Thread Rating:
  • 2 Vote(s) - 2.5 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Change the Flock's ability to convert tiles to the ability to just building things.
#1
Usually antags have a sliding scale of how similar they are to forces already present on the station. Like revs are basically station assets but evil, traitors are almost station assets but tend to have equipment making them slightly different, blobs are a totally outside force that has nothing to do with anything onboard. Flock seems to lean heavily to the "new force" side of things rather than the "hostile station resources" side. The one exception however, is that they are able to convert station objects into their own versions.

In-universe this is confusing. They are utterly alien technology that is not compatible with NanoTrasen's machinery. The converted objects don't resemble the original things except in function. They're not made out of the same materials or anything. If drones are small fabricators why can't they just take the metal, which they are apparently deconstructing and converting to a whole new green substance, and build with it somewhere else? Do they need a skeleton of an airlock to make one?

Out-of-universe I'm not really sure why they do this. I get that they need to make bases and stuff but what if instead they did it similar to human engineers with metal sheets? As in, they have a limited amount of the green crystal stuff that is required to build new things. Starting out they can't do much other than build walls but as they go on and acquire more of the material they can build more expensive things with greater quantity. As I understand it the idea of flock is mostly "what if critters but SMART AND EVIL", with the conversion of objects being pinned on without any clear relation to that.

Code-wise, they already seem pretty close to this. There are several things they can build from scratch using a limited resource and conversion of airlocks also takes resources. Not to mention a human holding a material sheet is basically the same thing. In-fact it seems like the sheet thing is more complex of a mechanic and just having one always made of the same material inside you all the time.


Now my next reason is a little out-there, but bare with me here. If in the future there is an antag that converts both machines and station staff it should be legitimately dedicated to this instead of flock which revolve more around being "critter-like". I have never gotten the feeling that I'm fighting some weird twisted version of the facility with flock, just aliens with a random mechanic related to converting doors and chairs. If the Borg or something similar are ever implemented they should retain some traits of whatever they were before being converted. Kinda like a weird mix of ling and rev with less stealth or something, and flock doesn't really fit that role.
Reply
#2
Bump because I&S is slow lately.
Reply
#3
flock are, roughly, a semi autonomous "grey goo" style robot swarm. They convert things to flock style stuff and break down materials to self replicate. It's a very common trope in scifi, and the "conversion" mechanic seems very on theme for that

The green substance is gneisis, if I spelled that right, and in-universe.it converts nearby materials to it automatically. The drone isn't so much doing the conversion so much as it's inserting the self replicating green goo stuff
Reply
#4
Can't they just like, turn the metal from something into gnesis then use it somewhere else? Or build different things out of it?
Reply
#5
I figure Flock Birds chew on stuff to turn them into genesis and then throw it up on stuff to convert/build

Like Cliff Swallows, actually
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)