Cult balance

[Pckables]

41 minutes ago, Generaldonothing said:

Hmm, this actually gives me a somewhat decent idea to how you could fix this issue of permakilling officers. When you sacrifice someone instead of sending them to bluespace hell or whatever, it stores them inside that rune, if they die while sharded, they pop out of the rune, if the rune gets cleaned, they pop out of the rune and the construct dies.

 

I would certainly need to expand on it, but this seems a better way to deal with it to me at least. 

Or even potentially having something like a "Construct Control Tower" that is required to be built to enable sharding and constructs. It stores the bodies of sharded victims, and if destroyed, kills all cult constructs and drops the bodies where the tower was.

One potential problem i having the bodies only be dropped in the cult base opens up the potential for abuse by cultists, either to re-shard the bodies or to get rid of them all. (Though I doubt cultists would go so far out of their way to do the latter).

Edited March 18, 2022 by Pckables

[McRamon]

I don't personally think perma death is a problem, dying is part of the game and there is no need to make sure every poor gamer returns to the round.

In my personal experience, the biggest problem of cult is shielded robes + mirror shield. It takes quite some time to actually get an autorifle through all the process of ordering it and waiting for delivery, while cultists (and it can be any cultist, not just one of them) basically immune to anything security has. Flahsbangs and bolas might help but still.

I noticed someone mentioning wraith being an AI killer and after that they have nothing to do, but i dont remember last time a wraith killed an AI, they die to turrets much faster. Jaggers are the real AI killers. Constructs generally have things to do and are very useful in combat, and arguably quite op if done right. The very idea of a construct being created by cult is cool but maybe they would benefit from a major rework (the less simple mobs the better)

[Sirryan2002]

I had some ideas for this.

Obviously cultists may permakill officers more often if officers can be brought back to sharding, however that's at the tradeoff of giving up a possible construct which is a choice the cult now has to make. I was thinking that upon death, constructs would deform into a "broken construct" or something along those lines and could be brough back through a timed ritual done by the chaplain. 

[procdrone]

17 hours ago, Pckables said:

But here's a better compromise:
The corpse gets stored in the shard (with all their gear dropped onto the ground), and then put into the constructs created. Killed constructs drop the related corpse.
Shards shatter and drop the corpse after 5 minutes if not used.

this sounds best to me so far.

Edited March 18, 2022 by procdrone
me, not be

[Charliminator]

My major issues with cult, as it stands, is that they aren't considered kos fast enough. I don't care about being permakilled. Shit happens. But my god lets me kill the cultists atleast. 

It takes 30% of the crew to be converted on low pop or something for cult to get halos. This is huge, and then you consider the fact that it's not counting crew, it's counting all players. This includes ash walkers, ghosts, admins dicking around on the admin room.

Also the instant ranged stun spear. That issue speaks for itself though.

All cultists with visible gear, flag robes, shielded suits, etc. Should be considered armed and dangerous under space law. This isn't even a balance concern at this point. Often cult isn't fun to fight, you are forced to ferry tiders from maints into processing, then sit and wait 150 seconds for them to either unbuckle and teleport away or get deconverted at the end. But sinking autorifle rounds into a cultist with flag robes is very cathartic, much needed sanity for security on a cult round.

 

But yeah I'm gonna stick to ordering mindshields and autorifles as soon as cult is called out and mindshield any deconverts. I am tired of people getting deconverted and walking into maints again.

 

Thank you for coming to my ted talk

[MattTheFicus]

On 3/19/2022 at 5:50 AM, Charliminator said:

All cultists with visible gear, flag robes, shielded suits, etc. Should be considered armed and dangerous under space law.

IMO technically they are. I personally wouldn't see an issue lethaling them but that would be a Head Admin question.

[DwaneLoki]

On 3/17/2022 at 9:08 PM, Carthusia said:

It would be neat if the shards from a construct remain after death, but say a chaplain can take a corrupted shard and purify it with a bible, some holy water and a crafting timer? then use them to create holy constructs, creating a kind of tug of war between constructs, each construct lost is a potential gain for the other side and it makes them less of a disposable shock trooper and somthing you dont want to just toss away haphazardly without a plan to retrieve their shards.

 

This keeps people from being knocked out of the round forever with nothing to do by simply dyeing as a construct and allows them to potentially continue on as a construct if they are retrieved, or captured.

 

 

I had a very similar thought recently and I think this would be a excellent change. Security players shouldn't be punished so harshly by being perma'd after being sharded and dying, I would go so far as to make it converting shards something that can be done by splashing holy water on the shard rather than requiring a chaplain. Making the conversion for shards and cultists the same process for ease of that tug of war type gameplay.

[Generaldonothing]

7 minutes ago, DwaneLoki said:

I had a very similar thought recently and I think this would be a excellent change. Security players shouldn't be punished so harshly by being perma'd after being sharded and dying, I would go so far as to make it converting shards something that can be done by splashing holy water on the shard rather than requiring a chaplain. Making the conversion for shards and cultists the same process for ease of that tug of war type gameplay.

you may vibe with this then, made by octus

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/20402

[DwaneLoki]

That's very interesting! I might prefer if a ensouled corpse is produced instead or if there's a resource cost involved with releasing the shard's body. It might also be interesting if you could just use a soul shard in the place of a robotic brain or mmi in borg construction!

[robveelben]

On 3/15/2023 at 5:27 PM, DwaneLoki said:

That's very interesting! I might prefer if a ensouled corpse is produced instead or if there's a resource cost involved with releasing the shard's body. It might also be interesting if you could just use a soul shard in the place of a robotic brain or mmi in borg construction!

Even thought the idea of doing is interesting I do not see why it would make sense lore wise as constructs are very different from machines and suchs so it would need a extra step to be able to do so to make it lore wise sense and we do not redcon the world by accident.

[Nerfection]

On 3/19/2022 at 9:50 AM, Charliminator said:

All cultists with visible gear, flag robes, shielded suits, etc. Should be considered armed and dangerous under space law.

Are there some players that think that armed and equipped cultists aren't armed and dangerous under Space Law? Seeing as the basic piece of equipment for a cultist is a magic stabby-boi even before they get extra stuff, this is a pretty strange take - especially when Space Law explicitly specifies flag-robed cultists as KOS-able:

Quote

Lethals Authorised - Post-Combat Treatment/Revival Required: Cultists - (Flag Robes, Highly Armed, etc.)

For all the ways cult balance could be improved, this isn't one. It's a very, very rare situation where sec aren't already covered to KOS cultists.

KOS under Space Law != valid for most crew. If the argument is that cult should become valid earlier, then that holds more water. 

[Charliminator]

Bro quoting my tweets from a year ago.

[Rurik]

5 hours ago, Charliminator said:

Bro quoting my tweets from a year ago.

tweets?

[DwaneLoki]

On 3/18/2022 at 8:07 AM, Sirryan2002 said:

I had some ideas for this.

Obviously cultists may permakill officers more often if officers can be brought back to sharding, however that's at the tradeoff of giving up a possible construct which is a choice the cult now has to make. I was thinking that upon death, constructs would deform into a "broken construct" or something along those lines and could be brough back through a timed ritual done by the chaplain. 

This I think would be the best option, Sec shouldn't 100% be removed from the round after losing to a antag, least of all a conversion antag.