Cult tweaks

[Malkevin]

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/3937

runes.dm
¬ Changed summon shell from 4 plasteel to 20 metal sheets, apparently it was too hard for people to take apart walls...
¬ Changed the requirements for multi-cultist runes to allow constructs to be included; with the exception of sacrifice, blood boil, and summon narsie. Namely this allows constructs to assist cultists in conversions and summon cultist.
^ NOTE: Constructs still cant activate runes directly, if they can its a bug. [this and above needs testing]
¬ Blood boil has been changed from insta-crit nofunallowed to adding hell water to the victims. You're still going to die but atleast you might be able to take some of the fuckers with you.

talisman.dm
Remove from the supply talisman:
¬ Communicate - it was redundant with tome communication
¬ Stun ¬
¬ And Armor - this and the above were murderboner fuel
¬ Soul stone - redundant with sacrifice producing stones, also made it easier to murder boner.

camera.dm
¬ Removed EMPs triggering camera alarms - this might as well of shown the AI a big red message "HEY! OVER HERE! AN ANTAG IS MURDERING SOMEONE!"

This will allow cultists to use the EMP talisman to disable someones headset and then beat them down with their tome.
constructs.dm
Juggernauts:
¬ Lowered their melee damage from 30 to 20
¬ Lowered BASE reflect chance from 80 to 70
¬ Reflected projectiles have their damage halved

Wraiths:
¬ Increased damage from 25 to 30

The intention is that juggs are the tanks and wraiths are the glass cannons.

Artificers:
¬ Increased their damage to 10 so they're not completely boned when cornered.
¬ Removed the summon soul stone spell - redundant due to sac rune spawning stones. Yes this has a knock on affect to Wizards but they can take the spellbook option multiple times for more belts with stones.
¬ Removed lessor magic missile. I was originally iffy on this idea and in hindsight it was a bad idea. Maybe I'll replace it with a flash spell or something at a later date.

Chemistry-Reagents.dm
¬ Removed the extra damages from Hell Water
¬ Replaced by increasing the holder's bodytemp directly.

[Steelpoint]

Somewhat iffy on the removal of the Stun Talisman from the Supply Tasliman, on the one hand it does force Cultists to get the words to get to the point where they can wordlessly stun and convert/kill people. On the other hand it further rasies the "skill" ceiling for cultists in the early game.

A alternative could be to increase the amount of points a Stun Talisman is worth, say up to 3 or 4 points. Mainly so that if you really want to bank on a stun in the early game you can but you lose any other item to deploy.

Otherwise, I like the changes over all, more so the Blood Boil changes.

I still wish we could bloody remove the Jugg's reflect chance and just increase their base health, I can either kill them with one Egun or 4 Eguns and then some depending on my RNG luck.

[leibniz]

I cant really imagine the cult converting people effectively without stun talismans.

[Malkevin]

Theres a reason I removed emps triggering camera alarms.
The starting tali has emps.

Use emp to take out their headset, disable them by hitting them with your tome or make a stun stick and cable cuffs before hand.

I'm a bit iffy on it myself but its something I need to do to make cult less murderbonery.


Remember that early round isnt about increasing your numbers - this isnt rev cult where you swarm the station with cultrevs in 10 minutes, you're meant to be obtaining words via sacrificing things and people.

[Oldman Robustin]

This is a massive joke. I probably have more experience playing a cultist than anyone here so I'm going to say from the bottom of my heart that these are the worst changes I've ever seen proposed to a SS13 gametype.

These are not "tweaks" and they certainly aren't "minor". This is a terrible fraud about to be passed onto the SS13 community by someone who scarcely understand how the cult operates and what makes for an enjoyable and balanced game. This proposed change COMPLETELY guts the cult and everything that gives them a shot at victory. Literally everything about these changes nerfs every aspect of the cult... a gametype that already sees extremely mediocre success rates.

The mere fact you refer to soul stones as a "tool for murderboning" just highlights that you have no fucking clue how cult works or what drives an enjoyable cult round. Soul shards are essential for quickly converting the dead into constructs without all the buggy shit that happens when you have to kill someone before sacrificing them. Sacrifices are already highly unreliable since many people ghost or even quit the game after being killed since they don't know or expect they will be sacrificed into a shard... sharding people directly bypasses that risk since you can get them fresh while they're still in crit.

I mean I could go line-by-line on why this is the most awful list of changes ive ever seen but frankly I'd have a small novel here by the time I was done. The construct nerfs, removal of stun paper from starting paper (STARTER CULTISTS CAN BARELY GET THEIR TOME WITHOUT DRAWING A RUNE IN MIDDLE OF THE HALL AND ANNOUNCING THEMSELVES TO SECURITY... DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT THE AVERAGE CULTIST IS GOING TO BE ROBUST ENOUGH TO KILL SOMEONE WITH IMPROVED WEAPONS AND AN EMP? THATS EXACTLY WHAT NEWLING HAD TO DO BEFORE ARMBLADE AND WE ALL KNOW HOW WELL LOVED THAT ANTAG WAS), soul stone removal, blood boil, etc. etc. etc. is just mind-boggling as to why anyone would think this is a good idea.

Don't get me wrong I think there are SOME changes worth discussing here but they make up such a small fraction that this entire effort should be scrapped and restarted from the bottom-up with a clear idea of what direction you want to take the cult besides "into the trash".

I posted a link to these changes in OOC and it was a small riot on how utterly stupid and bizarre these notes are. I normally dont get up in arms since I am willing to let changes play out in practice... but holy shit there's no way I would ever play this abomination of a gametype. 0/10 please see me after class.

[bandit]

Leaving aside cult for a second, this:

camera.dm
¬ Removed EMPs triggering camera alarms - this might as well of shown the AI a big red message "HEY! OVER HERE! AN ANTAG IS MURDERING SOMEONE!"

Has massive repercussions for all antags across the board, and I hope you took that into consideration.

[Incomptinence]

Sac cult was already harder to play than convert-cult and now you nerf it even further? Really aiming for the coveted 5% win percentage newling would on occasion achieve are we?

All the paper-spawn options removed other than sword + armour are bonkers. Stun paper and soulstone encourage murderbone? You don't say I was so sure the savage human sacrificing blood cult was meant to have a peaceful resolution where the cultists showered the detective with butterfly kisses, wait they sacrifice him then probably have to kill all of security? WHY ARE YOU DISCOURAGING KILLING IN A BLOOD CULT THAT LITERALLY SACRIFICES PEOPLE? Oldman is right this is newling level hugboxing, Mohugmad Smiley has entered the ring.

Removing shards from artificers... really?
Construct wizard is rare as all hell and now it can't even work. Your saying they should just buy multiple belts fails to take in account they can only reset their spell selection when they are on the wizard shuttle.

When were constructs made to not count for summon nar sie in the first place? This is bombastic since they actually require protection and planning as opposed to cheese like manifest ghost X 8 click rune.

[Steelpoint]

Statistically speaking, so people can know the true facts. Cult rounds have a 28% win rate for the Cultists on Sbyil, with it being a 14% win rate on Artyom.

(Addendum+Opinion: A low win rate does not entirely mean the cult was wiped out, for example the cults target may have evaded being sacrificed or something else hindered the cults objectives)

Other facts
- Most Cult rounds occur on round populations between 40 to 60 people.
- There is no difference in win-lose ratio no matter how fast or slow the round goes, it always hovers around the 20% win mark.
- Most Cult rounds last between 40 - 80 minutes.

Take this for what you will.

[Incomptinence]

Those stats might sound okay for some people but it must be stressed that this is a group antagonist. Unlike traitor where one might slip though the cracks where others fail this is a total domination.

I earnestly believe solo antags should have a 20% or more win percentage because 1 in 5 winning is usually what double agent does and if your antagonist not dedicated killing itself performs worse wow you really have a paper tiger there.

40% to 60% win rate is where group antags belong because it is an all out conflict between two groups and having either the station or group antag with an overwhelming advantage is boring as all hell.

[Cipher3]

Wait a second. Malkevin don't you still have much greater changes lined up still for cult? It may be worth holding off on this until that comes around.

[Oldman Robustin]

Sac cult was already harder to play than convert-cult and now you nerf it even further? Really aiming for the coveted 5% win percentage newling would on occasion achieve are we?"

My thoughts exactly. The fact that cultists are forced into the same robusting tactic (EMP+beatdown) as pre-armblade newlings is an irony hopefully not lost on the OP here.

Anyway im copying my latest github comment here:


This is just painful to read. Seeing the logic used to justify these changes is hurting my soul.

When you nerf juggernauts and your only justification is:

"I've seen jugs bust down a wall into a room and slaughter everyone with ease."

I cri IRL. Juggernauts could use tweaking to how reflections work (which youve done) but flat out nerfing their HP and damage by double-digit percentages is not a fucking tweak, its a massive nerf. Obviously you know cult code better than me, everyone here probably knows every bit of code better than I do, but with a few exceptions I guarantee I understand the "code in practice" better than most people here. Sentences like the one above just show how short-sighted and knee-jerk most of these changes really are.

First of all, I will spell out quite clearly: SACRIFICE IS NOT THE PRIMARY WORD GENERATOR FOR A GOOD CULT. It's a perk, it's a nice "benefit" to have a word thrown at you after a sacrifice, but with 4 starting words I can unlock the entire tome just by doing research before most cultists even attempt their first sacrifice. There is no way in hell that cult will ever be effective if that to fucking EMP and beat someone to death and then gib them just to have a shot at one random fucking word. You designed some new aspects of cult but you clearly have no idea how fucking BROKEN sacrifice runes are right now. Sometimes they don't give soul shards, sometimes they don't give words, sometimes they don't give EITHER. If "Johnny Cultist" gets fucked on his first sacrifice and doesn't get a shard... he's going to be stuck playing "SHITTY REVOLUTION" where he has to try murdering people with improvised weapons and no means of silencing them... except instead of loyalists v. revs, the entire station minus a handful of other cultists is against him. Life is going to suck REALLY, REALLY HARD FOR JOHNNY CULTIST AFTER THESE CHANGES.

As for constructs, Wraiths needed a buff but Juggernauts are already mostly perfect. The only changes juggernauts needed was the reflect damage nerf you added. It was a little silly being killed by a juggernaut because you were slowed to a crawl by the 70 burn damage taken from reflected lasers. Lasers shouldn't hurt the shooter as much as the juggernaut. There is always a solution in ballistic weapons though and that's the way it should be. The Artifice change is the biggest shit on the constructs tough. I've already stated why removing soul shards is terrible (and your logic for removing them on wizard also made me cringe IRL), but removing magic missile is literally GG for the cult on a well populated station. When the cult is inevitably forced to go loud... after the conversion nerf... magic missile is pretty much the only thing that keeps cult in the game. The flashbangs, riot shields, and heavy guns come out of security and juggernauts are bumping into each other trying to avoid the hail of lasers streaming down the hall... the cult are completely outgunned and with the removal of sec lockers from departments, they have no chance of even trying to steal some sec weapons early with EMP. Magic missile is the ONLY way for them to create some distance... every veteran cultist knows that blood boil is already an extremely limited option, and with this nerf its almost completely unviable. Battles with security are inevitably running battles and trying to stand still for 10 seconds to draw the runes and another 2 minutes screaming for 2 cultists to stand near the rune is a great way to get dunked while looking like an idiot.

"Removed lessor magic missile. I was originally iffy on this idea and in hindsight it was a bad idea. Maybe I'll replace it with a flash spell or something at a later date."

Is just more shitty tampering without any explanation on WHY it was a bad idea. I've loved the lesser MM change since its inception because it let artificers actually play a role in combat and let the victims of the cult not spend the next 30 minutes shitting out rocks in a maint closet by giving them something exciting to do once the cult goes loud. You say arti's needed more ram damage so they didnt feel helpless when cornered but thats exactly that you've done. Before you could magic missile and flee to safety, or bust down a while and put up a cult wall behind you... now the artificer is back to losing to anyone with a welding tool and 0 meaningful combat role beyond pooping out rocks. Plus last I checked wizard magic missile was finally having its stun brought in line with the stun nerfs, and that will likely have an effect on lesser magic missile too.

The only reasoning behind ANY of this is you want cult to feel less "murderboner", yet you're misusing the very fundamental complaint about murderbonering. Murderboner is a NEGATIVE CONNOTATION because it implies that a player is removing several other players from the round for no other reason than to gain satisfaction from their anguish. AGAIN, murderboner is viewed as a bad thing because several people end up dead for the round just to tickle one guy's fancy... the net enjoyment of the game goes down. THIS IS NOT THE CASE FOR THE CULT. WITH FEW EXCEPTIONS THE CULT ALWAYS TRIES TO TURN DEAD BODIES INTO CONSTRUCTS. Turning people into constructs is not fucking murderboning, it's the only effective way to propagate the goddamn cult after the conversion nerf. You are not killing them, you're converting them into a new form and the round doesn't end for them. They have a new, exciting purpose and with the new cult communication and rune invocation changes they could actually feel like they were real cult members. At least until this change where you've relegated constructs back to being rock-poopers and living walls again.

So I have no idea why the fuck I keep seeing you reference "murderboning" when nobody is actually staying dead. It's actually extremely ironic that you're taking out soul stones and forcing us to use EMP talismans since that probably DOUBLES the fucking chance that someone you murder is going to stay dead for the entire fucking round... which means that more ACTUAL MURDER is going to take place under these shitty changes than under any previous iteration of the cult.

Again this is just a fraction of what I want to say. Pre-armblade newling had almost unlimited EMP and yet that was a very direction and obvious lesson for ANYONE who was paying attention that EMP+IMPROVISED WEAPONS was not enough for the average antag to feel confident robusting ANYONE. It was loud, risky, and there was a very good chance that your victim would actually win the fight (or escape). Given the massive complaining that took place about the state of newling, I thought coders would avoid making that same mistake within a fucking year... but I guess I gave them to much credit.

[Malkevin]

Leaving aside cult for a second, this:

camera.dm
¬ Removed EMPs triggering camera alarms - this might as well of shown the AI a big red message "HEY! OVER HERE! AN ANTAG IS MURDERING SOMEONE!"

Has massive repercussions for all antags across the board, and I hope you took that into consideration.

I did.

EMPs disabling headsets was added as an honourable alternative to the parapen/parasting/etc, then a day later cameras were overhauled including an alarm wire which set off from EMPs...
The AI getting "Alert, Antag shit happening at [location]" makes that alternative unworkable.

EMP alarms are a crutch.

Sac cult was already harder to play than convert-cult and now you nerf it even further? Really aiming for the coveted 5% win percentage newling would on occasion achieve are we?

All the paper-spawn options removed other than sword + armour are bonkers. Stun paper and soulstone encourage murderbone? You don't say I was so sure the savage human sacrificing blood cult was meant to have a peaceful resolution where the cultists showered the detective with butterfly kisses, wait they sacrifice him then probably have to kill all of security? WHY ARE YOU DISCOURAGING KILLING IN A BLOOD CULT THAT LITERALLY SACRIFICES PEOPLE? Oldman is right this is newling level hugboxing, Mohugmad Smiley has entered the ring.

Removing shards from artificers... really?
Construct wizard is rare as all hell and now it can't even work. Your saying they should just buy multiple belts fails to take in account they can only reset their spell selection when they are on the wizard shuttle.

When were constructs made to not count for summon nar sie in the first place? This is bombastic since they actually require protection and planning as opposed to cheese like manifest ghost X 8 click rune.

Convert cult was stupidly easy and universally hated so much people literally were begging me to fix cult.

Sac cult IS about killing and sacrificing people, although the rewards are greater for doing it alive, but its about killing and trapping their souls through ritual not through mauling them in the streets and using a pokeball on them.
I've seen cult where they actually play the mode as intended and work together, and you know what? They actually usually succeed.
Cult is a TEAM mode. Its not a round of solo robustness or a round of a limited team with limited, albeit elite, resources; its not a swarm mode where you've got to flash convert a mob so they're big enough to robust sec and the heads.
Cult is about working as a team with your cult mates, its about slowly building up your power base. Stop thinking its just another round where you can charge about like a retard with an axe and actually try working with others to achieve your goals for a change. Until you do that you're going to fail and I am not going to do anything to foster and handhold bad players and solo behaviour.

Is it really that hard for you to link up with just one other cultist, use EMP to disable the targets headset, and then bash him down with your tome?
Tomes are really robust weapons that people always forget about.
And FFS, unlimited use, zero cool down, 100% reliable, completely private communication channel - fucking use it


Wizards
I've changed it so the artificer spell book option also gives them the soul stone spell.
When I tested it I noticed you could take the soul stone belt option multiple times, each time would give you an extra set of belt, artificer spell, and summon stone spell. Thats probably a bug but I'm not touching wizard code.


Constructs
"When were constructs made to not count for summon nar sie in the first place? This is bombastic since they actually require protection and planning as opposed to cheese like manifest ghost X 8 click rune"
Since forever, constructs have never counted towards rune numbers because cult mode predates them by a long shot, so all the checks have always looked for mob/living/carbon.

My thoughts exactly. The fact that cultists are forced into the same robusting tactic (EMP+beatdown) as pre-armblade newlings is an irony hopefully not lost on the OP here.

EMP+beatdown didnt work because the AI got a big fuck off "Shits happening here YO!" warning

Those stats might sound okay for some people but it must be stressed that this is a group antagonist. Unlike traitor where one might slip though the cracks where others fail this is a total domination.

I earnestly believe solo antags should have a 20% or more win percentage because 1 in 5 winning is usually what double agent does and if your antagonist not dedicated killing itself performs worse wow you really have a paper tiger there.

40% to 60% win rate is where group antags belong because it is an all out conflict between two groups and having either the station or group antag with an overwhelming advantage is boring as all hell.

Metrics are dry meaningless statistics that exist for managers to point at and act like they know what they're talking about.
At one point Rev was about an 70% win rate for Revs then the uplinks were removed and that dropped to around 50%. Rev went from a quick bloody chaotic fun round to a drawn out dull boring round of sec systematically implanting /killing everyone.
On paper it was the most balanced round, in reality it was a boring stalemate of not much happening.

Besides, all statistics tell you is if the antags did/didn't get their green text.
All that means is that the objectives are too hard to get, if you look at the breakdown you'll see that Narsie and Sacrifice are around 45%, its the escape objective thats dragging the win rate down.

But, the game isn't about Green/Red text, its about the journey there, its about whether the game mode is fun for BOTH sides. Antags arent meant to win, they're meant to make the round interesting.
That is why I am disregarding Robustin's giant walls of rage, because he is the epitome of a P2Wer.

Wait a second. Malkevin don't you still have much greater changes lined up still for cult? It may be worth holding off on this until that comes around.

Yes, in fact here's the design doc for phase two I wrote months ago.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Future of the cult

*Replace word system with a tiered power system
--live human sacrifices gives lots of power
--dead sacrifices give not so much
--Making cult floors and walls also increases cult power
--converts maybe cost cult power / cost power above a certain number of cultists
--Tiered rune system (see below)

*Do things to reduce the individual murderbonerering
--Remove stun talisman from starting talisman
--|Remove armor too? The tome is already pretty robust.
--Add emp paper to supply tali if not already there.
--|Fix EMPs setting off camera alarms and fire alarms.

*Change blood boil to give the victims hellwater instead of insta death

*Construct changes:
*Juggs:
-Remove RNG on jugg reflection, have lasers always do reduced damage but also reflect back reduced damage lasers.
-Change melee resistance to reduce the attack damage by 9 instead of it being a 10 damage threshold
-Reduce attack damage?
*Wraiths
-Increase attack damage? I think juggs should be the blackguard tanks while wraiths are the glass cannon bezerker babarians
*Artificers
-Remove lMM, replace with something else - probably something simular to the flash powder effect
-Add arcane altar to the list of buildables, it'll be a child of alium nests so you just need to buckle someone to it without needing cuffs.
--Allows a single cultist to convert someone buckled to the altar
--Sacrifices give more points on the altar?
-Remove create soul stone and summon shell, these are now rune abilities
*Shades
-Make them not solid so they can run through walls.

*constructs drop their soul stone on death
-Chaplain can hit the stone with their bible to purify to the soul
--This will ghost the shade and cause massive point loss to the cult.

*Add some kind of feedback to indicate shell rune requires plasteel when used
*Add info on shell rune to the read tome screen


-------------------------------------------------------------
Tiered rune system:
(Very much up for debate)

First Tier
-Hide runes
-Reveal Runes
-Communicate
-Deafen
-Blind
-Sacrifice
-Summon Shell

Second Tier
-Convert
-Wall
-See Invisible
-Ghostself
-Teleport self
-EMP
-Imbue


Third Tier
-Manifest ghost
-Stun
-Free cultist
-Armor
-Summon Cultist
-Teleport other


Forth Tier
-Blood boil
-Raise dead
-Blood drain


Fifth Tier
-Summon Narsie

[AseaHeru]

Being able to create constructs for the church out of "purified" shards would be awesome.

[ColonicAcid]

>itt oldman robustin going all out with his holier than thou attitude.

when will he take his head out of his ass and understand that there are ultimately people who know more game mechanics than him?
probably never!

[bandit]

I mostly am OK with these changes but it'll probably do two things, one short-term one long:

- Short-term: Cult is gonna lose all the fucking time goddamn. (And everyone will bitch about the wiki.)

- Long-term: EMPded is going to become the new parapended in terms of cheapness, across the board. I am actually OK with this given that the level of RP on this server means such solutions are pretty much necessary to antag. But it's going to happen.

[Oldman Robustin]

Here's whats going to happen:

1) Ling is deadlier and more powerful than oldling ever was... I'm ok with this but holy shit if you people don't see this coming you deserve whatever you get from lings for the next several months.

2) Cult is going to be worse than it ever has at any point in its entire history.

Things like camera alarms are a huge deal for lings but really don't play into helping the cult much at all.

Current sacrifice:

1) Stun
2) Kill
3) Sacrifice

Result: Stuns are efficient but you only get 1 if you want to get constructs going (you always do), you also need a robust weapon ready and have pre-planned the sacrifice so nobody spots you and you can get the body to a sacrifice location ASAP.

New Sacrifice:

1) Pull out super fucking obvious stun prod (if you find a battery... and chances are your job only have access to 1-2 powercells coveted by others so you'll have to go beg robotics for more)
2) Hope that you land a stun before someone goes screaming on radio about you chasing people with a stun prod, super obvious stun noise alerts anyone nearby that a robusting is going down
3) Pull out EMP talisman and trigger it
4) Fire locks, shocked doors, and EMP effect on equipment now alerts anyone in the entire department/wing that some serious shit is going down.
5) Reapply stun prod in case, making sure everyone looking for the source of the EMP absolutely knows you're the antag they're looking for.
6) Apply cablecuffs, reaffirming to even the dumbest greyshirt that you're either a ling or a cultist.
7) Drag them away to a murderspot, but OH WAIT I SURE HOPE YOU GOT GLOVES KIDDO BECAUSE EVERY DOOR YOU NEED TO ESCAPE THROUGH IS NOW SHOCKED... YOU GOT SHOCKED? PREPARE YOUR ANUS KIDDO YOU JUST LOST THE CULT ROUND.
8) Successfully drag them somewhere more discrete without half the fucking station following you because you've just EMP'd the area and beat and cuffed some rando, and if anyone follows you you're fucked because there's no way you're going to be able to control the situation with just a stun prod.
9) Kill
10) Sacrifice
11) Enjoy your uber-nerfed construct, assuming of course your victim hasn't ghosted by now and you're stuck with no talismans, no words, no shards, and a supreme dislike for any coder who imposed this terrible version of cult on you.

Result: Cult already loses 3/4 of the time. Cult has a very steep learning curve. If you think the average antag is going to even be REMOTELY capable of what I just wrote then you're a bloody idiot who should never touch code again. It also requires access to a power cell, tools, insulated gloves, maint. access, etc... anything else and you're basically left EMP'd and trying to bash them with a fire extinguisher, which is the most helpless and pathetically stupid antag I've ever heard of on SS13.

The loss of starter stun isn't even the harshest change here. It would barely affect my round, but lord knows the other 5-8 cultists im stuck with will make sure that security/borgs are out cult hunting within the first 5 minutes of the round. My only hope is to describe enough of the shitty parts of this change that someone will put the fucking brakes on this shitshow and Malkevin will actually think carefully about the entirety of the changes he's making before trying to push them through. The mere fact he's describing these as "tweaks" and "minor changes" and not what they really are means he's either completely clueless about how cult really work or he's just a pathological liar... neither one of these descriptions should fit anyone trying to overhaul an entire gametype.

[Incomptinence]

Oh man I have problems with you nerfing the shit out of the sac construct angle you proscribed in the first damn place, this means I must never coordinate with ANYONE! I do work with other cultists to work convert runes but if we are found out and conflict begins I NEED those extra soulstones to use on my fellow cultists, unless you advise coordinating the conversions in the middle of medbay we WILL get cut off from cryo and cloning as the vastly superior sec force guns us down. Groups of 3 + people in maint even new maint is fish in a barrel you will become melted cheese.

While metrics are dry they are about the only indicator we have other than some blowhard repeatedly swearing at everyone and calling a change the worst thing ever that things are working. I have opted out of newling for fair while because while doable the adventures of impotent flounder bashing their head against a wall until they pull of a brain heist as a non roboticist wasn't worth experiencing.

Isn't Stun Prod vulnerable to EMP? Making stunprod + emp a rng gamble before you even make a swing? Or maybe single use if you prod first EMP latter? Worthless garbage from nerfherding scum lords. If improvised weapons make for the best freaking game play let's make sec craft half potency gear for themselves every round.

I distinctly recall constructs working summon Nar Sie runes with me in the past.

[Pybro]

MAKE THE FUCKING CONVERT RUNE REQUIRE ONLY TWO PEOPLE

Please man.

[lumipharon]

What the fuck is even going on. I routinely summon narsie with constructs. The last time I summoned narsie, I didn't bother converting anyone because other cultists are retarded, and used FIVE constructs during the summon narsie spell, so I don't know what you're saying with that change.

If you still believe that newcult is about saccing people for words, I really don't know what to say. Literally EVERY round where I am a starting cultists, I will research all the words in about 2 minutes at most. Saccing for words is slow and risky, there is zero reason to use it as a primary method of word collecting.

Stun papers and soul shards have literally nothing to do with 'encouraging murder boning'. Stun talismans provide a COVERT method to disable people for conversion/saccing. It is hard to MURDERBONE with one use items. also flopping out a big bloody stun prod is a tad suspect, even if you have just emp'd them.
Soul shards are simply a much faster, safer and cleaner alternative to sac runes, on top of the fact that so many fuckers ghost after you kill them. There is really no REASON to want to sac people (other then your sac target).

I'm fine with removal of the armor talisman from the starting talisman, not because of 'murderboning', but because far too many times, one fuckwit starter cultists decided to go loud at round start and reveal it's a cult to the whole crew and royally fucks us.

I Like the emp change to cameras, but am less certain from a balance point of view.

Juggernauts are pretty shit if you take a third off their damage. They are extremely slow and cannot see in the dark, a half robust assistant can dance circles around a pair of juggernauts and kill them with floor tiles. Literally their main use is for smashing into places/reflecting things. They NEED high damage, because it's fucking hard to actually hit people that aren't dumb.

I don't really see the reason to remove MM from artificers, it's hardly OP (every time I've seen a construct nest get found, they fucking die, it's a short ass stun, on a comparatively long CD considering their damage and hp), and hell, it even friendly fires.

These changes would be severely gimping cult.

[Kelenius]

I guess I'll join the fun too.

¬ Changed summon shell from 4 plasteel to 20 metal sheets, apparently it was too hard for people to take apart walls...

It was never used before. It will never be used now. It's one of the most useless runes in the game that is never used because there is absolutely no fucking point in doing this when any artificier can make those out of thin air.

¬ Communicate - it was redundant with tome communication

Well maybe, maybe, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe you should have removed the fucking communicate rune too, no?

Juggernauts:
¬ Lowered their melee damage from 30 to 20
¬ Lowered BASE reflect chance from 80 to 70
¬ Reflected projectiles have their damage halved

Wraiths:
¬ Increased damage from 25 to 30

The intention is that juggs are the tanks and wraiths are the glass cannons.

How the fuck is this supposed to work? Are you expecting people to attack a juggernaut and not wraith? This isn't some RPG strategy game. If wraith can hit someone, they can hit back, and they will fucking hit back the wraith and not the juggernaut. Wraith do need a buff, because right now the only thing they can do well is snipe the AI, but you can't buff wraith by nerfing juggernauts.

¬ Removed EMPs triggering camera alarms - this might as well of shown the AI a big red message "HEY! OVER HERE! AN ANTAG IS MURDERING SOMEONE!"

YEAH LET ME JUST MAKE A CHANGE THAT AFFECTS ABSOLUTELY FUCKING EVERYTHING IN THE GAME AND CALL IT A "MINOR CULT TWEAK"

¬ Blood boil has been changed from insta-crit nofunallowed to adding hell water to the victims. You're still going to die but atleast you might be able to take some of the fuckers with you.

Well. This. Is probably better than what was before. Probably. Blood boil should be removed or made into a mass stun with minor damage or something. It's still '3 cultists wipe out 20 attackers'.

Remove from the supply talisman:
¬ Stun ¬
¬ And Armor - this and the above were murderboner fuel
¬ Soul stone - redundant with sacrifice producing stones, also made it easier to murder boner.

I agree with removal of armour, but retardeness of removing stun and soul stone has already been explained perfectly by Robustin.

Artificers:
¬ Increased their damage to 10 so they're not completely boned when cornered.

Hahahaha what a joke oh wait you're actually serious.

HOW IS FUCKING 10 DAMAGE GOING TO HELP THEM SURVIVE THE ATTACKS?

Is he still boned in a battle against anything? Yes.

Is the attack buff helping him escape? No.

Does this buff make any fucking sense? No.

¬ Removed the summon soul stone spell - redundant due to sac rune spawning stones. Yes this has a knock on affect to Wizards but they can take the spellbook option multiple times for more belts with stones.

What the actual fuck are you thinking about.

Were you high or drunk or what when you thought that this is a good idea?

ARE YOU SERIOUSLY SAYING THAT WIZARD SHOULD BUY TWO FUCKING BELTS NOW TO GET MORE CONSTRUCTS

HAVE YOU EVER PLAYED A FUCKING CONSTRUCT WIZARD BEFORE?

DO YOU SERIOUSLY SAY THAT CONSTRUCT WIZARD SHOULD GIVE UP ON ONE OR TWO SPELLS JUST BECAUSE YOUR INSANE AND DRUGGED MIND DECIDED THAT ARTIFICIERS SOUL STONES WERE USED BY CULTISTS TO MURDERBONE?

I seriously have no words here.

¬ Removed lessor magic missile. I was originally iffy on this idea and in hindsight it was a bad idea. Maybe I'll replace it with a flash spell or something at a later date.

RIGHT. THEY ARE NOT COMPLETELY BONED WHEN CORNERED NOW, YES. This spell has one fucking function for them: to help then escape. Because using it in a battle situation WILL FUCKING KNOCK DOWN CULTISTS TOO. Was it an iffy idea? Yes. Was it a bad idea? Probably. They were supposed to be fragile things that panic when an assistant with a toolbox gets closer. BUT YOU CAN'T FUCKING REMOVE THEIR ONLY WAY TO ESCAPE AND ALSO SAY THAT THEY ARE NOT COMPLETELY BONED WHEN CORNERED.

¬ Removed the extra damages from Hell Water
¬ Replaced by increasing the holder's bodytemp directly.

Well yeah that one actually works.

Overall: retarded/10. Sorry, Malkevin, I'm not meaning it as a personal attack against you, but this is horrible. Just horrible. Get your ideas through the forum before coding them.

[Steelpoint]

Apparently hurling insults and saying "fuck" every sentence is the absolute correct way to offer feedback.

Either way, I agree with removing the EMP alarm from cameras, using a EMP in any form immediently alerts the Silicon's to your presence and location. That effectively makes EMPing a waste of time when your better of using a Parapen/Stun Talisman(If you get one)/etc.

Taking away Kelenius's hostile wording, I agree with everything else he said (Except the communication rune jab).

[Malkevin]

The changes were on the forum for nearly a month before I started working on them, granted it was just before the forums split so you may have missed them.

Guys, seriously - stop with the shouty emotional bull crap, I put up a thread for feedback - that means clear concise unemotional points.
I do want to listen but when you're throwing giant word walls at me full of CAPSLOCK AND BOLDNESS, or just general snide remarks, it just makes me want to dismiss anything you say as babbling nerd rage.

I was already going to quit coding and playing /tg after finishing Sac Cult because I'm just completely fed up of everything, I was only staying on to finish it because I hate leaving things half done.
Right now the raging and having to deal with the massive tool that is Giacom (seriously, this guy's a contender for Aran's nobhead of the year award. Why the fuck would anyone put him as project lead) aren't making me want to do even that.

[Oldman Robustin]

One of the reasons im so hostile is that these changes feel like a Trojan horse filled with shit about to take a dumb on cult mode. These changes were presented in a deceptive manner and if they go through it's going to be absolutely miserable playing cult.

So yea I'm salty about these proposals and really disturbed by the logic underlying them. It's like we're not even playing the same game and I'm really scared to see anything coming down the pipeline for cult now.

Here's the ONLY decent changes I see:

1) Juggernaut reflection damage nerfed by 50%. This is an issue where security grabs the armory and sprays lasers at Juggs, only to see their health climb down to orange from reflected lasers alone. It's a bit silly when the highest source of damage from Juggernauts is my own lasers. I still don't think its necessary to change this but in a world where half of security still tries to tase constructs, I really don't see them loading up combat shotguns with slugs to decimate constructs anytime soon... so at least make lasers a little bit less suicidal against juggs. I would like see forcewall reflect 100% of energy weaponry as a possible compromise to other juggnernaut changes.

2) Wraith damage. Wraiths are pretty much a joke, only useful for assassinating AI's but even that is iffy since many will switch to lasers before you even show up. Other added utility would be nice, give their melee attack an EMP effect? Give them a short-range fixed jaunt like ninja that can do heavy damage if it lands on someone? Let their melee function like an alien attack that can shred APCs/cameras/etc?

3) Communication and Armor starting paper removal, because its silly idiot bait.

I'd also like to see some serious consistency on constructs chanting runes. I can use them for Nar Sie and they count as escaped acolytes but they can't chant conversion or target/live sacrifices. IMO constructs should be able to chant (but not invoke) every rune (especially if youre nerfing blood boil) and cultists should even be able to teleport constructs by invoking a teleport rune while a construct is sitting on it.

The changes were on the forum for nearly a month before I started working on them, granted it was just before the forums split so you may have missed them.

Guys, seriously - stop with the shouty emotional bull crap, I put up a thread for feedback - that means clear concise unemotional points.
I do want to listen but when you're throwing giant word walls at me full of CAPSLOCK AND BOLDNESS, or just general snide remarks, it just makes me want to dismiss anything you say as babbling nerd rage.

I was already going to quit coding and playing /tg after finishing Sac Cult because I'm just completely fed up of everything, I was only staying on to finish it because I hate leaving things half done.
Right now the raging and having to deal with the massive tool that is Giacom (seriously, this guy's a contender for Aran's nobhead of the year award. Why the fuck would anyone put him as project lead) aren't making me want to do even that.

Then put all of the contested points on hold and focus on the non-controversial stuff. If the more controversial stuff makes more sense in the light of later changes then present it later alongside those changes.

[Orzorn]

Yeah, most of these changes would absolutely ruin cult by forcing them into using non-cult creations (stun batons) in order to get a kill, and anyone who played old-new ling knows how bad that was. A piece of paper is inconspicuous and hard to notice. A stun baton is the opposite.

The changes I agree with:
Allowing constructs to chant on runes
Lowering jug reflect
Removing communicate and armor paper from initial talisman (just don't remove the communicate rune. It absolutely has a use as a back up for if you lose your tome, or for people to communicate at the cult base without needing a tome, since you can't always crap them out for people, especially if healing is at a premium)
Wraith Damage

I would also like to see convert changed to requiring only 2 cultists. 3 cultists is very, very hard to get together properly, especially in the small locales that cult is often forced to take residence in.

As for the rest of your changes, if you feel they're necessary for your future cult stuff, just hold off onto them so we can see them in context. Doing them right now would neuter cult until any future major changes. Also, some of those changes affect other antags, such as the soul stone change (and seriously, you see so few construct wizards that nerfing them that badly just ain't right).

[Cheridan]

WAHH MALK DON'T TAKE MY ROBUSTNESS PAPERS AWAY

stun talismans are the most ridiculous bullshit in the game and if they're really this lynchpin that the entire mode revolves around, then this change couldn't make it any worse because any mode that relies on OH DON'T LET THIS GUY HIT YOU WITH PAPER OR ELSE YOU'RE ENTIRELY FUCKED is already at the bottom of the barrel.

The rest of the changes are cult BUFFS. You're all going on about how they're going to get so neutered when he's actually making it easier to use runes.

The EMP change is good. It's pointless to have a camera-disabling effect if that effect is just going to spam a message to the thing who uses the cameras in the first place.

Juggernaut damage change: who cares; 30 damage is 4 hits to crit, 20 damage is 5 hits+1 damage from anything else.

so everyone please unbunch your panties goddamn

[oranges]

stun talismans are the sleepypen of cult, they should be nerfed because they're a boring win button.

As an aside
do away with talismans forever and make it so cultist can store two runes with 3 shots in their arm, as a tattoo or something.
Does away with paper meta.

[Malkevin]

Juggernaut damage change: who cares; 30 damage is 4 hits to crit, 20 damage is 5 hits+1 damage from anything else.

Exactly 5, the rasputin bug that let you live forever at zero health so long as no one sneezed on you was one of the first things I fixed when I started coding for tg

[paprika]

How about stun talismans don't work on people who are loyalty implanted...?

The difference between stun talismans and sleepypens being a win button is that LITERALLY ALL YOU HAVE TO DO TO GET GREENTEXT IS SLEEPYPEN + C4 SOMEONE.

Stun talismans don't get you that far, you still have to convert enough people with limited stun papers. Remove the ability to make new stun talismans with runes, but keep the starting stun talismans, because holy fuck if converting won't be tossed out the fucking window and people will just murderbone and make constructs without them.

But of course that's exactly what malk wants because he has a huge, throbbing boner for constructs and hates de-converting.

[Bluespace]

The average player is likely unable to succeed as a cultist without some sort of crutch. The average player is unlikely to understand and able to use a stunprod+EMP.

[paprika]

The average player can kill someone without a parapen, though. That's way too much of a crutch, and why it's not even close to being the same as a stun paper.

Seriously, this change just encourages cult muderbone and constructing which is cute if that's your thing but some of us prefer the secret conversions and stuff and it's near impossible without stun papers early round. I don't like these construct-centric changes at all.

[Perakp]

I am concerned about the changes to EMP making changelings overpowered. But then again I thought dissonant shriek in itself would be overpowered. What do I know.

Also I dislike being forced to use stun prods, I feel like they are for assistants, not antagonists. Antagonists should have better tools available to them than the rest of the crew. I don't see much of a problem with the stun talisman.

[paprika]

Off topic but using dissonant shriek in genetics while someone is being cloned is grounds for actual side destruction.

I was a ninja and a friendly ling took me out by emping me and armblading me (was too slow on that adrenaline) and afterwards he realized he completely fucked up the person in cloning, 100/10 moment

[Oldman Robustin]

The average player can kill someone without a parapen, though. That's way too much of a crutch, and why it's not even close to being the same as a stun paper.

Seriously, this change just encourages cult muderbone and constructing which is cute if that's your thing but some of us prefer the secret conversions and stuff and it's near impossible without stun papers early round. I don't like these construct-centric changes at all.

Stun paper = 2 applications of a stun baton. You immediately have to start killing your victim with a significantly robust weapon or they will escape. Of course this will draw plenty of attention if you murder someone while dragging them away. The mute is absolutely necessary because of the need for secrecy from the cult. The early-midgame cultists have absolutely no real defense against sec other than running. Lings and Traitors both have options to counter tasers... cultists really do not until late game.

[Malkevin]

Hobbies are meant to be fun.