All blood runes disabled in space

[Oldman Robustin]

So apparently Kor went ahead and authorized this, which came in the form of a meme title PR called "people think burn victims are better than literally-cant-see-shit" that had no changelog.

Needless to say im completely exhausted after carefully listening to feedback and spending hours adding new icons and mechanics for off-station teleport runes that Kor would just slip this one in. I heard people complaining that their runes weren't working and I honestly just thought they were confused at first - because I couldn't comprehend someone sneaking in the most important cult change in years without even telling anyone and it also neutralized any chance we had of testing my modified teleport effects. I had a long list of ideas to reduce the prevalence of off-station bases (limit lavaland runes to the mining base, have summons/teleports from space indicate what direction they came from, remove the manifest option from spirits runes off-station) but out of nowhere we got this heavy-handed prohibition.

I prefer a solution that lets security/loyalists go after these bases without making them as vulnerable as station-side ones that can typically be cleared with nothing more than a couple guns and a flashbang. Just earlier today we had our base caught within 3 minutes of starting it, within 60 seconds we had the captain shooting into the base, killing a cultist, and within 2 minutes of that (still early round) the base was maxcapped for good measure even though we had already been wiped out because in the contest of FLASHBANGS AND GUNS v. SINGLE-USE MELEE STUNS, its not even close.

IMO space bases/lavaland bases must be part of gameplay because its the only way we can have conversion antag rounds that aren't effectively decided by the 20m mark. The best compromise is:

1) Limit Lavaland runes to the main mining base.

2) Teleporting in from a space-base will leave a short-term hint as to the direction of the source-rune (combined with the already existing new animation/glow that accompanies space teleportation)

3) Summon cultist show a brief "trail" effect hinting at where the cultist was summoned from, with added visual effects if they were summoned from Lavaland/etc.

4) Manifest cultist can only be done on-station

This all helps strike the right balance instead of coming out of nowhere after almost 2 years, in the midst of testing new changes, and gutting off-station cults with no warning.

[John_Oxford]

>striking a balance with the code base
>having a logical well founded conversation with them which will result in a compromise between you two

robustin you've played here longer than that to know that's simply not possible

[Oldman Robustin]

>striking a balance with the code base
>having a logical well founded conversation with them which will result in a compromise between you two

robustin you've played here longer than that to know that's simply not possible

It's a cycle, new year, naive new hopes, reality comes crashing down every this February - this year its a PR about "virtual anime titties" getting merged, making hours of coding/art/testing you had in a well-documented update obsolete in the blink of a meme.

So I progress to the bargaining stage of grief where I try to salvage something reasonable from it all.

[onleavedontatme]

They still work on lavaland, just not in tiny dumb boxes at the edge of space that require metagaming+a jetpack (of which only a handful spawn) to deal with.

Those suggestions sound like it'd almost make them tolerable though.

[Oldman Robustin]

They still work on lavaland, just not in tiny dumb boxes at the edge of space that require metagaming+a jetpack (of which only a handful spawn) to deal with.

Those suggestions sound like it'd almost make them tolerable though.

Why not directly ask me to add that then instead of some terrible meme PR that just confuses everyone and wastes my time? I already spent a couple days after your last feedback doling out nerfs, one of those changes made totally obsolete by the lack of space runes now - and im back to square 1 where I have no idea where to go with this? I still think space bases have a proper niche in highpop and its not like Clock Cult where you get a camera to snoop and plan your appearance in advance, runes are nullified by simple dense objects or better yet anyone with a stun can just camp them and get a free cultist every so often. You always brush that aspect off but when some validhunter is camping your teleport rune with a sawn-off shotgun with neurotoxin/perfluoro and a bag of holy melons you start to understand the vulnerability of blood cult's teleporter network.

So now I'm just sitting here going: Do I push to get them re-added with some of the nerfs? Do I have to introduce another round of buffs to make stealth feasible during highpop? Do I just have to accept that MAGIC REVOLUTION is the only way to succeed in highpop now? If people like Dante and Lexia are just going for conversion rushes I felt it was a sign that space bases were overrated as it was, now that option isn't even available so what are we left with when maint is crawling with 20 assistants and any rune, no matter how obscure, is going to be found within 60 seconds of drawing it? For a while during my update I was considering making ALL runes slowly meld back into blood pools for non-cultists... I just, dunno.

[oranges]

you should quit that would be great

[iamgoofball]

you should quit that would be great

You should quit being a dick, that would be great.

[oranges]

get a thicker skin you little baby

[onleavedontatme]

If cult gameplay is breaking down to the point that they cant operate on station at high pop why not add a max pop at which the mode can trigger?

Also I argued with you about cult bases for something like a year now and we never agreed on them (you even insisted at one point they're barely used), it is not like this came from nowhere.

The title/changelog was not something I asked for, that was goof being goof.

[iamgoofball]

The title/changelog was not something I asked for, that was goof being goof.

can confirm

[Bombadil]

I would just like to note:


If you do limit bases on lavaland to just the mining station also include the nar'sie ruin with the summon rune and all the cult gear and the death trap. It's totally appropriate for a cult base and it rarely occurs so it will be a rare once off thing that might never get used.

[Oldman Robustin]

If cult gameplay is breaking down to the point that they cant operate on station at high pop why not add a max pop at which the mode can trigger?

Also I argued with you about cult bases for something like a year now and we never agreed on them (you even insisted at one point they're barely used), it is not like this came from nowhere.

The title/changelog was not something I asked for, that was goof being goof.

Waiting until I'm touching space bases with one of the biggest cult updates after them existing for several years was shitty. Cult's winrate plummeted after I forced them to summon in "common" areas, thus negating one of the more abused aspects of the space-base, the ability of the cult to "win" while barely conducting activity on station. If you nabbed the sac-target early, the remainder of a space-cult's round was basically deciding which obscure corner of maint to wall off before summoning. Now having a healthy number of cultists is all-but-mandatory and having an off-station base isn't conducive to large conversion efforts. So it just felt weird for you to drop the change when cult's power has already ebbed and high pop victories had basically required active negligence from the loyalists. With cult set to 8%, off-station bases also provided a crucial outlet for cultists to experiment first-hand with new equipment/UI/etc. without the threat of Lexia Black opening the door and ass-blasting them with a tech storage flash.

If I were lazy I might say sure, give it a maxpop, but the whole point is that I'm maintaining the mode unlike Nukies or Revs where we just throw in the towel and disable it for ever-growing parts of the day. I think it's also important for highpop quality in general. Highpop has a lot of issues and one of them is "antags confirmed in the first 5 minutes", with more antags and more eyeballs on the antags, it becomes critical that we keep modes where its possible to keep people on their toes for a while. Lowpop is already a glaring example of what happens when you basically pull any mode with population issues and (IMO) the reason why Sybil is basically on life-support - since we pulled blob and gang, and raised pop for other modes, some absurd percentage of Sybil rounds are traitor-types (wizard is one of the only lowpop modes remaining despite it being easily one of the unbalanced for population, and most wizard rounds are still 5 minutes of magic shit followed by mulligan into, you guessed it, traitor mode).

Even though you've probably stopped reading by now I want to drive this home above all else: I would have added this change to my cult PR if you had simply asked me, forthright and directly - and I could have made other changes to soften the blow instead of wasting time with new mechanics that would be made obsolete before they were even added. Even though I disagree, it would've been a lot more painless for EVERYONE involved to just approach me directly when I'm altering dozens of lines of cult code every day. Its beyond frustrating to know that a new mechanic that I made specifically to help the crew counter space-basing might never see the light of day when you could've just talked to me so I wouldn't waste time on it in the first place, or after years of it existing we give it a few more weeks to see if the mechanic was enough to promote healthier gameplay.

[SpaceInaba]

can you still build on lavaland because if you can I fail to see the problem

[Oldman Robustin]

Well this is mostly moot now. Joan merged my revert PR and now https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/35433 is open with even more nerfs to the cult and off-station bases.

TL;DR: In the near future you can make runes in space but won't be able to summon cultists or manifest ghosts out there. Teleporting in from space will also indicate (at the destination) the direction of the space base.

[Cobby]

Manifest ghosts should just do more damage offstation because that little story on the wiki with the guy researching on the white ship and sending the baddies has a special place in my heart