Garret Dalheart reporting for Duty!
Captain Howard Dalheart Captain of the USS Almayer Deceased
Ckey: TheDexfiles
Joined the fight 19 Dec 2017
Current Record holder for most dead in a single OB at 25
Sorry mates
Unless there are specific limitations, either mechanical or rule-based, there are going to be plenty of xeno players who do not care about RP or facilitating other people's enjoyment, and who will attack synth survivors just to eliminate an unknown variable which might get in the way of winning down the line. I don't think that's fixable entirely, the only way to stop it is to either put OOC rules in place or to make it mechanically more difficult.
Mechanically, I think synths should be capable of fighting unarmed. This would solve the problem of them being extremely vulnerable before they can acquire a melee weapon, and also remove the need for synths to always find and carry a specialised melee weapon. For example, have a synth's punch deal a decent amount of damage with some AP, and let synths tackle smaller xenos (think of the queen's tackle, not really dangerous but enough to allow the possibility of escape). I'm thinking specifically of Covenant, where synths are shown throwing people around and having martial arts fights.
From an RP/Rules standpoint I also think an issue is that survivor synths will almost certainly end up banding together with survivor humans, and xeno players generally know this. Since survivor humans are a genuine threat due to all the robust survivor mains, it makes sense to deprive them of any advantage, which I think feeds into wanting to kill survivor synths on sight. While this is meta and should be treated as such, I also think it needs to be clarified and affirmed that synth survivors don't have to be loyal to the colony or to other survivors and don't have to be hostile to xenomorphs just because they threaten other survivors.
I'm not saying synths should be able to go hostile to other survivors or actively help the xenos, but I think it would be more interesting if synthvivors weren't compelled or assumed to be automatically helpful.
One other possibility would be to require specific queen permission to attack synths. This could be a lot of work to moderate though, so I don't know how viable it is.
Last edited by Surimi; 02-11-2020 at 08:18 AM.
imo non survivor synths shouldn't be capable of violence, at all
Make survivor synth have no combat restrictions(other than the hardcoded ones).
If the almayer synth can (and does) go kinda nuts post crash. The survivor synth should be able to go ham from the get go.
It would lesson the xenos messing with him.
Give an outlet to synths wanting to combat synth.
And make survivor more survivable.
And before you say it.. the number of young queens killed by them is going to be very low. Anyone who tries to charge the queen 4mins in is going to get wrecked by the whole hive.
Some interesting ideas here. As far as how to make Xenos less likely to target Synths? Make it so Synths don't count on the KDR stats. That'll make the more sweaty players less likely to try and farm them for easy points.
That really won't do much and will undermine the whole existance of stats (they shouldn't exist, but if they already are, then why make them not even track everything?).
Synths aren't killed because it adds 1 to KDR, but they are killed for helping survs/marines.
Without changing much I can think only of one solution to the problem:
Synthvivor affiliation. At start of the round Synthvivor has few minutes to choose one of the two (maybe more, but that it a bit more complicated, depending on return of Hostile Survivors):
Neutral: Synth does what he would when Colony was at its prime. If some wall was melted, he repairs it, if vents were welded, he unwelds them, if vent pipes were unwrenched, he sets them again, if he sees wounded Human, he heals him, if he sees critted beno not on weeds, he drags that beno to weeds, if he sees shocked doors, he unshocks them etc.
All benos get the message that Synthvivor is Neutral, they have disabled slashing on him and untill Queen turns it off, they can only tackle him and tell him to buzz off if he is about to do something they don't like (like repairing power, benos would need one guard there who just says "no").
Synth choosing this set of "rules" can't change his behaviour, unless Queen enables slashing on him.
In this state he can freely roam the colony (if benos allow, even nest) and should be free of harm.
Marine/Survivor alliance: Surv goes full survivor, slashing permitted, but he can do whatever helps him and Survivors.
As a xeno main I either encounter synths as unkillable assholes sprinting on the front lines holding a fire axe, waiting for a human to be attacked so they can go "DEFEND HUMAN, DEFEND HUMAN" or I barely notice them.
Roleplay with survivor synths can be fun, but most time some random lurker kills them. I would suggest ooc rule that xenos ignore synths at first.
I liked the notion of mod kits for support. Here are a couple ideas beyond medical.
A kind of permanent binocular mode. It will give them a huge natural viewing area, and allows them to call CAS and gather coords. A possible like defcon 2 or 3 upgrade could be a remote mortar kit for them, where they can spot it and shoot it in the field but loose CAS.
A fabricator mod that lets them refine things into plassteel or make ammo cans.
Accountant mod lets the RO assing them to a crate and elevator duty, to gain extra money/ discount. Lets them pick up crates like a power lifter.
Med evac and fulton mod lets them have an ulinmited uses of these, with some kind of special stasis air lift bag.
Direct server uplink lets intel be analized on the ground.
How would you feel about thing like that?
Last edited by Noosh; 05-25-2020 at 06:48 PM.