/tg/Station 13

Cult has... a lot of powers. Almost as many as traitor. Here are the ones you're almost guaranteed to see in a successful cult round: I see a lot to work with here. Removing underused/unused spells and constructions makes decision-making easier for the new cultist. Remember that these are potential changes and that not all of them need to be made.
Remove EMP
The EMP spell is redundant in several ways, but chiefly: stunning borgs(stun hand) and opening doors(twisted construction), which are its main functions. It also griefs nearby cultists who have robotic limbs/organs and turns off everyones' headsets, as a bonus.
Remove Hallucinations
Almost never used, and the wiki decries it as useless, so new players aren't likely to use it either.
Remove the cult girder
Why is it even here? Why waste valuable cult metal on building walls instead of gear? If you need walls that badly, make an artificer or build walls with normal metal girders like everyone else. This seems like a trap option for new players when any other building would be better.
Remove Flagellant's Robes
Rarely seen, but moving at uncontrollable speeds should be a temporary thing, even at such a high price. If you want lighter armor for whatever reason, use summon combat equipment instead of putting the heavy armor on cooldown.
Remove the Altar, roll the construct shell into the Forge, slightly increase the cost of building forge/archives
This would also effectively remove the cult whetstone and unholy water flask. But why? Because it's the only cult structure that doesn't glow, which is vital for finding bases hidden in maint. Cult swords are already plenty strong without the whetstone, and cult daggers are rarely used as combat weapons so they shouldn't be sharpened anyway. Also, the unholy water is rarely if ever used; if cultists need healing, they can retreat to a base for pylons, use normal medicine, or use blood rites on themselves. The construct shell is undeniably combat equipment, and should go in the same place as the sword and armor. As a final flavor note, the act of constructing cult equipment isn't something that should be done at an altar, it should be something done with unholy knowledge(archives) or with unholy tools(forge).
Remove the constructed Cult Airlock
Just build a normal airlock and use twisted construction on it, or use twisted construction on an existing airlock.
Remove the Void Torch
Void Torches are those funny little torches that come with veil shifters that nobody ever uses. And when they do use void torches, it often runs into problems. As an anecdote, I sent off some cult swords last minute the other night and actively screwed over someone who was trying to kidnap a person; they didn't notice and couldn't equip a spell because their hands were full. The cult already has the ability to send things between teleport runes if they need to distribute things to various bases/people. I personally won't miss it getting in the way when I try to pick up a veil shifter off the Archives.
Remove ghost cultists
Remember that PR about removing ghost cultists? I actually think it's a good idea. It kills off an entire playstyle of cult that, personally, I wouldn't miss: spirit realm spam. When the cult gets down to one or two members, it sometimes results in them hiding somewhere while their spirit minions go around killing and converting/soulstoning people for them, which is extremely unfun for everyone not playing the ghost, not to mention risk-free as long as there's a couple pylons nearby. It also threw them a bone for teamwork and gave cultists an innate way of telling nearby friends that they're in trouble.
Remove Apocalypse
Apocalypse is not an iconic spell. Apocalypse is a grief tool. Its primary use is to piss off everyone else in the cult by invalidating a summoning site, and piss off the station by throwing a bunch of rocks at them. It's inherently random and is either really useless(haha the crew caught a cold), or really stupid(immovable rods go brrrrrr).
Remove Summon Cultist
Almost never gets used on time, can't be used on the dead or cuffed, requires several invokers, griefs cultists when misused, cultists can just teleport themselves 9/10 times.
Remove blood rites
It's a complicated spell with a lot of flowchart paths to it. I love Blood Rites, and feel like there's still some room for complexity in cult if other changes are made, but if there's really no space for it, it should probably go.
Finally, the hottest take in this post:
Remove the Empower rune, roll its functionality into the ritual dagger itself.
I don't know if this is the case on MRP, but on LRP, cultists are never captured alive and put into perma. Even if they were, they could use the teleport spell to get out, or be summoned by another cultist. The empower rune makes almost no sense to me; a cultist's dagger should be their most important possession and should represent access to their spells. Not only can you prepare spells without the dagger in the first place, but you can carve symbols into your flesh without a sharp object by using an existing empower rune. They also take up space inside of cult bases and require more frequent returns to cult bases. Nothing like shoving matches / getting interrupted while carving because the base is crowded and already full of forges, altars, archives, runes, and people.

I feel like cult constructs are as fine as they are; my only complaint is that if they're made too early they have to sit around the base and do nothing for a while because two of the three aren't particularly useful while the cult is still in hiding. I'm not sure what could be done to fix this without expanding the flowchart, though, which isn't what this thread is trying to accomplish.

You are a cultist! Your objectives are to sacrifice <W> and summon Nar'Sie at <X/Y/Z>.
To do this, your god has given you a ritual dagger. Keep this on your person! Without it, you lose access to the majority of your power.
You can prepare spells on your person by hitting [picture of the spells button], or invoking an Empower rune! Spells are critical to your success, especially Stun. Using Stun gives you a long one-hit stun on any non-cultist you can touch.
Use your dagger to carve runes. The Empower rune and Offering rune are the most important- Empower lets you prepare more spells at once, while Offering lets you convert and sacrifice people. To invoke a rune, you simply click on it with an empty hand. Some runes, like Offering, require multiple cultists standing near them to invoke!