Changeling Headcrabs

[AnturK]

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/8320

The idea was to give the changeling alternative way to survive when exposed than going lesser form and making beeline for the nearest vent.
This is pretty rough pull for now so any feedback welcome.

How this works now:
-20 chems
-Small silent explosion. (0,0,2,0), gibs changeling.
-Creates a headcrab which priorities infecting corpes over attacking alive enemies ( 25 health , 5 damage )
-Infected corpse blows into a changeling monkey after a period of time.

[Incomptinence]

I don't like it. The reference is good but reinforcing the impotence of changeling with more ways to run away and become a near relevant deserter isn't really helping.

Core design flaw in changelings is they can be REALLY GOOD at running away but not all that adept at standing up for themselves. So people don't take the escape powers because that is planning to fail, to a much greater degree than an uplink implant, and the proactive side of changeling is kept weak because look how survivable you can be! Pretty sure live infecting crabheads were a total bust on goon as another point against.

[Jacquerel]

What's the intended use of this? Any situation where you're caught and gib yourself will just lead to the person who caught you burning the newly infected corpse too, or yelling for surgical aid over the radio.

[soulgamer]

I like it. It makes lings more dangerous to take on in small groups. This also gives another reason for people to use surgery which is never used anymore.

[hanshansenhansson]

I feel it should either infect alive people, or allow the player to control the headcrab to navigate it to "secure" corpses. Otherwise it's only switching the body that is going to be cremated.

[AnturK]

Giving the player control over the headcrabslug would make this strictly superior to lesser form in terms of escaping. But i agree that it's kinda underwhelming at the moment. I'll probably rework this a bit to make this more of a planning ahead than panic button.

[hanshansenhansson]

Why not aim to have it replace lesser form completely? Monkey is a bit comical after all, not creepy/strange enough

[Cheimon]

Why not aim to have it replace lesser form completely? Monkey is a bit comical after all, not creepy/strange enough

The nice thing about monkey, though, is that you can't necessarily tell if it's just a monkey or definitely a changeling. That's worth preserving, I think.

[Fragnostic]

If they can ventcrawl, that would be awesome. If RR finishes dismemberment without anymore changes delaying it, a changeling could make these headcrabs by detaching their arms, meaning they can only make 2 max. These things could mind control, so that the victims of headcrab attacks have to follow every order given to the by the changeling. And the changeling could switch bodies with the victims they headcrab. If a ling does the change bodies thing, it should take away almost all of their powers, except for hivechat/armblade/absorb/absorbDNAsting. To balance this, if a ling makes headcrabs they get covered in blood and they're left with a weird organic stump.

The nice thing about monkey, though, is that you can't necessarily tell if it's just a monkey or definitely a changeling. That's worth preserving, I think.

I agree, but people just kill monkeys anyway just to be sure. If they had the ability to become Poly, Runtime or a simple animal, it'd be better. What if a ling become Tom? Sure, they don't have the access or the health, but they do have the stealth of uncertainty. In these forms, they shouldn't get armblade if they aren't monkeys, but instead enlarged teeth and can only become humans after using absorbDNAsting on at least 6 humans, meaning they have to get close and act normal.

This is probably impossible to code and would take forever, but it'd be cool as hell.

[Incomptinence]

Fairly sure there is a pretty recent policy that is isn't okay to randomly kill player monkeys. I don't like it though, better monkey control than "ANIMAL SIMILAR TO HUMANS WITH HANDS LIKE A HUMAN CANNOT POSSIBLY USE A GUN!" style restrictions.