Unapologetic Diona Nerfs

[Snakebittenn]

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/8350

A thread for that PR.
Let's go over some numbers.
There's a handful of common NPCs that players fight on a semi-regular basis.
A rat has 5 health.
Viscerators have 15 health, as do typical hivebots.
Space bats have 20 health.
Carp have 25 health, as do lesser worms from the Sarlacc.
Blob parts have 30 health, except strong blobs which have 60.
Nurse spiders have 40.
Ivan the Carp has 50.
Alien drones have 60 health.
Shantaks have 75 health.
Hivebot guardians have 45-80 health.
Bears have 80 health, as does Faithless, as do the green cult Creatures.
But do you know what has more health than all of those?

A diona nymph, with 85 health. This is just a little less than great worms, space sharks, slimes, and xenomorph hunters.

But that's not all. There's about 6 nymphs that make up a gestalt when it splits. When the nymph a gestalt controls after it splits dies, it controls the next available nymph. This gives it an effective health of 510. This is 2.5 adult slimes, 60 more health than a Plains Tyrant (a 20 foot tall Moghesian predator), 110 more health than a cult Juggernaut, 200 more health than a hivebot beacon, about 5 blob cores of health, 240 less health than a horror form, 200 less health than a colossal spider queen. They actually have 310 more health than they did post-split than they did pre-split. A diona gestalt has 710 total health, from their 200 base health combined with the 510 effective health of their nymphs. A horror form has 750. This is on top of health and limb regeneration, not having bones, not having organs, plus being immune to brain damage, plus being immune to oxy/tox/clone, plus decapitation not killing them.

But that's not all. Something in common that all of these mobs have is not being smart. They are not controlled by players, they just run at you. They do not phase under your sprite, or take evasive maneuvers, or take into account the environment. They cannot hide under tables, they cannot crawl through vents. Most of them are human sized or larger, and are easy to click. Nymphs are none of these things.

But that's not all. You cannot actually stun a diona nymph outside of punching it. You need to punch a nymph 17 times to kill it. 102 total punches, ideally, to kill the entire pack. You need to attack it 3 times with an energy sword, or 18 times to kill the entire swarm. But, it's too late, it's already crawled in a vent, absorbed the rest of the swarm, and reformed to go continue whatever it was doing. All it takes is the one nymph to find enough nutrition or radiation.

Are you with me so far?

Let's take some other numbers into account, so you can imagine the sheer blocks of health these things are.
Human punches do 5 damage.
A crowbar does 5 damage.
A wrench does 5 damage.
A screwdriver does 5 damage.
Wirecutters do 6.
Power drills do 3.
Kitchen knives do 9.
Tactical knives do 18.
Butterfly knives do 15.
Glass spears do 21 damage.
Sec's pistols do 25 damage.
Fire axes do 10/42 unwielded/wielded.
Grandmaster (The Best A Borer Can Get) psiblades do 30 damage.
Revolvers do 45 damage.
A shotgun slug does 60.

Are you with me so far?

This PR introduces a new health for them, 25. This is an effective health of 150 instead, which is just above a normal human.  A nymph will not die in one hit from common weapons, but it will take actual damage compared to right now. It also raises the maximum amount of nutrition a nymph needs to consoom to become a full gestalt, so we can have less cases of 'It splits, enters a vent, and is humanoid again within 5 minutes.' I am also welcome to other ideas for nerfs.

[Chada1]

As said in the PR, 25 is far too low because while those NPCs are easier to kill, yes, and sometimes have less health, they're not player controlled, and they are NOT expected to roleplay, and do not follow escalation rules and rules against self-antagging. They're NPCs, meant to p. much just be there and a threat and then to be fought and destroyed by the Crew. Nymphs are completely separate, the only thing linking them to those is that they're mechanically a simple mob, which really isn't a reason to make them die in 1-3 hits from most improvised weapons and 1 hit from any actual weapon.

Your entire argument here relies on there being 3-6 of them but Nymphs are also grown and singular player mobs at times, they don't only exist in the multi-form from splitting as a Dionae Gestalt. 

Multiple other ideas (I loved the others THO!) were given and you've had substantial pushback only on lowering their HP to 25. 50 has been said as acceptable and so has other ways of making gestalt nymphs weaker, such as making Nymph health scale on biomass, and also by making a Dionae gestalts' nymphs have lesser starting health based on how much damage their gestalt had taken before they split.

This change as you've done it will likely just make Nymphs get killed while they're trying to roleplay p. much instantly and without being able to run away, the problem with it is that it targets Nymphs universally without exception when it should be targetting specifically Gestalt splits.

Edited February 25, 2020 by Chada1

[Yonnimer]

This is still being discussed, with the headdevs/maintainers, but an alternative idea would be:

Change nymph health to 40.

Give dionae 5 nymphs, not six

Make it so if a dionae splits, nymphs are damaged based off of damaged areas (Leftarm-lefthand would be considered a area) or nymphs are damaged based off of the dionae's overhaul health.

If 40 is too low or too high, we can easily have that changed in the future. 40 is a decent base.

This might be changed a bit though, i'll post a new comment if it is.

[Yonnimer]

Something to include, When a dionae forcefully splits, the dionae is not exactly going to be doing well. You could imagine it as getting brain damage. If someone is splitting/reforming and going right back to what they were doing, that becomes more of a lore issue.

[Scheveningen]

19 minutes ago, Yonnimer said:

This is still being discussed, with the headdevs/maintainers, but an alternative idea would be:

Change nymph health to 40.

Give dionae 5 nymphs, not six

Make it so if a dionae splits, nymphs are damaged based off of damaged areas (Leftarm-lefthand would be considered a area) or nymphs are damaged based off of the dionae's overhaul health.

If 40 is too low or too high, we can easily have that changed in the future. 40 is a decent base.

This might be changed a bit though, i'll post a new comment if it is.

This seems mathematically fair and sound, for the most part. Not to mention balance-wise it also makes a load of sense, so I'm onboard with yonnimer's suggestion here. The nerfs as posed in the OP seem a little excessive, but if fine-tuned to yonni's post here would be perfect.

[GreenBoi]

I think 35-40 would be much better. 40(5) = 200, which is the HP a normal gestalt has. 25(5) is barely over 100, AND it's also harder to grow into your more durable form.  35-40HP is only about eight whacks from a crowbar, which is preferrable to 4-5 and keeps cheese-killing on the down-low while also keeping it easy for actual weapons (typical weapons do about 10-15 per hit which means only four hits).

 

EDIT: RECENT ARGUMENTS HAVE BROUGHT ME TO BE FINE WITH 30-35

Edited February 25, 2020 by GreenBoi

[Scheveningen]

Also >butterfly knives doing 15

Somebody hasn't learned of plasteel/diamond butterfly meta. J U S T

[Pratepresidenten]

Although a health nerf seems very reasonable with the numbers presented, 25 seems like a biiiiiiiiit much of a nerf.

Having a gestalt split into damaged nymphs seems rad af tho.

[Snakebittenn]

48 minutes ago, Chada1 said:

As said in the PR, 25 is far too low because while those NPCs are easier to kill, yes, and sometimes have less health, they're not player controlled, and they are NOT expected to roleplay, and do not follow escalation rules and rules against self-antagging. They're NPCs, meant to p. much just be there and a threat and then to be fought and destroyed by the Crew. Nymphs are completely separate, the only thing linking them to those is that they're mechanically a simple mob, which really isn't a reason to make them die in 1-3 hits from most improvised weapons and 1 hit from any actual weapon.

Your entire argument here relies on there being 3-6 of them but Nymphs are also grown and singular player mobs at times, they don't only exist in the multi-form from splitting as a Dionae Gestalt. 

Multiple other ideas (I loved the others THO!) were given and you've had substantial pushback only on lowering their HP to 25. 50 has been said as acceptable and so has other ways of making gestalt nymphs weaker, such as making Nymph health scale on biomass, and also by making a Dionae gestalts' nymphs have lesser starting health based on how much damage their gestalt had taken before they split.

This change as you've done it will likely just make Nymphs get killed while they're trying to roleplay p. much instantly and without being able to run away, the problem with it is that it targets Nymphs universally without exception when it should be targetting specifically Gestalt splits.

'1-3 hits from most improvised weapons, and 1 hit from any actual weapon' does not have any basis in reality. The most common weapons people will be bringing to bear are either tools or whatever their unarmed attack is, which is no more than 10 damage (I can't find the exact numbers for a *fully* loaded toolbox, the unloaded ones do 5.) Nobody is bringing out shit like a katana, or a laser rifle, or a frag grenade on a diona nymph. They're just going to smack you with their hands or a crowbar or something. They would still need to hit you 5 times with a crowbar to kill you. Rarely is anyone on the station randomly jonesing to kill some diona nymph. If a nymph is killed, it's either because of gank, or because the nymph has been a shitter.


Also, unrelated to that, but making them spawn with damaged nymphs is a poor solution. There is still sparse ways to actually hit all 6 of them (outside of fire axes), and vent crawling is an instant action that has no do_after of a reasonable time. It can still just reform and regenerate these nymphs in an area with good light.

[canon35]

While I would prefer Paradox's solution at 25 health, Yonni's isn't too terrible either. All in all I'd like nymphs to not be so insanely durable. Besides, the only nymphs that do attacked are antagonistic ones now. Random balds are hardly a concern. 

[Snakebittenn]

I would be willing to increase it to 35, the same health as a maintenance drone.

[Yonnimer]

Should post this https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/issues/8351

[Arrow768]

Diona and the Nymphs have been a long time PITA for me, partially due to the shitcode and partially due to way they are not exactly balanced to fit into the game.

The primary issues I have with them are as follows:

• A Diona can split at any time, to gain "N-1" full-health nymphs (which can be reformed at a convenient time into a full diona again; N being the number of limbs + torso + head)
  • Even if they split right before death of the Diona, 5 full-health nyphs are spawned (if they had all their limbs)
• When split any negative effects (such as toxins in the system) do not carry over to the nymphs.
• The health of the Nymphs exceeds the Health of the Diona by quite a bit.

This allows a "competent" Diona player to survive pretty much anything, as they can always split and fuck off into a nearby vent.
(Yes, that might not be acceptable with lore, but its not mechanically enforced and non-diona players are often unaware of that)

While talking with @Yonnimer about the proposed PR and Diona mechanics in general, I came up with the following points that I would like to see in a Diona Balance PR:

• [nymph count]*[nymph max health] = [diona max health]
  • The max health of a diona cant be higher than the max health of the nymphs its made of
• [nymph count]*[nymph health] = [diona health] (when split)
  • The total health of all nymphs that are created when split, cant be higher than the total health of the diona.
• The health the nymphs have when splitting are based on the health of the diona (either proportionally, or based on the location of the damage)
  • Damage the diona has received must be split among the nymphs spawned  by the split either proportionally or based on the location of the damage.
• You should no longer have to "pay" for the split with one nymph as that is a bad way of attempting to balance it.

The biggest question that remains is: "What should be the diona max health".
Traditionally the damage threshold for crit was 100 and for death 200.
However that has changed with our implementation of Brainmed.
There is no longer a hard damage threshold that causes mobs to die when reached.
So that number might have to be increased accordingly, to be more in line with what is experienced by "human mobs".

So in the end that leaves us with a maximum health of 33.3 if we go with 6 nymphs and 200 max health of the diona.
The question is, if we should increase the max health of the diona to be more in line with what "human mobs" have.

(Imho it would be time to take a long and hard look at diona code to figure out if it would be better to just rewrite it from scratch.)

Edited February 26, 2020 by Arrow768
Corrected: "non-diona players are often unaware of that" (previously: diona players)

[Yonnimer]

We could give dionae 240 health and they spawn with six nymphs, the default right now, but it seemed the extra health was unpopular

[Chada1]

That sounds like a p. good way to fix this problem Arrow without making Nymphs die in 3 hits from nearly anything. This'd cause nymphs to come out dead if the Gestalt took a lot of damage, right?

Edit: Re-read and now I see you said explicitly that's a bad way to manage it. SO health is split between each Nymph.

Edited February 26, 2020 by Chada1

[Arrow768]

Well, there are two ideas to solve the problem of damage going from the gestalt to the nymph.

The "easy fix" would be to just divide up the damage the gestalt received amongst all the nymphs.
So if the gestalt is almost dead, so would be all the nymphs after a split.

My preferred option would be to base the damage the nymph has, on the damage location of the gestalt.
For example, if only the arm of a gestalt is heavily damaged, then one of the nymphs that spawns would have almost no health while the others are at full health.
If a nymph is damaged to the point, where it would die, it is "dropped" from the gestalt, and they loose the damaged limb.
However that comes with another question: What should happen if the torso is damaged to that point. (33 HP is not a lot and could be 1-shotted with a energy pistol)
I only have two partial solutions to that:

• We could force a "split" of the remaining nymphs
• We could select another nymph to take the place of the core and the diona looses that limb instead. (Selection based on the importance of the limb; i.e. head first, then the arms and finally the legs)

But that again raises the question if we should increase the max health of a Diona, as something like a laser pistol would be very efficient at taking out a Diona (if it is not armored).
(However I think that is something that could be figured out in a balance phase afterwards)

[Scheveningen]

The preferred option seems more sensible, it would lower case scenario frequency where all nymphs of a gestalt die when said gestalt decides to emergency eject or when they've sustained enough damage to break apart.

[knobbingham]

Whatever the re-balance is, it needs to happen. My interest with the species has gone from fascination, to mild annoyance and recently to disgust. I can't autistically number crunch, but the problems go beyond just numbers, anyway: Dionae have been whitelisted for a while now and so far I've seen nothing that warrents their existance in their current state. It'd be no problem with me personally, if whitelisted diona players added to the community interaction, but as it is now they don't act to mine in any purposeful way. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this. I obviously don't see everything, so I'm sure there's a player (maybe two) on the server who does a decent job roleplaying one while not being a case study in anti-social NPD, I just haven't met him yet. So while I'm not shitting on every diona player out there, please add this to the list: They still don't have to react to injury and the only lore gimmick they've got is that they're so, so alien.

It's a creatively written powergamer magnet and people will keep reaching for the bare minimum requirements of a background story just to ascend into dat sweet, sweet nymph-hood. Nerf them into the ground and let's see how many trees are still standing. I'm co-signing.

[Lmwevil]

>powergamer magnet
>dionaea

alright my guy if you really wanna call slow trees powergaming when there's plenty of other races with really (insanely) good mechanics you're free to, but it's a bit nonsensical. the name of the game of combat in ss13 is and always will be speed, a dionaea (who isn't lore breaking) once they get cut apart are brainfucked anyway and are akin to dead unless they have no idea how to rp learning and growing again

 

tl;dr they can be mechanically tanky but their lore on a *HRP* server is what balances them, and killing them is pretty easy

a nymph hp nerf is fine as long as it doesn't escalate because they're in a fine place when gestalts 

[SleepyWolf]

something to go off of, is the idea that diona are a great example of...

'The whole is greater than the sum of its parts' - stuff like that. so, nymph health doesnt have to equal the gestalts health

[Chada1]

Diona do need some fixes and nerfs but the solution to all of these problems isn't to nerf Nymphs into the ground. Many of them have to do with the actual gestalt and how they split. Edit: AND how they regenerate in general. Apparently they regrow limbs in 5 minutes? That's not good

Edited February 26, 2020 by Chada1

[PoZe]

On 26/02/2020 at 11:28, Chada1 said:

Diona do need some fixes and nerfs but the solution to all of these problems isn't to nerf Nymphs into the ground. Many of them have to do with the actual gestalt and how they split. Edit: AND how they regenerate in general. Apparently they regrow limbs in 5 minutes? That's not good

Exactly, 5 minutes is too fast. But the reason it is so low is because in past paradox screamed that 10 minutes is eternity.

[Carver]

If anything it should be a half hour. Let there be some proper fucking consequence, especially as rounds aren't thirty to fourty minutes long here.