Pckables

Could sharding be made temporary? Instead of shards dusting the corpse, it'd instead captures the ghost of the corpse. If the shard is left unused for 5 minutes or the construct dies, the ghost would be returned to its original corpse, and immune to sharding again. Bodies would also need new examine text for their souls being temporarily captured by the cult, rather than appearing as flat disconnected/unrevivable. Though I believe it might not be possible from a coding standpoint. I think i've heard that ghost-corpse relations are kinda finnicky.

(I didn't want to necro a 4 year old thread, and I can't really call this a "Suggestion" thread) Starter note: This isn't a post/thread for complaining about if something should or shouldn't be removed, or about demanding someone else do something you won't do yourself. This thread is purely for discussion value, brainstorming, entertaining wild ideas, and fun most of all. Onto the topic at hand: In light of a long-awaited pull request, I wanted to make a thread for any final thoughts on the Shadowling antagonist. As AffectedArc has correctly said, there have been many discussions on Shadowlings in the past, but none of them ever lead to any results or changes. Shadowlings have been a stagnant and divisive gamemode for, basically their entire existence. So if no one wants to fix a problem, the next best fix is to remove it. But with that said, how about we create a fun set of questions. Feel free to add or remove some, but remember it's all just for entertainment. Don't take things too seriously. - Do you like or dislike the Shadowling gamemode? - Do you feel Shadowlings are unique as an antagonist? If not, what does it overlap with? - What do you believe is the overall round-flow Shadowling rounds aim for, or should aim for? - What are the issues with Shadowlings? - If you, in theory, had the ability to make all the changes yourself, how would you change Shadowlings? To answer my own questions: - Do you like or dislike the Shadowling gamemode? Shadowlings are very much one of those "Hate to fight, fun to play as" kind of antagonists. They tend to stick far out of the way for most of the station unless the Shadowling is robust or the station is already heavily thralled. Nonstop dethrall surgeries aren't very fun either. Playing as one though, is fairly engaging once you're familiar with the game. They can feel like glass cannons at times, with insane offensive power but a high risk of reaching crit without realizing it. They definitely have some abilities that are 100% unfair for the victim though. - Do you feel Shadowlings are unique as an antagonist? If not, what does it overlap with? I feel they are half-unique, in that it's an improved version of Revolution, and shares some aspects with cult. Unlike cult, they're very much solely focused on numbers and mobbing the station. Unlike Revolution, they have clear leaders, slower conversions, and a more straight-forward goal. - What do you believe is the overall round-flow Shadowling rounds aim for, or should aim for? I believe shadowlings were intended to be a slow back-and-forth between the forces of the shadowlings and the crew, with Shadowlings trying to push slowly out of maintenance with their army, as the station tried to push them back with lights and lasers. Unfortunately it doesn't work like that for a multitude of reasons. - What are the issues with Shadowlings? Many: Armed thralls (security) are too strong, being infinitely better armed than the rest of the crew, causing a snowballing effect. But they're also the ones that are going into maintenance making them the primary targets, convertible or not. Shadowlings get stronger as they get a bigger army. Why do they get stronger as a reward for getting stronger? Paradise non-lethal combat isn't back-and-forth, it's either disablers or instantly over with stun batons. Stun Batons naturally favor the aggressor, which are the thralls due to having stealth. Shadowlings are very new-player unfriendly. They start off with very little, and their abilities aren't super intuitive. Having even a slight chance as a Shadowling requires a lot of prior prep and tool gathering, which new players will have no idea about. Rounds ending immediately after Shadowling death sucks, especially if Shadowlings were newbies. - If you, in theory, had the ability to make all the changes yourself, how would you change Shadowlings? (Spoilering for length) My own final thoughts on the matter to close things out: I wouldn't be sad to see Shadowlings gone. They're jank, have some bad design decisions, and really just don't work for our current combat system. Like Xenos (and vamps before Hal9000 made his rework) they really need a massive overhaul. But that can happen literally anytime if someone really feels like they want to work on it. Until then, no point in having a gamemode that isn't fun for a majority of the server. Share your thoughts and ideas, feasible or not!

A couple topics I'd like to discuss and nail down about reworking Xenos: - Reproduction and the resulting combat. As agreed on, we can't have Xenos gib everyone. It means that even if you defeat the Xeno threat, the station is fairly unrecoverable due to a large part of the crew being permadead, and many permadead crew isn't good for the round in general. So naturally chest-burst humans should leave a corpse, but should Xenos require humans to be ALIVE to be infected still? If they still need to be alive, this still forces xenos into a stamina/stun focus of combat. The only difference with stamina is that it'd take longer, but the result is the same. If we want them to still be alive, but still require deadly combat, we can do something such as xenos injecting a Xeno-Specific chem with their attacks. One that causes stamina damage if their health is below 0 (and massive stamina damage if below -50), but also stabilizes them so they don't die before reaching the nest. Alternatively and more simply, maybe they can just infect corpses that are less than 1 minute old.

Thermite isn't just a sweet chem that adds 20 stacks of fire to Molotov's by adding just a single unit?

Doesn't sound like the issue is specific with your character. But if you want to spice things up; like you said, instead of just permanently retiring the character, you might instead want to make two new characters and swap between the three on occasion. It'll give you a chance to try out some new quirks/gimmicks. You might even find you end up liking a new character more than the old! I've seen similar complaints about occasional "cliques" on Paradise, but it's just server regulars who roleplay well, and thus are always talking to people in common roleplay areas (Bar, front of bridge, dorm, medical lobby sometimes). Roleplayers are going to stick together, because that's how talking works. What else would you do? RP over your PDA? As for antag complaints, If you don't do this already (I assume you do), if you see a likely antag stalking you, give them a chance to "trick" you into an unsafe situation via RP, rather than huddling up with others. Giving antags a fair chance can lead to fun situations, even knowing you're likely to die afterwards. For the others that never attempt; if they don't want to make their own opportunities, they aren't likely to get one and have to deal with it.

It also may be good to do some introspective on WHY you've gathered a following that acts the way they do. - Do you tend to hang around the same spots/jobs of the station? - Who are most involved in your typical interactions? Anyone that's around you? The people who are looking to roleplay? The entire station? - Do you feel like you're contributing to the round and enjoyment of others? If so, is it widespread or only those who choose to engage with you? - Follow-up to above: How do you think you improve people's rounds? - Do you believe this is an issue that can be solved ICly? (e.g. telling people following you that you wanna talk to others or do other things that day.) - Do you defend or get revenge for other people you roleplay with in rounds? Remember that the core of the issue isnt "Being too fun", rather it's "Other people might be ruining the fun of others in my name". And sometimes you can't always stop that. If you meet a person for the first time, chat with them for an hour, you get killed by an antag, and that person maxcaps the antag in revenge unprompted, you can't act like its your fault that other people do stupid things and/or break rules.

I mean technically you have grounds to call it a paradox, but a more common sense understanding would be that Vox and Plasmamen use breathing tanks, because they already can't breath the station air. So your best course of action would be to remove the station O2 as usual, but also have the borgs bring O2 tanks to all Vox and plasmamen, and confiscate their other tanks.

Some potential issues: If they're required to be upright, that means they can simply *rest to stop being a shield. On the other hand, if they're not required to be upright, corpses become the best shields in the game, along with being a projectile with knockdown. There might need to be specific code to force conscious victims upright, and prevent the manual sleep verb. Seems like it might be messy to implement, but it could lead to some cool scenarios.

I'm not sure about adding that objective to antagonists, especially since traitors already have a "protect" objective. Minor theft doesn't make a great objective either, but I do think you have a good basis for something similar: I like the idea of a spontaneous, non-murdery game of cat-and-mouse. Could spark some fun RP, or encourage interaction between people who normally wouldn't have. To Summarize: - Player X and player Y both get objectives. - Player X must stay near Y for a majority of time. (Player Y must also be conscious for this to count. No Ether memes). - Player Y must avoid player X for that amount of time. - If either player dies, both fail their objectives. This wouldn't be its own antagonist (or really an antagonist at all), rather a random happenstance added onto the current role. This objective could be round-length, or more likely, have a time frame (say 30 minutes). These objectives can appear mid-round and to multiple people. and it should be separate from traitor, though there should be tools to aid in locating your objective.

Perhaps there in lies the issue that Holoparasites are only used for combat. The current three standouts are: Ranged - The best at combat overall Explosive - For deadly deception, doesn't rely on robustness at all Support - Provides free healing and teleporting To break away from Holoparasites being "noob-traps", holoparas, with the exception of ranged, need be steered away from direct-combat focused abilities. Standard (Renamed to Breacher): The strength of this holoparasite is its ability to destroy any wall. This could be boosted to be similar to a Prince of Terror's station destruction. Pros: Instant destruction of even reinforced walls. All doors are pried open. Bolted doors can be destroyed in a couple hits. Cons: Moves slowly, making it harder for escapes and bad at combat. Other Options: Instead of breaking walls, has Spatial Displacement - The ability to drag and move normally immovable objects, even walls. (I assume this would be tough to code). Charger: Being super fast, chargers are great for escapes and other speed-based requirements. What if we made Chargers like vehicles? Plus with the charger sharing damage with the owner, the vehicle is ALSO your sprite essentially. Pros: Moves faster. Can be ridden like a vehicle and charge on a cooldown. Cons: Movement is still controlled by the holoparasite. Low Defense, Low Attack. Other Options: Not sure if they should keep their ability to force people to drop stuff by charging at them. Assassin: Should probably focus on stealthing the user, not just the holoparasite itself. When manifested, the user can latch onto the assassin, becoming nearly invisible. The assassin then controls movement for both at a snails pace, remaining cloaked until the user moves, ends the ability, or the holoparasite is recalled. The sticky finger Assassin can also summon and unsummon a dimensional locker to store items/bodies. On holoparasite death, the locker's contents are dropped. Pros: Can quickly turn near invisible. Personal summonable storage locker. Cons: Weak combat capabilities. Slow while stealthed. Other Options: Not sure if the user should be able to hop into their own dimensional locker. While it makes it more akin to STICKY FINGA, antags hiding in lockers for half the round is already boring. Would rather not encourage it to be inter-dimensional. I was thinking of some possibilities for the Lightning holopara, such as being able to turn on/off nearby electronics while unmanifested, even if there is no power, powersink wires while manifested, and stun borgs it hits. But felt electronic manipulation isn't strong enough to warrant 12 TC compared to a breacher that can just break walls and open doors.

A miserable little pile of secrets.

It causes a big power spike to the SM when collected, which has the possibility to destabilize containment in some situations. A standard SM set-up is probably stable enough to prevent any issues, though.

Obviously i'm not an admin so i'm not going to be the spokesperson on whether something is good or bad, but for the sake of a quick response I can post what i've seen general attitudes to these are: I assume you mean gun crates as Cargo. Amassing during Nukeops/Blob is specifically allowed in SOP. Wizard might be a grey area but is probably fine. Cult Halos probably only if command is non-functional/dead. Traitor Murderboning still only if allowed by HoS. If you just mean arming as crew: Generally only Nukeops/Blob. If station is noticably in absolute chaos, nothing wrong with grabbing what you find for self-defense, but don't go raiding the armory. As a non-antag, depends on Alert Level / Active Threat and what crime you did that the officer is trying to tase you for. If it's green alert / no threat, and you're being chased for something minor like graffiti or denying a search, just don't steal the taser and it's generally fine. During Red Alerts / Active Threats, you shouldn't be distracting / messing with security as a non-antag. On the other hand, if you're seen constantly annoying security every single round, you start to trend towards breaking rule 2 and/or 0. Bribes are 100% OK, especially for theft objectives. Multiple people, myself included, have bribed the warden to sell his Krav Maga gloves. Though the engineer taking the bribe should probably also know how to re-stabilize the SM afterwards and make sure to do so. Adminhelp for permission. Some rounds you may be allowed, some rounds maybe not. Though to be blunt, you'd probably need to describe a pretty unique, fun, and complex deathtrap to convince an admin to allow you start kidnapping random people to put into it. From Rule 6: in short: They have to tell you they have Hijack, ask for your help, and then preferably you adminhelp that information so the admins don't get confused when they see a random antag with objectives "Kill a civvie and steal the clown's crayon" using maxcaps in escape. This is called Roleplay. As long as you roleplay it in a reasonable way, and not "He has a taser, better give him the NAD", admins generally like this kind of stuff. This would be a rule-break. Don't make death traps in arrivals, even for ERT. From Rule 6:

Some HOT TIPS for new cultists looking do get their daggers wet (with blood). - A very easy but extremely useful job for even the newest cultist to do, if you have an off-station base, is Ghost Overwatch. Put down a Rune of the Spirit Realm and a pylon next to it, and become a dark spirit. A dark spirit is literally a spectator ghost but can talk to the cultists via Cult Speak. Use it to constantly tell the cult where the sacrifice target is, or if another cultist is in trouble. - Veil Shifters (made from Cult Archives) are one of the most useful tools for cultists, letting you teleport forward a few tiles through walls while also pulling through anything you're dragging. Use it to escape security! They can't follow you through walls after all. Robust cultists can even nab the captain right out of the bridge with a quick shift in, stun+drag, and shift out. - The Hallucinations spell, while not the most useful for direct combat, can be useful to weaken enemy groups stealthily to prepare for a raid, or just slow them down. It's a 4 charge spell that you silently cast on a person you can see. If you know you're about to assault the bridge or security, you can make yourself look like any random civilian while loaded up on hallucination spells, and just cast them on absolutely everyone in the area. Even having one person get randomly stunned from a hallucination is a huge boon in a fight. Security can't patrol maintenance efficiently while hallucinating either, as it causes every door they touch to have a chance to stun them. - Mass conversion and murdering security is fine and all, but remember that cultist escalation leads to escalation from the station too, and the station has access to bigger guns than you (There's no such thing as a cult mech... yet.). Keeping numbers reasonable, or better yet, remaining stealthy, means security won't start pulling out the combat shotguns and durands (well, 9/10 times they wont). Also remember that using exceptionally strong combat items, such as the mirror shield, may result in escalation just even if used purely in self-defense.

Nutriment is essentially the base food chem. Pretty filling, easily available from most plants, and heals a tiny bit of brute too. Vitamins are both one of the most filling chems available, and heal a little bit of brute and burn. Weirdly it also has a cap on how fat you can get off it, but I don't think it's relevant anymore. I believe how "Obesity" worked changed a few years back. Plant-matter doesn't actually fill you up at all. As a botanist, it's mostly used for the Biogenerator. The more plant-matter a plant has (watermelon having the most), the more biomass you get per plant in the biogenerator. Protein is just the carnivore version of Plant-matter. As Woje said, the Carnivore/Herbivore feature isn't implemented, so Protein doesn't actually do anything. None of these can be overdosed, unless you consider being chubby an overdose. As for super-crops for the chef, I'm not 100% how it works. I've heard of chefs accidentally poisoning food because they used a batch of rice the botanists didn't make for consumption purposes. I also know that it's important to remove the Space Drugs from Ambrosia Deus if the chef wants to make food with it. But I believe it only works for dishes that use the actual plant whole. Plants that are grinded/juiced, such as Wheat or Corn, won't benefit from super crops. These plants are grinded to create a specific chem (Flour and Corn Oil). Any other chems you add to these plants are just gonna fill the grinder up with extra garbage.

Probably a good idea. The issue is Xenos isnt that they have one or two minor things wrong with them. Their entire design is either heavily flawed or overshadowed by Terror Spiders, a midround that has had a lot more time and effort put into making them fun and interesting for both sides. If you want to bring Xenos back as a midround, it's gonna need to go through a HEAVY rework to make it stand out against other midrounds, while still being fun for both the Xenos and Crew to fight.

I really can't think of a way to make BSA more useful to the station. It's just a big gun. It's not gonna have any real use because we don't have anything big to shoot every round. (And making it more effective vs Lavaland mobs would open a bad can of worms). As cool as everything about it is, it's not really practical as a regular station goal. BSH has potential, but needs more tweaking. Its rewards are lackluster and there arent enough options to power it except for a TEG. If the BSA and Station Shields werent also station goals, BSH would be a nice "Engineering/Atmos" focused goal with some adjustments. I have nothing new to add to the DNA Vault discussion except to add "Tough Skin" to the list of useless DNA vault powers. You take a little less brute damage, but you're also completely unable to be injected with hyposprays or syringes. Doctors hate him! Having station goals that involved more than just engineering is always nice. An example: Station Goal: Neural Education Organism A station goal that requires the joint efforts of medical. Nanotrasen would like the Cyberiad to experiment with the forefront of their "Education" program. The Neural Education Organism has been pre-loaded with Nanotrasen endorsed knowledge and ideals, and would like you to build a machine that can transfer it directly into another's brain. Unfortunately, ensuring compatibility with both the machine and subject is a violent process. Extensive medical attention will be required for both the preparation and attuning process. The cargo crate contains a cube containing the test organism, random cybernetic augments/limbs/organs that must be installed, a list of additional organs from randomly selected species to be transplanted, and the machine board. Once the test organism is set up and machine is built, the attuning process can begin. The organism must be attuned to three different species of sentient humanoids before it is complete. Unfortunately the attuning process is long and extremely violent. Both the organism and the subject will take large amounts of brute, burn, oxy, and toxin damage throughout the procedure, but must be kept alive for the two minute attuning process to complete. If either dies, the attuning process fails and must be restarted. Once this is successfully done three times, station goal is complete, and people can enter the machine for a quick blast of education. NanoTrasen-Educated individuals can understand all humanoid languages, have access to a special crafting menu (what you can craft is yet to be determined), and feel a bit more loyal to NT (just fluff). The organism must stay alive in the machine for it to continue working. It can be defibbed, but not cloned. If you lose it, you'll have to start from scratch with another one from cargo.

I was referring to hunters after the rework mentioned in the first post, though I think i'm mixing up information that was posted here and some that was posted on the discord. If they were slowed down and had their stun reduced to a ~50% chance based on armor, on top of another 50% block chance from a riotshield, hunters become VERY weak in the lategame. On average 4 melee hits to knock down a single armed person, but the hunter can only take maybe 3 standard laser shots. On paper, hunters needing more hits to knock people down (stamina damage buildup would be more consistent than just %stun chance) would be a lot more fair, but they'd need a health change too, since a glass cannon that isn't strong is just glass. That is unless the intent is for hunters to be more of a swarm, which in that case would work, but obviously needs the gibbing removed so that xeno numbers arent hardcapped on ungibbed corpses.

Drone (Can build walls, membranes, and nests. Can evolve into queens if there isnt one already) Hunter (Fast moving, can regurgitate people they eat.) Sentinel (Can spit acid that stuns. Can also melt adjactent items/people with acid.) Queen (Drone and Sentinel abilities, but can also lay eggs. Can't ventcrawl).

You also need to consider how xeno's are going to handle escalation. The thing about their instant guaranteed stuns is that it's all they have against crew with guns and shields, because xenos are mechanically overly simplistic. Sentinels/queens have spit, but the other two have nothing. So what should each type of xeno be doing when crew are fully armed with lasers and shields and all the vents have been welded?

Time-Dilation Anomaly. A new anomaly that can appear on station. As the name implies, when a player gets too close, or stands inside the Anomaly's range, AffectedArc gets pinged on the discord.

Random Minor Event: Sentient Piñata appears on the station. The Sentient Piñata has civilian access, can not ventcrawl, can not attack/drag, and runs at Xeno Hunter speed. It only has the objective to survive. When killed, explodes into a large amount of various candy/chocolates. There is a 10% chance that it is instead filled with random narcotics and floor pills.

In hindsight, i'm honestly confused at WHY the bridge has a giant glass window to the public hallway in the first place? I know it LOOKS nicer, but if it's supposed to be super secure and "above-your-paygrade", why is its default state to be highly visible in the most public part of the station? Is there a downside to just replacing the windows with walls? It might look a bit less pretty, but it'd both stop bridge hobo-ing and incentivize couch-potato captains to leave the bridge occasionally.

Some Changelings just wanna run a business. It was so popular, even the Captain and Magistrate bought Armblades for themselves! (Thanks SimPleCitES)

Today's menu consists of Brain Burgers, Robo Burgers, and Clown Burgers, what would you like to eat? (Don't worry, the Clown Burgers were made with Prion Sauce).