Borgs, AI and Ion

[Hackie]

What is ol' man Hackie Mhan on 'bout?

Well folks, as I've learned today through antagging like a bitch, I've discovered how terrible Ion is against synthetics, which is rather surprising! Now, being an old man such as myself, your memory's spotty, and I recall a couple Ion shots blastin' an AI to kingdom come, and 'borg being put down like Old Yeller. But, today I teleported right into the AI core, and emptied a whole rifle into that sun of a gun. And it was only badly charred, which really rustles my jimmies. This thing's designed to take down robo-baddies, if I recall correctly. And, later, with a whole new rifle, I unloaded half of that sunuvabitch into a 'borg! It only made it go nap for a couple seconds. Not even as long as a flash! However, what the rifle does exceed in is disabling enemy laser weaponry, which is very helpful.

Water we supposed to do 'bout it?

Well, make this gosh darned thing fry 'em suckers! While straight up upgrading the damage would put the poor sort into a sore disadvantage, I'd suggest some form of stun, slow or temporary disabling of equipment to be acceptable. A-K-A, I'm not going to smash you in one hit, I'm just going to scramble you and take you down a little faster. Five shots'd be fine to take down your run of the mill 'borg.

But what 'bout that AI? Well, the AI should just get completely smashed. He has a plethora of tools at his disposal to prevent any besiegers from entering his core, with APC explosions, venting, bolting, electricity and lasers they shouldn't be able to shrug it off and move on.

[Lady_of_Ravens]

I had no idea ion weapons were that weak... except on IPCs where it's a one-shot-kill with an AOE.

[Eliot Clef]

Ehn. To be honest, I think both Cyborgs and AI are sufficiently vulnerable that Ion Rifles shouldn't be improved against them without giving them something to compensate.

With regards to the AI specifically: It's stationary, its location is unconditionally vulnerable, it can be lawed to be on your side (or kill itself) pretty easily. A couple of welding tank explosions is enough to get in there and neutralize it, and if you can take out the turrets it's pretty easy to beat it to death with pretty much anything. With actual transfer bombs it only takes one placed outside the upload chamber in space to doom the AI unless people take extraordinary effort to save it.

With regards to Cyborgs: They're slow (so slow), ion rifles can disable them long enough to get up close and finish them off without much chance of reprisal (best bet is actually a flash and a baton), and EMP in general depletes their batteries to some degree as well. If an Ion Rifle is going to instantly fry them like it does IPCs, I honestly think they need to be tougher to other things.

If you want the Ion Rifle to auto-fry these like they do IPCs, honestly, some give is going to have to happen with regards to other vulnerabilities as well.

[Hackie]

Eliot, I suggested not a straight up frying them, and more like if I'm pumping half of my sweet, sweet precious EMP bolts into you I'd like you to stay down for a while. I understand that the analogy with the AI, but those are using very loud, and brutal tools to disable the AI. I'm suggesting the EMP to be the quiet killer, for the antags who manage get into the core undetected. But, I am personally not a 'borg player, I find it to be very mundane and limiting, but if compensation is necessary in a couple other aspects to open an entire new avenue of combat, I think it'd be worth it. This is moreso brainstorming than dead set suggestions. And with the IPC thing, generally IPC's are so vulnerable to lasers not a lot of people go out of their way to go for EMP.

[rrrrrr]

If ion rifles are weak towards the thing they're designed to beat (non-IPC synths), then they're in sore need of a buff.

[Eliot Clef]

If ion rifles are weak towards the thing they're designed to beat (non-IPC synths), then they're in sore need of a buff.

 

Ion Rifles are bad at blowing up things that aren't people with mechanical limbs and IPCs. When a synth gets hit with one they take some damage, get stunned, have their equipment drained of energy (if applicable), have their battery partly depleted, and have all of their equipped slots de-equipped. It's very dangerous, but it's not "kill it dead" dangerous unless you're one of those things you mentioned.

They drain energy out of weapons anybody is holding in the splash radius and outright destroy cybernetics/IPCs in one shot. Theoretically the idea is to balance out Cyborgs specifically (The AI really doesn't need this kind of balancing so I'm excluding it) but for most practical purposes it's just a weird weapon that can be deployed for niche situations.

I don't really think it should be thought of as a "stealth weapon", and as I've indicated already in this thread, Cyborgs are kind of plenty vulnerable to regular weapons. They really don't... need... to be specially vulnerable to anything to be something the station can handle. I'd be particularly interested in Alberyk's opinion on this, actually, since he's one of the guys I know who is most familiar with effective usage of weapons in-game.