## About The Pull Request
Heretic has received a complete overhaul. This PR touches nearly every
aspect of the antagonist. For readability's sake, not every change is
going to be listed in this pull request.
For the full list of changes please refer to the design doc:
https://hackmd.io/@BiST8PJVRjiwVPY86U3bLQ/B11HyChz1g.
Code by Me, @Xander3359 and @Arturlang
TGUI by @Arturlang
Sprites by OrcaCora and GregorDM
Writing bits by @necromanceranne
### Core changes
- Cross-pathing has been removed. Main knowledge spells are now
exclusive to their path (for the most part).
- For every main knowledge unlocked (save for the robes and the blade
upgrade), Heretics can choose one option from a draft of 3 random side
knowledges (this is a free point).
- Heretics can now purchase side knowledges from a new tab, the
"Knowledge Shop". Side-knowledges have been divided by tier (Stealth,
Defense, Summons, Combat and Main). Tiers are unlocked as you progress
toward your main path.
- Heretics now gain the grasp and mark upgrade immediately, but their
main knowledge choices cost twice as much (except for the first spell,
the robes and the blade upgrade).
- Path specific robes have been introduced! They come with their own set
of quirks.
- Each Path has received a passive ability. This passive is upgraded
when you first create your robes, and again when you complete the Ritual
of Knowledge.
- Paths have been rebalanced as a result of the removal of cross-path
progression. Cosmic and Moon paths have received soft reworks.
- Upon unlocking the path 2nd level or reaching a total of 8 points
worth of knowledge, Heretics will lose the ability to blade break (and
the limit on blades all together).
- Ascension now automatically calls the shuttle with no possibility of a
recall.
- Late join Heretic has been removed.
### New UI
<img width="750" height="635" alt="moon path ui"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/184ef783-5c9c-48a1-a2f7-4807ca93e990"
/>
### Knowledge shop
<img width="787" height="669" alt="Knowledge shop"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/3dc89b84-8c70-4d47-b612-54396e3ea6e7"
/>
### Quality of life //General balance changes
- Heretics will now gain X-ray vision for a few seconds when nearby an
eldritch essence (this effect has a cooldown).
- Ritual of knowledge now requires 1 uncommon item instead of 2. You may
now use a stunprod instead of a baton to complete the ritual. Beartraps
have been removed from the list of possible reagents.
- The maximum number of possible sacrifices required to ascend has been
reduced from 6 to 5 while the minimum has been upped to 4.
- Codex Cicatrix no longer requires a special pen to be made.
### Passive abilities
- Heretics now start with a passive ability. You can find what it does
on the path info tab after a path has been selected, and what they gain
when upgraded.
- Crafting your first set of Eldritch robes will bump your passive to
level 2.
- Unlocking the 2nd level will subsequently unlock your "Ritual Of
Knowledge"
- Completing the ritual of knowledge or ascending will net you the final
level.
### Path Specific Robes
- Armorer's Ritual is no longer a side knowledge. Each path will have
their own unique version of the ritual. This is placed after the 2nd
spell in the tree.
- Robes can no longer be destroyed by fire and acid, grant t4 flash
protection (Moth Heretics stay winning) and protection against basic
syringes, to bring them on par with other antagonist's armor sets.
- The recipe to craft the robes is now a set of armor/vest, a mask (any
mask will do now, not just gas masks), plus the unique reagent required
for the blades (Plasma for Cosmic, Trash For Rust, match for Ash and so
on)
- Wearing the robes as a non-heretic may yield some unfortunate
side-effects.
### Moon Path Rework
Moon path rework.
Moon Heretics gain immunity to brain traumas and slowly regenerate brain
health. Equipping the moon amulette channels its effects through the
moon blade; making it unblockable and cause sanity damage instead of
brute. Ring leader's Rise now summons an army of harmless clones that
explode when attacked; the explosion briefly stuns non-heretics and
cause sanity and brain damage to them. Moon blade can also now be used
when pacified and Moon spells are no longer blocked by regular anti
magic, only mind magic protection.
**Cosmic Path Rework**
Cosmic path has received the biggest batch of changes alongside Moon.
The path has been dead last in ascension and pickrate (less than 5%) for
almost 2 years. It did gain some popularity over the last few months,
reaching the highest ascension rate in the game (12%) while mantaining a
relatively low pickrate.
Cosmic sits in a weird spot, where pretty much every knowledge
surrounding the path is either mediocre or, in the case of the
ascension, dysfunctional. Yet it has maintained a smidge of relevancy
due to how quickly Cosmic heretics can capture and sacrifice targets
thanks to Star Touch.
As a result, the best course of action would be to rebalance the
entirety of the kit; granting the heretic more tools to manipulate space
and dictate the flow of a fight, while lessening their ability to end a
confrontation by instantly sleeping their opponents.
lastly The Star Gazer is now ghost controlled ; And they shoot lazers!
<img width="636" height="451" alt="gazer gag 3"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/601d6881-c042-4e42-8ce6-ac90cd27848b"
/>
## Why It's Good For The Game
### Ok...but why do we want this?
Again, if you want my full reasoning, please check my doc
https://hackmd.io/@BiST8PJVRjiwVPY86U3bLQ/B11HyChz1g.
To keep it short and concise; Heretic is too complex and unintuitive for
its own good. Too impenetrable for new players and too abusable for
experienced players. This can be chalked up to a lot of poor design
decisions. But ultimately, what I believe being the biggest contributor
to the current status of Heretic is the ability to move into different
paths, also known as "Cross-Pathing".
### Cross Pathing my beloathed.
Cross-pathing, while cool in theory, overcomplicates the antagonist and
overloads them with power. Players dealing with the heretic are
incapable of working out what a given heretic can do. This also leads to
late game heretics having 3 rows Worth of action buttons and virtually
no weakness.
Over the last year, I've often received the understandable but also kind
of unfair accusations of making Heretic too powerful without a clear aim
or purpose.
My goal with the paths I've reworked over the last year (Rust,Void and
Blade) wasn't necessarily to just make them stronger (although that was
also part of the goal, as they were paths that were underperforming),
but for them to have more interactions with the sandbox and to better
live up to the fantasy presented to the player.
If an harbringer of frost gets countered by a cup of coffee, we probably
messed something up.
Unfortunately, the current incarnation of Heretic doesn't really allow
for surgical balance changes to specific paths. Every time a knowledge
gets buffed, we make every path that can easily tap onto that knowledge
stronger by default. It doesn't take a genius to understand why this
system is ultimately unsustainable.
### Blade Breaking
I feel that after a heretic has reached the near peak of their power,
they no longer need the ability to instantly escape any encounter. Check
my doc for my full reasoning.
## Less versatile, more specialized paths.
By removing cross-pathing, we remove a huge maintainability burden from
the antagonist. Paths can now be designed around clearer strengths and
weaknesses. They become easier to balance and less of an headache to
understand for everyone.
It also means we can give paths some needed quality of life quirks
without having to worry how such a change might have a knock-on effect
for other paths.
Ash heretics can finally let loose without dying by their own flames.
Cosmic Heretic can go to space without having to carry a modsuit. Moon
Heretic can use their abilities without fear of one random trauma
ruining their day, and so on.
### What a horrible night to have a curse...., wait how do I curse
people again?
As of right now the heretic tree has quite a hefty amount of trinkets
that pretty much never see use.
Partly because the tree itself is a nightmare to navigate. And partly
because why would anyone set up an elaborate plan or scheme when they
can unleash 2 rows of spell in the span of bunch of seconds.
Heretics mostly gravitate towards powers that push them towards greater,
more potent combat strength. If it doesn't contribute to killing people
quicker, it isn't worth doing for most. And given the opportunity cost
associated for taking those powers, they will remain that way so long as
there are better choices to be poached.
The new draft system encourages Heretics to play more with the tools at
their disposal. If you want to go for a specific combo from the side
path options, you may now do so by tapping into the knowledge shop.
Yes, the shop does include a few knowledges from the other paths. But
these are limited to 1 per path, are very expensive and can only be
unlocked very late into the shift.
## Drip Of the Mansus
The iconic heretic robe is actually sequestered to a side path that is
most easily access by only two paths at a time. Since heretic paths are
being made to be much more specialized, the most obvious way in which
this can be showcased is through an easily
identifiable outfit.
By using the robes, we can both telegraph WHAT heretic you are looking
at, and just how much power they've accumulated and when it is
reasonable to take the kid gloves off and treat them as a genuine
threat. If a heretic is in their
robes, that heretic is now a significantly more prominent danger to the
station.
It also serves as a useful means for gating some of the more powerful
effects of a heretic's path behind the robes, AND enable options for
disarming them of that power should they be captured without making it
something endemic to their mob.
A major problem with heretics is a lack of certainty as to how powerful
they have become. A heretics robes is one of the milestones to help
players dealing with heretics identify that.
### Will this be 100% fair and balanced?
This is a massive overhaul to a pretty complex and bloated antagonist.
I've done my best to show the changes to several maintainers and other
members of the community for their feedback. But at some point we'll
have to see how this behave in the environment to get a feel if
something is over or undertuned. (that's my way of saying, yes this is
likely gonna require a testmerge or two).
What I will say is that I'm not trying to change the core identity of
Heretic.
Heretics should have the upperhand in single encounters early on, be
able to joust a small group of players after they unlock their final
spell, and end the round when they ascend. They're a progression
antagonist. They should retain their payoff as well as pose a danger as
they grow stronger.
But if more players feel like they are more reliably able to play the
antagonist in more varied and interesting ways, rather than the
antagonist largely existing as a measuring stick for 'robustness' due to
its elitist design philosophy, then the rework has been a success. There
should be something for
everyone in the antagonist, as is true for all of our antagonist roles.
## About The Pull Request
Fixes antimagic, not preventing the disgust builtup from standing on
rusted tiles, makes rust walkers more expensive to summon.
## Why It's Good For The Game
I'm very happy with the end result of my Rust heretic rework; but they
came up a tad stronger than i wanted them to be.
Carlac already changed the Vomit stun to knockdown, but i wanted to add
a couple of things myself.
Having anti magic now makes you fully immune to the effects of rusted
tiles, not just the spells.
Rust walkers summoning ritual now requires titanium instead of iron
sheets.
As of right now, they are way too easy to spam, Titanium is a bit harder
to come by than iron so that'll do for now.
I was planning to set a limit to how many you can summon at the time,
but i'd rather wait a few months to see how rust behaves before i add
more nerfs.
## Changelog
🆑
balance: Rust walkers' summoning ritual now requires 5 sheets of
Titanium instead of Iron.
fix: Magic resistance grants complete immunity from the passive disgust
buildup from standing on Rusted turfs.
/🆑
## About The Pull Request
closes : https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/issues/83375
## Why It's Good For The Game
Deleting Heretic rust you are standing on now properly deletes the
status effect.
## Changelog
🆑
fix: Rust debuffs now gets properly removed if you derust a tile you are
standing on.
/🆑
## About The Pull Request
Turf rusting is now based on knowledge instead of RNG; toxic damage on
spells has been replaced with disgust; rust walkers are a bit easier to
summon and show up early in the tree.
Rust ascension spread has been massively increased and immunities while
on Rust have been updated.
## Why It's Good For The Game
This is a massive list of changes, but the tl:dr is Rust heretic design
is pretty barebones and dated in its current state. I'm going to try my
best to explain why that is and why it needs to change.
### RNG on rusting is bad
**Problem** : quite a lot of turfs cannot be rusted, and reinforced
turfs rusting is tied to RNG, the emergency shuttle floors are also
unrustable, making an ascended heretic not threatening at all to an
escaping crew.
**Solution**: Heretic rusting prowess is now tied to knowledge
progression; reinf wall rusting is no longer tied to RNG; the emergency
shuttle is now rustable if you have accrued enough knowledge.
**Explanation** : I've been adopting the code from a previous PR that
sadly didn't make the light of day.
Link: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/65361
The goal is to have Heretic rusting be more consistent, so that if you
ascend the shuttle is no longer a safe refuge.
**Grasp Of Rust**: Basic floors and walls.
**Mark Of Rust**: Reinf floors and walls (takes 3 applications of rust
to fully destroy).
**Toxic Blade** Titanium and Plastitanium( still takes 3 applications of
rust to destroy).
**Ascension**: almost everything save for admin walls, glass, and
silver.
### A territorial antagonist with no tools to defend its turf
**Problem**: Rust heretic is forced into a territorial playstyle, but
it's heavily diminished by rusted turfs not having any negative effect
on the crew whatsoever, Toxic damage on plume and blade is also kind of
bad and has no synergy with the rest of the kit.
Lastly, while fitting to the theme of Rust; mark detonation destroying
clothes and items can end up being more harmful to the heretic, as
destroying a secoff's flashbang will result in you getting stunned and
killed.
**Solution**: Rusted floors are no longer safe for the crew; walking
over Rust will add a small buildup of disgust, silicons will receive
ticking damage, Toxic damage on Rust skills has been replaced with
disgust buildup and a chem purge effect to prevent the crew from
cheesing the debuff with sol dry.
**Explaination** "The goal behind this change is to prevent the crew to
just be able to walk willy nilly into an eldritchly decayed area without
repercussions, plus I feel like disgust is a fitting debuff for Rusties
for a number of reasons.
1) Lore wise, your goal is to turn the entire station into a garbage
dump.
2) It fits for fighting a territorial antagonist, it's not immediately
threatening on its own, but if you overstay your welcome, it has dire
consequences.
3) We don't really do much with disgust as a status effect, far as i
know, this'll be the first iteration of it being used for an antagonist
toolset.
4) It gives reason to the crew to act hostile towards the Heretic, as
you are essentially making their work area inhabitable.
I've also Slightly increased the healing on leeching walk and gave it
some minor temperature regulation (you won't be able to outtemp space
cold).
### Rust Walkers
**Problem**: Rust walkers might as well not exist in their current
state; they are one of the latest heretic unlocks, and the recipe for
summoning one is INSANE now that you cannot decapitate mobs anymore.
**Solution**: Rust walkers pop up a bit earlier in the tree; the ritual
to summon them has more reasonable reagents (wires, pools of vomit, iron
sheets) and they have increased health.
**Explanation**: : There is not a lot to add to this. without walkers,
Rust heretics are fairly slow at spreading rust, by making rust walkers
have reasonable summoning reagents, we ease that problem; lastly i've
slightly bumped their hp, as i felt 75 hp was a bit low.
### Underwhelming ascension
**Problem**: The spread rate from the ascension is downright ATROCIOUS
in its current state, i actually ran multiple tests on different maps,
on Metastation it can take up to 40 minutes for the rust to spread to
the entire station, considering an ascended heretic results in an
immediate shuttle call, it's unecceptable in its current form.
Solution: Rust spread is now a hybridization between old ascension and
Wizard tranformation ritual.
**Explanation**: The spread rate in its current form is painstakingly
slow and has a tendency to reach one corner of the map and compound on
itself, i've borrowed the code from the wizard final ritual
"transformation" and gave it my own spin so that given enough time it
will cover the station more or less evenly, it can now spread through
all z levels.
Video example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ5zMrNM6Jw
I've also updated the immunities you gain on ascension to ignore
slowdown and stasis from Cryogelidia.
The whole point of rust ascension is to become immune to crowd control,
i've seen far too many ascended heretics die to a single bola or cryo
syringe, that's pretty lame so i fixed that.
Lastly, aggressive spread has had its radius reduced in exchange for the
spread being consistent now; cooldown is also halved when you ascend, to
better help the heretic go on the offensive.
## About The Pull Request
Implements half of this (with some minor changes):
The ultimate goal of this is to split our attack chain in two:
- One for non-combat item interactions
- Health analyzer scanning
- using tools on stuff
- surgery
- Niche other interactions
- One for combat attacking
- Item hit thing, item deal damage.
- Special effects on attack would go here.
This PR begins this by broadining tool act into item interact.
Item interact is a catch-all proc ran at the beginning of attack chain,
before `pre_attack` and such, that handles the first part of the chain.
This allows us to easily catch item interaction and cancel the attack
part of the chain by using deliberate bitflag return values, rather than
`TRUE` / `FALSE`*.
*Because right now, `TRUE` = `cancel attack`, no matter what, which is
unclear to people.
Instead of moving as much as possible to the new proc in this PR, I
started by doing some easy, obvious things. More things can be moved in
the future, or technically they don't even need to move in a lot of
cases.
## Changelog
🆑 Melbert
refactor: Refactored some methods of items interacting with other
objects or mobs, such as surgery and health analzyers. Report if
anything seems wrong
/🆑
Remove welder fuel usage from all actions except attacking and leaving
it on
most welder tasks require a minimum of 1u of fuel, some longer tasks
require a minimum of 2 or 3u welders now drain 1u every 5 seconds
they're active
## About The Pull Request
Prior to this PR welder fuel usage was random, a lot of tasks didn't use
any welder fuel and welders were basically near infinite so long as you
didn't use them for combat, it took 26 seconds of activity to drain 1u
of fuel, that means an emergency welder alone could run for 5 minutes
straight before needing a refuel
After this PR all welders will drain 1u every 5 seconds instead of every
26 seconds, but welding objects won't require extra fuel anymore, making
the fuel usage much more consistent.
resolves#55018
## Why It's Good For The Game
Actually makes fuel tanks useful and relevant without making it
obnoxious to do repetitive quick tasks like turn rods into plates,
there's actually a reason to upgrade off the emergency welder now since
it lasts 50 seconds rather than 5 minutes
## Changelog
🆑
qol: Welders now have a more consistent fuel usage
/🆑
## About The Pull Request
Nothing too interesting to be quite honest, just cleans up the thermite
component code a bit because it was a bit weird.
## Why It's Good For The Game
This probably fixes a few rare bugs where the thermite overlay
disappears due to an update_icon call. Slightly neater code.
Also, adds an examine message to thermite walls because small QoL stuff
is neat.
## Changelog
🆑
qol: Thermited walls now get an examine message telling you they are, in
fact, thermited.
/🆑
---------
Co-authored-by: san7890 <the@san7890.com>
## About The Pull Request
Thought https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/74552 was good?
YOU WON'T BE READY FOR THIS ONE...
## Why It's Good For The Game
free miniscule amount of performance by getting rid of some silly
component datums
## Changelog
player dont care
---------
Co-authored-by: san7890 <the@san7890.com>
- Makes QDELETED use isnull(x) instead of !x, giving about 0.2 to 0.25s
of speed.
- Make disposal constructs only update icon state rather than go through
expensive overlay code. Unfortunately did not have much effect, but is
something they should've been doing nonetheless.
- Makes RegisterSignal only take signals directly as opposed to
allocating a fresh list of signals. Very few consumers actually used
this and it costs about 0.4s. Also I think this is just a bad API anyway
and that separate procs are important
`\bRegisterSignal\((.*)list\(` replaced with `RegisterSignals($1list(`
Makes the code compatible with 515.1594+
Few simple changes and one very painful one.
Let's start with the easy:
* puts call behind `LIBCALL` define, so call_ext is properly used in 515
* Adds `NAMEOF_STATIC(_,X)` macro for nameof in static definitions since
src is now invalid there.
* Fixes tgui and devserver. From 515 onward the tmp3333{procid} cache
directory is not appened to base path in browser controls so we don't
check for it in base js and put the dev server dummy window file in
actual directory not the byond root.
* Renames the few things that had /final/ in typepath to ultimate since
final is a new keyword
And the very painful change:
`.proc/whatever` format is no longer valid, so we're replacing it with
new nameof() function. All this wrapped in three new macros.
`PROC_REF(X)`,`TYPE_PROC_REF(TYPE,X)`,`GLOBAL_PROC_REF(X)`. Global is
not actually necessary but if we get nameof that does not allow globals
it would be nice validation.
This is pretty unwieldy but there's no real alternative.
If you notice anything weird in the commits let me know because majority
was done with regex replace.
@tgstation/commit-access Since the .proc/stuff is pretty big change.
Co-authored-by: san7890 <the@san7890.com>
Co-authored-by: Mothblocks <35135081+Mothblocks@users.noreply.github.com>
ELEMENT_DETACH is **not** a requirement to having `Detach` called.
Detach is always called when the element itself is destroyed.
ELEMENT_DETACH is a flag that when set, makes sure Detach is called when
the atom destroys.
Sometimes you want this, for instance:
```dm
/datum/element/point_of_interest/Detach(datum/target)
SSpoints_of_interest.on_poi_element_removed(target)
return ..()
```
This Detach cleans up a reference that would have hung if target was
destroyed without this being called.
However, most uses of Detach are cleaning up signals. Signals are
automatically cleaned up when something is destroyed. You do not need
ELEMENT_DETACH in this case, and it slows down init. This also includes
somewhat more complex stuff, like removing overlays on the source
object. It's getting deleted anyway, you don't care!
I have removed all uses of ELEMENT_DETACH that seemed superfluous. I
have also renamed it to `ELEMENT_DETACH_ON_HOST_DESTROY` to make its
purpose more clear, as me and a lot of other maintainers misunderstood
what it did,
---
An update to this, ELEMENT_DETACH *is* needed for anything that can
register to a turf, as turfs do not clear their signals on destroy.
* Fixes rust element not correctly using tool procs, now welding rust off will properly blind the user.
Co-authored-by: Capybara <Capybara@CapybaraMailingServices.com>
EnterTheJake