/tg/Station 13

Right, tl;dr, why is it possible to have 5 pylons surrounding a single person so they can support about 7 manifested ghosts allowing for waves and waves of people with extremely high force weapons to get repeatedly sent, killed, and repeated, basically making the station's loyalists have to fight a war in which each of them gets one life and the cultists get infinite?

Pylons were a mistake

Pylons aren't really the problem so much as the manifest rune is - I have never seen it used for anything but various forms of abuse.

Manifest rune deals 0.1 damage every 3 deciseconds
Pylons heal 1 damage every 25 deciseconds

You're taking 1 damage from the rune every 30 deciseconds, but being healed for 1 damage every 25...
Meaning by 30 deciseconds you've been healed once, and are 5 deciseconds into the cooldown of another heal, this means 1 ghost is negated by 1 pylon
so with the max of 8 pylons around you you can maintain 8 ghosts.

This is a bit high, it should probably be 2 pylons per ghost, so that you can only really split one person 4-way, but even that is a bit much.

Edit: if you saw my maths from earlier it was way wrong, but should be right now.

Blood cult should summon unspeakable horrors, not naked see-through people

Cult has a 50% win rate even with this

50% win rate isn't the end all be all of balancing. In my experience it is usually a complete stomp in either direction (and many cult losses are because security just decides to red alert evacuation at the 22 minute mark, not because they fought them).

perfect balance is 50% win rate, but as kor said, NOT a completely stomp in either case.
50% of the time sec completely wiping the cult is bad
50% of the time the cult completely dominating sec is bad
50% of the time a great to and fro battle between both sides ending in a victory for the true victor, is perfect.

Biggest issue with ghosts is actually the ineptitude of people casting, they never bring chairs so they can actually stand still and not get pushed off and around by the same ghosts/others they are summoning. If i had a penny every single time people screwed up the final ritual with pushing & not understanding that they have to stand PERFECTLY STILL ontop a ruin i would be a rich man.

Its either potentially super-noob ghosts or use extremely strong constructs - ok not actually strong, juggernauts are pretty strong but the teleporting ones are AI murder, artificers are just kinda shitty healing guys who can abuse their abilities to make infinite metal by cultists welding the walls using a autolathes infinite supply of welders last time i remember unless that was changed.

We have cult golems now, i can't see why we can't use those assets now instead if we powered golem shells with shards or some shit to move away from simple-mob constructs.

The problem is that Manifest Ghost is crucial if you're the last cultist, to be used to convert others.

Honestly cult ghosts should have a timer, and a max range away from the rune (maybe 10 tiles?), and there should be hard limit on ghosts you can summon from one rune, like 2 at a time at most to invoke some of the three-cult runes, or even one max. Manifest Ghost shouldn't be a Free Narsie Summon because you made one rune, a pylon, and a narsie rune.

The biggest problem with Manifest Ghost is that ghosts can run wild on the station as long as the manifester stays healthy, which with pylons isn't a problem, and as soon as a cult ghost dies it can just resummon itself. Security can't deal with an un-ending stream of ghosts and cultists eventually win a war of attrition if they can't find the base, as a ghost will eventually get in a lucky hit on an officer, and they'll be dead, and it becomes a conversion mode that you don't have to keep the crew alive to win.

This needs to be nerfed so that the rune can be used mainly for its original purpose: to help summoners invoke nearby runes.

I've never seen manifest use outside of summoning people for Narssy, now all of a sudden someone thinks of a use for it and we immediately try to remove it? Not cool.

Another "fix" to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

Yakumo_Chen wrote:The problem is that Manifest Ghost is crucial if you're the last cultist, to be used to convert others.

Honestly cult ghosts should have a timer, and a max range away from the rune (maybe 10 tiles?), and there should be hard limit on ghosts you can summon from one rune, like 2 at a time at most to invoke some of the three-cult runes, or even one max. Manifest Ghost shouldn't be a Free Narsie Summon because you made one rune, a pylon, and a narsie rune.

The biggest problem with Manifest Ghost is that ghosts can run wild on the station as long as the manifester stays healthy, which with pylons isn't a problem, and as soon as a cult ghost dies it can just resummon itself. Security can't deal with an un-ending stream of ghosts and cultists eventually win a war of attrition if they can't find the base, as a ghost will eventually get in a lucky hit on an officer, and they'll be dead, and it becomes a conversion mode that you don't have to keep the crew alive to win.

This needs to be nerfed so that the rune can be used mainly for its original purpose: to help summoners invoke nearby runes.

That is unless you were to somehow rework the rune as a scrying orb that did damage the longer you were in it, because really without limiting the ghosts (making them literally ethereal, with no hands and similar to revenants) they are just greytide as you describe, which is also very annoying.

FantasticFwoosh wrote: That is unless you were to somehow rework the rune as a scrying orb that did damage the longer you were in it

>It's "Fwoosh criticizes a game without playing it" episode again
Jesus Christ, I'm so tired of these ones.

InsaneHyena wrote:

FantasticFwoosh wrote: That is unless you were to somehow rework the rune as a scrying orb that did damage the longer you were in it

>It's "Fwoosh criticizes a game without playing it" episode again
Jesus Christ, I'm so tired of these ones.

fwoosh trying to be relevant
fwoosh trying to have people to talk to

Fun ghost armies are so rare.
Nobody ever litters the station with invisible teleport runes and sends surprise raid parties.

Was that meant to be ironic or did he just describe astral projection without knowing of its existence

EDIT: hold on you can invisibilize teleport runes and they still work as a receiver?

XDTM wrote:

InsaneHyena wrote:

FantasticFwoosh wrote: That is unless you were to somehow rework the rune as a scrying orb that did damage the longer you were in it

>It's "Fwoosh criticizes a game without playing it" episode again
Jesus Christ, I'm so tired of these ones.

Was that meant to be ironic or did he just describe astral projection without knowing of its existence

EDIT: hold on you can invisibilize teleport runes and they still work as a receiver?

I forget, i turned cult off my settings a long time ago though im broadly familiar with it. Now that you mention it i do vaguely remember what you mean, and regret suggesting it. Its just a natural leap of logic if its straight up better than ghosts. Weird. Do people still use that rune anymore? Kinda linking it back to the whole arguement that people can't sit still for two seconds in cult rounds to just use a rune that requires their presence.

An army of spirits is a fun concept. Removing it would be cruel. Could you not just change the summoned mob to be something else? Rather than having a fully working human mob with hands, how about some shitty spirit like the ones that come out of soulstones?

If sneaky runes are an issue, could you not have the rune announce itself like the clockcult Astral Portal thingy? Although having such a massive disadvantage would require a buff to Manifest Spirits, imo.

XDTM wrote:[...]
EDIT: hold on you can invisibilize teleport runes and they still work as a receiver?

That is what I meant, and they do. or at least they did at one point.

Alex Crimson wrote:An army of spirits is a fun concept. Removing it would be cruel. Could you not just change the summoned mob to be something else? Rather than having a fully working human mob with hands, how about some shitty spirit like the ones that come out of soulstones?

If sneaky runes are an issue, could you not have the rune announce itself like the clockcult Astral Portal thingy? Although having such a massive disadvantage would require a buff to Manifest Spirits, imo.

Ehh, just have some sort of effect (a crackle of red energy etc) when people come through? i mean if ("You hear a eerie crack in space and time") and suddenly a ghost appears then you know its somewhere within your radius and even if the rune is invisible you'd have a seeable indicator when its in use via this crackling red energy effect for like a second after a ghost arrives but only when its in use.

It's not fun as security to battle an endless army of ghosts. Normally when I kill an antag they don't come back or it takes resources to bring them back, but with manifest spirit you can literally just sit on a rune forever and have a literally infinite army of antags do your work for you.

Ghost armies have been around forever, and it's not hard to just build an off-station base with a teleport rune to send in infinity fully geared cult ghosts (complete with 40 brute weapon, strong armor, and ranged stun), where you will never be found and you will never be countered and never be killed. It's no surprise that every cult round ever results in an immediate shuttle call because nobody wants to deal with Free Antag spam.

Limit the rune to on-station only? Pretty simple nerf.

Cult has been limited to on station/mining runes for months now because white ship memes.
EDIT: AND to non-space tiles since early Feb

I've already said several times that I'm revisiting this with my rune PR. I've got some great ideas and naked people spam is not my ideal cult strat either.

Realistically though this has always been a pretty weak combat option. The summoned humans were worthless unless you had sufficient gear and/or arming talismans lying around, even then they have a giant "VALID ME" appearance and you're playing the robustness lottery to see if you actually get someone who can pull their weight. Generally the people smart enough to assemble a ghost army rune with proper equipment are also the kind of people who could achieve more on their own than a bunch of clueless ghosts. Basic economic incentives also discouraged this strat because what player wants to stare at a wall while a bunch of dead people get to go out and have all the fun. That's why im going to expand this rune so its not so awkward.

My plan is to limit the number of ghosts to 3 or so. Give them the basic cult loadout (robed, sword, bola, tome) and maybe even combine it with astral journey so that you can scout around as a ghost and then switch to "summoning mode". Ideally the "ghosted" summoner and the summoned ghosts would be able to have some basic interaction so that the player could function more like a squad leader and use his ghost to direct his minions - but that's getting ahead of my coding ability.

I've got a long list of gameplay improvements that I can make with confidence now that cult is the most balanced mode I've ever seen. I will almost certainly at least test the concept of forcing cultists to summon in one of three randomly selected rooms, the hard part is conveying that to the cultists in an obvious fashion so I don't have to hear months and months of "WHY CANT I SUMMON AHHHH".

I still feel like they should summon eldritch horrors and not naked people

XDTM wrote:I still feel like they should summon eldritch horrors and not naked people

Bloodletters i guess, or maybe some kind of modified jellyperson subspecies (since they are pretty gross aesthetically, not literally suggesting jellypeople) with squid arms to fit the theme.

Oldman Robustin wrote: My plan is to limit the number of ghosts to 3 or so. Give them the basic cult loadout (robed, sword, bola, tome) and maybe even combine it with astral journey so that you can scout around as a ghost and then switch to "summoning mode". Ideally the "ghosted" summoner and the summoned ghosts would be able to have some basic interaction so that the player could function more like a squad leader and use his ghost to direct his minions - but that's getting ahead of my coding ability.

Ghosts don't have to be robust. They can just gear up with a rune and a stack of paper for armor memes and teleport onto the station to try and kill everyone. Since they have infinite lives being 'robust' isn't an issue. Eventually they're going to get a valid and that's one less person they have to deal with overrunning the station.

Rewarding the summoner for being a jackass and being able to summon infinite armies is shit and does not need to make playing against the summoner I will never find hidden in a space cube on a rune with 25 pylons an even stronger asshole. They can use the ghost-self rune anyway to direct people, or ghosts can just use their free metagame 'I am a ghost anyway fuck you' ability to just direct themselves.

The problem with infinite ghost armies is that me, the robust HoS, is eventually going to be hit by a stun, eventually going to miss their taser shot, and it's GG NO RE for me as they kill me in 5 seconds with their force 40 sword. Meanwhile, if I tase and GG them, it's no problem, they'll be back on the station looking for me in just another 30 seconds, at full health, with a new set of armor, stun throwable, and force 40 sword, none of which I can use back against them because they're cult items that will seriously fuck me over if I so much as touch them.


Last time I fought a ghost army, I had to kill the same guy half a dozen times before he got lucky and killed me, and crew only won that round because as soon as I was teleported a meteor hit their space cube and I was able to float out into space and inconvenience the cult for another 20 minutes before they summoned a ghost with space armor to retrieve my body, and then after all that the cult got blown up by a suicide miner with bomb rocks. Sure it was hilarious but it prolonged t he round for like an hour because cult did nothing but summon ghosts and golems to try to (almost) win.

Ghost Army Cult is shit.

Ghost Rune should only be useful for activating other cult runes, like Offer or Summon Cultist. In fact, I believe more radical nerfs should be put in effect, not buffs. Ghosts should be 1-HP constructs that aren't useful for fighting, only for scouting or for their actual, intended purpose: activating runes because there's not enough [competent] cultists alive to help you use them.

How many times have you seen a cultist use ghosts for 9 Man EMPs or blood boil instead of the same old 'lel ghost army' or 'lel couldn't win the conversion game so im just gonna 8 ghost narsie' shit? Cult needs to Git Gud, not just rely on a shitty Free Win crutch.

In defense of manifest spirit, the rune really sucks without pylons and pylons are hard to get.

Literally just go in EVA/Robo/Engineering there's like 10 free plasteel there. On delta there's a whole stack of 30. Or god forbid you can't just deconstruct a few rwalls or rtables or just go get some from the ORM / Mine.

99% of the time you can just hack into EVA and get free plasteel. Security almost never cares about EVA break ins because its done every single round and there's nothing important in there you can't get easily anywhere else, aside from maybe jetpacks. Robos break in every shift for metal and assistants break in every shift for a suit and jetpack, and every time gravity goes down it's instantly broken into to steal all the magboots. Nobody is ever going to miss the plasteel and only maybe Robotics wants it to loot.

or just tear down infinite rune walls you get from an artificer.

ExcessiveCobblestone wrote:or just tear down infinite rune walls you get from an artificer.

WHY DID I NEVER THINK OF THIS

I did think of this but it gives you no metal when the artificer also breaks it down meaning you have to sit there burning your eyes out until you can pylon it up

Is this bait?

yeah