Stunning Spit Machine Guns

[Haveatya]

I would like to hear people's thoughts on the stun spit that a number of the aliens have. I for one think it shouldn't even be in the game but I'd like to see people's thoughts on it. Pros and Cons, Balance, Usability, Changes they'd like to see and what not.

[Steelpoint]

I think its very, very, annoying from a Marines perspective.

From a Aliens perspective its a free kill/infection. The amount of times I've been able to run up to a perma-stunned Marine and slash away is quite amusing while someone else is stunning them forever.

[Desolane900]

I used to be a marine like you. Then I took a spitter to the everything.

[Feweh]

Watched a single spitter yesterday keep a Pred down the entire time.

Might need some balancing.

[Haveatya]

They have more range than rifles. are more accurate than rifles, and arguably more devastating a weapon than most marines can get their hands on.

[Eldzen]

When you look at the very basis of SS13's combat system, stuns are considered far more robust than lethal damage, given how they completely incapacitate, cause you to drop your weapon, and in a team based scenario, allow your more heavily armored, melee based homies to sprint up with two huggers or 2 slash decap you.

Sure, marines are primarily ranged damaged dealers, but their weapons for the most part do not stun the Xenos. They run out of ammo, have to be reloaded, can be dropped, and in the end, you run dry of ammo.

Giving the xenos such a robust projectile, one that homes in on mobs and bypasses tables/barricades, along with range enough to where any spitter can just hang back on weeds and spam stuns over the marine's defenses is just plain ridiculous. Not to mention, it takes little effort to operate. Middle mouse on a sprite, get money. Marine weapons you juggle them around in your hands, manage your bags, deal with limited sight due to darkness, get friendly fired on, friendly fire on, there's just so much more to operating the marine's ranged weaponry and 90% of it cannot stun the xenos.
Pls tweak.

[jaisavage]

i'm having trouble imagining how a ball of spit and knock down and completely incapacitate a trained, fully armoured marine. might just be me though.

[outordinary]

It's fine as it is, with the tier limit in place, even with the whole team going spit castes, only 40% can become spitters and 20% can become praes. The sentinels don't really count since all they have is a stun. Rifles have the same amount of range and have the best feature that no ranged xenos have, the ability to have MANY angles to shoot from. Can't take away the spitters spit though, it's their thing.

[ParadoxSpace]

It'd be okay if it was just corrosive spit, but being entirely stunlocked constantly is really irritating.

[KeyWii]

i'm having trouble imagining how a ball of spit and knock down and completely incapacitate a trained, fully armoured marine. might just be me though.

It's supposedly neurotoxin. Which then raises the question of how it acts so quickly if the Marine is fully clothed.

[Toroic]

The simple change that needs to be made is to not have the stunning spit scale to be able to be fired so often. At young it's pretty balanced, but a mature prae can spam it nearly constantly.

If you want death spit to be a machine gun, fine. But don't have stun spit be so easy.

[Monoo]

Change it to a burst. Make them able to rapid fire as many as 3 spits, but then give them a long cooldown, long enough for the victim to get up and away. However, a good spitter/prae would still be able to save up their spits or use them to take out multiple marines, as intended. This will make spit more like guns in that it has a "reload" time with the longer cooldown.

[Steelpoint]

Perhaps change it that the Stunning Spit is based off a stored capacity instead of drawing from your plasma supply? In fact this could be a opportunity to rework the Sent-Spit-Praetorian cast system to make staying as a Sentinal more appetizing.

Firstly. Stun Spits are now buffered per round instead of drawing from plasma, so a Young Sentinal may be able to buffer, as a example, three Stun Spits at a time, meaning at most a Young Sent may only fire three stun spits in succession before having to wait to recharge. The Young Sentinal can also fire the Acid Spits but now at a higher plasma cost.

A Young Spitter is a middle ground, they can only store two Stun Spits but their Acid Spits are now half the cost to fire.

A Young Praetorian goes the lethal direction, having only one Stun Spit stored but very cheap Acid Spits with a quicker recharge time.

----

Effectively. If you want to be a Stunning machine, stay as a Sentinal (who should be defending the hive and captured hosts) and upgrade to have the most Stun Spit capacity, but little Acid Spit. If you want to be a jack of all trades the Spitter is your pick, you have some Stun Spit capacity and some Acid Spit capacity. The Praetorian surrenders most of their Stun Spit capacity and fire rate in exchange for a large Acid Spit pool and recharge time.

[Azmodan412]

I don't have any gripes about either spit except against a young prae, I was instacrit by a SINGLE spit from em and knocked down.

[Yottawhat]

Perhaps change it that the Stunning Spit is based off a stored capacity instead of drawing from your plasma supply? In fact this could be a opportunity to rework the Sent-Spit-Praetorian cast system to make staying as a Sentinal more appetizing.

Firstly. Stun Spits are now buffered per round instead of drawing from plasma, so a Young Sentinal may be able to buffer, as a example, three Stun Spits at a time, meaning at most a Young Sent may only fire three stun spits in succession before having to wait to recharge. The Young Sentinal can also fire the Acid Spits but now at a higher plasma cost.

A Young Spitter is a middle ground, they can only store two Stun Spits but their Acid Spits are now half the cost to fire.

A Young Praetorian goes the lethal direction, having only one Stun Spit stored but very cheap Acid Spits with a quicker recharge time.

----

Effectively. If you want to be a Stunning machine, stay as a Sentinal (who should be defending the hive and captured hosts) and upgrade to have the most Stun Spit capacity, but little Acid Spit. If you want to be a jack of all trades the Spitter is your pick, you have some Stun Spit capacity and some Acid Spit capacity. The Praetorian surrenders most of their Stun Spit capacity and fire rate in exchange for a large Acid Spit pool and recharge time.

This actually seems like a pretty good idea, it fixes the fact that a Spitter at any level is superior at any level than a ancient Sentinel and makes it so that Prae can't just infinity stun a person to death