Buff Blob Mode

[Hulk Hogan]

Blob is currently underpowered. With a flamethrower, you can easily wreck a blob in moments. For some of the blob evolutions, it takes a while, so if you get spotted before you can become fire-proof, a flamethrower will kill you fast.

[hipBEE]

I've been told the flamethower just cuts right though flame resistance

[DyssalC]

I think with how fucking godlike the flamethrower is now compared to the wonky horrible monstrosity it was before I'd say blobs deserve a buff. I mean, shit, even when the flamethrower was wonky blobs were easily stomped out by the crew before they were threats.

[BaneOfGiygas]

One of the major problems is that a lot of the ways that one can kill a blob really, really quickly (plasma fires, flamethrowers, chembombs) don't take anywhere NEAR as much time to set up as blobs do. While it takes a blob a solid half hour to become a major threat to the station, a crew member can put together and start using a flamethrower in about two minutes. The only way blobs seem to be able to win is if most of the crew decides to not give a shit, and now that flamethrowers are back to their full power, even that isn't much help.

And here's one of the other problems: The presence of a blob is really damn obvious. Sure, there are plenty of other really damn obvious antagonist types like the nuke ops or the wizard, but those two antagonists have advantages that the blob doesn't have and won't ever have: Mobility, the ability to retreat from an attack, and in the case of the nuke ops, strength in numbers. The high density of people on the station and the pseudo-omniscient AI, when combined with the blob's distinct lack of anything regarding retreat tactics, make for a very bad time. If you are caught at any point before you're able to efficiently fight back against a welder-wielding crew, there's no way to escape whatsoever.

[DyssalC]

Blob's need more offensive capability.

The most a blob can do is attempt to box you in and smack you to death, but that's not easy to do now that people are more blob savvy.

The blob is corrosive, right? That's how it breaks people down. Allow the blob to release excess enzyme fluid in the form of acid lube foam. This'll make it easier for the blob to trap people, and it'll also take a few flamethrowers out of play if somebody slips and drops their's into the foam.

Maybe make an upgrade for the blob that allows it to spread on space tiles after a while. See the crew deal with THAT.

[BaneOfGiygas]

Blob's need more offensive capability.

Also this. If the attack force is competent, blobs pretty much never get a chance at absorbing people, and the amount of time it takes to absorb someone is way longer than the amount of time it takes to welder/flamethrower the offending piece of blob away. At the absolute least, giving blobs a way to stun people would make for a much fairer fight.

[Roomba]

One issue with blob mode as it stands is that there's no incentive to hold back because once the blob is down, the round is over, so there's no reason to hold back on breaking out the plasma and ClF3 as compared to AI blobs where there's at least some incentive to keep the station in a livable condition after the blob is beaten.

[Dr_Bee]

an idea for offensive capability would be to blatantly steal from /tg/station blob mode and have people killed by the blob come back as NPC blob zombies. and if you give them robust AI it can be a pretty awesome threat. maybe give the overmind RTS like ability to command them, though I dont know how hard that would be to code.

[BaneOfGiygas]

It doesn't even need to be blob zombies, and it doesn't even need to be upon absorbing a dude. Maybe just give the blob the ability to detach parts of itself to form bloblings that beat people up and make it easier to get to them, or something of the sort.

[Berrik]

Blob really has the exact same mode as Alien: people know how to fight the blob easily so it dies almost immediately.

[Winklabom]

an idea for offensive capability would be to blatantly steal from /tg/station blob mode and have people killed by the blob come back as NPC blob zombies. and if you give them robust AI it can be a pretty awesome threat. maybe give the overmind RTS like ability to command them, though I dont know how hard that would be to code.

I agree with this.

If there is one thing that /tg/ has done right is their blob. It is a force to be reckoned with since it can A)Build different types of blob tiles (reinforced blob, point generating thing, etc.) B) Create really scary blob spores that you can tell to attack people with and eventually turn their bodies into semi-robust NPC blobzombies C)Eat through everything -really- quickly and regenerate ridiculously fast once you have enough point generating tiles.


Hell, I remember an entire crew of 20+ players having an extremely hard time dealing with a single blob that was entranched in the chapel once. They had lhose static laser emitters, everyone with welders, and plenty of welding fuel.

I personally do not know how the blob is played on Goon, but it definitely needs to be some sort of RTS type of thing with controlable units.

[Mageziya]

I've only played blob once, and it was during that time that the game bugged where no one had any limbs, so everyone was made blob. Out of curiosity, do blobs cut cameras? They don't seem to, bar eating the wall the camera is on. It they don't, I feel like it would help the blob situation if they could.

The main problem with blob seems to be their inability to remain undetected for long, and the thing is that they need to remain undetected to be able to do anything. Anything that can hold off the detection of the blob would seem like a major buff.

[I-Sett]

I think the main problem here is that the blob is, even with flame resistance, incredibly vulnerable to open flames (atmospheric). Yesterday, 3 of us from server 4 jumped over to the low pop server 35 minutes into a blob round. Using combined flame throwers and plasma fire we beat the blob back to just a tiny scrap of it's former self before eventually succumbing (I set myself on fire in a massive plasma fire). We died, but again, that was three people late joining over half an hour into a round. Blobs are especially vulnerable to plasma fires since they've blocked up the fire doors, allowing the flames to spread as far as the atmospherics will allow.
Potentially easy solution [no idea about the coding]: make flame resistance powerful against open atmospheric fire (flame throwers and plasma fire). Perhaps to the point that the blob can't grow into active open flames but, like a cig wall, it isn't actually destroyed by them. That way welders, lasers, phasers and other limited weaponry become necessary. I don't know how difficult this would be to code, but it would make blobs that have been left alone and ignored long enough potentially lethal, rather than slightly annoying to the handful of people who bother to scoop up a plasma tank and throw it into a room.

[DyssalC]

Here's how I see it:

The blob is seen as a threat to the station on par with syndies and wizards, thus everybody goes to beat the shit out of it.

However, the blob isn't very threatening unless you ignore it for like 20 minutes. It needs to be more of a threat, it needs to be dangerous early on. Currently the only trump card it has is "it spreads fukken everywhere", but that isn't enough for the blob early on.

[BaneOfGiygas]

I was observing a round on a lowpop server with an admin-spawned blob, and apparently, blobs now have the ability to make slime launchers, which are basically defense turrets. Blobs also have the ability to devour dropped items and store any devoured reagents inside particular cells.

I think that the blob has officially been buffed. Let's see how this turns out.