Changeling transformation sting Rule change or outrigth removal

Suggestions
1

Hello Wueue here.
I have a suggestion to make as you probally could have tell from the category.

I find thats lingsa who use the transformation sting to just tranform peopel to ruin their round for no reason or just to be a dick, they should be punished under Rule 7 be exellenct to each other.

Rule 7
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Rule23
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these are the relevant rules for this. as in the discryiption of the antag conduct is written :
Succeeding as an antagonist is not the “goal” of SS13, the goal is for all players to have fun. While there are no friendly antags, don’t seek to intentionally ruin the round for others just because you’re an antagonist, and always remember to be excellent to each other.
they are also not exempt from rule 7.
In the round 41446, Kane semenov ( a changeling) meet me randomly in maint, asked me if i liked my wings, then said would be a shame if soemthgin happend to them. then he transformed stung me too look like him. he did this just to be a dick and fuck with me, which under rule 7 is nto allowed
extract of rule 7: 1. Don’t be a dick. which in this case was.
I made an ahelp and the admin inquestion informed me thats they sadly have to mark this IC.
I accept this thats why i am makign thissuggestion.
antags as said before are nto exepmt from Rule 7 so such a behaviour should be punishable as it is a rulebreak ( yes i know this can be said in a lot of cases where an antag breaks this rule) but are these cases almsot non reverseable expect with the xenobio and/or genetics to restore you to your formerself?
Also most of the time i only see transformation stings be used to turn everyone into the same person for no reason other then hehehehe funnnnnyyyyyyyy!!! it is not
I find this to be more of a soft griefing thing and beign a dick.
either this ability get enforced as such as “being a dick tool” or if abused to just fuck with people as a grief.
I may also suggest the outrigth removal of this ability.
and Yes there are some palyers out there who use it in a good or interesting way but sadly these get massivly overshadowed by the abusers of this who ruin peoples round with it.

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2

Out of all the shit antags can get away with, you complain about transformation stings? Letting antags not antagonize outside their very strict objectives hurts roleplay more than it improves it.

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revs are also a bane of rule breakign i would say. they coudl be good but thats more a player mentally and gamemode problem then what a antag can do.
And i am not saying antags shoudl onyl antagonize their targets and such, but thats stuff thats borders on griefing ( like transform stingign for no reaosn) should fall under Rule 7.
I can also agree it is kinda weird thats they are not semi loosend on the rule, but froma rule standpoint they have to uphold it and i can also see your argument

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4

Honest to god, how much does a transform sting actually grief you? Yes, trying to prove your identity is difficult now, but you still have your ID. Plus that is kind of the point during changeling rounds.
I suggest you either play IPC or come to terms with the fact that sometimes an antag can spin your round differently than planned.

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5

Yeah I’m in the “who cares?” boat. A transformation sting doesn’t round remove you, and helps shield the changeling from accusation because there are several other people who are ALSO them. Its a minor inconvenience at worst, and genuinely helpful at best. Like, what? Sad that you got locked out of your robotics mech? sucks, thats just how it be sometimes. a superior freaking out because you are someone else? explain what happened, or get reconstructive facial surgery (which changes your name back by the way). A race you dont like? ask Xenobio for the unstable mutation toxin and have chem change it into the mutation toxin of your choosing.
It honestly sounds like getting transformed opens up more player interaction, which means its probably a good thing and also makes the round more interesting.

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6

It rarely ever does because players spamming transformation stings are usually just fucking around and have no plans whatsoever besides doing it for lulz, emphasis on “usually” here. I think the ability could use a nerf but that’s not really an urgent topic. Spamming transformation sting is on the same level as spamming teratoma, it does nothing for Rp and just annoys people.

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7

Spamming terraromas is way different though? It creates another, although minor, antagonist and it’s a ghost role.

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8

They are on the same level, as in they annoy players without creating much opportunities for interactions, since their purpose is just to “make people’s lives miserable” and you can’t communicate with them. The only time they somewhat work, is when the ling itself tells them to do stuff, and even then the teratoma has no loyalties. A sentient monkey with rabbies provides better opportunities for RP.

Most of the time, a ling player will spam transformation stings because they know it pisses people off. Or it’s wilchen and they do it so everyone is Kiera Katsura because of a discord meme. As in everything changeling, people don’t exploit the RP potential ling tools provide, hence why we’re here.

9

If we don’t want to straight up remove the transformation sting, maybe it could be changed to last X amounts of minutes on the affected person or at the very least give Geneticists a way to alter the ‘‘gene make-up’’ (which is already a thing) to restore you into your previous form but without being a simple click, i’d say we all hate transformation stings but they do provide a Ling a tool to do plenty of RP scenarios or strats, sadly since the majority of the cases that is used for is ‘‘haha everyone is now the clown!’’ that’s where the focus is

Lings already get away with not being able to be ‘‘tested’’ to confirm they’re one (blood method non existant, BZ removed, MMI surgery frowned upon by admins) and that’s already a problem, i don’t particulary like lings who just transform people for the sake of lulz but if they have a good strategy and a reason to do it, they deserve to have the tool.

1 Like
10

Hmmmm. I am of the mind antags and silicons need to follow Be Excellent to a greater extent, but not in this manner.

For example, I have seen an alarming amount of people who play silicon using their laws as a limitations and not their personality.

This is the reason the administration and players have so much fucking trouble with people on Efficiency, corporate, or basically any law other than Asimov or Crewsimov that does not put the sanctity of lifeforms at 1.

It is not that it is inherently bad or shitty lawset, its just that people will literally stretch, abuse, and use this inherent position of power to do with as they please, not to make a character. Most don’t even pretend to be a machine, and talk exactly as a human would.

Rambling about stupid shit below

There was this AI just today that went out of their way to fuck with me for literally no reason besides that they were not limited to their asimov laws because I was a moth.
I had wanted the bombsuit out of RD’s office because on Delta for bombmaking. I had asked the AI to let me in, and they said “Ask Captain”, which I thought, ‘Hey, fair enough’, and so I asked him and he replied affirmitive. Done deal right? AI replied, "No, I am not obligated ".

What a dick. But hey, if they want to be a shit AI, fine. I don’t care. I guess I will have to burn through the wall with a welder to get it.

I have a suspicion, so I mess up the focuses of the cameras in toxins before going to town. As soon as I break through the wall however, grab the suit, and am out of there. Security is gunning for me.

Disablers, batons, flashes burning the eyes, the whole shebang. I try to talk but its the usual sec routine of 'Harmbaton or the Highway." I manage to speak out that the cap gave me permission, the gears begin to turn in the felinid HoS’s head and I am released. I remark on what is likely to be the forgone conclusion… and yeah, it was the AI that ratted on me.

Not because I had commited any sort of offense to them. Not because they had a lawset or any kind of “RP” reason for their motivations.
It was just because they saw the opportunity to fuck with someone not EXPLICITLY protected under their lawset, and without ‘technically’ breaking the rules, they took it.

Stupid shit ended
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On antags, I have another good example. Swarmers will literally go out of their way to shoot and disarm and try to make life miserable if they detect a whiff of carbon life in the station.
I have seen swarmers literally start to invade, teleport players and eat the shuttle and literally destroy crews means of escape.

Their stated goal is to chomp away to replicate but motherfuckas will literally use them as a easy beat-em-up to fuck over people for no reason. Sure, killin them takes three hits, but 4 minutes later the same asshole is back on you.

THERE IS A REASON many crew consider the round basically fucked completly when swarmers are called.
It is not resources, I have saved the ore silo and all its goodies before and it hasnt changed the outcome one bit.
People feel from time playing the game when the RP is over and its time to just haul ass to end the round as quick as they can.

We all feel it, we all know that feeling. We all act on that feeling. I just want to say it.
Overall, I have seen trans sting be used incredibly tactically that has completely blow sec on its ass, and I have seen it used in meme ways where (some) people manage to actually find humor out of an antag, rather than straight up murderbone.

I had more shit to say but Im too tired and dont feel like writing more shitty APA research essays

I keep editing this crap

2 Likes
11

For the love of god this.

Regarding almost anything an antagonist does, at least consider this statement. Antagonists make rounds different and interesting in unpredictable ways, even if it’s a gimmick that has been done before.

Complaints about antagonists not roleplaying? Fantastic, need a much stronger and vocal voice speaking out against this imo

Complaints that you were totally removed from playing without much option to play or work around it? Worth discussing at least, but sometimes they’re gonna remove people and that needs to be respected

Complaints that an antagonist derailed your plans or did something unexpected that affects how you play without removing the ability to play? Suck it up, go with the flow of things and play out your character in the situatuon. This is an improv environment.

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12

I was transformed sometimes… i just asked xeno for renaming potion

13

the issue is not how hard to reverse it but how stupid the ability even is

have you ever seen anyone use trans sting for anything else outside of making everyone they see some random felinid/moth? you could argue it helps roleplay but the ling obviously is doing it for memes. It would be less bad if it was temporary but since you have to go to multiple departments to fix yourself and that depending on your species you might still not look the same is horrible, and the ling can turn you back in a single alt-click

This feature is just legacy LRP content that shouldn’t be present on a roleplay server, at least one where our players cannot be trusted, I’ve seen good improv with it but it was when it was selectively done and not spammed to hell and back

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14

Asking genuinely, can you explain the obsession with this by players that hate it? It’s a cosmetic change that has almost no gameplay impact beyond identity confusion (which is the entire gimmick of changelings), and is easily mitigated by maintaining control of your ID.

I totally get being upset, freaked out or otherwise IC… but I don’t understand why this causes so much frustration for the players on an OOC level to have their appearance modified for the current round.

It’s still your character and you’ve just gone through a dramatic event that provides a lot of RP fuel.

I strongly disagree with this.

The sting is not only flavorfully appropriate but opens the door to a lot of RP options for an antagonist that is otherwise overwhelmingly combat driven.

2 Likes
15

Kane here. I did transform you because I wanted to try my gimmick to change multiple people into me, so it would cause mayhem while sec would try to arrest me. Naturally maint roaming crew members were excellent targets. It wasn’t to grief you, I had a bigger plan in mind. At the end of the round there were about 4-5 Kane Semenovs.

I did not metagame you like changing you into glass golem and then proceed to shatter in two hits. You were just a part to my Antag strategy. All I can say is I did not target you specifically because of your character/race. You just happened to roam maints when I was around doing my gimmick.

Also referring this to rule 7 is ridiculous. What’s next? Ahelping because ling that had to steal magnetic boots killed you while you were playing station engineer?

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Not during the Edward Irish Ling event last year :grin:

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the issue is that its overdone

seeing it for the first time is alright, maybe also the second or maybe the third
but its such a common gimmick that’s done to hell and back and I would rather just play the character I signed up to play rather than the changeling local metafriend moth

if it was temporary and changelings had to occassionally go back and re-sting people would be better since it would cause a mass anxiety of people fearing who could turn them back into another form but since a changeling can easily just run up to people in crowds and turn them into someone else for most likely the rest of the round is annoying

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I would suggest coming up with alternative gimmicks rather than nerfing or removing one of their only non-combat options that affects the round for others if this is the issue.

It’s overdone because options for non-stealth, non-combat are severely limited for changelings.

The only things that suit changelings (that I can think of) would be various other ways to fuck with people genetically though.

19

Maybe less of a full character imprint and more of a species specific change would be a good middle ground? I haven’t seen a Ling actually frame someone or cause full on proper confusion because most of the time people both witness the sting and victims will very clearly state that a Ling has committed le forced identity fraud / genetic mutilation, often just blowing the ling’s incognito status in the process.

Additionally a simpler cure albeit a randomized one per-case would be a nice thing rather than forcing a xenobiology hassle.

1 Like
20

I disagree with the removal, I don’t have any real reasons to dispute this beside my usual stance on game feature removal bad and I don’t abuse the power to ruin peoples round.

I enjoy being able to change the identity of a body I killed, and taking over their identity fully. While this is a great idea, I’ve fucked up more than I’d admit normally due to me not taking their DNA before hand, ruining my own greentext. The loosest I use this ability is to change everyone into one of my target, in the hope of pinning the blame on them. This strategy is very useful if your target is a clown, has a much better chance at least of working than if it was the RD or someone with a more professional job that wouldn’t be hardwired for mischief.

I also propose that genetics would be better able at “repairing” people’s DNA and allow some way to more easily change someones UI+UE’s for the purposes of changing someone “back to their original form”. Though I personally haven’t had much more to how this works beside being able to use a expensive machine that requires the board to be ordered from CC that takes a stations employee form, insert it into the built machine, and then allow someone to transform into that employee with the proper ID given by the affected person. Step by step this would be:

  1. Oh no, Bob has been transformed into Jane by a changling
  2. After sufficient credits has been earned, cargo is able to order the special board
  3. Lawyer obtains a copy of Bobs employee file
  4. Lawyer inserts copy into machine
  5. Bob gives Employee ID that is convenitly placed in his OOC memory
  6. Bob no longer looks like Jane

This could also be a one-time use injector that requires a employee ID number and other steps I can’t think of. Gives more importance to this number, as only the player will know it (except if absorbed by a changling, which they would gain the memory of that ID number).