Cult Revamp: Lets list some ideas

Bombadil · Post by **Bombadil** » Wed Dec 17, 2014 11:01 pm #51749

Okay so some of the ideas like increasing rune range is good. So convert just needs 3 people with in 2 tiles out from rune.

But I have an idea for using Harvesters ingame.

If you dont know Harvesters are cult constructs who release a paralytic gas. Very powerful but how do we balance creation?

My idea is that you EMBED the soul stone in a living target there must also be a soul already in the soul stone. The soul stone begins to take over their body corrupting them into a harvester. Could have them turn into those "shade" humans who get hurt in the light at that point you can finalize the conversion. Soul stone is embedded in the chest also.

Perhaps a rune to finalize the change into a harvester as well. Either way the soul stone takes over their body and they get consumed in the process becoming a portal into Nar'sies realm through which Paralytic toxin spews forth.

We can also expand on soul stone embedding. You found a security officer who cant be converted? Embed a soulstone in him use a rune to make the soul take over without harvesterizing them. Now you have a security agent on the inside. Hell convert the HoS or anyone with an implant by replacing their souls. You may want to take off their headsets because they will be screaming in pain from the soulstone embedded in them.

Embedding could be done by surgery perhaps? Or just straight up stabbing it into their chest and it leaves a hole in their chest but it can be covered up by a jumpsuit or exosuit.

Post by **lumipharon** » Wed Dec 17, 2014 11:18 pm #51757

Who cares if harvesters are balanced? They only appear once Nar'sie is summoned, so the round is ending and everyone is fucked anyway. Also put on internals and ignore the gas, they do piss poor damage.

Reimoo · Post by **Reimoo** » Wed Dec 17, 2014 11:52 pm #51765

Rune sprites need to be updated. They are damn ugly.

Fragnostic · Post by **Fragnostic** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 2:05 am #51800

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2010 ... e_Baka.jpg
Might be cool if they looked kinda like this, like the runes in FMA.
Cult in spacemans has this obsidian infused with blood sorta look to it, and cult could look a little creepier, with a more mysterious feel to it. When Based RR adds dismemberment, maybe cultist can literally give an arm and a leg for the cult words.
Maybe there could be some sort of drink a cultist can feed someone to make them a "lesser acolyte" and are bound to their master, who ever forced them to drink the potion. It could wear off after a while, too, for balancing.

Bombadil · Post by **Bombadil** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 2:31 am #51808

lumipharon wrote:Who cares if harvesters are balanced? They only appear once Nar'sie is summoned, so the round is ending and everyone is fucked anyway. Also put on internals and ignore the gas, they do piss poor damage.

To be fair they would be good for getting gray tiders with only breath masks

iyaerP · Post by **iyaerP** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 3:30 am #51834

Convert should only need 2, not 3.
Sacrafice should only need 1.

Scones · Post by **Scones** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 4:00 am #51839

iyaerP wrote:Sacrafice should only need 1.

What? No. Why should you have a 100% unavoidable kill via 1-man sac rune + stun paper?

Convert should be 2-mannable.
Juggernaut reflect should be toned down or removed.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 4:07 am #51842

Juggs should get increased health (or more armour) and no reflection chance. Either I can kill one in five shots or twenty shots.

Cults in a weird place where it was left only half finished and its in a state of limbo. It may not be the worse idea to gut it and start over.

I recall having a idea of making Cult round more akin to Arkham Horror, but I digress.

Pybro · Post by **Pybro** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 4:25 am #51846

Add in that modular rune sprite system that bay made but never used.

Add in painting directional runes on walls.

Add in more types of runes (and thus words), thereby promoting a form of cult other than LOLCONSTRUCTS

Bombadil · Post by **Bombadil** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 5:07 am #51852

Pybro wrote:Add in that modular rune sprite system that bay made but never used.

Add in painting directional runes on walls.

Add in more types of runes (and thus words), thereby promoting a form of cult other than LOLCONSTRUCTS

Part of that is making conversion easier. If people need to gather and look suspicious as shit as a med doctor a scientist and a cargo tech enter maint it makes finding cult too god damned easy

Bombadil · Post by **Bombadil** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 6:09 am #51862

Also i think embedding a soul stone idea is something that would be a good idea. Even if it isnt too create harvesters. Soul swapping or soul takeover seems neat.

Balut · Post by **Balut** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 5:41 pm #51973

How about making a periodic announcement when a summon-Nar-sie rune is down? Have it announce location, and maybe how many cultists are next to it. I don't play cult, but I imagine that it might get annoying, though, with the possibility of multiple summon Narsie runes, and I'm not sure how to address that. Of course, multiple Summon Narsie runes would be dumb, but it would be a really easy method of trolling other cultists, I guess. Maybe add a tracker to who writes the rune, both for admins and in the message?

Do cult spells still cost HP? Because if so, I still support the creation of an artifact that pays blood costs for you. I say make it one of those face-things from Berserk on a chain. Have it scream periodically and bleed fucking everywhere - not exactly stealthy. It could double as a weapon with some cool spooky effect on-hit and also cover whoever it hits and whoever is using it in blood.

When I first imagined it, I thought it would be good to make the artifact out of a corpse, but that would mean NOT making a soulstone, which is stupid. On the other hand, if it were made out of someone's body, you could have it go "[that person's name] screams!" in emote, which would be pretty radical.

Maybe make it sorta like a PAI? Except perhaps the player could slowly move if dropped. Maybe counts as a cultist for rune purposes and can talk and use cult-telepathy-shit.

Wyzack · Post by **Wyzack** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 9:20 pm #51999

I know this probably belongs in the shitty ideas thread, but if we take a more lovecraftian direction with it like steelpoint suggested, how about noncult exposure to madness inducing horrors causing insanity? Maybe something like the survivor tag, but telling you to be crazy nuts rather than to survive?

rockpecker · Post by **rockpecker** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 9:30 pm #52000

Wyzack wrote:I know this probably belongs in the shitty ideas thread, but if we take a more lovecraftian direction with it like steelpoint suggested, how about noncult exposure to madness inducing horrors causing insanity? Maybe something like the survivor tag, but telling you to be crazy nuts rather than to survive?

Like, it randomly rolls an antag objective and assigns it to you? That would be fun.

ETA: Especially if the antag objective could be one that's not appropriate to a cult round. "Absorb 12 genomes" as a human, "Capture the nuclear authorization disk" as a non-Syndicate, etc.

Wyzack · Post by **Wyzack** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 9:51 pm #52008

I like it. Fucking crazy go nuts research director battling the cult in a vain and pointless attempt to secure the nuke disk from "DEM SYNDIES MAN! DEM SYNDIES!" or a batshit clown pretending to absorb people. Mite b cool. I was thinking something along the lines of "You have lost your mind. You are insane. live your madness to its fullest."

Xhuis · Post by **Xhuis** » Fri Dec 19, 2014 3:32 am #52066

Working on a rune that makes everyone around it bonkers, throw some ideas my way.
Too impractical at the moment

kosmos · Post by **kosmos** » Fri Dec 19, 2014 6:54 am #52100

Maybe cults could have a random god from 1-4 different gods which would alter the cult's gameplay a lot.

Some god could encourage cult to play as very aggressively through needing lots of converters but having easy to obtain weapons, granting automatic buff against brute to all followers.
While some other god could encourage stealthy gameplay through needing low amount of converters and having hard to get weapons, granting a buff of brief invisibility.
And some other god could just be plain construct cult.

Xhuis · Post by **Xhuis** » Sat Dec 20, 2014 1:25 am #52284

I've always thought of it to be interesting to have a very small amount of roundstart cultists, say one, as a prophet that has obvious stuff but can invoke most runes alone, has less downsides, and can do more.

Cipher3 · Post by **Cipher3** » Sat Dec 20, 2014 2:06 am #52295

RIP Hand of God. RIP Neerti.

TwitchTail13 · Tue Apr 14, 2015 12:22 am

The convert rune should only need one cultist.

Post by **lumipharon** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:42 am #82094

Necro'd as shit bro, but since it's here.

Some of the more unusual runes are rather neat, but never get used for various reasons.

Shit like the blood drain rune (activate it to suck health from anyone on ALL blood drain runes, making you addicted if you hit too many people at once)
and the raise dead rune (put corpse on one rune, with a ghost on top, and a living body on another rune. Activating gibs the living guy an puts the ghost in the corpse, and brings him back to life)
Are neat as shit, and I think could be made actually relevent fairly easily.

For example, rather then just healing you, what if feeding off enough peolpe with blood drain runes gave you some neat blood magic buffs?
Or the raise dead rune was needed to bring in some favoured champion of Nar'sie, who was never alive in the round to start with? (also while I'm thinking about it, isn't the raise dead rune a fantastic way to infiltrate sec, by possessing the corpses of dead implanted people, with cultist ghosts?)

Edit: And it would be nice if you could identify runes as a cultist, if you have a fully translated tome.
I always thought it was dumb to have you walk into the cult base, and see half a dozen runes and can't tell what they are.

Post by **MisterPerson** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 6:52 am #82122

Nobody uses those runes because they're clunky to use, not because they're weak.

Saegrimr · Post by **Saegrimr** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 12:45 pm #82170

lumipharon wrote:the raise dead rune (put corpse on one rune, with a ghost on top, and a living body on another rune. Activating gibs the living guy an puts the ghost in the corpse, and brings him back to life)
Are neat as shit, and I think could be made actually relevent fairly easily.

I actually got pulled into one from a virology cult that grabbed all of genetics humanized monkeys.

There was also a miner group that fucked off the to DJ satellite and set up a teleport hub. entire room was full of corpses, random clothing, and spears. Was pretty fucking wild.

Raises dead definitely still has its uses.

Fragnostic · Post by **Fragnostic** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 4:01 pm #82193

Once based Remie finishes dismemberment, whenever that comes, cult could have some creepy limb stealing objective to build Narsie. But each body part must come from different people. You CAN summon Narsie at any given time, instead of having other conditions preventing it.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 4:05 pm #82194

Fragnostic wrote:Once based Remie finishes dismemberment, whenever that comes, cult could have some creepy limb stealing objective to build Narsie. But each body part must come from different people. You CAN summon Narsie at any given time, instead of having other conditions preventing it.

Cult Objectives

1# The head of the Captain, the head of the station
2# The right arm of the Head of Personal, the Captain's right hand man.
3# The left arm of the Head of Security, the long arm of the law.
4# The chest of the Chief Medical Officer, the one who keeps us alive
5# The right and left legs of the Chief Engineer, keeping the whole intact
6# The brain of the Research Director, the smartest of us all.

Supermichael777 · Sat Apr 18, 2015 7:08 am

FUND IT
but i agree cult needs work

Post by **PKPenguin321** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 8:01 am #82728

Steelpoint wrote:
Fragnostic wrote:Once based Remie finishes dismemberment, whenever that comes, cult could have some creepy limb stealing objective to build Narsie. But each body part must come from different people. You CAN summon Narsie at any given time, instead of having other conditions preventing it.
Cult Objectives

1# The head of the Captain, the head of the station
2# The right arm of the Head of Personal, the Captain's right hand man.
3# The left arm of the Head of Security, the long arm of the law.
4# The chest of the Chief Medical Officer, the one who keeps us alive
5# The right and left legs of the Chief Engineer, keeping the whole intact
6# The brain of the Research Director, the smartest of us all.

give this to the abductor aliens, actually

Miauw · Post by **Miauw** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 9:05 am #82731

Fragnostic wrote:http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2010 ... e_Baka.jpg
Might be cool if they looked kinda like this, like the runes in FMA.
Cult in spacemans has this obsidian infused with blood sorta look to it, and cult could look a little creepier, with a more mysterious feel to it. When Based RR adds dismemberment, maybe cultist can literally give an arm and a leg for the cult words.
Maybe there could be some sort of drink a cultist can feed someone to make them a "lesser acolyte" and are bound to their master, who ever forced them to drink the potion. It could wear off after a while, too, for balancing.

and add placing soul stones in the place of brains?

Lumbermancer · Sat Apr 18, 2015 12:05 pm

You're overthinking it. Start from making more runes viable, easier to use. I don't remember when was the last time I seen blood boil, blood drain, summon cultist or free cultist in action.

RG4 · Post by **RG4** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 2:59 pm #82753

Saegrimr wrote:
lumipharon wrote:the raise dead rune (put corpse on one rune, with a ghost on top, and a living body on another rune. Activating gibs the living guy an puts the ghost in the corpse, and brings him back to life)
Are neat as shit, and I think could be made actually relevent fairly easily.
I actually got pulled into one from a virology cult that grabbed all of genetics humanized monkeys.

There was also a miner group that fucked off the to DJ satellite and set up a teleport hub. entire room was full of corpses, random clothing, and spears. Was pretty fucking wild.

Raises dead definitely still has its uses.

Raise dead is amazingly OP if you get someone who can commune with the ghost. Rob Ust once did it and we summoned Nar'sie on the DJ station because of sheer awesomness.

Bombadil · Post by **Bombadil** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 3:38 am #82893

Lumbermancer wrote:You're overthinking it. Start from making more runes viable, easier to use. I don't remember when was the last time I seen blood boil, blood drain, summon cultist or free cultist in action.

Most morns dont even know they exist

AdenAbrafo · Post by **AdenAbrafo** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 4:00 am #82898

Runes should honestly be resprited so that they arent horribly easy to spot, Id do it but Im terrible at spriting

Post by **lumipharon** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 5:36 am #82911

RG4 wrote:
Saegrimr wrote:
lumipharon wrote:the raise dead rune (put corpse on one rune, with a ghost on top, and a living body on another rune. Activating gibs the living guy an puts the ghost in the corpse, and brings him back to life)
Are neat as shit, and I think could be made actually relevent fairly easily.
I actually got pulled into one from a virology cult that grabbed all of genetics humanized monkeys.

There was also a miner group that fucked off the to DJ satellite and set up a teleport hub. entire room was full of corpses, random clothing, and spears. Was pretty fucking wild.

Raises dead definitely still has its uses.
Raise dead is amazingly OP if you get someone who can commune with the ghost. Rob Ust once did it and we summoned Nar'sie on the DJ station because of sheer awesomness.

Raise dead is nt the same as manifest.

Manifest creates a temporary body for a ghost - it also lets you cheese nar'sie with one cultist, if you have 8 willing ghosts.
Raise dead sacs a living person to put a ghost permanently into a existing corpse. It's not useless, but 95/100 times you'd just use the living guy to make a construct instead.

Cheimon · Post by **Cheimon** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 1:46 pm #82942

Honestly I think a big problem with runes is that it isn't obvious what any given one does. Yes there are colours but they aren't linked to functions in any meaningful way, so you have to learn what colour a rune is if you want to understand what it does as soon as you see it.

Then, if you're not sure, you can examine it, but that only gives the words you use to make it. Those are pretty vague anyway. Unless, again, you've memorised the words you need for everything (and the average person hasn't) then you have to guess or look it up. Much better to just have examine give the name of the actual rune: so, instead of join-blood-help (or whatever convert is) the rune would say 'convert' in the examine text.

I think this is one of those things where function over fluff would be helpful.

Not-Dorsidarf · Mon Apr 20, 2015 8:47 pm

The real problem is that the average cult convert has no way to actually do cult magic, because getting a tome is difficult.
Giving cultists the ability to summon a tome at the cost of 30 brute might be neat

Malkevin · Post by **Malkevin** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 11:45 pm #83019

That'd be too easy to smuggle a tome in to the brig

Not-Dorsidarf · Tue Apr 21, 2015 5:20 pm

But cultists are always deconverted or executed anyway, because otherwise some shit who's walled himself into a maint room with three medbots just >summon ghost >summon cultist >teleport him to a hidden teleport rune

Miauw · Post by **Miauw** » Tue Apr 21, 2015 6:06 pm #83156

Just an FYI, it would be nice to give some reasoning for your suggestions too, mainly the problems you're trying to solve. makes it easier to see what you're trying to do. (i definitely find discussion on how to make cult better good)

Tue Apr 21, 2015 11:14 pm

AdenAbrafo wrote:Runes should honestly be resprited so that they arent horribly easy to spot, Id do it but Im terrible at spriting

This so hard. Runes being stupidly easy to spot makes 99% of cults have to hide in bizarrely obscure locations in maint, which makes it really hard to convert people both because you can't get anyone all the way into there quickly and your teammates will have a hard time finding their way in.
Maybe make it so you can still use runes that have been hidden with the Hide Rune rune (or make them only visible to cultists), but make Hide Rune take longer to kick in or something? Or maybe make it so once the rune has been used a few times it becomes visible to the crew again.
I'd just like to see cultists have a bit more freedom in terms of location. Runes go underused because you can hardly use them at all, they're just too obvious.

Post by **lumipharon** » Tue Apr 21, 2015 11:21 pm #83192

If you want, you can use a reveal rune (letting you see invisible runes) then hide the reveal rune, and whatever other runes you have around, while still being able to see them. I think.