Remove Borers

[nuklearcellphoneg]

Yeah, they're fucked, just remove them. The new features have piled upon each other to make some trash balance.

• Xray in five minutes
• Head borers have far too many options, see picture below
• Too many borers in one body
• Xray in five minutes...
• The borers locations do not correlate with the abilities to get very well
• If you stack everything you possibly can stack from a head borer, you're healing 3 burn damage every 2 seconds1 brute damage every 2 seconds, 1 toxin damage every 2 seconds, infinite suffocation damage every 2 seconds(not entirely relevant, but you can survive being critted and left to die)
• You're faster than regular speed even with magboots on
• You're immune to atmospheric temperatures
• Borer speak is a relic left over from it being an antag- there is NO good reason for them to have that any more. pssst they were fine before but some recent changes have been lacking forethought

[SonixApache]

buffslugs

[ghost]

just obliterate head borers

[9600bauds]

Please make this into an actual discussion, say why are they fucked and such

[nuklearcellphoneg]

I agree!

[Rattlederp]

The moment we start talking in detail about balancing is the moment we turn into tg, let's not. They had to make their plasmamen shitty because people cried about muh balance. This game is years out of date and the combat system is probably the worst part, why even bother

[ghost]

i agree that borers are fucked. my opinion is that head borer is just way too fucking powerful. head borer needs to be completely gutted.

the ones i crossed out make almost no sense to be in the head, some should be moved to chest or just removed in general

[Exxion]

The reason they were in the head is because borers could originally only go in the head, and those abilities are from that time

[Killette2]

I suggested that head borers shouldn't have the liver function boost and that should be torso, but was greeted with "lul thas retarded"...

[Exxion]

Who the fuck said that? As far as I'm aware, the only reason liver boost is still with the head rather than the torso is because nobody's bothered to move it.

[Killette2]

Never mind a different issue of mine was the retarded one, the liver one was just ignored.

https://github.com/d3athrow/vgstation13/issues/11364

[Lokiamis]

The other day I had x-ray vision and completely negated a lethal injection syringe with just one borer. They were interesting when they fought for control of your body and reproduced wildly, but now they're just super-PAIs, and I don't think anybody would be happy with what they're capable of if their abilities were given to PAIs in the first place.

[Lokiamis]

They're also a way for metafriends to buff the ever living fuck out of each other in a completely ban-proof way.

[Killette2]

I'm sure if a guy kept going into xenobio and the same guy kept becoming his borer, that might raise a red flag.

[Exxion]

I don't think that's actually against the rules, unless they're also metacommunicating

[Aurx]

Problems with borers (some of these apply to pAIs too):

Problem: There's no way to know John Target has a borer until he gets back up and murders you.
Fix: Make borers obvious. I'd suggest periodic flavor messages about something squirming in their LOCATION, and flavor messages when they get attacked.

Problem: Knowing John Target has a borer doesn't mean you can do jackshit about it.
Fix: Borers should take damage when their body part gets attacked and when locationless damage is taken.

Problem: Borers do asstons of things. Borers stack.
Fix: Pare down the borer abilities. Borers should be only able to affect their current location. Borers should be able to move around in their host's body. Retain one borer to a zone. Limit how many things a borer can do at once.

tl;dr Borers should be obvious living bandaids that you can kill at the same time as their host, not invisible invincible living medbays that give super powers.

[Killette2]

Head borers make your head swell really huge like the "too smart for" meme and disable headgear

[Aurx]

I don't think that's actually against the rules, unless they're also metacommunicating

It's a tad suspicious, but "Head to xenobio asap to get borer" and "Become borer asap" are both reasonable things players could do independently of each other.
Easy to test for, though. Swipe the borer slot and see how the xenobio rusher reacts, and have somebody get to xenobio first and see what the borer rusher does.

[Killette2]

Mybe cause bone breaking to harm the borer? When a borer is secreting chemicals into a limb make the limb flash a green glow while the chemicals are being metabolized

[Shadowmech88]

We were discussing head borer tweaks in the Discord some time ago, I just never got around to implementing them. For example, instead of allowing head borers to give their humans X-ray vision, allow head borers to channel chems to temporarily give themselves X-ray vision. I think there's definitely more interesting things that can be done with head borers than just leaving them as chem dispensers.

[Aurx]

@AutismSpider OK, but how do you know to apply the salt/silicate to John Target before robusting him?

[kol1th]

They don't add anything to the game, really. I am literally only killed by borers poisoning me with space drugs and/or radium when I get one.

[nuklearcellphoneg]

Just get rid of the x-ray vision entirely, in my opinion... that is far far far too overpowered.

[ghost]

should wider vision stay?

[nuklearcellphoneg]

Personally... that is a

HUGE

advantage.

Personally, I don't believe so.

[Aurx]

Basically everything borers currently do should go.

[nuklearcellphoneg]

I've been adding all the points brought up as they are brought up, in the original post. :^)

[9600bauds]

Let's make a list of things everyone can agree on

Can everyone agree that xray should go? Can everyone agree that some/most headborer chemicals should be moved to chestborers?

[Shadowmech88]

I'm fine with hosts not getting xray. I think it'd be neat for it to be a costly channeling ability for head borers themselves, though.

I think it'd be fine to move some headborer chems to the chest.

[Kammerjunk]

If you stack everything you possibly can stack from a head borer, you're healing 3 burn damage every 2 seconds1 brute damage every 2 seconds, 1 toxin damage every 2 seconds, infinite suffocation damage every 2 seconds(not entirely relevant, but you can survive being critted and left to die)

This is not and was not meant to be an argument againt borers. Asides from a few things (x-ray, hyperzine, and to a limited extent anti-tox come to mind), the borer will not help you in a fight to the death (as opposed to a fight to the crit). It's also slightly wrong, it's 2.5 burn, not 3, which means that each laser shot takes takes 24 seconds to heal. What I'm saying is that you'll want to fix chemistry, not borers (ODs + 1000u limit + ease of creation).

X-ray is really powerful though

[NigglyWiggly]

Multiborers removed fucking when

having Cortical borers that can go into your foot and then talk into your brain and shit is just silly, and having people just turn into these bio-weapon tier freaks with a sword for one arm and stretch armstrong for the other is dumb and would probably fit changelings better anyway

[AI-Is-Rogue]

@NigglyWiggly The cortical part was removed from their name and the voice when they talk comes from the body part they are in, not the head.

[Kurfursten]

Don't get rid of them, but dial them back to be more reasonable and come in less archetypes.

Extendoarm is crazy useful, useful enough that if a borer could ONLY use extendo arm it would still be fun to play and extremely powerful. This ability is literally a get out of death free card for any non-antag (get dragged to medbay) or antag who can regen. EMP borer can be fun too and the EMP is very reasonably balanced (it takes a staggering 100 chems for a small EMP). Personally, I don't even see anything wrong with borerspeak as a nice little bonus, it makes them interesting. If anything, I'd like to see unhosted borers able to use it.

Do away with the kitchen sink of borers secreting every chemical in the world from hamserum to paismoke. No more xray or telescopic vision.

[Kurfursten]

@AutismSpider I was wrong. I was looking at the original PR where it claimed it uses Hamserum but he changed it to use a verb at some point.

Here are some real things that borers can synthesize that are a little silly though:

Latte (the coffee) Bustanut Frost oil pAI smoke Radium Both tramadol AND paracetamol (isn't one painkiller enough?) Iron, blood, dex+, and clotting agent (what's the point in any of the others if you can make dex+?)

This isn't even talking necessarily about balance and how enough chems make you invincible, just out outrageous the list is at times.

[AI-Is-Rogue]

Radium for curing viruses, frost oil for lowering the host's heat along with capsaicin for raising it, and clotting agent stops internal bleeding.

[AI-Is-Rogue]

@AutismSpider Chest gets arithrazine for fixing toxin damage and yeah, the oils aren't great but the temperature resistance genes are wonderful and even better than leporazine, though you can only pick one due to the fact that having one of the genes makes the activation chance for the other so low

[N3X15]

I have plans to nerf the shit out of them so they don't make you a living God.

Once they're more concrete, I will share.

On 2/3/2017 8:55 PM, AutismSpider wrote:

over all Head borers are over loaded Chest need lot of work done to it it and it has mix of powers that dont fit it on top of being only borer sub type that has power to do full body body scan on the host.

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[Ephx1]

Remove all the idiotic borers in other parts of the body, nerf headborers. Done.

[PJB3005]

pAI borers were a mistake.

Borev when.

[Ephx1]

Actually, I would be in favor of body part borers had their own breeding system similar to slimes, but only if the resulting offspring could only go in its designated spot, so that it would take lots of effort to become a slug party bus that shrugs off everything.

[Praecordia]

make one in every ~10 borers spawn as a classic bodysnatcher borer suddenly you can't trust your walking chem dispenser egg anymore

[Ephx1]

There's little point to being a bodysnatcher borer though, the original mechanic (or how it was supposed to work) gave them constant brain damage at the control of the borer. Not only would you be piloting a retard, but there's no real reason to be piloting the retard as the original borers objectives were just "breed", which now requires you to leave the body.

[gbasood]

so remove brain damage and find a way to make bodysnatching borers not shit I know it's fucking CRAZY but you can completely rework a gamemode if it's shit

[Ephx1]

Then why do we have rev?

[gbasood]

@Ephx1 code it @yclatious also code it although I'd prefer people get them removed from rotation instead of removed from code

[gbasood]

I didn't say remake

[gbasood]

That's me Feature request shit you want in it Or get someone to make a server poll to remove it Also the literal "IED" ieds are shit, they used to have them and they do fucking nothing

[gbasood]

MAKE IT ITS OWN ISSUE FUCK this issue discussion is already derailed enough

[Ephx1]

Maybe, gut borers, expand upon the pAI range. Someone on bay was working on making your limbs pAIs, so that could be an extension of robotics? We could shift some borer abilities that way.

[Ephx1]

No, this is something different that I guess was never expanded upon, I read it while browsing Bay's idea's corner. There was an actual coder behind it, so I expected at least something was done. It was the idea of incorporating pAIs into prosthetic limbs, with a similar concept of "speaking into" the person themself.

You could probably make that into the stupid hookshot, shield, sword thing we have now for borers. It would take more than some bored player to wriggle into you.

[Ephx1]

I don't think it ever got past "let's put pAIs in limbs" but I would assume so, at least a small step up from a normal limb,