Assimilation Gamemode Feedback

[Ziiro]

(posted on the PR but I immediately realized it would be better to post in this thread)

I think that the hivemind would do much better as a side antagonist. It reminds me a lot like Devil in that it has some interesting tools that might interface with other antags well, but unto itself it just isn't a great thing to focus a round on.

Every other roundtype is more interesting because even if you aren't the antagonist, your interactions with the antagonists (or perhaps even one more removed) is far more engaging than "you lose control of your character briefly."

[DemonFiren]

it's been so long, I thought datum antags were finished

[Anuv]

There's still absolutely no counter to spam buying mindshields as soon as HMs go loud to fuck them over. Roll them into traitor rounds to make sec much less likely to spam implant crew or remove the mindshield counter.

[wesoda25]

Yeah I still think they’d function a lot better paired with more destructive antags if not just made into a side antag.

[zxaber]

Spam-buying mindshields is itself the counter to sloppy mind control. In fact, it's the only thing at all resembling a counter to mind control.

[Kierany9]

An absolutely massive Assimilation PR has been merged. The changes are too numerous to list here, a full description of the changes is in the PR's description.

[wesoda25]

The AOE sleep move should have a charge up to use (say 3 seconds) with warning to other players. The charge up should be allowed to work even if the hivemind moves. It seems way too similar to time stop, I murderboned without fear since I knew I had a failsafe no matter what happened.

Also mind control seems really weak now, you can hardly move anywhere and need to be really close to use it. Maybe if you could see your permitted area of motion and it had more range to it?

All that aside though it seems to be in a lot better place, although I need to play against them as sec to see if its still secret extended plus depending on players.

[Yenwodyah]

Just played a round as a hivemind host. Here are my thoughts -- All the abilities seem to be geared around "stealthy" play, but using any one of them on anyone important will immediately alert sec to rev up the mindshield production line and mass-implant the crew, fucking you over. Essentially, it's a "stealthy" antag where using any ability requires you to go loud, and where sec is given in invitation to search the entire station for the one valid crewmember.

Here's my suggestion -- remove the ability of sec to sweep the station for hiveminds with implants. Instead of making implants remove people from the hivemind and acting as a tell for who the host is, do something like the cult deconversion process, where implants don't deconvert and instead the person has to be fed some reagent (maybe mannitol?) and monitored for a while. This would make sec's job less "stun-cuff everyone without a little blinky on the sechud" and more "use clues from the host's activities" to hunt them down. IMO making a stealthy antag and giving them any sort of surefire tell -- even the reagent method I mentioned -- is just preventing them from being stealthy at all.

[Yakumo_Chen]

I stated in the policy thread, I think hiveminds should not be outed by mindshields. No hard tells. They should be implantable, with the caveat that implants disable their powers but give them the power to break it on demand. It gives plausible deniability to hiveminds since they can just claim another one broke their implant. They look suspicious when they conveniently lose their implant multiple times to "someone breaking it", too. Stealthy modes should be full of paranoia and this would definitely encourage it.

Security should have to do actual detective work to find who the hiveminds are (implanting gives pinpointers to people who hive'd them). This also gives hiveminds themselves a chance to lead security on a wild goose chase and falsely point fingers to get heat off of them or even kill a rival hivemind. It also prevents sec from winning by "just implant everyone" and lynching anyone it doesn't work on. This isn't Revolution and there isn't a wave of 40 crew resisting security to be implanted, there's a wave of 40 crew asking to be implanted while the entire crew validhunts for the hive bois. Having to implant break and losing power for losing people in the hive is punishment enough for hiveminds, especially when security has the entire crew supporting them from the get-go and makes the mode not a race to the bottom as soon as it's revealed what it is.

[oranges]

what kind of pinpointers would you envision?

[Shadowflame909]

Assimilation should not have an ULTIMATE MOVE, type thing. It should have a couple of decent offensive moves.

This whole, a bunch of defensive skills. With one overpowering super strong skill, just isn't working out.

Also, add a camouflage skill.

All great psychics need a way to temporarily turn invisible.

Funny how I make an argument and then suggest another defensive skill.

Edit: By ultimate move, I mean Mind-Control. The previous one, and Heart Attack. Which is the meta strat that is being used currently. Well, it is the only real usable thing in that arsenal to do serious damage at a very minor cost. Not talking about One Mind.

[Yakumo_Chen]

what kind of pinpointers would you envision?

I mean the pinpointer HUD you get when implanted after having been put on a hivemind, the one that points vaguely to the hivemind for a minute or two. The one that's already implemented.

[Mickyan]

I've been thinking that hivemind does a pretty good job at giving you tools to sneakily manipulate situations in your favor, but all of these tools are made to directly ruin someone's day in a way or another

What if you had more powers to help your vessels? For instance, you may give a vessel temporary immunity to stuns, break them out of handcuffs or a burst of healing to help them escape security and give you a useful distraction, that sort of thing

[confused rock]

In order of shitness, simple issues that I easily recall:

-medullary failure is and will be unfair, no matter the form. Even if it were point blank, it’d be a more unfair version of a death-sting. And no, having a buddy isn’t a counter(and not required in ANY OTHER MODE) since most won’t even RECOGNISE the heart failure-even doctors-and if there’s not a defib, I think I’m one of a half dozen people who know to use shocked grilles and doors to restart a heart, and that usually isn’t viable (try telling the AI to shock a door on asimov so you can throw someone at it)
-neural shock is just as bad- effectively just a parasting, makes cult stunarms look balanced.
-mind control just as unfair for same reasons
-you literally fucking stand still to convert people it’s boring as fuck, at minimum extract dna sting is a better option- could be like that.
-all pinpointing tracker skills are godawful- not only do they only work at a range for no good reason, but it constantly fucking switches targets and I never know what I’m tracking. Not knowing what I’m tracking is a HUGE problem when it jumps around so often. Biggest problem that isn’t frustrating for other people, but for the host. Only network invasion is useful, because the tracker is so vague I never know if it’s *really* a hive so I directly network invade it first.
-bruteforce shouldn’t exist. Implant breakers were the most reviled part of gang for a reason, and bruteforce is super easy.
-chaos induction is awful- the objective should always be set as “obey (hivemind here)”but I’ve used it plenty and never more than 2 people responded because it’s near impossible to notice and you never know who it effects.
-induce panic and distortion field are just obnoxious and usually just get used in escape to be a dick. They don’t add anything to hivemind they’re just obnoxious.
-circadian shift’s minimum is eight seconds of koing everyone in escape. MINIMUM. You could probably hijack in that time if there are few there. Wizards would ejaculate at the thought of magic missile stunning for that long while being instant and unavoidable and koing. As a reward for standing still on the same screen as 20 people I don’t think that’s fair.
-did I mention every hive is inherently far powerful on highpop?
-the forcewall is one of their fairest abilities of hivemind, it’s a shame that the best they have on offer is a changed wizard skill.
-Repair protocol also seems fine, though it isn’t clear how much brain damage it does, or if the hive should care. The problem there is..
-hives have no way to survive sec tasing them. All effort has been put into making them harder to track. Two things must be recognized:
1. There are a ton of hiveminds in one round. It shouldn’t be too hard for security or hives to track other hiveminds.
2.hives don’t need to be hard to track. They need to be harder to keep down.

Currently, hiveminds are like an airlock charge. “Balanced” in an uneven way. It isn’t fun to assimilate people and it isn’t fun to have a random heart attack. But as for their survivability, hives need SOMETHING. I would give hives a mindswap at any range on a very long cooldown. If hiveminds were made less unfair to track it’d be reasonable, so long as the swap is random. Maybe actually interesting. Better then “an asspain to track but an assistant with a toolbox can win sometimes”

-hive sight is the one thing I have zero problem with- combo with mind control or medullary or shock make it unfair, but those skills are already unfair.
-the one mind sound is irritating
Don’t get me fucking started on one mind. It feels like hivemind is at a weird spot between “hiveminds should rely on their powers” and “hiveminds should rely on regular weaponry” and worse still, in a spot between “hives should go full genocide” and “hives should never do crime”. It feels that, up until the one mind, hives have no reason not to avoid doing any antag shit- sec has no reason to suspect them until then (sec having “tase and implant anyone at random” promoted is another problem) and so if all a hivemind does is kill the other hives (which would be super easy if tracking wasn’t retarded so you rely on who stands still the most) it won’t feel fair for sec, but that’s the optimal way to play, and sec won’t know which purple guy to detain either.

This isn’t everything and I didn’t go into full detail on onemind and stuff I thought obvious, but that’s what I think, mostly. Too many powers doesn’t make the mode deeper, but it makes it worse if all the powers are unfair. I maintain my position that the only reason people should want hive is the sunk cost fallacy. Gang, shadowling,(both are better than hive at what it tries to do honestly), neither got this second chance, and neither had this many flaws. What’s worth salvaging here?

[terranaut]

In the last real extended round I played, someone walked in the supermatter at roundstart, nobody fixed the destabilization, the SM exploded with the least powerful explosion (basically just the chamber) and the shuttle was called as soon as refuelling was over.

If anything, stealth extended modes like this one are better because people don't try to end the round as soon as the extended announcement goes off.

>People don't want to play extended so let's force it on them without them knowing
what the fuck is going on in your head

[confused rock]

Just had a round where a hive went onemind at the FIFTEEN MINUTE MARK ROUND TIME and roughly 90% of the station population was part of it. nobody had any idea that it was a hive round until that point. nobody did anything wrong. the 10% who wasn't hive got wrecked. At least with revs you can deconvert with headbashes, and at least with revs there's something tangible you can see and try to avoid.

Hivemind is weird because it's the one antag where the only thing keeping antag power in check are the other antags. one hivemind is 10x more dangerous than four, and when sec kills 3 and leaves the station with 1, it's in an awful situation. and sec can't just tie the hive's up, becuase you don't know how far their influence is and they can mind control or heart attack people from inside their cell, all while repeatedly destroying security's implants. all sec can do is call the shuttle. seriously, fuck this gamemode.

edit: it turns out THE HIVEMIND GOT ONEMIND WITH 20 MINIONS ONLY 12 MINUTES INTO THE ROUNDTIME

[Taylork2]

Just had a round where a hive went onemind at the FIFTEEN MINUTE MARK ROUND TIME and roughly 90% of the station population was part of it. nobody had any idea that it was a hive round until that point. nobody did anything wrong. the 10% who wasn't hive got wrecked. At least with revs you can deconvert with headbashes, and at least with revs there's something tangible you can see and try to avoid.

Hivemind is weird because it's the one antag where the only thing keeping antag power in check are the other antags. one hivemind is 10x more dangerous than four, and when sec kills 3 and leaves the station with 1, it's in an awful situation. and sec can't just tie the hive's up, becuase you don't know how far their influence is and they can mind control or heart attack people from inside their cell, all while repeatedly destroying security's implants. all sec can do is call the shuttle. seriously, fuck this gamemode.

edit: it turns out THE HIVEMIND GOT ONEMIND WITH 20 MINIONS ONLY 12 MINUTES INTO THE ROUNDTIME

Yes, this ties into my complaint of it, hiveminds are only ever really dangerous if they achieve the One Mind. As long as two or more hiveminds are still alive they won't almost will never achieve the One Mind. Though their abilities encourage them to kill other hiveminds, while discouraging them to kill the crew(who antagonists are supposed to be antagonizing, not other antagonists)
If on the off chance manage to Reclaim all other Hiveminds and have 30+ vessels, their abilities will be powered up to the extreme and they'll be incredibly difficult to kill.
In addition to their abilities being extremely long lasting at this point, the passive effects of being a One Mind, and having dozens of servants, they have a passive regenerate effect on themself, constantly regenerating any damage they take(in addition to being able to use their active regenerate to boost it to very high levels of healing), making them impossible to kill in "fair" fights.

My problem is really that Hiveminds usually just antagonize other hiveminds until One Mind, then they're usually too powerful to stop.

[confused rock]

it looks like fucking awoken hive vessels deconvert when they die, which is excruciatingly confusing when you look at the antag list at roundend

[Akrilla]

The gamemode is fundamentally flawed imo, and I don't think that any sort of tweaks to powers will really change that. I'm not really sure what the gamemode is trying to be... Lone antag, team antag? Antag against antag? I've always thought it was antag versus antag, but it's almost like it wanted to be that, then backed out a little before. Cool idea for sure, but sadly bland.

Cult I think is probably a good example of a really well made unique gamemode in the game, and is fairly(?) well balanced. Not sure others thoughts on it, but I've always really liked the idea and execution. There's clear sticking points, goals for both sides, interesting features and interactions on both sides of the crew... When you're cult, it always feels like it'll be fun to play, even if lose. Most common complaint for Hivemind I see is people literally think it's extended until the One Mind rises, but that only I think scratches the surface of its flaws.

My vision for it is antag vs antag where the crew becomes the man in the middle of it, the station getting fucked because these incredibly powerful beings are fighting for control amongst themselves etc etc, but that obviously might not be what you're wanting. I just want more interaction with crew.

[CPTANT]

I am not even sure what a good hivemind round is supposed to look like.

[wesoda25]

I kinda wanna give hiveminds a pink repulse variant, but it has a long cooldown and it releases two people from the hivemind. Also make the cost for circadian rhythm one person from the hivemind.

[py01]

Circadian no longer exists, see PR #44436

[py01]

Random thought that I don't think I have the talent to implement: remove chaos induction, make psychic ghostrole/npc threats spawn in and attack the station periodically so the general crew has something going on (main issue is spriting)

[CPTANT]

I think we have run the game mode long enough to conclude that it is dysfunctional.


There isn't any interesting antag vs crew interaction besides security mass implanting everyone.

[Shadowflame909]

When do we give it psychic punch ghosts.

[confused rock]

but guuuuuys nervere made us do a vote with four options and an option saying "its super fucked but leave it in for fixes" won so we have to keep it even if the fixes are more minimal than a single robustin rework