5 Minute Full Cult Powers

[Steelpoint]

You can gain access to all cult powers in under five minutes without needing access to any medical equipment or people to sacrifice, all by yourself.

--------------------

While I'm loath to discuss something as potentially game breaking as this, however I think the best way to solve a problem is to discuss it in public. As such, I'm going to explain exactly how you can, as a cultist, gain access to every single cult power in under five minutes. All you need is some time, and a room all to yourself. Then I'm going to suggest ways to solve this issue.

Addendum: I don't know how well know this is, I discovered it by chance but I digress.

The intended system behind brute forcing the cult magic system is to enter a word into the tome and see if it creates a working rune, you test it and if it works you go ahead, if it does not you have to heal the hefty damage and do the next line.

To understand how this trick works you require a understanding of how cult runes appear and work to an extent, so I'll make it simple.

• If you create a rune that will not work, it will generate a randomly made rune and rune colour.
• If you create a rune that works, it will create a bold blue/red rune that will always be the same rune (So the EMP rune will always appear as that sprite)

Knowing this, you can simply work out if a created rune will work or not. If the rune is randomly coloured you erase the word and do the next line, if the rune is bold red/blue you've got it right!

The only runes that are a exception to this rule are the armour/shell runes. They always appear as a randomly coloured rune, but that does not change anything.

It takes five minutes for one person, who knows what they are doing, to get every single cult power. It takes even less time if they only get words they specificly want (As in under a minute if they only solve one or two words).

--------------------

How do we solve this?

Your first answer would be to say "Why don't we just make all the runes randomly coloured"?

Sadly that would not work. Cause even if you still had to test each rune in succession (as intended) you can still heal the damage and get one or two words in short order, or all of them if you get a healing bot (Or steal a medkit). On average I can test two runes before I have to use one healing item, so in a best case scenario I could test thirty runes per medkit.

The second possible answer would be to simply kill/crit a cultist if they get the wrong rune. That would work, but that would be very damn punishing, not to mention if you get told the wrong words and/or someone decides to "troll" you by intentionally handing out the wrong words.

A final answer I can think of is to make triggering a false rune drain a lot of blood from the player, meaning you could only get away with one or two before your blood is very low. Sadly that would require a medical overhaul to do (Goon med anyone?)

--------------------

Call it an exploit or intended behaviour. But access to all cult powers in under five minutes seems to powerful in my opinion.

Thanks for reading.

[Saegrimr]

You know whats incredibly silly about this?
Large pop cult rounds start with 9 people.

If they were smart, actually communicated, they could have a 5 minute Narsie and nobody would even suspect a thing.

[Steelpoint]

You can argue that if a few cultist players got together they could get all the cult powers in under five minutes.

While you may well be true, relying on three strangers to exhibit that level of competence is damn near impossible. Whereas a single person doing the work is very easy to pull off.

[bandit]

Congratulations, you just discovered research. It is well-known. So well known that this was in fact an integral part of the cult system before Sabbat shat on it and Malkevin tried to assemble sculptures out of the shit but only got halfway.

[Steelpoint]

Congratulations, you just discovered research. It is well-known. So well known that this was in fact an integral part of the cult system before Sabbat shat on it and Malkevin tried to assemble sculptures out of the shit but only got halfway.

I already acknowledged that research is a intended part of cult, I am pointing out how you can work around the research mechanic to easily, and quickly, acquire all needed words with little effort or health loss on a cultists part.

I don't think being able to examine a rune and tell its not going to work before you've tested it is intended behaviour. At least in my opinion.

[Braincake]

I don't think being able to examine a rune and tell its not going to work before you've tested it is intended behaviour. At least in my opinion.

It's been a pretty integral part of cult strategy before the rework, going back at least as far as april 2013. New wiki page has it as not-recommended, though; but since you can only get brute damage from a couple of not-easy-to-identify runes it's still not bad.

Knowledge of the method depends entirely on the cultists themselves, ofcourse.

[Pybro]

I'm sort of working on something involving cult.

One way to get around bruteforcing would be to implement Urist Runes from bay. Each word gets a "letter" sprite at round start which combine to create a rune. Thus, Join is Nahlizet and looks like a Q. Blood is Ire and looks like a W. Self is Ego and looks like an X. Convert, Join Blood Self, Nahlizet Ire Ego, has the sprite "QWX". Part of Urist code is that working runes glow, almost a dull throb (There's an image of it on their wiki), but this can be removed or just made so that all blood runs throb regardless of if they are "Correct" or not (As compared to, say, Crayon runes which do not throb/glow). This eliminates the visual portion of brute forcing meaning that if one DOES want to research they have to take one for the team and take damage from using incorrect runes.

An alternative would be to accept that brute forcing is a necessary evil as nine times out of ten the cult doesn't have the luxury of being able to drag people into maint and sac them by the boatload as people will scream for help the moment they see a stun prod.

[lumipharon]

Steel, researching words like this has literally always been a part of cult. Before the cult changes this was the ONLY way to do it. The changes just made an ALTERNATIVE method of getting words (saccing everything in sight)

Well yes I can research all the words in 3 minutes, A: most people can't or don't, and B: It's not even a bad thing.
Without your translated tome cultists can't do shit. You have a few uses of your starting paper, which at best means you can stun, sac and construct someone. Which leads to construct army, which gets you words, which are secondary to your army of constructs.
Or you do research, get all the words, which lets you plan and prepare the cult stealthly, making more talismans, setting up a base with wall and teleport runes, scout shit out with astral projection, blah blah blah.

Basically you have 2 options to play cult (other the the frequent 'be a bunch of retards' approach)
A: sac everything you can and eventually go loud with lots of constructs
B: Research words and go either stealth or loud, at your choice.

So yeah, research has been around forever, and as far as I know intended gameplay. If the researcher gets discovered it's pretty damning for them. The only completely (more or less) safe place to research is somewhere off station, which takes eva and time.

Also for the record not all rune are 'blue or red', they just have a set colour and icon, but you don't even have to know them. You just make two of the rune, if both match up, you've got the right word, if not, keep trying.

[paprika]

Cult is balanced by general player incompetency

[Steelpoint]

Jesus.

I know research is a proper cult mechanic. I'm saying that its far to easy considering you can tell if a rune will work or not, meaning you can avoid having to be dealt a ton of brute damage.

I'm saying its far more effective for a cultist to sit down and work out all the words, risk free, than it is to capture people and sacrifice or convert them.

That is the problem.

[lumipharon]

But it's not a problem. In old cult, it was exactly how it is now, only (as far as I remember) there was no ass rape damage from incorrect runes, and you didn't get words from saccing.
Getting words via saccing is a nice bonus for saccing, it never replaced research as the primary, effective method of getting words.

[Incomptinence]

Also too many powers, many of which are niche or just plain underused.

[bandit]

I'm saying its far more effective for a cultist to sit down and work out all the words, risk free, than it is to capture people and sacrifice or convert them.

That is the problem.

This is a direct consequence of cult being shat on and then only half-reworked, and not so much about research itself. You see the same thing happen in incrementally tweaked gamemodes, such as ling.

[Malkevin]

I'm pretty sure that in the original Urist cult brute forcing wasn't the intended way to play, or an intended feature at all.
Originally cultists started with only the words to sacrifice, later got changed to convert.
So I *think* it was originally intended that cultists were to get their words from sacrifice.

Problem was that 3 cultists were pretty gimped against a full station, and sacrifice just gibbed the victims - I mean god, people bitch enough at getting soul stoned.
So brute force 'research' out on the derelict was discovered to be less risky and more effective, so it became the norm - and thus the phrase "Oh it was cult, I thought it was extended" came about as cults took atleast an hour to get of the ground, most cult rounds ended because some cunt would literally go "I'm bored, I'm going to release the singularity to force a shuttle call" - usually just as the cultists were just about done researching...

[Stickymayhem]

I really wish we could see stuff like free cultist be used more.

It's a shame such cooperation is essentially impossible.

[Pybro]

Is voice chat even possible on byond?

Cultists could get a special necklace (attaches to jumpsuits like scarves/departmental armbinde) allowing voice chat amongst those who have it on. Astral journey could be used for real time directing of cult activities and you get to hear sweaty neckbeards shout at each other. If you get stunned or lose the necklace the voice chat stops and every person can mute people who abuse it.

Would make such coordinated cults a lot easier as part of the issue is having no real way to communicate with people. You can use the communicate rune/tome feature, but not everyone knows about that or pays attention. Hell a lot of people don't even know about the Cultists' innate communication.

[bandit]

I really wish we could see stuff like free cultist be used more.

It's a shame such cooperation is essentially impossible.

Summon cultist is incredibly robust and even works across z-levels, but good luck getting a group of three cultists who aren't assclowns to do it.

[lumipharon]

It's fucking hard, but a few times I have managed that. Screaming in cult chat for 5 minutes straight till I got 2 other cultists, had free and summon cult runes, summoned all the captured cultists, then summoned EVERY cultist, to force summon nar'sie.

If you have mlgpr0 ghosts, you can use a manifest rune to summon a pair of meat suits, to activate the multiperson runes.

[Bombadil]

I just want cult to go back to being fun like it used to be. Now its a fucking chore. Gotta get 3 people from across different departments ot where your converting which is suspicious as fuck especially if they start running into maintenance

[dezzmont]

I just want cult to go back to being fun like it used to be. Now its a fucking chore. Gotta get 3 people from across different departments ot where your converting which is suspicious as fuck especially if they start running into maintenance

It is trivially easy to meet in the holochamber.

[oranges]

I always found it weird.

I think cult should instead have to start cultifying areas of the station (like what narsie does). At first this would be in secret areas and hidden away.

The more area you cultify the more points you get per tick. The original cultists would be able to spend the points to unlock runes, or perhaps you just spend points to spawn runes and papers.

That way you can choose between a stealthy slower approach or just try to go loud with maximum point early.

[Malkevin]

That was going to be my eventual end goal, artificers would basically be the base builders - they would convert/build floors, build altars that would let you do three person runes solo - with drawbacks.

[Bombadil]

That was going to be my eventual end goal, artificers would basically be the base builders - they would convert/build floors, build altars that would let you do three person runes solo - with drawbacks.

Massive brute damage?