Changeling rounds are boring as hell

[Steelpoint]

Bottom post of the previous page:

B-b-but Steelpoint! Antagonists should pull be pulling up their belt straps and should be very robust, and very combat capable, by themselves. They should not need fancy shamcy powers or abilties or progression!

Well sorry but your horrifyingly wrong. Every single antagonist in this game needs some edge in order to do well, even Revolutionary's get their edge by being able to convert crew member's to their side, and use numbers to overwhelm the loyalists.

Have you see what happens when a unarmed Assistant, or any other crew member, tries to attack a member of Security, or a robust member of the Command staff? Its very one sided UNLESS the attacker has a way to even the playing field.

Yes you can cheese it out with water and a spray, you can try your luck with a stun prod and cable cuffs, but at the end of the day the antagonist needs a clear and effective edge to give them some advantage.

Rev has numbers, they can overwhelm the loyalist with pure numbers. Nuke Ops have coordination, a clear objective and powerful weapons and equipment. Wizards simply have over powered abilities. Traitors have the elemet of surprise and a wide array of unique tools and weapons to do the job.

Newling had cyro sting and (eventually) a shitty variant of the Energy Sword.

----

Antagonists need a clear, unique, and effective edge to win.

The problem is that Changeling's edge came, not in combat or similar, but in being able to hide and evade. This creates the problem of Changelings being, hence the title, boring as hell.

What is the solution? Oldling, Goonline or some psudo-cross between the two? Whatever it is, anything is better than boring rounds with nothing going on, even having insane Changelings with 40000 chemicals and Death Squad tier armour.

(AFTER POST)
Caught Cheimon's post as I was typing.

Morph and Abductor get away with stealth due to them both having a clear and present effect on the round in a major way. The Morph can eat half the station if left out of control and the Abductors can spew Chaos quickly as their implants in Humans cause a wide array of destructive, or less so, side effects.

Ling simply has husked bodies turn up once in a while that get cloned, before being gunned down by a officer and burned to death. As well as any other round antagonist, ling or otherwise, being burned to death just to be sure.

[Saegrimr]

Eventually someone decides "if the antagonists aren't doing much, I will" and you get extended, with people doing things like sabotaging station atmospheres, rioting, forming tribes and so on.

These are the kind of people that need to go.

[Steelpoint]

Eventually someone decides "if the antagonists aren't doing much, I will" and you get extended, with people doing things like sabotaging station atmospheres, rioting, forming tribes and so on.

These are the kind of people that need to go.

How dare people expect something interesting to occur after a hour plus of nothing happening.

If you don't want people looking for something to do, and causing trouble, then provide game modes that actually provide something of a challenge to the crew.

That happens all the time EXCEPT for Changeling rounds. Or the odd Traitor round where they all die within five minutes.

[CPTANT]

Pure abductor rounds are also shit. Nothing happens because the abductors aren't even on the station for the majority of the time.

Abductors only function as a side antag. Just as ling should be.

And side antag is not a derogatory term. They can be powerful and have a large influence of rounds. It just means that they can actually utilize their stealth without the round bogging down.


And this is why the implementation of antag datums should REALLY get priority.

[Tornadium]

Team Antagonist modes are far superior to Traitor, Double Agent and Changeling in my mind.

They affect the round as a whole beyond "Oh i might get bombed".

I think if there was a rule overhaul to give people a bit more freedom to drive conflict outside of being antagonists it would help a lot. Not talking like "Grey tide everywhere" but actual escalated conflict between Security and crew based on legitimate grievances.

I don't know where the hugbox thing of "Oh cargo has guns, you not allowed to fight back" bullshit came from.

[Zilenan91]

Actually if anything the Arm blade is infinitely superior to the esword because you can't be memed on with disarm. #RemovePushing2015

Also yeah on that gun cargo thing, I think that's really shit too but I get why it's there. It's to prevent self-antagging, but if the round is truly boring enough for that to be a thing people are considering then the diversion would be welcomed. It's just a problem with the server rules.

[Tornadium]

I was uncharitable.

I get why it's there, because if you give shitheads an inch they'll take a mile and do it every round for the flimsiest reasons ever.

[Zilenan91]

Honestly it depends on how you do gun cargo. If you just order a bunch of guns and armor and tell everyone to fuck off I think it's fine there, but if you order a bunch of guns and armor and then start gunning people down in the halls for little or no provocation then you deserve a ban.

[Malkevin]

What i'm trying to get at is what does Changeling do differently than a Traitor also trying to be stealthy?

Do you actually want Changeling to be different from traitor, or just a biological terror themed traitor?

The way a lot of things are "balanced" here, it seems everybody just wants everything to be traitor themed, and also want traitors to get old shit that was Ling specific like regenerative implants or something.

Thank you. Had been trying to think of a way to phrase this. Everything seems to be "balanced" around how many sec officers you can kill in an open battle/how many antagonists the officers can kill.

I don't know why the idea of an actually stealthy bad guy is intolerable to people.

Problem is is that current ling isn't a stealth antag its a sleeper antag, nothing it does attracts attention to itself unless it chooses to go loud - any its tools for doing that straight away out it as a ling.

Compare this to classic ling which was a stealth antag and could stealthily take people out, causing disruption to the round without people automatically knowing whodunit.

[Alex Crimson]

Just bring back oldling and make them able to spawn in any game mode rather than having their own mode.

[Zilenan91]

>parasting

Please no

[Incomptinence]

>parasting

Please no

Being afraid of parasting being available to maybe 1-2 guys coming in mid way though a round or not at all if it is short.

It is a game you got any idea how ludicrously squeamish this "THAT MECHANIC NO! NEVER! DEAD GAME!" stuff sounds?

Probably the biggest problem with the coders is the unwritten list of things to NEVER PUT IN!

[Gun Hog]

Your muscles painfully tighten!
Bring it back.

[Scott]

>parasting

Please no

Being afraid of parasting being available to maybe 1-2 guys coming in mid way though a round or not at all if it is short.

It is a game you got any idea how ludicrously squeamish this "THAT MECHANIC NO! NEVER! DEAD GAME!" stuff sounds?

Probably the biggest problem with the coders is the unwritten list of things to NEVER PUT IN!

>its the ebil coders fault >:(

Stop.

[Wyzack]

What exactly is he lying about? There are a number of things that maintainers will not allow on the branch, I am starting to think that bringing back parasting might be good

[Zilenan91]

>It's an antag item that has no counter, stuns you and prevents you from talking or moving in any way for upwards of five minutes


What the fuck are you people talking about.

[Steelpoint]

I thought it was already established that the stun lasted either 40 or 90 seconds, not five minutes.

Also I've already suggested going for Goonling's approach, which includes their Parasting not silencing nor do the lings have any silencing abilities.

[Zilenan91]

We could always just keep tweaking our ling and giving it interesting abilities to make it our own thing instead of taking the design of something else.

[Steelpoint]

The advantage of taking another servers design is that its a proven design that works.

With us we're just throwing random things at Changeling that are useless or detract from the game mode, and we have no idea what the fuck direction we want our ling to go.

Taking another design is better, imo, since it has a clear vision of how its antag should function.

[Oldman Robustin]

Eventually someone decides "if the antagonists aren't doing much, I will" and you get extended, with people doing things like sabotaging station atmospheres, rioting, forming tribes and so on.

These are the kind of people that need to go.

Or they're the only ones that make extended rounds tolerable.

People closing the game out of boredom is the absolute worst possible outcome for a player on SS13.

I'd take any level of crew shittery over the rounds where you get 1 radio message per minute and most of the crew is braindead because nothing is happening and someone with recall access believes that shuttles should only come during an emergency.

As for lings, pure lings are about as entertaining as pure traitors. Its just that traitors have access to low-skill high-chaos items that can make a round interesting. Also traitors are more numerous and thus less likely to end up with a complete group of pure incompetents. Ling is completely dependent on player skill, without good lings you've got extended still. There's less lings and thus a higher chance of RNG dealing you a group of terrible players.

I find it funny though, on one hand you've got boring ling rounds when lings are bad, but when lings are good you get "FLESHMEND OP" threads where someone's salty that a handful of lings wiped out security because they finally ran into something that harmbatons couldn't solve. Had one round like that last night and the lings recalled once while they were still taking over, admins had a pulse-rifle + syndicate medical kit (the defibs that completely heal you) ERT squad on station within 10 minutes.

So what is it, do you want overt lings or are you so hostile to murderboning lings that you'll send a goddamn deathsquad to wipe them out if they actually try to take over the station?

[Saegrimr]

ahelp "NO ANTAGS. ROUND IS BORING. PUSH BUTTONS."

Suddenly theres nukewizards fucking everything up and you don't have to worry about being banned for being a shit as a nonantag.

[DaemonBomb]

Had one round like that last night and the lings recalled once while they were still taking over, admins had a pulse-rifle + syndicate medical kit (the defibs that completely heal you) ERT squad on station within 10 minutes.

You mean that round where the Captain was a ling, and had barricaded himself in his quarters, and recalled while the singularity was destroying the station? Also, that wasn't just a random ERT spawning by the admins, the HoP got in through a whole torn through the bridge by the singulo and requested them.

[Scott]

It is usually best when admins intervene with fun or calling an ERT yourself.

[Zilenan91]

The issue with lings that isn't usually the case with traitors is that there's a possibility, however slim, for regular crew members to kill traitors. Whether it's throwing various robust shit at him, stunprodding him, or setting him on fire with molotovs, you can do it, even if you're likely to get dunked

With lings, that's not the case. Their healing so good, and their armor so protective, that if there was a ling in armor vs. 4 assistants with spears I would bet on the Ling if he's ever played the game before. He CAN'T be disarm spammed to get rid of his esword, it's literally his arm. He CAN'T be hit with high damage weapons because he heals it off, he CAN'T be stunned because he just uses whatever power that gets rid of it completely. It makes it so that literally the only people who can fight lings is security without ridiculous numbers on the crews side, and anyone else is like the virologist in a blob round.

[Oldman Robustin]

The issue with lings that isn't usually the case with traitors is that there's a possibility, however slim, for regular crew members to kill traitors. Whether it's throwing various robust shit at him, stunprodding him, or setting him on fire with molotovs, you can do it, even if you're likely to get dunked

With lings, that's not the case. Their healing so good, and their armor so protective, that if there was a ling in armor vs. 4 assistants with spears I would bet on the Ling if he's ever played the game before. He CAN'T be disarm spammed to get rid of his esword, it's literally his arm. He CAN'T be hit with high damage weapons because he heals it off, he CAN'T be stunned because he just uses whatever power that gets rid of it completely. It makes it so that literally the only people who can fight lings is security without ridiculous numbers on the crews side, and anyone else is like the virologist in a blob round.

1) Stop bitching about Ling armor. It's like whining that you tried to beat someone in riot armor in a fistfight and lost. If a ling is in armor he's got a giant valid sign over his head and he sacrificed 2 points that would have been much more useful elsewhere. Armor ling means he doesn't have dissonant shriek OR lesser form (Armblade, Adrenal, Engorged Chems, Fleshmend = 8 points mandatory for heavy combat lings). The lack of dissonant shriek alone means that a secborg is going to completely destroy this ling build

2) Absent armor, melee'ing lings is still extremely viable. All it takes is RNG in the favor of a spear/axe user and you've got a dead ling. One-hit KO from axes/spears means you're instantly out 50 chems for fleshmend + toxic adrenals. 20 more chems to bust your armblade out and now you've only got 1 ability left to actually win you the encounter, and even with fleshmend keeping you out of crit you're still going to be slow compared to some greyshirt dancing around you with a spear. Losing melee fights is very plausible for lings, I've lost versus an axe with post-buff ling myself. One-hit Knockout to the head, 60 health gone almost instantly. Fleshmend+Adrenal keep me standing but I'm in red health after trading swings and then I'm knocked down again... adrenal to get up but before I can move I'm hit again and in crit this time. Constant axe+spear > Fleshmend = GG.

3) If you're actually smart just get a stunprod and you're still almost on even footing with a ling. Even if the ling has pooled energy and is quick on the adrenal usage, after popping armblade you're looking at 3 stun cancels against a prod. You land 4 stuns on the ling and you've got a window to hogtie it (keep cablecuffs in hand in this scenario), similarly the ling has to land about 4 hits on you to make sure you're down for the count.

[Incomptinence]

Suits that prevent injections provide the most utility I would think since panacea to cover the few chen based gaps in fleshmend probably isn't worth the point. Most of these rampaging armour lings could have been put to sleep like little babies since their organic armour provides no protection against syringes. Then even if your gibbing means are sabotaged just use N2O air mix on to create your own sleeping beauty.

[Zilenan91]

Oldman the suit was literally deathsquad armor -10, and it costed one (1) DNA point with no slowdown. You could have all of these powers and be unstoppable.
Can't argue with the second point, with no armor lings are relatively balanced, they can lose, they can win, as it should be.
On the third point, with armblade doing 31 damage per hit, if the ling targets your chest, he has an above 40% chance to knock you down on every hit. I don't think I really need to say much of anything about this.

[lumipharon]

Dis shriek costs 1 point.
Armour costs 1 point.

Where is the ling losing out on either of these abilities?
Also ling armour is already nerfed so not point going on about it.

[oranges]

make your own fun?

[Atlanta-Ned]

Just finished spectating a two hour(!) ling round that only ended when badmins spammed wizards/xenos.
This is bad. Fix the gamemode or remove it.

[metacide]

I appreciate that lots of people have tried to make changeling a decent round to play, but I've never seen anyone succeed. Ling is cancer, and always has been to a greater or lesser extent, the lesser only when they were irrelevant and just led to extended rounds. Could someone perhaps just remove it and we be done with it?

Recently it seems they get buffed, everyone complains, buff is reverted, someone thinks up another buff, everyone complains, it gets reverted, and on we go. I just saw some sort of 7-strong team-ling, a truly horrible round. I don't think it's worth putting the effort into changeling when the other gamemodes could be improved just as much and are more fun already.

Ling should have been removed ages ago. More interesting novel stuff would be much nicer - praetorians anyone?

[PKPenguin321]

Just finished spectating a two hour(!) ling round that only ended when badmins spammed wizards/xenos.
This is bad. Fix the gamemode or remove it.

this kind of thing happens with rounds other than ling
i've seen 2 hour cult rounds before, and traitor rounds also love to drag out now and then

[Zilenan91]

Just finished spectating a two hour(!) ling round that only ended when badmins spammed wizards/xenos.
This is bad. Fix the gamemode or remove it.

The round in question here had a dirtbag ling selling out the other lings while they had team objectives, so having half the antags dead in 10 minutes was not good for the game.

[Tornadium]

Fleshmend is fucking BULLSHIT.

I survived 4 officers all shooting at me with Auto Rifles and managed to turn and kill 3 of them before finally getting tasers.

Got beaten to near crit then LOL ADRENAL SACKS + FLESHMEND and killed the other.

[newfren]

Fleshmend is fucking BULLSHIT.

I survived 4 officers all shooting at me with Auto Rifles and managed to turn and kill 3 of them before finally getting tasers.

Got beaten to near crit then LOL ADRENAL SACKS + FLESHMEND and killed the other.

Why the FUCK would you try and kill a changeling with rifles instead of stunning him like 3 times. Sounds like a player problem to me.

[Tornadium]

Fleshmend is fucking BULLSHIT.

I survived 4 officers all shooting at me with Auto Rifles and managed to turn and kill 3 of them before finally getting tasers.

Got beaten to near crit then LOL ADRENAL SACKS + FLESHMEND and killed the other.

Why the FUCK would you try and kill a changeling with rifles instead of stunning him like 3 times. Sounds like a player problem to me.

Good luck comboing that stun.

[PKPenguin321]

Fleshmend is fucking BULLSHIT.

I survived 4 officers all shooting at me with Auto Rifles and managed to turn and kill 3 of them before finally getting tasers.

Got beaten to near crit then LOL ADRENAL SACKS + FLESHMEND and killed the other.

Why the FUCK would you try and kill a changeling with rifles instead of stunning him like 3 times. Sounds like a player problem to me.

Good luck comboing that stun.

if you cant combo stuns then dont fight lings 1v1, we've been over this a million times

LING CAN'T DIE? STUN AND CUFF
CAN'T STUN TO CUFF? DON'T 1v1
LING KEEPS BREAKING CUFFS? STUN AND KILL
CAN'T STUN TO KILL? DON'T 1v1

[onleavedontatme]

Except lings are in a team of up to like 8 guys. An individual on that team doesnt need to be able to shrug off the armory.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

LING CAN'T DIE? STUN AND CUFF <okay
CAN'T STUN TO CUFF? DON'T 1v1 <but its not 1v1 its 1(you)vs5-7(them)
LING KEEPS BREAKING CUFFS? STUN AND KILL <how do kill if ling cannot die
CAN'T STUN TO KILL? DON'T 1v1

<how do kill in group if ling is inwincible and heals 10 brute a second with 50% las resist

[tuypo1]

just remove dna extract sting the horror of ling should be in people slowly going missing. Death is a thing that happens on space station 13 just go grab a drone.

[PKPenguin321]

LING CAN'T DIE? STUN AND CUFF <okay
CAN'T STUN TO CUFF? DON'T 1v1 <but its not 1v1 its 1(you)vs5-7(them)
LING KEEPS BREAKING CUFFS? STUN AND KILL <how do kill if ling cannot die
CAN'T STUN TO KILL? DON'T 1v1

<how do kill in group if ling is inwincible and heals 10 brute a second with 50% las resist

a fair question because i phrased myself poorly
if one person chainstuns/cuffs (but mostly chainstuns) while another bashes relentlessly, the changeling WILL run out of chems and die.

[Zilenan91]

Sometimes that isn't feasible though, like if he's in maint or if he has a taser. Come to think of it, if a changeling ever gets a taser, he basically wins the game. All his weaknesses suddenly evaporate due to him having a ranged stun. I don't think this is so much a problem with lings, but a problem with tasers in general.

[Saegrimr]

The big bad boogietaser strikes again.

[Zilenan91]

>one person can act for five seconds and kill the other one while the other one can do nothing


long stuns are and have always been inherently shit.

[lumipharon]

LING CAN'T DIE? STUN AND CUFF <okay
CAN'T STUN TO CUFF? DON'T 1v1 <but its not 1v1 its 1(you)vs5-7(them)
LING KEEPS BREAKING CUFFS? STUN AND KILL <how do kill if ling cannot die
CAN'T STUN TO KILL? DON'T 1v1

<how do kill in group if ling is inwincible and heals 10 brute a second with 50% las resist

a fair question because i phrased myself poorly
if one person chainstuns/cuffs (but mostly chainstuns) while another bashes relentlessly, the changeling WILL run out of chems and die.

Fun fact: With engorged ball sacks, and even with the nerfed ling armour, unless that guy has a very high brute weapon (fire axe etc), the ling WILL NOT DIE.
The chem regen is insane these days.

[ShadowDimentio]

I don't know what's wrong with you people. Back when parasting was around, it was fun. You were the infiltrator, you'd steal someone's face and then pretend to be them for as long as it took to find someone alone, upon which you would eat their face too.

If you got caught during the 2 MINUTES it took to kill someone, you'd run the fuck away. If you got away, you'd turn into someone else and resume the impersonating. If not, you'd try to escape with lesser form, or get fucked.

Everyone who hates parasting always keeps bitching about parasting and talking it up like it was the most overpowered thing ever

But it wasn't.

It made stealth ling viable and not stupid. Lings quietly killing people one by one makes a much better round than the autistic mess that lings are right now. If you KNEW someone was ling, guess what? Parasting became worthless because nobody would let you get near them. Hell, if there were confirmed lings, your life would become hell because nobody would let you get near them, period.

Parasting is balanced .Bring it back.

Also: Nerf the ling "going loud" arsenal. It's absolutely awful. I once threw a horde of 8+ golems at a single loud ling, and guess who got fucked? All the golems. They were unrobust and fighting at a shit location, but still.

[PKPenguin321]

LING CAN'T DIE? STUN AND CUFF <okay
CAN'T STUN TO CUFF? DON'T 1v1 <but its not 1v1 its 1(you)vs5-7(them)
LING KEEPS BREAKING CUFFS? STUN AND KILL <how do kill if ling cannot die
CAN'T STUN TO KILL? DON'T 1v1

<how do kill in group if ling is inwincible and heals 10 brute a second with 50% las resist

a fair question because i phrased myself poorly
if one person chainstuns/cuffs (but mostly chainstuns) while another bashes relentlessly, the changeling WILL run out of chems and die.

Fun fact: With engorged ball sacks, and even with the nerfed ling armour, unless that guy has a very high brute weapon (fire axe etc), the ling WILL NOT DIE.
The chem regen is insane these days.

when a ling pops ling armor there are going to be more than two people trying to kill him if he's stunned since it's such a sign of valids
if you stun it, greys will come

[CPTANT]

The combat abillity of a single ling is fine. Although the only really viable way to bring one down is with repeated stuns.

However team based objectives have driven lings to act together and it is virtually impossible to destroy a group of 3 lings without bombing them.


Still makes for more interesting rounds than the hide and seek they used to play though.

[Amelius]

LING CAN'T DIE? STUN AND CUFF <okay
CAN'T STUN TO CUFF? DON'T 1v1 <but its not 1v1 its 1(you)vs5-7(them)
LING KEEPS BREAKING CUFFS? STUN AND KILL <how do kill if ling cannot die
CAN'T STUN TO KILL? DON'T 1v1

<how do kill in group if ling is inwincible and heals 10 brute a second with 50% las resist

a fair question because i phrased myself poorly
if one person chainstuns/cuffs (but mostly chainstuns) while another bashes relentlessly, the changeling WILL run out of chems and die.

Fun fact: With engorged ball sacks, and even with the nerfed ling armour, unless that guy has a very high brute weapon (fire axe etc), the ling WILL NOT DIE.
The chem regen is insane these days.

Fun fact: Grabbing a ling three times renders combat lings (the garden variety) 100% inert. Follow up with a cuff, choke, and slow crawl to the incinerator/gibber and you have an easy kill. Batonning one to death is 100% viable as well, and I have done it many times as sec.

[Zilenan91]

Can't they still hit you when choked?

[PKPenguin321]

no not at all
chokeholds shut lings down hard, they always have
iirc the only ways for the ling to break out without intervention are confusion screech and lesser form