Rework Cult Stun

[imsxz]

Bottom post of the previous page:

dr bee please address my points I don’t mention winrate at all

[NecromancerAnne]

How do you make an improvised shotgun

Modular receiver, which you find in maint or make out of a hacked autolathe. A wooden stock, which you can make in the library. A pipe, which you can pull up from the floor. Wrapping paper, which you can get out of cargo or most protolathes.

Cargo and engineering are the easiest ones to get these constructed in and print the ammo through. Also they have the roles with maint access so it is easier for them to hunt people.

[Oldman Robustin]

If I actually knew how to code I'd make cult like it used to be: no summon objective, they just have to convert x amount of crew members and have x escape aboard the shuttle.

Or we could up the number of roundstart cultists, remove conversion entirely, and stun too.

In this community there are scarcely few places where we reach a consensus.

One consensus we reached several years ago was that team-escape objectives were unequivocally the dumbest possible objective that you could ever incentivize. Not even gonna debate this one further.

tfw cult can go loud immediately and win to the point where stealth isn't even worth considering

This has always been possible when certain PRO-GAMERS(tm) play antag roles and security is empty or populated by newbies. However, I don't think it should be a common outcome. I balanced cult around the 2017-2018 meta. I have no idea where that stands now but my understanding is security has been neutered hard and is less attractive than ever for experienced players. If that's true though, then further nerfs would be justified but a lot of the sugggestions here are just silly.

We tried a conversion mode with no stuns or silence with Hand of God. It was absolutely cancer. It was almost impossible to win and even that required using pre-nerf stun prods to abduct people and hoping securitw4y was incompetent or empty enough to ignore the repeated "HELP ROBUST ABDUCTING ME IN SCIMAINT!" From 2012-2018, having a stun without a silence was suicide for antags. You either stunned and muted, or you killed them so fast they couldn't yell, because if they did yell you would have every corner of that maint stuffed with flashbangs and tasers down 1-width halls before you could say "wow it sure feels like there was nothing I could to prevent this outcome".

If cult needs a nerf, it needs a smart nerf. Fortunately there's a few suggestions here that actually put some effort in. Holy water immunity seems decent, but (unless its been added already) holy water would really need a visual effect to be fair. I recall specifically adding holy water to cargo to take pressure off the chaplains, if that's not true anymore then give cargo holy water again or give HoS, Cap, Warden, or the Sec Vendor access to a special tome that lets them santify a security member as a battle chaplan, sounds fun.

Enthrall is an okay option. If you babies actually nerfed security half as hard as you claim, then maybe cult doesn't need a stun to fight sec anymore. However, I really don't understand 2020 gameplay enough to say if it's justified. One of the nice aspects of the current stun is that it gives antagonists a lot of AGENCY over how they want to carry out their conversion. Enthrall takes a lot of that away, it is forces you to self-stun and out your antag status at the same time in order to convert. I think it would make sense to have enthrall be a "delicate" effect that stuns+silences, but any interaction with that victim (damage, grab, cuff ATTEMPT, strip ATTEMPT) besides dragging them would break that effect, but the cultist would at least be able to move them while the spell was active (with a progress meter showing roughly how much time is left so we don't have to play those dumb guessing games). Finally, if we broke stun/silence on any damage I don't think mindshield immunity would be necessary (you can drag sec to your cult lair to try and outnumber him but he's still gonna give you a fight and be able to call for help).

Even on revs you can at least see somebody pulling out a flash.

That’s another big problem with cult. No visual cue it’s about to happen. I feel like I may have come up with a possible solution to this problem. What if when you were about to use the stun spell your hand would suddenly have like a red flame covering it? So instead of just suddenly being stunned you have reaction time when you see their glowing red hand.

Unless there's a bug, that's absolutely what already happens. I even spent time animating the stun spell when it's in your hand so that it would be more noticeable than the old red piece of paper that was 3x6 pixels and invisible if you held it in the "far" hand. One other solution is just to give the spell a brief "wind-up" of 1-2 seconds so that cultists either have to prep it off-screen and hope the victim doesn't notice that they're being rushed by a dude with a flaming red hand... or they have to chant on-screen which would also give a metric fuckton of warning to the potential victim. Or just add more pixels to the effect if it's still not noticeable enough. Some people seem miffed that you can't stop the stun with another stun or disarm, that was actually something I intended to be anti-cult, since without the dropped item I was worried people might stash their dagger and go willy nilly with hand spells without any lasting evidence of their cult affiliation.

That worry was probably unfounded, so I don't see why stuns or disarms couldn't cancel the spell - you could even go the extra mile and have a cancelled spell "lock" summoning a new spell within a few seconds too, to make it more consequential. I would straight up even contemplate having the spell "backfire" if someone disarms an active spell, briefly stunning the cultist and letting the other person get some free hits in. That's the kind of solution I'd prefer to see, not just a return to the god awful HoG style conversions.

Stop using winrate as a measure of game mode balance or quality, it doesnt tell the whole story of a round, and also doesnt necessarily need to be a focus anyway in a storytelling roleplaying game like SS13.

Using statistics without understanding the broader implications of them leads to shitty decisions like the cult we have now.

You've been saying this for several years. Every metric has flaws. Propose a better metric beyond "My anecdote is better than your anecdote!" because that's what most of these threads turn into. It's been years since we've had a poll but cult has always been in the top half of mode ratings and you were saying the same thing then that you are now. There's always room for improvement and I welcome intelligent contributions but this tired refrain of "Cult OP because I say so!" doesn't get us anywhere.

The comprehensive guide is pretty simple I'll be honest. Don't go into melee against cultists, who predominately have the advantage in a straight melee fight. Fight them from afar where their magic doesn't work. And use ballistics. Taking an imrpovised shotgun and just pinging down cultists with slugs is 100% a fantastic means of fighting cultists. And if they try to hide behind corners, just walk. There is no reason to engage cultists on their terms.

These are generally basics you can apply to practically all combat in space. Fighting a fools errand. You aren't fighting, you're hunting. Sneaking, following, and waiting will win you more kills than charging in blind and getting yourself slapped down. Follow blood they drip everywhere and you'll usually find the cult. Bear traps, hiding in lockers, soap under doorways, all very powerful means of catching just about anyone and especially cultists. Once you've established where they are, you can start rigging their base with traps to fight them. One of the most powerful means of fighting cultists is rendering their bases uninhabitable and pushing deeper into their bases from space. Kind of a shitty move, I know, but it works and works well. I've combat most cultists by just rendering their base of operations depressurized and everyone inside vulnerable to a PKA or being sniped with slugs and keeping the fuck away.

It legit warms my heart to see that someone paid attention and noticed all the weaknesses I've given cult by design. You're correct, I intentionally made cultists vulnerable to kinetic ranged weapons (rifles, revolvers, and shotguns - especially with slugs - which is explicitly why I gave sec lathe the ability to print shotgun ammo) which can be crafted using common maint objects and an autolathe. A cultist with every toy at their disposal is still gonna have bad odds against the assistant who spent 2 minutes to craft an improvised shotgun with slug shells. When I switched from Tomes to Daggers, I made the cultists spill their own blood when preparing spells so that careless cultists would leave a trail and observant crew could spring a trap. And, of course, the easiest solution to every summoning attempt is to render the room uninhabitable, which elevated the role of chemists, atmos techs, toxins, etc. who otherwise rarely have a reason to put their full talents to use in service of the station and not against it.

However, if a nerf if indeed necessary, I think all-in-all changing to an "enthrall" stun WITH the adjustments I mentioned wouldn't be the end of the world. Disarming/Backfiring the stun spell seems very fair too. If constructs are getting out of hand then I'd reduce the efficacy of the sac rune for dead victims. I also wouldn't oppose removing the gimmicky mechanics of having ghosts/spirits serve as conversion helpers. Perhaps sacrificing ALL mindshielded persons should require 3+ cultists instead of just the sac target. It would also be fair to change sacrifices of the braindead (or all dead) to yield a "broken shard" that would only work if combined with another, which would then trigger the existing "ghost prompt" for someone to step in and become a cult ghost/construct.

It also wouldn't hurt to give the crew more options. Purified cult ghosts and constructs are a thing I'd love to see more of. Any crew members can use library bibles on shards I believe, but if that's not the case, it probably should be. Holy Water (available via cargo) + Glass shards to form an empty holy soul-shard that crew could use to either "grab" and purify roaming cult ghosts or to dust dead cultists and bring them back as purified ghosts, also seem like good options for allowing the crew to regain momentum against a cult.

I've also pitched the possibility of giving the crew a way to achieve "final victory" over the cult without having to flee. Cultists have a dramatic victory but the crew's always feels anti-climatic, even crushing the cult merely ends with an escape shuttle. Allowing the crew to build a megastructure like a special BSA (I believe that BSA can kill Nar'Sie and give the cult a defeat now anyway right?) or some kind of dimensional stabilizer for what would essentially be a reverse-summoning: crew gets a notice and location, cult gets X seconds to stop it, depending on how strong the cult is doing, the game could summon a variable number of mob or player-controlled constructs (no wraiths tho) to target the structure and crew would have to defend it. Game ends with Nar'Sie being banished in some janky-but-beloved animation and give the crew a victory to feel good about. There is tension with dynamic mode, of course, perhaps the other antags would have an incentive to destroy the anti-cult structure or perhaps having it activate and end the round will just giving the other antagonists credit for their escape objective, or maybe just have it run the animation and deconvert the remaining cultists, vaporizing remaining constructs, etc. and letting the crew choose how and when they want to end their shift. There would be a lot of careful considerations for how to design such a structure (can't have it available at roundstart, can't make it too easy for the cult to prevent it from being deployed either by resorting to lazy tactics like smashing RND or stealing the ORM.

Regardless what I'm trying to convey here is that this game, and cult mode, give you a lot of levers and creative options for adjusting balance such that if cult really does need a nerf, you can do it in a thoughtful way that makes it fair for both sides.

[Arathian]

I dunno who you are mr. Robustin but your post was great.

And also, thank.you. "i don't car3 what the acrual statistics say the winrate is. MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE SHOWS XXX" posts are braindead.

[Dr_bee]

The point I try to make when I point out the flaws in just using win-rates is that when you are looking at a problem that is not easily quantifiable, such as the quality of a given game-mode, you need to use qualitative data.

So yes, I'm talking about using anecdotes, but a large number of them. Win-rate has accuracy issues, you aren't measuring what you think you are.

The Likert scale polls are also a decent way to measure how much people like a game mode, but unfortunately some people liking a game mode and said game mode being balanced and fair are not the same things.

If I were to study the overall state of cult as a game mode I would actually ask for people to write a little about their experiences with it, what they don't like, what they do like, and what they think should change, then find the most common themes in the responses.

This is the shit I'm in school for, so that's why Ive been saying it for years, admittedly poorly.

[Cobby]

cult can win by a singular person murderboning everyone and converting being a secondary matter.

You don't need to care about any invoker req barring narsie when they can be performed by a singular person and a single rune. You can also just kill and sac everyone which gives you invokers that can also be beefed up to be simple mob murderboners that can also kill and bring people to sac...

There's also a one click button that lets you get all possible invokers at once (you only ever need to perform this one as mentioned above).

[cacogen]

In this community there are scarcely few places where we reach a consensus.

One consensus we reached several years ago was that team-escape objectives were unequivocally the dumbest possible objective that you could ever incentivize. Not even gonna debate this one further.

like many of your forum essays i didn't read this but here is a picture i took of your character aeons ago that i will never have another reason to post

[NecromancerAnne]

I dunno who you are mr. Robustin but your post was great.

He was blood cults principle maintainer for a while and responsible for most of the content presently in the mode.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

make all spells use blood points like the """advanced ones""" do

[confused rock]

What if the stun stunned both the cultist and the gamer so it was a bad idea alone?

[Super Aggro Crag]

How do you make an improvised shotgun

Modular receiver, which you find in maint or make out of a hacked autolathe. A wooden stock, which you can make in the library. A pipe, which you can pull up from the floor. Wrapping paper, which you can get out of cargo or most protolathes.

Cargo and engineering are the easiest ones to get these constructed in and print the ammo through. Also they have the roles with maint access so it is easier for them to hunt people.

thanks babe

[Flatulent]

How do you make an improvised shotgun

Modular receiver, which you find in maint or make out of a hacked autolathe. A wooden stock, which you can make in the library. A pipe, which you can pull up from the floor. Wrapping paper, which you can get out of cargo or most protolathes.

Cargo and engineering are the easiest ones to get these constructed in and print the ammo through. Also they have the roles with maint access so it is easier for them to hunt people.

thanks babe

carry trashbag on your belt and store shells in it
reason: they are all in one "slot", you can hold a fuckton of them in one bag, you can pick up 30 shells that are laying on lathe instanenously without geting capral syndrome and you can collect spent shells to recycle in lathe for more ammo; just spam slugs and dab on cult
reminder that pointblank shotgun now also knocks back the person in melee range so dabbing on cult is even easier

[NecromancerAnne]

It's also a stunif they hit a wall.

[pugie]

Real shotgun users in cult use holy water darts not slugs.
Also getting the wall stun with shotgun ammo is a bad idea you have to
1. Be in melee range and;
2. Click their actual sprite.

[Flatulent]

Real shotgun users in cult use holy water darts not slugs.
Also getting the wall stun with shotgun ammo is a bad idea you have to
1. Be in melee range and;
2. Click their actual sprite.

cult dagger removes holy water from system and darts are blocked by gamer suits

also, two darts definetly don't crit. Why would you use anything but slugs and buckshot?

[pugie]

Real shotgun users in cult use holy water darts not slugs.
Also getting the wall stun with shotgun ammo is a bad idea you have to
1. Be in melee range and;
2. Click their actual sprite.

cult dagger removes holy water from system and darts are blocked by gamer suits

also, two darts definetly don't crit. Why would you use anything but slugs and buckshot?

Also the dagger holy water removal means fuck all when shooting them once removes all their spells. Slugs won't help you when they can teleport out instantly.
If the cultist is wearing a syringe proof suit then they probably don't know how to click people so just stun baton them they all have slowdown.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

they cant use spells either after 2 slugs

[Oldman Robustin]

Shotguns sound fucking hilarious now.

[PKPenguin321]

Shotguns sound fucking hilarious now.

they're insane
nobody's even mentioned incendiary shells which are basically a "stun yourself by resisting and die to me or don't and die to burn" button

[angelstarri]

remove cult stun after sigils appear

[confused rock]

Just kill the guy who set you on fire and then resist

I forgot, why do we (we being people who are wrong) hate team escape?

[Lazengann]

instead of a stun make it a super shove so you can play around it
Still stunned if you fly into the wall though

[Flatulent]

Shotguns sound fucking hilarious now.

they're insane
nobody's even mentioned incendiary shells which are basically a "stun yourself by resisting and die to me or don't and die to burn" button

why the fuck would you not carry an extingusher with you at all times
it gives you escape potential through slips or slip tile ambushes against clueless maint lurkers

[XivilaiAnaxes]

I forgot, why do we (we being people who are wrong) hate team escape?

I imagine it devolves into a binary "This objective doesn't actually mean anything and ergo isn't really an objective" in the case that you can just walk onto the escape shuttle and nobody notices or cares (Blood brothers, minus the fact ALL brothers need to survive). Or "you have to murderbone the entire shuttle" in the case you can't just walk on like a regular crew member (Hijack, for example) which is arguably rather painful to actually do.

[oranges]

two pages, no code

[cacogen]

we have to check it's okay with everyone first

[NecromancerAnne]

Real shotgun users in cult use holy water darts not slugs.
Also getting the wall stun with shotgun ammo is a bad idea you have to
1. Be in melee range and;
2. Click their actual sprite.

If you can get close enough to baton you can get in to pointblank. It's literally just a matter of being on help intent, and there are some tricks you can do to obfuscate your intent. Shift+B the gun out being one of them. Not what I would recommend against cultists of course but it's not as hard as you make it out to be. Also you can use dead cultists as a stun projectile using shotguns if you want. Good for fleeing if you've left a trail of corpses behind you, and something I already watch for and set up for shoves.

[oranges]

still no PR

[imsxz]

we have to check it's okay with everyone first

someone just has to open a bad PR(but good enough that maintainers won’t close it instantly) and then someone with an actual good idea will have an incentive to do something

see: Krav Maga changes

[wesoda25]

still no PR

none of these ideas resonate with me hate to say it, nox's is close but not refined enough

[NecromancerAnne]

still no PR

none of these ideas resonate with me hate to say it, nox's is close but not refined enough

Consider what role you want the ability to fill and what you want from it. People seem very keen to keep it from being used for combat but want to still quietly kidnap people. It might not be a bad idea to rip off Kindle and have the effect shorten it's duration from damage taken.

Barring that, another alternative idea I had was making the spell simply a mute and slow and giving cult daggers the ability to inflict stamina damage. This way it's a bit more of a fight from the back foot rather than certain defeat.

You could even work that into cult bolas and separate the eldritch longsword and bolas conjuring. That way you don't have two cult powers/gear doing the same thing (why would you use a melee slow when bolas exist), keep some of the combat prowess but still let who is hit with it have a fighting chance, since cult bolas aren't a hard stun anymore.

we have to check it's okay with everyone first

someone just has to open a bad PR(but good enough that maintainers won’t close it instantly) and then someone with an actual good idea will have an incentive to do something

see: Krav Maga changes

The other day I lost hardcore to my own krav changes. I just couldn't fight back because they kept disarming me of my weapon, even though I disarmed the warden of his baton and was going for the finishing blow.

All in all I think I did pretty well.

[oranges]

still no PR

[Anonmare]

You can swap out the Paralyse in the cult stun with immobilise, but I'm not sure how you'd go about adding a signal that listens for damage that will remove the immobilsation. Here's what I've got so far.

Code: Select all

/obj/item/melee/blood_magic/stun
	name = "Immobilizing Aura"
	desc = "Will halt and mute a victim on contact."
	color = RUNE_COLOR_RED
	invocation = "Fuu ma'jin!"

/obj/item/melee/blood_magic/stun/afterattack(atom/target, mob/living/carbon/user, proximity)
	if(!isliving(target) || !proximity)
		return
	var/mob/living/L = target
	if(iscultist(target))
		return
	if(iscultist(user))
		user.visible_message("<span class='warning'>[user] holds up [user.p_their()] hand, which explodes in a flash of red light!</span>", \
							"<span class='cultitalic'>You attempt to immobilise [L] with the spell!</span>")

		user.mob_light(_color = LIGHT_COLOR_BLOOD_MAGIC, _range = 3, _duration = 2)

		var/anti_magic_source = L.anti_magic_check()
		if(anti_magic_source)

			L.mob_light(_color = LIGHT_COLOR_HOLY_MAGIC, _range = 2, _duration = 100)
			var/mutable_appearance/forbearance = mutable_appearance('icons/effects/genetics.dmi', "servitude", -MUTATIONS_LAYER)
			L.add_overlay(forbearance)
			addtimer(CALLBACK(L, /atom/proc/cut_overlay, forbearance), 100)

			if(istype(anti_magic_source, /obj/item))
				var/obj/item/ams_object = anti_magic_source
				target.visible_message("<span class='warning'>[L] starts to glow in a halo of light!</span>", \
									   "<span class='userdanger'>Your [ams_object.name] begins to glow, emitting a blanket of holy light which surrounds you and protects you from the flash of light!</span>")
			else
				target.visible_message("<span class='warning'>[L] starts to glow in a halo of light!</span>", \
									   "<span class='userdanger'>A feeling of warmth washes over you, rays of holy light surround your body and protect you from the flash of light!</span>")
		else
			to_chat(user, "<span class='cultitalic'>In a brilliant flash of red, [L] stops in their tracks!</span>")
			L.Immobilize(160)
			L.flash_act(1,1)
			if(issilicon(target))
				var/mob/living/silicon/S = L
				S.emp_act(EMP_HEAVY)
			else if(iscarbon(target))
				var/mob/living/carbon/C = L
				C.silent += 6
				C.stuttering += 15
				C.cultslurring += 15
				C.Jitter(15)
		uses--
	..()

If I can figure out how to register signals, I'll update it.

[wesoda25]

I’ll look into this today