Blob

EXTRATERRESTRIAL STAFF
{{#if:blob_shield.gif| | }} {{#if:blob_core.gif| | }} {{#if:blob_core.gif | | {{#if:blob_shield.gif | | }} }} Blob	Additional Access: Not defined |}}Difficulty: Hard Supervisors: N/A Duties: Spread onto the whole station Guides: No external guides {{#if: Confirmed outbreak of level 5 biohazard aboard the station. All personnel must contain the outbreak. | Quote: Confirmed outbreak of level 5 biohazard aboard the station. All personnel must contain the outbreak.}}

Blob is a random event where a large blob infests the station and starts destroying everything its path, including hull, fixtures and creatures. The crew must destroy the blob to prevent it from destroying a pre-determined amount of the station, currently 400 tiles. Once the blob reaches critical mass, the blob has a minute or so to absolutely devour the station with its now insane spread rate and infinite resources. Only thing to do as crew at that point is to launch yourself to lavaland in a escape pod.

Mean Green Mother From Outer Space

In the blob game mode, players start off as blob overminds, who must find a secluded location to place their core. As the overmind, you can place the core with the 'Jump to Core' button in the lower right, after a few minutes of preparation time.

OH SHIT I'M A BLOB WHAT DO I DO

So you're a blob. Open the status tab. You have a minimum time of one minute before you can spawn, and a maximum time of 6 minutes until you will forcefully be spawned on your current location. You can move around freely and invisibly until you spawn. Try to find a secluded spot with no cameras. Also remember, nearby walls will automatically be destroyed the first few minutes from blob tiles created by your core. Talking normally will send a message to your blob hivemind channel.

Positioning

Positioning is extremely key to winning as a Blob. Improper positioning can result in you being barraged by emitters or quickly found and killed. Main hallways and maint areas too close to main hallways tend to be bad choices to burst in.

You should go position yourself near the place you want your core. You have exact timers of how long you have until you can manually place your core and until the core will be automatically placed for you.

You cannot move onto space or shuttles until your core is placed.

The best place for your core is in an inaccessible area, decreasing the chance of being spotted and being contained. Think along the lines of good Xeno hiding spots. Public hallways are bad. Out-of-the-way places that require elevated access are good. Chokepoints are good. It can also be strategic to spawn in places that will cripple the crew once you destroy them, like telecomms or science.

You cannot place your core on top of dense walls or objects, and if there is anyone nearby you will also be unable to place your core.

Try not to place your core where it can be trivially shot from space. You can't easily get to people who are in space and hardsuits and EVA suits are easy to come by. Remember that lasers go through glass. Then remember that x-ray lasers go through walls.

Blob Chemicals

Blobs are made of chemicals. These affect the color of the blob tiles, blobbernauts and blob spores, as well as the effects of their their attacks (which count as vapor). You start with a free chemical reroll, and get another after a few minutes of cooldown. These are the available chemicals you can get:

Name	Color	Attack Effects (Blobbernauts deal 80%)	Positive Effects	Negative Effects
Blazing Oil		5 Brute Damage, 20 Burn Damage, Lights targets on Fire and makes them scream	When hit with Burn Damage, Emits a Burst of Flame, Immune to Fire	Weak to Water
Cryogenic Poison		10 Brute Damage, Injects 7.5u frost oil, 7.5u ice, and also 7.5u of its own poison that deals 0.3 toxin, burn, and brute damage about every 2 seconds.	N/A	N/A
Debris Devourer		5 Brute Damage	Devours loose items left on the station, and releases them when attacking or attacked.	N/A
Electromagnetic Web		5 Brute Damage, 25 Burn Damage, 20% chance to EMP Targets	Causes EMP if killed by melee, bullets or lasers	Takes 25% More Burn Damage and Full Brute Damage
Energized Jelly		5 Brute Damage, 15 Oxygen Damage, 25 Stamina Damage, Prevents Breathing a few seconds	Immune to Tesla	Takes Burn Damage from EMPs
Explosive Lattice		20 Brute Damage to Target, 10 Brute Damage to Nearby Mobs	Immune to Explosions	Takes 50% More Damage from Fires and Tesla
Networked Fibers		20 Brute Damage, 15 Burn Damage	Can only expand manually (by clicking). Nodes and core produce extra resources instead of producing Blob Tiles. Manual expansion near your Core moves it to that tile.
Pressurized Slime		15 Brute Damage, 10 Oxygen Damage, 25 Stamina Damage	Releases Water When Hit or Killed	N/A
Reactive Spines		5 Brute Damage, 20 Armor and Bio Resist-Ignoring Brute Damage	When hit with Brute Damage, Attacks Nearby Area	N/A
Regenerative Materia		5 Brute Damage, 17.5 Toxin Damage, Targets Appear Full Health, Injects Toxin	N/A	N/A
Replicating Foam		22.5 Brute Damage	Expands when burned but is not immune to fire, Chance of Bonus Expansion	Takes Double Brute Damage
Shifting Fragments		22.5 Brute Damage	When Damaged, May Swap Positions with a Nearby Blob	N/A
Synchronous Mesh		17.5 to 70 Brute Damage Based on Nearby Blobs	Spreads Damage Between Nearby Blobs	Takes 25% More Damage from Fire, Explosions, and Tesla
Zombifying Pods		5 Brute Damage, 15 Toxin Damage, Gains Resources+Zombie From Unconscious Humans	Sometimes produces Fragile Spores when expanding or killed. The spores will harvest sleeping/crit targets for 5-10 additional resources and a blob zombie. All strains can make blob zombies, but this one doesn't require them to be dead.	N/A

Surviving the first few minutes

You build structures by hovering over a blob tile and clicking the HUD icon for that structure. You will get a fail message if that spot is not valid. There should be ONE thing on your mind, that being placing a Resource Blob close to your Core as soon as possible.

Then, create a Node Blob a short distance from your core and create another Resource Blob next to it. After you have two Resource Blobs, produce a Factory Blob, again preferably as close to your core as possible. Once that is done, you should be able to defend against the crew reasonably well. Just keep producing nodes with resource blobs near them and you'll do fine.

Blob Powers

Blobs attack and destroy the station by trying to place Normal Blobs on tiles, which destroys items and structures on the target tile, and applies chemical effects to humans and heavily damages other mobs, such as cyborgs. You can expand/attack manually by left-clicking the target or target tile, but this costs chemicals. Hemming in targets by placing Normal Blobs behind them before attacking is extremely effective.

You, the Overmind, can also place special blob pieces or activate special functions and abilities. You must have enough Power to place those structures or activate those abilities, however.

Blob Buildings and Creatures

Appearance	Name	Production Cost	Other Requirements	Description
	Blob Core	N/A	N/A	The core of a blob. Protect these at all costs. Pulses nearby Resource Blobs and Factory Blobs, activating their effects. As an Overmind, you can see the health of your core from the HUD; if it lowers, go there to defend it immediately.
	Normal Blob	4 Resources	Must be cardinally adjacent to another Blob of any type to place a blob	A normal blob. Attempting to place one on a tile containing a dense object, or diagonally from another blob, will cause you to attack that tile, damaging mobs and structures. Attempting to expand into space is much less effective, having a high chance of failure. HOTKEY for placement is Left-Click.
	Strong Blob	15 Resources	Can only be placed on Normal Blob.	Consumes a Normal Blob to place a strong and hard to kill blob that prevents atmospheric threats from passing and is immune to fire. HOTKEY for placement is Ctrl-Click.
	Reflective Blob	15 Resources	Can only be placed on Strong Blob.	Turns a Strong Blob into a Reflective Blob, at the cost of their normal health and extra brute resistance. Will reflect projectiles based on their ricochet chances. Shots from emitters or lasers will be typically bounce off. HOTKEY for placement is Ctrl-Click.
	Resource Blob	40 Resources	Must be at least 4 tiles away from another Resource Blob	Consumes a Normal Blob to place a special blob that, when pulsed by a Node Blob or the Blob Core, gives additional Resources to the Overmind that placed it. Additional Resource Blobs slow resource generation down slightly.
	Node Blob	50 Resources	Must be at least 5 tiles away from another Node Blob	Consumes a Normal Blob to place a blob, much like the core, that will slowly expand, heal other blobs, and activate the effects of blob factories and resource nodes.
	Factory Blob	60 Resources	Must be at least 7 tiles away from another Factory Blob	Consumes a Normal Blob to place a special blob that, when pulsed by a Node Blob or the Blob Core, will spawn a Blob Spore, up to a maximum of three.
	Blob Spore	N/A	Produced from Factory Blobs	A fragile spore that does low damage and explodes into a cloud of gas when killed. The gas contains the chemical of the Overmind that placed the factory that spawned the spore.
	Blob Zombie	N/A	A Blob Spore and a corpse	A Blob Spore that has taken over a corpse, a Blob Zombie is harder to kill, gains health from the corpse's armor, does more damage, and will still explode into a cloud of gas when killed.
	Blobbernaut	40 Resources	An undamaged Factory Blob	Heavily damages a Factory Blob to create a player-controlled Blobbernaut which does high damage while being extremely hard to kill. However, unlike a blob spore, it does not explode into a cloud of gas when killed, instead applying the blob's chemical when attacking targets. The blobbernaut will slowly die if its factory is destroyed.

Blob Abilities

Name	Use Cost	Other Requirements	Description
Jump to Core	N/A	N/A	Teleports you to your Blob Core. If you haven't yet placed your core, will place it at your location.
Jump to Node	N/A	At least one Blob Node	Teleports you to a Blob Node of your choice, provided there is a Blob Node.
Remove Blob	N/A	A non-Core Blob	Destroys the blob underneath your selector, refunding some points, usually around 40% of the blob's initial cost. Not all blobs can be removed. HOTKEY for activation is Alt-Click.
Rally Spores	N/A	At least one Blob Spore	Rallies nearby Blob Spores to the area chosen. Use to swarm humans and other targets with fragile spores. HOTKEY for activation is Middle-Click.
Readapt Strain	40 Resources	N/A	Lets you choose a new blob strain/chemical out of four randomly selected. The first use is free, and you get another free readaptation every few minutes.
Relocate Core	80 Resources	A Blob Node underneath your selector	Swaps the location of your core and the selected node, useful for preventing your death if humans are getting too close for comfort. Cannot be used on nodes in certain areas.

How to play as a Blobbernaut{{#if:Blobbernaut|}}

If you spawn as a Blobbernaut it's your job to obey the Blob Overmind, and help it survive and expand. You start with 50% health, so heal up first thing you do. You can communicate with the blob hivemind channel by using :b.

As a Blobbernaut, you have a lot of health (around 400). Managing your health is a key to success. Pay attention to your health at all times. You can regenerate fast by staying near a yellow node or the blob core. You will run faster on blob tiles. You slowly take damage when not on a blob tile. If your factory is destroyed, you will take damage until you die. You can not claim a new factory.

A good tactic is to do hit-and-run attacks, and then constantly run back to safety to heal up. Against soft, living targets you can often get many strikes in before you need to retreat, or even kill them completely. Mechs though, such as Durands, can kill you quickly with a couple of punches, so play it extra safe versus mechs.

Another important use for your health is to tank shots for your Overmind's core and structures. If the core is destroyed, you lose. You can body block a surprising amount of damage, even from beam rifles, before you need to retreat to heal up. If the enemy uses laser sighted weapons, you can use this to your advantage to see when and where you need to block a shot.

Remember, sometimes you don't need to kill your enemies. As long as you prevent the crew from destroying nodes and other structures, your Overmind may eventually reach critical mass and win.

KILL DAT FUKKEN BLOB

The Emergency Shuttle will not depart during blob mode. Nor will the blob spare you or your precious station from a horrible death. Destroy it before it destroys you.

Tools of the Trade

Most of your weapons are useless against blobs. The blob doesn't give a fuck about brute damage, nor is it able to be stunned. Generally speaking, what you will want is to do burn damage. (NOTE: This does NOT mean setting fire to everything!) Here are some tools at your disposal:

• Armor: The blob, in addition to expanding, can attack. Blobs do a variety of damage, but are blocked by armor and bio protection, so riot armor or bio-suits, are helpful. Don't let yourself get surrounded!

• Welding tools: Cheap, readily available from YouTool machines (hack them for two more Upgraded Welding Tools) or the autolathe. Grab one and start burning away. Make a path towards a resource node and take it out. One guy with a welder isn't going to be able to breach the core, so don't try. It's a good idea to grab some Fuel Tanks to keep nearby so you can refuel quickly, but make sure your welder is OFF before refueling, and be sure the blob doesn't get close enough to absorb them. If science division is any good, they'll be passing out plasma cutters before long. They do the same damage as lit welders without any need to refuel, and have the added bonus of not setting plasma on fire in the case that the blob or some chucklefuck pops open a plasma canister. Replace your welder with a cutter ASAP if science starts making them.

• Laser weaponry: HOLD UP THERE HOT SHOT THESE ARE IN LIMITED SUPPLY. Don't take more then three and don't take them if you don't have good armor or a space suit. Carring the whole armory into maint just lets the blob kill you and bury them. Available in the Armory, in certain heads of staff's quarters and through R&D or Cargo. For the love of god consolidate gear.

• Emitters: Set them up as far away from the blob as you can while still striking the core. If the blob reaches them, they're gone. Three emitters side by side matched against the core is a one sided match.

• IEDs: The modest explosion is enough to rip a bit of the blob apart without destroying the floor and ruining atmos for people. Throw them in when you see weakness in the blob's defenses to tear open an attack point.

Once again: DO NOT USE FLAMETHROWERS OR PLASMA FIRES (see below). They are useless and will only make the rest of the crew die and hate you.

Risky Measures

(Do not use these unless shit has really hit the fan, or else you might be banned. When in doubt, adminhelp to see whether the Cuban Pete inferno you are about to unleash is kosher.)

• Large Plasma Fires: Large fires will eat away at a blob but will also make the area uninhabitable for people without fire suits. It will also not destroy blobs protected by unweakened shield blobs, so you'll need men with fire suits and laser guns to finish the job. If atmos isn't ruined yet this will make the crew hate you.

• Bombs: Bombs can destroy any piece of the blob except for the core proper, if the round's been dragging on and atmos is ruined, it's not a terrible idea provided you have something to hit the blob with AFTER there's a gaping bomb hole in the ground.

• Bags of Holding: If you can get within one or two squares of the blob core, creating a singularity there will almost certainly eat the blob core and win the game. DON'T DO THIS IF YOU CAN'T GET EXTREMELY CLOSE AS THERE'S NO PREDICTING LORD SINGULOTH. If things are going really bad, though, and you can still get reasonably close there's a chance this may be your only hope. Because there's no assurances here you might end up killing everybody. Ahelp before doing this to get the ok. This is now obsolete, check 'science' paragraph for reason.

Defcon 1

You've failed to contain the outbreak within the allotted timespan. Quarantine procedure 5-12 7-12 should be initiated immediately. The nuclear bomb code has been transmitted. Secure the disk and detonate the nuke in the Vault. The blob cannot be allowed to escape containment!

A Quick Note On Intent

As you know, your intent affects what you do when you run into people while moving. If you are on help intent, you walk through that person, and if you're on disarm intent, you'll push them out of the way or into the nearest object, like a wall, or a blob.

In other words: If you are fighting the blob, use help intent or else everybody will hate you. Unless you have the obstrusive quirk. Then they will hate you regardless. Obtrusive quirk got canned, thank you coderbus.

Oh Shit, Zombies!

Zombies are hardy bastards that will take people down faster than a school of space carp. Prevention is the best measure, if anyone goes down, pull him out and away from the blob before he either dies or the blob blocks him off. If a zombie's smacking at you, the natural reaction might be to try running away but don't do that, running around in a panic is the last thing you should do. Zombies, like many NPC mobs, have laser-guided autoattacks and will relentlessly pursue and hit you until you're down, plus anyone trying to help you won't be able to get a single hit off the zombie if it's running around chasing you.

If you've got a welder in hand (Which you should if there's a blob.) and the zombie isn't armored, simply stand your ground and attack like mad with your lit welder. Even if you're unarmored, it will go down first unless you let it get a few free hits off before fighting back. If it's armored, though, you're fucked unless you have armor, a fire axe, or a buddy or two fighting alongside you.

Non-Action Crewmates

If you do not have access to the above weaponry, you should stay off the front lines unless you want to get killed and get in everyone's way. However! There are still things you can (and should) do!

Medbay

Blob mode is one of the few modes where Medbay is actually worth a damn. Here is what to do:

Medical Doctor: You are field medics. Put your HUD glasses on, grab a first-aid kit and heal people so they don't die. The worst thing in blob mode is someone with half the armory in their backpack dying and getting engulfed and/or zombified by the blob. Don't let this happen. You will want to bring brute patches/bruise packs and probably burn patches/ointment if people are inevitably getting caught in lasers or getting hurt by inevitable plasma fire. Don't waste them on someone with 10 damage to one limb; use triage like a real doctor, you drunken ERPing fuck. You can also drag people to cryo and dead people to cloning, but generally you'll be more useful on the field. If you do because no one else is, loot their bag so you don't end up removing half the guns and space suits from the field like so much kebab.

Chemist: Mass produce medicine. During Blob, if the crew is competent, you will run out of medikits very quickly, and Cargo is better off ordering other things. What you'll need depends largely on what kind of blob you're dealing with (brute damage? tox?) and how competent the crew is (FRIENDLY FIRE OH GOD). You can either leave your pills/patches on the counter for people to grab or take them to the battlezone yourself depending on what people are doing.

Geneticist: Clone the people who inevitably die. Always have someone cloning. LOOT THEIR FUCKING BAGS FOR WELDERS AND GUNS if no one else did, to give back out to people who need them; if anyone whines about GENETICS TAKING MAH GUNS they don't deserve to be in the fight. Most of your powers are of limited utility -- Hulk is only good if the blob is in a hard-to-reach place, X-ray is useless (if you haven't found the blob by the time you get it, it's already ogre), cold resistance can be useful if some chucklefuck has exposed the blob area to space but otherwise useless, and TK is fun but impractical.

CMO: You are NOT a field medic, let your slaves do that. Basically, your job is what the CMO's job should be but never is: coordinate doctors, be a head of staff, make sure Medbay proper is doing its job, and for God's sake keep your cat away from the blob. Contribute your first-aid kit to the cause, and consider contributing your hypospray to someone you trust who can actually use it.

Virologist: Make healing viruses.

Cargo

Order emitters. Order fucking emitters. Don't assume the ones in Engineering Secure Storage will last, or even that anyone will remember to use them at all. Point seven emitters at a blob and it'll regret everything.

Order guns. Energy guns have their place, and are nice, but the station already has plenty. Combat shotguns may be better if people are good with them and print as many shells as you can in advance. Why? If you print lethal shells between Industrial Welders, combat shotguns don't have the downtime of energy guns. A constant feed of lethal shells makes for the ability to print, shoot while printing, clear shell, take new shell, feed old shell in, repeat. It makes the metal cost pretty much fuckall and does big damage. Besides that, you should already have enough laser guns on the station that unless some dipfuck loses them to the blob, you have barely enough chargers to charge them all at once.

Order some goddamn metal and glass. Don't rely on mining to get back at all or on time. However...

Get those miners a hand teleporter and EVA suits. Calibrate the teleporter to a beacon in R&D. You're going to mass-drive the miners to the asteroid because fuck the quarantine. Laser cannons don't grow on trees. They can give a heads-up when they're sending a crate for the RD to re-test-fire so you don't lose mineral shipments. The primary importance is getting uranium and silver back, in which case if research and cargo is any good the round will end shortly. See Science for details.

SHIT TYRONE HACK THE FUCKING AUTOLATHES. You can make dozens of INDUSTRIAL WELDERS from a single sheet each of metal and glass. They're 70 metal, 60 glass, or something like that, with a single sheet of material providing 3750 of each. An Industrial Welder is the exact same size as a normal welder but holds 40 fuel and comes pre-fueled. They're so cheap to make that they're virtually disposable. In fact, R&D should bump up their materials research with the gold from the vault to make super matter bins, pico-manipulators, etc., so that you can lathe thing stupidly fast at the forward autolathe you fuckers better have made.

No seriously make a fucking extra autolathe near, but not up in the face of, the blob. It's easier to have an assistant constantly print new Industrial Welders than to refuel them and risk the blob popping a fuel tank.

Use that goddamn lavaland loot to kill dat fukken blob miners

Science

RnD: Trying to "BoH-bomb" the blob by putting a bag of holding into another bag of holding near it is usually not recommended. Instead of falling into the tear of reality, the blob core will teleport to a random location on the station, which might be usefull if you can find the blob quickly, as it will have to remake its defenses. If you are intent on boh bombing the blob though, try to NOT CATCH THE CORE IN THE TEAR. if you do so, you make area that blob cant spread over, but people can shoot over. Also rush the fucking advanced beam weapons. Beam snipers are the only reliable way to beat the blob if its medium to large size, if the crew is not a bunch of chucklefucks

Toxins: Don't make bombs, because the blob is highly resistant to bombs, being rather solid, and the crew is very much not resistant to bombs.

Roboticist: Once the medics empty their medkits onto belts, you can make at least 6 medibots. Cargo can order emergency crates with floorbots and 2 medibots which will be useful to heal injured crew. Cleanbots are useless here, don't waste the metal on that. Mechs aren't worth making. But if miners brought silver and the blob ate research, but not robotics? Make a durand, load it with a solaris and an energy relay and set it loose.

Xenobiologist: Slimes take way too long and are way too random to be useful in time, although if you get some metal slimes early it could be mildly helpful, but it's better to just give your plasma to research.

Engineering

Engineer: Drag some emitters out of Engineering Secure Storage (if there aren't any, you can afford to take some from the SM Chamber) and set them out pointing towards the blob. They can do some serious damage to the blob in the long run. If the blob is exposed to space, you can work on the blob from the outside and pose as a real annoyance.

Atmospheric Technician: Grab a welder and fight the blob. Don't you fucking dare try to plasma flood that blob.

Security

Grab lasers from the armory, unwrench some rechargers, set them out near the blob, pew pew pew pew. Pretty damn self-explanatory what you should be doing.

Jobs on /tg/station
	Command	Captain, Head of Personnel
	Security	Head of Security, Security Officer, Warden, Detective
	Engineering	Chief Engineer, Station Engineer, Atmospheric Technician
	Science	Research Director, Scientist, Roboticist
	Medical	Chief Medical Officer, Medical Doctor, Chemist, Geneticist, Virologist
	Service	Janitor, Bartender, Cook, Botanist, Clown, Mime, Chaplain, Curator
	Civilian	Quartermaster, Cargo Technician, Shaft Miner, Assistant, Lawyer
	Non-human	AI, Cyborg, Positronic Brain, Drone, Personal AI, Construct, Ghost
	Antagonists	Traitor, Malfunctioning AI, Changeling, Nuclear Operative, Blood Cultist, Revolutionary, Wizard, Blob, Abductor, Holoparasite, Xenomorph, Spider, Swarmers, Revenant, Morph, Nightmare, Space Ninja, Slaughter Demon, Pirate, Sentient Disease, Creep, Fugitives, Hunters
	Special	CentCom Official, Death Squad Officer, Emergency Response Officer, Chrono Legionnaire, Highlander, Ian, Lavaland Role

Game Modes on /tg/station
Traitor	Changeling	Nuclear Emergency	Revolution	Blood Cult	Wizard	Other Modes