The virgin sting vs the chad absorb (ling ability tree rework)

[Luke Cox]

No MS paint meme art because I'm fucking lazy

The Virgin Sting Ling

• Meekly walks around using DNA extract sting to meet genome objectives
• Cannot function independently, must rely on telepathic hugbox
• Beta who must take every protective ability possible
• Uses feeble stings to weaken target; is afraid of confrontation
• Passively tries to complete objectives
• Never husks out of fear of being caught

What do
Get rid of the "genetic emporium" entirely. That gay shit is for syndicate agents. Instead, give lings ability trees styled after techwebs. 3 linear paths to keep it simple. They get a few points to start out and maybe a free powerful ability (i.e. they get to choose between armblade, cryo sting, or fleshmend, all mutually exclusive). The idea here is to prevent some of the more broken combinations from being obtainable without nerfing the individual abilities (thus making them unfun) or having some convoluted combination ban system, while enhancing the flavor of lings by making them literally evolve as they progress. The only way to get more points is by fully husking people. Dead people give a small number of points, people in crit a some, and fully conscious people a decent amount. Hive chat is removed too, and absorbing a changeling gives the most points. Turning on your fellow lings isn't just easier, it's encouraged. Also DNA sting is gone, because it's for pussies.

With those changes, we'll have

The Chad Absorb Ling

• Is the living reincarnation of Sun Tzu, making tactical ability purchases according to the situation
• Robusts people through pure skill alone using highly specialized ability loadouts
• Independent apex predator who hunts down and kills ling peers, not dead greyshirts like some beta cuck
• Loudly and confidently pursues objectives; does not hide from security
• Does not need 50 million defensive abilities, relies on knowledge and foresight
• Husks prey alive and conscious as they scream for help, like a true alpha

Edit: PK had a similar but simpler idea that could also work

Much simpler idea

Three categories of ling abilities, Combat, Stealth, and Regenerative

If take an ability from any category, all abilities in any other categories go up in price by 1
So if you take armblade, armor, shield, screech, etc (all combat abilities), it costs what it usually does, but if you try to take armblade, fleshmend, biodegrade (a combat, regenerative, and stealth ability), you're now down 2 more points than you'd usually be. This encourages specialization and makes it so mixing all the optimal powers and getting the best of every world isn't really doable.

Edit 2: Preliminary tree idea, vaguely in order of unlock

Beginning: Armblade, Cryo Sting, or Fleshmend (choose 1, mutually exclusive abilities)

Combat
Resonant Shriek
Hallucination Sting
Dissonant Shriek
Strained Muscles
Resonant Shriek
Tentacle



Stealth
Mimic Voice
Digital Camoflage
Mute Sting
Augmented Eyesight
Blind Sting
False Armblade Sting
Lesser Form
Transformation Sting


Healing
Regenerate
Anatomic Panacea
Organic Shield
Organic Space Suit
Chitinous armor
Last Resort
Adrenal Sacs

[kevinz000]

Or we can not encourage murderbone

[DemonFiren]

I hate the chad/virgin meme with every fibre of my being and thus disapprove of your idea even though changeling is utter cancer

[Lumbermancer]

Loudly and confidently pursues objectives; does not hide from security

Or we can not encourage murderbone

Ling should be all about stealth.

[DemonFiren]

Ling should be all about stealth.

[InsaneHyena]

Just remove changelings already.

[DemonFiren]

update your sig, ligga

[Luke Cox]

antags kill people REEEEEEEE

The current setup encourages murderbone a hell of a lot more than this. Lings will be a lot easier for everyone if they have to earn their abilities rather than have them all dumped on them at once.

Loudly and confidently pursues objectives; does not hide from security

Ling should be all about stealth.

And they are now? They'd have a skill tree devoted just to stealth abilities. The idea here is to force them to specialize in one area or another. It's possible to silently abduct people and absorb them, you know.

[Saegrimr]

So is this an actual rework in the making or are you just throwing ideas at the wall

[Armhulen]

So is this an actual rework in the making or are you just throwing ideas at the wall

he won't code it pshh

if you guys take too long i'm gonna try not thingling but a new angle to balancing changeling

[Lumbermancer]

If you force them to specialize in one path, inevitably one playstyle will be favored, probably murderboner cause it's easier. Then you gonna inevitably engage in an arms race, buffing other playstyle to make people play it. It's either full stealth or nothing.

[kevinz000]

Antags kill people yes but encouraging mass murder to get a rollercoaster of murderbone powers is dumb as fuck.
If you want your bloodthirst go play revs or something.

[D&B]

>Thinking stealth antags are possible in 90 player rounds

Lmao

[kevinz000]

>Thinking stealth antags are possible in 90 player rounds

Lmao

Encouraging a snowball scenario from removing others from the round is bad design too if you don't want ling to just be a deathmatch.

[ShadowDimentio]

>Thinking stealth antags are possible in 90 player rounds

Lmao

Encouraging a snowball scenario from removing others from the round is bad design too if you don't want ling to just be a deathmatch.

Every mode we have is a deathmatch, ESPECIALLY ling.

[Luke Cox]

@Saeg: It's like this is some kind of ideas board! I'd rather try to help brainstorm than complain. This is a lot more productive than screeching on the feedback forum to remove ling because I ded pls nerf

@Arm: That would probably be for the best. Trying to make the mode line up with a movie is a bad idea. What did you have in mind?

@Lumber: Some ling's are going to try to murderbone no matter what you do. The goal here is to narrow their ability sets down to give them clear strengths and weaknesses

@Kevin: The most powerful a ling could possibly get under a system like this is still weaker than they are now. If snowballing is a problem, either implement a point cap or make skill costs scale

[Armhulen]

@Saeg: It's like this is some kind of ideas board! I'd rather try to help brainstorm than complain. This is a lot more productive than screeching on the feedback forum to remove ling because I ded pls nerf

@Arm: That would probably be for the best. Trying to make the mode line up with a movie is a bad idea. What did you have in mind?

@Lumber: Some ling's are going to try to murderbone no matter what you do. The goal here is to narrow their ability sets down to give them clear strengths and weaknesses

@Kevin: The most powerful a ling could possibly get under a system like this is still weaker than they are now. If snowballing is a problem, either implement a point cap or make skill costs scale

woah i posted in this thread? i guess i did, but i lost faith in my rework idea on discord because i was chatting with people smarter than me. anyways if dgl would like to post his ideas itt it'd be great he knows how to get it working right

[Luke Cox]

@Saeg: It's like this is some kind of ideas board! I'd rather try to help brainstorm than complain. This is a lot more productive than screeching on the feedback forum to remove ling because I ded pls nerf

@Arm: That would probably be for the best. Trying to make the mode line up with a movie is a bad idea. What did you have in mind?

@Lumber: Some ling's are going to try to murderbone no matter what you do. The goal here is to narrow their ability sets down to give them clear strengths and weaknesses

@Kevin: The most powerful a ling could possibly get under a system like this is still weaker than they are now. If snowballing is a problem, either implement a point cap or make skill costs scale

woah i posted in this thread? i guess i did, but i lost faith in my rework idea on discord because i was chatting with people smarter than me. anyways if dgl would like to post his ideas itt it'd be great he knows how to get it working right

PK's idea is pretty simple, and is something we could implement immediately while we try to find a more permanent solution.

Also, I went ahead and updated the OP with an idea of how the trees could go.

[Lumbermancer]

goal here is to narrow their ability sets down to give them clear strengths and weaknesses

But that's exactly my idea.

[Luke Cox]

goal here is to narrow their ability sets down to give them clear strengths and weaknesses

But that's exactly my idea.

It sounds like you want lings to focus almost exclusively on stealth though. Going loud should still be an option for lings, but we need to keep them from taking a dozen get out of jail free cards along with all the murderboning abilities one could want. Every other antag has both quiet and loud options (stealth ops and wizards are a thing, even if people don't do them), and it's crucial that any ling rework doesn't railroad it into one playstyle or another.

[Darkgenerallord]

Despite my best efforts I couldn't get traitorchan removed so instead I'll try to help fix it.

I think we should remove extract DNA, it sort of just tends to make transforming a little too easy, and without removing it I don't understand why the genome objective is still a thing even.

Revival stasis should be nerfed back to where it was pre-timer change. This would be in the range of 40 seconds (now) --> 90 seconds (old).

Other than that, the hivemind is honestly weird. It's free, invisible antag chat. Either make it buy in or remove it entirely, to help cut down on the ling gangs. A way we could keep it but still change it is possibly making each ling have a personal hivemind, and make them have to put people in manually.

[Luke Cox]

Despite my best efforts I couldn't get traitorchan removed so instead I'll try to help fix it.

I think we should remove extract DNA, it sort of just tends to make transforming a little too easy, and without removing it I don't understand why the genome objective is still a thing even.

Revival stasis should be nerfed back to where it was pre-timer change. This would be in the range of 40 seconds (now) --> 90 seconds (old).

Other than that, the hivemind is honestly weird. It's free, invisible antag chat. Either make it buy in or remove it entirely, to help cut down on the ling gangs. A way we could keep it but still change it is possibly making each ling have a personal hivemind, and make them have to put people in manually.

Extract DNA needs to go back for sure. Like I said, shit is for little bitches. Revival stasis absolutely needs to go back too. I played ling a few days ago and it was quite broken. Why was it ever buffed in the first place?

I know it might be entering "muh conversion" territory, but what if lings had an ability that allowed them to brainwash one or two pepole?

[EagleWiz]

I think we should remove extract DNA, it sort of just tends to make transforming a little too easy, and without removing it I don't understand why the genome objective is still a thing even.

The extract genome objective requires you to get 6-8 genomes. If the extract DNA sting is removed that's a whole lot of murder.

[Luke Cox]

I think we should remove extract DNA, it sort of just tends to make transforming a little too easy, and without removing it I don't understand why the genome objective is still a thing even.

The extract genome objective requires you to get 6-8 genomes. If the extract DNA sting is removed that's a whole lot of murder.

I'm told that it was lower back in the days of absorb ling. Obviously you'd have to either tweak the number.

[ChefOdDish]

Here's a hilariously bad idea. What if we brought back absorbing lings but rather than husking crew it turns them into zombies? Stealth is thrown out the window as the lings rush to absorb living crew before they are all zombified.

[PKPenguin321]

Here's a hilariously bad idea. What if we brought back absorbing lings but rather than husking crew it turns them into zombies? Stealth is thrown out the window as the lings rush to absorb living crew before they are all zombified.

sounds genuinely terrible

[ChefOdDish]

I shouldn't be allowed to post

[Takeguru]

Best idea is to just remove ling but I've been saying this for years and it hasnt happened yet