Mindslave Cloner rework

[Yellow]

So currently the mindslave cloner has two things that occur when someone gets it:

It is either:
-Installed into medbay and instantly removed and trashed

-Installed on some random maint cloner, which I have seen cause people who are antag fishing to go and get a scan in it with minimal RP to justify it and what not

Both of these are very obviously poor, and have very low success rates for the huge cost of the cloner. I'm not saying it cant work, but in general, and especially on RP, it is significantly more difficult to convince someone to hop in the pod of the giant red flashing cloner.

The idea is for a minor buff to the Mindslave Cloner with a new item that comes with it, a hand scanner.

It would work similarly to a mechanics scanner, however would take 1-1.5 seconds to complete a full scan of a person. From there the scan can be transported back to the mindslave cloner console and have their records inserted.

So this way you don't need to transport people or bodies long distances, you can scan them, kill them, then go back to wherever your cloner is and insert the scan and clone them.

If I am remembering correctly, the mindslave cloner is 8 TC and can be almost instantly disabled as soon as anyone spots it with relative ease. I think this would balance it out to being less of a realtively useless traitor item, and allow for different RP than just "hey, want to get a clone scan in my 'totally not antag maker' cloner?".

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it is to be noted that while I have had my fair share of time on main, I've never seen a snowball of a mindslave cloner, I'm not saying it hasn't happened, I've just never seen people take that over the c-saber or literally anything else.

[DioChasek]

Honestly it should be a bit more subtle of an item. I would nix the sprite for the module entirely in favor of something like the machine kicking around a bit more than usual, a tell that can have multiple explanations as opposed to yes this an antag device and it is dealt with seconds after it is installed. Because honestly as it is you are lucky to get a single use out of it. And at that point you may as well take the hit for the deluxe mindslave instead.

But the hand scanner would also be a welcome change.

[kyle2143]

I think that sounds reasonable, as long as the hand scanner can only have one person's data in it at a time (or maybe require data disks? Might be OP) and you have to manually bring the hand scanner back to the cloning computer and slap it to upload.

[Cal]

hand scanner should need a disk inserted, imo.

also huge no to changing the visual look of the cloner.

[AmazingDragons]

Just let the hand scanner write to data disks, which already can be used to scan into cloners (see sec cloning disks).

Imo changing the look of the cloner is a good idea. There ought to be a middle ground between the absurdly obvious change and the cloners being indistinguishable. Forcing people to deal with not being sure whether or not their character knows that it's a mindslave cloner isn't a great mechanic and just ends up being useless aside from letting antag fishers get their wish.

[DioChasek]

Just let the hand scanner write to data disks, which already can be used to scan into cloners (see sec cloning disks).

Imo changing the look of the cloner is a good idea. There ought to be a middle ground between the absurdly obvious change and the cloners being indistinguishable. Forcing people to deal with not being sure whether or not their character knows that it's a mindslave cloner isn't a great mechanic and just ends up being useless aside from letting antag fishers get their wish.

Pretty much sums up my thoughts on it. As it stands it is probably the least reliable piece of syndicate gear.(Meme gear like the syndicate hat, and boom boots aside that is.)

[Cal]

Pretty much sums up my thoughts on it. As it stands it is probably the least reliable piece of syndicate gear.(Meme gear like the syndicate hat, and boom boots aside that is.)

I assume you play mostly on classic, a mindslaver with 0 trace that you  can build offstation and if you're savvy setup a teleporter or something with? It's not that unreliable. Just hard to get started.

[DioChasek]

I play mostly on rp Cal. Add in the generally slower body count and the resulting increase of more attention to little things like the giant flashing red modules on the cloner and even the most generous rp players are going to put the kibosh on your cloner in a hurry.
Meanwhile I can get a guaranteed permanent mindslave for the same amount of tc as the base cloner module and two for 2 more tc than a full kit version and I dont have to worry about getting shut down before using it. A fact that is compounded by the added issue of finding a location getting it setup, and not getting caught doing so.
If that isn't the definition of unreliable I don't know what is.

[Cal]

I play mostly on rp Cal. Add in the generally slower body count and the resulting increase of more attention to little things like the giant flashing red modules on the cloner and even the most generous rp players are going to put the kibosh on your cloner in a hurry.

Oh. Just build it off-station. Rp's slow rounds guarantee you'll be able to set it up somewhere secret. Ghost drone factory is a classic. So is space diner.

[Mouse]

I mean, I'm not sure why you'd be picking a traitor item that relies on high bodycounts on RP to begin with.

[RGBDeadSilent]

Make mindslave cloner override Puritan trait. A ton of HoS players run puritan and trying to mindslave clone someone who has puritan is just wasted effort. What if its the first person you kill to start a mindslave army and its just a puritan that pops out and explodes?

Override it, let mindslave armies happen. I've literally seen it twice.

[Cal]

Make mindslave cloner override Puritan trait.

oh christ yes how has nobody suggested this before

[Froggit_Dogget]

Make mindslave cloner override Puritan trait. A ton of HoS players run puritan and trying to mindslave clone someone who has puritan is just wasted effort. What if its the first person you kill to start a mindslave army and its just a puritan that pops out and explodes?

Override it, let mindslave armies happen. I've literally seen it twice.

litterly 90% of the time i use one one of the first 3 people i try to clone is a puritan. It kills momentum so fast.

[Ikea]

I feel like the complaint of its hard to convince people to get in it is an odd one, considering I dont think youre supposed to convince them. Even on roleplay, while I am not an admin, considering youre going to be immediately reviving them, the death can probably be safely less roleplayed then other murder. I think hand scanner would remove a lot of the depth of setting up cloner setups, as in the question of how are you going to get that body to the cloner, and I think thats bad. Theres a lot of interesting calculations that go into where youre going to put a mindslave cloner and thats a really interesting aspect of that item (theres generally a lot of areas in maint you can wall off and make people forget that there was a room there, just dont put the cloner itself adjacent to a wall). Making it override puritan seems fair and good though.

[Lady Birb]

Make mindslave cloner override Puritan trait. A ton of HoS players run puritan and trying to mindslave clone someone who has puritan is just wasted effort. What if its the first person you kill to start a mindslave army and its just a puritan that pops out and explodes?

Override it, let mindslave armies happen. I've literally seen it twice.

Yeah, it should definitely override puritan. If you are done with the round and don't want to be revived just enable DNR.