Changelings, and why they're just too damn powerful

[BaneOfGiygas]

I'm just gonna restate this.

In short: If you are designing a stealth-oriented antagonist type but it ends up being totally feasible and actually LIKELY for them to spend their entire round being unstealthy, acid-spitting, neuro-stinging, borderline unkillable rampagers, then there is a problem with the design.

[Ed Venture]

To be quite honest, good players can really be unstoppable lings. They're straight up unstoppable. Bad players however are very bad lings. Learning curve is pretty steep

I disagree out of all the antags I find Changeling to be the easiest even for new players who have a slight idea on what to do. Really what would help make the changeling better is giving the crew other ways of killing it. Most of the time I just see people stun the changeling and just have a borg (or if they have the RCD) trap it inside walls. Which makes the player who is the changeling trapped all round.

I'm just gonna restate this.

In short: If you are designing a stealth-oriented antagonist type but it ends up being totally feasible and actually LIKELY for them to spend their entire round being unstealthy, acid-spitting, neuro-stinging, borderline unkillable rampagers, then there is a problem with the design.

I agree with this 100% for a antag designed to be a stealthy foe you are not punished at all for not being steathy. Changelings need to reworked and balance I believe most would agree with me on that. They should not be near unstoppable.

[LinkDaWolf]

Which makes the player who is the changeling trapped all round.

if a changeling commits voluntary suicide do they still respawn? cause that'd be really shitty if they were 100% out for the count.

also if this is the only way people think they can fucking get rid of an antagonist there is a problem that needs to be fixed

[Ed Venture]

Which makes the player who is the changeling trapped all round.

if a changeling commits voluntary suicide do they still respawn? cause that'd be really shitty if they were 100% out for the count.

also if this is the only way people think they can fucking get rid of an antagonist there is a problem that needs to be fixed

Nope you can't respawn

[Frank_Stein]

The fact that lesser form is still a changeling power is kinda evidence that it needs some tweaking.

[pizzatiger]

How about we stop arguing about how ling is or is not shitty and instead of expecting the coders to figure something out and start giving suggestions on how the ling can be better.

1-The lings/ling should be forced to transform into the organism they assorb. It can still transform into stuff it has assorbed in the past but it taken alot more dna points then you earn from assorbing a corspe. This makes shitty bill and father jack less of a free meal but a desperation thing

2-Lings acid spit and neruotoxin should both cost a bunch of Dna points to use but has no cooldown

3-Allow the lings lesser form to include most animal types. I include this because i want to be a bee

4-The abomination form should be a perment change. You can also split off your head in this form which will result in a ghost taking control of the body while you run away in the head.The head is easy to kill but is fast and can use nerutoxin sting. It can also crawl down peoples throats if they stand still long enough which allows it the ling to take control of the body instantly

5-Have it so lings can't use medical chems to heal but make the loud healing ablitiy where you stay awake when you heal but your flesh bubbles and stuff have a longer cooldown and make it free to use.

6-The ling can survive in space but they enter a dead like state unless the spend some dna points to wake themselves up.If they don't have enough dna points they can do this for free but there is a super long cooldown

7-The lings have a hive mind. They get nothing for assorbing each other but they are allowed to betray eachother for their own gains.

8-If the ling takes too much burn/brute damage its will enter a semi-Abomination state where it is super obvious and has a slight stronger attack (Blade arms!!!) but doesn't have any cool powers and can't consume people. It can revert back to its regular form if manages to heal itself

[pizzatiger]

Sorry for double post but i forgot to include

9-The ling should have a free stun ablity where the victem is frozen in place and can't talk BUT if the ling moves or if someone attacks the ling the stun is broken

[Dr_Bee]

ling as it currently is wouldnt be so bad if It was always limited to one per round and the round ends when the ling is dead. antags as hard to kill as lings shouldnt have more than one in a round.

[OMJ]

Shamblers are legitimately unstoppable, I fended off about nine people at once yesterday as one

[Sundance]

I unloaded an entire clip of a laser gun (I found a laser gun in space when doing some scavenging) and unloaded an entire clip of an egun, into a changling.
He went abomination after the first clip, he was extremely burnt so it SHOULDN'T of taken it much to finish it off, but a second clip of later, it remained standing.
Holy shit like.

[Lantern]

To be quite honest, good players can really be unstoppable lings. They're straight up unstoppable. Bad players however are very bad lings. Learning curve is pretty steep

yeah the learning curve for new ling players can be pretty harsh. You've gotta be at the least half way decent to get a good Abomination Rampage going. Even then you are pretty likely to get fukin rekt by some joker with a beaker.

[Dauntasa]

So I was talking with someone about this, and finding a happy medium between the old "changelings suck and you can kill abominations by shooting them with a laser gun like 3 times" and the new "changelings are practically invincible and if you see an abomination you should probably just kill yourself". We came up with kind of an idea for balancing that out: changelings should be basically as strong as they are now but have one weakness that can fuck them up real bad.

Basically, setting a changeling on fire should do nasty shit to them beyond just burn damage. A changeling who is on fire should hemorrhage DNA quickly, have their skin melt off, and spray geysers of blood, and eventually die if they remain on fire. A changeling who is on fire should be in extreme danger and have their priorities completely shift to "stop being on fire immediately". Abominations should be immune to the DNA loss and take far, far longer to die from it, but should not be totally safe.

Since using a fire extinguisher on yourself may be impractical when you're being stunned repeatedly by your own blood rebelling and attempting to escape your body, and surrounded by people continuously trying to reignite you, changelings should receive a new power for attempting to escape this situation(maybe it should just replace lesser form since I have no idea why anyone would ever use that). It costs no DNA to use. Upon use, the changeling's main body explodes into gibs, leaving behind just the head with 1 arm attached, and some little spidery legs. This form looks basically like a headspider, but is for escaping rather than infecting anyone. It's fire proof, very fast, can run under people's legs and can hold things, open doors, etc. with its arm. It's extremely vulnerable to damage, though, and the changeling can be quickly killed if caught like this.


The idea behind this weakness is essentially that portable sources of fire are not common enough that this would completely screw changelings, but they are common enough that if a changeling decides to throw stealth out the window the crew can prepare to make his life very miserable.

[BaneOfGiygas]

Perhaps one of the biggest ways to help mitigate the changeling's unstoppableness is to, plain and simple, give them some sort of punishment for being unstealthy. As things stand, changelings never have to worry about getting caught while feeding because they can just neuro+acid the intruder and get TWO meals instead. Perhaps force a cooldown on all changeling abilities during feeding and a while after so that a ling is required to feed in actual secrecy instead of wherever happens to be convenient, lest they be forced to fight without any of their abilities.

[Iatots]

Perhaps one of the biggest ways to help mitigate the changeling's unstoppableness is to, plain and simple, give them some sort of punishment for being unstealthy. As things stand, changelings never have to worry about getting caught while feeding because they can just neuro+acid the intruder and get TWO meals instead. Perhaps force a cooldown on all changeling abilities during feeding and a while after so that a ling is required to feed in actual secrecy instead of wherever happens to be convenient, lest they be forced to fight without any of their abilities.

You are assuming the changeling actually dind't use his spit/neurotox on his first victim. That cooldown you have in mind applies already to all changelings that play stealtily without using weapons/explosives to knock out their prey.

Cooldowns will get you nowhere.

[Walrus]

So I was talking with someone about this, and finding a happy medium between the old "changelings suck and you can kill abominations by shooting them with a laser gun like 3 times" and the new "changelings are practically invincible and if you see an abomination you should probably just kill yourself". We came up with kind of an idea for balancing that out: changelings should be basically as strong as they are now but have one weakness that can fuck them up real bad.

Basically, setting a changeling on fire should do nasty shit to them beyond just burn damage. A changeling who is on fire should hemorrhage DNA quickly, have their skin melt off, and spray geysers of blood, and eventually die if they remain on fire. A changeling who is on fire should be in extreme danger and have their priorities completely shift to "stop being on fire immediately". Abominations should be immune to the DNA loss and take far, far longer to die from it, but should not be totally safe.

Since using a fire extinguisher on yourself may be impractical when you're being stunned repeatedly by your own blood rebelling and attempting to escape your body, and surrounded by people continuously trying to reignite you, changelings should receive a new power for attempting to escape this situation(maybe it should just replace lesser form since I have no idea why anyone would ever use that). It costs no DNA to use. Upon use, the changeling's main body explodes into gibs, leaving behind just the head with 1 arm attached, and some little spidery legs. This form looks basically like a headspider, but is for escaping rather than infecting anyone. It's fire proof, very fast, can run under people's legs and can hold things, open doors, etc. with its arm. It's extremely vulnerable to damage, though, and the changeling can be quickly killed if caught like this.


The idea behind this weakness is essentially that portable sources of fire are not common enough that this would completely screw changelings, but they are common enough that if a changeling decides to throw stealth out the window the crew can prepare to make his life very miserable.

This is an excellent solution. Fire is supposed to be their Achilles heel yet i've seen shamblers shrug it off like it's nothing.