The borer balance suggestions thread
Created by: despotate
We gotta fix borers. Just gotta. I opened https://github.com/d3athrow/vgstation13/issues/13322 to try and fix chest borers and it appears to be the case that not a lot of people actually understand that different body parts are immensely unbalanced relative to each other. Let me explain by comparing head and chest borers.
Head borers, off the bat, can:
- Completely remove and prevent genetic defects, brain damage, slowness, temperature damage by spending one or two chems on the appropriate drug
- Fix toxin damage faster than anyone with antitox + charcoal
- Fix brute and burn damage fairly well with bicaridine and kelotane, only requiring a couple of chemicals to do so (e.g. 1 unit of bicaridine = 10 brute damage healed), as well as halt crit fairly easily with a squirt of inaprov
Then when they're upgraded, they can:
- Spend 2 (2!) chemicals once in a while to completely negate all suffocation damage even on someone who has 0% blood in them
- Secrete keloderm for the fastest burn damage removal
- Heal internal organ and clone damage with rezadone and peridax for essentially free after researching them. If you're keeping count, that means they can heal EVERY single damage type except for radiation damage by spending just a few chems
- Plus they have that sweet telephoto X-ray vision
- Taste blood for those precise medications
In comparison, off the bat, chest borers can:
- Get a more advanced scan than headborers, which is completely pointless because you can't fix anything anyway and anyone who could do so would be able to do their own advanced scan
- Spend a fuckton of chemicals to secrete blood. For those of you who think this is balanced, I have a question. Would you rather spend 250 borerbucks injecting 250u of blood into someone to keep them gasping and stumbling along while they continue to bleed out (unless you're gonna pay an extra 200 for the clotting agent), or be a fucking headborer, spend 250 borerbucks researching dexplus, and expend 2 chemicals every minute or so and be much more effective?
- Heal eye damage, ear damage, fatness, and drunkness. Yawn.
- Have Oxycodone which is the only thing they have that's kind of better than headborers, but not really since Tramadol is "good enough" and doesn't obscure your health data
And when upgraded, they can:
- Feed their host. YAWN
- Cure radiation damage in their host by causing toxin damage that they can't even fix themselves, you can not make this shit up
- Mitigate temperature damage by injecting chilis/ice chilis. remember, headborers get leporazine for free, meanwhile chestborers need to spend 150 borerbucks each to cure being too hot or too cold. can NOT make this shit up
- Secrete smoke, this is kind of fun and the only clear upgrade that a chest upgrade has over a headborer
- Secrete clotting agent after spending 200 borerbucks to research it (and it costs 10 chems per u) (recall that headborers only need spend 50 more chems for dexplus, superior in every way)
- Learn to REDUCE temperature damage in their host by spending 350 (!!!) borerbucks PER type of temperature damage, YOU ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP, 700 BORERBUCKS JUST TO DO (SHITTILY) WHAT A HEADBORER CAN DO FOR FREE, LITERALLY CODE THAT IS BEING RUN BY THE SERVER RIGHT AT THIS MOMENT
- And CONSTANTLY EXPEND CHEMICALS to reduce brute and burn damage (recall: they still can't actually FIX the damage, just reduce it), that's 200 borerbucks per damage type when headborers can pump bi and keloderm like it's nothing
Oh, and does it seem like something's missing? Yes, something IS missing - CHEST BORERS CAN NOT EVEN TASTE BLOOD, THEY HAVE LITERALLY NO WAY OF FINDING OUT WHAT'S IN THEIR HOST'S BLOOD OR WHAT THEY INJECTED RECENTLY, THERE ARE CURRENTLY 63 PEOPLE ONLINE PLAYING A GAME WHERE THIS IS ACTUALLY THE CASE, LITERALLY SOMETHING THAT YOU ARE ABLE TO BE SUBJECTED TO RIGHT NOW IF YOU PLAY AS A BORER AND CLIMB INTO SOMEONE'S CHEST INSTEAD OF THEIR HEAD (AND MAYBE 10% OF PLAYERS WILL EVER TAKE OFF THEIR SUIT TO LET YOU IN, COMPARED TO 90% OF PLAYERS KEEPING THEIR HEAD OPEN)
tl;dr headborers are adminordrazine, chest borers are lemon juice
Also the arm and leg borers are kind of balanced already IMO, at least they're relatively balanced compared to the immense gap between chest and head borers. So when I say that chest borers should be able to defibrillate their host, you should keep in mind that I'm talking about CHEST borers, the forgotten child of borers, the cripple runt who looks at you with puppy eyes, not the megalomaniac headborer who controls all.
Share borer balance suggestions here