Make mindshield implants resist ling mutesting

[FloranOtten]

Title. Ling mutesting is a bullshit ability. Absolute cancer. There's no counterplay, and it means that any ling with a stunprod can take you out of the round permanently without any fear of reprecussion. Especially security is boned, as they are high profile targets whose gear is so far beneath a ling that a security officer has exactly zero counterplay beyond run for the hills if they hadn't pre-prepared. A ling has an esword, a mutepen, a cryosting, a healing ability that outheals space, and can revive from the dead. All of this is invisible. A security officer has a stunbaton that takes an eternity to take effect, which you can crawl away from, and is countered by an item that is on the floor of maintenance. Sec also has a flash, which is countered by gamer glasses everyone can have, and a disabler, which works great at ranges but once they're close enough to sting you you're already fucked.

[terranaut]

max your suit sensors

[Reyn]

Title. Ling mutesting is a bullshit ability. Absolute cancer. There's no counterplay, and it means that any ling with a stunprod can take you out of the round permanently without any fear of reprecussion. Especially security is boned, as they are high profile targets whose gear is so far beneath a ling that a security officer has exactly zero counterplay beyond run for the hills if they hadn't pre-prepared. A ling has an esword, a mutepen, a cryosting, a healing ability that outheals space, and can revive from the dead. All of this is invisible. A security officer has a stunbaton that takes an eternity to take effect, which you can crawl away from, and is countered by an item that is on the floor of maintenance. Sec also has a flash, which is countered by gamer glasses everyone can have, and a disabler, which works great at ranges but once they're close enough to sting you you're already fucked.

One, Mutesting is essentially a survival method for non-Murderbone oriented lings, and it's designed to screw with sec and teamwork for a reason.

Two, Try pepper spray or a flashbang.

Three, Once a ling IS known, and people are on guard, it's revival ability is only of use if someone forgets about it or underestimates it. The cremator exists. Also, Lings have "Organic space suit", and don't outheal spess, likely.

Plus making mindshield implants resist mutesting would FURTHER reinforce the meta of immediately ordering a metric fuckton of mindshields.

[Nabski]

What round did you die in so we can laugh at you?

They absolutely can't use all the ability you listed in one fight without running out of chemicals.

You also forgot that lings have "free" flash protection as well, and the ability to free themselves from handcuffs.

[FloranOtten]

and don't outheal spess, likely.

Fleshmend outheals space.

[PKPenguin321]

1. there are known lings
2. you go into maint alone or something for some reason because youre bored
3. ling ambushes you because you are all alone
4. "wtf i died???"

bring a buddy

[Reyn]

1. there are known lings
2. you go into maint alone or something for some reason because youre bored
3. ling ambushes you because you are all alone
4. "wtf i died???"

bring a buddy

Better yet, don't fuck about in maint as sec for no good reason, and if you do, keep your sensors on, and keep in constant contact with your team. Going into maint, nobody can see you through cams. You're alone. Bring a friend, or just stay on maximum guard. NEVER go into maint for no fucking reason, and keep your light on.

Also, using your sechud, look out for people with the wrong Id or Wanted tags in maint, or people who should have mindshields but don't. Look out for that in general actually.
Only you can prevent Changeling assisted suicide.

[Sandshark808]

ided delete lings

[pugie]

What round did you die in so we can laugh at you?

This is ided, posted before round end. I killed them as ling with inferior gear... they walked into me absorbing RD so I mute stung and shoved them. Maybe don't stand still and pull your disabler out on the ground if you dont want to lose it???

Mute sting is ling's bread and butter and is only useful if you, the victim, gets robusted. Don't get robusted and you don't die. You pulled out the wrong weapon, you misplayed the situation. You could have flashed me, I had augmented eyesight toggled on I would have been stunned.

Furthermore, sec gear is already very strong. You didn't have to stand still and wait for me to attack you and get the advantage in the fight. You basically confirmed lings by looking at me; you could have just thrown an ebola at me, ran away and yelled lings, instead you pulled out the wrong stunning weapon when you were vulnerable to stuns.

Ling adrenals got nerfed to the ground so they're weaker than ever now, stunning a ling allows you to kill them with zero issue in a 1 v 1 now. Pump up isn't an excuse to lose a fight because one hit still slows down (just carry two batons in belt).

If you actually have problems killing a ling with armblade stop playing sec, just paralyze their arm with disabler fire... forces them to waste 25 chems to get it back and eliminates a hand used for stunning.

tl;dr ided ling post man bad

[TheMythicGhost]

I'd like to mention that very recently, despite apparently being on top of their game, I beat Imsxz who was a ling during a round with just a stun baton, so I'm not sure where you're going with "Security Gear is so far beneath a ling". I agree that mutesting is actual bullshit for sure, but most of their abilities (minus the stings) have very obvious fucking tells.

[deedubya]

It's been a while since I've seen an honest to god ided post here. You being unrobust is not a good reason to change game balance.

Also, there's an antag freeze at the moment, so good luck getting an antag-related PR through anyway.

[Shadowflame909]

Counterpoint ided posters, an antag that circumvents medbay and all its balance changes and is lame

Free esword infinite use emps and adrenals

Lings are a poor man's wizard, but a traitor with a debug uplink, which would be cried as the shittiest admin bus if it wasn't a coded mode.

[pugie]

It's more akin to a fireaxe than an esword, esword has blocks etc which bring it further above than just a high damage weapon. Also adrenals are worthless now. Like, they're dead, no point taking them it's a waste of points.

[Shadowflame909]

Ling adrenals got the lesser nerf

[pugie]

Ling adrenals got the lesser nerf

While it is true they have less downsides they also don't remove stuns & they don't remove stamina damage fast enough to save you from a stun baton hit, sadly. They're more close to say, a stimpack now.

[SkeletalElite]

Ling adrenals got the lesser nerf

While it is true they have less downsides they also don't remove stuns & they don't remove stamina damage fast enough to save you from a stun baton hit, sadly. They're more close to say, a stimpack now.

I love adrenals
But I also don't use mute sting I just murderbone.
Adrenals + Strained muscles = good luck catching me ever, if you take too much stam damage and pop the strained muscles and adrenals it can get you out of the fight for long enough to heal up.

[Denton]

How is ling mute sting better than let's say the EMP flashlight or stun paper?

[pugie]

How is ling mute sting better than let's say the EMP flashlight or stun paper?

It's better for muting than EMP flashlight because it has 1 tile extra of range this barely matters though, as well as having less collateral. EMP flashlight is a good multi-utility and lings have an EMP anyways to disable radios mute sting is just localised and stealthier muting.

[PKPenguin321]

How is ling mute sting better than let's say the EMP flashlight or stun paper?

upsides:
- not noticeable by target until they try to speak
- you dont need to pull out an item to do it, so no inventory juggling

cons:
- you dip into your resource pool that you use for healing/combat/literally everything, leaving you to finish the kill with normal methods

[NecromancerAnne]

EMP flashlight has considerably greater use cases than mute sting. You could argue that lings don't need mute sting, since emp scream is just as good and actually way, way more powerful than mute sting. I get that mute sting is silent and all but frankly glassing the room leaves very little means for someone to escape due to door shocks/door bolts/APC draining/sudden siphoning (which lings don't care about with fleshmend up), and you take out any energy guns they happen to have on them, which is an immense boon. You may even scramble their suit sensors to prevent backup. As a traitor emp kit is one of my most common purchases behind cham kit and agent card expressly because of the power of emps.

Of course, you hit your own weapons but frankly a ling shouldn't need more than their tentacle and armblade.

Once you start looking at ling powers you quickly begin to realize most of them are actually some of the strongest traitor implants but on steroids and literally endless. Implants are some of the strongest tot gear you can get, and that's why they're priced as they are. When you start abusing that you end up being an insane murder machine that can't reasonably be beaten if you are capable enough. Some of these powers are so subtle you can even get away with convincing everyone who didn't fight you on multiple occasions (and therefore work out you have an unusually large quantity of emps and adrenals) you're not actually a ling so long as you don't reveal the armblade or tentacle without finishing off witnesses. I saw once a ling murderbone fairly capably with just the fireaxe by using their endless adrenals and regen to come out in any fight with ease. People just thought he was a tot, so when he was killed they didn't think to gib his body. (His internet died so he didn't come back, but that's besides the point)

All in all, giving mindshield implants the ability to grant ling sting immunity is not going to fix the problem. In fact, stealth ling is nothing compared to what a ling can bring to bear if they want to go murderburger, and a change like this only pushes them into that playstyle harder and therefore runs into the problem a lot of changes to crew gear to directly counteract antagonists run into. When you ultimately make a certain tactic that encourages the core gameplay of an antagonist (in this case, changelings are a stealth antagonist at it's core) untenable or far too weak to reliably utilize, then the alternative is it's complete opposite should that be possible or simply the antag just doesn't function. In changeling's case, they have two potential methods of approach. Stealth stings and catching their targets by blending in with their coworkers. The other is nigh invincible murdermachine with a lot of 'no' mechanics they can pull out of their arse as much as their chemicals are permissive.

We saw a similar problem with Assimilation actually. That antag was a completely stealth based antagonist with limited overt powers that didn't interact with their assimilation mechanic or relied on them not being found out to get the ones that weren't by taking time to assimilate people, but these powers were incredibly obvious tells that gave away the game. So ultimately, when the mode was discovered, the entire game fell apart as the crew started to get the thing that shut this antag down completely. And with no alternative, more applicably useful power sets to fall back on, the antag just...died. If they just quietly assimilated their needed number of people and used their no-tell kill powers to take out opposing hivemind hosts, then they were given the benefit of just endgaming everyone, but that was the only thing they could do and that was assuming not one other hivemind host gave away the game mode in time to stop them. Feast or famine was a very, very big problem for assimilation.

Basically, nuclear counters to antagonists are bad and encourage bad game balance because they can be powergamed ahead of time. For sec, that would be automatic if mindshield implants stopped mute sting. This is the same problem we have/had with flash/bang immunity and stuns/stims, and we shouldn't just insert more nuclear solutions/counters into the game. I will argue EMPS are in a similar position with regards to silicons, but silicons are actually notoriously bad for being unreasonably hard to kill, suffering far less downsides to the flesh crew of the station and far more durable short of their nuclear counter of the emp, and that's a dynamic that also needs to get brought into line.