hi tell me how to blob please

[Berrik]

So, I got randomly selected for antag while hanging out in deadchat. Yay, I think. Then I end up being a blob. Fuck. FUCK.

I've been blob mabye two, three times, and every time I am discovered and quickly lasered/burnt to death. Blob's interface is confusing, there's no indication of which buttons are really important or not, and it's apparently super easy for two people to kill you if you are discovered early.

Oh, in case you're wondering how this went for me: someone RCDed a bunch of walls so they could shoot my nucleus to death with a pod, with no apparent way at all for me to do anything about it.

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I'd just like to say that every time playing blob has been one of my least fun SS13 antag experiences.

[NateTheSquid]

if you hate blob, just turn it off in your job preferences. some tips though: rush slime launchers and reflective membranes. place slime launchers in open areas, and around your nuclei. i use slime launchers as alarms a lot cause they are real loud. pick a small, closed off area to spawn, and fortify it like crazy. use hotkeys! ctrl, alt, or shift click an ability to set it to that. e.g. ctrl click spread, then just hold control and click the tile you want to spread to and it does it.

reflective membranes shouldn't be placed until crew uses lasers, or they'll stop using them. place them when a captain spam fires laser gun, or pods attack you from space.

NEVER SPAWN NEAR WINDOWS

[Vitatroll]

I like blob. I mean I suck at it because I'm impatient, but it's a great tool for screwing with the crew.

Placing the first nuclei in a highly defensible position is ideal. Make sure it's not accessible by space and, if it is, make sure you cover it well. This is blob rule no. 1. In the very least you should block the visibility of your nuclei by surrounding it with vision-obscuring organelles.

Blob rule no. 2 is probably "assign hotkeys", especially for expansion, attack and.. uh, the one that eats people. Not doing so slows you down by quite a bit. Especially when actively defending.

Now, my own biggest problem, as said, is impatience. Ideally you should have some points in reserve so you can expand around a dork quickly and devour them. Let them think they're safe. Let them dig deeper. Then jet around them and gobble them down quicker than they can say wtf.

[medsal15]

NEVER SPAWN NEAR WINDOWS

Noone can stress this enough. Pods can shoot through windows, you can't fight pods back efficiently.

[Sov]

Spawn your core in belt hell on an active conveyor belt

it makes you a bitch to kill when everything is sliding around

[Noah Buttes]

Fire resistance is the most important trait you can evolve.

Do so ASAP.

It prevents people from jnstawiping your normal blob cells with a flamethrower.

Other than that, avoid areas near space in general.

[Vitatroll]

On that note, I've seen lots of arguments for 'Rush Turrets' and 'Rush Fireres', and I'll say they both have merit, but Fireres is the easier of the two to manage. Lots of people forget how to use turrets, and often don't know how to link chem deposits to turrets, or that you can move chem deposits by click-dragging

Not necessary, but it's always disheartening when a blob has something like sarin or eggs doesn't move to replicate and exploit it.

[ferriswheel1]

Rush for fire resistance as fast as you can. Flamethrowers are a guarantee as soon as you're discovered, and they'll wreck your shit if you're not prepared. As you expand, place resistant membranes as much as you can, ideally at confined choke-points like doors.

I usually only go for reflective membranes only if energy weapons are causing me a problem. They're nasty, but have a long charging time and small amounts of charge.

Have "fall-back" positions prepared around choke points as you expand, with layers of different resistant membranes and slime-launchers, where you'll concentrate your defense and attention. Whatever you do, keep expanding and keep placing structures.

[Mageziya]

Another good tip, in addition to rushing cannons and fire resistance, is to not undervalue the use of mitochondria blob parts.

In my experience, you can use these to fortify threatened choke points, and, in worst case scenarios, surround your nucleus with them as you desperately cling to life.

They've saved me once before, which is why I'm mentioning it.

[SageAcrin]

Offering a third suggestion here-Biopoint generation/attack L2 for your first two points.

This has a lot of merit as a general slugfest opener-you can now punch people hard enough to matter, they can get stunned and eaten, and-this is important-no wait times for charging up an upgrade, you're constantly on the move. It also means you expand faster-Attack L2 lets you smash down doors and windows/grills faster, biopoint generation lets you spread much quicker and put up ribosomes-for faster spreading.

Downside-everything is reactive. Dealing with flamethrowers? Put up fire res membranes. Dealing with fights? Attack, put up thick membranes. It's entirely reliant on how good of an active blob player you are and how aware you are.

Still, those times I've gotten rushed, this has worked wonders-an early smash down and eat and now I have fire res all of a sudden, instead of just getting overwhelmed and dying.

Incidentally, I'm the jerkass mentioned in the opening post, with the pod. That was mostly luck-I RCDed random toxins walls and happened to find the nucleus pretty fast, and it turned out I was correct in that a pod can drive on the combustion chamber(which was hilarious).

Having said that, IIRC I *think* you got called out really fast-a big part of blobbing isn't just picking an area, but looking over how full an area is, in addition to how near it is to a map edge-and try to keep as much blob material as possible between you and possible pods, as blob material is generally the most durable thing, not walls or windows.

(I'm admittedly not sure on the callout point-if I recall that round correctly I was waking up from a sugar coma after setting up a mechanics teleporter to teleport an apparently invulnerable glitch drone to the southwestern asteroid on the map. My rounds are pretty good sometimes. Anyways, I recall waking up to hear BLOB IN TOXINS so I'm like "I have a bowling ball that is actually an RCD, can I find a way in, that's near a map edge"...)

[medsal15]

One of my tactics, as a blob, is to put fire resistant and normal membranes around my core. In 2 layers. Same for hallways. 2 layers of protection, and, whenever you can, add mitochondrias (they're the ones that regen, right?) close to them. They work in a 5x5 tiles range.

[Roomba]

Does the material reinforcement feature still work, incidentally? I don't think I've ever seen anyone use it effectively/at all. I tried messing with it once but I was too busy fending off people to actually make any good use of it.

[Dr Zoidcrab]

Does the material reinforcement feature still work, incidentally? I don't think I've ever seen anyone use it effectively/at all. I tried messing with it once but I was too busy fending off people to actually make any good use of it.

I've managed to get it to work once with steel, but by that point i had pretty much already taken over the station and was just faffing about to find out how it works. Definitely needs re-working as it's tedious as hell to drag and fit each of the massive single material deposit sprites onto the same screen, which is almost impossible unless you eat every stack of steel on the station, then spend forever breaking windows and eating the steel rods.

[Noah Buttes]

Last I checked, material reinforcement was broken because I definitely had enough material on the screen at one point to activate the upgrade, but it did nothing

[Dr Zoidcrab]

Last I checked, material reinforcement was broken because I definitely had enough material on the screen at one point to activate the upgrade, but it did nothing

Had this happen on multiple occasions, only got it to work that one time, and even then im not sure if it actually did anything as everyone was dead and the round ended soon after