A Changling verification

[kevsop]

So its my personal soapbox that the switching up of changlings that happened to more of a collective group is a bad thing. While it adds a lot more things to do, the major thing it added which changed the "feel" of the antag was that they now work together. This alone is ok, I guess, if not wanted.

The issue that arises is that changlings, while nerfed somewhat from their orignal set up, are still designed to kill people one versus one. If you look at Gibbed and the old way changlings were on /tg/ you had to team up on them to win. But with 3 other people on the map also being changlings, they become almost impossible to lock down because the one person who gets locked down and identified has three other people they can call out to for help, and multiple changlings stack better than the sum of their parts.

This causes issues from a player perspective, as of right now, there is no verifiable way to determine a changling without the player themselves slipping up and getting caught doing changlings things. This also causes issues from an admin perspective, as I routinely have to moderate and deal with adminhelps about people killed as changlings or as suspected changlings. There's no test, and John Q Pubbie has to decide between being to judicious with death justice, and getting nailed by an admin for being a griefer, or to lax, and getting into situation that neither the player nor the admin can resolve without disclosing antag status to the players and having to take a more active role in confirming or denying changlings.

So my purposal is simple. I like changling, I liked it more when it was a single or duo who didn't have a not hivemind to work together, but I believe we need an implemented test for changlings. I don't know if the old Gibbed Method of heating blood would be the best solution, as since there are more changlings on the station, the test should be harder to do so you don't start netting them on accident.

While I am not a coder, here are some feasible solutions.

• Heat Blood test like Gibbed
  
• Make them unable to be debrained, similar how they used to be while in statsis
  
• Make them immune to, or react differently, to a somewhat hard to make chemical, like Ryetalyn, since that deals with genetic issues already.
  

This post is long but I feel that the issues and reasons for these purposed changes are unnecessary. Please feel free to chime in if you have an opinion or your own super cool changling test that might be able to be put in.

[Name Changing Autist]

Some random Ideas I put next to no thought in:
- Separate Hive minds:
Two/Three different Changeling Teams, with 1 or 2 Lings in each team (prevents the normal 4 lings working in cohesion to kill everyone every time)

- Absorbing and the change it brings to them:
After a certain amount of people are absorbed, odd effects start happening to the Lings:
(My best idea is 1 has small effects, 2 has visible, 3 and only a blind. deaf and retarded man won't notice them)
No real idea on what these changes could be like, Mismatched/Xeno-looking Skin, Bloating of the Stomach, A Alien-like appearance, hissing instead of normal talking

I think the effects could work out pretty well with more expansion put into it but those are currently my only ideas that don't totally fuck something up .

[letshavecake]

Since changeling powers currently work with a magic undetectable chemical, that could just be changed.
Make a new chemical that doesn't do anything, but is left in the blood of victims of stings(would show up when scanning a corpse with the det scanner), and can be detected in the living with a regular and/or advanced mass spectrometer.
That way science can actually have a use, and it wouldn't be completely foolproof, since traces are also left in people who've been stung.

There would also be a tradeoff with stealth for changelings, using their powers a lot leaves them vulnerable, and makes them more obvious, but gives them more scapegoats to frame, and makes them appear as a possible victim, while changelings who don't use their powers as much would be less obvious, but have an obviously large amount of the chemical stored.

Of course it's not the best idea, but it's what I could come up with in five minutes.

[crackerroll]

I hate changelings. I'm all in favor for a killswitch which completely destroys their ability to use their powers all together, similar to the "de-Changeling" command, but I think a test of some sort involving Medical/Science personnel would be the best option. A blood test which doesn't involve heating their blood, but checking the number of genomes they have using the DNA-modifier console or something similar.

[Jerkael]

Ahem. I believe:

If a changeling is harmed in a large amount in a very short amount of time, for example: being blasted with a shotgun, they should be forced into another form. Just a little sign that "Ow I just got hit hard and I kinda forgot what skin I was wearing lemme just put this one on" and that the person is definitely a changeling.

Followed by:

An implant or upgrade to handcuffs that will essentially: Jam the hivemind, whenever the Changeling attempts to speak in the Hive mind, it just results in nothing. Yeah no #@$%!% or anything. It just tells them "The Implant/Cuffs are keeping you silent" or something along those lines.

And as an actual item to use for testing, possibly like a scanner which when held up in front of your captured suspected changeling will 1) Reveal the ling by forcing them to change into a poor husks form (as in you drained Gerald, you become Gerald under the scanner) or 2) Just burn the human you annoyed out of Genetics.

And yeah there's my small ideas.

[Leadpoisoning]

What if when you cut a brain out of a changeling, it becomes a new mob and can scuttle away and escape through air vents?

Given time, the brain can eventually regenerate itself into a new body.

[mutateddorito]

How about after awhile of not eating, the changeling starts to turn into an ugly form of a human, like a vampire who hasn't fed.
Or if you spray it with Ryetalyn (maybe hit with null rod or sprayed with holy water?) it starts to transform into people it has absorbed.

[Danuis Studnick]

We should add something that deals with medical and or chemistry, simply due to the fact that, yes, it's there, but you have to go out of your way to confirm it, and thats helluva lot better than stuffing suspects into lockers and screaming at weary admins to verify.

[crystalwarrior]

You know, I remember I tried to de-changelingize myself because I got figured out right away.
What we tried to do is debrain me, put me in monkey body and clone me with expections of me losing my powers, but I still had changeling powers.
I think the body should have changeling powers, not the brain. That would give found-out changelings a chance to keep playing without sitting on their ass moaning about being dead.

That would also make more sense to find Changeling-exclusive chemicals in the body through complicated fluid-test flesh-test blood-test whatever process.