Borg tweak ideas

[Zamujasa]

Currently, heavy cyborgs are generally looked upon as basically being hell in a metal shell.


I have some thoughts about how to fix stuff.

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Delete the Efficiency upgrade, or at least make it a rare find in crates, and not a cyborg-init upgrade/makeable by fabs. (Rev-engineering OK?)

Right now it's basically a must-have. The ability to get it as an initial upgrade results in some people going Civilian to get it, then getting someone to change their module and making a different upgrade.

Goals of this change: Remove fun to encourage using other upgrades.


Change base power usage based on parts.
- Light parts: +0
- Standard parts: +2
- Sturdy: +3
- Treads: +4 ea (?)
- Heavy: +6

For a fully outfitted heavy borg, this would be 6 x 3 (arms, head) + 2 x 3 (chest, legs) = 24 power/tick. Treads bump this up to 28.
For a light cyborg, it'd be 0, or 8 with treads.

Speed penalties heavily reduced. A heavy cyborg will move only slightly slower than a light cyborg. Treads would increase speeds proportionately, so a heavy borg with treads would move faster than a light borg without them, but a light with treads would always move faster.

Goals of this change:
Differentiate cyborg types based on expected hazards. Light cyborgs are good for scouting, exploration, and other tasks that could leave them away from a recharger. Heavier cyborgs are better suited for dangerous environments, but require more frequent recharging as a result. As cyborgs also have the ability to connect to APCs to drain/give power, this also means that they can end up using more power from the station, which is always nice.

It also means that non-light cyborgs no longer feel like a prison due to how slow they are.


Cyborgs that have their heads smashed drop their brains. Being irreversibly killed because you suffered 40 damage to the head isn't fun. If someone wants to permanently remove you from the round after that, they can cart around your brain. Explosions of significant strength should still make your brain into mush, though.



Thoughts? A lot of things here would change a lot of the potential balance.

[FULLDEMOCRATICCOMMUNISTFASCISM]

This is an idea I've had from back when I was a /TG/ling:
What is "space" was a finite resource in borgs? Like there's more (less OP) upgrades but they take up different amounts of space, which the more heavy a borg is the more space it has. So you can fit more cool stuff in heavy borgs, but they're slower and all.

[poland spring]

All of this is good

[TheVeseloff]

I like the idea, but PLEASE allow cyborgs to plop light fixtures on walls somehow.

[Zamujasa]

a light fixture replacer is one of those ideas i've wanted to have (for ghostdrones as well). maybe engineering borgs should have a generic light tube/bulb fixture item they can place wherever

[TheMaskedMan2]

I know other servers have light replacers as an item, just make one of those here at least for Borgos.

[Superlagg]

Part of why Heavy Borgos feel so heckish to play isn't so much that they, themselves, are slow, but that speed in general is vital for robusity in space.

Damage and health doesn't typically play into who's going to win a pvp engagement, since most methods of killing someone involves clicking a spaceman with something that makes them helpless, then executing them while they're helpless. Whoever stuns first and longest, wins.

A big component to who wins these engagements is speed. If you are faster than your opponent, you have more opportunities to click on them. If your opponent is faster, they have more opportunities to click you or get away and squeal on you to validhunters.

Heavy borg slowness, combined with their lack of decent stunners, makes it feel difficult to be successful in fighting spacemans. Which is good for non-rogue borgs, but less so when they're not non-rogue.

And in a way, this is kind of the point of borgs; to be more utility than combat, to be immune to most environmental hazards, and win almost every pvm encounter they encounter. But man, with how slow they are, it feels like they're trading a huge part of being a spaceman for something that's only really a benefit in certain occasions.

It's like wearing heavy armor the whole round; it gives just about no practical benefit for the time you aren't being hurt, and when you do get hurt, it only seems to protect you from the least deadly parts of being hurt.