Double Agent & Antag Saturation

Psyentific · Post by **Psyentific** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 6:25 am #33540

Logs from Sibyl, ~23:00 Pacific, just now:

Spoiler:

50 people, 11 double agents. That's one in every five people - 20% of the crew is antags.

Double agent rounds are a shitstorm of explosions, sabotage, and murder - Notorious for lasting <45m total, 15 of which is shuttle call. This time around, the gravity was C4'd, the SMESes were C4'd, the singularity was loose, the kitchen was bombed, all within the 10-15m mark. That's pretty much your average double agent round, and I can't be the only one not having fun spending more time waiting for the shuttle than actually playing the game.

So, with 20% of the crew as antags, is it any wonder the station goes to hell faster than I can make this post? Can we nerf double agent antag saturation, please?

Incomptinence · Sat Oct 04, 2014 6:35 am

You could just make it easier for them to find each other, so they could thin the herd. It is the self annihilator antag.

mrpain · Post by **mrpain** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 8:23 am #33563

Is there a way of making it scale with round start security?

Although that could be a bad idea, because no one plays security.

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 8:34 am #33567

You think this was bad? This was after I adjusted antag calculation.

Before, it was every 1 in 3 crew members were Double Agents. One in fucking three. That means 17 DAs with 50 players.

Also, the new calculation isn't as simple as dividing the number of players by a coefficient any more. The more players there are the fewer antags-to-crew there will be. But if you want to change antag calculation for DA, it's very easy to adjust the num_modifier var which adds the number of antags needed for DA.

I personally would not mind reducing num_modifier by a DA or two.

Scott · Post by **Scott** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 9:34 am #33571

It's because DA is shit. Encourage actual assassinations by taking away all the non stealthy toys.

Lo6a4evskiy · Post by **Lo6a4evskiy** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 10:24 am #33576

Okay, why do you go from 11 out of 50 to one in five and then to 20%? Why not just go do 22 fucking percent?

Yes, that is very important.\

By the way, what makes DA more violent than traitor?

leibniz · Post by **leibniz** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 11:19 am #33580

Lo6a4evskiy wrote:Okay, why do you go from 11 out of 50 to one in five and then to 20%? Why not just go do 22 fucking percent?

Yes, that is very important.\

By the way, what makes DA more violent than traitor?

Traitors have more kinds of objectives.
DA is always the same.
It was voted to be the worst gamemode and I dont think minor bandaids like number tweaking will do anything to make it more popular.

Saegrimr · Post by **Saegrimr** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 11:32 am #33581

Lo6a4evskiy wrote:By the way, what makes DA more violent than traitor?

Two reasons.

DA density of antags just creates more chaos simply because theres more people antagging.

And while in normal traitor, the only thing you have to watch out for is not being obvious, or security. In DA you know there is someone hunting your ass down, but you don't know who. DA's will react much more violently and sabotage any chance to get caught and cause confusion to throw off their attackers. Or maybe to hopefully catch their attacker in the random murderfest.

Incomptinence · Sat Oct 04, 2014 11:37 am

I say give them some sort of occasional involuntary ping on their target in slightly inaccurate coordinates (maybe with rough distance between and or room name of coords explained for laymen) with their own for reference and not tell them who it is exactly. So a da stuffing about sabotaging the station drags in the DA hunting him the one hunting them etc so whoever is sidelining into grand sabotage and not playing cat and mouse gravitates the the rest of the DAs on top of themselves.
The orbit collapses, a planet of corpses emerges.
When the pings come up empty they know their target is dead or stuffed up monumentally. Or wait no the pings stop and since they happen at random intervals the DA is left on edge for a while. Pings would occur individually so they wouldn't just run out of a room each time they got their ping and would be nervous optimally all the time.

Psyentific · Post by **Psyentific** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 12:12 pm #33591

...what?

Incomptinence · Sat Oct 04, 2014 12:26 pm

Just a rough idea to make DAs both more hunted and less likely to become friends.

Arete · Post by **Arete** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 5:57 pm #33648

Honestly, I prefer rounds where everything goes to shit quickly over rounds where things drag on for two hours with nothing happening. The big issue here isn't the number of DAs or the amount of chaos they can cause, it's the incentive they have to cause it immediately. Having their uplinks generate telecrystals slowly rather than giving them 20 all at once might be a good way to lock off roundstart bombing.

Incoming · Post by **Incoming** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 6:18 pm #33653

I like the high density of antags in DA it's a good way to make sure no one is in an antag drought for too long. It's also a good way to acclimatize newer players to the basics of antagery without having to sacrifice a round to it.

Reimoo · Post by **Reimoo** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 7:23 pm #33667

Maybe the gamemode is shit because it's literally traitor with extra murderboning?

Psyentific · Post by **Psyentific** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 9:44 pm #33683

Reimoo wrote:Maybe the gamemode is shit because it's literally traitor with extra murderboning?

^^^
>Traitor
>with all the items
>with all the TCs
>objective: kill
>objective: don't get killed
>both objectives incentivize inconveniencing other players
>both objectives incentivize ending the round ASAP
and people wonder why double agent is shitty

Arete wrote:Honestly, I prefer rounds where everything goes to shit quickly over rounds where things drag on for two hours with nothing happening. The big issue here isn't the number of DAs or the amount of chaos they can cause, it's the incentive they have to cause it immediately. Having their uplinks generate telecrystals slowly rather than giving them 20 all at once might be a good way to lock off roundstart bombing.

I, too, like things happening. The biggest issue I have is that 20m rounds are universally shitty. Doesn't matter if it's Engineering screwing up the engine or double-agents C4ing the gravity, SMESes, and whatever else they feel like. A shuttle call at 20m is 35m of my time that I've wasted, accomplishing nothing of any value or meaning in a round. The ideal round length is one hour; Long enough for a round to play out, escalation to happen, and people to reach 'endgame' content, but short enough that people won't get bored.

cedarbridge · Post by **cedarbridge** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 9:46 pm #33684

Reimoo wrote:Maybe the gamemode is shit because it's literally traitor with extra murderboning?

Raven776 · Post by **Raven776** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 12:10 am #33704

Maybe add another objective to their lists too?

Psyentific · Post by **Psyentific** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 12:44 am #33717

Adding another objective doesn't solve the basic problem, though.

Namely, that as a double agent I know that there's someone out there gunning for me, and the person I'm gunning for knows that someone's gunning for him.
Thus, tactics favor going in as fast and hard as possible; Not giving your target any time to prepare, and not giving your hunter a chance to catch you with your pants down.
Tactics also favor forcing a round end as soon as you get your greentext, to give your hunter even less time to get you.

Thus, 20m exploding murderfests. Throwing a "Steal X" in there just gives them another stop on the tour of bloodshed.

Personally, I'd like to see DA turn into 'Team Traitor' - Red Traitors and Blue Traitors. A blue traitor is told to kill a red traitor, and also to ensure that at least N number of blue traitors greentext. Vice versa for red traitors.

Reimoo · Post by **Reimoo** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 2:12 am #33725

I think by additional objectives he means adding another component to the murderchain to make a bit things more interesting.

I like the idea suggested earlier where in addition to trying to assassinate your target, you are also tasked with protecting another DA from his assassin as well. This means everyone both has an assassin and a protector to interact with. The mindgames of who to trust and who not to trust would be very interesting.

Raven776 · Post by **Raven776** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 3:30 am #33740

Or cut the amount of DA's in half but give an equal amount an objective JUST to protect a single DA. Still technically antag but their greentext relies on keeping some dude alive... Obviously they could ignore this greentext and just blow some shit up too, but they don't really have an incentive to.

And you're forgetting that all traitors have just as much of a reason to get off station as DAs. So long as their objective is complete, spending more time on station just means you're spending more time likely getting caught or dying.

Psyentific · Post by **Psyentific** » Mon Oct 06, 2014 3:06 am #34017

Raven776 wrote:And you're forgetting that all traitors have just as much of a reason to get off station as DAs. So long as their objective is complete, spending more time on station just means you're spending more time likely getting caught or dying.

Yes, but traitor doesn't incentivize doing all your objectives right away. Going at your own pace to steal magboots or whatever is fine - Going at your own pace in DA gets you killed.

/tg/Station 13

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