Making lings cool again

[Armhulen]

The fact that that the best plan for a ling is to mostly rely on crew gear and equipment instead of going full alien monster on people is a big lrp coder issue.

I just want my alien monsters to commit evil alien murder with actual alien powers, damnit. Make lings cool again.

Any ideas, gentlemen?

[Xkallubar]

Make it more like goon lings. Hivemind, hand spiders, buttcrabs, etc.
Snake arms!

[Redrover1760]

Ling armor, for something that has an active chemical drain, is not really worth it. 40 across level armor is worse than heretic, only plus being 90 bomb, but considering its a piece of armor that literally screams ling just for wearing it, while in comparison sec vest/helmet is comparable and has no chem drain, adding some kind of utility to it to encourage its use that's not just scaling it up in comparison to infil suit or heretic armor would be amazing.

Second, I think lings have a very unsatisfying competition against anyone with a baton. On both sides of the equation I wish that Lings had something to make it hard to truly stun them down that doesn't mandate powergaming chemistry to do the same thing for free. I want security officers to be able to escape from a ling if they dont have lasers and stuff and stuns and stamina does do something, but lasering and hunting lings is just a more sastifying and fun loop than just hardstunning the evil alien abomination by smacking with baton. Imagine trying to shock a hydralisk or roach with a literal stunstick, and they're less intimidating than lings. I think Horror Form was a good way to help this loop out, but that's not a thing anymore.

Another idea is to make it so lings can augment themselves with permanent fleshy evil limbs. Or perhaps a form or ability that prevents lings from using guns for a big buff in other fields, turning them into a scary melee based nightmare. Maybe you could turn yourself into monsterous basicmobs that pounce and attack etc. Fear me, for I have turned Into a zergling and are currently biting your face off. Or a horrific mantis creature chasing you with duel wielding armblades with double the attack speed of a human to account. You could even make it a progression element by requiring genomes absorbed like terror spiders in order to adapt these, maybe even add a bunch and make genomes get spent so you pick what forms you want and if you get enough genomes you can have utility and variation in your forms. Absorbing is fun and hard but is mostly unrewarding, making it even worse when lings do it to you as they're not working towards things. They're shapeshifters, sky's the limit.

Anything that encourages less using of crew gear through restrictions etc, anything that allows the antag to operate through their own style and fleshy hellish abominations while not invalidating stealthier disguised lings. As long as its not like giving final objectives and more giving new toys to play with in reward for being evil I think ling could benefit a lot.

Hell, make it so fires are more effective against ling abilities. Give flamethrowers an actual usecase despite their incredibly destructive and risky nature as it's simply soul to pull out a flamethrower against an evil alien abomination. While we're add it probably buff flamethrowers against xenos too.

[TheRex9001]

Take something like horror form, remove armblade in favour of more discrete options. Allow for more stealth gameplay by buffing chameleon and the mute+silent stings, maybe make the ling also heal on absorption? Add in some sort of cool stinger/sucker weapon thats good at single target instead of the current armblade that is just a good murderboning tool but is pretty loud and obvious.

[Itseasytosee2me]

nerf stun batons

also i wound buff changeling adrenalines to make you flat out immune to stamina damage.

[Armhulen]

nerf stun batons

trust me, it's a lot easier to push through ling changes than it is security changes that affect all antagonists
adrenals change sounds not bad though

[mrmelbert]

Step one: Make Fleshmend an innate ability, give it a visual / audible / examine tell like regenerate. Everyone takes it anyways.

Step two: Buff fire against lings, but scale the fire vulnerability on how many abilities they have active at the moment. You can go full monster mode if you're OK with shying away from flamers, but you aren't penalized if you wanna be a more subtle transformer face stealer.

Step three: Add a ton of silly organic weapon replacements, augments, etc. Some good for gimmicks, some good for stealth, some for murder, w/e. Put some of them behind # of absorbs (Horror form). See Redrover's idea.
I know this sounds like biddle lings but this is literally how ling has always been.

[datorangebottle]

Give the ling an organic stun baton equivalent.
Each stun costs chems instead of charge.
Then they will be fully capable of saying fuck.

[wesoda25]

The ling counter to batons is their extensive toolkit. Ranged disarm/grab, EMP, disorient, changing identity, speed boost, biodegrade, remove restraints - you have a lot of options. If you are that worried about batons, don't blow your cover. Also, I like the idea of adding more gimmicky stuff to lings, I'm specifically more interested in non combat oriented stuff (that could still have combat applications) since as is the ling combat bag is pretty deep already imo.

+1 to buffing ling armor, does't quite justify itself when it strips a ling of their greatest weapon (stealth). If you are going to do an adrenals change, make lings able to clear all or some stamina damage for a significant chemical cost - this would essentially return it to its former ability of clearing stuns.

[Ezel]

Most people mistake ling adrenals for old ling adrenals which just removed the stun and you immediatly get up again
At the moment its just supet ephedrine but most lings dont know when to use it and they use it after they get stamcritted

I do think changelings should be able to do whatever with their limbs if its not a gameplay adventage a mechanic or even cosmetic fluff letting them transform their limbs impedently aslong they have other species dna kinda like bioscrambler anomaly
or giving them the ability to use chemspike tongue without using genetics integrate it as one of their cellular options
let their head pop off make or let them shoot out their eyeballs idk the possibilities are limitless

[Shadowflame909]

revive thinglings

[BrianBackslide]

Maybe lings could fake being catatonic/SSD. That way they could hide in plain sight as a genetics monkeyman or a SSD player.

[Indie-ana Jones]

Fix up some of the current powers and add new ones, I guess. Some ideas I had:

- Biodegrade auto-casts on revival from stasis. Currently, this ability is only good if go down and people leave you alive, which every gamer and their mother knows not to do. If you do die, you'll never get to use it since being dead slows chem refilling and revival already costs chems, so there's no way you're going to get the 30 chems required to use this ability when it would actually mean something.

- Last Resort got nerfed greatly when explosions were changed, as it used to stun people in a nearby radius to you when you blew up. You also used to be able to use this ability while dead. Re-add both those mechanics, as right now if you use this the people carting you off immediately get back up and kill you.

- Lesser form got nerfed when primal medicine got removed. This used to be a full heal and de-cuff at the cost of losing any gear monkeys couldn't wear, now its just a de-cuff, which again, isn't very useful since everyone knows you need to kill a ling and keep it dead. The only thing I could think of is give lesser form the ability to use the armblade?

- Buff the adrenaline sacs. Everyone expects it to work on stuns, it should work on stuns, changeling probably deserves a way around stuns.

- New mutation, Toxic Spikes : Takes up the suit slot and covers your body in toxic spikes. Provides little to no armor, but melee attackers have a high chance to get a spike embedded into them when attacking, which does toxic damage over time so long as its embedded. Gives you an ability which will shoot your spikes out in a radius around you, deactivating it (become tac shooter). Stepping on a ling using this ability has the same effect as stepping on punji spikes, great to pair with chameleon skin.

- New mutation, Bone Hammer: Big two-hander made out of you which takes the form of hard mass fused to both of your hands. Hits like a truck, provides some passive defense since its a giant mallet blocking their way to hitting you. Maybe only applies in the direction you're looking, like a shield.

[Ezel]

The adrenaline sacs does work on stuns except stamcrit isnt considered a stun