Major cult changes

[lumipharon]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Names went back to runes, but a lot still have wierd names that don't really tell me what they actually do.
practicality>fluff

[Xhuis]

Names went back to runes, but a lot still have wierd names that don't really tell me what they actually do.

Like?

[lumipharon]

Mainly it was just the hide and disguise runes.
Disguise is new, but hide got renamed to veil or something.

Had to actually stop and check what the hell hide had turned into.

Also the nar-sie rune is named something wierd.

Not a huge deal, just something to point out.

More importantly, did you really change the stun paper phrase thing?

[Xhuis]

More importantly, did you really change the stun paper phrase thing?

What do you mean by that?

[lumipharon]

I haven't had a chance to test it out myself, but someone (I think in this thread, or maybe ooc) mentioned that the message thing you say whenyou use a stun talisman ('dreaming sign' evil sealing talisman, or whatever the fuck) is gone.

Literally has no impact on gameplay, other then being readily identifiable as someone using a stun talisman, just we had a thing a while back where somoene tried to change it and it got shut the fuck down.

[Xhuis]

I haven't had a chance to test it out myself, but someone (I think in this thread, or maybe ooc) mentioned that the message thing you say whenyou use a stun talisman ('dreaming sign' evil sealing talisman, or whatever the fuck) is gone.

Literally has no impact on gameplay, other then being readily identifiable as someone using a stun talisman, just we had a thing a while back where somoene tried to change it and it got shut the fuck down.

The Dream Sign thing was the case for invoking all talismans, as far as I know of. Instead of shouting "Dream sign 'Evil sealing talisman'!" at them, you whisper "Fuu ma'jin!" which is the invocation of the stun rune and talisman. I can make them shout it if feedback dictates that people want it that way.

[Saegrimr]

RIP muh 2hu references

[Amelius]

Starting cult numbers needs to decrease, or we need to go back to three-to-convert (but in a larger area, instead of within one space of the rune, make it two). Cults are TOO fast right now, esp. with no research (which is fine).

The escape objective needs to be made more reasonable as well (you START with more cultists than you need for it). Blind papers aren't in yet either.

[Zilenan91]

There's just no salvaging cult mode as a whole. It's shit and unfun, we need to just disable it from rotation until someone fixes it.

[PKPenguin321]

There's just no salvaging cult mode as a whole. It's shit and unfun, we need to just disable it from rotation until someone fixes it.

to be fair, it was worse before xhuis made changes

[Zilenan91]

If anything it's worse now because you'll get magical parapenned right out of the gate instead of 10 minutes in.

[Xhuis]

If anything it's worse now because you'll get magical parapenned right out of the gate instead of 10 minutes in.

This has always been the case to anyone who can do research. When I got roundstart cultist, I could do research in less than three minutes if I got lucky, and you could buy stun talismans from the supply talisman anyway.

[Zilenan91]

Kor put it well.

Its just a bunch of guys who have old parapens, eswords, and armor, who then summon a singularity and the round is over. You don't even have to research the parapens now.

[Oldman Robustin]

You never did, it was standard procedure to make at least one stun talisman from your starter supply. By the time you needed a 2nd one either you had the research done or someone else did.

Also the talisman stun is not that long. I can barely secure people most of the time and I've had plenty of escapees.

I think its funny that people are even arguing cult is OP now, sounds like they just got stomped by cult once and their brain compensated by convincing themselves that cult is just super OP all of a sudden.

Rev and Gangs still make the cult look like a joke.

[Amelius]

You never did, it was standard procedure to make at least one stun talisman from your starter supply. By the time you needed a 2nd one either you had the research done or someone else did.

Also the talisman stun is not that long. I can barely secure people most of the time and I've had plenty of escapees.

I think its funny that people are even arguing cult is OP now, sounds like they just got stomped by cult once and their brain compensated by convincing themselves that cult is just super OP all of a sudden.

Rev and Gangs still make the cult look like a joke.

Like I said before, the ONLY thing OP about current cult is 2 man conversions. Go up to 3 man in a larger radius and it slows down the mode a bit, which I feel is somewhat needed, given security has no efficient way of deconverting, unlike in gang or rev, esp. if the Chaplain is missing.

[Zilenan91]

snip

Are... are you serious? No really, I am legitimately confused.

This is an antagonist that : has a typically better version of old parapens due to mass production, has the ability to stun and convert more people to their side effortlessly with said parapens, has access to eswords that only they can reliably use due to massive brain damage by non-cultists, has armor that's better than sec armor only they can reliably use, has a basic object required for culty stuff do the same damage as a lit welder have no attack message and never runs out of fuel for said damage, has constructs that are completely immune to stuns and are able to produce more shells to make more of them, has the ability to gib literally anyone not wearing the null rod, has the ability to instantly teleport any of your members or themselves that get brigged or are in a tight spot, has the ability for all members of this antagonist to communicate to each other from anywhere, has the ability to instantly spawn a "singularity" and end the round with round start population, has the ability to infinitely have ghosts pop into existence and kill shit/green text for you, has the ability to ghost and look for your sacrifice target/keep a reading on what gear they have and what is guarding them, has the ability to put up invisible walls anywhere they want to, has the ability to make items and bodies invisible, has the ability to resurrect dead cultists which they can teleport to them via the teleport rune, has the ability to heal themselves from non-cultists if standing on a rune, and has the ability to literally one shot entire rooms at once at almost no effort on their part.

You wanna know what the icing on the cake is?

There is only a single item IN THE ENTIRE GAME THAT CAN STOP ANY OF THIS

This mode is unsalvageable. The entire core of its design is utterly flawed and cannot be saved. We need to remove it from rotation.

[Xhuis]

When you look at it from that perspective, all antagonists are overpowered. Look at nuke ops! They're only five people and have enough power to kill the entire station! They can buy an LMG with FORTY bullets and they have enough burst shot to instantly kill someone! The main issue with cult is that, unless you start with a job that gives you ranged capabilities, almost all of your abilities are melee range. Still, I get where you're coming from.

[Scones]

I think his point was that that cult is a stupid fulmination of EVERY antagonist power and has only been held back by player error prior to this.

[Zilenan91]

Sorry for the walls of text, by the way, but if I don't say what I need to say nothing will ever be done about cult and the game will be all the worse for it.


I have a lot of problems with cult, but that's one of the main ones, yes. They do everything that almost every other antagonist does at no downside. They spread as fast as Gangs, and can shit out a stupid amount of parapens.
Unlike gangs, however, if you assault their stronghold, it means almost nothing. I can guarantee you that all of them or almost all of them will have teleport talismans so they just gtfo as soon as they see you.

One last, and one of the biggest problems with cult, is the deconversion situation. It needs a chaplain. It also needs the chaplain not to be spaced along with his null rod, the single item in the entire game that prevents you from being parapenned/one shot by blood boil. No, I don't care that you can order religious supplies through cargo, because it only gives you about 120 units, which is 3 conversions that take like five minutes each and can be stopped by a cultist just slapping their friend with their book (35 holy water to decon one, and if slapped with book, buffs them due to it being unholy water) and some useless bibles. No chaplain = murder literally everyone as non-cult because the alternatives are too hard and can fail too easily. It's rev before loyalty implants with an antag that is more powerful and spreads slightly slower. Another problem here is that there is no way to tell who is or is not a cultist without relevant contraband. No sec officer will ever call the chaplain in every round to give them holy water to feed it to their prisoners or they get banned for metagaming. This also means that if the cult doesn't keep their tomes on them (they can still hear cult communication without them too afaik) sec has no way to determine if they're a cultist, so they brig or permabrig them, then they either get out once their time is over or get teleported out and the cult loses nothing. If cult was to be remade, there would need to be a way to determine who is a cultist like shadowling thralls.

Personally, my own opinion on cult is fuck stun paper. Before you say, "but cult needs stun paper to convert!" is that it actually does not. Cult literally doesn't even need to convert any more due to its objectives requiring less than they have at round start, which means they make parapens, gib everyone, make constructs, and kill the entire station. Even if they don't get greentext which nobody actually gives a shit about, they can quite easily and quite often murder the entire station for literally no effort other than clicking on a bunch of dudes once, optionally cuffing them, and beating their skulls in while they can do nothing. Understandably, this is fucking shit and unengaging to the non-cultists. It's the same exact situation with old parasting. You CANNOT EVER stand near anyone or go in maint or you get GGNORE'd by stun paper and either gibbed or converted. This is does not build tension or make an "atmosphere of paranoia," because once again, you get clicked on once and you're dead.

Restating my earlier opinion, none of this can be fixed without completely redesigning cult, and currently, it's just shit for everyone involved to sit through it. It needs to go.

[Oldman Robustin]

Zilenan please make a serious post.

Conversion aren't effortless, they're high visibility/high risk and it requires coordination between cultists.

Stun talismans are not parapens. They're a stun baton with mute.

They cannot summon nar sie with their starter population, and they will fail if they summon it before completing their objective.

Cult are also the antag type that is weakest to deconversion. Unlike revs/gangs, cult can be deconverted with a nearly infinite item (blessed water tanks), throw in an implant and you can build up a team of holy rollers from ex-cultists in no time.

Only thing I am not too comfy with is the full research at roundstart. I think going back to the previous unlock method would be a fine balance with some of the latest cult improvements.

[Zilenan91]

Stun Paper stuns for ten seconds (+3 seconds versus stunbaton which is just under 50% increase in stun time) and mutes for 15. This means that you can quite comfortably slap someone with a piece of paper, cuff them, drag them somewhere, take the headset off, and they'll still be muted for about five seconds. You can also make at least 30 of these in an average round, so if one isn't enough, just slap them with two. Hell, stun papers only purpose isn't just for conversion, slap a sec officer with one, drag him into maint, bag and tag, gib him, win the game due to having a taser and sec gear. It's so, so effortless to do this that it's stupid.

Speaking of conversions, yeah, they're also effortless. You slap someone with a piece of paper, bag and tag, set up tp rune in wherever you're hiding, tell your buds to tp over, they do, beep boop got a convert.

And yes, they can summon nar nar with round start population. As far as I know, nar nar did and still does require 9 cultists. If I'm not wrong, they still start with nine, just needing their sac target, unless it's low pop where they start with six.

Thing about cult deconversion is that if there's no chaplain, which there often isn't, or if he gets spaced/suicides or if his null rod (the only thing in the entire game that can stop rune stupidity) gets spaced, you're basically fucked because the religious supplies crate is useless. Once again, you also have no way to know who is a cult without relevant contraband.

I'm also gonna restate my point about how cultists are encouraged to set up autism forts like gangs are, yet they have so many escape abilities built into them that if they ever lose said autism fort that it means literally nothing, unlike gangs. They just tp away, get more converts, and the round is over because sec couldn't catch them long enough to stop them from converting. The alternative is that they just murder everyone with construct spam, which is easier than ever now that they can make stun paper round start. Slap someone with a piece of paper, beat to death with whatever item you have on hand, drag onto sac rune, gib, make construct, make artificer, stun another dude, beat to death, make wraith, kill AI, kill another dude, then never make anything but juggernauts forever.