Thoughts about shadowlings

[Cocacolagua]

   Hello everyone, I'm starting this topic to see what everyone thinks about shadowlings and the shadowling gamemode, and what should be done so the playerbase doesn't hate playing these rounds; whether it's from a balance perspective on what abilities should be nerfed, buffed, added or removed, or from a concept perspective, on whether a team antagonist conversion gamemode centered around darkness is a good idea at all.

   gamemode suxs pls remoev

[ImmortalRedshirt]

Let me get this out of the way: Conversion antags are probably my favorite type, because it allows other people to join in on the fun of being an antag. That being said, shadowlings have some issues.

• The outcome of the round is determined almost immediately. If the slings make one slipup, then the crew will kill them all. If Security runs into maints right away, slings will win. There is no long struggle over the course of the round, it's always a curbstomp, it just changes who's curbstomping who. Cult also shares this problem, but that's another topic
• Shadowstep is too fast. The most common killer of slings is overshooting and reemerging right into space. Also makes jumping from maint network to maint network too easy.
• I like the idea of the mindshield not protecting you. What I don't like is how this isn't very intuitive to grasp. Security, especially newsec, often believes themselves immune to mind control, and will rush into maintenance and get thralled, to their surprise, giving the slings a big boost.
• The whole hatching thing has caused issues before. Whether it's people seeing the resin or hearing the sounds, a bad hatch can give away the whole thing, due to our lax limitations on antag knowledge.
• Let's be honest, how many of the abilities do you actually use during a round?

I'd rather not see them thrown into the trashbin like they are on so many other servers, but some changes have to be made.

Edited August 1, 2020 by ImmortalRedshirt

[AzuleUtama]

Immortal already makes some good points above as to why Slings has issues, but to add to that with my own views:

• The method for dethralling is awful - first you're reliant on medbay to be competent enough to know the surgery procedure necessary to remove the shadow tumor. Even if they do know what they're doing - the surgery can wind up taking a while since it's random as to whether the tumor will die when you use the flashlight on it, sometimes taking multiple attempts - coupled with the fact there are usually queues of people to dethrall and security need to keep them from escaping rather than helping the rest of the sec team in hunting down the sling. It's also easy to prevent dethralling entirely - just get a medical thrall to steal all the surgery tools. Compare this with cult where you just give them about 40 units of holy water and wait for the revelation message and even revs - where you just mindshield them or harmbaton their head.
• Rounds generally go one of three ways and none of them are a lot of fun. First the slings snowball most of sec and then sit back as they get new thralls hand delivered to them until ascendance, often ending the round in about 30 minutes. Second, the slings get found before they can do anything and every tile on the station gets covered in lights before security quickly kill all the slings. Third is similar to the second, but where 1 or more slings are more robust and just keep shadow walking over and over never getting caught but also never making any progress in getting thralls, dragging the round out for ages while everyone is just sitting around waiting for the round end screen to pop up.
• Adding to the last point above - having the round end once all the slings are dead or ascended means that most players just stop bothering to really do anything once they get confirmed, since the round is going to end early at some point so doing any big construction project or trying a rp event / activity often isn't worth the effort. This often leads to most of the crew just standing around waiting or just mindlessly doing their job since they also can't hunt the slings if they aren't sec (or possibly botany with glomshrooms). Wizard, Blob and technically Nuke Ops do have the same "early-end" issue - but it's negated by the fact that the entire crew is allowed to hunt those antags down and the rounds themselves (namely wiz) are often very short compared to slings.
• Pretty much any attempt at an ERT tends to fail with slings if they aren't Gamma level (and even then, sometimes gamma can fail). Either the slings ascend while they're still getting ready to hunt them down or they inevitably get caught by the masses of thralls and now the slings have ERT thralls too.

[Meow19]

Remove glowshrooms or prepare for botany to get maxcapped 5 minutes into the round next time i roll sling >:C

other than that I enjoy the gamemode.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Meow19