Kaed

Christmas is over now. It's 2019. Can we remove the christmas tree and wreathes and lights please.

I also added a new bit of code: If you perform absorb on someone who has over 100 genetic damage, you skip the stealthy timer entirely, and they immediately husk on the spot. As a result, you are encouraged to not over-feed on a single person if you are trying to be stealthy, because due the variable amount of genetic damage you deal each time, you will get between 6-9 DNA points from them before they obviously turn into a gross husked monster and reveal that something is going on. Husked people no longer are useful for absorbing DNA for in any fashion, but it's worth noting that unlike with the probiscus succ, they do NOT necessarily die, they just briefly are paralyzed with the pain of their DNA corrupting from over-extraction. They WILL likely begin shrieking over the radio in this event.

We're going to try 22 seconds and then shorten its if needed. Right now what this needs is a playtest rather than wild speculation on how long is too long. As Garn said it can always be shortened later. As for synthetics, the simple answer is no there will not be any implementation of synthetic based changelings. Their purpose if they want to be in a rounds with changelings, is to be a counteracting force, as they are immune to being impersonated and parasited and are extremely difficult to kill with Conventional Weapons. I do not share the philosophy that antagonist roles have to be all inclusive. I had no choice when we kept IPC cultists and I had no choice when we kept wizard robots, nboth of which I protested against. If I'm going to be putting in the work coating this, then I think my design philosophy should have some merits. If you want to add a liquid metal changeling robot, then code it yourself. I realize I sound a little hostile and I apologize, but I'm a little sick of people acting like synthetic players deserve all the treats that everyone else has when they already have their own treats that no one else has.

You should always go into extended assuming an event might happen. That something more than you role-playing in a private corner for the entire round will happen. I don't see why admins should be required to tell you that there's an event going on. Generally speaking if there's an event going on the OOC channel will be turned off, and you can always cryo if you don't like what's going on. This is a completely unneeded addition and makes me laugh, because it's like the universe of people asking extended to be removed from secret, and people telling them that they should always expect every secret round to be extended or it's metagame. If we have to suffer ambiguity about whether there's going to be antagonists when we clearly wanted them by voting Secret, you can stand a little bit of inconvenience when you wanted an extended round and it turns out to be an event.

It's been over four days with no requests for changes or approvals. I'm not even tagged as being under a waiting period, which I recall being 3 days when skull wrote the new rules out? Is there anything else I need to do?

Oops, missed this. I'll answer them briefly, in order (at least, the ones that weren't answered above) -Melee combat would fall under the 'tank' category (which is still a working name) -Tracking people will probably be something inherent to all parasites, just because you need to locate people who have them. I do indeed plan for there to be a parasite(s) that burrows into their brain/nervous system, allowing you to see through their eyes/possibly even hijack their body... ~BRIEFLY~ -Still mostly the same base abilities. I don't have any base abilities to add that I haven't already, yet. -The time of the DNA extraction is currently set to the default 60 seconds. If it becomes too long and problematic, I will lower it. I have an alternate version that takes ~20 seconds instead waiting to be implemented if needed. -You can extract from a person as many times as you like, though I think I will make it hurt them more each time and become more noticeable to them the more genetic damage they receive. I would say you can probably get about 70-100 DNA points from a person if you pin them down and extract from them until they die. This will take a lot longer than simply slurping with the proboscis, but is more rewarding. -You cannot extract from changelings without using a proboscis, i.e. one changeling must die during such an event, no passive drain. But you also get all their powers and DNA, sooo. -I'm only emplacing mechanics. I do not choose whether they cooperate with each other or not. Certainly there will be benefits to both highlander and cooperative ling play -There will be no conversion or recruitment mechanics. You are all food and playthings of the changelings, to be eaten or killed. Vampires and cultists already have conversion stuff covered from the supernatural angle. This is just horror space monster. ----- You require access into a particular high security room (eg vault, upload, Captain's office), what abilities do you have that others don't that can help you achieve this? Tank: A tank could simply tear non-reinforced walls down and yank open doors with their arm blades. With the amount of damage control and resistance they have, they would spit at your vault turrets, too, and take what they want. Sniper: Infest someone who has access to the area with several parasites that will disable them, then ambush them in an area of your choosing, taking their access card for yourself. Maybe you eat them too. Adaptation: Using your ability to manifest false clothing and fake ID cards from your flesh to make yourself look exactly like the captain and get the AI to let you into wherever you want. Alternatively, there might be a high level ability that lets you become more amorphous and just slide through the maint drone hatches like an ooze. Of course, this should be done when no one is looking, or you'll have bigger problems than infiltration charges. You've been permanently brigged for murder and are clad in jumpsuit. What can you do to escape? What can you do after to remain free? Tank: Same as above. The puny prison walls cannot contain your monstrous power. Tanks are not supposed to be subtle, you are a monster and spit upon the attempts of lesser creatures to contain you. Sniper: Infest one of your captors with parasites that you activate at exactly the right time to make your escape. Murder the others with wall-penetrating bone darts from out of their vision range. Adaptation: something sneaky, I expect. Perhaps disguising yourself as one of the guards. I might add an ability that lets your emulate simple tools like screwdrivers, wirecutters, and crowbars from your bone structure, allowing you to simply break your way out of prison, engineer style (ignoring the electrified grates with an upgrade that makes you immune to dat shit) Or just ooze through the maint drone hatches, I guess. You have reason to do away with someone. What are both the quietest and the most efficient ways you can do it Tank: The only way you're doing away with someone quietly is by dipping into the other two categories. Maybe you can cut them to bloody chunks before they have time to scream? Sniper: Self evident Adaptation: These guys aren't really good for killing people. They will probably gain benefits the other classes don't have for quiet DNA absorption, and late game will have some noisy abilities that harm or kill lots of people to gain even more delicious DNA, like that scene from The Thing where the monster had all the doggies wrapped up in tentacles and was eating them. Except you are the doggies. And the changeling is eating you. You're in interrogation, handcuffed. How can you turn the tide to your favor? Tank: Break out of the puny cuffs when your arm blades come out, then destroy those who dared to interrogate you while bucklecuffed. Sniper: Infest them, disable them the moment your cuffs are off and make a get away. Alternatively, bone dart everyone around you to death that doesn't flee, and escape at your leisure. Adaptation: Cuffs cannot hold you, you can rearrange your bones or remove them at will. Turn into flesh ooze, and flee through a vent.

Changelings will have some system to track their parasites. I'm not sure what it is yet, but I'm leaning strongly towards a HUD icon only changelings can see. I'm not certain it's possible to make the icon only visible to the changeling who made it, though. Another possibility is some way of telling the direction of your parasites from your current position. I know from pinpointers that the game has some way to recognize directional cues based on positions. It's a hard one. I don't really want you to be able to just pull up a list of people's names and what's in them, though, because that seems more tech-y than biological - at most, a list of parasites you have active, maybe with numbers designating them (or greek alphabet titles, since that seems to be a ling thing, ocular parasite lamba etc). Parasites remain there generally for STRATEGIC usage more than tactical, and if you start implanting more than like 4-5, you better have a way to memorize them. I'm not certain I want them to last more than one use either. There might be a way to make parasites multi use, but I kind of want them by default to be single use and self destruct, removing the evidence when they go to medical claiming they felt something wriggling in their throat. I have a vague idea of a sniper upgrade that can make parasites activate within seconds instead of after a incubation period, but it will be very obvious and people will feel it digging into their skin and paralyzing their throat or whatever, and your nature will be revealed. Armblades will stay, and I probably will add some upgrade under Tank that lets you yank doors open ala vaurca queens and aliums. It is my eventual goal to make parasites be a physical object that can be found and removed, yes. I think during the alpha stages of things I may have them simply exist as an abstract object or variable inside someone's body that doesn't show up, because it's more important to me that I initially make the parasites function before fiddling about with making them visible and interactable. I intend for this rework to be processed in bites that can be tested and bugfixed rather than shoving the whole thing down people's throats at once 6+ months from now and having a mass of problems show up that overwhelms me.

With the first tier of my ling rework finished, making the ling something people might want to play (assuming it passes review, which it seems to largely be doing), I'd like to sit down and discuss with you my current vision for New Ling. It's going to be a significant overhaul of the concept, while keeping a touch of it's original flavor. ________ The first thing to note about the new changeling concept is that DNA points will become plentiful with the new system. No longer having to kill to gain DNA, it is possible to harvest 2-3 points from half the people on the station with only a minor expenditure of time on each one, soon having 10-20 points to play with as you wish. DNA point hunger will largely be a thing of the past with current prices and what is available to buy, which is why people will need something to spend it on. Here's where the new system will come into play. The first thing to note is that now the value of DNA point gain and base prices will be multiplied by 10. Effectively, this means little for the base mechanics except that, for instance, it will cost 50 DNA points to get what is currently called silence sting, and you gain 10 points from extracting someone's DNA. More importantly however, this allows me to create DNA costs that can work with fractions of DNA point gain and can effectively scale, making it far easier to make something that, for instance, costs 4 points + 4 for every previous level. It's a lot harder to make something cost 0.4, 0.8, 1.2, etc points and looks really messy. Why does this matter? Because the new changeling will be heavily focused around constantly evolving itself and growing more powerful. There will be quite a few statistically based variables for the changeling that I will be adding, and all of them can be improved infinitely in theory, but in practice, they eventually become prohibitively expensive. This makes it so no two changelings are necessarily the same - maybe one person makes a ling that is extremely difficult to kill, upgrading the variables that gives them increasing damage resistance and regeneration, wading through gunfire with impunity, using the terror of their near immortality to scare the crew as they cut them up with arm blades. Another upgrades their range to the maximum and uses a telescopic eye to snipe people with horrible biological projectiles. Maybe a third one ops to just be a well-rounded character with no significant weaknesses or strengths. But Kaed, I heard Strawman McWorriedguy say, what is to stop someone from just silently maximizing all their stats and becoming god in the last 10 minutes of the round? I'm glad you asked, imaginary person worried about game progression and balance! What will stop them is what I am going to tenuously refer to as 'tier ceilings'. There are going to be three (probably) categories of evolution you can choose from in this system. Let's call them, for the sake of this thread, "Tank" (damage mitigation/regeneration/etc), "Sniper" (Ranged combat and parasite use), and "Adaptation" (Tricky stuff like better disguises, faster DNA extraction and stun removal). Each of these three 'categories' of evolution will have several things you upgrade to improve your tier in them. Once you exceed a certain amount of progress in one of those tier's collective evolutions, you will enter 'Tier 2' of that category. By doing so, you have effectively committed yourself to that tier. You can no longer reach tier 3 with the other two. Once you reach tier 3 in that category, you are locked into it entirely. All of the other tiers are now locked at a maximum of tier 1. I'm not sure if I will have you lose any excess evolution points (possibly with a refund), or reward people who want to try and game the system by spending a lot of time getting everything to tier 2 cap before taking tier 3 in their locked in option. Certainly up for discussion there. Certain abilities are also locked behind certain tiers. For instance, telescopic eyes is a tier 2 Sniper ability, and since it's possible to extend the range of your 'stings' to over 7 tiles in this system, you'll need it. Let's talk about 'stings'. First thing that I should say about this rework is that there will be no more 'stings'. Instead, there will be a number of parasites and other awful things you can generate from your own flesh to inject into people. They take a bit of time to get into place, but after that, they effectively can be used by you at will. For example: Instead of Silence Sting, there will be a new ability called Vocal Parasite. After it emplaces itself into their body and finishes wriggling through their veins and flesh, it sits there and waits in their throat. Once you engage that vocal parasite (potentially out of their line of sight), the player is unable to speak for a time. The duration of the silence can be upgraded, and starts out fairly short. While this sounds fiddly, keep in mind you can now combine this with other abilities, for instance silencing someone important just as you mimic their voice, taking away their ability to immediately naysay your fake orders to go somewhere. You can only have one parasite of a particular variant in a person at a time, so there could be an Ocular and Vocal parasite sitting in their body, waiting to be used to make someone blind and mute at a bad time, but not two vocal parasites to be used in a chain. There will probably be a maximum number of parasites you can have inactive and waiting, which is upgradable. Something else about parasite launching - you can upgrade up to range 2 like you can in current ling and it remains mostly stealthy. There will probably be a small chance someone notices you launching a parasite into them from 2 squares away, but once you reach Range 3, you have entered Tier 2 of Sniper. At that point, there will be a new mechanic for launching parasites over long distances and things that works differently, and is very obvious and conveys that you are a changeling. Stuff like: Urist McLing's Neck Splits open and launches a wriggling worm! Basically, dedicated sniper lings are scary and obviously monsters, rather than just being able to silently infect someone from ten million miles away and out of their vision range. Yes, there will be an ability to snipe people with bone darts outside of horror form, and tier 3 lings will be able to shoot through them through anything but reinforced walls and blast doors. I also have a vague idea under Adaptation Ling for a tier 3 ability that is really gross and basically attaches a tentacle to everyone in vision range after a loud and obvious chargeup time and begins sucking out their fluids for many DNA points and horror movie themes. Also a Sensory Parasite that lets you eavesdrop, giving you vision and hearing from the location of someone else (which I might make able to later be used to burst out of their skin and attack someone nearby for extra horror points)

I've made an alternate version that takes about 35% of the time previously required (3 stages instead of 4, each half as long, for a total of 22.5 seconds instead of 60) Does that seem acceptable to you? I admit my main concern is that if I make it too short it will encourage people to treat it like they do stings, i.e. running around doing it on everyone without a word.

How much do you think it should be shortened to?

Honestly yes, but I seem to be in the minority.

Potentially no longer needed, due to my recent PR, which offers a solution.

I will add it to the idea table for later. Right now I'm trying to keep this PR as atomic as possible so that it gets through as soon as possible. It's sorely needed.

Reasonable. Done.

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/5865 I'm finally doing it. Praise. This is Stage 1 of my ling rework. It is intended to be a standalone fix that corrects one of the particularly frustrating aspects of changeling, along with a few minor QoL tweaks. There WILL be more stuff later as I continue the rework, but this is sorely needed now. Here is what it has done: -There is now an ability called Absorb DNA available to all changelings, it has replaced the old ability of the same name. --It can target anyone adjacent to you, and they can't move or it fails. --It takes the same time as a normal succ, but you don't have to grab them, you just have to chat with them or whatever to encourage them to remain put. You know, roleplay and stuff. --It does not kill the target, or work on other changelings. --After it is completed, you receive 1 DNA point --Approximately 10-15 seconds after you complete the process, the target will receive a small but noticeable amount of genetic damage. This is do prevent people from immediately flipping the fuck out because they took damage and pointing at the person next to them as the cause. -The extract DNA sting has been commented out of the power list for now The original flavor succ is still there, but it has been renamed to Full DNA Extraction. Using it gives you 10 5 DNA points. Also, the old 'large organic needle' meme has been replaced with something more generic.

Reworks take time and more importantly, interest and effort from people. You don't drive around in a junker car that breaks down constantly in place of other cars that work better because you want someone to fix it, you put it in the garage until it's fixed, THEN you take it out again to drive around.

I would do this myself, but unfortunately, I have been informed that this (specifically, removing ling from votes/secret rotation) is something that can only be done on the config file, which only the headmins have access to. Thus, this will never happen unless you can convince one of them to do it. And they didn't do it when we held a community vote saying we'd prefer it to be removed for now, so I'm not sure if they will no matter how many threads happen.

I mean I would not mind the cloaks being debranded and just being made generic cloaks of the same colors, guys. But don't just remove them entirely because you don't like them. At the end of the day, I want my characters to wear cloaks. If they aren't official departmental gear anymore, fine, whatever, as long as I can wear them.

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/5851 https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/5855 Between these two PR's, this thread be done. Move it to projects.

I could just fix it to not let people resist during succ. That is more reliable than any text. I'd also probably remove the ridiculously loud and inappropriate squishy sound. Possibly replace it with something more subtle.

I have very little forgiveness for antagonist 'gimmicks' that involve fake announcements about stupid or nonsensical things, like deathmatches or xeno executions, and I'm not doing to start pretending they become plausible to protect the feelings of people who can't think of something that sounds vaguely plausible. As for the other stuff, like not immediately arresting anyone doing something vaguely antagonistic, I can get behind that. I still remember when Gonzales was doing a hilariously bad ling pretending to be human and got arrested for buying protohumans to succ, then got locked in xenobio for the rest of the round to be ignored. His charge was 'suspicious conduct' of all things.

I think the bigger problem with the toxicity is that people coming forward to testify should just be that - a testimony. What happens instead is huge argument starts between several people and the thread fills with angry posts. As an example, in a normal, organized legal process of a courtroom, the persecution says it's piece and sits down, and then the defense talks. The defense doesn't interrupt the persecution with an objection leading to a huge shouting match while the judge (the admins in this case) just sort of blinks and watches the screaming match in helpless silence until they start saying things they can act on. These things should be a single, as descriptive as possible testimony, and then it stops there, except as directed by the admin(s) running the thread. No 10 page argument between the OP and the accused, or random mcwitness and the accused.

I don't have a whole lot of faith in staff member's abilities to make arbitrated judgements based on vague information and round logs, generally speaking, because almost no staff member I have ever talked to has anything that I would call resembling a nonpartisan standpoint on server politics. But that's not really the issue here, and I don't suppose having a half dozen or more people screaming accusations in the thread particularly makes their attempt to arbitrate a dispute. And yet, I find myself largely despising this idea and feeling strong scorn towards you for basically implying that the 'peanut gallery' as you call it are a bunch of meanie meanpants who don't deserve to give testimony on an issue on account of not being one of the lofty madmins selected by the server administration from an unclear combination of supposedly being suitable for the position and having sheer insanity to willingly moderate a server full of screaming maniacs pretending to be characters in a severely overcomplicated atmos simulator without monetary recompensation. I don't particularly like the idea of relegating discussion on matters to undocumented mediums like discord or PM, where no one can see what was said and it leaves everyone wondering what happened, but I can support a bit of tightening on the matter that only people actually involved in the complaint itself, i.e. the complainers, and the complainees should be posting there, but not like Joe McBystander who once had a snit with the complainee two months ago and wants to vent now about how much of a chodesucker this person is, complete with half remembered details that are difficult or impossible to verify.

I did not mean it should be temporary, I meant that it should not be eternal and impossible to revoke. But if IRs are the way to do it, fine, but that's the idea I'm trying to get across. Life should be hard for IPC players wanting to be in charge.. You are literally coddling them right now, and it needs to be less of that. Things should be horrible sometimes, they're second class citizens, and you've rushed through the process of civil reform for the sake of making the PLAYERS feel more empowered and happy, which seems to be your primary concern here.

I would also like there to be paperwork in place to revoke an avowal. If there are synth-loving people who will give an avowal the first time a synth asks them - and it will happen this is how grandfathering will actually work, some captain will just automatically approve them due to roleplaying with them as a head in the past - then there should be paperwork to revoke the right for anti-synths/sensible people, but only if they have an actual reason, like a fuckup that they can point out that makes the synthetic unsuitable for the role. If you require an avowal to work it shouldn't last for eternity and be immune to contesting no matter what you do (ahelping them for breaking the rules is not sufficient here, I'm looking for IC ways to contest the legitimacy and make them work for their roles) And hey, it'll give something new for CCIA to do.