New healer drone ability - Sacrifice

Development Ideaguys
1

My old idea Healer Drone Rework (!2820) · Merge requests · CM Devs / CM13 · GitLab

New skill — sacrifice. If things get really bad, the healer can instantly transfer 75% of their current health and remove all debuffs from the target, but for the great cost of the healer’s own life.

The sacrifice ability is just an interesting option, an emergency button. You don’t have to use it, but at some point you may find that sacrifice is a right thing to do, so it’s a nice option to have. I want to emphasize that this skill is not a necessary part of the healer gameplay. You don’t have to trade your life for the life of another xeno. But you can if you are willing to.

I dropped this because people didn’t really like the fact you have to lose your ability to play to use this ability, so I came up with another idea. Add some counter (like acider’s acid) that increases every time you heal someone (for the amount of health transferred). As soon as you have enough (like 10k), you can use this ability basically for free, because you’ll get new larva, just like acid runner. But if you don’t have enough points, you still can use this ability, but there will be no coming back. Might be still worth it in some cases.

Gameplay:
Does it feel good to use?

  • Saving fellow xenos is most satisfying part of healer drone’s gameplay. This ability allows to save others in really dire situations, but for the great cost. It’s still fitting, because drone can use heal ability until it goes into crit or dies already, in some situation it’s a worthy risk. Also rewards long living healer drones with opportunity to use the ability essentially for free.

Does it feel good to play against?

  • Not sure. Probably it would suck to lose your epic SADAR noscope queen kill due to healer drone interference. But at least, you still removed the drone from the game. Also marines can keep the drone at bay or outright kill it/grind its health down enough to make the heal from the ability meaningless. Plus we can make the ability unusable if target or/and healer are on fire, to add another counterplay.

Does it affect other systems?

  • Don’t think so?

Roleplay:
Does it increase immersion?

  • Somewhat? Xenos sacrificing their lives for the queen/other xenos is kinda immersive I guess.

Does it increase communication/interaction between players?

  • Well it requires interaction, you need to be selfless to give up your ability to play (or just points you were collecting the entire round) to help another player.

Simulation:
Does it fit in the CM universe aesthetically?

  • Not sure, but since we already have drone heal, then I guess.

Does it fit in the lore of CM?

  • Not sure, but since we already have drone heal, then I guess.

Does it make sense “realistically”

  • Sadly it does not, but again, we already have drone heal.

Yes, I can code it myself, but I want people’s opinion first.

3 Likes
2

It would have to be really clear that using it will kill you. Imagine being a new player and a using one of your abilities to see what it does and then you just die.

3

Yes, absolutely. Turned out I did consider this.

/datum/action/xeno_action/activable/healer_sacrifice/action_activate()
	..()
	var/mob/living/carbon/Xenomorph/X = owner
	if(X.selected_ability == src)
		to_chat(X, SPAN_HIGHDANGER("Warning: [ability_name] is a last measure skill. Using it will kill you."))
1 Like
4

This is a cool idea, I already see lots of healer drones willing to kill themselves to save a queen or fellow sister in dire situations. Having a dedicated mechanic for it that also has a chance to reward such a selfless act would be great

5

Honestly, sure. Why not. This feels soulful.

2 Likes
6

I’m not too sure about giving queen or rav murderballs another way to ‘quickheal’ and immediate anti-stun.

Most healer drones act as a pocket healer already, and this will make scenarios like punishing that roaming 5-6 xenos left even more tougher when queen decides to go mobile with 2 ravs and a warrior, when it took 10 marines just to push that hell choke.

Yeah, it’s gonna be a life for a life essentially, but when you also consider the anti-stun/debuff cleanse on top of a heal, and queen has two healer drones in the pocket, it’s going to make assaulting and punishing key xenos incredibly hard

1 Like
7

Of course not.
Sudden heals were (mostly) removed for a good reason. CC removal is also questionable when used to nullify AP sadar direct hits. Counterplay is iffy because depending on situation it might be impossible.
Not a fan of these ultra broken abilities gated behind staying X time as a t1. Probably wont break the game but maybe some heal over time or another buff would be better.

8

This would be very unfun to play against if the xeno or even the queen you’re fighting suddenly gets a second chance, or gets to escape a bad situation with one ability press. I think it would be bad to underestimate the patience of people who will use this ability then just wait to respawn again.

9

I understand your concerns, just want to point out this statement also applies the other way around. In some situations getting to downed xeno is outright impossible, attempt to do so can cost your life before you even can use ability (you need to be at PB range) and even successful sacrifice doesn’t guarantee the xeno you gave your life for won’t die within next 5 second.

Drone has total 500 HP. In perfect situation (when you’re on full health) you can heal 375 HP max using this ability. It’s slightly more than warden’s heal (325 hp). But if you wounded, the number would be lower. Stun removal is huge, but I think the ability would be too weak without it. Yeah it kinda counters SADAR AP direct hit, but chances are it’s going to stun drone as well, and if not, by the time drone can reach the downed xeno some of the stun time will have passed (you cannot use it from distance unlike warden’s rejuv, so in this regard it’s not instant).

And I really want to make cost huge. It’s either your life or the amount of time you spent doing your job (it’s hard to estimate how much time will it take). Unlike acid runner, you can’t just afk in hive to use the ability for free, you need to be somewhat close to the front to keep healing xenos, there’s a chance you’ll get killed by fire support or flanking marines before you get your free respawn.

10

Making it something that takes ages to stack doesnt make it any more fun to play against. Better than acid runner but healing drones aint really taking much risks.

SADAR stun time can go up to 4 or 5 seconds iirc and drones that stack this up will have to sit near the front topped off on health if they ever wanna use it. There’s basically 0% chance an AP rocket would stun the drone, it’d have to hug the t3/queen and even then doesnt seem likely.

I guess its fine but its still weird in terms of actual use cases

11

Let’s see how it goes.

1 Like
12

personally i dont like the idea of a T1 strain having abilities comparable to a T3 even if its a support one i am pretty sure this would be more fitting for the T2 territory

2 Likes
13

t1s need to be fun to play. weak things aint fun and you cant give t1s massive stats because they’re t1s.
They should have strong kits to compensate weak stats.

2 Likes