New New New New New^50 Cult Feedback Thread

bandit · Post by **bandit** » Sat Dec 12, 2015 3:18 pm #139848

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/13552

I've given my feedback here/in OOC, now you

Helios · Post by **Helios** » Sat Dec 12, 2015 3:47 pm #139853

Random runes are terrible

Alex Crimson · Sat Dec 12, 2015 4:32 pm

"magical version of nuke ops"

What the fuck why?

Wyzack · Post by **Wyzack** » Sat Dec 12, 2015 5:54 pm #139866

I feel like indoctrinating new members is what really made it a cult and not just a cabal of evil wizards

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sat Dec 12, 2015 5:57 pm #139869

Technically they do indoctrinate people by murdering them and enslaving their souls

Amelius · Post by **Amelius** » Sat Dec 12, 2015 6:54 pm #139878

Really weak. Has potential, but cult is simply too complex for having a 5 man prosquad. Ops is simple with a simple objective - use this mundane gear to wreck a station and steal the disk.

Cult meanwhile has a bajillion runes with interesting interactions and so forth. However, with the removal of stunpapers entirely, and RNG starting runes, it means even IF you're competent it's doubly hard to 'carry'. Sometimes, no one even has sacrifice runes and people have to use their supply papers on really really basic sac runes. Then, with 6~ people you have to defend a small area from the entire station with no possibility for a retry, like in gang. To make things worse, your fellow cultists can be deconverted, spoiling the whole operation. Heck, the round I played with had 4 people in the cult total(all very competent, thank the gods) with 62 people on the server.

There's also ridiculous circumstances such as people with veil not having reveal, and vice versa, essentially making them wastes of slots. Had a fellow member cloak our runes, including our only sac one, and since no one had the sac rune in their tomes we had to waste a second supply paper on it.

To make things even more dire, the nar nar summon statue essentially mandates that the base initially chosen is the only base for the duration of the round. This means that rather than being able to act as a somewhat decentralized cult, mitigating the effect of poor teammates, you're instead even more vulnerable, essentially being a HoG cult without the base defenses or conversion.

Incomptinence · Sat Dec 12, 2015 8:00 pm

A lot of runes are crazy irrelevant. Imagine if nuke ops got random gear instead of picking what to buy.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sat Dec 12, 2015 8:01 pm #139890

The thing about cult is that they can have options of some ridiculously powerful and unique things in their runes because it's magic. Nuke Ops are specifically working with guns and tacticool things.

Alex Crimson · Sat Dec 12, 2015 8:03 pm

But its a damn Cult. Not some silly "magical nuke ops". If you want that, then make a new Wizard mode.

Incoming · Post by **Incoming** » Sat Dec 12, 2015 10:29 pm #139912

I have to agree that this version of cult pushes too close to what other modes offer. Cult's existing niche is that it's a team antag conversion mode that actually requires a little tactics to avoid being quashed by the station.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sat Dec 12, 2015 10:29 pm #139913

Cult is also really really awful in its current state

TheNightingale · Sat Dec 12, 2015 11:49 pm

Cult is the "stealth conversion" gamemode, as opposed to Rev and Gang's "mad rush to convert and murder everyone". Making cult into Ops 2.0 won't achieve much.

A wizard operative mode might be interesting, though - give them all basic spell choices (no Ei Nath/Jaunt/multiverse) and see what they can do working together.

onleavedontatme · Sat Dec 12, 2015 11:57 pm

I think people are getting too hung up on the word "ops"

Its only "ops" in that its a small elite team trying to do something. It otherwise shares nothing with the mode.

We already have/had the following conversion modes

Rev
Cult
Gang
Shadowling
Hand of God
Monkey if we're including jokes

Whats the harm in rethinking how cult works? We didnt have a stealthy cabal mode yet

Post by **oranges** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 12:06 am #139936

lol themed nukeops

just remove cult if you're gonna waste time on this.

ShadowDimentio · Sun Dec 13, 2015 12:09 am

>Remove stunpaper

Sure okay

; HELP CULTIST MAINT SURGERY AAAAAAAAAA

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 12:11 am #139938

Why would they kidnap people, they'd just murder them and kidnap the body

Edit : Especially since they don't convert anymore

Amelius · Post by **Amelius** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 2:19 am #139957

Zilenan91 wrote:Why would they kidnap people, they'd just murder them and kidnap the body

Edit : Especially since they don't convert anymore

Then you're dragging a corpse along with a bloodtrail or an unwieldy locker while all of sec and the validhunter force converges on your position with no tools to either escape or use in combat. It'd literally be the same problem as we had with post-parasting ling and pre-newling - you have nothing but basic station tools to catch people with, yet you have to escape with their corpse AND do a time consumptive/obvious process to the corpse (gibbing leaving all their gear behind and skulls in this case, on a sac rune that you may or may not have access to).

Since you have RNG runes it's exceedingly unlikely you'd get imbue and anything useful. Veil/reveal may as well be removed since they're useless without their counterpart and, in fact, can be counterproductive (as I said earlier). Many runes can't be made into a paper form straight up. Furthermore, the win condition involves using sac runes that zero cultists may have the ability to create, except from the fancy 3-use paper that you also need to spend to make constructs, so you can't even decentralize that way.

Also, if you DO use that magic by some fluke, i.e. you managed to get EMP + imbue by some magical fluke, be prepared for the inevitable red alert shuttle + maint/likely cult hideout sweep that consists of more people than the cult combined, with actual cohesive firepower.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 2:24 am #139958

>stunprod sword to the chest until they die no time to scream

Seriously it's actually hilariously easy, cult swords do 30 or so brute, so tehre's no chance that they'd be able to yell if you're hitting chest.
Also you could just send them into crit/ko with a briefcase then shard them immediately after.

Incomptinence · Sun Dec 13, 2015 2:41 am

Zilenan91 wrote:The thing about cult is that they can have options of some ridiculously powerful and unique things in their runes because it's magic. Nuke Ops are specifically working with guns and tacticool things.

Not saying everything should be blood boil obviously you could have varied costs or even a bloody tech tree.

There should be increasing combat utility by cost and there should be intermediate combat relevant runes/ armaments so we don't have another STUN PROD THE GAME!

Amelius · Post by **Amelius** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 3:04 am #139962

Zilenan91 wrote:>stunprod sword to the chest until they die no time to scream

Seriously it's actually hilariously easy, cult swords do 30 or so brute, so tehre's no chance that they'd be able to yell if you're hitting chest.
Also you could just send them into crit/ko with a briefcase then shard them immediately after.

Except RNG runes means that you're either running around with a cult sword in hand AND you or another vaguely competent cultist creates one for you, or you have to wind up with imbue + arms through some magic.

Remember it only takes four letters to kill a cult 'CULT!' on the radio will instantly summon the validhunter power rangers and sec to maintenance.

Toolboxing to death is viable, but again, the odds are stacked against you considering you have to kill them, move their corpse, AND evade the validsquad. Saccing them right then and there also presumes you have sac in your tome, AND it leaves residue that is cult-identifiable. There's only so many places to hide a cult base, and anyone vaguely used to the maps will know viable cult locations and check them in that case.

1g88a · Post by **1g88a** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 4:05 am #139965

Amelius wrote:Really weak. Has potential, but cult is simply too complex for having a 5 man prosquad. Ops is simple with a simple objective - use this mundane gear to wreck a station and steal the disk.

I was one of your fellow cultists that round, and I agree with a lot of what you said.

While I do like the idea of the cult being a small-ish secret cabal, the random runes and inability to rely on multiple hideouts make it near impossible. A single cultist dying/getting converted means the team effectively loses access to their runes. A number of cultists dying means one or two guys have to make due with a mishmash of runes. Losing the nar-nar statue at any point is an instant loss so if a couple of validhunters stumble upon your base early on or when there's only one person there at the moment its essentially game over. It also means there's little point in making more than one base unless there was a way to take corpses with you through teleport runes (that way you could have a 'main' base where most of the activity takes place, along with more secluded place to hide/defend the statue).

In that particular round, we were extremely lucky in a number of ways. We were generally pretty robust, a few of us were familiar with the runes, the department we based ourselves in was understaffed, someone wiped sec's records(?) shortly after some of us escaped capture, sec never bothered to raid science after catching two cultists in it, and we did a good job of choosing our victims. We still lost the defense phase because "lol boh singularity suicide bomb" but it was a miracle we even got that far.

Artificiers are nice but cult walls are very obvious and space is often limited in the first place so one thought I had was to find a way to allow them to more safely make expansions to the station. Big eldritch metal tumors on the station that would be obvious to any EVA explorer (but there aren't too many of those). One idea I had to make wraiths more useful (since they are more offense-focused than juggernauts) is to let them see cultists through walls, that way a cultist could scout the halls and call upon a wraith hiding in maint/space to blink in and help murder someone/defend the cultist.

In summary
-Random runes bad
-Cult needs more power (this probably would be solved by getting rid of random runes but I'm leaving this in)
-Constructs may need more to do other than wait around for the final defense
-Can only really have one base of operations
-Boh kill me please nerf

Takeguru · Post by **Takeguru** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 4:53 am #139971

Amelius wrote: Then you're dragging a corpse along with a bloodtrail or an unwieldy locker

Protip: Bodybags.
They can be folded back up and stored in your backpack.

Helios · Post by **Helios** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 5:13 am #139973

Can we do the Gang Dominator thing and give a second chance? If say, someone bombs a supposedly bomb immune structure.

Supermichael777 · Sun Dec 13, 2015 5:22 am

Welcome to bomb memes how may we crush you?

magic nukeops suffres from a case of long rounds with high general pop survival rates
this means bombs and full science. also they need masive buffs and now have zero incentive not to go on masive killingsprees the moment anything starts going down.
so bomb imune walls would be nice or bomb imune narnar.

Helios · Post by **Helios** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 5:25 am #139975

Supermichael777 wrote:Welcome to bomb memes how may we crush you?

magic nukeops suffres from a case of long rounds with high general pop survival rates
this means bombs and full science. also they need masive buffs and now have zero incentive not to go on masive killingsprees the moment anything starts going down.
so bomb imune walls would be nice or bomb imune narnar.

If they do that then people will just BoH singulo them.

Helios · Post by **Helios** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 5:41 am #139977

A general Idea that antagonists have is that they have some kind of distinctions, so that not all antagonists are the same, barring Blob, which is more of an RTS so doesn't really work for the sake of this discussion.
Traitors have telecrystals, so they can choose what type of traitor they want to be, changelings have a limited supply of genomes, as well as chemicals, so they can be incredibly powerful against specific things, but not against everything. Nuke ops can choose what type of equipment they want, whether or not they want Syndiborgs, or a hacked AI board or so on. Gangs have a limited amount of influence, so the decision between getting some more cans or a switch blade can be critical, and effects how the gang is acting.

Old, or I guess current Cult gives every cultist access to every rune.
This new Cult arbitrarily assigns runes, so you could get sacrifice, fabricate shell, and all of the important runes, while everyone else gets shitty runes and you are AFK at the start of the round ruining the entire Cult. This also takes away player agency when it comes to their capabilities as their runes are chosen completely arbitrarily. This is how I recommend dealing with it. Give each cultist a role that they could choose, and trying to balance it so each role would have one "powerful" rune.
Examples could include
Brawler:Gets access to summon Armor, flame, blind, Sacrifice
Scholar:If there's conversion, they get it. Fabricate shell, Manifest Spirit, Astral Communion, Ressurect, also a tool that makes Cult Welders so they can heal constructs
Defiler:Teleport, Teleport Other, Summon Cultist, create wall, and turn items into cult items (proposed by Xhuis, so turning metal into cult metal/floor tiles for walls and floors)
And so on.

Spoiler:

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 5:44 am #139978

The reason this version of cult doesn't have conversion is to make it so that removing stun paper doesn't gimp them.

I do really like the classes idea here though.

VonRidel · Post by **VonRidel** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 5:46 am #139980

I hate the fucking new cult symbols. Can't tell a cultist or non-cultist in dark areas. Otherwise the 'bomb proof' not bomb proof nar'sie summoning thing needs to be, well, bomb proof.

1g88a · Post by **1g88a** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 5:51 am #139982

It is bombproof, from what I've heard. Double boh isn't really a bomb though, it just spawns mini-singularities.

Amelius · Post by **Amelius** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 6:07 am #139983

1g88a wrote:It is bombproof, from what I've heard. Double boh isn't really a bomb though, it just spawns mini-singularities.

It isn't bombproof. Most recent cult round resulted in a resounding cult victory with seconds to Nar Nar, followed by a suicide bomb from 10~ tiles away OHKOing it.

Nar nar really needs a timer though.

Amelius · Post by **Amelius** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 6:10 am #139984

Helios wrote:Can we do the Gang Dominator thing and give a second chance? If say, someone bombs a supposedly bomb immune structure.

You can 'retry' but you start back at square 1 in terms of sacs. The sac requirement is much too high anyway, given you have to reach the requisite sacs AND defend for roughly as long as a dom.

Luke Cox · Post by **Luke Cox** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 11:37 am #140016

I don't like how they have the same turtle end-game that gang has with dominator. The cult's main objective should be to construct a giant shell for Nar'sie and sacrifice a key target or targets to summon him.

bandit · Post by **bandit** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 2:30 pm #140056

1g88a wrote:In that particular round, we were extremely lucky in a number of ways. We were generally pretty robust, a few of us were familiar with the runes, the department we based ourselves in was understaffed, someone wiped sec's records(?) shortly after some of us escaped capture, sec never bothered to raid science after catching two cultists in it, and we did a good job of choosing our victims. We still lost the defense phase because "lol boh singularity suicide bomb" but it was a miracle we even got that far.

There was also the huge, HUGE benefit that the AI/borgs were in an Asimov struggle with security and not focused on the cult at all. It didn't send its secborg in until the dominator defense phase. Just one of many reasons I wouldn't call that round a representative playtest.

Amelius · Post by **Amelius** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 4:50 pm #140075

1g88a wrote:In that particular round, we were extremely lucky in a number of ways. We were generally pretty robust, a few of us were familiar with the runes, the department we based ourselves in was understaffed, someone wiped sec's records(?) shortly after some of us escaped capture, sec never bothered to raid science after catching two cultists in it, and we did a good job of choosing our victims. We still lost the defense phase because "lol boh singularity suicide bomb" but it was a miracle we even got that far.

Might want to mention that two people were caught very early on and we could have lost both of them if I wasn't standing over a summon cultist rune at that point, and if both of them didn't have a panic phrase. We had 4 cultists in that round at 62 pop. Most of our sacs were braindead, slime clones, or corpses. Not a representative round. Once people are used to newnewnewcult, they won't bother trying to deconvert (they can't) or brig anyone with a tome - they'll just kill them in the field and incinerate them, fucking over the cult unless you have a certain selection of runes (raise dead, summon cultist, and summon ghost, or whatever it's called). Keep in mind that cultists are no more powerful than a revolutionary in the field, despite having very low numbers.

The sac requirement is too high atm, given that it only gives you the opportunity to try for a win (like a dom) rather than an immediate win.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 5:35 pm #140106

Can't you also use the ghost summon spam rune, equip them all with cult armor then send them out into the halls to murderbone to get the sacs you need.

Amelius · Post by **Amelius** » Sun Dec 13, 2015 5:50 pm #140115

Zilenan91 wrote:Can't you also use the ghost summon spam rune, equip them all with cult armor then send them out into the halls to murderbone to get the sacs you need.

Only with a drain life rune as well. Medibots and medikits won't provide enough sustained healing. Even then it's risky since you have no control over ghost supply or summoned ghosts staying with you long enough to drain life them. Plus requires alot of prep (10+ arm runes) for a sustained horde.

Still unwieldy with the RNG runes.

Helios · Post by **Helios** » Mon Dec 14, 2015 1:31 am #140213

Okay, if there's questions about powergaming when it comes to classes, have it be restricted that only 40% of the cultists can pick said class, and if you try to pick it after that, it says please pick something else

Amelius · Post by **Amelius** » Mon Dec 14, 2015 4:08 am #140236

Helios wrote:Okay, if there's questions about powergaming when it comes to classes, have it be restricted that only 40% of the cultists can pick said class, and if you try to pick it after that, it says please pick something else

> Artificial limitations.
> Forcing people to choose roles they don't want to play.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Mon Dec 14, 2015 4:23 am #140243

But that already happens with station jobs anyways

Xhuis · Post by **Xhuis** » Mon Dec 14, 2015 12:55 pm #140351

Just leave cult the fuck alone. I've overhauled it twice based entirely on player suggestion and I can tell you now this is just gonna make things worse.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Mon Dec 14, 2015 1:22 pm #140357

Cult was always at best only tolerable if good players started in a position to employ the Cult Tomes from the start.

Oldman Robustin · Mon Dec 14, 2015 4:44 pm

Glad to see most of the Feedback thread players recognize what makes a cult a cult. Seriously "growing your membership through conversion" is pretty much what defines a cult. Not a group of shitty nukeops with robes.

Cult is a solid mode and anything that people don't like can easily be remedied with tweaks. Changing stuff like researching runes, # of cultist required to convert, etc. is modest but shown to drastically effect the style of the mode.

We have PLENTY of levers to alter the style of cult and improve it however we desire. Turning it into magic-ops is just bad on so many levels. I could write one of my signature novels on why its a terrible direction but I don't think that's necessary when so much of the bad stuff is obvious on its face.

Helios · Post by **Helios** » Mon Dec 14, 2015 5:35 pm #140402

I don't think it is entirely bad though, for the reason of it being a change up, so you don't know if you are facing a cult who can convert or not.
So people can think "I want to get converted, sure", and then they get sacrificed. Because they assumed it was old cult, but it was new cult. Like 1/5 cult rounds are this.
But I know how much that would bloat the code so maybe not.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Tue Dec 15, 2015 12:34 am #140482

If anything this cult is more of a cult than old cult ever was. Rather than converting you while you're still contained within your feeble fleshy cell, they instead free your soul into a shell worthy of the Geometer himself.

leibniz · Post by **leibniz** » Wed Dec 16, 2015 11:23 am #140845

unplayable.
My tome has like only 5 runes for some reason, most of them are the useless ones. No sacrifice. No stun talismans. It's just dogshit.
Also there is no useful up to date guide and my objectives were literally empty.
Cant even use cultcom while stunned.

edit: after looking at the changelog.. random runes, yeah, thats -10/100000

Amelius · Post by **Amelius** » Wed Dec 16, 2015 5:11 pm #140892

From git:

> That's a valid concern and it's part of the reason why I removed the 5-minute time limit on the orb. It means you can decentralize your saccing and then collect all the cultists on a place when you want to summon.

Sac runes need to be standard on all cultists. It is required to reach the win condition - you shouldn't have to spend precious supply on that. It's also theoretically possible to have the cult take over the station and have a no-win condition because they can't make a sac rune.

You can't really effectively decentralize if your sac runes aren't entirely expendable.

Post by **lumipharon** » Wed Dec 16, 2015 11:13 pm #140977

The ONLY thing I like about this change, is that it makes individual cultists very precious, which means the resurrection rune is actually useful (if rng gives it to you?).

Every cultist should have some basic runes like sac though, and the loss of stun paper gimps them so hard - even if you have a cult sword, it takes half a second to scream cult, and then you're fucked unless you have loads of constructs already.

Also as everyone has said, rng runes is horrible shit. At MOST, each cultist/tome or whatever should have a fixed set of runes, with overlap for the more important ones.

invisty · Post by **invisty** » Wed Dec 16, 2015 11:32 pm #140983

Basically, we remove conversion, and turn cult into a magic version of
nuke, with a small team of stealth elite cultists that have to build a
base in the station and sacrifice people in order to build an army of
constructs and get materials to eventually summon Nar-Sie.

A team [gangsters] that have to [secure areas] in the station and [pen] people in order to build an army of [gangsters] and get [influence] to [plant a dominator].
A team [xenos] that have to [secure areas] in the station and [facefuck] people in order to build an army of [xenos] and get [big enough] to [overrun the crew].

All too similar, tbh.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Wed Dec 16, 2015 11:36 pm #140986

[quote="lumipharon"][/quote]

I suggested to him in OOC that one cultist should always get sac, and one should always get the armor/weapon rune so the cult isn't completely defenseless in the beginning.

Luke Cox · Post by **Luke Cox** » Thu Dec 17, 2015 12:08 pm #141055

invisty wrote:
Basically, we remove conversion, and turn cult into a magic version of
nuke, with a small team of stealth elite cultists that have to build a
base in the station and sacrifice people in order to build an army of
constructs and get materials to eventually summon Nar-Sie.
A team [gangsters] that have to [secure areas] in the station and [pen] people in order to build an army of [gangsters] and get [influence] to [plant a dominator].
A team [xenos] that have to [secure areas] in the station and [facefuck] people in order to build an army of [xenos] and get [big enough] to [overrun the crew].

All too similar, tbh.

This is my main issue with the mode. I'm fine with overlapping qualities between antags, but each team antag group needs to have a distinct mechanical attribute or feel that makes them unique. For example:
Ops: Carnage and chaos (bombs, shotguns, general mayhem)
Gang: Clandestine operation and bunkering (conversion, setting up a dominator location)
Cult: Building and growth (Sacrificing, building constructs, getting a cult "factory" going)

Right now, it feels like gang with magic.