Balance Discussion: Blob's difficulty curve throughout a round

[aft2001]

Disclaimer: I am in no way qualified to participate in this discussion, but I'd like to provide a basic foundation for a thread here for the discussion to exist.

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It has been stated previously that blob's difficulty curve is extremely unbalanced. What I mean by "difficulty curve" is how easy blob is to play as the round goes on. As the blob gets stronger, it becomes exponentially harder to handle, but as it gets weaker, it gets exponentially easier to handle. As a result, early-game blob is extremely hard for all but the most experienced of blob players (im looking at you, Wire), and late-game blob is extremely difficult to counter by the crew.

Therefore, I propose a discussion as to how Blob should be balanced in the early and late game, to make sure that the blob can reach the mid-game, a point where it can't be easily destroyed by a small number of crew, but to also make sure that when it reaches the end-game it's not immortal, either by making the end-game harder to get to or making it less powerful when you reach it.
(I should clarify: By early, mid, and late game, I mean in terms of how large the blob is, how many EVO points it has acquired, and how many abilities it has unlocked. The later into the game a blob is, the greater the aforementioned quantities)

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What do you guys think? How should blob be balanced to make it less powerful in the end-game but make it easier to play and not be insta-killed by the crew early on?

[Trustworthy]

I think the issue is with how really powerful counters to the blob are available with nearly no effort, such as napalm flamethrowers(when they fireball, they go through walls and thick/fireproof membranes), eguns, and welding fuel floods. If you bring a spare powercell you can solo an early blob effortlessly with an egun. This is because reflective membranes require an evo point, and evo points are pretty scarce unless you start near a valuchimp, especially during the first ten minutes. I'm trying to get my head around the smoke code so I can repurpose it to make fireballs not an instant win, by having them respect walls and such, but I'd also suggest giving them reflective membranes for free when they first deploy.

[Technature]

The problem with Blob balance is that how strong a blob is depends entirely on how long it takes for them to be discovered.

Things that are unreasonably broken early on are a necessary counter later.

The general consensus has pretty much always been that the blob needs something that bursts it early on, but doesn't affect them nearly as much down the line, which is easier said than done.

[Mouse]

As several people have mentioned before, giving starting blobs access to a bunch of the upgrades (hell, give them all the special tiles from the get go) would do wonders. It ultimately will buff late game blobs by giving them more evo points to play with, but eh. Late game blobs are so strong that most buffs won't actually be noticeable.

And honestly, I don't really mind late game blobs being basically unstoppable. The blob has to force a shuttle call to win after all, and in my experience the only way a shuttle ends up getting called on blob is if the station is completely and totally fucked. Give the crew a better chance against late game blobs and I absolutely believe they'll prolong the round until the blob player is completely exhausted and the permadead folks have been floating around as ghosts for an hour.

[Xeram]

I think blobs should definitely have all the special tile types unlocked from the start. They still cost biopoints and cooldowns to deploy and they lose the autonomous attacking from regular tiles. In general, any actively deployed ability such as tile placements should be unlocked from the start.

EVO points should be reserved for passive blob upgrades, Biopoint generation, base spread cooldown, resistances, attack upgrades etc. Stuff that either improves your active abilities or passive ones.

It's a far better than being in a life or death struggle against the crew for 20 minutes as a sub-50 size blob that finally gets its growth point and can finally actually choose to take the upgrade that stops them from getting murdered by whatever the crew chose to attack with.

Edit: Also is it possible to let blobs set up their hotkeys/keybinds before deploying? I've definitely dropped in hot as hell more than once where not having to bind everything would have helped and there's really no time to get them set up once the action starts.

[Frank_Stein]

I feel like an aspect of blob that plays a part in the way responding to it plays out is how deadly an encounter with it can be, with absorbtion being an instant and usually round ending death.

I would like to see fights with blob have a greater level of even handedness for both the blob and the crew, with a greater margin for error on both sides

[Drago156]

I feel like an aspect of blob that plays a part in the way responding to it plays out is how deadly an encounter with it can be, with absorbtion being an instant and usually round ending death.

I would like to see fights with blob have a greater level of even handedness for both the blob and the crew, with a greater margin for error on both sides

Please see: People get tox damage while being on blob tiles.

The blob should definitely get all the basic resistance tiles from the start for sure, and maybe a shorter cooldown for placing space tiles.

late game blob needs some pretty serious nerfing though, like badly... having an entire crew of 40+ people all fighting a single blob on all fronts with little to no progress getting made without the use of some pretty turbo-nerd shit is extremely dumb. Maybe blob tiles could be weaker the farther away from a nucleus they are past X range?

So say maybe 7-13 tiles away from a nucleus the tiles would start having less health or take more damage or something? I think this would make the nucleus positioning more important for a blob and prevent end game blobs from being so powerful while still leaving early game blobs maybe otherwise affected? Might require tweaking the extra nucleus gain points so instead of like 100 for the first maybe 50-75?

[vampirate]

It's been a while since I played SS13, but I saw this and thought I'd drop an idea or two.


1. Deployed Blobs release spores. For ten minutes, the first person to find a blob gets converted with the mandate to "serve the blob's will" meaning a player is now bound by stealth antag rules. They can communicate with the blob, and should try to feed it and keep others from it. It turns a rando early detection by a player into a benefit for both.

2. Blob's deploy with a small "emp" field that makes the cameras not work. AI can't blow up their spot but can be like "hey, someone disabled my cameras" and it also causes guns not to fire near it. Also on a ten minute early timer.

3. Above spores could change the air for ten minutes so explosive chemical reactions just don't happen near it.

[Frank_Stein]

I think some more automation could be helpful.

For instance, instead of having to manually place all tiles, being able to select a tile a distance away and have the mass automatically spread in that direction.

Maybe there could also be a kind of automatic upgrading of blob tiles somewhat similar to how kudzu grows in thickness? The longer a blob tile remains alive, the stronger it becomes. Places where a nucleus is dropped would start at a higher level than newly placed tiles, and a new nucleus would upgrade ones nearby