Mindhacking Kudzu mindhacks the entire hivemind

[cheekybrdy]

This would reduce the amount of weird antag in an obstruction to the crew but never in any other form cases kudzu has, and make unique playmaking opportunities. I think the during mindhack will be somewhat balanced by the fact that they are stuck to their area. I think to balance it 1. The kudzuperson with the mindhack in them has a visible symbol (maybe some kinda floral halo or something, like a dryad queen) 2. If the kudzu are unhacked, they're given a revenge objective against their hacker.

[Lefinch]

I'm sort of having a weird problem with this so I'll outline my thoughts and see if someone else can untangle the dissonance or we can revel in it.

My first thought was "Okay so I buy a kudzu seed, and a mindhack, I get some bodies together and then I've got a slowly growing army. Would it work on new additions? Wow that sounds pretty powerful if I get lucky. I kind of like that and also worry about it. What if it doesn't? Does it then become about keeping your mindhack in pocket? That might be interesting tactically in case you don't get many kudzu spawns.

Then I had some thoughts about general crew response to kudzu and that generally you're going to need to be hoofing bodies in there yourself unless you get lucky with people dying in it, so maybe it being a pretty cheap way to get a mindhack army (with kudzu limitations) going.

But then I thought about Kudzupeople's healing touch which is -tremendously- powerful, and could really be exploitative, or potentially cool depending on how balanced it was.

So it's a bit of a mess, I kind of like the idea, I'm just also worried about how powerful it -might- be. Hopefully some others have far more coherent thought on it.

My last, and significantly more coherent thought that I think would need to be addressed directly: Kudzu people have very, very explicitly not antags, going as far to put it in big red letters in the popup for them right at top. It would be very, very important to make sure people are clear on the difference.

the visual indicator is a good start. I would probably go further and it makes me wince a bit even saying this but: Like the clonescan hacker kit, very visually distinct. Maybe the Kudzu spreads out with a different colourscheme as a heads up.

[Katzen]

My impression is that the team would rather rework the way kudzu people come into existence and tidy up the antag/not antag element.

[RSOD]

Like the clonescan hacker kit, very visually distinct. Maybe the Kudzu spreads out with a different colourscheme as a heads up.

if growth had to change mechanically to reflect the mindhack, i feel like kudzu growth should be able to become more hostile and/or erratic, sometimes spreading in huge bursts instead of over time and occasionally developing thorns that hurt whoever attempts cutting the kudzu with a tool.
i do really like the idea of an antag taking control over the kudzu, alongside the thought of the plant part of it going mad in the process just sounds incredibly cool
either way, i'm very interested and this could have some great opportunities