Rethink S.W.O.R.D.'s spawn logic, maybe

[Mouse]

S.W.O.R.D. is designed to be fought with pods.  Pretty much solely with pods, from what I recall and the whole "instakill AoE" thing is does.  It seems to spawn inside the station with disturbing frequency, which means that you often can't get pods anywhere near it, and consequently cannot fight it with the tools that it was designed to be fought with.

If an event is sufficiently destructive to result in an immediate shuttle call, then it needs to be counterable before it does enough destruction to warrant a shuttle call or otherwise people are just going to call the shuttle the moment the event happens, and the event turns from "fun thing that happens sometimes" to "annoying thing that prematurely ends rounds at random".

[nefarious6th]

It currently utilizes blobspawn points which are all internal to the station, just to explain the spawn locations thing.

Some other thoughts:

AoE stuff that I think contributes to part of the problem with SWORD:

There is no overlay for the AOE, and even though the SWORD looks like it takes up a 3x3 tile radius and you'd expect the AoE Gyrating Edge to be hitting, well, things at the edge of SWORD in a 1-tile extension around it, it's actually an extension from the center of the 3x3 by five tiles in every direction. You could be standing on the back side of the mob, five full tiles away from it, and still be hit with the full force of the attack.

I would certainly be okay with seeing that radius brought in a little and an overlay applied. Truthfully I'm not around on Classic when SWORD spawns to understand how 50 people in a round facilitate the best way to fight it. I think I discovered in my testing on it that winning the ground game against it really hinges on having both a Signifer and an Egun (preferably with a rechargable cell) at your/the crew's disposal, and I think that needs some consideration for balancing.

Second biggest observation is the pacing of everything:
SWORD can use a new attack every two seconds so long as it's not in the middle of an attack, which means it rolls from one into the other with very little signal time of what you need to do to prepare. Some of the individual attacks like linear purge also have embedded short timers; you have less than two seconds to get out of the way of Linear.

Again, I haven't seen this in action on Classic, and odn't know how frequent it is (it sounds like it's more frequent that people would like, which is surprising since the spawn restrictions are rather tight), but I am curious about people's general reception and strategy for it.

If you're thinking of SWORD as a pod-based battle, then I think timing becomes a more significant issue when it comes to the start-up and activation of it; it really might take people a while to find and get into pods, to put weapons in pods, repair pods, and potentially build new ones for fighting, and you only have two minutes between when it's pulled and when it activates (not to mention if anyone needs to seek it out, but I imagine AIs maybe do that?)

Certainly I could look into both of those. The spawning thing for me is a little harder to resolve and I think would need to rely on an agreement between people but especially devs to move the boss from being a ground-game boss to a dogfighting one. Not sure how that would shake out since there's similar pod-based bosses.

Edit: Sorry, just to be clear:I had never considered SWORD a pod-based boss before, but recognized a few related but separate points that might need balance consideration.

I would be interested to know if you/any other players are concerned about the attack power, the attack timing/patterns, the short wind-up from the event announcement, the massive destructiveness of certain abilities, the spawn locations, or the stylings of this as a foot battle versus a pod one, and which of these are the Most Significant. Not that you didn't bring up good points, just to know which ones of these to think more on and review again that are the most actionable and will bring about the most significant and positive change for this event (and it can be all of them too, or maybe it's none of these; who knows!).

[THISISANICEGAME]

I didn't know it had an ability that gibs tbf, but if it does have one it should totally be easier to notice, today I fought the SWORD and all I and others really did was shoot at it with e guns I mech scanned and we won pretty easily, it deleted a good part of the station and caused a shuttle call almost immediately after it's announcement.

I think it should be less destructive tbf, even when you ""win"" it still feels like a loss because you are going home in the next 5 minutes.

[coolvape]

I didn't know it had an ability that gibs tbf, but if it does have one it should totally be easier to notice, today I fought the SWORD and all I and others really did was shoot at it with e guns I mech scanned and we won pretty easily, it deleted a good part of the station and caused a shuttle call almost immediately after it's announcement.

I think it should be less destructive tbf, even when you ""win"" it still feels like a loss because you are going home in the next 5 minutes.

Yeah! it's like, it drops some really cool rewards - you can make that cool flaming sword, or toss it onto a pod for a super weapon/engine/some other thing - but there's no reason to actually use it because it always results in a shuttle call(and there's not really a scenario where you need the pod super weapon so it's like, why bother)

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maybe if it could spawn in debris or even station z space on the edge and head towards the station from there, so people have time to hop in pods, fight it in space, and have a chance to kill it before it gets to the station it would be more fun

[Katzen]

I didn't know it had an ability that gibs tbf, but if it does have one it should totally be easier to notice, today I fought the SWORD and all I and others really did was shoot at it with e guns I mech scanned and we won pretty easily, it deleted a good part of the station and caused a shuttle call almost immediately after it's announcement.

I think it should be less destructive tbf, even when you ""win"" it still feels like a loss because you are going home in the next 5 minutes.

Yeah! it's like, it drops some really cool rewards - you can make that cool flaming sword, or toss it onto a pod for a super weapon/engine/some other thing - but there's no reason to actually use it because it always results in a shuttle call(and there's not really a scenario where you need the pod super weapon so it's like, why bother)

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maybe if it could spawn in debris or even station z space on the edge and head towards the station from there, so people have time to hop in pods, fight it in space, and have a chance to kill it before it gets to the station it would be more fun

Starting in space zone for a pod battle and then moving into the station space if not defeated in 10-15 minutes sounds like a good idea. Gives the crew a chance to get organised, guarantees being able to fight it with pods instead of mass producing eguns, delays the threat a bit and works better with the "beacon" lore.

[Froggit_Dogget]

yea theres nothing worse then making something all round just to see the sword message in chat, 40 minuets in.