Vivalas

Bumping this, since absolutely nothing has changed in regards to shadowling balance so far, as much as I can tell, and I just had the displeasure of playing through another shadowling round. Now, I enjoyed it more than usual because security went murderbone earlier, which made it more interesting and heightened the chances of actually beating the slings, given that dethralling people is still a huge pain (and I think still a major headache even with the current PR). I don't want to sound knee-jerky but according to the community poll there are significant concerns about shadowling balance and we haven't taken any steps yet. I think from what I gathered in this thread the following would be acceptable: 1. Causing damage to shadowlings to be propagated among thralls. As mentioned earlier this allows attrition to help slow down the slings. 2. Making thralling permanent. Conversion gamemodes can be ass because of the fact that people get attached to their sides and get salty when they get converted. Now, this could mostly be chalked off as a player issue, and I'll admit sometimes when I'm thralled I'll just go sit in the bar and drink until the round ends, but I think the gamemode would be improved if deconversion was just removed completely. This accomplishes: 1) Giving security a fighting chance. Usually they only start murderboning when it is too late. 2) Prevents people from getting rethralled or people running into maint to begin with because they want to be thralled. If it turns out the slings are bad / incompetent, there is no going back, which adds a small amount of personal investment. Does anyone else have any ideas to add? Can we reach any sort of consensus about what will make this gamemode better? I'm going to keep pushing for action here because, again, I love paradise and all other antags / gamemodes, but everytime a sling round comes up I just want to cryo, and I think there might be shared resentment. If consensus can't be reached I think a better course of action is to remove the gamemode from rotation entirely for a complete rework.

I was going to just PR this but it probably could use formal discussion. I think magistrate should start with announcement access. While he is not a member of command, he is nonetheless an important crew figure and probably could use it more than a few of the heads. It's useful for issuing clarifications on laws and when the magistrate needs everyone to hear something important, like reminding security for the umpteenth time not to bring vampires to the chapel, or announcing trials. Some other people might disagree and claim powercreep, though, so I am making this threat to hear all sides.

I would prefer we handle shadowling rebalance in one singular PR with a mixture of tweaks most people can agree with, not a bunch of singular nerf PRs that give people the impression of trying to run shadowling completely into the ground.

Sounds cool but I agree that this would have negative effects in terms of powergaming and less cooperation among departments.

Liking this discussion, Norwest and Moxie have great points. Are there any objections to removing the round-end trigger when all slings die? Unlike nuke and wizard which involve forcing or requiring complete disregard of regulations (e.g. giving guns to everyone) to beat the antags, sling generally only causes about as much chaos as a typical stealth antag.

I mean, I think police patrol hotspots of crime more than they would calmer neighborhoods. It makes sense ICly for security to patrol maint. A secluded area where there are no cameras and where you are far from the public areas of the station is the perfect place to commit crimes and for criminals and murderers to lurk. Added: The reason security exists in the first place is because somebody at Nanotrasen decided that their expensive research station needed protecting, which means they anticipated some sort of external threat to the station beyond just crew members acting up. Police exist to deter and prevent crime, as do security. They wouldn't exist at all if there wasn't some IC expectation of funny business happening on NT stations.

Alright, I think this might not be so hard to balance, here is what I have pieced together from this thread: 1. Either make thralling permanent or create immunity afterwards. I actually feel the second one would make slings underpowered since now you have crew you have to fight who can only be killed and of are no use to you. 2. Leave ascension. If the gamemode is made difficult enough it is a worthy reward. 3. Don't cause killing all slings to end the round. I don't think it's enough of a "high intensity" gamemode to do this like nuke or wizard. Really this is only one balance change though and I don't think it gets to the heart of why they shadowling is uninteresting currently. Are there any issues or comments on specific shadowling powers or mechanics that need looking at? I still think spreading damage out among thralls would also help balance it a bit. Slings themselves become more robust as the cost of the utility of the thralls, and in extreme cases even outright killing your thralls.

That's not the main issue I have with it, other than the idea of having such a rewarding "gold star" given to a player who... really hasn't exerted that much effort to get where they have gotten. War ops with 100 players is a lot more difficult, and if they win, which they almost never do, they just get a little cutscene played. Compared to all other endings it just lacks luster. The other issue I forgot was how the round just ends when all the lings die. I don't think slings causes enough chaos to justify that,.

Cult is still interesting for other players though. It's not a singular entity that kills everyone because they can, it's an NPC that floats around and turns people into little minions that go and grab other people to turn into minions.

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.

Yeah there is no player input for diagonal movement, things can move diagonally fine though. It could be made so holding a certain direction while cablewalking figures out diagonals automatically, or we could just port diagonal movement. (or just allow diagonal input when in cables)

Want to point out that lorewise I think the NAD is needed in nukeops because the nuke is stolen from NT, so that could be similar here, where it is a stolen blob specimen... but then the name nuclear authentication disk doesn't make much sense... ah well whatever, just a minor detail.

Would kinda be cool if they "ventcrawled" through power cables rather than "bloodcrawling". Maybe with its own little crackling sound too, like pipe sounds. APCs would act as exit "vents". This could even be expanded a little where they naturally get pulled towards power generation sources in the grid, which instantly kills them or something, so they're always fighting upstream and reaching areas away from engineering is hard.

As far as the second example, I still think there should not be a conflict, even though I'm just gonna do what I interpret as the correct interpretation every time. And yeah Tully is in charge of this but I've pinged him a few times on Discord and he's always sleep deprived so I figure someone else could handle it.

Alright, upon close examination of space law and Legal Standard Operating Procedure, there are two inconsistencies within them, that is, multiple conflicting statements about what to do in certain situations. I will list them both here. 1. Repeat Offender example vs. definition The definition for repeat offender states: The example, however, states: In the example the second brigging for assault gives them 10 minutes from the Repeat Offender clause. However, this wasn't the third brigging for assault, and the definition states to only add 5 minutes per successive offense. 2. Trial SOP as defined by LSOP This one is pretty minor, but could be called out by people who just want to cause issues. The big inconsistency here is that one part of Trial SOP states that if both IAA are present, they should be used for Defense AND Prosecution, at least implicitly. While further down, it says this: The difference is highlighted. Basically, one line says to use IA for prosecution, while the other says to use security. The latter makes more sense and is what I would default to anyways in a trial, but it is still an inconsistency nonetheless. Anyways, just some issue I found in our somewhat complex virtual criminal justice system. Mainly this thread is for admin input so I can fix the inconsistencies without being yelled at.

Since I've gotten magistrate, I've enjoyed the job but also not understood the IA oversight. At best I think the relationship between the two exists because those two offices ended up near each other, and that most of the volume of their work is a byproduct of security's work. Legal / IA even with the recent reforms and whatnot is still nebulous and a bit misleading, while we've tightened regulations and guidelines for things like chef, which really don't need any. A bit silly I think. A good legal reform, in my opinion, is to add a proper lawyer-esque job, designed to be able to help magistrate deter shitcurity while not become a greytide enabler, and put that under the magistrate, then shift IA oversight to NT rep. At least then the two "minion" jobs have a boss who actually deals in the same field as their subordinated, even if their scope is vastly different (e.g. IA vs NT Rep)

I've never understood why public defender / lawyer are a thing and why people want them to stay. It's just not necessary for those titles to exist if the actual job is still just IA. Would I like a lawyer job with perhaps some legal powers? Sure, would be cool. But there is no reason for IAA to be called lawyers, it just causes problems regardless of any player issues.

Dragging people in circles while bashing their heads in with a fire extingusher was always cheesy but at the same time, while I appreciate the merit of nerfs to both security and antags, I feel like making it take longer to drag people to the brig would make it easier for the greytide to run off with their metabuddies and make security even more stressful.

Little beeps and boops for pressing buttons on computers would be nice, huge atmospheric change from CM that I love. Sounds for putting things on tables or dropping things on the floor. If we're going for general immersion / atmospheric improvements I have to submit the idea of not being able to write on paper in your hand as well as items being knocked around when you drop them.

I currently planning a "legal network" system with associated terminals around the station, mostly security, for the purposes of helping IA track complaints and issues from crew and prisoners. The system I have envisioned is somewhat like the admin ticket system, where you can open tickets, have someone assigned, and resolve it etc, all with feedback to the end user (the complainee). The way it would work is "legal kiosks" would be around the station in key places. One in each brig cell and perma, and one in lockers, dorms, and bar. From the kiosk crew are able to submit formal complaints to the network, for a nominal 100cr legal fee (configurable by "network admins", which will be touched on). The idea of this is to deter repeated posts and spamming, as well as to generate a little money for the legal department, as well as just for fluff. (lawyers expensive yo). An additional spam safeguard will be a blacklist that troublesome crew can be added to (e.g. that one assistant in the brig who keeps spamming "HALP SHITCURITY IN THE BRIG") that automatically denies their tickets. Once submitted, all legal terminals will beep and notify of the new ticket, from where qualified personnel can respond to the ticket. Qualified personnel are able to claim, resolve, and comment on tickets. The complainee will get PDA notifications of their ticket status to stay informed. Note that to not remove the face-to-face interview part of complaints and investigation, comments are only one way and the complainee is not able to comment or reply to comments on their ticket. Qualified personnel are given a "legal rank" in regards to their access, and this influences the actions they are able to take. Personnel of lower legal rank, for example, wouldn't be able to claim tickets claimed by people of higher rank, or change settings if someone of higher rank locks them to their rank (by default settings would be locked to IA level, so IA can still manage the ticket system in the absense of a magistrate, but the magistrate would be able to lock settings to their level if they wish). Current ranks I have planned are "bystander" (for warden / HoS who would have terminals in their offices but only to spectate, not comment, claim, resolve or any of that or change settings). "legal representative", such as IA, who are able to do standard things. And "administrator" which is given to the captain. Magistrate has a special "magistrate" rank which goes above the captain due to the legal order. Tickets would have a "category" that influences who can handle them and helps for sorting / distribution of labor. Categories can include things such as, SOP Infraction, General Complaint, Lost Property, Appeal, False Sentencing, Excessive Force, etc. The ticket system is designed to handle general complaints among crew and departments instead of just complaints against security. Appeals, for example, would be locked to magistrate or captain access, and notify both officials, while general complaints would probably be left to IA. Additionally, entire departments could be chosen as a target in the ticket, in which case, even for regular general complaints, the captain would be notified. PDA notifications would be togglable in settings for certain people as to their preferences, such as if the captain doesn't care for complaints or is tired of getting spammed by them. After tickets are processed they have to be resolved, and their will be multiple close options. "Close" is the general option, but additional options can exist, such as "close and refund", or "close and blacklist", etc. General feedback, suggestions, or criticism of this proposed system is appreciated, but in general I think it would help the flow of the legal team and help complaints be more obvious and concrete.

@McRamon That's the whole point of only being able to have one "high" job, so people don't set all the jobs they want the most to "high" and have to settle for one they REALLY want.

I've been planning on porting tg's wanted posters, the ones you can print from record consoles, would at least get a little more use and be somewhat fun. I agree with these changes though, having only one wanted notice up at a time is a bit restrictive.

I like the idea of increased access, and like the sound of increased lethal powers, but I really feel like it would be abused. I main security but recently have taken a break for my sanity and seeing the opposite end of the baton is an eye-opener. Increased access is neat since it would really help get around during emergencies. Makes sense IC too since NT wants their station intact and threats dealt with. Privacy has gone out the window at this point. For lethal force I think there still needs to be clear objective guidelines to application during red. Maybe one or two VERBAL warnings (hailers count), while pointing, etc? Unless the person is already a threat in which case current guidelines already allow lethal force. On a side note yellow alert sounds silly to me, if we do split red into combat / confirmed threat or whatever, amber alert sounds more ominous and official.

Ahhh I don't care about accessories but please don't go full uniform bloat. We don't need 20 different sec uniforms that makes it impossible to distingush security from.. say.. the paramedic or bartender / detective etc.

And as a coder, in regards to your code, I suppose I can comment. First off I'm assuming "cult viewpoint" is a verb container that is part of the cult gamemode already, and not something you added. If you copied those snippets you have questions about from the communication verb, then they probably have a use. The one that iterates through the minds and checks to see if they have a cult role enabled is indeed the one that sends the message. The first log is probably an admin log so they can see that cult is saying and cult_log is most likely logs cult events in a separate file for easy reference. Suggestion 1 seems easy to implement, making things available to certain people is generally trivial. Suggestion 2 would also be easy, only slightly harder than the first suggestion. I don't know how I feel about scalable cult however, the point of cult is to grow your numbers with something. If cult is competent extra roundstart manpower could be a guaranteen win, although I also agree highpop / meta and validhunting can sometimes end cult rounds before they begin, especially if cult lacks competence.