Goonhub
I found out about this PR through the changelog yesterday. Since i'm not very active on the forums, i only found this thread afterwards. Apologies for only responding after it got merged. I also tried writing a response yesterday, but both drafts got a bit out of hand lengthwise.
While reading the PR, this thread and the complaint thread that was linked in it, i get the feeling there is some misunderstanding going around when it comes to borg combat in general, and the shields specifically. While some complaints that were mentioned are completely valid, some others seemed to be based on inaccurate information, or a lack of borg perspective. I personally believe that while obviously well intentioned, this PR will not have the intended result, will significantly nerf arguably the only viable defensive option borg currently have, and possibly even have some unintended and unwanted side effects.
For clarity's sake i will split the shields up into three elements and discuss those separately.
First of all there is the bug that causes shields to not visually update properly. I personally believe this is a major cause of issues and frustration when it comes to the shields. It adds an unfair element to them. Having a taser reflect from a shielded borg could just be a learning moment, but since it so often doesn't show while active, even players that would know better have no way of telling whether the shields are on or off. The fact that this bug has been around for a long time, and the fact this PR specifically mentioned not fixing it either, does lead me to believe this bug might not be easily fixable.
Secondly, there is the reflection ability that comes with the shields. From what i can gather, these were intended to have a overheat mechanic which didn't work properly due to a bug. As a result they are able to reflect full sprays of nukie weapons, which i think is obviously overpowered, especially since it was never intended to work like that in the first place. That being said, i think fully removing the reflection ability is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. While it might be overpowered in some contexts, which i think should indeed be remedied, it also adds a lot of flavor to the game. In my opinion, borg can often be treated quite poorly with relative impunity. Them having a tool that allows for some minor, in many cases non harmful payback, certainly has its place. Apart from that, reflecting a pulse rival shot back to someone is just very funny. Furthermore the reflection could serve as an additional (assuming the visuals update properly) indicator that the shields are on. This would make it more of a deterrent.
Then finally we have the damage mitigation the shields provide. My personal experience using the shields lines up perfectly with the numbers described in the PR when it comes to melee mitigation. Low damage melee weapons dont do damage, they just drain power, but any weapon that does enough damage does get through on top of draining power. This might sound very strong, but in practice this has quite a few limitations. The threshold being where it is means that there are plenty of weapons that do work that are easy to come by. Sec can use their batons, but any extinguisher will do the trick too. I'm not sure on the exact math of how much damage comes through, what i do know is that in practice either of those weapons will damage my head 10% with shields on. So to compare, while those 10 hits could destroy a fully upgraded light borg, an unarmored human would have just entered crit from those same hits. This to me does not seem very overpowered. When it comes to ranged mitigation, i indeed don't recall the heat shield ever letting any damage come through, although stuns do go through. but i also seem to recall instances where physical projectiles did actually do damage, altho none of them very recent, so i could be off on that, or it could just be outdated. While this means that fighting shielded borg with ranged weapons isn't a viable option, in my opinion this doesn't necessarily have to be an issue. There are plenty of other scenarios in which a certain approach is way more viable than another. You wouldn't (or shouldn't) use a baton to try to stun someone with a csaber, if you have a taser available to you.
In my opinion there are already plenty of ways out there to counter borg. AI laws, killswitch, flashes and debraining to name a few, are all very effective tools. In the current meta unupgraded borg are ridiculously easy to take out, regardless of how heavy they are. A single flash will do the trick most of the time. This incentivizes upgrade use. The current meta for upgraded borg is all about charge management. Since if you go upgraded, you will most likely also get a teleport upgrade, actually getting destroyed is unlikely, as long as you manage your charge properly. There is also the recovery upgrade, arguably the most important upgrade, which removes stuns at the cost of a large chunk of charge. People that know how to properly combat an upgraded borg, know that it's all about draining the borg (if they dont have the option to debrain), not destroying them. A skilled borg will always bail out before they get destroyed and draining borg is way easier to do than damaging them. The PR also mentions that these changes will hopefully encourage people to consider using heavier parts. While i would also love to see more varied borg types around, the current way borg combat works makes the heavier types completely unviable. Since borg combat revolves so much about being fast, most notably to be able to bail fast. Going standard is already risky, any heavier model is simply not an option.
In conclusion, while i believe the shields certainly need some changes, i think that in a lot of regards the shields are actually very well balanced, and i do not believe it is an "I win" button by any stretch of the imagination. If a skilled, fully upgraded borg has an opponent against them that knows what they doing, i would even argue the borg is the underdog. I think this PR might significantly sideline borgs when it comes to direct combat, which in return could lead to an increase in hit and run style attacks, like chemmixes and and plasmafires, which i doubt is what anyone wants. I would much prefer if instead some alternative solutions could be found.
Suggestions:
Imagine writing such a long post and still forgetting something.
Blob!
When it comes to blob i feel like in the past it was very well balanced, to the point where a skilled upgraded borg and a skilled blob would often end up in a stalemate situation, where neither could actually kill the other. I'm talking more than a year ago tho. Since i took a break at some point, i'm not exactly sure when this got changed, but after i came back (around the start of this year), this seemed to have changed a lot. My first time trying to fight a blob after my break i basicly got insta-killed, and ever since then i've basicly stayed back healing the people actually fighting the blob. Due to this cautious approach i do not have a lot of recent experience fighting blob, but what little experience i do have leads my to believe a nerf is certainly not needed in that regard either.
While reading the PR, this thread and the complaint thread that was linked in it, i get the feeling there is some misunderstanding going around when it comes to borg combat in general, and the shields specifically. While some complaints that were mentioned are completely valid, some others seemed to be based on inaccurate information, or a lack of borg perspective. I personally believe that while obviously well intentioned, this PR will not have the intended result, will significantly nerf arguably the only viable defensive option borg currently have, and possibly even have some unintended and unwanted side effects.
For clarity's sake i will split the shields up into three elements and discuss those separately.
First of all there is the bug that causes shields to not visually update properly. I personally believe this is a major cause of issues and frustration when it comes to the shields. It adds an unfair element to them. Having a taser reflect from a shielded borg could just be a learning moment, but since it so often doesn't show while active, even players that would know better have no way of telling whether the shields are on or off. The fact that this bug has been around for a long time, and the fact this PR specifically mentioned not fixing it either, does lead me to believe this bug might not be easily fixable.
Secondly, there is the reflection ability that comes with the shields. From what i can gather, these were intended to have a overheat mechanic which didn't work properly due to a bug. As a result they are able to reflect full sprays of nukie weapons, which i think is obviously overpowered, especially since it was never intended to work like that in the first place. That being said, i think fully removing the reflection ability is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. While it might be overpowered in some contexts, which i think should indeed be remedied, it also adds a lot of flavor to the game. In my opinion, borg can often be treated quite poorly with relative impunity. Them having a tool that allows for some minor, in many cases non harmful payback, certainly has its place. Apart from that, reflecting a pulse rival shot back to someone is just very funny. Furthermore the reflection could serve as an additional (assuming the visuals update properly) indicator that the shields are on. This would make it more of a deterrent.
Then finally we have the damage mitigation the shields provide. My personal experience using the shields lines up perfectly with the numbers described in the PR when it comes to melee mitigation. Low damage melee weapons dont do damage, they just drain power, but any weapon that does enough damage does get through on top of draining power. This might sound very strong, but in practice this has quite a few limitations. The threshold being where it is means that there are plenty of weapons that do work that are easy to come by. Sec can use their batons, but any extinguisher will do the trick too. I'm not sure on the exact math of how much damage comes through, what i do know is that in practice either of those weapons will damage my head 10% with shields on. So to compare, while those 10 hits could destroy a fully upgraded light borg, an unarmored human would have just entered crit from those same hits. This to me does not seem very overpowered. When it comes to ranged mitigation, i indeed don't recall the heat shield ever letting any damage come through, although stuns do go through. but i also seem to recall instances where physical projectiles did actually do damage, altho none of them very recent, so i could be off on that, or it could just be outdated. While this means that fighting shielded borg with ranged weapons isn't a viable option, in my opinion this doesn't necessarily have to be an issue. There are plenty of other scenarios in which a certain approach is way more viable than another. You wouldn't (or shouldn't) use a baton to try to stun someone with a csaber, if you have a taser available to you.
In my opinion there are already plenty of ways out there to counter borg. AI laws, killswitch, flashes and debraining to name a few, are all very effective tools. In the current meta unupgraded borg are ridiculously easy to take out, regardless of how heavy they are. A single flash will do the trick most of the time. This incentivizes upgrade use. The current meta for upgraded borg is all about charge management. Since if you go upgraded, you will most likely also get a teleport upgrade, actually getting destroyed is unlikely, as long as you manage your charge properly. There is also the recovery upgrade, arguably the most important upgrade, which removes stuns at the cost of a large chunk of charge. People that know how to properly combat an upgraded borg, know that it's all about draining the borg (if they dont have the option to debrain), not destroying them. A skilled borg will always bail out before they get destroyed and draining borg is way easier to do than damaging them. The PR also mentions that these changes will hopefully encourage people to consider using heavier parts. While i would also love to see more varied borg types around, the current way borg combat works makes the heavier types completely unviable. Since borg combat revolves so much about being fast, most notably to be able to bail fast. Going standard is already risky, any heavier model is simply not an option.
In conclusion, while i believe the shields certainly need some changes, i think that in a lot of regards the shields are actually very well balanced, and i do not believe it is an "I win" button by any stretch of the imagination. If a skilled, fully upgraded borg has an opponent against them that knows what they doing, i would even argue the borg is the underdog. I think this PR might significantly sideline borgs when it comes to direct combat, which in return could lead to an increase in hit and run style attacks, like chemmixes and and plasmafires, which i doubt is what anyone wants. I would much prefer if instead some alternative solutions could be found.
Suggestions:
- If possible, fix the shield sprite not updating.
- Nerf the reflection ability, so it no longer is weaponizable, while leaving the more funny and harmless side of it intact. A possible way to fix this could be to give the reflection a cooldown. Have it reflect the first projectile in a spray, but then not reflect anything for a certain amount of time.
- If the sprite update bug isn't fixable, it might be an option to split the reflection ability into its own seperate upgrade. Assuming the same bug would not allow this to have an accurate sprite either, turning it into an active ability, similar to how a sec barrier works, could maybe be an option.
- Assuming people don't share my opinion that ranged damage immunity is not an issue due to there being plenty of other ways to counter borg, please carefully consider how this should be balanced. The PR mentions ranged mitigation being the same as melee, but in general ranged attacks do more damage and allow you to attack way faster than in melee. Even tasers damage borg, so this would mean security basicly has phasers that also stun, even while shielded, to use against borg.
- Leave the original values for melee, as in my experience the melee side was actually very well balanced already, and would sooner need a buff than a nerf.
- If people do believe the shields need a nerf when it comes to melee damage mitigation, would it be possible to do this in a way that aligns more with the current borg combat meta? Increasing the charge cost is the first thing that comes to mind in this regard.
- If having more different types of borg around is a goal, it could be a good idea to make them more viable, to incentivize their use. Buffing their speed, or alternatively the effect a speed upgrade has on them, could possibly be a good starting point for this.
- Currently it seems to be the case that if a borg's head gets destroyed, this also destroys the brain. Since it's good practice to target the head, this often means that if a borg does die, they have no way to get back into the round. Seeing how borg are meant to switch allegiances by design, this has always seemed odd to me. Changing this could make it so that dying as a borg is less of an issue you would want to avoid at all cost, thereby making any changes that do make them more vulnerable less drastic.
Imagine writing such a long post and still forgetting something.
Blob!
When it comes to blob i feel like in the past it was very well balanced, to the point where a skilled upgraded borg and a skilled blob would often end up in a stalemate situation, where neither could actually kill the other. I'm talking more than a year ago tho. Since i took a break at some point, i'm not exactly sure when this got changed, but after i came back (around the start of this year), this seemed to have changed a lot. My first time trying to fight a blob after my break i basicly got insta-killed, and ever since then i've basicly stayed back healing the people actually fighting the blob. Due to this cautious approach i do not have a lot of recent experience fighting blob, but what little experience i do have leads my to believe a nerf is certainly not needed in that regard either.