Put a hard limit on the number of combat cyborgs.

[Ryan Falcorino]

The amount of combat cyborgs we can have is crazy. They are incredibly hard to deal with for most antags, and are basically a death sentence for merc/heist teams when their are the 3 starting drones, plus volunteers and constructed posibrains.

So I am proposing a hard limit on combat cyborgs of one combat cyborg.

Thoughts?

[Faris]

Right, so I may have an unpopular opinion here but I believe that with the recent additions, I believe they are fine as they are. There are multiple ways to counter them or even stop them from happening, it's just up to you to properly counter them.

1. The antag(s) could rush research and blow up the Borgs, destroy robotics, kill/capture the relevant crew member.

2. Most antags have access to ionic weaponry or can acquire them with a bit of effort.

3. Subvert the AI/Synthetics prior to going loud.

I'm not going to list all possibilities but that's a few of them, antagonistic roles are supposed to be hard, and with the recent changes and removal of thermals, it's fine.

[Fiskap]

The problem with current combat cyborgs is that they're still very spammable if you have the required materials, so yes, limiting it to just one could improve things.

[Skull132]

Right now, the limit is that command staff must authorize their use (it's separate from code red). Has this not had a tangible effect on their deployment?

[Ryan Falcorino]

Not really, @skull. Their are usually enough command staff, or if their isn't, they just promote one and swipe as soon as a emergency happens.

[Snoopy11]

The addition of sprinting has already heavily nerf'd combat borgs enough by taking away one of their crucial advantages, good speed- now they're a lot slower they can't escape shots as they could before.

Atop this, they still suffer plenty of disadvantages, and are still rather simple to disable.

The single-antag types, wiznerd and ninja can both easily blow up or subvert the borgs. Mercs and heisters get Ionrifles, Tators can get EMP weaponry- though Cborgs are less likely to be called in an autotator round.

I don't believe a limit is necessary, as antags should be taking steps to prevent such threats to themselves. Mercs more often than not bomb the armory to stop weapons from being deployed, what's to stop them from grabbing the ionrifles in preparedness to stop a borg?

[Serveris]

Regarding what Skull said above; no. It's had no significant effect on their prevalence. If things go to shit in a security capacity, command staff now almost always unlock combat borgs whenever they raise to red.

It's like, they would've gotten them by raising to red before, but now it's just as easy to do an authentication swipe to unlock them.

[Alberyk]

The main purpose of the chance was to give command staff a control over them, and I did see less combat cyborgs. However, it is fully possible to just fall back to the plan of only allowing them via a research upgrade.