[POLL]Removing ling from rotation but keeping traitorchan

[Bombadil]

It seems kind of Universal that ling is the most hated roundtype the round tends to either turn into lings take over the station and keep recalling the shuttle. Or the lings work together murderbone and recall the shuttle.

Traitorchan has a nice mix of conflict to make the addition of lings fun.

[CocaneStyle]

Sure.

[DemonFiren]

Do it. Pure ling rounds have a strong tendecy for being pure shit.

[Steelpoint]

Until we get Shadowling (if ever) to replace Changeling as a main game mode I think we should restrict Changeling to a side antagonist alongside Traitor rounds, as suggested.

Changelings by themselves usually lack the overt capability to force a end game, and have no incentive to end the round in a timely manner. Meaning they want to keep the round going for as long as possible or they simply lack the capability to force the round to end. Thus we get long drawn out rounds that bore people to death before the lings do.

[Remie Richards]

Until we get Shadowling (if ever) to replace Changeling as a main game mode

Personally, I hope that never happens.

Traitorchan is the only form of Chan I see on Basil/Badger these days and it's usually all right.

[Miauw]

ling is a shit mode, this has my

[Lumbermancer]

Limit number of lings to one per round?

[Incoming]

I had a pull request up a long while ago where a ling could basically spawn as a side antagonist in any other game mode, with the implicit idea that it would replace pure ling as a thing.

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/1826

said I was gonna finish it, whoops apparently I never did

[Saegrimr]

I had a pull request up a long while ago where a ling could basically spawn as a side antagonist in any other game mode, with the implicit idea that it would replace pure ling as a thing.

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/1826

said I was gonna finish it, whoops apparently I never did

With the recent buff to blobs, a ling in blob might be a bad idea. Malf would make for a great scapegoat. Nukes might be fine, but questionable what the lings might do with their ability, would be fun to see. Wizard rounds should end when the wizard dies so throwing a ling in there also sounds like a bad idea, or at least it'll make the rounds that get really destroyed by staff of change/animate drag on for way longer than it needs to.

[Alex Crimson]

I had a pull request up a long while ago where a ling could basically spawn as a side antagonist in any other game mode, with the implicit idea that it would replace pure ling as a thing.

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/1826

said I was gonna finish it, whoops apparently I never did

+1 awesome way to handle ling. Ive wanted this for quite a while now. Having ling as an antag that has a chance to spawn during every antag round.

[bandit]

Why don't we just fix ling instead of patching around it? The solution to a broken antagonist type is not to prop it up with other, non-broken types.

[Cipher3]

Ling hives are the most fun kind of lings though. Remind me, Lumbermancer, how having one ling only is superior/more likely to engage than having three? Some of the best stuff comes from lings working together, not alone.

[soulgamer]

One step closer to removing the most annoying antags in the game.

[Bombadil]

Ling hives are the most fun kind of lings though. Remind me, Lumbermancer, how having one ling only is superior/more likely to engage than having three? Some of the best stuff comes from lings working together, not alone.

You still get 2-3 lings in traitorchan

[Bombadil]

Why don't we just fix ling instead of patching around it? The solution to a broken antagonist type is not to prop it up with other, non-broken types.

No one has had a solution. The last solution has lead into the problem we have now.

before it was instadeath now its Prototype the game mode

[iyaerP]

Just remove ling from the rotation all together. I voted "no" in the pole because that keeps lings in the game.

[Cipher3]

Ling hives are the most fun kind of lings though. Remind me, Lumbermancer, how having one ling only is superior/more likely to engage than having three? Some of the best stuff comes from lings working together, not alone.

You still get 2-3 lings in traitorchan

You still get 2-3 lings in traitorchan on Sybil*

[Bluespace]

Keep them in rotation but add but needing to absorb and parasting.
Extract DNA sting should be renamed "fucking boring" sting.
The thrill of sucking someone dry and almost getting caught is the best part of changeling.

[Incomptinence]

Voted yes only because it is a step in the right direction. Right direction being removal of an antag that was utterly broken in the name of I LOSE PLZ NERF and then proceeded to remain utterly unlikable anyway.

[peoplearestrange]

So long as we don't loose ling's completely... I think they're a really interesting character to play and have fun with. In fact I'm always insanely happy when I role ling.

[Perakp]

Keep them in rotation but add but needing to absorb and parasting.
Extract DNA sting should be renamed "fucking boring" sting.
The thrill of sucking someone dry and almost getting caught is the best part of changeling.

Last time I tried to phase out extract DNA sting I butchered it by adding bunch of other stuff in too. Might be worth giving it another try. But removing extract DNA sting would also require the removal of absorb dna objective, because requiring antagonists to remove people from the round is considered to be awful.

Another way to make changeling more interesting could be to make them ridiculously overpowered, allowing fast, rewarding plays instead of lurking around doing much nothing. By ridiculously overpowered I don't mean adding parasting, but buffing the existing powers/ chemical recharge rate.

But I don't see these being too popular options, so it might be better to make it a secondary antag at this point.

[Malkevin]

Keep them in rotation but add but needing to absorb and parasting.
Extract DNA sting should be renamed "fucking boring" sting.
The thrill of sucking someone dry and almost getting caught is the best part of changeling.

Yeah, as OP as old ling was it was definitely a more exciting round type.

The sound of someone yelling over comms "HUSK SPOTTED" made everybody's anus twitch.


Actually para-ling was only OP if they jumped you whilst you were alone, lings were basically fucked if someone found them whilst their parasting was recharging.

[Alex Crimson]

Keep them in rotation but add but needing to absorb and parasting.
Extract DNA sting should be renamed "fucking boring" sting.
The thrill of sucking someone dry and almost getting caught is the best part of changeling.

Last time I tried to phase out extract DNA sting I butchered it by adding bunch of other stuff in too. Might be worth giving it another try. But removing extract DNA sting would also require the removal of absorb dna objective, because requiring antagonists to remove people from the round is considered to be awful.

Another way to make changeling more interesting could be to make them ridiculously overpowered, allowing fast, rewarding plays instead of lurking around doing much nothing. By ridiculously overpowered I don't mean adding parasting, but buffing the existing powers/ chemical recharge rate.

But I don't see these being too popular options, so it might be better to make it a secondary antag at this point.

We have more ways to get people back into the round now. Back when parasting was around, we could only put brains in new bodies. I think the old parasting ling would be just fine now. As long as there are not 5 lings in one round.

[Miauw]

parasting is never ever coming back on account of being completely fucking awful, fyi.
unless you want to make it an organic sleepypen.

[Steelpoint]

parasting is never ever coming back on account of being completely fucking awful, fyi.
unless you want to make it an organic sleepypen.

organic sleepypen

What's the point then, we don't need two identical traitors.

[Alex Crimson]

parasting is never ever coming back on account of being completely fucking awful, fyi.
unless you want to make it an organic sleepypen.

Then have fun merging all the PRs that make ling even more of a traitor copy. Because that is soooo much better.

[Bombadil]

This is why ling is shit. Parasting was utterly op and devestated anyone who was alone. It was fun for the ling but not fun for the targets. Also with no maint access finding bodies would be rarer

[Steelpoint]

Hence why I think Shadowling is the best way forward for the Changeling game mode.

Otherwise we're stuck with a boring game mode, which should be removed from rotation.

[Alex Crimson]

Shadowling are a completely different idea compared to Changeling. Changelings are supposed to be human-imitating aliens that stay undercover and undetected. Shadowling is just another Alien type that kills everything, except its mixed with Rev.

[Gun Hog]

What about the Personal Hivemind idea? Anyone you sucked dry, you could have in your ling body. It is like turning your victims into pAIs, then stuffing them into your head. Having active players in your head could give you special buffs or something. That, or you could just enjoy having the whines and complaints of your victims fuel your ego as you go about your business.
The original PR which was reverted before going live is here: https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/689 I think it still has merit.

[allura]

then stuffing them into your head.

no erp

[leibniz]

What about the Personal Hivemind idea? Anyone you sucked dry, you could have in your ling body. It is like turning your victims into pAIs, then stuffing them into your head. Having active players in your head could give you special buffs or something. That, or you could just enjoy having the whines and complaints of your victims fuel your ego as you go about your business.
The original PR which was reverted before going live is here: https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/689 I think it still has merit.

I always thought this would be great, a shame we never added it.

[Alex Crimson]

Seems unbalanced. Forcing your victims to hang around so you can get buffs. Most would just ghost out of spite or insult him constantly for being a murderboner. Ghosts/dead players shouldnt ever have a mechanic that effects the game in this way, imo.

[dezzmont]

Shadowling are a completely different idea compared to Changeling. Changelings are supposed to be human-imitating aliens that stay undercover and undetected. Shadowling is just another Alien type that kills everything, except its mixed with Rev.

Shadowling is actually much closer to the changeling source material than changeling is. If anything is currently a really shitty generic alien monster it is the changeling. I mean for real, the idea of the changeling is that it could be anyone, the paranoia of not knowing who was the real deal being the primary threat.

The problem is that changeling plays absolutely nothing like that and the shapeshifting powers are borderline incidental, both in old and new ling. New ling tried to make them earn back their name by giving them transform attacks but it just make them more like a generic monster that pounces on you when alone rather than an insidious alien out to subvert the crew.

The real deal is that The Thing never actually just up and killed people in the way we understand it. Yeah, it did technically devour them, but the method it did it in left was seemed to be the host, essentially meaning it converted people. There was no trail of corpses, that wasn't the point, the threat was a very highbrow one where even the people watching the movie had no idea who was the monster and who wasn't.

Shadowling replicates that effect to some extent by introducing a conversion mechanic as the primary focus. The problem is, as you said, the threat is real that this becomes another rev-cult. I personally don't like how it is playing out right now because the focus early on is too much on killing and conversion rather than infiltration.

Having the shadowlings forced to collect a resource of some kind to convert people, limiting the pool of followers they can have at a time would prevent them from just trying to overpower the station as rev with a worse mechanic. Ideally they should be some hybrid between changeling and rev, focusing on quality and tact over quantity and riots.

[Alex Crimson]

Shadowling is further from The Thing, isnt it? They cannot disguise themselves, and are more focused on creating underlings than absorbing more DNA to grow. The idea behind The Thing, in my opinion, was the fact it could be anyone. Seems like Shadowling is just another Alien that skulks around in maint and grows until it overruns the station.

Newling has just been taking items from Traitors and putting an "organic" spin on them. Hell, there is even a new PR that wants to give them Thermals and Hyperzine. At least parasting promoted the idea of incapacitating your victim, dragging them somewhere quiet and absorbing them. Now lings just beat people to death or use DNA sting so they can bypass the whole thing.

[dezzmont]

The point of the ling wasn't that it disguised itself to eat you. It was the idea that anyone could be the thing. The thing actually, if you didn't notice, never really transformed from one person to another during the film, at least not overtly. It instead transformed other people into more of it.

The second any two characters were alone off screen the tension rose a lot, not because the thing may have killed them and left the body in some corner, but because they both might come back as the thing if one of them was. The thing is in every sense a converting style alien that focused on slowly corrupting the base so it could escape.

Meanwhile current ling plays almost like the opposite of that. The focus is only on jumping out of a corner, shouting boo, and eating someone. That is pretty much the MO for any alien space monster, including Alien. There is very little actual paranoia about who is what. Once a ling is outed it becomes a standard monster hunt.

[Alex Crimson]

Pretty sure it did transform in the movies. No idea about the book. But it was able to split off parts of itself, those parts were conscious and had the same abilities to absorb and transform. While i doubt we would ever be able to simulate The Thing perfectly in SS13, i think the goal of Changeling is to be an antag that blends in with humans whilst preying on them.

But yeah, i think rather than having dedicated ling rounds, we should just change ling to be a side-antag that has a chance to spawn in every round type. Dedicated ling rounds, once the first ling is found out, it raises the awareness too much and other lings have a hard time. Even in blob rounds, i think it would be an interesting dynamic. The ling would need to complete its objective whilst stopping the crew from killing the blob, but helping them enough to stop it killing the station.

[dezzmont]

You are missing my point though. The thing did transform into hiddeous monsters when caught, but it never actually reduced the amount of people on the station unless forced to kill in a crass manner. It never jumped out and ate someone like a boogieman. And most importantly it absolutely never changed from one human into another, it instead converted them. The idea of the changeling that transforms into other people compeltely misses the point of the source material and the paranoia wanes by a large margin when you make the changeling into a hyper generic shapeshifting monster that eats you.

You are way too focused on shapeshifting as the idea behidn The Thing. It wasn't. That wasn't the source of the paranoia, the source of the paranoia was understanding part way through the movie that the thing was spreading like a disease and subverting people, and you had no idea who was the thing. Any two characters alone together for any amount of time could have resulted in the thing multiplying, and people still fight over who was actually part of The Thing and when people were converted. The thing never left a corpse, it always was a converter, that created a new version of itself with the ability to perfectly emulate the person it converted to the point that one large theory surounding the film is the idea that The Thing had no idea it was The Thing on a conscious level.

Shadowlings have more in common with The Thing in this respect because the primary mechanic of the shadowling is to, much like the real deal, infest existing people and multiply itself rather than become a really terrible copy of them. Unlike the alien the people the shadowlings convert are really themselves in a lot of significant ways, and they can go on being relatively normal in the round. Meanwhile when a changeling eats someone they just leave a very obvious body and gain the ability to change their face to them, which utterly pales in comparison to what the thing did.

Don't get me wrong, I think there is too much focus on the shadowlings as spooky guys who take over the station in a manner more similar to a rev wizard than anything else, but the potential of the idea is much greater than "I transform guys!"

[Scones]

fucking dezzmont post snip

Sums up most of what I can say about the movie, albiet in a much more verbose and long-winded way. The Thing is much scarier in that it creates more of itself via conversion, instead of having some shitty player try and assume your identity and get lynched when people near-instantly realize your manner of speaking/acting is different from the original.

Once a ling is outed it becomes a standard monster hunt.

"Is this a standup fight, sir, or another bughunt?"

The instant someone spots a ling or an indicator thereof, the valid-goggles go on and the station instantly goes on high alert to find and kill the ling, before Security/a silicon finds them 60 seconds later and they have their body destroyed. Shadowlings is a thousand times more interesting because ling rounds are always either:
- Ling gets discovered early and lynched in record times
- Ling gets high-level access, raids the Armory, and murderbones the majority of the station
- Ling is robust and kills everyone regardless of having Armory access by virtue of a 30-brute weapon and free riot shield

Even the tools a ling has makes them lean towards going loud and only ever switching IDs when it's an extreme situation. They have a hidden esword, hidden riot shield, adrenal implant, and the ability to -come back from the dead-
Stealthy ling rarely happens because it's so boring to play in contrast to the LIVE FAST DIE HARD playstyle that is so readily availble

[Remie Richards]

My Reactions:
Dezzmont's first post: No no no fuck off no.
Dezzmont's second post: Eh, maybe I get your point.
Dezzmont's third post: Alright ok, I gotcha.

We should probably move ling close to it's source material again, but can we please do it without these shitty shadow twats?

[Alex Crimson]

Removing its murderbone-enabling mutations would be a start. Remove DNA sting and the debrain/kill objectives. Have its objectives be things like absorbing and impersonating X. Absorbing X amount of DNA. Escaping alive and not in custody.

Then as its been suggested many times already, rather than having a round with only lings, just allow them to randomly spawn at the start of every round no matter the type.

[DemonFiren]

Which at least means there is a purpose to being a Chaplain regardless of roundtype. There will always be lings to incinerate.

[dezzmont]

I like the idea of shadowlings enabling murderboner mutations in their conversions in exchange for a limited conversion rate. Makes it much more a focus on staying subtle than rev but also makes the individual more capable of doing things on their own.

Full on murder mode should definitely be a suicide rush, like the source material. When the monster in The Thing transformed it only ever did so because it absolutely didn't feel like it needed to be subtle anymore because only one (or possibly two, again, the thing status of the characters is still super controversial, people were left alive in a "round" of 8 people or so and it was ready to rush down 1v1.

The only other situation when it turned into a monster was because it wanted to protect the other hives as best it could by killing people. It was never plan A from the get go, and whenever it transformed it died super quick to the weapons the crew had. Yeah, it was a flamethrower and regular bullets didn't do much, but the point wasn't to focus on "Only fire could hurt it" during the movie, so much as the idea that certain people cleared of being the thing were extremely scary to the monster. Security lasers basically already do this for most antags.

[Alex Crimson]

It only ever really transformed when it was going to absorb something, or it felt threatened and needed to defend itself. Its end goal was basically to absorb, imitate and survive. It didnt infect people or turn people into monsters, it absorbed them then divided. Even if they acted fine, they were "The Thing".

But really, Shadowling is just another rev/team antag mode and i think we should avoid doing more of those.

[dezzmont]

[quote="Alex Crimson"]It only ever really transformed when it was going to absorb something, or it felt threatened and needed to defend itself. Its end goal was basically to absorb, imitate and survive. It didnt infect people or turn people into monsters, it absorbed them then divided. Even if they acted fine, they were "The Thing". /quote]

So if you were to represent how The Thing eats, how would you? How could you make it so that the thing is capable of creating a new being that is capable of perfectly emulating the person it ate?

You are hyperfocusing on the fact that in the fluff The Thing killed people, and are entirely ignoring the point that I am making. Mechanically, the best way to represent an absolutely perfect copy would be conversion, which is why shadowling, a monster that focuses primarily on converting people and giving them weirdo monster powers to use, is way closer to the original thing compared to changeling and frankly far more interesting.

Having a lot of something isn't bad. It means you need to question why that is happening.

Team antags are easier to design, it is easier to create failsafes in the round if multiple people can pick up the slack. It allows more interesting variations in power among the players and more complicated powers and abilities. Number tweaks are easier because there is less focus on the antag having to do everything alone. The round will almost certainly be interesting as well because team antagonists often are a very concentrated force of chaos compared to traitors and changelings who are literally forced to be subtle. Rounds are faster because of this which is actually a big problem with current SS13 design

Team antags are more puplar than solo antags with players too. Being an antagonist who knows it isn't all over if they dont do everything perfectly. Intra antag dynamics are fun, especially if you are an antag who spawns on station in a role, and you don't realy have any reason to interact with fellow antags as a solo. Group fights in SS13 are fun, the combat system both pre and post stun change was set up to heavily reward teamwork. Team antags allow you to exploit interdepartmental dynamics more and allow you to preform more complicated actions.

If team antags are really popular with both designers and players, then it stands to reason we need to look at what is lacking with solo antags that makes them so unnatractive in many ways, not try to limit things that clearly work.

[Alex Crimson]

and im saying that for the sake of game design we do not need to copy The Thing THAT much. The idea is to create an antag that can cause someone to think "is my co-worker human? Am i safe here?". A team antag that slowly takes over the station with aggro underlings is way too overt for what a "changeling" should be, or atleast what i believe it was created to be.

[DemonFiren]

Except those underlings have to remain stealthy if they're individually shit at prolonged engagements and weakened in the light (that is, in high-traffic areas.)

[Alex Crimson]

They really dont. Shadowling just needs to phase shift to the SMES/power, disable it, then convert people in the dark. The converted can then see in the dark and have a massive advantage. It will be like Cult, but worse because the Shadow/Underlings are so much stronger and require no ramp-up time to get their powers.

[DemonFiren]

Well, the SMES are usually in plain light.

And we are assuming they can use electronics (which you just gave an argument against.)

[Alex Crimson]

As i understand it they can walk in light, they just get hurt by it. Even if they cannot interact with machines, they can just smash up lights or cut wires in maint. From looking at the Shadowling thread, its just another Alien infestation game mode.