Rampages

[Grek]

Well it's a good idea to find out if you are really dealing with a changeling or any other antag for that matter before you kill them. I don't buy that people don't know if a person is a antag since if someone is rampaging I think it's safe to assume they are a antag and therefor safe to kill.

Its not really self defense that's a problem, so much as proactive other-defense. If you hear someone stammer out, "Help ling medbay!" over the radio, do you drop everything and go investigate, or do you ignore it? By the time you get there, they'll probably already be absorbed. There's no corpse to clone. If only one or two people arrive to investigate, or these people aren't well armed, the ling will kill the investigators and eat them, getting even more powerful. Even if enough people do arrive, the ling can probably escape and unless you actually see the changling absorbing someone, you can't just detain everyone for blood tests without risking the admins (and probably the crew) shitting on you for metagaming/tryharding.

After a while, people just start ignoring calls for help and start carrying instant death chem beakers for self defense. After all, nobody else is coming, so you need something that can one shot a ling in 3 seconds or less regardless of how cheap or exploity your answer is.