[Design/Antagonist] New Terror Spider: Webslinger

[IggyShmiggy]

Terror Spiders Enter The Wild West

Foreword

Motivation

Terror Spiders often suffer from having no way to close the distance between them and prey that is just outside of their webs, shooting them from a far with laser guns and having very little ability to do anything about it. Crew often go unpunished even for entering Spider Nests and then making a hasty retreat.

• This new Spider-Type aims to fix that by allowing the otherwise slow-moving spiders the ability to close that distance via a Spider that shoots 'Bola's' as a ranged attack.

• Support-Class akin to a brown spider

Desired Outcome

A Spider-Type that will hopefully allow terror spiders to more easily close the distance to long-ranged troublemakers, and especially punish players that go too deep inside of Terror nests. This support class is mainly used for allowing Front liners (Reds, Grays) to get some back-up support and let them easily catch up to someone after they get slowed down by the bola.

Overview

The Webslinger, otherwise known as the 'OgreSpider' (named after a spider in real life that is able to throw nets at prey) is a Support-Class Terror that is capable of producing a 'Web Bola' which it then shoots out from its mandibles towards a target, ensnaring them as a regular bola would, with slightly faster remove-speed than your standard bola.

How would this all work in practice?

Well, I've never actually coded with Byond before, which is probably a bad preface but I will say that I have coded in the past, and if this discussion is well received I wouldn't mind picking up and learning how to Code in Byond in order to make this dream a reality!

Furthermore, I will explain a few things so we're all on the same page while I'm describing the rest of the spider;

The Spider has two abilities, Vent Crawl and 'Snare Spit', Vent crawl is your standard Brown-Spider vent crawling speed for entering and exiting, but 'Snare Spit' is essentially a long-cooldown spell that fires a projectile similar to the Queen Terror's Neurotoxin spit, this 'projectile' is not a bola entity and is rather just a bullet entity that upon contacting a humanoid, will 'ensnare' them like a proper bola would. Similar to an Energy Bola, it will 'disappear' once removed by the player. So, just to affirm

The spiders are not directly shooting bola's out of their bodies. They are shooting web-projectiles that ensnare people with a bola-adjacent effect.

And yes- This class cannot heal itself other than the 0.1% natural regeneration it starts with. This can be raised or lowered/removed entirely for balancing purposes if need be, but they cannot eat corpses.

General Stats

• Health: About that of a Brown-Spider (Probably a smidge lower due to being ranged.) . This is a front-liner spider, but they are not meant to be tanking shots or anything like that. They need to play carefully, and pick and choose when they pop out and fire their snares.

• Speed: A little faster than a red spider. They aren't meant to be terribly slow because they should be moving around a lot in order to avoid getting murdered, since they are not supposed to be attacking head-on enemies.

• Range: The projectile that the Spider shoots out from wherever the player clicks will travel a little further than a thrown bola might, but otherwise has pretty short life expectancy in terms of projectiles.
  Exact tile count would probably be around 10 tiles worth of range.

• Damage: Extremely negligible. Probably lower than a brown spider due to being a Support-Class Terror Spider. The point of this spider is not to kill people, but to be the reason why people get killed. Likely still capable of killing an alone person though, given the right situation.

• Spider Tier: By 'Spider Tier' I more or less mean how high-ranking the spider is, and for balance I'd say it would probably act as a Spider Adjacent to the Brown Terror. While probably not as useful due to not being able to destroy walls or break open vents, it is a good support class nonetheless. If this is deemed too strict, we can always put this one alongside Gray and Red Terrors, making it a staple to the Terror Spider army- And I believe the only Support-Class terror of that tier.

But the plan for now is to make it a Brown-Terror Adjacent

Name: Either Ogre Terror Spider, another [Color] Terror Spider, or Web Slinger Terror Spider, I'm pretty flexible when it comes to whatever we decide to name it.

Abilities

• Standard Vent Crawl

• Snare Spit
  Cooldown: Moderate
  Description: Spider will shoot out a projectile based on where they last clicked (Like a standard fireball spell) that will ensnare anyone it touches if it does not expire beforehand. (Ten tile range.)
  Removing the Bola would take a little less time than the standard bola removal, and would require you to stand still. It does not go away on its own.
  The bola does no damage, it is just a simple bola 'snared' effect.

Non-Code Work/Required Assets

Sadly, while I am confident I could learn how to code all this, I am not capable of doing any of the sprite work beyond maybe the Web Projectile. And even then, probably shouldn't.

• Needs a sprite for the body, preferably a really fluffy terror spider because we simply don't have enough of those, but obviously it could be whatever, just cant look too similar to any of the pre-existing terrors.

• Needs a sprite for the Projectile, likely pretty small but a little larger than a bullet, it'd look like a clump of webs.

• Needs sounds for shooting the projectile, and a sound file for when the Web impacts someone and ensnares them (Debatably could just be the standard Bola sound effect. I'm not sure Energy Bolas and Bolas have different sound files or not.)