/tg/Station 13

Bottom post of the previous page:

How about instead of using a light diminisher and a dissonant shriek, both of which are somewhat problematic, you replace both with something similar to the statue's light-flickering ability (though preferably without the blindness).

It doesn't fuck over silicons, it gives you time to smash lights, it hurts people's PDAs and flares too (+1 fear), and it all round sounds a little more fun and shadowy rather than what changelings currently have.

I say light diminisher's problematic because the concept just seems really hazy. I mean, something like a goliath tentacle but only strong enough to take out lights? I'd prefer flickering.

I like what's being drafted so far. If Pybro wants more ideas for sprites, how about a replacement form for when husking someone, like a sort of 'melt and enshroud the body' type thing? Another way, along with the rest of your lovely sprites, of increasing the differences from changelings.

In my opinion a ranged physical attack would allow for more precise elimination of light sources permanently, though the light flickering idea does hold weight as a good alternative, if a bit iffy since you would still take damage from the flickering lights.

Possibly have it as a free ability that costs about 5-10 chems/shadowchems to use.

Make them take damage only after X amount of time under the light, so the flickering will not damage them.

Demonstration of shadow absorbtion sprite

So, I gave Shadowling abilities a bit more thought. Here's a run down of my thoughts so far. Could use a fair few more abilities for diversity, but these are the basics on my mind.

Overshadows
-Shadow Reform (Revive from death)
-Shadow Shift (Etheral Jaunt- makes the shadowling a faint shadow that can move through walls)
-Shadow Purge (Essentially an ability that temporarily expunges the stun effect, long cooldown for balance)
-Engorged Glands (Allows more shadow chemicals to be stored. Shadow chemicals would need a rename but that's just fluffyness.)
-Human Form (Allows the Overlings to assume a human-skinned disguise. This causes slow but steady clone/genetic damage, and is nonfunctional in the shadows).
-Shadow Tendrils (Lashs out to a distance of 5 tiles in all directions and takes out the lights. Does no damage to actual mobs)
-Sonorous Screetch (Causes a weak EMP pulse and weak 3 second stun when in the light, stronger EMP and 5 second stun in the shadows).
-Shadow Lance (A cousin of the changeling arm-blade)
-Enthrall (Absorb, but the absorb process revives the absorbee and binds them to the absorber, creating an undershadow.

Undershadows
-Shadow Tendrils (Lashs out to a distance of 5 tiles in all directions and takes out the lights. Does no damage to actual mobs)
-Shadow Lance (A cousin of the changeling arm-blade)
-Shadow Purge (Essentially an ability that temporarily expunges the stun effect, long cooldown for balance)
-Shadow Reform (Revive from death)

After careful consideration, I feel a fleshmind-esque ability would actually make shadowlings too powerful. As it is, shadowlings heal in the dark due to the way the mutant race works. Giving them the ability to heal out of the dark makes having the light do damage relatively pointless.

I dunno, those are basically renamed abilities that we already have.

I want new stuff, interesting stuff, more original content.

Like the ability to become one's shadow. Invisibility while you are attached to an object or person. Should probably be balanced out to prevent following the target like that forever.
Instead of being a copy of Jaunt, Shadow Shift makes you a shadowy cloud. You can go through tiny cracks and holes, so you can go through airlocks, firedoors (let's forget for a second that those are supposed to be airtight) and windows, but not through walls, for example.
It doesn't even have to be gameplay changes, it's just more fun to have the abilities that are a little bit different.
Like a missile that blinds whoever it hits temporarily, weapon that's not just resprited arm blade, but creates smoke or something like that when it hits, ability to temporarily disable light sources in the area, or to blow them up, or put a "wall" that blocks the light. All the things. Passive chance to avoid brute attack, like it goes through you, ability to quickly blink from shadow to shadow, all the stuff.

Naked Ned walked up the Head of Personnel's desk, his harmbaton proudly swaying in the space wind. He was here to start his daily routine. Ask for all access, then call the Head of Personnel a fascist prick when he was denied. Then, off to the kitchen to practice tabling with the clown! As he approached, Steals-Shit-Sal, one of his greyshirt brethren, patted him on the back.

"Lookin' good, Ned!", he quipped.

Ned wanted to say something witty in return, like "fuck off faggot", but couldn't. He didn't know why. He stayed silent. As he neared the HoP's window, he felt cold. Strange, there were no holes in the station! Maybe atmos had fucked up again? He stepped forward.

"Yes, Ned?", Hank the HoP asked.
"I'd...I'd like all access...please", Ned replied.

He felt in a haze. Hank looked at Ned oddly. As he was about to shout his denial, Ian went off like a fire cracker, howling and yapping like a mad dog.

"Ian, boy, what's with you, it's just Ned? He comes by every damn day", Hank said to his best friend
But Ian could not be abated. He yelped and cried, whined and howled at Ned, as the nude man stood there awestruck. Ian pawed at the Heads of Staff meeting room door, frantically crying and whining. Hank got up from his chair, and opened the door. Ian ran off, howling and crying even as he hid behind cigarette machine. Hank turned back to Ned, raising his arms in a shrug.

"DENI- Uh...Ned...What is that?", Hank asked, slowly pointing at the ground.
"What? What is what?" Ned replied.

My concern is that unless you give people shadows every round, there will be some strong meta. Maybe give people shadows every round but make a shadowling clinging make the shadow darker?

(I approve the concept though)

First attempt at spriting, drafted this for Underlings. Thoughts/criticism?

Edit: This is an altered Husk sprite, to go along with the way Underlings are created. I can post the .dmi if anyone wants me to.

Nalar wrote:My concern is that unless you give people shadows every round, there will be some strong meta. Maybe give people shadows every round but make a shadowling clinging make the shadow darker?

(I approve the concept though)

When I said "stand still for too long", I meant like, a minute and a half straight. But whatevs. Or it could just be viewed as a second shadow, that doesn't move with the light like it should.

I like that interpretation of the shadowling, Chronic's one that is.

I can see a blend between Pybro's and Chronic's sprites, maybe the underlings take Pybro's sprites to better emphasise the difference between the two?

Steelpoint wrote:I like that interpretation of the shadowling, Chronic's one that is.

I can see a blend between Pybro's and Chronic's sprites, maybe the underlings take Pybro's sprites to better emphasise the difference between the two?

All I've seen of Pybro's sprites are animations which could totally be used on top of my sprites, but the ones I showed are meant for Underlings, was planning on making a distinct other sprite for Shadowlings as well as a "horror mode" sprite.

Only non-animation sprite I've made so far is the armblade and the latch-on-shadow. I was also thinking about maybe trying to make a hud reskin.

As for "horror mode" things, I thought of making "horror modes" for underlings based off shit a crewmember would fear. Spess carp, rogue HoS, murderous clown, etc. But...uh...It didn't exactly go very far.

Too mechanical for my taste

May I suggest checking out the gear presets admins can use? There are a few horror things in there, mostly the welder and the tunnel clown...

Yup, that seems like a decently thought out list of reworked changeling powers from Nalar, with some interesting new ideas. I think 'shadow lance' sounds quite stabby (I'd rather 'shadow lash') but obviously that's a personal taste thing. I'm really not sure about the 'attach as a shadow' thing: first, it has the potential to make shadowlings much more keen on the light (ever a bad thing, makes it more like current game modes) and has the meta attached, but it also seems like it might be a bit boring to play with. Wait until your target gets alone, he takes ages, that sort of thing. Oh, and I like the sprite for absorbing, Pybro.

Xenomorph hunters can turn partially invisible. It's really surprisingly hard to spot them. What if something like that was possible for shadowlings in the shadow, and therefore only wore off a slight time after coming out? That could both add to their mystery and the drama of being attacked by one in maint.

How are you going to balance only the head lings having 'enthrall' with all the people who are going to be taken out of the game by the underlings? You'll need incentives for the head lings to go through queues of people to absorb. Perhaps an increasing upper limit of powers that can be concurrently held? Along with the inability to 'reset' power choices like a normal ling?

Yeah, I think Narlar's ability list is great, and the skins are great as well.

Nalar wrote:My concern is that unless you give people shadows every round, there will be some strong meta. Maybe give people shadows every round but make a shadowling clinging make the shadow darker?

(I approve the concept though)

Vashta Nerada style.

This is still as relevant 5 months ago as it is today.

It has been, from my viewpoint, the only incarnation of a Changeling that saw near universal praise from the server while it was on.

I still present this idea as a good alternative, and replacement, for the fragmented Changeling game mode.

Shadowlings dwell in the shadows and take damage in light... This sounds awesome but what if the whole station starts building light fixtures everywhere and botany starts spreading glowshrooms? Would they be too vulnerable to that?

Then you kill the botanists and destroy the lights faster than they can rebuild them?

Reimoo wrote:Then you kill the botanists and destroy the lights faster than they can rebuild them?

Which, I think, dovetails rather nicely with the recent hivemind talk, since it would be a lot easier for a group of shadowlings to ambush 'light crews' and/or quickly deal with their lights than it would if each 'ling did it on their own.

The ideas put forward earlier in this thread were that Shadowlings had a limited selection of offensive weaponry, their main advantage was stealth, speed and team work. The Shadowlings have access to a form of phase shift and a weaker form of armblade and nightvision. Not to mention that if they absorb someone they revive them as a weaker Undershadow.

The Undershadow was weaker than the Shadowling and cannot absorb people, but it still is robust enough.

This is what changeling should have always done. As a player, you feel the mechanic converts you into a biological abomination, but really the changeling hijacked your genes and biological composition to form another being, that is completely different than you. You're just controlling it.

How about it works like Allens? If you get "converted", there is a very slim chance that you are the new entity created, and it is pulled by the pool of ghosts.

And what about making these underlings genetically unstable?
They could randomly mutate and I dunno, grow armor or a shield without any warning to the user.

Having the absorption pull from any available ghosts is generally the gold standard in handling bringing in a antag player from the dead players. It would discourage players in seeking out the Shadowlings to become a antagonist. But it would still bring people into the round.

If we had some way to toggle off pda/flash/lamp lights temporarily (just set them off not break them almost force them to scramble for their pdas) it would be a real cracker. Maybe make EMP do it.

Shadowlings could possibly have a cooldown limited ability that acts as a EMP but also effects PDA's as well. Would be useful if caught in a bind or want to avoid detection.

I just skipped over page 3, but anyway.

Instead of flickering lights, what if the light diminishing ability dimmed lights considerably, making the large wall mounted ones having a range of 1-2 tiles, and incredibly dim, making PDA's only light up the tile they are on, and flares maybe 3-4 tiles out, but still very dim.
Y/N

Flickering seems more scary because you can still catch a slight glimpse of what is coming at you.

Ultimately all this requires is someone dedicated enough to make it a full game mode. Considering the original implementation was just editing a normal Changeling around, it should not be as hard as making a new game mode from the ground up.

Its clear this game mode suggestion has good support, it just has to be made.

Well, you say that, but you seem to be the only one who is bringing it up after half a year.

It's not that I'm against it, but you know.

I mainly brought it up again considering we've come back to our annual 'changeling is bad' cycle, and I just wanted to point out that this option still exists and is a good alternative.

If you remove "ling" from it, we can have both.

Shadowpeople

Phantom, Specter, Banshee, Nightmare, Revenant, Phantasm, Shadow, etc etc etc

Darkovores.

imo tcomms tends to ruin modes like this. it takes the spook out of things you know.

i guess this would be worth trying but >implying i can be arsed to code this.
my approach would be more of a brain parasite thing.

Miauw wrote:my approach would be more of a brain parasite thing.

Which reminds me of this, which is a thing that lives in people's minds, can speak as them, whisper to them, take over the body temporarily, all while the victim is fully conscious. On bay it used to be that the victim is still regular self, it's just you make them do things by causing huge pain and in general use fear to control them, however, I could see something like that working if we made the victim actually be "brainwashed" and follow all commands of the host, so like a golem, but your master is in your brains. Combine that with the ability to change host, enhance them with healing or whatever, take direct control for a limited amount of time and it may actually work.

The main problem is how you kill the bloody thing, I think it was one of the main reasons why this mode didn't really work.

There's also this, but I've no clue about what the fuck that is.

I thought the cortical bore and the meme were the same thing?

You know what might be a interesting ability? A way to shut of telecomms for a period of time, say 5 minutes, as a Shadowbeing/ling/whatever. 2spooky4u.

Meme is some energy metaphysical whatever entity, bore is parasite.

More so I meant that I thought that they both did mostly the same thing.

Either way, personally I'm not so sure if a 'invasive parasite' would work well in a Shadowling game mode. However it might be worth investigating it on its own merits. However the main problems confounding it has been that its been reliant on roleplay to make the host compliant, meaning on /tg/ the parasite would need to take control of the host fully and not by subtle subversion.

Shadowlings (or Overshadows) need to not be able to take personality's, mainly in that absorbing someone is not to gain a disguise but to recruit a new Undershadow or ally.

I would also suggest that Overshadows cannot wear any clothing aside from backpacks, however Undershadows can wear clothing. Encouraging Undershadows to disguise themselves, as they will lack the more overt combat capabilities the Overshadows have.

My brain parasite idea was much straightforward. The main reason not to absorb everyone would be that the people you leave become husks that can't speak. they have to dress up or get shrekt.

The key behind shadowling is a snowballing progression before an outburst of public activity.

I think a mechanism for the overshadows becoming more and more obviously grotesque would work well for this.

Watch The Thing and see what kinda cool shit the lings have.
They have the Sloth's claw, which I imagine would be able to pry open airlocks or work as a retractor/hemostat.
They can assimilate others via facehugger.
They can pose as animals.
Tons of other cool shit.

I think this is a really great idea. One thing that I don't think I've seen mentioned is how these things would spawn in, since they're essentially nonhuman and if they spawned in with every other engineer/the middle of medbay it'd be ggnore. I suggest giving them a short timer of something like five to seven minutes and a button. Pressing the button ends the timer immediately, and when the timer ends, the shadowling enters it's true form and gains all powers as well as having it's mutantrace changed. That or having them spawn completely nude in a maint tunnel or something, but then "Officer! i was metagaming I was just checking this area of maint as soon as the shift started for totally IC reasons and saw this spooky shadow man! We must have shadowlings!"

Yearly reminder that this is the, in my opinion, best and only viable alternative to Changelings that does not involve gutting the game mode.

Best way to have them in like the movies portray them. Which is quite ironic really.

Should shadowlings get that invisibility in low light conditions genetic power that got added recently?

My concern with conversion changeling is that it would be like rev with superpowers.

This clearly would play nothing like rev. I love it.

The only difficult part in making a straight Shadowling game mode is getting rid of the ability to change your appearance, not having your appearance change when you absorb someone and reviving someone who is absorbed into a underling/thrall.