Increase Requirement for Blobs on Low-Pop

[niennab]

Blobs on low-pop are an absolute nightmare and have been a consistent thorn during the Australian afternoon-evening and early morning European hours. As such, I wanted to request that their spawn rate be vastly changed and will only spawn if certain roles on the manifest are filled as well as a minimum population. A lot of these low-pop rounds where I’ve witnessed a blob have had anywhere from 3-6 characters on the manifest.

The biggest hurdle in my opinion I’ve noticed is a lack of medical during these hours. If the engineers in question aren’t IPCs, there’s a high risk the character will simply die because no one can treat them from any mishap. As such, I'd be wary of a blob requiring exclusively engineering to spawn. The second hurdle then being a lack of Engineering. A blob can be a nightmare if it’s only one person in engineering online. Or, even worse if there is no one in engineering (which I thought wasn't possible but I have seen).

I cannot comment on the effectiveness of security fighting a blob on their own but as I understand it, it’s not really feasible. Thus I don't know if they should be considered for the manifest requirement.

[ChevyChevron]

6 minutes ago, niennab said:

I cannot comment on the effectiveness of security fighting a blob on their own but as I understand it, it’s not really feasible. Thus I don't know if they should be considered for the manifest requirement.

I can. It sucks, and it's pretty much only viable if the blob core spawns somewhere people can see it. With the recent changes to the sec armory, I'm not even sure we still have enough lasers to rotate in order to make it feasible.

[Gem]

i agree. to continue on that line of thought, blob is kind of a leftover that doesn't serve much purpose and can probably be removed.
the only way to defeat blobs now is with a emitter (unless you want to risk your life). it's not really engaging at all imo.
either it deletes half the ship and is a pain to repair, or it gets stomped immediately.

[niennab]

7 minutes ago, Gem said:

i agree. to continue on that line of thought, blob is kind of a leftover that doesn't serve much purpose and can probably be removed.
the only way to defeat blobs now is with a emitter (unless you want to risk your life). it's not really engaging at all imo.
either it deletes half the ship and is a pain to repair, or it gets stomped immediately.

A fair point. I wouldn't mind pushing for it's entire removal as well.

It takes Engineers away from roleplay and with the work needed to not only repair but refill maintenance (which is a nightmare by z levels alone), it is agonizing.

[MattAtlas]

1 hour ago, ChevyChevron said:

With the recent changes to the sec armory, I'm not even sure we still have enough lasers to rotate in order to make it feasible.

Not sure what you are talking about here. Security had none of their weapons removed.

[Omicega]

Engineering has precious little gameplay as it is once the roundstart setup is complete. The blob is one of the few things that gives you a reason to come out of the lobby and do something, and I don't think shifting further towards a perma-extended chatroom is something the server needs.

The reason there are so many lowpop blobs lately is because the most active morning European player group tends to stack a lot of engineers, which increases the spawn weight. I can't comment on how exactly the maths works because I haven't delved that deeply into it, but it might even be that with so few people on in total and so many engineers relative to the pop, the blob might be one of the only major events eligible to spawn, especially if meteor and/or ship debris are disabled like I think they might be?

Security aren't considered at all for the blob spawn weight, which I think is fair since they are basically useless against it anyway. It really only takes one person with an emitter to set it up in-line with the main core to kill a blob.

[ChevyChevron]

1 hour ago, MattAtlas said:

Not sure what you are talking about here. Security had none of their weapons removed.

I was pretty sure we swapped out a carbine for the ballistic, but I might be misremembering.

[MattAtlas]

4 minutes ago, ChevyChevron said:

I was pretty sure we swapped out a carbine for the ballistic, but I might be misremembering.

We did not.

[Carver]

I like the blob, but I'd rather see it rebalanced to be more of an Engineering-focused problem that doesn't kill them off like flies - instead of an emitter/Security-focused problem. It's never fun to have to go deal with it as Security when it was designed for Engineers, and is just downright tedious. Requiring an emitter isn't exactly engaging either, as you either have the answer to the problem or you can't access said answer. Great.

[Sycmos]

The premise of engineering busywork is fine when you have a full manifest and can reasonably handle scenarios such as a blob without much risk to life, limb and RP. That is not the case during deadpop hours where the crew number less than ten, medical are absent and engineers are limited in number. Deadpop blobs do nothing to serve RP besides completely halting the round for everyone until the blob is dealt with, and can be potentially round-ending if there are injuries. As someone who routinely plays with Nienna during these hours it is frustrating to have enjoyable RP experiences during deadpop only to then have them derailed entirely for half an hour or more just to deal with a mechanic that really only serves to keep players busy.

[Melariara]

Blobs definitely need to be checked out on their spawn weight. I've seen completely dead rounds, no crew at all, no power, and a blob has eaten half the ship.

[NerdyVampire]

I would rather keep the blob as-is than remove it. I don't mind it checking properly for engineerings before firing though, but I for one enjoy dangerous non-antag events and right now aside from blob there really are none.

[Marlon P.]

I played another server awhile ago that was lowpop all the time and the blob was the worst. I can sympathize eith the frustration. It's so tedious! And you cant ignore it behind firelocks because it can destroy the entire z-level if it starts overwhelming the crew due to Lanchesters Laws.

[niennab]

To add onto the thread, during a recent round with 0 players, vines erupted in the central ring and due to the power outage, spread to the far corners of the station. What is the point of random encounters when the manifest is 0? No one is going to want to play the carpal tunnel simulator alone and so the round simply sat empty while players waited for it to hit the 2 hour mark. Any of the random encounters that can spawn with a manifest of zero should be re-evaluated.

If we want the blob, sure, but it's chances of spawning needs to be greatly reduced along with both engineering and medical being staffed and at best with a 15 player minimum.

[Sycmos]

On 02/08/2022 at 17:18, NerdyVampire said:

I would rather keep the blob as-is than remove it. I don't mind it checking properly for engineerings before firing though, but I for one enjoy dangerous non-antag events and right now aside from blob there really are none.

The initial purpose of this thread was to suggest changing the weight of spawn of the blob to offset the burden on deadpop players. This is the primary issue - they should not be spawning with such regularity that they are hurting lower pop rounds.

[Owen]

We just had a round where a blob spawned on a deadpop round with zero engineers active. Took over the entirety of deck 1. Should be screenshots getting posted soon. It was a disaster 

[Lonefly]

Heyo!

We had a round where blob spawned with no engineers on and, iirc, maybe eight(?) total people on the manifest.  Was asked to post here. I really think that blob should be unable to spawn during low pop, especially when no engies are on.

 

Edited August 12, 2022 by Lonefly
Typoooo

[Lonefly]

Note: engies did come in /later,/ but by the time they arrived it was far too late for the blob to be contained, even with security aid.

[Marlon P.]

Because of the speed of the blobs growth, due to Lanchesters Laws it quickly overwhelms deadpop because it regenerates faster than lowpop can kill it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester's_laws

 

[Omicega]

All the blob needs is to check for at least one engineer before it spawns. I don't really know where the misleading comparisons to military theory or whatever are coming from; you point an emitter at the main core, turn it on, and walk off. The blob can't regenerate its way out of that, full stop.

I also don't really buy that searching Horizon's maintenance for the thing is an impossible task at lower pop: the same single engineer can do it with how cut-down maintenance is now compared to the Aurora. You poke your head into both of the wings, then take a run through deck one's central maintenance near the machinists' and the morgue. It's a lot easier with two or more, of course, but it's not some colossal threat that needs 5 engineers and fully staffed medical to handle.

If anything, vines are more of a busywork problem than the blob, since you sometimes can't feasibly get rid of those if they spread too far at too low a pop. 

[limette]

4 minutes ago, Omicega said:

I also don't really buy that searching Horizon's maintenance for the thing is an impossible task at lower pop: the same single engineer can do it with how cut-down maintenance is now compared to the Aurora. You poke your head into both of the wings, then take a run through deck one's central maintenance near the machinists' and the morgue. It's a lot easier with two or more, of course, but it's not some colossal threat that needs 5 engineers and fully staffed medical to handle.

i can say with extreme confidence, playing lowpop, that generally it takes enough time that i've seen the blob grow out of control more than once - which then makes the round for everyone center around the blob rather than whatever roleplay they were actually trying to do

regardless of the theory of how it works, the practical effect is that this is what actually happens on lowpop with regularity - there is a blob, it is not found quickly, and it has blown up a fuel tank or something else funny by the time you arrive. maybe it lashes the engineer a total of once, giving them a super-lethal infection that they will certainly die to.

the practicality of how it turns out is extremely different from the theory of how it could work, and the actual result is just that it sucks and nobody enjoys it among those who play the hours in question

[niennab]

31 minutes ago, Omicega said:

All the blob needs is to check for at least one engineer before it spawns. I don't really know where the misleading comparisons to military theory or whatever are coming from; you point an emitter at the main core, turn it on, and walk off. The blob can't regenerate its way out of that, full stop.

Just because you don't have issue with the blob justifies that a timezone that you don't even play on should suffer. People are going to be at different levels of capability as Engineers. It is a struggle to go through as one engineer and even more dangerous when there are no medical aboard. Two capable characters nearly died on lowpop extended due to a blob with no medical.

Edited August 12, 2022 by niennab

[Gem]

a PR has been submitted fixing blobs spawning with no engineers active. it doesn't enforce a minimum population requirement, but scales with how many engineers are active.
https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/14614

[Bejewledpot]

43 minutes ago, Omicega said:

If anything, vines are more of a busywork problem than the blob

I’m sorry but this isn’t really true. Sure, vines are a lot of clicking, but the only time vines can be a problem is when there’s only 1 person on the server. 
i think the point you’re missing is that A. You cannot reasonably handle a blob without an engineer. B. Blobs will get out of control really easily. And C. They’re a massive pain in the butt with the amount of destruction they cause. Even caught early, it can take 15 minutes to deal with one. If it vents a section or multiple sections, it takes even longer. I’m a pretty experienced engineer player, and i find blobs incredibly tedious because it takes so long to undo the damage. 
i think you’re also not really giving credit to the fact that even pointing and firing the emitter at a blob is time consuming. A believe it was about a week and a half ago, i was handling a blob in the starboard wing. And it took about 7 minutes to cut through 6 tiles of vine and the core. And it’s not like you can busy yourself with fixing the breech or doing repairs in the meantime. You have to wait for the emitter to do it’s work. 
 

I’m not going to say it’s impossible to deal with vines without an engineer, but I’ll give some insight to what it’s like when security does it. You pull out every single energy gun in the armory. You grab 4 chargers. You wrench those chargers down near the blob. You and another security person repeat the steps of 1. Firing all your ammo in a straight line towards the core 2. Swapping guns and repeating. 3. Putting the guns into chargers and wait half a minute or so for it to recharge. Repeat 15-20 times at least. Pray someone orders more guns or flash bangs while you sit there doing this. Huzzah, it finally dies. But you’re a security guard, you can’t fix the hole the blob poked into the ship. 

honestly, i don’t see a lot of value in keeping the blob at all. But if we do keep it, it’s gotta be nerfed to be less awful to deal with on lowpop. Or cap it so there’s at least, I’m just throwing random checks out, 15 people with at least 1 engineer or 2 Engineers. 

[Omicega]

42 minutes ago, niennab said:

Just because you don't have issue with the blob justifies that a timezone that you don't even play on should suffer. People are going to be at different levels of capability as Engineers. It is a struggle to go through as one engineer and even more dangerous when there are no medical aboard. Two capable characters nearly died on lowpop extended due to a blob with no medical.

I play lower pops quite a bit, although not as much as I'd like. I'm in the UTC+0 timezone and played a lot more earlier in the day when server pops at those hours supported it; lately it's been harder to find interaction at EU morning/early afternoon hours for a variety of reasons. I've handled a good few blobs solo or essentially solo at this point; it isn't hard and it doesn't require any kind of special knowledge.

It isn't a struggle to go through as one engineer unless the blob spawned without your knowledge, like if you latejoin or something. You just find it (it takes ten minutes maximum to trawl Horizon's maintenance, considering there's hardly any of it) and kill it. It can't hide from you since it can't move to begin with, and there is really not that much of the ship it can spawn in anyway.

If two characters nearly died to it then they just weren't capable to begin with -- I don't know how else to put the obvious blob-killing strategy beyond 'shoot the core with an emitter' and 'don't stand next to any of the green stuff'. It doesn't leave RNG trip hazards and explosions like hivebots do, nor does it set you on fire like hivebots do. It doesn't have any capability to retaliate at all beyond venting areas and attacking people who stand next to it.

 

13 minutes ago, Bejewledpot said:

I’m sorry but this isn’t really true. Sure, vines are a lot of clicking, but the only time vines can be a problem is when there’s only 1 person on the server. 

Okay? I'm still arguing it's a lot 'busier' to handle vines -- depending on their spawn point, admittedly -- than it is for a blob. You can kill any blob with one engineer and about fifteen minutes of effort max -- maybe twenty in the worst-case scenario that doesn't involve the blob having eaten stuff for half an hour before anyone looks for it. For vines you need at least a couple, and it can get really bad really quickly if they spawn somewhere open and can spread in every direction.

 

6 minutes ago, Bejewledpot said:

i think the point you’re missing is that A. You cannot reasonably handle a blob without an engineer. B. Blobs will get out of control really easily. And C. They’re a massive pain in the butt with the amount of destruction they cause. Even caught early, it can take 15 minutes to deal with one. If it vents a section or multiple sections, it takes even longer. I’m a pretty experienced engineer player, and i find blobs incredibly tedious because it takes so long to undo the damage. 
i think you’re also not really giving credit to the fact that even pointing and firing the emitter at a blob is time consuming. A believe it was about a week and a half ago, i was handling a blob in the starboard wing. And it took about 7 minutes to cut through 6 tiles of vine and the core. And it’s not like you can busy yourself with fixing the breech or doing repairs in the meantime. You have to wait for the emitter to do it’s work. 

No-one's saying you have to undo the damage. You can leave the hole in the ship patched with inflatables if you want, especially on lowpop -- nobody is really going to care if you just go back to your previous chairRP.

It doesn't take much longer than 5 minutes to have the emitter vaporise the blob unless it's genuinely huge. I guess it's a bit RNG-dependent based on when the server ticks decide to regen the central core shield, but unless you're getting really unlucky they tend to up and die pretty quickly in my experience.

You are right that security is useless against the thing, though -- in fact they're worse than useless, because all they do is trip engineers up, get in the way, and maybe vent more of the ship through inflatables while the engineers are trying to emitter it. Buffing security's weapons against the thing is probably a separate discussion, though, but I feel like any number buffs you could give them would be outweighed by the ammo capacity on their weapons.

My main point here is that the gameplay Aurora offers is already minimal beyond secret modes -- and even then, you'd better be security, command, or maybe medical, otherwise you're looking at two hours of twiddling your thumbs while whatever is happening is handled by someone else. I don't think the latest band of lowpop players should neuter a ship event for everyone, and I think the threat it poses is already being overblown as long as you have one engineer on the manifest. Hopefully a PR that makes blobs impossible to see without at least one engineering crew on the manifest will sort it once and for all.