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People don't use lockdowns very often as it is, instead preferring to just blow them outright. They don't need less of an incentive to do so. At least you can still communicate if you've been locked down (Usually).

Okay, shadowling is the worst thing about paradise currently. It has a bunch of major flaws and I literally just want to cryo whenever there is a shadowling round. Here are some of the issues with it: 1. Over 90% winrate. I mean, really. It has to be way up there. It's above 70% at least. Unless security and command are hot shit and botany gets shrooms growing right away, it almost ends in a shadowling victory. Are there actual stats pertaining to shadowling winrate? 2. Endings are boring. The easiest gamemode in rotation should not have the best reward for the antagonists. Getting to become a god and be a dick to literally everyone you don't like is kinda dumb, and this could be improved. 3. It is way too easy to convert people, and some people just go back to maintenance right after they are deconverted. Likewise, deconversion is a painstakingly lengthy process during which you are almost always going to be jumped by the shadowlings. In comparison to cult, where you must first be dragged back to the cult base, shadowling conversion is on the spot and very quick. Unlike cult where you can deconvert with holy water, you must also perform surgery. The purpose of this thread is to discuss making shadowling a polished and interesting gamemode rather than the turd it is now. The premise is really cool: night creatures that thrive in the darkness and enslave people's minds. The execution is bad. My suggestion is this: 1. Make thralls permanent. This would mean becoming a thrall (or being thralled) is a significant event in your round, only escapable through death. This would encourage people not to become a thrall unless they are really into it, and also stops people who want to become thrall from being thrall again right after being converted. This would also allow security to fight back against the thralls much more effectively, since they would be able to kill them on sight. In exchange, thralls no longer are visible from their facial features. They would have to be specifically tested if suspected of thralldom. Perhaps with an advanced medical scanner. Currently security is very handicapped in fighting back against lings. It is hard to find a competent surgeon, and if you are deep in maint, it is even harder to get out with the thrall and not get thralled yourself. 2. Make thralls actually act like the description suggests. When a shadowling takes damage, make it so that a certain portion of the damage is divided among thralls. This would scale with the number of thralls. For example: staring at 5%, maybe 5% more damage gets divided among each thrall, up to a maximum of 80%. This serves as a way to, again, discourage people seeking thrall unless they are deadset on it. Even though players shouldn't seek to be thrall at all, this would discourage the metagamers at least until they think the thralls are competent and they won't just be throwing their lives away. 4. Remove ascension. Becoming a literal ascended shitter is fun for nobody but the thrall. No other gamemode gives you the same amount of room to just be a dick to everyone. Sometimes shadowlings are even dicks to their own thralls after being ascended. While I don't want to seem like this one is out of salt (although it somewhat is, although I think others have similar sentiments), in a recent example I was a thralled roboticist helping rescue thralls in an odysseus. The ascended ling then proceeds to destroy my mech and then kill me when I call him an idiot for doing that. 5. Replace ascension with a series of related powers that unlock with more and more thralls. At high amounts of thralls, you might unlock a death ray or insta-thrall beam similar to what ascended lings have now (but you still have to actually hit with it), but they never become invincible. The idea is shadowlings become more and more powerful but never actually invincible. As lings get more thralls, not only is damage reduced tremendously as thralls take the brunt of it, but they unlock powers that make them more and more dangerous. I think this is more interesting for all involved than the current ending, but still rewards lings for good work. 6. Add objectives. Like other antagonists, instead of just ascending, lings get objectives. These would need to be very difficult objectives, that are generally only possible if the thralls are super-powered. Perhaps the current form of ascension could be an objective thralls get on occasion where they have to summon their god or merge all their thralls and lings together into one ascended shadowling, which performs as it currently does. My idea is to generally to make thralls more of an eldritch beast type thing. As it prowls maint and collects more thralls, it gets more powerful and harder to kill. Instead of just becoming outright invincible at a certain point, it just gets more and more robust. Added on to this, they also get objectives which can then be worked towards as a team with all the thralls. I think this is better than what we currently have because it cuts down on some main issues thralls have, mainly boring endings and easy conversion / difficult deconversion. Anyways this is just my idea. Any other suggestions are welcome. Anything is better than the current implementation of shadowlings, including removing them altogether.

I 8 it all muahahahaha

Necaladun has retired as of this time, although it'll take awhile to weasel all the bastards permissions out of the system and hand things over properly.