Remove the ability for blobs to spawn offstation

[Nnystyxx]

As other people have said, blobs auto-end the round if they grow enough, meaning that it is impossible to friendly-blob. Stop using that as an excuse.

(Than again, the round ending when a blob grows large enough is shitty anyway and should be removed)

both of these things
peaceful blob is not a good excuse especially when the blob is in bullshit nigh unreachable/unfindable places and ends the round arbitrarily

[Boa Jacque]

Blobs should be forced to spawn on station. (this includes anything directly connected, such as the solar panel array.)

If you want to play as a friendly blob, then you should ask for blob mode to be added to VR. Go play with yourself in your own little world.
Only with off station blobs do you get a unique situation-
-where some asshole playing by themselves in the corner actually makes 20-50 unrelated people playing -their own different game nearby- NOT HAVE ANY FUN.
(i'd italicize for emphasis, as i don't mean to yell but I don't see an option for that.)

[Zafhset]

I'm all for antag autonomy, but off station blobbing kind of defeats the purpose of being a blob. Want to be a friendly blob? Do it on the actual darn station. You can't claim to be a friendly blob off station when there's nobody to be friendly with.

Automated Blob size victory was meant for situations where almost half the station is taken over by the blob, not a lump of rock near the station.

[Ed Venture]

Yeah I gotta agree with Zafhset and in my opinion if you spawn outside of the station you pretty much just robbed the round of one of it's antags. Also agree Blob should be added to VR. Would be a great place to practice.

[misto]

the whole point of having blobs in the game is that they should threaten the station and its inhabitants. so, it is not too unreasonable to request that blobs be more properly encouraged to fulfill their role

that blob players wish to fart around off station so often speaks to the fact that basic blob gameplay may benefit from some tuneups

[ferriswheel1]

There was a suggestion a while back to let blobs communicate using the voices of people it had absorbed. Sounded pretty neat, and being able to communicate with the crew would be a nice way to spice up blob rounds.

Maybe blobs could generate some sorta independent NPC slime minions or slime zombies created from absorbed people too, would certainly make multitasking easier when you've got the entire crew bearing down on you with flamethrowers.

[poland spring]

Yeah if you just spawned in staff assistant NPCs with spooky dialogue and blobby skeleton skins it'd pretty much solve a bunch of blob issues

[Noah Buttes]

I'm noticing a huge disparity between what people think off-station blobs do and what they actually do.

Basically, if there's two blobs, you have one of them spawn its nucleus in the syndie teleporter room, then you have the other one spawn on station.

The key is to make sure the listening post blob doesn't expand much or at all in the beginning.

The blob on station grows as normal, but if it ever runs into trouble, the listening post blob swoops in and starts building off the station blob. Since the listening post blob hasn't expanded at all, it can still take advantage of the starter assistance expansion bonus. This lets it quickly overwhelm any threats to the on-station blob by rapidly engulfing any offending parties and absorbing them.

Once both blobs have absorbed enough victims, the listening post blob can start expanding as normal on station. Once the original station blob expands enough to place a second nucleus, it plants one on the listening post.

Boom, now you have two blobs that can only be removed from the station by removing every trace of them, not just the nuclei.


I've only ever seen one or two "friendly" blobs in space, but I've personally used the above strategy quite a few times.

[misto]

too bad i think that blobs being able to freely build off each other is not a good feature, unless it is changed such that they are explicitly part of the same organism and not 2 distinct organisms that magically sprout off of each other constantly. then their shared goal would be bumped up to 1000 rather than 2 separate goals of 500.

[Roomba]

That is even worse than a blob straight up expanding into space, holy shit.

[misto]

yeah, having a little buddy sitting out somewhere far in space, unfindable and untouchable, to back you up, feels in bad taste, despite the admirable teamwork being displayed. antags should be at some mild degree of risk

[ferriswheel1]

The main issue with blobs spawning off-station seems to be that they can expand unopposed, as no-one is likely to investigate deep space for em. But what if, when a blob spawned off-station, the crew received its location in the usual "aggressive macroorganism detected" announcement?

Blob fighting out in space sounds like fun, and announcing the blob`s location would make non-station spawning more of a trade-off rather than strictly better.

[misto]

people regularly ignore the macrocellular announcement already, theyd care even less if centcom was squealing on a blob that isnt even immediately threatening the station.

fighting the blob in space with pods would just be reflective membranes, reflective membranes. maybe the occasional thick membrane, if mining drills work on blobs at all.

[Nnystyxx]

fun fact: blobs can easily grow fast enough that pod plasma cutters can't make any progress whatsoever, even without using reflective membranes

i've had a nucleus behind like two tiles of blob and the fucking cutters could not make a dent because they werent shooting fast enough/doing enough damage. i never want to have to do that again.

[ferriswheel1]

Really? I remember a blob round I had with a Borg in a pod that was the bane of my life. That was with pod phasers though, and the Borg kept hopping out to whack my reflective membranes. Maybe that's just me though. I'd really like to see a gamemode that makes more use of pods.