Pylons - Opinions wanted

So, there's been some discussion about pylons being overpowered and/or unbalanced, I would like to gather people's opinions on how they are at the moment before I try to address these issues.

For references' sake, here are some of the stats associated with pylons as they are in master right now:

• View range of 9 tiles (players' view range is 7 tiles)
  
• Cannot be damaged by weapons that deal BURN damage (actually empowers the pylon)
  
• Standard pylon shots deal 3.5 BURN every ~0.5 seconds.
  
• Empowered pylon shots deal 10 BURN every ~0.5 seconds, with 10 armor penetration.
  
• Empowered pylons slowly self-repair over time.
  
• Inert pylons can be activated by sacrificing any living non-cult mob, including small mobs like mice.
  
• All living mobs can present sacrifices to pylons.
  

Alright, I will post on this my opinions on the pylons (because I am like the only person who uses the damn things anyway)

They are Area of Denial, simple as that. They have a 9 view range.

I put the pylons in the halls and/or my department entrance for area of denial to that area. Now I am going to explain why people die from them.

• People rushing them with lasers, not thinking that when they turn blue and start hurting a lot more, they should really back off.
• People constantly have zero cover from them, so they inch away your health very poorly.
• People don't get out of the area, I think being shot by a laser beam that caused a blister should be your warning to get the hell away.
• When people die from them, there is no tactical planning involved as there is currently a ton of things you can use, like tell chemistry to make smoke bombs, etc.
  

I seen once when I did pylons security kill them, they used smoke and other means like shooting out the windows with a laser rifle before someone shoots a gun down the hall, because they can not be moved once activated.

You could just push a water tank down the area of that hall.

You could just remove the powered shot, but still make them laser proof.

Every time we have a pylon complaint thread it essentially boils down to people not wanting to have to put any thought into their approach and have to think it through any further than "just run down the hallway and get'em"

Do pylons really add anything for the sake of roleplay?

Pylons seemed to have been a rather hasty and contrived solution to a problem that already had more than a few present solutions. That problem being: Defending a cult base, apparently that is what Nanako justified it as? You have force walls that can be turned absolutely invisible to the naked eye. You have blood boil. If you're smart and your two other cult buddies are also smart you can literally instantly kill anybody who walks into a room. You can then drag their corpse to a revive cultist rune to not only revive a corpse that isn't a cultist but instantly convert them with no prompt if they are in their body. Not just anyone, but any non-cultist in range takes terrible, terrible damage. You also get pocket stuns in the manner of talismans, either for EMP's sake or for stuns. I pack both as part of my cultist repertoire, because they are such a staple in cult robusting that using anything else is redundant.

Add to the other multitude of fun things you can use for weaponization or self-defense as a cultist that is potent enough. Why do we need Tower Defense in the game, again? They don't really add anything special from a roleplay standpoint nor do they generate anything that's tangible for the sake of roleplay. They're just cultist auto-turrets that are apparently way more useful than actual auto-turrets.

I don't like them mainly for the rate of fire and range. They also are supposedly implemented for area-denial, for which cult already has an un-counterable, invisible wall that does the same thing (except those do not try to burn down poor suckers who wander within a screen and a half of one).

Given that their intended purpose has a redundancy, and that cult already has several strong tools (blood boil, stuns, EMPs, constructs, etc.) I would be in favor of either heavily modifying pylons, or removing them.