REMOVE LING remove ling

[Yakumo_Chen]

you are worst antag. you are the ling idiot you are the ling smell. return to antartica. to our antartica cousins you may come our staton. you may live in the brig….ahahahaha ,syndi we will never forgeve you. wizrd rascal FUck but fuck asshole ling stink syndie sqhipere shqipare..ling genocide best day of my life. take a bath of dead ling..ahahahahahSYNDIE WE WILL GET YOU!! do not forget- where was I going with this?

I really want to see ling removed until it is changed into a better mode. Ling is currently near the bottom of 'favorite game modes' and people more or less despise playing against them.

Why is ling so obnoxious to play against?
[*]Stealth antag. Lings have no outward tell when not using any abilities. Searching a guy you are 90% sure is a ling and he has nothing in his backpack. What can you do? They don't carry antag items, all their powers are spells.
[*]Ling revive. Lings are extremely hard to kill. There's three ways to get rid of a ling and a ling can destroy two of them. The crematorium is destructible now and most ling rounds I will drag someone to it and it'll be not there. You can't rebuild this. The gibber can be rebuilt or even moved but I have never, ever seen this happen in a round. That just leaves shuttle crushing, which is extremely risky as the ling can just revive in space or you have to stand on the dock holding it and hope space wind doesn't drag you under / powergamed magboots.
[*]Common ling abilities make them even harder to kill. 90% of lings will take the adrenals and the free healing because you can mash them and immediately gain a combat advantage and speed advantage and either kill your aggressor easily or make a speedy getaway with meth speed and then dive into maint or change disguise.
[*]Many ling abilities are suited to invisible griefing and are not fun to deal with.
[*][*]Cyro sting is extremely lethal unless you happen to have coffee nearby and out-damages most chems.
[*][*] DNA sting completely fucks you over unless you were legitimately autistic enough to back up your SI beforehand and makes communication hard.
[*][*]Lings can spam infinity EMPs to more or less shut down comms and / or gravity / security pursuits for the next few minutes. I've seen lings who do absolutely nothing but go monkey and hide in the vents and spam EMP on comms and gravity and disable them for the entire round. Incredibly easy to just murderbone silicons by EMP screeching and armblading or killing the AI via ventcrawl and EMP spam.
[*][*]Easy to frame people by changing identity, even easier to get away from security just by changing disguise on the fly (nobody ever does this, however)
[*][*]Other minor abilities give you a massive advantage / force security to lethal you like armblade, cuff melting, confuse screech, etc.
[*][*]Everything is spammable and only costs a cooldown in terms of how many chems you have stored.
[*]Team comms make it easy to band together and go on murderbone parties. Team comms in general give you more free information and other benefits like a ling hop easily notifying other lings of easy free all access.
[*]Ling objectives themselves are obnoxious to do, especially the disguise one, because DNA stinging the right guy almost never actually gives you the right DNA strand because it's already full and you can only do it once on a target. Getting the ID also more or less forces you to murder them.
[*]Traitorchan generally results in more antags then plain traitor. The station becomes a huge mess right away in traitorchan rounds because of this.
[*]Traitor is the far, far, far, far more popular mode yet has a lower chance to proc instead of "traitors plus the asshole antag that griefs everyone"


Ling as a mode has not seen any changes in an extremely long time. Every single attempt to change the mode has failed or stalled indefinitely. Last time I saw ling being worked on, Remie was supposed to be doing goon lings, and arm had something PR'd but couldn't because of Remie's non-existent PR. Has anything actually been in the works since then?

Proposed solutions that would make it more fun to play against:
[*]Remove lingchat. Lings aren't a team antag and don't need free traitor comms to act like one. They already get a tell if another ling stings them, if they want to cooperate.
[*]Make death more permanent. This would solve many of the issues of why ling is so completely cancerous to fight. No more not having a furnace or a gibber to kill the ling and having it revive, decuff, and sax away to never be seen again. Replace ling revive with last resort. Force the ling to do actual, real work to survive when caught, and make it not an enormous pain in the ass to get rid of caught lings if you play it right. All the stealthy survival/grief powers have a lot less sting when you can overcome them and actually result with a dead/cornered ling instead of a ling with a 40 second revive timer before you have to do it all over again.
[*]For the love of fucking god switch the round odds of traitor and traitorchan or better yet, just assign most of the chance odds of traitorchan to just traitor.

[Luke Cox]

Perfect timing, I actually had what I felt like was a good idea for a ling rework. How would you feel if certain abilities were mutually exclusive, and you had to earn evolution points?

[Armhulen]

napkin idea here but ling should have only one ability and that's horror form, make horror form block movement and bolt doors and we'd really have something

[Fatal]

If nothing else, remove the team chat and stop lings being a team murder mode at the very least

Every time I see lings it's basically a team mode because, why wouldn't they use that advantage

[Dr_bee]

If nothing else, remove the team chat and stop lings being a team murder mode at the very least

Every time I see lings it's basically a team mode because, why wouldn't they use that advantage

Remove the team chat and make the revive cost DNA points to use or aquire.

I mean death REALLY should cost something.

[SaveVatznick]

Honestly just make the changeling like the movie it came from. Right now, they're an antag that is undetectable until they do something blatantly ling-y, and they just end up being murderbone machines. Changelings have tools to deal with literally any damage they sustain and are guaranteed to at least survive till the end of the round.

-make lings vulnerable to fire. Xhuis went a step in the right direction by making fire block fleshmend; make fire the anti-changeling tool. Perhaps we can have fire destroy a changeling's chemicals at a reasonable rate, and if they died by fire, they couldn't revive. Maybe fire stops them from using abilities. Maybe fire has a chance to stun changelings or forces them to scream and play an audio cue, maybe it drops their flesh disguise.
-Add the blood test from the movie. There's no way to check for a changeling right now, but the source material provides one : applying heat to a blood sample makes the blood of the changeling jump, where a normal blood sample will smolder.
-Replace revive with last resort. Chen suggested this, and it would be a good change. Right now, changeling revive is fucking retarded. You "die" and after, what, 80 seconds, you're back on your feet at full health and all you lost is 15 mana? Make death have a penalty, right now this just makes changelings unkillable. Plus, this works thematically.
-Drastically nerf in-combat healing if you're going to keep revive. Part of why changelings are used to bone so hard is that it's pretty much impossible for them to lose anything under a 2v1 fight. They get a huge spammable heal, they can purge all toxins and deformities, they regrow limbs, they igbore stuns, etc. Up the costs of these spells so you need to think about using them, like, kick fleshmend up to 50 chemicals. Right now, I only think Adrenals has a semisane cost at 35.
-Remove all this Alex Mercer Prototype shit. Armblade is a retarded stealthy nodrop esword. If the changeling sneak attacks you and lands the first hit, even if they don't get the knockdown on head hit, you are still gonna die, because the slowdown is going to get you killed once they hit you again. Tentacle is a meme, no one uses the shield. Bring the changeling back to its source material, don't let it be "traitor but fleshy". Horror form would be a good replacement with work.
-Why do cryo, mute, hallucination, blind, and deaf stings exist? I'm not gonna whine about "waaaaaa cyro op ided" becaude cryosting isn't op. What I want to know is why anyone needs zero-tell grief tools. What is the rationale behind the changeling having any of these stings, thematically or gameplay wise? The changeling in the movie couldn't shoot freeze-poison needles or make you higher than a kite. These have no reason to exist.

That's all I can think of right now, but I'm basically saying to nerf changeling into the ground and then heavily rework it to be faithful to the source material. Right now, changeling is retarded as all fuck and I cannot believe they have been allowed to stay in this state for as long as they have, but then again, the coders don't play mene.

Also, anyone who bitches and whines about nerfing muh antags needs their head checked. Our playerbase is so vicious that antag status is all an individual needs - fancy powers are just icing on the cake.

[Lumbermancer]

[*]Stealth antag. Lings have no outward tell when not using any abilities. Searching a guy you are 90% sure is a ling and he has nothing in his backpack. What can you do? They don't carry antag items, all their powers are spells.

A smart person devised the test for ling long time ago.

https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11410

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Honestly just make the changeling like the movie it came from. Right now, they're an antag that is undetectable until they do something blatantly ling-y, and they just end up being murderbone machines. Changelings have tools to deal with literally any damage they sustain and are guaranteed to at least survive till the end of the round.

-make lings vulnerable to fire. Xhuis went a step in the right direction by making fire block fleshmend; make fire the anti-changeling tool. Perhaps we can have fire destroy a changeling's chemicals at a reasonable rate, and if they died by fire, they couldn't revive. Maybe fire stops them from using abilities. Maybe fire has a chance to stun changelings or forces them to scream and play an audio cue, maybe it drops their flesh disguise.
-Add the blood test from the movie. There's no way to check for a changeling right now, but the source material provides one : applying heat to a blood sample makes the blood of the changeling jump, where a normal blood sample will smolder.
-Replace revive with last resort. Chen suggested this, and it would be a good change. Right now, changeling revive is fucking retarded. You "die" and after, what, 80 seconds, you're back on your feet at full health and all you lost is 15 mana? Make death have a penalty, right now this just makes changelings unkillable. Plus, this works thematically.
-Drastically nerf in-combat healing if you're going to keep revive. Part of why changelings are used to bone so hard is that it's pretty much impossible for them to lose anything under a 2v1 fight. They get a huge spammable heal, they can purge all toxins and deformities, they regrow limbs, they igbore stuns, etc. Up the costs of these spells so you need to think about using them, like, kick fleshmend up to 50 chemicals. Right now, I only think Adrenals has a semisane cost at 35.
-Remove all this Alex Mercer Prototype shit. Armblade is a retarded stealthy nodrop esword. If the changeling sneak attacks you and lands the first hit, even if they don't get the knockdown on head hit, you are still gonna die, because the slowdown is going to get you killed once they hit you again. Tentacle is a meme, no one uses the shield. Bring the changeling back to its source material, don't let it be "traitor but fleshy". Horror form would be a good replacement with work.
-Why do cryo, mute, hallucination, blind, and deaf stings exist? I'm not gonna whine about "waaaaaa cyro op ided" becaude cryosting isn't op. What I want to know is why anyone needs zero-tell grief tools. What is the rationale behind the changeling having any of these stings, thematically or gameplay wise? The changeling in the movie couldn't shoot freeze-poison needles or make you higher than a kite. These have no reason to exist.

That's all I can think of right now, but I'm basically saying to nerf changeling into the ground and then heavily rework it to be faithful to the source material. Right now, changeling is retarded as all fuck and I cannot believe they have been allowed to stay in this state for as long as they have, but then again, the coders don't play mene.

Also, anyone who bitches and whines about nerfing muh antags needs their head checked. Our playerbase is so vicious that antag status is all an individual needs - fancy powers are just icing on the cake.

In the same sentence you suggest "make it more like the source material get rid of the rest" and "make it fall over forever when I click on it with a toolbox".
Making lings unable to resurrect from burn damage, however, if they cant already (they cant heal burn damage as it is iirc), is good

[SpaceInaba]

be me
change ling
change entire station into meme catgirl
XD nobody can communicate or keep track of anybody anymore
lol xd my way around mudering people with a taser in a sec outfit

[ShadowDimentio]

Just remove ling tbh, I've said it for years but ling is the worst antag we have in the code by far.

[kevinz000]

Mandatory "security just needs better players" post from someone with ~366 hours of security play time with all antags off

[Lazengann]

lings are just traitors but not fun

[ShadowDimentio]

Mandatory "security just needs better players" post from someone with ~366 hours of security play time with all antags off

Sec can't do jack shit to lings. Stuns don't work, lasers don't work, they can sax away faster than you can chase them and if they leave your sight they can completely change appearances and instantly lose you.

[Oldman Robustin]

Kor remains opposed to a ling test since he's convinced it will just end up encouraging sec to round up the entire crew or something.

I think we can have a test that's sufficiently time and energy intensive that sec won't have the means or the will to just sit around and testing everyone.

[Swagbringer]

More use of Tracking implants is required to fight the ling menace.

[Togopal]

There should be a way to test for lings and I like Lumbermancers idea more than the blood test because the blood test would just make the server a combination of revs and TTT the moment lings are confirmed

[Dr_bee]

There should be a way to test for lings and I like Lumbermancers idea more than the blood test because the blood test would just make the server a combination of revs and TTT the moment lings are confirmed

Goon has a fucking ling test and killable lings and they are FINE.

Lings should be a stealth antag and there needs to be actual consequences for going loud. Right now with how lings are there really arent any reasons NOT to murder everyone with your un-disarmable e-sword and easy adrenals, as even if they somehow manage to down you there are buddies available to bail you out because you have fucking free antag-only comms.

If you are concerned about people meta-ing the test then do what goon did and add ways for it to be spoofed. You can inject people with lingblood and they will throw false positives, and there are methods of obtaining lingblood outside of drawing it from changelings. (in fact there is a good bartender drink made from it and vodka)

even if you dont do a fucking test, just remove the fucking free respawns and comms. It isnt hard.

[SaveVatznick]

my post

In the same sentence you suggest "make it more like the source material get rid of the rest" and "make it fall over forever when I click on it with a toolbox".
Making lings unable to resurrect from burn damage, however, if they cant already (they cant heal burn damage as it is iirc), is good

They can heal burn damage, it's that fleshmend has a severely reduced effect if they're ablaze.

Maybe I wasn't so clear in that sentence. What I mean is that I think that a lot of what changeling has needs to be stripped away, and once we get it to a state where they don't have the tremendous amount of bullshit they do, things can then start to be added on bit by bit and changed to make them more like the movie. I don't think just cutting out most of their arsenal and then leaving it would make for an interesting antag.

[Togopal]

There should be a way to test for lings and I like Lumbermancers idea more than the blood test because the blood test would just make the server a combination of revs and TTT the moment lings are confirmed

Goon has a fucking ling test and killable lings and they are FINE.

Lings should be a stealth antag and there needs to be actual consequences for going loud. Right now with how lings are there really arent any reasons NOT to murder everyone with your un-disarmable e-sword and easy adrenals, as even if they somehow manage to down you there are buddies available to bail you out because you have fucking free antag-only comms.

If you are concerned about people meta-ing the test then do what goon did and add ways for it to be spoofed. You can inject people with lingblood and they will throw false positives, and there are methods of obtaining lingblood outside of drawing it from changelings. (in fact there is a good bartender drink made from it and vodka)

even if you dont do a fucking test, just remove the fucking free respawns and comms. It isnt hard.

I literally just said there should be a way to test for lings but the fact still remains that changelings can easily be meta'd if it was something that easily verifiable regardless of whether or not changelings went loud or silent. Also goon has a very different codebase and population from ours so comparing the two servers would be ineffective

[Lazengann]

In my opinion, lings don't allow for interesting interactions in practice. With traitors you can investigate their crimes and you have anywhere from twenty to fifty minutes to get to know them well enough to make a judgment call on permabrigging, spacing, or deciding you can trust them enough to make an alliance. Those things are what makes a great round type and interesting stories.

You can't investigate a changeling or their crimes, they leave no evidence. They turn into multiple people so you can't get a feel for their personality. It's impractical to keep them alive because they can call for help, turn into a monkey and escape to become someone else, and more. The idea of a changeling becoming your coworker and you finding out because they're acting differently is a great idea in theory, and I think it was the original intention but it doesn't work when there's 80 people online and the playerbase is too huge to get to know people well.

[Yakumo_Chen]

The biggest difference between ling and traitor is that ling tools are all upgrades of traitor tools.
Innate ling chat > syndie key
Recharging emp / adrenals > implant
No drop esword > esword
Flash protection implant thermals > goggles
Form change > Mulligan

Etc etc

[PKPenguin321]

I think there are a handful of powers that could do with being locked behind needing an absorption or two, and a few that could just be outright removed.

Fleshmend is basically a must-have for any ling that wants to do combat, but also has a good place in stealth IMO, so it should be locked behind maybe 2 absorptions.
Biodegrade to break out of cuffs is just a more direct version of last resort. If you get cuffed and welded into a locker you should have to resort to a drastic measure to get out of there, rather than just instantly deleting it. Should be removed.
EMP screech is INCREDIBLY strong. Where traitors have a choice of an infinite but slow to recharge EMP that only has a tile of range or a long range EMP but with only a handful of shots that have a big delay and tell (EMP grenades), lings get innate, large range, infinite charge. I think the chem cost is fine because by itself it's not great, but lings taking only it and spamming it in key locations to annoy the crew and never actually antagonizing is awful. If it was locked behind maybe 2 absorptions it would require them to at least antagonize a little bit.

Do you guys have any more suggestions or ideas like this? Now's the time to throw them at be so I can implement them before the thaw closes

[Yakumo_Chen]

Secondariallu I also agree with laz that few meaningful interactions exist with lings. Lings mostly lack bargaining chips to work with security. Traitors cab trade tc goods and information for objectives or pardoning. Lings mainly lack that. The beat they can give is names from mostly unshareable ling comms and their word they won't grief. Unless a ling is actively working with you there's no real reason to trust them or give them what they want or keep them alive.

[Xhuis]

I still stand by that ling's very powerful abilities and lack of balance could still be smoothed out greatly by giving them a signature weakness that, while not killing them outright, makes direct attacks much less preferable. I actually tried to do this with fire, by making them primally afraid of fire in a PR, which inhibited a lot of their abilities, made them heat up faster from fire, and in general hugely discouraged going into a massive crowd of people with armblade and armor suit drawn. Kor closed the PR, as he felt that it was a binary "changelings wins if no fire, changeling loses if fire" scenario. I still feel that it'd be better than the "changeling wins" scenario we have right now, but as it stands giving them a large weakness won't make it through the pipeline unless it's done differently.

I feel pretty strongly about ling and think it has a great amount of potential that's been limited by lack of design direction throughout the game's development and has given them a toolbox with reactionary abilities to get out of every situation. Hell, I've contributed to that end result. Making ling fun isn't about just making huge overhauls to the mode until it's fun - I tried that several times now with clockcult and some side antagonists and it doesn't work. That's why all the massive "changeling overhaul!!!!!" PRs fail. It's tiring for maintainers, puts a massive burden on a single person, and more often than not, doesn't actually solve the issues the PR is trying to address.

I'd agree with Save here in that the best way would be to look at the mode as a whole and slowly slice off the parts that make it awful to play against, while making sure you don't neuter the antag into uselessness to play as. Toss in a good heaping of stuff to make it more faithful to the Thing by making it more body-horror and less Prototype and you have a changeling that's ideally not neutered but not ridiculously overpowered. Changelings as-is have:

• stun recovery/immunity
• infinite healing
• inability to permanently die if their body is intact
• concealable energy sword that can't ever be found
• concealable body armor that can't ever be found
• the ability to disguise as anyone

In my less-than-great opinion, the two main thematic parts of the old Thing was the ability to disguise as and assume the body of anyone, and the inability to die permanently. The only thing that kept it away was fire, and although I haven't seen the film, if I recall it didn't respond to massive trauma by just healing and then attacking; it caused some damage and then fled while the scene was in chaos. The paranoia in the Thing wasn't caused because it was wandering through the halls and slaughtering everyone it saw; it was caused because nobody knew where it was. It could be anyone, at any time, and there would be zero indication.

Of course, I have zero idea how to fix that, and my gamemode design has always been less-than-stellar, but I guess it helps to have the main problems on the table, although a lot of people have stated them already. The Thing succeeded because there was one very powerful and deceptive entity that lacked frontal combat capabilities but was unmatched in subterfuge and inducing paranoia. Removing the teamwork part would probably help a lot, or maybe even only making one changeling spawn on traitorchan and removing the changeling mode entirely. A monster who wears many faces doesn't need allies when it has itself!

I think there are a handful of powers that could do with being locked behind needing an absorption or two, and a few that could just be outright removed.

Fleshmend is basically a must-have for any ling that wants to do combat, but also has a good place in stealth IMO, so it should be locked behind maybe 2 absorptions.
Biodegrade to break out of cuffs is just a more direct version of last resort. If you get cuffed and welded into a locker you should have to resort to a drastic measure to get out of there, rather than just instantly deleting it. Should be removed.
EMP screech is INCREDIBLY strong. Where traitors have a choice of an infinite but slow to recharge EMP that only has a tile of range or a long range EMP but with only a handful of shots that have a big delay and tell (EMP grenades), lings get innate, large range, infinite charge. I think the chem cost is fine because by itself it's not great, but lings taking only it and spamming it in key locations to annoy the crew and never actually antagonizing is awful. If it was locked behind maybe 2 absorptions it would require them to at least antagonize a little bit.

Do you guys have any more suggestions or ideas like this? Now's the time to throw them at be so I can implement them before the thaw closes

Locking abilities behind absorptions skews the changeling balance curve. Instead of starting out high up constantly, they start very low, and once they get a few absorptions it ramps up exponentially. In the end, that doesn't solve the problem; it means that the robust players have to murder some people to get all their toys, and the people who aren't robust get slaughtered and thrown in the crematorium. As Vatznick said, with /tg/'s playerbase, the majority of people don't need special powers to kill people; the culture encourages murder, overescalation, and arming to the teeth. All it takes is a water bottle and cablecuffs, and once someone is slipped you can mutesting them and have your absorb then and there.

[PKPenguin321]

Not intended as a ramp up, but rather to force some amount of interaction. EMP screech for example is sometimes used to only technically interact with the crew rather than being a true direct antagonist. If you force them to at least suck out two corpses before doing that then you already have a better antagonist.

Now, if you got more points to get even more powers, then it would be a ramp up, but that's not what I'm proposing.

[The Clowns Pocket]

Chill brah, the days of lings being these hard to use exploitive murder machines is long gone. Nowadays when I roll ling I just troll the crew with the voice changer

[Yakumo_Chen]

xhuis

To be honest I have to agree with others to point out goon ling is perfect here for what you want. A strong solo antag that isn't just a toolbox. Victims become helpers for ling powers (detachable bodyparts using victim minds with helpful functions) and horror form for when stealth stops helping

[oranges]

The reason ling is so powerful is it used to be a solo antag in it's own game mode and there were only three of them to a large pop station.

Now they're just lumped in with tators and their pop scaled heavily.

any attempt at balance while ling exists as both a standalone and joined mode is doomed to fail.

[onleavedontatme]

Lings need to be directed to kill one another again or they need to lose the hivemind or yeah far fewer numbers.

As a solo antag I think they're pretty great. Only thing you cant antag test/randomly search to catch and strong combat abilities make them scary.

[Luke Cox]

I'm going to do my ling write-up later, but as a tl;dr of what I had in mind:

No more of this glorified uplink shit. Lings get ability trees that function similarly to techwebs. 3 linear upgrade paths to keep it simple (possibly one for combat abilities, one for stealth abilities, and one for healing abilities). Start with enough points for 2 or 3 abilities, get more from fully absorbing people. If we want more lings turning on people like Kor is suggesting, make lings worth more points when absorbed. No more hive chat.

[Yakumo_Chen]

I could live with just one ling as is in a traitorchan round. Still a shitty antag but at least it solves the "double the antag" problem traitorchan has compared to traitor.

Ling as a standalone mode doesn't exist so I don't see why we can't scale down ling pop massively.

I think any progression centered around murderbone / absorbing braindeads is terrible and doomed to make people hate it more. Again though, I think goon ling at least makes it not god awful.

[ShadowDimentio]

Ling either needs to be a stealth antag or a loud antag, not both.

This horseshit we have now where the ling is practically undetectable unless you literally catch them with their dick proboscis out AND them being as strong as wizards in combat is fucking stupid.

Or, and this is what I'd prefer, we just fucking remove the mode. We removed fucking clockcult and it had fewer issues than ling does.

[Cobby]

Honestly just make the changeling like the movie it came from. Right now, they're an antag that is undetectable until they do something blatantly ling-y, and they just end up being murderbone machines. Changelings have tools to deal with literally any damage they sustain and are guaranteed to at least survive till the end of the round.

I hate this argument "make it like the movie" because the whole premise of "The Thing" was finding its hardcounter and hardtell that obviously can't exist in a round-based open-source game without heavy RP restrictions or large balances in their favor which will just be a reskinned version of what we have now.

The reason ling is so powerful is it used to be a solo antag in it's own game mode and there were only three of them to a large pop station.

Now they're just lumped in with tators and their pop scaled heavily.

any attempt at balance while ling exists as both a standalone and joined mode is doomed to fail.

Pure-Ling hasn't been in rot for a while iirc so we already are at the 50% mark

Also am I missing it???? WHERE ARE THE PARASTING POSTS????

[Lazengann]

Sometimes things are cool in movies and don't need to leave the movies

[ShadowDimentio]

Also am I missing it???? WHERE ARE THE PARASTING POSTS????

I've established my legacy. But at this point parasting isn't coming back and I'm ok with that so long as ling is finally put out of its misery and removed.

[Gamarr]

Remove Changeling mode. Merge with Cult. Flesh-monsters are the dogs of Nar-sie in their war against gears and metal.

[onleavedontatme]

I hate this argument "make it like the movie" because the whole premise of "The Thing" was finding its hardcounter and hardtell that obviously can't exist in a round-based open-source game without heavy RP restrictions or large balances in their favor which will just be a reskinned version of what we have now.

[ohnopigeons]

I miss the days when lings had to manually suck out DNA with a proboscis. That's my only opinion of current lings.

[Selea]

meanwhile, make the changeling like the movie it came from is solution.
Because even if we know, how to check or changeling and roast it, it's hard to do.Because if check is relatively hard to perform, you can't fry entire crew to find out ,who is who.
We can't have saspens, lie it was in movie, but it will be fun.

BTW, there are more ways to kill/contain changeling:
1.cryo with zombiepowder/chloral/bacchus blessing:good night, sweet prince!
2.kitchen spikes with emitter:if you can't kill it, it's still painful.
3.supermatter:bright way to go.
4.disposal loop:treat him like a trashbag!
5.mind transfer potion:Dragon is dead.All hail new dragon!
6.elecrtogrille+conveyor:shoking welcome.
7.rwalls cage:ouibliette worked since middleage!
8.shield generator gib:sometimes shield is a sword
9.lock it in incenerator:burn,baby!burn!
10.singulo:feed lord singuloth!

Possibly there are much more ways.I've posted only options, which worked.

[The Clowns Pocket]

itt discussion rages about overhauling ling, nothing is done

[Selea]

Honestly, there are hope only for 3 persons:
Goofball:He may try to port goonlings, because it's from goon.Barely he will finish it, throught.
Kevinz:I could suspect somehing like this from him.But he has relatively clear plans, what he will do next.So it will happen not this year.
Robustin:Among all guys, who could be salty enougt, only he can do such big PRs and capable to code good enought.It has 50% chance to be merged, throught.Because maintainers will have headache from such big PR and arguing about it.

Otherwise barely someone will do overhaul.

[bandit]

if we're going to gate things behind absorptions then we should go all the way and just restore old (2013-era) ling

[ShadowDimentio]

if we're going to gate things behind absorptions then we should go all the way and just restore old (2013-era) ling

This, it can't make ling any more shit.

[Kingfish]

https://github.com/HippieStation/Hippie ... /pull/6690
https://github.com/HippieStation/Hippie ... /pull/7063
hippie is doing a fucking better job than tg right now

[Armhulen]

https://github.com/HippieStation/Hippie ... /pull/6690
https://github.com/HippieStation/Hippie ... /pull/7063
hippie is doing a fucking better job than tg right now

>tfw I did all of the action buttons for that pr

[Fatal]

Those hippie nerfs seem nice, why don't we start with that

[Luke Cox]

The hippie nerfs are a band-aid. Ling is broken because it can pick and choose a bunch of different abilities and become impervious to basically everything. None of the abilities are broken in a vacuum, it's combinations of various abilities that make ling broken. Implement a skill tree with powerful skills spaced out enough to where lings can't get them together, and ling is fixed.

[kevinz000]

Mandatory "security just needs better players" post from someone with ~366 hours of security play time with all antags off

Sec can't do jack shit to lings. Stuns don't work, lasers don't work, they can sax away faster than you can chase them and if they leave your sight they can completely change appearances and instantly lose you.

Have you tried disable mode it's better than taser mode it tends to work better on adrenals
>Lasers don't work
What the fuck are you smoking?

[Rustledjimm]

Can I just repeat here that I hate ling and it's the only antag I have refused to ever play.

Please nerf. I don't have any input or ideas sorry because I've played it once about 3 years ago and never touched it since but I'm just asking nicely can we please nerf it somehow.

[Lazengann]

I have ling enabled because if I get it then there's one less ling to absorb me in maint