/tg/Station 13

Cult has been through many iterations since its creation, and based on the poll on the feedback board, it's safe to say that "newcult" is by far the least popular version. It removed all the flavor from the mode, and made it the bastard child of gang and ops. A new version that fixes the issues of oldcult while maintaining the feel and flavor of the mode is an imperative. I've read through the feedback thread, and based on those suggestions I've come up with some changes to cult that address some of the issues oldcult had, while making it still feel like cult. Note that these suggestions are made with oldcult in mind. I'm assuming that newcult will be scrapped entirely. Under each suggestion is a list of the issues that I had in mind when I came up with it.

The Vessel

• Leadership
• Stunpaper
• Early Conversion

To my knowledge, no version of cult has had a leadership role. Every member kinda went off and did their own thing, which made for a lot of cult losses due to no coherent strategy among the team. I considered a cult head of sorts in the past, but simply designating a random cultist as a head wouldn't be very creative or interesting. Another complaint (probably the biggest) was that stunpaper was broken but at the same time necessary for early conversions. To remedy both of these problems, the cult should have a leader figure with special powers that aid the cult early on.

At the start of the round, one of the cultist will be selected as the Vessel of Nar'sie. The Vessel will be the only cultist that spawns with a talisman; all the regular cultists will start with only a tome. If the total number of cultists and constructs is less than two more than the starting number, the Vessel will count as two cultists for rune magic. Also, they will be able to create runes without a tome, which makes them harder to detect if captured as they will not have a tome to give them away. If Nar'Sie is summoned in the round, the Vessel will need to stand in the middle of the summon rune, and will become and control Nar'sie if the summoning is successful. The Vessel is the leader of the cult, and their word is law. If the Vessel is killed or deconverted, Nar'sie will gib them for their failure, which will deal severe brute damage to anybody around them. Then, a new Vessel will be randomly selected among the remaining cultists. Consideration for the role will be able to be toggled on or off in preferences.


New Runes

• Impactful runes
• Fewer items
• Research

In most versions of cult, only a select few runes actually saw any use. Most of the runes are too niche or unwieldy to use. A good number of them just spawn physical items, completely removing the flavor from them. Research has always been a mess too, being unwieldy and usually just done through trial and error rather than the "right" way through sacrifices. Under CoxCult, runes would be both more powerful and expensive, and research would be dramatically simplified.

As it stands, we only have one sacrifice rune. I propose that we have a standard "sacrifice" rune that gives you a soulshard with the victim's soul in it and a rune, and we have other sacrifice runes, all with varying effects. They would be a class of their own. One rune could kill the victim and create a temporary power outage. Another could EMP all the energy weapons on the station. Adding a cost to some runes would allow us to create more dramatic ones without having to worry about balance. Construct shell, blade, and armor runes will require some material placed on them to function. Imbue runes are out completely, along with other useless runes. Research will be stupidly simple: sac guy, get new rune, all tomes automatically updated.


Vengeful Spirits

• Rune balance
• Muh conversion

For reasons that still elude me, conversions in cult is controversial. One camp wants easy conversion, which will lead to the station being all cult or implanted, just like rev. The other wants difficult conversions and for people to fight in deadchat for 40 minutes. I propose that a third party be introduced to cult: vengeful spirits.

These vengeful spirits will have a chance to be created when the cult uses a rune that sacrifices the victim without trapping their soul in a shard, with varying percentages per rune used. Sacrificed souls will be unable to move on to the afterlife after being so violently torn from their bodies, and will remain as revenant-like spirits. They will function similarly to revenants, perhaps with some tweaks to their abilities to account for their numbers. They will have one objective: to sabotage the cult wherever possible. The purpose of this role is to add an additional cost to the new sacrifice runes, and to give roles to ghosts.

Sounds interesting, I'd like to try it out.

Zilenan91 wrote:Sounds interesting, I'd like to try it out.

I am simultaneously flattered and horrified by your endorsement. Thank you.

hand of god with no player-controlled god and cult runes

PKPenguin321 wrote:hand of god with no player-controlled god and cult runes

HoG doesn't look like it's going anywhere, so I figured I could borrow the prophet role a little bit. I'm not sure how it's implemented in that mode, but it makes sense for Nar'sie to bless the leader of the cult.

what even happened to hand of god anyways

Abandoned

Shame really about hog I like RTSlight modes like blob and it offered a bit of that.

Good luck Cox sounds promising.

1) Making one cultist arbitrarily stronger and more important is not good. Cult would not benefit from this. It's already crippling enough when a cultist doesn't know what the fuck he's doing, last thing I want to see is "Vessel of Nar-Sie: Hey guys how do I make runes?" I just see no benefit to this aside from making the player selection RNG even more determinative of the round's outcome. Plus requiring the vessel to stand in the center of the Nar-Sie rune is 99% frustration for 1% flavor.

2) "A good number of runes just spawn physical items". What? There's only a few and they all serve really obvious and distinct purposes. Shells are a great rune for when you need to jump start a construct army without having to wait for an artificer/starting talisman. Armor+Sword is great when its just a bloodbath and you need some extra protection against spear-tossing assistants and lethal-spamming sec with the sword giving you quick executions against people hit by MM. Tome is obviously important if someone loses theirs or a new convert needs one. These runes are all the LAST ones I'd touch if I wanted to change cult.

3) Vengeful spirits sound fucking awful bro. Sac someone with one of your new runes and I have a fucking revenant following me around for the rest of the round constantly draining my stamina, shocking me, and killing me if I get stunned?

1. The key issue here is giving cult a leader. Like I said, a lot of the time cultists just fuck off and do nothing, so a clear leader is necessary. Every other team antag has one, so there's no excuse for cult to not have one. The few powers they do have are to help the cult early game with the proposed removal of talismans. Exploding on death is meant to punish security for dumping holy water on people who aren't suspicious, and to force them to use a little more discretion. I thought the whole Vessel becoming Nar'sie thing would be cool but I guess it could be a little annoying.

2. Imbue runes were my main complaint. I've considered it, but there's no way to make them balanced. Some of the runes are never used and take up quite a bit of space in the tome. Now that I think about it, I would make it so that the armor/sword runes bind the armor to you on use, and un-bind it when used again. Multiple sacrifice runes are something that I would love to see, because it would allow runes to have much more powerful effects. Also, flavor-wise it's cool as fuck.

3. My main reason for vengeful spirits is to add an additional cost to the more powerful sacrifice runes, and to give roles to ghosts. I said that they would be revenant-like, not necessarily the same. After some balancing, they'd probably be a bit weaker than them. Also, they wouldn't have a 100% chance of spawning. Each sacrifice rune would have different odds of spawning one. The weapon EMP rune would probably have a low chance, while the station-wide power outage would be almost guaranteed. They would be killable too, so it's not like they're there forever.

Tell me that, unlike revvies, they're not invisible and unkillable all the fuckin' time.

DemonFiren wrote:Tell me that, unlike revvies, they're not invisible and unkillable all the fuckin' time.

There are a couple ways to go about it. Make them visible to cultists only, make them visible near cultists, make them visible near runes, etc.

vengeful spirits is retarded, it's punishing the cult for a successful abduction/kill

Alright, I guess I didn't think the whole vengeful spirit thing through. Still think that Revenants could be incorporated somehow. Everything else I suggested I stand by. Cult needs a leader with powers that benefit them early game, and sacrifice runes encourage abductions over flat-out murderboning

Just to let you know... Runes are balls. Literally fucking balls.

kazeespada wrote:Just to let you know... Runes are balls. Literally fucking balls.

Hence me wanting to make powerful runes that actually feel like you're doing some sort of satanic ritual

About the one powerful person thing
We already occasionally have a cultist who don't know what they're doing and screws the whole thing up by dropping runes in heavily used areas
What happens when a new guy plays the "vessel"?
Also don't say Job Time Bans because those do absolutely nothing considering all the terrible heads and security I've seen.

What do we do when new guys end up as rev heads, gang heads, blobs, or ops leaders?

Luke Cox wrote:What do we do when new guys end up as rev heads, gang heads, blobs, or ops leaders?

cry because the game turns to shit

cult being another round with a head role that can singlehandely ruin everything is bad, i agree with kevinz on this one

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Luke Cox wrote:What do we do when new guys end up as rev heads, gang heads, blobs, or ops leaders?

cry because the game turns to shit

cult being another round with a head role that can singlehandely ruin everything is bad, i agree with kevinz on this one

That's an inherent risk with anybody in a leadership position, command staff included. It's better than the alternative of total anarchy that has ruined so many cults.

Luke Cox wrote:

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Luke Cox wrote:What do we do when new guys end up as rev heads, gang heads, blobs, or ops leaders?

cry because the game turns to shit

cult being another round with a head role that can singlehandely ruin everything is bad, i agree with kevinz on this one

That's an inherent risk with anybody in a leadership position, command staff included. It's better than the alternative of total anarchy that has ruined so many cults.

not really

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Luke Cox wrote:

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Luke Cox wrote:What do we do when new guys end up as rev heads, gang heads, blobs, or ops leaders?

cry because the game turns to shit

cult being another round with a head role that can singlehandely ruin everything is bad, i agree with kevinz on this one

That's an inherent risk with anybody in a leadership position, command staff included. It's better than the alternative of total anarchy that has ruined so many cults.

not really

How often have you been a cultist? Do you know what it's like trying to organize 5-6 people who are fucking off and attempting to use mutually exclusive strategies? Even without all the Vessel stuff, a cult leader of some kind is absolutely necessary for the mode to function smoothly.

Luke Cox wrote:

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Luke Cox wrote:

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Luke Cox wrote:What do we do when new guys end up as rev heads, gang heads, blobs, or ops leaders?

cry because the game turns to shit

cult being another round with a head role that can singlehandely ruin everything is bad, i agree with kevinz on this one

That's an inherent risk with anybody in a leadership position, command staff included. It's better than the alternative of total anarchy that has ruined so many cults.

not really

How often have you been a cultist? Do you know what it's like trying to organize 5-6 people who are fucking off and attempting to use mutually exclusive strategies? Even without all the Vessel stuff, a cult leader of some kind is absolutely necessary for the mode to function smoothly.

nobody will listen to the leader anyways, only now there's a certain cultist who ruins the whole round if he's bad
yes i played cult a lot (as a roundstart cultist and a convert), yes i won most of the time

cocks cult