Changelings, and why they're just too damn powerful

[Ali0en]

Can we just discuss lings please, and how to make them not so horrible?

-Can rapidly heal
-Neurotoxin sting practically knocks you out until death and can be used while incapacitated, handcuffed, etc (HAVE TO KILL IT DEAD TO NOT GET DEATH STUNG, FUCK PRISONERS)
-Hallucinogenic sting will cause bad hallucinations and will randomly knock you out for medium to large amount of time (WHY DOES IT NEED 3 STINGS THAT KNOCK YOU OUT???)
-Can once again after an update revive from the dead infinitely, must be gibbed (that plus neurotoxin I mean come on it'll revive in like 25 seconds with all abilities off of cooldown; caught with your pants down on the way to the gibber)
-Lesser form (monkey transform) that is basically a really good freedom implant that regenerates and removes handcuffs (again no prisoners ever, and if you catch them? they'll switch back to human and destroy your cuffs again)
-Acid spit stuns borgs (why???)
-Can frame people and cause havoc with mimic voice
-The headspider, which is another hand holding crutch for changelings to enter the game, AGAIN, even though they can just regenerate back to life (screws over lings who eat lings; can't go screaming into medbay that you ate a ling and got spidered)
-Absorbing takes people out of the game forever (really who actually turns husks into borgs these days)
-Space does not harm them AT ALL (would be fine if it wasn't for E V E R Y T H I N G else)
-Abomination form (again would be fine without every other Mary Sue ability as it throws away stealth)

Honestly my biggest points are the neuro sting while handcuffed/incapped and the lesser form spam. Say you have 3 officers (very rare thing in itself) who simultaneously respond to a ling call. They all enter at the same time. Officer A gets acid spat on, Officer B gets neuro stung, and officer C gets hallucine stung. Officer A goes down. While Officer B is applying the handcuffs, Officer C is killing the ling after handcuffing it. Officer B shortly passes out, is rapidly dying, and can not be woken up. Officer C cannot move properly and keeps falling unconcious. During this, the ling turns into monkey form and is uncuffed. Officer A gets back up from the acid spit and kills it, then cuffs it. As he is dragging it to the gibber, the changeling revives and turns back into a human, removing his handcuffs. With his abilities off cooldown, the changeling dumps all stings and spit into officer A and he dies.

That's all with an ideal sec force of 3, who actually bother responding to a call for help. The only real way to kill a ling these days is a crew mob, which is rare, or setting the entire room on fire, which is probably bannable.

I feel they're just way too damn good for what they should be: quiet killing machines until horror form. Instead they're rambo with drug abilities and death crutches.

[Frank_Stein]

Maybe we should just get rid of acid spit as an ability? The stings should be enough.

[Ed Venture]

Here are a couple ideas on how to balance the Changelings.

-Nerf some of their abilities or flat out remove some.
-Make it so most of their powers have a longer cool-down
-Add some other way to kills them, It's starting to become way too common for people to just wall the changeling in a area forcing the player to do nothing for a hour.
-Make borgs immune to acid spit. Seeing as they are already so powerful this would be a welcome change.
-Possibly make to where they cannot transform into a monkey when handcuffed
-Get rid of speed regeneration
-Add some sort of muzzle so they can't split acid or inject venom so we can actually arrest them if we want.
-Possibly make it so when you transform into another human or monkey all of your powers are temporarily unusable. Changelings so focus on stealth so you should be heavily punished for being caught

[Winklabom]

I agree, changelings are just monstrously overpowered and it has become far too common for one to eat the near entirety of the crew.

The acid spit should be just that: acid that you spit at someone and it burns their face off or something.

It should not knock you out because that's what the neurotoxin sting is for.

[Dauntasa]

Honestly my biggest points are the neuro sting while handcuffed/incapped and the lesser form spam. Say you have 3 officers (very rare thing in itself) who simultaneously respond to a ling call. They all enter at the same time. Officer A gets acid spat on, Officer B gets neuro stung, and officer C gets hallucine stung. Officer A goes down. While Officer B is applying the handcuffs, Officer C is killing the ling after handcuffing it. Officer B shortly passes out, is rapidly dying, and can not be woken up. Officer C cannot move properly and keeps falling unconcious. During this, the ling turns into monkey form and is uncuffed. Officer A gets back up from the acid spit and kills it, then cuffs it. As he is dragging it to the gibber, the changeling revives and turns back into a human, removing his handcuffs. With his abilities off cooldown, the changeling dumps all stings and spit into officer A and he dies.

yes, if 3 people show up to fight the changeling at the same time, and are complete idiots, it will kill them

here's another scenario:
the captain and a staff assistant show up

the ling spits acid at the staff assistant and then neurostings the captain. The captain shoots the changeling 8 times with his laser gun. It dies. The staff assistant loots its body and then throws it into the crusher. The captain spends 20 minutes slamming into doors in Medbay looking for Mannitol. The end.

[Amuys]

I don't really think that changeling is OP, just that acid spit is kinda weird since it's a homing instant-knockout loogie that goes through any headwear.

[UrsulaMejor]

Honestly my biggest points are the neuro sting while handcuffed/incapped and the lesser form spam. Say you have 3 officers (very rare thing in itself) who simultaneously respond to a ling call. They all enter at the same time. Officer A gets acid spat on, Officer B gets neuro stung, and officer C gets hallucine stung. Officer A goes down. While Officer B is applying the handcuffs, Officer C is killing the ling after handcuffing it. Officer B shortly passes out, is rapidly dying, and can not be woken up. Officer C cannot move properly and keeps falling unconcious. During this, the ling turns into monkey form and is uncuffed. Officer A gets back up from the acid spit and kills it, then cuffs it. As he is dragging it to the gibber, the changeling revives and turns back into a human, removing his handcuffs. With his abilities off cooldown, the changeling dumps all stings and spit into officer A and he dies.

yes, if 3 people show up to fight the changeling at the same time, and are complete idiots, it will kill them

here's another scenario:
the captain and a staff assistant show up

the ling spits acid at the staff assistant and then neurostings the captain. The captain shoots the changeling 8 times with his laser gun. It dies. The staff assistant loots its body and then throws it into the crusher. The captain spends 20 minutes slamming into doors in Medbay looking for Mannitol. The end.

8 lasers is Not even halfway enough to put down a changeling

[BaneOfGiygas]

See, here's the big problem here. The main thought process behind the Changeling is that it's a big huge monstrosity that requires a good portion of the crew banding together and coming up with a plan to take the thing down, even if that plan is just "run at it with lasers".

The inherent problem is that trying to get any more than maybe two or three people to cooperate on this server is difficult to the point of infamy, and the sheer number of crew members who fail to give a shit when a changeling's running around serves to make the changeling infinitely more difficult to beat.

[Paineframe]

8 lasers is Not even halfway enough to put down a changeling

Having been on the wrong end of a laser as a ling, it definitely is way more than enough. Now, how long they stay down is a different story, but in my experience the crew absolutely loves to gang up on obvious changelings that can't run away (just look at shambler dogpiles), so you only need to incapacitate them for a short time to call down a stampede of welder-wielding graysuits on them.

[Dauntasa]

Honestly my biggest points are the neuro sting while handcuffed/incapped and the lesser form spam. Say you have 3 officers (very rare thing in itself) who simultaneously respond to a ling call. They all enter at the same time. Officer A gets acid spat on, Officer B gets neuro stung, and officer C gets hallucine stung. Officer A goes down. While Officer B is applying the handcuffs, Officer C is killing the ling after handcuffing it. Officer B shortly passes out, is rapidly dying, and can not be woken up. Officer C cannot move properly and keeps falling unconcious. During this, the ling turns into monkey form and is uncuffed. Officer A gets back up from the acid spit and kills it, then cuffs it. As he is dragging it to the gibber, the changeling revives and turns back into a human, removing his handcuffs. With his abilities off cooldown, the changeling dumps all stings and spit into officer A and he dies.

yes, if 3 people show up to fight the changeling at the same time, and are complete idiots, it will kill them

here's another scenario:
the captain and a staff assistant show up

the ling spits acid at the staff assistant and then neurostings the captain. The captain shoots the changeling 8 times with his laser gun. It dies. The staff assistant loots its body and then throws it into the crusher. The captain spends 20 minutes slamming into doors in Medbay looking for Mannitol. The end.

8 lasers is Not even halfway enough to put down a changeling

I have never seen a changeling take 8 lasers and remain standing, even in Abomination form.

[Iatots]

The strenght of a changeling comes from people not caring.
When does sec cooperate efficiently? When do people start sweating after a husk has been found in maint? Why do people not care when their coworker disappears without a word and doesn't answer radio calls?
When does anybody even react anymore to someone crying for help on the radio?
There is a solo mentality going on, every man an island.
I agree that the instant knockout is a bit too much, and that neurotoxin making you severly impaired as opposed to dead is preferable, but 1v1 against a space horror by surprise, you should have no chance.

[DyssalC]

The strenght of a changeling comes from people not caring.
When does sec cooperate efficiently? When do people start sweating after a husk has been found in maint? Why do people not care when their coworker disappears without a word and doesn't answer radio calls?
When does anybody even react anymore to someone crying for help on the radio?
There is a solo mentality going on, every man an island.
I agree that the instant knockout is a bit too much, and that neurotoxin making you severly impaired as opposed to dead is preferable, but 1v1 against a space horror by surprise, you should have no chance.

Ya, this is pretty much it, especially the sec part.

Are you trying to organize sec? Haha, fat chance. Unless you're the HoS/HoP/Captain and you've got a COMPETENT sec team you're not organizing shit. Quite frequently one of those 3 people will rope in outside help like doctors or staff assistants to help fight lings because of how unruly and uncoordinated security usually is. And even when you do have competent sec sometimes they carry the mentality that hunting down a ling is wrong.

Not to mention people will completely ignore somebody walking into a room completely fine, somebody walking next to them, them falling down, and then getting dragged away into a maint tunnel by the person next to them, or ignore the cries of help coming from the office next to them, not even bothering to look through a window and report it to sec.

[Mofleaker]

Changelings should be given some incentive to actually use subterfuge and mimicry. Most just run around maintenance spitting acid at lone people, which is really fucking boring.

[Berrik]

Changelings die easily to a mob of people. They're fine as it is, they're supposed to be 1v1 combat monsters.

[BaneOfGiygas]

The overall problem here seems to be that the number of ways a changeling can fuck someone up is very, VERY disproportionate with what they're supposed to do. Changelings are, though I am speaking on presumptions here, supposed to be sneaky, masters of subterfuge, able to leap at lone crew members and take them down before they have a chance to scream. Why the everloving HELL, then, would you give them the complete inability to properly die and a whole motherload of abilities that they can use to mess up about three people at once? If changelings are supposed to be suited to 1v1 combat, why do they have an arsenal that could rival that of a fully decked-out nuclear operative?

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, monkey-transforming, borderline unkillable rampagers, then there is a problem with the design.