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One of those is the secret Paradise ERP server. Enter at your own risk.

Balance doesn't matter. I know, crazy, right? Give me 5 minutes of your time and I'll prove it to you. Nuke Ops is not a balanced game mode. A well executed Blitz is basically impossible for the crew to counter. Blitzes fail only because the nukies make mistakes, not due to the actions of the crew. And yet... Nukies don't always blitz. A lot of the time they declare war, even though war isn't the optimal path to victory and they know it. Sometimes they even stealth or do gimmicks, even though, again, doing so is not optimal. Ideally, we'd balance the game so that there isn't one optimal path, but that's a whole different discussion. The take away is this: When you give players multiple viable paths to victory, they will not always choose the optimal one. Which means that balance isn't really all THAT important. It's better to have balance than not have balance, but imbalanced game modes can work because we have players who are not just interested in greentext. So what does this have to do with shadowlings? The main problem with shadowlings isn't that the mode is imbalanced (although it is), it's that there is only one path to victory. There are no alternative viable paths to victory that are sub-optimal for the shadowlings to take. As a shadowling, you do the same. thing. every. round. You know the meme rounds where operatives decide to try to pose as NAD inspectors? There is no shadowling equivalent to that. Shadowlings can't do that type of stuff. The mechanics force them to bulldoze towards greentext, the exact behavior that is shunned by the community in every other type of antag. No one blames shadowlings for doing it because they have no choice but to do it. So even if things were balanced it would be a bad game mode. Sure, it would be better if it was more balanced, and balancing it isn't a bad thing, but it's not the thing that is going to ever fix the issues with the round. What shadowlings need is to be able to actually use different tactics like other antags can, rather than being forced into the same thing over and over. If shadowlings had many viable paths to victory, they wouldn't need to always pick the optimal one. The best part is we don't even really need to worry about balancing those paths to make them equally strong as the way things shadowlings do things now. Even if the other paths were objectively non-optimal, players would still choose to use them.

Shit. He's onto us

The issue with shadowlings is that a single shadowling can convert the entire sec team to their side. Traitors have mindslave implants, but those are expensive, require surgical removal of the mindshield first, etc. Changelings can impersonate sec, but that requires one changeling per impersonated officer. Shadowlings aren't stopped by mindshields, and a single shadowling can enthrall many officers. Once the slings thrall sec, they've not only eliminated their main opposition, they've converted a group of people with excellent stun/disable weapons (ideal for capture/conversion) to their side. At that point, the round balance is heavily in favor of the slings, and there's not much the crew can do to fight back beyond call an ERT. If you want shadowling rounds to be more interesting... alter mindshields so that shadowling enthrall doesn't work against mindshielded targets. Slings can still kill off sec. That should be possible. But subverting sec won't be possible anymore without using surgery to remove their mindshield first. That should restore some balance to the game mode.

... one

And thanks to this fruitfull diskussion we finally know the origins of Shadowlings: Also in the same round someone imitated James we leared what James really desires:

Stand aside, Steve. (I did't catch all of them but I caught quite a bit)

I was in a low pop round as a non antag engineer. Someone had been disabling cameras around the halls so i decided to be a good worker and fix them. Nek minut an officer charges in tazes me and radios in that ive been wrecking all the cameras. I get dragged off to the brig screaming at him the whole way. Get interrogated as they think im a traitor. Despite my constant denials I'm considered a risk and thrown in perma with the other 2 "traitors" for doing my job. Turns out one of them was a ling and and had already eaten the other guy. After pleading with him not to eat me i realised that the half assed officer only took my hardsuit,pda,radio and backpack but not my insulated gloves or toolbelt. Decided to bargain i let the ling out in exchange for not eating me and was promptly lasered to death on site by the same officer who arrested me for now being "a fucking ling". ?