston · Post by **WJohnston** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:58 am #123809

Scones I play xenos constantly, that's the one thing I don't jump away from.

Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:59 am

WJohnston wrote:
Scones wrote:Removes driveby bullshit, makes xenos have to use nests

WJohnston wrote:This PR was allegedly intended to make the whole drive-by hunter/facehugger throwing less effective. Ironically it completely failed at that because hunters do not actually really even rely that much on facehugger usage, and they can just leap in its place. So right away the PR failed at its job.
why do I even write these things if you don't read them

part of a driveby is getting away
when you leap, you move your entire body to the target
with facehuggers you barely had to glance at the target before it goes down and you're home free

anyways i'm okay with this change, it shouldnt change how xenos are played at all except that xenos will have to disarm somebody a single time when a facehugger gets on them

WJohnston · Post by **WJohnston** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 2:00 am #123811

You realize that hunters are sanic, right? They can EASILY get out of trouble after leaping. I also pointed out several times that while this doesn't affect late game stuff like hunters prowling around (they can just leap on people instead), it DOES majorly affect early game defense because your wall of facehuggers is no longer able to protect you at all. This means you can just run in completely unprotected and not care, and is going to mean that swarming a starting xeno hive is going to be a totally valid tactic (which is super shitty because that sucked with nuke ops in the past).

Post by **lumipharon** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 2:48 am #123822

enjoy never getting victims as a queen unless you can find monkeys, or people line up for your spit.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 2:51 am #123827

>stun somebody as Xeno
>slap a hugger on
>start dragging
>concentration wavers for .1 seconds
>he rips the hugger off and you're left with a dead hugger, your dick in the dirt, and him not implanted

Whyyyyyyyyy

TechnoAlchemist · Wed Oct 07, 2015 3:22 am

Although it has little effect on late game Xenos this severely crippled early game hive play. Not to mention you can completely negate this effect with a wide array of head equipment. If you're walking into a nest without headgear you deserve death.

Post by **Shaps-cloud** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 4:10 am #123840

wait... so there's a threat that I can't just walk up to with a fireaxe and beat to death? I'd actually need to... strategize? And work with other people?

nah lmao remove that shit too complex

tuypo1 · Post by **tuypo1** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 4:50 am #123851

being able to wade in with a fireaxe and kill all the xenos is exactly the problem here.

Incomptinence · Wed Oct 07, 2015 6:23 am

Why leave the stun in at all when you are this salty it isn't like the aliens can pick up and move the gear you drop in 1 bloody game tick.

Not-Dorsidarf · Wed Oct 07, 2015 7:16 am

When I closed my dead broken PR and wrote "Closed to prevent yolomerge by raz", I didn't realise he'd get frustrated and merge something else instyead

Remie Richards · Wed Oct 07, 2015 11:34 am

Don't worry guys, none of it will matter when I make facehuggers playable

(I'm busy on the last few % of HoG, but soon!)

Aloraydrel · Post by **Aloraydrel** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 11:58 am #123952

If you don't want to get driveby by a xeno just wear a biohood or full face protection. Change is pretty stupid

bandit · Post by **bandit** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:19 pm #123972

lumipharon wrote:enjoy never getting victims as a queen unless you can find monkeys, or people line up for your spit.

I'm just going to sidestep the whole "how bad a change is this" discussion and highlight this, because the monkey thing is absolutely going to become the new meta, even more than it was before. (Or corgis, I'm pretty sure you can still facehug them.)

WJohnston · Post by **WJohnston** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:25 pm #123976

That's the problem though, attacking genetics or viro is borderline suicide even WITH long-lasting stuns on facehuggers, because it'll take about 10 minutes to even GET those. You'll be dead long before that can happen unless the crew is disgustingly bad.

Xhagi · Post by **Xhagi** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 6:59 pm #124067

plz revert fam this nerf is smh

But yea, this is just dumb. I feel no reason to repeat the reasons already given in this thread. Should not have been merged due to massive player opposition, and should be reverted back out.

Absalom · Post by **Absalom** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 6:02 am #124242

Yeah this is just awful, please revert before it's too late.

>facehugger is still consumed even if they just rip it off

tedward1337 · Post by **tedward1337** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 9:15 am #124260

Quit nerfing things that are made to be round ending for fucks sake.

tuypo1 · Post by **tuypo1** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 9:49 am #124265

also misterperson stop deleting posts without explaining what was in it in an issue with as much rage as this it looks suspicious as fuck.

Not-Dorsidarf · Sun Jul 30, 2023 1:33 am

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/12235

The AYYYYRANCLANOS STRIKES BACK

Saegrimr · Post by **Saegrimr** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 4:24 pm #124391

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/12236

I dunno but either way it'll be funny.

DrPillzRedux · Thu Oct 08, 2015 11:28 pm

Why are you trying to balance a game ender?

Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:05 am

tuypo1 wrote:also misterperson stop deleting posts without explaining what was in it in an issue with as much rage as this it looks suspicious as fuck.

Mostly people calling for aran's head without talking about the code change or why it's bad. Which is of course off topic, this is about the facehugger stun times, not how they were merged. If you have a problem with the behavior of a maintainer, I strongly encourage you or anyone else to take it straight to the current headcoder(s), which is right now just Cheridan.

Personal insults are not welcome here. Period.

Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:09 am

DrPillzRedux wrote:Why are you trying to balance a game ender?

we need to determine once and for all if we want xenos to be a round ender or not because a lot of people think they aren't for some reason

Wyzack · Post by **Wyzack** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:10 am #124532

but those people dont get it

Saegrimr · Post by **Saegrimr** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 7:06 pm #124736

I don't understand what is happening anymore

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/12269

CPTANT · Post by **CPTANT** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 7:35 pm #124742

Saegrimr wrote:I don't understand what is happening anymore

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/12269

Can people please just accept nobody likes the facehugger nerf and move on?

EndgamerAzari · Fri Oct 09, 2015 7:47 pm

Shouldn't there be some sort of oversight for this sort of thing

WJohnston · Post by **WJohnston** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 9:08 pm #124757

Well it looks like this change is finally over, having apparently become a meme for its duration except nobody wanted it. At least we're back to old facehugger stun mechanics.

VICTORY.

Sat Oct 10, 2015 12:55 am

WJohnston wrote:Well it looks like this change is finally over, having apparently become a meme for its duration except nobody wanted it. At least we're back to old facehugger stun mechanics.

VICTORY.

literally nothing changed, we did it digg