Bloodcult feedback thread

[Dax Dupont]

Since theres a CC thread we should have a bloodcult thread.

I would like to start off with why do mirror shields stop mech rockets?

[onleavedontatme]

Constructs from sacrificing continues to be too cheap of a way to get soulstones, it means any battle between sec and cult that doesn't end in a cult wipe will immediately see the dead cultists and security recycled into more cultists.

Have not seen many rounds of it though

[Dr_bee]

Constructs from sacrificing continues to be too cheap of a way to get soulstones, it means any battle between sec and cult that doesn't end in a cult wipe will immediately see the dead cultists and security recycled into more cultists.

Have not seen many rounds of it though

Thank god someone else sees the problem with getting constructs from dead or mind-shielded people.

It is almost better to not mind-shield people as you can at least de-convert human cultists.

who made that change in the first place?

[Cobby]

It was a long time ago when ghost roles were sparse so dying sucked

[onleavedontatme]

Constructs from sacrificing continues to be too cheap of a way to get soulstones, it means any battle between sec and cult that doesn't end in a cult wipe will immediately see the dead cultists and security recycled into more cultists.

Have not seen many rounds of it though

Thank god someone else sees the problem with getting constructs from dead or mind-shielded people.

It is almost better to not mind-shield people as you can at least de-convert human cultists.

who made that change in the first place?

I was actually the one who added soulstones way back in the day, but when I added them you could only get them from your roundstart supply talisman or an artificer (ditto for the shells) so it at least cost a decent amount to start up and taking out the artificers would cripple production of them.

I think Malkevin is the one who added the sac rune gibbing people into shades. Not sure who made the shells buildable with metal.

[Stickymayhem]

Constructs from sacrificing continues to be too cheap of a way to get soulstones, it means any battle between sec and cult that doesn't end in a cult wipe will immediately see the dead cultists and security recycled into more cultists.

Have not seen many rounds of it though

Thank god someone else sees the problem with getting constructs from dead or mind-shielded people.

It is almost better to not mind-shield people as you can at least de-convert human cultists.

who made that change in the first place?

I was actually the one who added soulstones way back in the day, but when I added them you could only get them from your roundstart supply talisman or an artificer (ditto for the shells) so it at least cost a decent amount to start up and taking out the artificers would cripple production of them.

I think Malkevin is the one who added the sac rune gibbing people into shades. Not sure who made the shells buildable with metal.

Buildable shells is definitely the problem here and should be the bottleneck. Revert it back to artificers only. Might even have to take it off the paper because cult forges give supply talismans

[ShadowDimentio]

Constructs from sacrificing continues to be too cheap of a way to get soulstones, it means any battle between sec and cult that doesn't end in a cult wipe will immediately see the dead cultists and security recycled into more cultists.

Have not seen many rounds of it though

>Haven't seen many rounds of it but it's STILL A PROBLEM

If you want a decent complaint, it's that access to the morgue lets the cultists get like 5 constructs roundstart if the suicide bounty was plentiful. But even then that's just gameplay, there's nothing really wrong with constructs imo.

[onleavedontatme]

I've seen many rounds of constructs being too easy for cultists to mass produce. The mechanic has either remained unchanged or gotten easier over a period of years. The key word was "continues to be"

"It" was meant to refer to the latest iteration of blood cult which I guess may have been unclear.

[Oldman Robustin]

Im pretty set on nerfing construct production or toning them down in some fashion.

I'm probably going to start with 2 shells to just 1 shell from the archives, its been around for almost 2 years at this point but using supply paper for runed metal and archives for supply talisman ---> 2 shells wasn't something the average cultist would think to do, now with some of those middle steps removed people are learning to make construct factories.

Easy soul shards is a much harder problem to solve. On one hand we can't go back to "STAY IN YOUR CORPSE REEEEEEE" gameplay for sacrifices, but I don't think cult bases should easily turn into corpse factories either. Reducing shell production at least puts some brakes on that cycle since you have to rely on artificers and outside of a defense context artificers are pretty garbage in combat.

I might reduce the "reflect" rate on juggs a little too (its not true reflect, they still take 50% damage on "reflected shots), just so shotguns don't feel nearly so mandatory. For now I'm just in "wait and see" mode, the meta is very unsettled - the 1 shell from archive change is unoffensive enough I might PR that regardless.

Edit: I honestly don't see the cult going out of their way to try and harvest suicides but that's an easy enough fix. Catatonics shouldn't yield a full shard but I guess there's no harm in removing the empty shard for them either.

Edit2: Mirror shields stop rockets as well as the costume vendor roman shields do, its just shield code dunno what I can do about that.

[onleavedontatme]

With improved force wall + that ranged attack I'm not sure juggernauts need reflect at all anymore honestly.

And yeah shotguns are miserable to rely on for such a large health pool post shotgun nerf.

We need some kind of flag on a mob to differentiate between "had a player at one point" and "was never a player" so you can't screw the cult over by ghosting before they can shard, but the cult can't just harvest NPC bodies either.

[Oldman Robustin]

While I'm pretty sure that sac'ing catatonics only yields empty shards, I suppose one compromise would be to just do ghost-grabs on anyone sacrificed and only have polling if people are cultbanned. If the person you sac'd no longer has a ghost it probably just means that its a stale kill or something and it makes sense not to reward a full soul for raiding the morgue/genetics. I only wonder if there's a way to prevent people from just DC'ing as a sacrifice-dodge tactic just like ghosting was used before.

[Bombadil]

While I'm pretty sure that sac'ing catatonics only yields empty shards, I suppose one compromise would be to just do ghost-grabs on anyone sacrificed and only have polling if people are cultbanned. If the person you sac'd no longer has a ghost it probably just means that its a stale kill or something and it makes sense not to reward a full soul for raiding the morgue/genetics. I only wonder if there's a way to prevent people from just DC'ing as a sacrifice-dodge tactic just like ghosting was used before.

Could there be a time-based check on when they disconnected? Or a check on if they were connected when they died?

[Dr_bee]

I still dont understand why attempting to convert people who have mindshields or are dead needs to give a shard in the first place? Doesnt it kind of defeat the purpose of mind shielding people if it just means the cult gets a free stun-immune simple mob instead of a deconvertable cultist.

Mind shielding used to no-sell conversion runes, when that existed the station actually had a way to fight the exponential growth of the conversion process and the cult had less of an incentive to go super loud, super fast and to keep their captives alive.

The counter play to implants was always controlling the cloner or surgically removing the implant, with the current shard system the counter play to implants is to keep doing what you were doing before with no change, just you get simple mobs instead of cultists.

[Cobby]

We lost a round just last night because we killed nearly all cultists but one managed to nab a kill and then roll out constructs to victory.

It was pretty dumb to say the least.

[Oldman Robustin]

Keeping people in the game is generally a good thing and making mindshields completely ruin the value of a sacrifice would just push things toward Rev where if you can rush out implants then suddenly the cult starves because they can't recruit or gain constructs. Also I dunno what you mean by "no sell", you could always sacrifice mindshielded people for a soul shard if they stayed in their body.

I'll start with shell reduction and remove suicides and see where that gets us.

[Sweets]

Rework seems ok. I feel it is slightly weaker in the non-construct portion of the cult than it used to be.

Jugg health and wraith damage could probably use a tweak down and buffs be given to artificers stats and cult resource generation or Narsie armor.

I will say though the station wide EMP is retarded. That spell may as well be called "Delaminate the SM" and makes AI's even more vulnerable when Wraiths are almost already a assured kill on them. Perhaps they could disable all lighting across the station and some baseline night vision could be given to a piece of cult gear/add a night vision spell?

In addition, much like clock cult, deconversion is still a chore. I would keep the current method in, but maybe RND can have something high cost researchable (LOYALTY IMPLANT) that can be made in sec lathe using glass, metal, gold and holy water?

[CPTANT]

Wraiths against AI is super lame. Absolutely zero counterplay except for relocating which requires you to know there is a cult in the first place.

[Dr_bee]

Keeping people in the game is generally a good thing and making mindshields completely ruin the value of a sacrifice would just push things toward Rev where if you can rush out implants then suddenly the cult starves because they can't recruit or gain constructs. Also I dunno what you mean by "no sell", you could always sacrifice mindshielded people for a soul shard if they stayed in their body.

I'll start with shell reduction and remove suicides and see where that gets us.

You fail to see the point I am trying to make, mindshields are supposed to starve the cult of recruits because that is the whole reason they exist in the first place. They need to be a hassle to get rid of or the value of even using them goes right out the fucking window. considering they dont even prove you are deconverted even using them to assess if someone isnt cult isnt useful.

And way back in the good old days of 2008 or so the recruit rune didnt sacrifice, if you wanted to shard someone you had to beat them into crit and smack them with a pre-built shard that you had to have ready instead of it being spoon fed to you by your recruitment rune.

There were already ways for a cult that has gone loud to counter mindshields without giving them the ability to make someone uncloneable and get an unstunnable minion, it was called controlling medbay or building a ghetto surgery.

Cult was originally a slow, stealthy game mode because of the power mindshields had. With the way sacrificing mindshielded people works right now, it is basically rev mode with fancy magic powers.

[SpaceInaba]

I keep forgetting to check but is there a separate pref for bloodcult because I am so sick of getting sharded because I hate playing constructs/being stuck in a retarded rock but I actually like playing clock cult

[DemonFiren]

I'm all but certain there is.

[darkpaladin109]

Yeah, there's separate prefs for both cults. Pretty hard to miss really.

[SpaceInaba]

<- is retarded

[leibniz]

Would it be better if blood constructs had the same number limit as clock marauders?

[Oldman Robustin]

Blood Cult in 2008? Wat. You're just wrong on a lot of those points Bee. Cult was slow because of "word research", not because of some fear of mass-implanting. Even then you've gotten shards from implanted crew for as long as I can remember.

Mindshields still serve an important purpose - its just not an autowin tactic like it is for revs, and I like it that way.

@Leibniz that would be unworkable. Plus, the chief issue with marauders was being able to conjure them from thin air. Constructs have typically borne a sufficient cost that most cults simply cannot spam them - to the greatest extent possible in this game I'm trying to keep an eye on cult rounds and getting a sense for whether the "cost" is balanced.

Edit, FYI: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/35353 (-1 shell from archives, suicides will no longer yield a "full" shard)

[Dr_bee]

Bringing this back because bloodcult is still shit to fight against as there is no counter to conversion because implants just mean they get an un-stunnable simple-mob instead of a cultist.

The crew HAS to shuttle call as fast as possible or they will lose. It is worse now than it was before.

Especially because some jackass gave them laser reflect shields and god damn claymores, I wonder who that was.

Cult is in a worse place than it was before you started fucking with it, the major balance problems like the fact that the crew has no incentive to stick around and fight, and the snowball effect of conversion with no counter have gotten WORSE, not better.

[InsaneHyena]

I want the tome back.

[CPTANT]

I dislike how the only practical way for the crew to win is to immediately call the shuttle.

From a victory condition perspective there is zero reason to stay on the station, cults usually only grow in strength over time.

[Nitrousoxide]

I dislike how the only practical way for the crew to win is to immediately call the shuttle.

From a victory condition perspective there is zero reason to stay on the station, cults usually only grow in strength over time.

Maybe a way for the chaplain to reveal cultists and their location over time? Like a ritual he can do which will slowly reveal more and more of the cultists (give them a glow like clock cultists get after the gate opens), until the final step which lets him see runes and stuff through walls?

That way the crew can actually purge the cult and be really confident that they've done so if given enough time.

Make it take 40+ minutes to fully power up though so the cult isn't totally fucked.

[captain sawrge]

This game mode sucks big dick. Cheers op

[Nabski]

Getting a mirror shield as a noncultist is a meme. It still reflects and WHEN YOU GET IT HIT STILL SPAWNS CLONES. THE CLONES ARE HOSTILE TO YOU AND THEY SPAWN MORE CLONES.

[Yakumo_Chen]

Making cult paper into action buttons is one thing a shitload easier to both learn but also to make cult a lot more powerful (Nodrop STUN ARM makes stunning fucking easy now) but encourages cult to load up on powers like EMP and blood healing and teleport to make them extra fucking annoying to deal with, a lot more slippery since they don't have to manage inventory space and fumble with the backpack to use powers. Having extra inventory space without resorting to cheesy methods like clipboard paper means cultists can carry a lot more stuff and can even drop the dagger to be stealthy while still retaining all their action button powers if sec caught them.

But on top of that the cult item powercreep has made them much more incredibly powerful. The reflect shield means you have to go into melee combat with them (and they carry a nodrop stun arm) and they can throw the shield for a homing stun and make CLONES to make them even harder to get.The bastard sword is also crazy powerful, and all that is on top of the usual assorted cult items they can spam with enough rune metal (and on stations like Delta where it's plentiful, expect to have some extremely well-armed cult teams if they're smart). Construct spam is also more robust then ever and means if you have a loyalty implant you're going to be a stun immune cultist with even more snowflake powers instead of a human one.

I thought cult was already pretty strong (and the nerfs to ghost rune were much, much needed) but now they've just skyrocketed up to being as completely obnoxious to deal with as clock cult is, almost to the point suicide is preferable to fighting them. At least in blood cult, calling the shuttle isn't an auto-win for cult.

[Nilons]

its bad and i hate it

[captain sawrge]

its bad and i hate it

[Xeroxemnas]

its bad and i hate it

[SpaceInaba]

for the first time in history I agree with nilons

[Dr_bee]

Blood cult needs to be reduced to bare bones mechanics and rebuilt from the ground up. What cult has become is the cause of years of powercreep coding and no overall design direction.

Remove everything but the conversion rune and the final summoning rune, play it for a bit, then start adding things for flavor and watch how it effects the balance.

[Bombadil]

Blood cult needs to be reduced to bare bones mechanics and rebuilt from the ground up. What cult has become is the cause of years of powercreep coding and no overall design direction.

Remove everything but the conversion rune and the final summoning rune, play it for a bit, then start adding things for flavor and watch how it effects the balance.

I think the sacrifice rune should be kept. Instead blood cult is like stealth nuke ops. Only way to gain new converts is sacrificing targets & they become a construct

[pubby]

Only way to gain new converts is sacrificing targets & they become a construct

I like this idea.

It would make the conversion aspect easier to balance, and it would be more fun for security to fight against.

[Dr_bee]

Only way to gain new converts is sacrificing targets & they become a construct

I like this idea.

It would make the conversion aspect easier to balance, and it would be more fun for security to fight against.

I dont understand how making conversion permanent by rendering victims uncloneable will make this game mode more fun for sec to fight.

[Bombadil]

Only way to gain new converts is sacrificing targets & they become a construct

I like this idea.

It would make the conversion aspect easier to balance, and it would be more fun for security to fight against.

I dont understand how making conversion permanent by rendering victims uncloneable will make this game mode more fun for sec to fight.

When i said sacrifice and you get constructs, I specifically mean YOUR TARGETS TO SUMMON NARSIE. Specific people that are the only ones who can be sacced. Perhaps 3 or so people including the chaplain every time if there is a chaplain on station

[Luke Cox]

Fucking balance it so people stop complaining about my favorite mode

[Anonmare]

We did team, non-conversion bloodcult and it was universally unpopular

[Dr_bee]

We did team, non-conversion bloodcult and it was universally unpopular

That was before robustin's "balance" changes. Trying again right now might end up with a different result.

[Xhuis]

We did team, non-conversion bloodcult and it was universally unpopular

That was before robustin's "balance" changes. Trying again right now might end up with a different result.

something about the definition of insanity

[Luke Cox]

Cult ops is pants on head retarded no matter what context it's tried in.

For balance, how about this: tome returns, is required in hand to use blood magic spells. Channeling the spell "charges" the come, whacking someone with it uses it. Charged tomes revert to normal when put in your bag. No more storing spells.

[Dr_bee]

We did team, non-conversion bloodcult and it was universally unpopular

That was before robustin's "balance" changes. Trying again right now might end up with a different result.

something about the definition of insanity

Not applicable when you are changing variables, thats how experimentation and development works.

Bloodcult is just shitty rev anyway. Clock cult at least had a gameplay gimmick that was functionally different from Rev rounds.

Bloodcult is just unblanced rev rounds with a shitty coat of paint on it.

[LifeReign]

Maybe the problem is that there's no way to actually deal with a cult, so it's incredibly unsatisfying to fight them. No, I don't mean that cultists are literally unstoppable, don't fucking quote this and pretend that's what I meant.

For literally every other antagonist, there is a limited number of them, and each one of those antags dealt with is one antag closer to containment. Thus, the actively anti-antag players can feel assured that they are making progress, while the passive non-antags can feel increased safety.

• Wizards are either solo or come with a limited supply of friends that cost power
• Nuke Ops come in teams, but again, reinforcements cost power
• Traitors/lings are limited in number
• Although the entire station can be turned into revolutionaries, there is still a limit to the number of head revs. Implanting a rev results in instant gratification, either in finding out the identity of a headrev, or in removing a headrev from the round. Removing a headrev further grants gratification, because you reduce the conversion power immensely.

Now look at both cult modes. Both blood and clock have the issue where deconverting can feel meaningless, because you have no idea how much it affects containment of the situation. If there are 20 cultists about, then deconverting does almost nothing, because each of the other cultists can convert in the right conditions. Regardless of balance, how do you know how much progress you are making in fighting against a cult? Does 5 cultists defeated indicate the entire cult, or is there another swarm of 15 running around maint replacing the lost cultists faster than you can stop them? I don't particularly like the low roleplay this implies, but I suppose the issue can be summed up as: How do you know you are making any progress against a cult?

This doesn't just apply to when the cult is winning, but how about when the station is getting worked up for a final confrontation with the cultists, making endless mechs and weaponry for the implanted, just to find out that they actually took down all the cultists 20 minutes ago?

TL;DR I'm complaining about a lack of in-game feedback for the players.

[Oldman Robustin]

We broke stats, again, so its very hard to get an idea of how cult is doing after the talisman removal.

It felt strong though so I was doing a weekly nerf to reign in the most abused stuff but after the freeze hit I had no data OR ability to keep making changes.

I had planned to add more limits to the revive rune, reduce jugg HP/armor moderately, and make the mirror shield less effective against physical attacks while adding a channel + more health cost to converting airlocks. Lastly I was going to add an experiment where 35% and 50% cult pop (as a % of living players) became major thresholds that would cause eye color to change (35%) and a red aura to develop (50%). The freeze came early but we just had a thaw so I will try to use my single GOODBOY PR this weekend to get a balance PR up.

Keep in mind that the last couple months have been a steady stream of nerfs, not necessarily because the spells are stronger than talismans (they aren't, stuns are shorter, spells cost more blood and HP, EMP is smaller, etc.) but because it made the average cultist somewhat competent at cult magic whereas before even in a large cult you'd have <5 people who would actively make talismans.

This was the intended design of course, to make cult more accessible, but it was impossible to know without a good deal of playtime how much that would affect balance. I still wish I had better data but rest assured I don't want cult to be too strong either.

Edit: PR is up with nerfs to some of the cult's more problematic strengths https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/37024

[Luke Cox]

I've come up with a few more ideas:

• Aforementioned tome idea. Tome is used for spells, slap people with the charged tome to use it, charge goes away if tome leaves your hands. "Storing" spells is grossly OP, that change would fix half the problem.
• Cult only starts off with very basic spells/runes. More advanced ones require more members. You can lock constructs entirely until the cult is medium-sized.
• Only living, non-construct cultists count for invoking runes and unlock requirements. Sacrifices are easier than conversions, and the product is more powerful. They need a drawback. This also fixes the issue that LifeReign brings up, because deconverting living cultists will have the potential to seriously fuck the cult.
• Nar-sie rune opens a portal, cult has to guard it. Give blood cult a decent endgame.

[Yakumo_Chen]

I still think cult spells are way more powerful then talismans. Like, way, way more powerful.

The health cost is incredibly minor. A medibot or a cult pylon will heal any damage you take from cult spells.

The most major change that made them powerful is how incredibly convenient they are.
-You can cast cult spells with a button push. They happen automatically.
-They do not take inventory space.
-You do not have to manage inventory or take them out of your bag (which makes a sound)
-You can drop your dagger and security will have no easy way to tell you are a cultist unless you get fed holy water.
-Spells can't be taken away from cultists because they're spells, not talismans.
-You can't disarm the cult stun
-All but one of the spells are invisible now and dont show up in hand.
-The cult stun is visually difficult to see.

I think the runes themselves are still fine. They've always been fine. I've never had a problem with cult runes, ever, because they're static and the effects aren't changed very often and they're pretty easy to spot.

Cult items are still pretty ridiculously strong. The mirror shield is super fucking cancer to fight, because of the throw / homing stun and reflecting. And the spitting.
Seriously it has way too many powers for one item.

Constructs still need to be nerfed and I don't know why they even got buffed in the first place since they're so easy to make. Seriously one morgue raid can boost cult numbers double or triple.