/tg/Station 13

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I have ling enabled because if I get it then there's one less ling to absorb me in maint

Every time I play ling I will at some point at least entertain the idea of outing all my buddies to security so that the round has less lings, if not go through with it. Most rounds I'm ling at least one of them will have some plan to murderbone or do shuttle-call-tier shit (bombs, etc) so I'm happy to be rid of them

Oh except that one round where I told an officer to incinerate a "suspected ling" without outing myself and he spent the rest of the round autisticallly watching me to "prove" I was one too so I couldn't even do anything fun.

Fatal wrote:If nothing else, remove the team chat and stop lings being a team murder mode at the very least

Every time I see lings it's basically a team mode because, why wouldn't they use that advantage

I've tried, but coderbus disagreed.

Rustledjimm wrote:Can I just repeat here that I hate ling and it's the only antag I have refused to ever play.

Please nerf. I don't have any input or ideas sorry because I've played it once about 3 years ago and never touched it since but I'm just asking nicely can we please nerf it somehow.

that's like not playing wizard because you hate wizard

the only reason people tolerate it is because eventually you get to be the epic spell man

Or maybe you're comparing apple to oranges and playing ling isn't that epic.

Lings can be frustrating, but do you guys really die to them that often? The traitors usually end up being way more dangerous in traitorchan rounds in my experience. I don't think I've actually died to a ling in months.

Armhulen wrote:

Rustledjimm wrote:Can I just repeat here that I hate ling and it's the only antag I have refused to ever play.

Please nerf. I don't have any input or ideas sorry because I've played it once about 3 years ago and never touched it since but I'm just asking nicely can we please nerf it somehow.

that's like not playing wizard because you hate wizard

the only reason people tolerate it is because eventually you get to be the epic spell man

Wizards are infinitely more fun to fight than lings because wizards, while strong as hell, are the loudest antag we have and is pretty much outed the moment they step on the station. Lings meanwhile are roughly as good as wizards, there's 2-5 of them in a round, AND they're practically undetectable.

Much simpler idea

Three categories of ling abilities, Combat, Stealth, and Regenerative

If take an ability from any category, all abilities in any other categories go up in price by 1
So if you take armblade, armor, shield, screech, etc (all combat abilities), it costs what it usually does, but if you try to take armblade, fleshmend, biodegrade (a combat, regenerative, and stealth ability), you're now down 2 more points than you'd usually be. This encourages specialization and makes it so mixing all the optimal powers and getting the best of every world isn't really doable.

PKPenguin321 wrote:Much simpler idea

Three categories of ling abilities, Combat, Stealth, and Regenerative

If take an ability from any category, all abilities in any other categories go up in price by 1
So if you take armblade, armor, shield, screech, etc (all combat abilities), it costs what it usually does, but if you try to take armblade, fleshmend, biodegrade (a combat, regenerative, and stealth ability), you're now down 2 more points than you'd usually be. This encourages specialization and makes it so mixing all the optimal powers and getting the best of every world isn't really doable.

That's really good actually. Way simpler than my ability tree idea.

just make them either all combat or all stealth it seems like the biggest problem is the identity crisis

oldling was bad for another plethora of reasons (boring, long rounds of being parastung and sucked until no one but lings was left) but it at least had its own identity. lings weren't terribly strong in combat but they had sneaky abilities to confuse people and make them scary one on one especially if they got the drop on you.

if you wanna move away from that then give them the strong combat stuff and nix the invisible poisons and stings. make lings be able to activate tentacles and blades and be this beasts of combat but they need to stop and recharge (maybe limit or remove passive chem generation by amount of absorptions so they need to keep accumulating biomass)
make them loud and obvious but they need to balance chem usage and keep absorping to get new disguises

or just like nix the evolution shop and give em 2-4 random evolutions (maybe u get to pick from 2/3 fr each one) so people have to think on their feet a little more and work with their builds

captain sawrge wrote:oldling was bad for another plethora of reasons (boring, long rounds of being parastung and sucked until no one but lings was left) but it at least had its own identity. lings weren't terribly strong in combat but they had sneaky abilities to confuse people and make them scary one on one especially if they got the drop on you.

Newling is just all of the above but harder. I liked that parasting was basically their only offensive ability, it made it so they were unbeatable in 1v1 but in groups the ling didn't stand a chance. Oldling was the closest we've ever been to a stealth antag.

it was really boring and bad

ShadowDimentio wrote:

captain sawrge wrote:oldling was bad for another plethora of reasons (boring, long rounds of being parastung and sucked until no one but lings was left) but it at least had its own identity. lings weren't terribly strong in combat but they had sneaky abilities to confuse people and make them scary one on one especially if they got the drop on you.

Newling is just all of the above but harder. I liked that parasting was basically their only offensive ability, it made it so they were unbeatable in 1v1 but in groups the ling didn't stand a chance. Oldling was the closest we've ever been to a stealth antag.

Problem being parasting had no tells at all. basically leading to people getting dragged into maint in the middle of crowds. Unlike goonstation's neurotoxin sting you didnt even get the ability to shout for help. It was very unfun to fight against, even with a group. Also Lings even back then were deadly as they usually had para and cryo sting, and could easily disable 2 people while fighting the third.

even back then they were fucking shit to fight against. thats why parasting was removed in the first place.

This may be controversial, but what if we removed hidden stings entirely?

Luke Cox wrote:This may be controversial, but what if we removed hidden stings entirely?

I don't really think those are the issue.

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Luke Cox wrote:This may be controversial, but what if we removed hidden stings entirely?

I don't really think those are the issue.

Biggest issue is the fucking comms and free revives. Remove those and ling might be somewhat balanced.

Dr_bee wrote:

ShadowDimentio wrote:

captain sawrge wrote:oldling was bad for another plethora of reasons (boring, long rounds of being parastung and sucked until no one but lings was left) but it at least had its own identity. lings weren't terribly strong in combat but they had sneaky abilities to confuse people and make them scary one on one especially if they got the drop on you.

Newling is just all of the above but harder. I liked that parasting was basically their only offensive ability, it made it so they were unbeatable in 1v1 but in groups the ling didn't stand a chance. Oldling was the closest we've ever been to a stealth antag.

Problem being parasting had no tells at all. basically leading to people getting dragged into maint in the middle of crowds. Unlike goonstation's neurotoxin sting you didnt even get the ability to shout for help. It was very unfun to fight against, even with a group. Also Lings even back then were deadly as they usually had para and cryo sting, and could easily disable 2 people while fighting the third.

even back then they were fucking shit to fight against. thats why parasting was removed in the first place.

Worry not any PR to readd parasting will be rejected without debate. Ling was even less popular when they had that and I'm not gonna fall for nostalgia.

Kor wrote:Lings need to be directed to kill one another again or they need to lose the hivemind or yeah far fewer numbers.

They sadly lack any reason to kill eachother anymore outside of antag objectives, in the past you could easily get an absurd amount of genomes off of killing other lings but that isn't a mechanic anymore.

Dr_bee wrote:

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Luke Cox wrote:This may be controversial, but what if we removed hidden stings entirely?

I don't really think those are the issue.

Biggest issue is the fucking comms and free revives. Remove those and ling might be somewhat balanced.

The revives are fine if the crew aren't fucking retards who can't figure out how to space something or dump it into a gibber. The comms are a problem.

Space loops you straight back on station most of the time and is generally considered a completely fucking retarded move since the ling will just revive and come back.
The gibber can be armbladed and often is. The only reliable way is shuttlecrush which either gives the ling a chance to revive or gives you the chance to die in a stupid way to the same thing.

Lings are hard to kill in the first place so RE-killing a ling becomes an extremely tedious (and hazardous) chore when it can just press a reset button and run away again.

Luke Cox wrote:The revives are fine if the crew aren't fucking retards who can't figure out how to space something or dump it into a gibber. The comms are a problem.

Except lings have a space suit now and space loops so if you throw a ling out an airlock it's just going to come back and kill you in five minutes.

Reviving needs to revive the ling at 1 health and use all their chems, I've had lings revive on the way to the gibber, instantly melt the cuffs and sprint away with methspeed before anyone can stop them. It's fucking gay.

Yakumo_Chen wrote:Space loops you straight back on station most of the time and is generally considered a completely fucking retarded move since the ling will just revive and come back.
The gibber can be armbladed and often is. The only reliable way is shuttlecrush which either gives the ling a chance to revive or gives you the chance to die in a stupid way to the same thing.

Lings are hard to kill in the first place so RE-killing a ling becomes an extremely tedious (and hazardous) chore when it can just press a reset button and run away again.

I'll give you the spacing bit, but you can also just dump them into the xenobio pen.

ShadowDimentio wrote:

Luke Cox wrote:The revives are fine if the crew aren't fucking retards who can't figure out how to space something or dump it into a gibber. The comms are a problem.

Except lings have a space suit now and space loops so if you throw a ling out an airlock it's just going to come back and kill you in five minutes.

Reviving needs to revive the ling at 1 health and use all their chems, I've had lings revive on the way to the gibber, instantly melt the cuffs and sprint away with methspeed before anyone can stop them. It's fucking gay.

I'm fine with just about any ling nerf but I will defend the indefinite revive till my last. Braindead assistants can't just toolbox them to death like they can traitors. They actually have to use their brains to kill the ling. Security can easily gib them with the labor camp shuttle, and if you honestly get yourself killed doing it, consider it natural selection.

*insert shilling for explosive lances here*

I'm fine with just about any ling nerf but I will defend the indefinite revive till my last. Braindead assistants can't just toolbox them to death like they can traitors. They actually have to use their brains to kill the ling. Security can easily gib them with the labor camp shuttle, and if you honestly get yourself killed doing it, consider it natural selection.

the ling revive timer is so incredibly short that if I don't hold them down while trying to crush them (which will invariably drag me down into space with it), that they'll often get back up as I'm trying to gib them. Gibbing them is just incredibly annoying to do and not very fun for anyone except the ling.

I wouldn't mind seeing the revive timer increased a bit, but agian, if you honestly can't find a way to gib a body in SS13 the problem is you.

If anyone is seriously pining of the days of oldling then I want to punch them in the face. No, oldling was shit and one of the worst things to play against. Being parastung and then dragged into a dark corner of maint or coming back from AFK to be nothing more then a husk was not fun, it was terrible. "They were good in one vs ones!" is also terrible because they weren't just *good* in 1v1s, they were fucking stupid. They also had a tough ass learning curve for people who dont know how to quickly grab and while currentlings may be kinda pathetically weak I'd happily take a role that's at least fun to greif as over one that outright encourages powergaming.

And speaking of which... if you want a heavy nerf to lings (still?) all you really need to do is give them objectives to kill one another (randomly!) or just cut the hive channel completely. Honestly, I personally enjoy selling out my fellow lings even if it means being stuck in the pen at Xenobio. They arn't team antags so it's fair game! Alternatively you could revamp them but like, that would require work! And code! And we all know how important it is that we do super minor fixes to shit and dumb things like moodlets rather then important game changes!

When the freeze is over I'm going to make fire cancel revives, absorbing lings give you a higher point cap in the power menu, and personal hiveminds that only function if you use the "grant hivemind" power on someone.

time to bust out the epic atmos tech ling murderfuck pneumatic fire cannon I have been teamkilling lings for months I am so ready

ShadowDimentio wrote:

Armhulen wrote:

Rustledjimm wrote:Can I just repeat here that I hate ling and it's the only antag I have refused to ever play.

Please nerf. I don't have any input or ideas sorry because I've played it once about 3 years ago and never touched it since but I'm just asking nicely can we please nerf it somehow.

that's like not playing wizard because you hate wizard

the only reason people tolerate it is because eventually you get to be the epic spell man

Wizards are infinitely more fun to fight than lings because wizards, while strong as hell, are the loudest antag we have and is pretty much outed the moment they step on the station. Lings meanwhile are roughly as good as wizards, there's 2-5 of them in a round, AND they're practically undetectable.

Idea: replace lings with wizards (yes, multiple. probably not mixed with traitors because that would be even more of a shitfest); they're more fun both to play as and to fight.

somerandomguy wrote: Idea: replace lings with wizards (yes, multiple. probably not mixed with traitors because that would be even more of a shitfest); they're more fun both to play as and to fight.

This was had as a gamemode once, it really isnt fun. Wizards are very powerful alone but obnoxiously strong when there was more than one

the return of raging magin

Kor wrote:When the freeze is over I'm going to make fire cancel revives, absorbing lings give you a higher point cap in the power menu, and personal hiveminds that only function if you use the "grant hivemind" power on someone.

Latter two sound great, but fully canceling a revive with just a little fire seems excessive. Just nerf the ability to what it used to be (90 seconds I think)

Yeah, tripling (or doubling or whatever) the revive time and halving chem regen rate while on fire would be better IMO since the chem regen hit would also be effective against not-dead lings.

>be AI
>ling EMP's in the teleporter room
>50% hp gone
>disabled forever

good design

Ling should be a progression based side antag.

/thread

CPTANT wrote:Ling should be a progression based side antag.

/thread

why
this side antag meme is getting out of hand
why not just antag antag

PKPenguin321 wrote:

CPTANT wrote:Ling should be a progression based side antag.

/thread

why
this side antag meme is getting out of hand
why not just antag antag

Because progression based antags suck as primary antags and lings only make sense as a progression based role.

Also "side" antag doesn't mean they shouldn't be a threat, a ling that has absorbed enough DNA should be able to fuck up the station royally.

Side antags are great and we should have more of them, they bring variety to the round

No they don't.

Lumbermancer wrote:No they don't.

"Found a traitor now I know what every other antagonist in the round is and will have"

I love me some side antags, but right now we have fewer main antags than ever with the newest one being made in 2010. If anything, I'd want to see 2-3 new main antags.

"I found a traitor, now I know there's traitors. Now I found a revenant, so now I know there's also a revenant".

Except traitor is integral to the round, while side-antag exist only to perpetuate itself and ruin your experience.

Lumbermancer wrote:"I found a traitor, now I know there's traitors. Now I found a revenant, so now I know there's also a revenant".

Except traitor is integral to the round, while side-antag exist only to perpetuate itself and ruin your experience.

But every antag is out there to shoot,bomb,absorb or convert you.

No, not me. Just their target. The fact that murdeboner and murderbomber exists is a player issue. Meanwhile side-antags destroy everything by design.

If you give someone a bunch of cool toys and free valids, they will go on killing sprees. There is no way to stop it without royally pissing off at least 2/3 of the playerbase. We have to accept it and move on.

Armhulen wrote:

Lumbermancer wrote:No they don't.

"Found a traitor now I know what every other antagonist in the round is and will have"

thats something that was supposed to be solved by datum antags I thought, as you could functionally have any antag during any round with them

Dr_bee wrote:

Armhulen wrote:

Lumbermancer wrote:No they don't.

"Found a traitor now I know what every other antagonist in the round is and will have"

thats something that was supposed to be solved by datum antags I thought, as you could functionally have any antag during any round with them

we have datum antags now, we just need to have changelings and traitors have a low chance of happening in every round too

Armhulen wrote:

Dr_bee wrote:

Armhulen wrote:

Lumbermancer wrote:No they don't.

"Found a traitor now I know what every other antagonist in the round is and will have"

thats something that was supposed to be solved by datum antags I thought, as you could functionally have any antag during any round with them

we have datum antags now, we just need to have changelings and traitors have a low chance of happening in every round too

OR SOMETHING! Doesn't have to be crazy!

stop adding baddies to the mix if you’re not going to touch primary antags who are scaled to be the sole antag of the round!!!

Cobby wrote:stop adding baddies to the mix if you’re not going to touch primary antags who are scaled to be the sole antag of the round!!!

ideally we'd have a gamemode that mixes a bunch of side antags roundstart as the game mode instead of traitor and changeling, so nuke ops can stay away from traitors revolvering the cap and nuking immediately