Headspidered victim dying should let the spider instantly take over

[Angel]

Currently, if you head spider someone and they die, the headspider dies with them. The problem with that is that, if you get head spidered, you can just suicide and the spider will die, and you can just be cloned or revived through some other method, while the changeling is now permanently dead and countered through a very easy and cheesy method. My suggestion instead is, if the person you're trying to take over dies, you take over the body instantly, that way suiciding would be just handing over control to the changeling, and instead it encourages more getting the surgery to remove the spider.

[Kotlol]

Fair balance change. "Just suiciding" yourself in anyway shape or form (even jumping into the crusher or burner) should result into the changeling gaining something.

Even popping out safely as a headspider again with extra DNA.

[ju45he]

Makes a lot of sense, instantly hard-countering the last chance that an antag has at almost no detriment to yourself sounds unintended.

[Silent Majority]

The spider ticks as a disease and can process within seconds of infection.

I would argue that if surgery is to be the prefered methode infection needs to be longer.

Further; if that is the case let the headspider spend dna go split open its chest and bite off a surgeons arms mid removal

[Froggit_Dogget]

The spider ticks as a disease and can process within seconds of infection.

I would argue that if surgery is to be the prefered methode infection needs to be longer.

Further; if that is the case let the headspider spend dna go split open its chest and bite off a surgeons arms mid removal

yeah ive been headspidered in the medbay operating theater, and still not had time to cut the head out (litterly seconds). While suiciding is disgusting counterplay, if thats fixed it should also take atleast 30-45 seconds to be fully taken over instead of 5.

[Angel]

The spider ticks as a disease and can process within seconds of infection.

I would argue that if surgery is to be the prefered methode infection needs to be longer.

Further; if that is the case let the headspider spend dna go split open its chest and bite off a surgeons arms mid removal

yeah ive been headspidered in the medbay operating theater, and still not had time to cut the head out (litterly seconds). While suiciding is disgusting counterplay, if thats fixed it should also take atleast 30-45 seconds to be fully taken over instead of 5.

The time it takes to take over seems pretty random, I have had a headspider take literally 2-3 minutes to take over, while other times I heard people saying they got instantly taken over, so yeah I would like it to be consistent, and suicide to not be just a fuck you to the headspider.

[Mouse]

The host dying used to not kill the headspider.  I think it was supposed to take over on death but it didn't work very well, resulting in things like a living headspider in a decapitated corpse* or a living headspider inside the enzymatic reclaimer that could survive it being activated.**

*An admin teleported it out and it reinfected me when i went to get my corpse.
**An admin teleported me out due to a misunderstanding.  I was fine being stuck there I just wanted to be renamed "enzymatic reclaimer" so medbay would know who was demanding to be fed dead bodies.

[Emimiyu]

Imo, I prefer if someone can kill themselves out of headspider but not through suicide command. Sometimes surgery is just not an option and death is one. It should be able to disable the option to suicide, but I assume it will cause weird jank or a problem when something unpredictable happened.

[KikiMofo]

I personally feel that if you are going to suicide or somehow else kill yourself because of a headspider that is very rude.
You are already going to be dead and the only thing you do is spites the changeling that spidered you.
Its one thing to go and get the spider removed from you but its another to kill yourself just to take another player out of the game.
Especially considering the result is you thinking you will be revived for it. Feels cheap.
I think if you get headspidered your corpse should be a husk if you somehow die before the spider comes out.

[Nerkson]

I play on the RP servers and my feedback will be focused on that area as a result.

I wouldn't call it cheap to consider suicide an option out of the headspider. Is it cheap to jump on a grenade and block to save everyone elses life at the cost of yours? As it stands, the headspider tends to happen right after death to escape in the post-violence chaos, or if security decides to split up and only have one officer drag the corpse to the incinerator - but usually this is a group affair. Once the group sees the headspider hop into John Staffie, they're just gonna beat John to death and then drag him to be incinerated OR drag him to medical where they fail to remove the headspider and they then beat him to death. It's a very dramatic thing to try to stop the headspider and I think that drama is well suited for the RP side of things.

We should look at the headspider form from a broad level then - What is the purpose? To give the changeling a second chance, but its not guaranteed. Why is it not guaranteed? The spider itself is fast but weak, and if your victim has bad luck they could be taken over near immediately, or you could have bad luck and they cut you out. I believe a good starting point here should be standardizing the time (if at all) it takes for someone to be infected by the headspider. As others have stated I've seen it last almost two minutes but usually its either near instant or within ten seconds from what I've seen.

It might also be worth considering changing how the headspider form works as a whole. Admittedly that consideration is far more vague and requires far more thought into it.

[Angel]

I play on the RP servers and my feedback will be focused on that area as a result.

I wouldn't call it cheap to consider suicide an option out of the headspider. Is it cheap to jump on a grenade and block to save everyone elses life at the cost of yours? As it stands, the headspider tends to happen right after death to escape in the post-violence chaos, or if security decides to split up and only have one officer drag the corpse to the incinerator - but usually this is a group affair. Once the group sees the headspider hop into John Staffie, they're just gonna beat John to death and then drag him to be incinerated OR drag him to medical where they fail to remove the headspider and they then beat him to death. It's a very dramatic thing to try to stop the headspider and I think that drama is well suited for the RP side of things.

We should look at the headspider form from a broad level then - What is the purpose? To give the changeling a second chance, but its not guaranteed. Why is it not guaranteed? The spider itself is fast but weak, and if your victim has bad luck they could be taken over near immediately, or you could have bad luck and they cut you out. I believe a good starting point here should be standardizing the time (if at all) it takes for someone to be infected by the headspider. As others have stated I've seen it last almost two minutes but usually its either near instant or within ten seconds from what I've seen.

It might also be worth considering changing how the headspider form works as a whole. Admittedly that consideration is far more vague and requires far more thought into it.

I see your point, but I still feel like having to surgery the spider out would lead to more drama and RP, since it also makes it so you have to include medical, or someone able to perform surgery to remove the spider. Also, yeah spider taking a consistent amount of time to take over, instead of how currently it either takes 10 seconds or 2 minutes, would be much better. I would argue surgery would lead to better drama and roleplay, since suicide you could just instantly succumb and that's that, while you dying the spider takes over means there's more drama and the stakes are even higher to be able to successfully perform the surgery. Also, means you could try to perform emergency surgery using a nearby table, if transport to medbay seems like it would take too long and the spider would take over, but with the spider taking over if they die, thats an added risk, while currently doing emergency surgery on a table with not the proper tools would means little to no risk, since if the person dies, the spider also dies. I play both classic and RP, and believe such a change would lead to more interesting scenarios on both servers.

[KikiMofo]

I believe personally that the head spider should remove your ability to kill yourself because its taking over your body and doesn't want the host body to die. Simple as that.

[Silent Majority]

Actually heres my deal:

No suicide under a headspider

No suicide to MAKE a headspider.

I have seen, on rp, lings sometimes chain suiciding because headspider is a fast easy almost uncounterable kill. I feel like if the counterplay if suicide is removed then the play of holding your breath to make your head come off and escape from a portabrig is fun. This means sec also has to CONTAIN a ling before execution and gives lots of escape and conflict

[Nerkson]

So I checked the wiki and according to it:

>>> If you successfully implant yourself down a victim, then unless they get immediate surgery or are killed (the suicide command is disabled), you'll control of their body and live again.

So it seems the suicide command is automatically suppressed, which means the method of suicide people are talking about must be grinder/incinerator/other methods of immense damage quickly.

[KikiMofo]

So I checked the wiki and according to it:

>>>  If you successfully implant yourself down a victim, then unless they get immediate surgery or are killed (the suicide command is disabled), you'll control of their body and live again.

So it seems the suicide command is automatically suppressed, which means the method of suicide people are talking about must be grinder/incinerator/other methods of immense damage quickly.

Yeah I coulda swore that was already the case but since this thread was talking about suicide I figured it was changed. Glad to see it wasn't.
Though I'd like the rules to be changed that if you are head spidered you should do what you can to survive because the head spider is semi controlling you.