can something please be done about blob?

[Snoid]

blobs currently basically unwinnable right now, owing to 2 major factors. 1: ever since the change that made flamers + hotshot heat up the tiles theyre on, blob becomes functionally unable to spread on those tiles. its an insanely hard counter. 2: fire grenades instantly kill the blobs core. for some reason. even if a blob is caught late, as long as theres SOME people breaking heat resist tiles, blob cant fight back against fire. this has been going on for i think months now and no ones fixed it? i assume just cause any active devs are playing on RP and not classic so they havent noticed or something. 

idk if any of us classic players have put forth the effort to try and tell people who actually know how to program, so heres my effort to do so. its very depressing to have a blob round and know that no matter what the blob does, crews gonna melt them instantly.

[Asterion0]

As the worlds #1 Blob enjoyer the fire grenades are some of the least enjoyable things to deal with as a blob. They go around fire walls (which if you manage well enough CAN counter the new flamers, albeit with a lot of work), insta kill your core from full health at random (but dont worry you'll always have spares to try again) and as far as I can tell even get around ectothermids somehow which they really shouldn't. Ive had and seen a few blob rounds just end instantly without any climatic battle or buildup because someone threw a fire nade too close to the core and instantly killed it past their defenses.

It's also been bug reported more than once (although those slip through the cracks really easily), and feels very much not intentional. Especially considering it's very inconsistent, and the only thing I can think that would cause it is maybe the tile getting spaced? But also that'd be really obvious to see happen with proper explosives as well so idk.

[Vulwin_Gilran]

Pretty sure this is due to how chemfires, such as made by grenades and flamers, used to not actually properly interact with atmos. So fires were not effectively heating the air which they were MEANT to do. I am pretty sure there was even balancing added to decrease the damage hot air does, but clearly it needs more balancing then if these issues are still present. (in short, bug got fixed but things were balanced based off of the system with the bug, so its currently not balanced anymore with bug fixed)

[GARGATHUGANOKSREVENG]

Would making the blob core a lot higher in health work? It's a quick cheap fix and I dunno if it'd be balanced but it makes sense for the blob core to have a lot of health, so it can survive for some amount of time once all of its other defenses are down and is close to harmless in that stage.

[Snoid]

Would making the blob core a lot higher in health work? It's a quick cheap fix and I dunno if it'd be balanced but it makes sense for the blob core to have a lot of health, so it can survive for some amount of time once all of its other defenses are down and is close to harmless in that stage.

it takes an acceptable amount of damage from everything else, its just the fire nades that oneshot it. increasing the health would just mandate you use 2 or 3 nades on it because no amount of damage otherwise would be worth the effort.

[CalliopeSoups]

I honestly don't think they take reasonable damage from other things too. You ever seen people flamethrower or shotgun flare a nucleus?

[Egregorious]

Pretty sure this is due to how chemfires, such as made by grenades and flamers, used to not actually properly interact with atmos. So fires were not effectively heating the air which they were MEANT to do. I am pretty sure there was even balancing added to decrease the damage hot air does, but clearly it needs more balancing then if these issues are still present. (in short, bug got fixed but things were balanced based off of the system with the bug, so its currently not balanced anymore with bug fixed)

Yeah, chemfires used to only tick their heat at most once on any given tile throughout their life because they were a bit bugged. That was fixed so that they tick their intended number of times, which is 3-4 for generic flashfires. As such the fire damage may have tripled prior to being scaled back, and potentially more than that because each tick compounds the heat and the heat increases the damage. 

I don't know the blob's mechanics much, but it sounds like it could just be given some decent baseline heat resistance perhaps?

[Kotlol]

You all are trying to do work arounds to fix a problem of a singular item.

MORE HEALTH:
Now everyone requires to use Fire Nades to kill it since it's the only one that can do enough damage.
You aren't fixing the fire nade problem. You made every other option WORST.

Fire Reistance:
Better but now you nerfed flame throwers on the core too. Wich cause some confusion going: Why is the core fire resistance but the rest not? Why is beating it up better then flaming it? Anyway....

I think the fire nade in this case needs a rework or the core SPECIFICALLY needs to gain a different mechanic to be able to not be 1 shotted.
Simple as that.

[Snowy :D]

Blob was been very weak for a while now and it only seems to have gotten worse. It’s more than just fire nades. As Vulwin said, blobs aren’t balanced around all these new changes to fire and it has made them unplayable.

I feel like blob is an antag that has been suffering from being rather neglected and it has been showing for a while but now it is showing BADLY.

[LeahTheTech]

I'm taking a look at the spaghetti behind this, I honestly think this is an atmos issue more than a blob balance issue just because of how jank chemfires have been for a while (we're slowly chipping away at the jank).
First PR up here: https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/25150 which should help a lot with flamethrowers immediately skyrocketing the temperature to 1200C and I've also committed a change to increase blob's natural temperature tolerance a bit more (ie it can get hotter before the blob starts to cook, so ideally the first few flamethrower shots won't be enough to trigger atmos based damage as well as the direct fire damage)

[Lord_earthfire]

You all are trying to do work arounds to fix a problem of a singular item.

MORE HEALTH:
Now everyone requires to use Fire Nades to kill it since it's the only one that can do enough damage.
You aren't fixing the fire nade problem. You made every other option WORST.

Fire Reistance:
Better but now you nerfed flame throwers on the core too. Wich cause some confusion going: Why is the core fire resistance but the rest not? Why is beating it up better then flaming it? Anyway....

I think the fire nade in this case needs a rework or the core SPECIFICALLY needs to gain a different mechanic to be able to not be 1 shotted.
Simple as that.

Funnily enough, you do the same.

The problem is blob being ancient and interfacing with mechanics like atmos and chemicals poorly. Don't get me started on the whole blob-spefic behaviour of items to make them blob-breakable.

I think blob needs a rework/refactor. A new round of flamethrower/fire nerfs just dances around the issues of blob.

[Mouse]

I maintain that the damage that blob tiles, or at least the nucleus, can take ought to be capped.  One-shotting a nucleus ought to be flat-out impossible.

[Silent Majority]

Does breaching rhe room your core is in help?

How do plasma mining lasers interact now?