How to control/balance xenos

[FantasticFwoosh]

My suggestion is very simple and it will allow everyone to have what they want.

Remove the current state of all carbon mob xenos and start again with a hunter xeno. Before the uproar hear me out, because to compensate the simple mobs would be given a upgrade that they deserve, right now the simple mob can function at a capacity roughly equal to a xeno without special abilities and that's a good self limiter.

Xenos are given AI to properly set up a hive with a specific pattern, when a simplemob xeno queen is left unattended they will build this pattern, sentinels will work on a tether of where the queen currently to a maximum number of tiles, hunters on the other hand will instead of slashing wildly, tackle surrounding carbon mobs and drag them to one of the nest spots & secure where if built & kept correctly

EI of xeno behaviour inside the nest - If you are not lying down, the sentinels & queen in the nest will attempt to spit neurotoxin at you, and if you come too close standing up they will slash you (until you are lying again

Now with this biology in place, other than admin spawned larva (in which you keep the carbon based xenomorph types) all xenomorph eggs only burst into simplemob larva instead of ghost controlled larva and go off the predictable ecological pattern of turning into a drone first or randomly another caste (so you can still misfire if you run deliberately up into a facehugger egg) with sentient carbon queen dropped eggs (egg sac eggs) carrying a special ghost role inheritance trait that allows player xenos to populate, so both xenomorph system work in parallel to each other and a the round ending intelligent xeno apocalpse is delayed.

How xenobiology slots into this then is that sentiencing a larva with a pink slime potion will allow a ghost to take control of that larva & grow up into a obedient carbon hunter or sentinel tied to their xenobio master. Effectively giving them control to domesticate into the round.

[*] Carbon intelligent xenomorphs are still as powerful as before, but now are admin button exclusive

[*] Xenobio get another limited antagonist like the changeling to play with by use of sentience potions that is aligned to a master & doesn't breed

[*] That subservient carbon xenomorph will have organs, which scientists can extract for tech making it much safer to bring to the station, but still a local xenobio not station risk

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- To tie in with this, R&D with high biological tech can create 'backpack surveillance' that follow onto certain mobs by use of a electropack-like mounted combined exosuit & backpack slot object, which means that the friendly xeno (or about any xenobio creature with one) can carry a inbuilt device (which cannot be removed by itself) that follows its progress and allows the AI and crew to monitor it. Its also useful on other creatures with back/body slots like ian.

[WJohnston]

My suggestion is very simple and it will allow everyone to have what they want.

Remove the current state of all carbon mob xenos and start again with a hunter xeno. No. Before the uproar hear me out, because to compensate the simple mobs would be given a upgrade that they deserve, right now the simple mob can function at a capacity roughly equal to a xeno without special abilities and that's a good self limiter. Are you high? OF COURSE THEY CAN'T. They're a joke right now!

Xenos are given AI to properly set up a hive with a specific pattern, when a simplemob xeno queen is left unattended they will build this pattern, sentinels will work on a tether of where the queen currently to a maximum number of tiles, hunters on the other hand will instead of slashing wildly, tackle surrounding carbon mobs and drag them to one of the nest spots & secure where if built & kept correctly

EI of xeno behaviour inside the nest - If you are not lying down, the sentinels & queen in the nest will attempt to spit neurotoxin at you, and if you come too close standing up they will slash you (until you are lying again I can't even understand what you're trying to say. Your formatting is completely shot. Something about bloating up simple animal functions to ridiculous extents, you might as well make use of SNPCs at that point.

Now with this biology in place, other than admin spawned larva (in which you keep the carbon based xenomorph types) all xenomorph eggs only burst into simplemob larva instead of ghost controlled larva and go off the predictable ecological pattern of turning into a drone first or randomly another caste (so you can still misfire if you run deliberately up into a facehugger egg) with sentient carbon queen dropped eggs (egg sac eggs) carrying a special ghost role inheritance trait that allows player xenos to populate, so both xenomorph system work in parallel to each other and a the round ending intelligent xeno apocalpse is delayed.

How xenobiology slots into this then is that sentiencing a larva with a pink slime potion will allow a ghost to take control of that larva & grow up into a obedient carbon hunter or sentinel tied to their xenobio master. Effectively giving them control to domesticate into the round. So your approach to this is to avoid any possibility of breakout, losing control or whatever except against traitors which is how they break out 90% of the time anyway.

[*] Carbon intelligent xenomorphs are still as powerful as before, but now are admin button exclusive Still not okay with this, and I can guarantee you that you'll still see a lot of player xenos because admins spawn a fair few of them and simple animal ones sound extremely boring from your proposition.
[*] Xenobio get another limited antagonist like the changeling to play with by use of sentience potions that is aligned to a master & doesn't breed
[*] That subservient carbon hunter will have organs, which scientists can extract for tech making it much safer to bring

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- To tie in with this, R&D with high biological tech can create 'backpack surveillance' that follow onto certain mobs by use of a electropack-like mounted combined exosuit & backpack slot object, which means that the friendly xeno (or about any xenobio creature with one) can carry a inbuilt device (which cannot be removed by itself) that follows its progress and allows the AI and crew to monitor it. Its also useful on other creatures with back/body slots like ian. Simple animals have an inventory is not the most ideal thing. Again, make use of SNPCs by that point. Also, how the hell would you ever even equip these things onto hostile xenos? Only the person who raised the original xeno would be able to.

There are so many things wrong here I don't even know where to start.

And this is probably the most half-assed attempt at xenobio xenos I've ever seen, not even attempting to fix the critical problems it currently has or could have with things like players having FUN or preventing you from just repeatedly killing the xenos for their organs and oh god piss off with this.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Id like to hear some more opinions before then InsaneHyena. In short i think stepping back and away from actively placing players in the role of this round ending antagonist unless it is desired by admins is better and promotes better human play. (How evil are the human traitors influencing xenomorphs rather than xenomorphs breaking out and immensely overshadowing & overpowering the traitor during THEIR mode who made them for a second antag life to griff from)

Swarmers on lavaland as a "boss" work off basic AI, all you would need is just change the routines in what the simple mobs do similar and in line to swarmers bringing back resources to their main building on lavaland, xenos go out find resources and bring them back to the base and facehuggers etc do the rest, pop out more simple animal xenos, the hive rinses and repeats, spreads weeds as they go periodically. That's what i was kind of drawing to in my quoted part.

- In itself the xeno hive with structured AI could also be a boss for miners to face on lavaland, rather than a easy to loot ruin if the local xenomorphs are lorewise ash immune from eating local fauna (thats a fun mechanic, xenomorphs go out and consume goliaths etc and become monsterous variants) and of course profitable.

Honestly if you want to butcher xenos all day in xenobio WJohn its easier to make simple mobs of them, and then drop them with a abductor console into a incineration room or something even if all you get out of it is meat & hides. You can consensually ask a golem to let you put it in a grinder for golem meat, so you can consensually ask a sentienced & now grown up carbon xeno to let you take its organs or tell it to go kill a specific person/commit to a goal and scoop it up if it dies.

- Not to say that safely transporting a live facehugger to the station, or making use of the 2% chance to have one already in xenobio is a easy feat to insert them into every round, but they would be a much more controllable threat.

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Draw me some Red ash immune simplemob xenomorphs to be a (as to the famous rivalry between red & black xenomorphs in the comic books, big red goliath crushers im thinking as to my previous point about this xenomorph hive boss eating lavaland fauna in a Zerg like manner) lavaland boss WJohn, cheridan or remie wrote the swarmer lavaland boss code so they might be good people to ask about it.

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They are not hostile xenos, its a xeno raised in the xenobio lab if you're following what im writing, a variety of simple mobs have a *clothing slots* so even if its a universal camera/tracking setup akin to wearing a go-pro in the real world. Carbon xenomorphs have the body structure to wear it like a electropack by attaching to their midriff chitin bodypart by a scientist who obviously they are slaved to (drag xeno sprite to self, open inventory and attach).

Unless you have a translator already in that backpack (so ian's & monkeys can talk SOL). It was only meant to be a fun little side idea WJohn so people could keep tabs on their pets, whether they be xenos, ian, monkeys, runtimes or otherwise with clothing slots from the courtesy & safety of a camera console. Ian could become a K9 police response dog giving sec vital coverage.

[Gun Hog]

Why do this? Why take the player Xenos out like this? I am obviously biased here, but I find playing as a Xeno extraordinarily fun! I absolutely would not want this! I enjoy fighting them as well, as shoving a can of plasma into their nest and incinerating the lot of them is a fantastic feeling. I do not always use fire, though. Getting some lasers from Sec or pins so I can build my own and take the fight to them is also amusing. Keep your distance, hold a riot shield, and be prepared to dodge. AVOID CORNERS, THIN HALLWAYS, AND CHOKE POINTS. WELD NEARBY VENTS.

Even if the Xenos take me by surprise and kill me, I am not upset. Death is not the end, as I might have a chance to come back as another Xeno! Frankly, I do not understand the complaining. I personally find it better than being killed by an antag that only kills me and does not even give me the courtesy of entertaining me with more murders, destruction, or a chance to play as something else.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Basically as demonstrated ("Git Gud") but my solution helps sooth & resolve xenos as they stand with how they enter the round (which is the biggest source of irritation in either seeing them too often and then highlighting their problems), people striving to become them for powerful ghost antags you just admitted yourself E.I - "Death is not the end, as I might have a chance to come back as another Xeno!" for a second chance to screw stuff up because by then whatever happens in round antag structure doesn't matter.

Why have a normal round when you can inject xenos right now into every single place you humanely can by somehow getting a egg sac to lay your own eggs or trapping a facehugger in a locker EVERY ROUND (thinking back to asteroid mining), and force yourself into a antagonistic role because you are bored? You can just play ashwalkers for a mildly antagonistic experience, but xenos carry a 'cool factor' and are inherently strong. As soon as they are spotted the round is over because everyone knows they are going to get screwed by this menace one way or another, especially when its not the work of a admin to bail them out with a vaguely interesting ERT or shuttle call (because there isn't one online)

- That is like 4 players average that run at that level of competency, as soon as those competent people die (probably because a swarming mass of xenos took out all the non competent people not wearing masks/not carrying riot shields in which there is a very limited supply of and converted them & monkeys into xenos) they just get added into the xeno collective as competent xenos. Which are terrifying.

Virtually the original admin carbon larva (what we have current) is no different to what we have now. This is more for a domestic setting so xenos (as we know them) can only be spawned under the specific setting of a admin button, because eggs would now develop into simple mob ghostless larva (a timid creature that scurries away randomly into pipes etc) so when they do get put into the mapping process at all, bringing back a facehugger is less suicidal for the crew and they can harvest the limited benefits of it or just put up with annoying simple mob overspill rather than a intelligent round ending threat.

- Ruins such as the xenomorph hive ruin spawn on lowpop lavaland anyway and all it realistically takes to claim free antagonist is to run up to it with a ghost role without internals by piercing the back of the ruin (or hacking your way through) to claim your 'prize' of dying & becoming antagonist. People have been deleted by admins for trying to abuse this for free antagonist instead of waiting for ashwalkers.

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In addition to the whole back mounted monitoring pack, it would also be less scary to see pets/xenos on the loose wearing them because you'd know they were affiliated with the crew or complicit enough to wear them, and a product of science.

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From the sound of your enthusiasm on being killed, you might enjoy playing CM server more because i do not recall this being a pure xeno on crew combat server, most of the time people have their own jobs to do or are fighting the round antagonist (if there is one = extended) science gets criticised enough for making guns, and most of the armory guns are under lock & key or inadequate because afterwards you can't disarm assistants (ideally only open armory if it ends the round = nukeops/revs/etc or you are planning to immediately evac the station) because you will never get the guns back willingly without literally searching & arresting everyone who still owns them.

People enjoy killing xenomorphs i understand (aquired taste to killing super-powered mobs as cheesily as possible) but severely more people enjoy the easy ride of hacking the crew into tiny chunks as a xenomorph. And shouldn't be taking every opportunity they can unless literally delivered by the admins themselves to do it.

[Dagdammit]

Or maybe they shouldn't be GETTING that many opportunities.

Ignore me if I don't grasp the current tgstation context well enough for this input to apply, but: personally, I'd rather make xenomorphs rare than make them a fair fight with a 50% win rate. They should be a powerful and terrifying threat.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Or maybe they shouldn't be GETTING that many opportunities.

Ignore me if I don't grasp the current tgstation context well enough for this input to apply, but: personally, I'd rather make xenomorphs rare than make them a fair fight with a 50% win rate. They should be a powerful and terrifying threat.

Fully with you, this is partially what this idea addresses. Other than a button you can't get the sentient super deadly brand of regular xenos and instead get predictable simple mobs with AI.

[Jacough]

post more competitively with your ideas.

You heard it here folks. Posting ideas is a competition