/tg/Station 13

Bottom post of the previous page:

Still wondering how ling shrieks bypassing earmuffs was labelled not a bug.

*Ling makes sound to disorientate you, earmuffs block sounds*

*get deafened and disorientated anyway*

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:Oh boy, it's almost like changelings are super-hard to kill without the right kit, like they're meant to be, instead of being walking pinatas of valid-kills for anyone with an 8-brute weapon.

Holy shit don't throw common sense around like that all willy nilly someone might get hurt.

Lings don't get ranged weapons.

They don't get stuns.

Both of those things are hallmarks of being "robust" as a character in this game.

They make up for this by being HARD TO KILL. You actually have to put some thought into how you're going to destroy a changeling and put some effort into it, not just "LOL I HAVE A RANGED STUN AND YOU DONT SO IM GOING TO STUN YOU THEN HARMSTUNBATON YOU INTO OBLIVION."

If Lings had their old EMP then there might be some merit to this argument, but when lings were still in their completely impotent state someone decided to nerf EMP's so that you can still get lethaled with a laser after EMP'ing it.

Conclusion: If the crew is incompetent, then almost any competent antag will run circles around them and ruin their day. Who in their right mind is upset now that Lings can occasionally reach parity with other antags?

Have you fucking PLAYED current ling?

I literally walked into the brig round start and just murdered the entire department, the captain and the sec borg.
This was BEFORE I looted the armoury.

With the current deathsquad tier armour, engorged ballsacks and fleshmend, you literally CANNOT fucking die.
Stick on arm blade, emp and adrenal, and everyone is royally fucked unless there is multiple people chain stunning you with non energy weapon stuns while also cuffing you.

And that's if the lings don't work together.

lumipharon wrote:Have you fucking PLAYED current ling?

I literally walked into the brig round start and just murdered the entire department, the captain and the sec borg.
This was BEFORE I looted the armoury.

With the current deathsquad tier armour, engorged ballsacks and fleshmend, you literally CANNOT fucking die.
Stick on arm blade, emp and adrenal, and everyone is royally fucked unless there is multiple people chain stunning you with non energy weapon stuns while also cuffing you.

And that's if the lings don't work together.

The EMP makes it really lethal, after the first emp all your tasers and laser guns are fucked and you are reduced to either using the auto rifle (which is in the game temporary) or baton bashing. While this was always a strong combo for lings its now quite ridiculous.

Ohw and this is when you are sec, otherwise you are just fucked.

have you tried not 1v1ing changelings

when sec unloads literally 40 shots into your face and you don't even need to bother dodging, yeah, have fun.

Armour nerf just got merged though, so there's that.

Lumi was correct, I saw a single Changeling absolutly annihalte half a dozen people in the HoP's office as well as tank about 10 laser and 30 ballistic rounds from security, he eventually went down when a Detective and Assistant ambushed him when said ling was retreating from a security officer.

But the armour nerf is in so this is a moot point.

Steelpoint wrote:Lumi was correct, I saw a single Changeling absolutly annihalte half a dozen people in the HoP's office as well as tank about 10 laser and 30 ballistic rounds from security, he eventually went down when a Detective and Assistant ambushed him when said ling was retreating from a security officer.

But the armour nerf is in so this is a moot point.

I wasn't retreating from a sec officer, I was actually looking for more people to kill before the detective used his revolver.

The only thing that was really inconveniencing me in that office was when the HoP started disabling me, but that was only because I'm terrible at chem conservation and didn't have the 30 for adrenal. Then once the HoP went down someone took his egun and switched it to lethal shots which were hilariously useless against me - found out from Kor later that they were doing literally 6 damage.

Has anyone every thought of not using lethals on a changeling that can fleshmeld.

WHOA FANCY THAT! Just stun, approach while stunning, baton to death, cuff (bonus points for NOT BEING SOLO SO IT'S EASY AS FUCK WITH ONE PERSON WHACKING AT THEM WITH A BATON AND THE OTHER CUFFING). Beat to death on the way to the gibber/incinerator. If they transform, keep whacking them since there's a rather large delay.

Done. Remember that lings have fewer numbers than changelings. Also recall that they can 50/50 kill each other. Remember that lings have no mid-long range utility, all they get is durability.

It's balanced, holy shit. Do you guys really want to go back to those 3 hour long ling rounds where all the lings get dunked in the first 5 minutes because they regenerated chems so slowly on top of having no mid-long range utility or even durability. You had enough chems for 2 anti-stuns (half the time unsuccessful, especially if you're being batonned or cornered) and 1 fleshmeld, maybe if that, ignoring if you had reduced chems from the start of combat (likely given the ridiculously slow regen rate). You were a crippled traitor - no gear, no equipment, no utility, only the ability to adrenaline through two stuns at most, and heal superficial damage.

Lings are in that same spot now, except they actually excel at durability, their primary role since they have the chems and the chem regen to do so. No longer do we have to suffer through 3 hours of lings shitting spiders stationwide and transform stinging everyone, because doing only those sorts of 'gimmicks' were viable for a changeling to survive. Everyone complaining is complaining simply because they're using fucking lethals on a changeling without subduing it.

Also: for those complaining about EMP. It forces them to close into melee and EMP was nerfed anyways so it shouldn't drain all your guns to 0 unless they waste 40 chems on EMP shouting. Your baton will still work, in which case you just have to best a changeling with an armblade in glorious melee combat, of which they are operating at a slight advantage. You have to hit them once to knock them down, but they can get right back up 2 times while you have to conserve the battery. They have to hit you several times to knock you down flat out. Seems pretty fair for a 1v1 against an unallied antagonist, given they have a gigantic 'VALID' sign hanging over their head and you, the officer, can call for backup. Also, having armblade + armor active uses ALOT of your chem regeneration, so the moment they run out of chems it's gee gee.

I don't think that fleshmend is op after these changes but adrenal glands make the lings very hard to keep down with stuns.

If lings can't use adrenals to instantly negate 3 full stuns guaranteed in addition to a general 50% stun reduction for 25 seconds each time they use said adrenals, in addition to having their fleshmend power which puts adminodrazine to shame in terms of insane heal rates (ten brute, burn and oxy per second for ten seconds), then they're obviously completely toothless and may as well be removed from the game. And it's so awful that they don't have any built in stuns (other than their dissonant shriek which fucks people's movement to the point of uselessness), if only there were objects on station like tasers, stunprods, stunbatons, water, bananas, lube, soap, or any other number of tools on station that a ling could use to detain people... Nope, no way a ling could ever stun anyone, so they NEED to be impossible to kill for some reason

The whole point of ling is that traditional lethal are not going to be lethal against them.

They can break out a few stuns if they dump all their chems on it, but each security officer has 20+ stuns ready to blow against them.

I've played plenty of rounds and I never felt like lings were OP. If a ling wasted points on armor then just laugh and apply stuns knowing it gave up something critical in return for the armor.

>1 dna point
>cuts stun durations of most stuns in half
>makes you effectively imune to damage

on top of

>100 chem amount
>x4 chem recharge
>spam emp/adrenal/res for days

And this is all assuming the ling doesn't have a pile of guns and equipment, so good luck with that.

You also have to remember that adrenal surge also poisons them and fleshmend doesn't heal poison damage, anatomic panacea does but that costs just as much as fleshmend to use and also further narrows the Ling's toybox, as well as cure their diseases (both good and bad) and superpowers/disabilities as I recall. Simply put, you can't have Armour+Armblade+EMP Shriek+Fleshmend+Adrenal Surge+Engorged Glands and Anatomic Panacea all at once. You could use viro to get around the need for anatomic panacea but you still won't be able to get everything on the list.
I've found that the big and under-played advantage for lings is the re-adapt option after you've sucked a corpse or two, which is handy if you need to lose most of your stealth for combat.

And even an optimal combat build will require you to sacrifice something or acquire items/abilities to get around the limitations so lings can't be unstoppable robustness incarnate roundstart.

Plus, you know, 1v1ing a Ling is 'meant' to be suicidal and requires cooperation to defeat instead of the brave, lone greyshirt and his trusty toolbox. They are, at heart, an ambush predator.

Beat a ling into crit 4 times within a 30 second period.

Stunned or knocked him down upwards of 10 times.

He still managed to kill me simply by making me bleed to death.

I don't know what to tell you if you think you should be able to bonk a regenerating horror to death on your own.

Saegrimr wrote:I don't know what to tell you if you think you should be able to bonk a regenerating horror to death on your own.

I think they should have skills and abilities to help them not get into a near death situation.

Not 'Oh i'm being beaten here and about to die? Better hit my I win button".

Which they can then use several times in under a minute to heal most of the damage and start going again.

Changelings aren't meant to be solo'd (at least I hope not) and the best way to kill a ling is by overwhelming them. They're most dangerous in melee and their EMP shriek tends to force Sec into fighting them head-on but you can still wear them down even with engorged glands. Best bet is to overwhelm them and force them to deplete all their chems on fleshmend which can leave them up shit creek without a paddle if they can't get enough chems for regen stasis ready in time to avoid cremation/gibbing/spiking/Brain surgery.
Plus someone mentioned the "one guy stuns and another guy cuffs technique" earlier and Changelings have no innate ability to remove handcuffs beyond their lesser form which forces them to abandon their equipment and that's assuming you aren't quick enough to catch them on the rebound. And even if they do escape, they can't grow themselves a new ID (A PDA they can though but it's jsut cosmetic and has no utility) and Sec/Silicons can spot someone without an ID pretty easily and demand they try to take everything off (unless they prepared a clothes/ID ahead of time).
Fleshmend's powerful but it doesn't make you unkillable and Lings are a joke in combat without it if they haven't acquired at least sec-grade equipment. Seriously, next time you get Ling get into fight with lethals and don't use fleshmend. You'll drop very quickly.

Shaps wrote:If lings can't use adrenals to instantly negate 3 full stuns guaranteed in addition to a general 50% stun reduction for 25 seconds each time they use said adrenals,n

*cough* adrenal implant
3 instant stun recoveries, whenever you want them, as fast as you can click the big HUD button.

adrenal implants will OD you on omnizine and kill you though.

lumipharon wrote:adrenal implants will OD you on omnizine and kill you though.

Someone added suicide-juice to the fucking adrenals?

motherfuck let me go fix that

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:

lumipharon wrote:adrenal implants will OD you on omnizine and kill you though.

Someone added suicide-juice to the fucking adrenals?

motherfuck let me go fix that

Only if you use all three charges in rapid succession. Complete waste of an implant, if you ask me.

Actually it injects 10u per click so you'd need to activate it three times in the same tick to overdose on it, which I don't even think is possible, soo

So lumi is telling massive porkies again?

I remember when someone was CMO tator and injected themselves with their entire hypospray, then shortly after had to use their adrenal implant. It made them OD and die because they didn't know Omnizine was also in the adrenal implant.

Was pretty hilarious, honestly, although I do have to agree it was bullshit for the CMO. Kinda a rare case.

Well, being a heal-tank and having bio-terror weapons is the CMO's unique advantage. A doctor, while normally pacifist, becomes a truly terrifying force when provoked, and he has intricate knowledge of how your body works, and from that, the most extreme ways of killing you.

You can make infinite adrenal implants with R&D if you're not a scrub, and dorf was directly saying "as fast as you can click the button".

So yes, if you spam the button you will OD and probably die horribly.

lumipharon wrote:You can make infinite adrenal implants with R&D if you're not a scrub, and dorf was directly saying "as fast as you can click the button".

So yes, if you spam the button you will OD and probably die horribly.

yeah, and if you hit adrenal glands too many times in combat you will not have enough chems to do it again and get cuffed and probably die horribly
what's the problem here again?

lumipharon wrote:You can make infinite adrenal implants with R&D if you're not a scrub, and dorf was directly saying "as fast as you can click the button".

So yes, if you spam the button you will OD and probably die horribly.

You physically can't activate an implant 3 times in a second

Byond second~

a single tick is like 2 seconds at most or something and with Byond Input Lag TM it would be impressive if you actually managed to do that to yourself and also very intentional

That's also only assuming you're using a single implant, not multiple, like my entire point was about.
But like I said, I only brought it up because dorf specically said "as fast as you can press the button".

You can have 6 uses of adrenal in you at a time (and can immediately inject more after use), so yes, if you press the button as fast as you can, I am pretty sure you will OD and die/getshrekt.