Suggested Cyborgs changes

[Gem]

1 hour ago, Contextual said:

Of making stationbound effectively the same as crew, but worse?

• no pain.
• being immune to stuns (with the exception of flashes).
• being immune to vampires and changelings's "biological" abilities.
• being immune to vacuum.
• being immune to chemicals.
• being immune to radiation.
• don't need to breathe.
• faster movement (especially with the upgrade).
• built in flashlight.
• built in computer.
• can interface with pretty much any system.
• built-in toolkit that you can't disarm or change.

[Contextual]

31 minutes ago, Gem said:

• being immune to stuns (with the exception of flashes).
• being immune to vacuum.
• faster movement (especially with the upgrade).
• built in flashlight.
• built in computer.
• can interface with pretty much any system.

 

These, specifically, are all really good points for adjustment. All of them can be tweaked, removed, or reworked in order to make stationbound more consistent with existing lore and mechanics for other races, as well as bringing their "power level" in line with the rest of the crew, without losing their inherent character.

Make stationbound more susceptible to stuns, be they screeches or flashbangs or the like, or even stun baton strikes. Perhaps even give them some kind of fluffy electrical shock threshold, where they can dampen so many disruptor shots before being overwhelmed and suffering a temporary shutdown/stun to prevent systems damage?

Vacuum is a big one. They shouldn't be super-immune to it, as this runs directly counter to IPC lore/mechanics. Perhaps have the EVA modules have some built-in cooler item with limited charge that they have to work around, with the others suffering gradual heat buildup/damage a la IPCs?

Movement speed is ever-tweakable with every individual module, and I have suggested that several of the modules have varying degrees of it. Especially ones which present combat utility in the form of surgical saws, etc.

The flashlight can be removed outright and locked behind the floodlight upgrade, if this is a particular pain point of balance. It would give much more impact to the upgrade, too, making it feel much better in the machinist-stationbound interaction loop.

The computer was added out of nowhere, and really only serves to give stationbound the ability to use the chat client when AI IM was deprecated. If this functionality can be re-added to their baked-in mechanics, the computer can be removed entirely at no great loss.

System interfacing can be policed on a system-by-system basis. See ATMs for an example.

 

31 minutes ago, Gem said:

• built-in toolkit that you can't disarm or change.

 

Not in round, no. Not without a substantial rework along the lines of what Chada has proposed; however, this toolkit, which in certain cases is far too strong and all-encompassing, can be adjusted with balance passes, as I have detailed in my previous posts in this thread. In fact, it's really important for the health of the role that these passes take place, even if the access changes are permanent.

Edited December 10, 2022 by Contextual
Minor formatting.

[TrainTN]

8 hours ago, Contextual said:

And then, another merge has already been proposed for an entire module to be summarily removed instead of the (admittedly more involved) solution of restricting module availability based on available slots. 

I don't think I can wrap my head around the mentality that has gone into these implemented and upcoming changes. It seems to me to be intentionally, maliciously obtuse, spurred on by blind bias and intentionally oblivious to more reasonable, agreeable suggestions. There is so much room for improvement to stationbound, so many things which can be adjusted, and should have been long ago. Instead, in the face of the removal vote not going through, the intention seems to be to "rework" the class in the same way that an autocrat "reworks" political opposition, rendering it utterly toothless and obsolete.

Arrow did say this would happen, at the end of the "Remove Cyborgs" thread.

[Fluffy]

4 hours ago, TrainTN said:

Arrow did say this would happen, at the end of the "Remove Cyborgs" thread.

It was also said such attempt would be rejected without much discussion, why they were merged anyways is beyond me, I don't play a borg much but as of now when I did (during the event) it felt disheartening to play, not able to really provide much help or assist the crew around while also being below them all, it seems to me like a lot of recent borg development (and merging) is aimed at making the borgs not want to be something someone would play, instead of cutting a reasonable window where they would be used like actual borgs, to help the crew accomplish things in moments of need, give a different level of RP (yes, you can role play a borg, it might not be interesting to some, but usually the alternative is that the tired player do not play at all, or at least does not play here) and in the end do not even seem address the reasons this whole thing started for, to me it seems like a loss for everyone involved in all the sides of the story.

All in all, I feel like we should roll back to then move forward with actual, reasonable changes and a plan that both borg players, non borg players, lore writers and developers agree, in majority, with.

 

.2c

[Itanimulli]

On 10/12/2022 at 11:54, Gem said:

• no pain.
• being immune to stuns (with the exception of flashes).
• being immune to vampires and changelings's "biological" abilities.
• being immune to vacuum.
• being immune to chemicals.
• being immune to radiation.
• don't need to breathe.
• faster movement (especially with the upgrade).
• built in flashlight.
• built in computer.
• can interface with pretty much any system.
• built-in toolkit that you can't disarm or change.

And yet there are literally rp restrictions, the most important kind, that keep people from doing dumb stuff with them:

The LAWS.

We have laws that specifically tell people how they are supposed to act. But rather than hold people to those standards like we'd been doing for years, they just get neutered, and in the case of one of your PRs, there is a silent moment in which a module almost gets deleted without much in the way of reprise.

There are so many things that can be done with Borgs that are simply being slept on for the sake of making them into unfun pieces of trash.

The entire point of Borgs is that they are incredibly valuable tools that assist the crew, and put that assistance above their own significance. With modules like secborgs there was at least a pattern of behavior that couldn't really be curbed without a rework/removal, but as it stands what's going on now doesn't seem right in the slightest.

[Zulu0009]

14 hours ago, Itanimulli said:

The entire point of Borgs is that they are incredibly valuable tools that assist the crew, and put that assistance above their own significance.

I'd like to throw my two cents shortly, starting from this excellent point.

Right now, as we speak, I am sitting in the engineering lobby as a construction borg, completely clueless as to what my purpose is supposed to be. My module has no wirecutters or a multitool, so I can't fix a broken door, but that's fine, it's a construction module, I get it, it's balanced. I can't download any engineering-specific programs on my internal computing device, like RCON, power monitoring or camera monitoring, which means I'm forced to physically go to a console. I don't understand why and it seems broken. I can't open doors I don't have access to, but I can't hack them either, meaning I am completely unable to lend a hand if a crew member gets stuck somewhere they shouldn't be, or if there's an emergency.

At this point, the value of this borg is null.

This thread is so far filled with people who have seemingly never played a borg and have no idea what it's like playing as one. The changes suggested initially by OP are questionable if not outright destructive to the two-three borg players still around. Limited module selection unless on low pop, removing access (which has for some reason been implemented wordlessly), and the idea that it's even an option to consider adding it to the whitelists. No offense, but these are wacky. The idea that borgs are a threat to actual players is, frankly, ridiculous. If a borg is not communicating with their department and rushing into situations, that's not a borg problem, it's a player problem.

What exactly has removing all-access fixed, now? What improvements has this brought, aside from forcing me to say "sorry, can't open that" when a crew member was stuck in the janitor closet? A friend told me that Aurora is about characters, and if I decide to stop playing borg because of these changes, maybe I shouldn't have played them in the first place. While I have seen some borgs in the past with specific personalities and characteristics, as Itanimulli said, their own significance and character takes the backseat purely because of the nature of playing a borg. I saw so many mentions of job stealing, that if a janitor borg cleans the floor it's stealing the janitor's job. The same logic would dictate that a surgeon who's a little better than me should never do surgery because they have more skills or tools than I do, or that a more experienced engineer needs to always let the junior set up the Supermatter, because otherwise he'd do it too quickly! Too bad the human janitor, after he's done with his job, can go converse with crew members, while I sit in the hallway and wait for more dirt to appear on the ground. Are these seriously the hills we're willing to die on? "Borg does job better, thus remove borg"?

I would urge the players recommending removing this and that from borgs to actually play a few rounds, especially on low pop, and tell us how it was. I can guarantee it's not a pleasant experience. I have been sitting in this lobby for 45 minutes.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Zulu0009
Holy shit that was not shortly at all

[PoZe]

On 14/12/2022 at 09:31, Zulu0009 said:

I would urge the players recommending removing this and that from borgs to actually play a few rounds, especially on low pop, and tell us how it was. I can guarantee it's not a pleasant experience. I have been sitting in this lobby for 45 minutes.

See the thing is that I play cyborg a lot myself. I was heartbroken that close to majority of people want to see it entirely gone from Aurora. I have explained it all in the original post of this thread. This suggests that if nothing is done, the next vote to remove them altogether will pass as lots of people are frustrated with having this role. This is why I suggested to try do some changes to the borg, and see if that will allow us to keep the role around. Most of my suggestions are common points that people who are for removing borgs pointed out: all-access, to many tools. Now I did not fully removed all-access. You can enable that per borg in Robotics Control Console, this of course won't be easy during low-pop, but solving issue with borgs needing all-access on low-pop is hard tbh. I am considering possibly automatically giving borgs all-access on blue alerts and above, that might help.

The next changes on the list are outlined in the doc Chada shared with me(and I think this thread too possibly). Their TL;DR are the splitting of engineering, science and medical modules into upgradable sub-modules. I have originally suggested to just have default sub-modules, but Chada's idea is to allow them to be upgrades. So engineering borg will start with limited tools that still let it do their tasks, then can get an upgrade from Machinist to next tier to either construction modules which gives it more variety of materials to work with or maintenance borg giving more useful tools to shorten the time. Same sort of idea for other modules like medical and science. Of course if people think that it's better to just split modules into sub-module without requiring upgrading, we can do that route too. I already have code that splits them into submodules ready.

[Playbahnosh]

I'm the player behind LEVIATHAN, your friendly neighborhood spiderborg. I'm one of the few remaining borg players, who actually enjoyed playing this role. Until now. I was away on work assignment for a few months, only to come back and realize my favorite role has been all but destroyed. I'd like to throw my $0.02 in as well.

On 14/12/2022 at 18:31, Zulu0009 said:

 that's not a borg problem, it's a player problem.

^This.

I stood the tide of hatered against borgs for years, which - as Contextual and many others have said - mainly comes from a place of ignorance and misplaced envy/scorn from people who most likely never played the role even once and only saw bad player misusing it. I was a huge proponent of reworking borgs to be actually useful, productive characters in any given round, with the help of some wonderful devs like Myazaki, consolidating and giving the different modules the tools and abilities needed to actually perform their duties. And this is where we arrive to the crux of the problem: What is the "job" of a borg?

Shipbounds are in an odd place gameplay and RP-wise, since they are NOT part of the crew, they are part of the ship! A borg's main function is to maintain ship systems, keep departments functioning when crew is lacking/not present, and to serve as a helping hand to the AI and the crew in general. In practical terms, borgs serve to fill the holes in the manifest on low-pop rounds and be a "swiss army knife" for their department: a useful tool to be wielded by the crew.

The problem with tools is usually the people wielding them.

A hammer, a nail gun or a chainsaw can be used to build a beautiful cabin, fix things, avert danger, and also to brutally murder people. Is it the tool's fault, that in the wrong hands it can become destructive and dangerous? No. Just like bad actors mis-/abusing the borg role is not a reflection on the role itself. What it is a moderation problem, always has been.

Now, I don't want to put this all on the admin/mod team. I understand, it's a lot easier to simply restrict and remove roles, functions and gameplay elements that can be abused, rather than actively policing their use. It's the path of least resistance, I get it. However, Aurora being a HRP server, there should be a high amount of enforcing said high roleplay instead of simply taking away and removing what fun some people still have left on the server, on the off chance it would be abused.

To address a few of the common complaints:

Powergaming: The borg's universal access and ability to perform various tasks around the ship is what the role is practically about. Yes, it is very easy to abuse unrestricted access to multiple ship systems and areas and cause trouble either intentionally or through ignorance/incompetence. This is why it's up to the player to actually roleplay this role and up to the mods to enforce it. Restricting access and removing tools, abilities and functions (essentially turning borgs into a worse version of simple crewmen) is essentially destroying the role as whole. I know it's not easy and it takes a lot of effort, but when things get out of hand, educate/punish the player, not the role! When I see other (new) borg players, I usually make it a point to explain to them (LOOC) how the role is actually played, that with great power comes the ability to powergame, but they should resist it! Yes, often it is an uphill battle to try and talk people down from the incredibly false thinking of "well, I can do [this and that] so why shouldn't I?", thinking that if they have the ability to do something, then it's free game. It's not. And making them understand the difference is the key here. Sure, taking away said ability would essentially make that specific powergaming/abuse issue go away forever, but it also erodes/destroyes the exact point of the role. This is a roleplay server, so people should be expected to know (or learn) the basics of roleplaying and understanding (and obeying) the rules to be able to play here or should be removed if they are incapable or unwilling to do so, and let the people who actually know/can play said role to do it.

Takin' er' jerbs: A borg's duty ends when actual crew shows up to perform jobs/roles they were filling in for, unless otherwise instructed by the crew to keep helping out, or in cases where the crew is unable/unwilling to perform certain tasks. Being able to essentially serve as skeleton crew and keep things basically running while the "real" crew is off RP-ing is what borg life is: serving the round but not necessarily participating in it. Doing all the boring chores, maintenance tasks and menial work people don't want to. For example, the "Engineering Loop" of setting up the engines, RCON, shields, thrusters, etc., is one major part. Most engineers do it out of necessity, so they can run off to RP somewhere or get to their pet project of building a sauna or turning the bar into a giant phoron aquarium full of carp or whatever. In my experience as LEVIATHAN, most engi players are more than happy to ditch the boring menial stuff to the borgo so they can get to their "fun" faster and not be bothered by space fungus or minor engi issues and such. Same thing with meds in the medbay, etc. The problem starts when a borg doesn't stand down when the real crew arrives. We arrive back to the previous issue of players not knowing the basics of roleplay or the borg role itself. Constantly one-upping regular crew, ripping tasks from their hands just because you can, doing tasks outside of your module's purview, constantly hopping modules to do everything, etc., goes against not only the role, but common roleplay behavior which is a part of a bigger issue: Some people simply cannot take being relegated to a conscious roomba, let alone actively willing to play as such. Again, this a player problem, not a borg problem! Playing a borg requires a very different mindset than playing crew. A keen sense of "where am I needed" versus "what I can do" is a very important distinction. That doesn't mean borgs cannot actively play together with regular crewmembers but it requires very careful consideration and cooperation: knowing when and where your services are needed, actually asking people if they need you to perform a task, explaining/supervising/tutoring crewmembers instead of doing it yourself, and so on. Sure, crippling borgs to be unable to perform tasks would definitely stop people from overreaching, but again, it destroys what being a borg is about.

The crux of the problem we keep getting back to is the issue of player vs. role. The same reason why the AI was plunged into the f#>$ing soil, because it was easier this way than actually putting in the time and effort to keep the role viable. What would normally make sense to do, like shadowing antags and helping the crew take them down as fast and efficiently as possible, is actually very bad most rounds as a whole. Just like the key to playing a good AI is knowing how to support the round first and be a believable AI second is what separates a good borg player from a bad one. Borg is a hard role to play, because it requires a huge amount of practical knowledge (the server, the map, lore, game systems, departments, jobs) and a very good roleplay ability, to be able to let go of ego in favor of serving the round, to be that "conscious roomba", to possibly sacrifice your own fun at times to keep the round going and help other people enjoy themselves.

As for a possible solution:

Restore borgs to "their former glory", so to say. Restore access, abilities, software, etc., and make the role whitelist only. This way it will be easier to filter out people who just want to use the role to powergame or just simply don't have what it takes to play as a borg should. Demonstrating an understanding of the role and willingness to "play as a support character in someone else's story" in a whitelist application should be a huge step towards this.

Thank you for reading all this dreck. I will ruminate on this topic some more and post more things later if I have time.