Protects Comdom, Head of Shitcurity, and security from enthralling

[Bxil]

🆑Bxil
tweak: We are pleased to announce that Nanotrasen has managed to create a better mindshield implant which prevents shadowlings from enthralling your colleagues.
/:cl:

PS: Apologies for doing this from the webeditor, won't happen again

[Aurorablade]

It's like that intentionally and makes them take longer to thrall.

[FlattestGuitar]

@Aurorablade this makes implanted people impossible to thrall.

[Bxil]

@Aurorablade
Intentional? Really? Didn't notice from the 5 lines of fluff made up for it.

[KasparoVy]

Make minds shielded again. 👽

[Aurorablade]

This is a bad concept really cause it just presents a mind shield everyone meta. Now you can do that on cult but cult has a bit more freedom to rebound back. Shadowlings on the other hand can only thrall when hatched and need to rely on thralls to get a foot hold. As the moment they hit light they are fuckdiddlered.

[Bxil]

Shadowlings win almost all the time.
I don't see your point.

[alexkar598]

Thanks for making the pr

[tigercat2000]

I'm against this. Shadowlings are able to ignore loyalty/mindshield implants for a reason - they need the extra help from every department. The preparation they have to do first is costly enough.

[Tayyyyyyy]

I think there are better ways to balance a game mode than to make it more similar to other game modes.

[EvadableMoxie]

If the intention is to keep command and security from being able to be thralled, while not creating the 'Order 100 mindshields and mindshield everyone' meta, then perhaps the solution is to have 2 tiers of mindshields. Security and command spawn with high tier mindshields that are immune to thralling, but all mindshields on station or ones that are ordered are the lower tier which can be burned through by shadowlings.

This solution is also somewhat scalable as we can control who gets the high tier mindshields. If all of sec is too much, then maybe just the command and the warden get the upgraded verisons, while normal officers have normal shields. We could even scale it based on population, such as the first 3 security officers get upgraded shields, the rest don't.

[bigfatbananacyclops]

You're forcing shadowlings to perma kill all mindshielded people, this is not fun to take out players out of the game.

Vampire thralling also doesnt work against mindshield.

[Bxil]

What everyone forgets to consider here is, once a single mindshielded person is thralled, it is basically over. A single person losing can win the entire round for the shadowlings.

[Shadeykins]

I'd rather see how things shake out if the icy veins removal passes.

Shadowlings are tremendously overpowered either way and--while powers are a contributing factor--pretty much as soon as you get a thralled sec officer it's game over. This does mean slings/thralls will probably kill mindshielded people, but as it stands if you manage to get a mindshielded anyone (Captain, Blueshield, HoS, Sec Officer) the slings immediately snowball.

Whether or not removing Icy Veins or thralling Mindshielded people is the solution, I'm not sure--but we should certainly be attempting something.

[SkeletalElite]

Well time for every sec officer that walks into maint to be get swarmed by a shadowling and 5 thralls that will space their corpse

Edit: Now instead of being thralled a thrall will take their gear and essentially fill the exact some role they would have filled. Makes very little difference

[Kyep]

I suggested this on the forum thread, because I have observed that shadowlings almost always win, because sec gets thralled and then they have nobody opposing them - and sec helping them.

What I did not count on, at the time, was the idea that cargo could simply order 100 mindshields and render most of the crew immune to enthrall, tipping the balance too far in the other direction. Yes, mindshields can be removed... but mass-mindshielding crew might be too powerful if this was added. Maybe?

[Bxil]

What I am thinking now is, maybe it's worth it to try.
If this gets merged and maybe after one month of waiting it turns out that shadowlings are basically dead because of this, then I will revert myself.

[Shadeykins]

@Kyep To play devil's advocate, mindshields are already leveraged in Shadowling rounds--either to tell who's legit or by shadowling thralls themselves who steal the mindshield and implant themselves to trick everyone.

[davidchan13]

Stop using 'command' when describing Loyalty implanted crew. Only 2 Heads of staff have them.

[Bxil]

Silly me, let me fix that.

Note: Also, it's mindshield not loyalty.

[davidchan13]

'Makes Mindshield prevent Thralling' might be a better title since they can be implanted mid round, and will if this PR goes through.

[Pennwick]

Feels like its going too far. Plus it means that captured security players are removed from the round and the only real change is that you don't get a thrall but you still get all the gear. The fact that Security players aren't butchered is one thing that Shadowling has over other gamemodes. If mindshields make you immune its gonna be a sudden glare, veil, and instead of thralling it'll be a swift murdering.

Maybe instead mindshields could let out a yelp over radio when they recognize they're about to burn out. Similar to death alarms but without a location, only a name. This would make the identity of the captured officer known. Letting the crew know not to trust them. It would also alert the crew to the fact there are Shadowlings, so a security officer is a LOUD pick. Perhaps instead of burning out completely the mindshield could go into alarm mode, displaying a '!' instead of the green dot. This means that thralled officers are still powerful but much less stealthy. Plus a player doesn't get removed from the round.

[Aurorablade]

if people didn't single file into dark tunnels when shadowlings were called we might not have a issue.

[Bxil]

I've had another idea recently. How about having both a mindshield and a tumor causing you random stuns over time?

[Vivalas]

Putting up a bunch it shadowling nerf PRs separately is going to make balancing shadowlings difficult as everyone is just going to throw their different solutions up instead of one PR where people can pick and choose various options

[tigercat2000]

This is going to be closed. Disallowing security from being thralled is too large of a nerf, and means that Shadowlings wouldn't really have any way to combat sec aside from trying to conventionally killing them.

[Bxil]

Well, I tried.