How lethal should SS13 be?

Miauw · Post by **Miauw** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:40 pm #94518

Bottom post of the previous page:

we have never argued that dying in itself is or is not an issue.

instakill shocks, for example, would increase the death number without making the game more interesting, as would numerous other things.
the lack of deaths is caused by boring rounds, not the other way around.

it is, imo, only partially a code problem.

Arete · Post by **Arete** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:53 pm #94522

Miauw wrote:we have never argued that dying in itself is or is not an issue.

instakill shocks, for example, would increase the death number without making the game more interesting, as would numerous other things.
the lack of deaths is caused by boring rounds, not the other way around.

it is, imo, only partially a code problem.

For a round to not be boring, things of mechanical consequence have to be happening. Otherwise, the only substance to the game is freeform roleplay, and there are other servers already filling that niche for players who want it. For an event to have mechanical consequence, it has to change what you're capable of within the game. That means either taking away your ability to do something, giving you the ability to do something new, changing the rules you operate under, or killing you.

Taking away your ability to do something might involve getting a disease or having to deal with part of the station becoming uninhabitable. Giving you the ability to do something new happens as you complete time-gated jobs or when wizards summon guns or magic. Changing the rules you operate under happens when you're converted by or deconverted from a team antag. Being killed is just the last option by process of elimination when none of the conditions for other interesting things are met.

When playing SS13, you should always always always either be dealing with those mechanical consequences or causing them to happen. Instadeath is fine to remove since there's no "dealing with it" because it's over as soon as it begins, but the threat of death should still be present. If there's a point in the round beyond which none of that is happening, then you've entered a boring fucking pseudo-extended round. The less often boring fucking pseudo-extended rounds happen, the more fun people will have with the game.

tl;dr Rounds where nothing mechanical happens are fun-neutral, you might as well not be playing the game. There are multiple possible fun mechanical things that you might have to deal with in the course of a round, but if none of them are happening, then they leave a void. Dealing with impending death is gameplay, at the very least, and it's preferable to not having to deal with anything at all.

Kor wrote:Every step you could realistically take to make things deadlier is something that people will rail against. You cant really advocate for most of the stuff either because most of it really is terrible individually. Parapen legitimately sucked. And yet changeling isnt scary without it.

Assassination and murderboner tools suck because of the element of the "sure kill," where the antag has every incentive to only interact with one other player at a time and end the confrontation before the target has a chance to interact in return. Basically, it's incentivized to cause zero collateral damage and end the interaction as early as possible.

I think that it would be good to add more antag tools that incentivize things in the other direction. Maximum collateral damage, long interaction duration (during which any targets have a chance of counterplay). I'm thinking of stuff along the lines of singulo beacons and subverting the AI. Dehydrated carp, summoning guns, plasma flooding, all that stuff is good too. I think the quality of traitor rounds would substantially improve if there were a push to make more of these sort of options and make them more viable.

ThatSlyFox · Post by **ThatSlyFox** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 7:05 pm #94542

There was a thread about traitor TCs. Someone suggested to double the TCs traitors have. I think that could solve the non-lethal traitors issue. Traitor rounds being 60% of all rounds.

Maybe even give some extra points to lings.

Scones · Post by **Scones** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 7:15 pm #94544

ThatSlyFox wrote:There was a thread about traitor TCs. Someone suggested to double the TCs traitors have. I think that could solve the non-lethal traitors issue. Traitor rounds being 60% of all rounds.

Maybe even give some extra points to lings.

gonna be the meme man and tell you to read the rest of the thread

giving traitors more gear is an alright idea but that helps traitor, does not fix the games underwhelming lethality rate

not sure who said it but the biggest thing is that the antagonists in traitor/ling interact with individuals 90% of the time and nobody else, while having no motivation to cause collateral and thusly being boring

Remie Richards · Tue Jun 09, 2015 8:02 pm

Overpressured pipes throwing you at the wall levels of lethal?
https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/9867

EndgamerAzari · Tue Jun 09, 2015 8:05 pm

MORE EXPLOSIONS

ThanatosRa · Post by **ThanatosRa** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 8:48 pm #94567

We're in god damned space! We should be dying in droves.

Oldman Robustin · Wed Jun 10, 2015 12:52 am

I voted extremely.

There's a million shitty online games out there if I just wanted a pure roleplaying experience.

SS13 is special primarily for one reason: The enemy is controlled by players, they can be just as smart and clever as you are, and when they kill you - you aren't coming back without someone's help.

Years of experience across a dozen servers has shown anyone paying attention where the sweet spot lies for most players. Keep it lethal, the crew should not ever feel safe or comfortable unless they've earned it. Code Blue should be a dreadful omen. The limit is where every round becomes a bloodbath and chaos becomes the norm, then it just ceases to be fun for the non-antags. But right now we are so far from that being an issue I don't even know why I mentioned it. Most rounds are virtually indistinguishable from extended for most crew members. If you are on camera then you're probably not going to witness a single antagonistic act, either against yourself or others, for the duration of an hour long round.

This is a problem and it's only going to be fixed when you start ignoring the people who got us here and start doing shit that is doing to result in more deaths, more station damage, and more chaos.

Oldman Robustin · Wed Jun 10, 2015 12:54 am

Scones wrote:
ThatSlyFox wrote:There was a thread about traitor TCs. Someone suggested to double the TCs traitors have. I think that could solve the non-lethal traitors issue. Traitor rounds being 60% of all rounds.

Maybe even give some extra points to lings.
gonna be the meme man and tell you to read the rest of the thread

giving traitors more gear is an alright idea but that helps traitor, does not fix the games underwhelming lethality rate

not sure who said it but the biggest thing is that the antagonists in traitor/ling interact with individuals 90% of the time and nobody else, while having no motivation to cause collateral and thusly being boring

I might actually play traitor and kill people if I had enough TC's to do that job effectively. I agree its not a perfect solution, there needs to be fixes elsewhere, but the worst enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan. Double TC's, anything to make traitors more of a force to be reckoned with.

ThatSlyFox · Post by **ThatSlyFox** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 2:47 am #94623

Pretty much what oldman said, traitors need a boost. Honestly adding more traitors/lings in a regular traitorchan round can help out too.

I would like to see medical be more in-depth too. Limbs getting cut off, toxins actually mutating you, that rat burger you ate giving you stomach pains. Also, the bleeding effect we have works soooo slow, someone fix it.

Cheridan · Post by **Cheridan** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:43 am #94625

Traitors lie low because the second they do anything it's radio-bolt-tase-cuff-strip-execute. Making traitors more lethal won't help anything, unless it is overwhelming firepower like L6 SAWs to eliminate anyone who comes at them after detection, because Sec still effectively has a one-shot-kill and comparable numbers with greater teamwork.

Scones · Post by **Scones** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 4:36 am #94633

Because stun combat is shit but evidently nobody is willing to even try to take a step away from it.

Arete · Post by **Arete** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 4:48 am #94635

Cheridan wrote:Traitors lie low because the second they do anything it's radio-bolt-tase-cuff-strip-execute. Making traitors more lethal won't help anything, unless it is overwhelming firepower like L6 SAWs to eliminate anyone who comes at them after detection, because Sec still effectively has a one-shot-kill and comparable numbers with greater teamwork.

Tasing wouldn't be the end if traitors had enough TC to buy an adrenal implant without losing the ability to also buy a singularity beacon.

Sec wouldn't be able to get the jump on them if they could buy a syndicate encryption key without losing the ability to grab a couple of eswords.

They wouldn't get bolted in the first place if they could afford to buy a hacked upload module without losing the ability to buy a power sink.

Traitors can't afford to buy gear that protects them and gear that lets them antagonize the station at the same time. So they're either going to have defensive gear and never interact with the round, or they're going to grab offensive gear but get blindsided before they can use it.

It seems obviously false that giving traitors more TC wouldn't make a difference in what they're able to do.

Not-Dorsidarf · Wed Jun 10, 2015 7:01 am

Arete wrote:
Cheridan wrote:Traitors lie low because the second they do anything it's radio-bolt-tase-cuff-strip-execute. Making traitors more lethal won't help anything, unless it is overwhelming firepower like L6 SAWs to eliminate anyone who comes at them after detection, because Sec still effectively has a one-shot-kill and comparable numbers with greater teamwork.
Tasing wouldn't be the end if traitors had enough TC to buy an adrenal implant without losing the ability to also buy a singularity beacon.

Sec wouldn't be able to get the jump on them if they could buy a syndicate encryption key without losing the ability to grab a couple of eswords.

They wouldn't get bolted in the first place if they could afford to buy a hacked upload module without losing the ability to buy a power sink.

Traitors can't afford to buy gear that protects them and gear that lets them antagonize the station at the same time. So they're either going to have defensive gear and never interact with the round, or they're going to grab offensive gear but get blindsided before they can use it.

It seems obviously false that giving traitors more TC wouldn't make a difference in what they're able to do.

qft

Incomptinence · Wed Jun 10, 2015 7:13 am

Only traitor nerfs I remember being in huge demand was parapen C4, parasting and the more exotic chemical blobs. Traitors can still kill competently without it so it wasn't as important as it seemed, guess more overt weapons took over. My key claim about ling isn't that parasting wasn't overpowering (although it perfectly fine for an antag to be strong) it is that not even that could save oldling from being lord chumpington. Some of the goofblobs were unfightable and some remaining verge upon it so those being a problem made sense.

I would say most antagonist nerfs aren't really demanded by a lot of people and standards for antagonist performance are very low. Just look at changeling for example.

Not-Dorsidarf · Wed Jun 10, 2015 7:24 am

This might be useful for this

Incidentally, over the past 50 days, there have been 27,340 deaths on sybil. Spessmens is still pretty deadly

It's also interesting that there are more deaths in the HOP line than in the prison, and that most prison deaths happen in the hallway, not the execution room

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 7:34 am #94653

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:This might be useful for this

What station is that because it does not look like our current Boxstation.

Not-Dorsidarf · Wed Jun 10, 2015 9:06 am

Beats me, but the deathmap is accurate, even if the bit below is of the original box revision or some shit ( If you turn off the deaths, you can see it has a medisci department)

firecage · Post by **firecage** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 11:24 am #94673

I don't see my vote option here. I want more lethality, but I want much longer rounds aswell. Rounds are to short currently.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 12:16 pm #94680

I've put up a PR that will double the amount of starting TC's that Traitors, and Double Agents, receive at round start, so essentially from 20 TC's to 40 TC's.

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/9881

This seems to be a good place to start, and is easily tweakable if need be. Hopefully this will give Traitors more freedom in their equipment options.

imblyings · Post by **imblyings** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 12:26 pm #94681

Raise cost of singulo beacons/explosives.

Possibly scale TC's available to population and sec/silicon population.

Lethality goes both ways- if traitors are being encouraged to wreck havoc and cause chaos, this means non-sec validhunters suddenly play a necessary role in the game. Sportsmanship, or the desire to cooperate and engage in non-lethal interaction between antags and non-antags, isn't necessarily linked to available TCs. Similarly, if the meta shifts to traitors being constantly armed with lethal weapons, adrenal implants and the like, then sec will have to compensate somehow. Not necessarily with code buffs but we'll see how they handle things IC.

Post by **MisterPerson** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 1:12 pm #94687

firecage wrote:I don't see my vote option here. I want more lethality, but I want much longer rounds aswell. Rounds are to short currently.

Without respawns, this is a fundamentally impossible request. And I mean real respawning with people who can actually replace the guy who died, not golems/drones/etc. If you're wondering why things have shifted towards people living longer, it was a reaction against the short rounds that high lethality causes.

Gun Hog · Post by **Gun Hog** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:15 pm #94702

Just to warn you guys know, going down this road WILL lead to many tears and calls of NERF NERF NERF!!!! all across the board. You have two stances working against each other here - People seem to want more death and danger, but do not want to die either. These ideas are ever present and always in conflict. Someone nerfs all armor to be weaker, people will cry and demand that now overpowered weapons be nerfed. Someone adds a 'call sec' beacon, antags are greatly deterred by this and stop murdering, as a result, rounds drag on and people call for more lethality!

tl;dr: We just cannot win. We cannot satisfy both, and we cannot favor one over the other. We are stuck in a murderbone vs hugb0x tug-of-war.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:27 pm #94706

We can do better than what we have now. One and a half rounds with almost nothing going on during the round has got to end. If anything can realisticly kill this game its the lack of anything going on for a long period of time.

ThatSlyFox · Post by **ThatSlyFox** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:31 pm #94709

At this point gun hog I think we just need to weed out the complainers. This game is going to stay stagnate, and eventually die, if we let people like that control TG. I also think the coders need to be more wary of changes that effect traitors and security in the future.

Steelpoint, honestly I think the balancing for double TC should come later. Obviously something is going to have to be done about people buying a bunch of explosives but other than that we should just leave it a flat double TC boost.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:33 pm #94711

What I can do is just do a proper conversion of the Syndi Bomb and Minibombs so that you can only buy one Syndi Bomb or three Minibombs (Same with the Singulo Beacon/AI Module), which is essentially what we have now, and leave the rest as is if we want.

Miauw · Post by **Miauw** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 4:39 pm #94729

friendly reminder that the movespeed decrease happened. if the maintainers are convinced that a change is good, it will probably get in despite le singulo chelpposters complaining.

problem with increasing TCs so traitors can "buy adrenaline implants" is that adrenaline implants become mandatory.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 4:41 pm #94730

I do still prefer newspeed but I suppose we'll have to get around to the issue of movement speed at one point or another.

Not-Dorsidarf · Wed Jun 10, 2015 4:44 pm

One thing I've noticed is that people seem to be strongly opposed to any change, even minor, which has not had every possible balance change thought out, or those which only partially address a problem.

onleavedontatme · Wed Jun 10, 2015 4:51 pm

>only traitor nerfs I remember being in demand.../traitors weren't nerfed very much

It isnt about the actual traitor gear. People did in fact demand numerous nerfs to traitors, whether they realized it or not.

People wanted the movespeed lowered. This means guns and flashbangs are now very powerful, and the AI is comparatively faster. It makes it much easier to track whats going on in a chase as well, I've found.

Genetics, polyacid, water, guns from science, chloral, stungloves, etc were all nerfed for one reason or another, often with popular support. Hell I coded some of the nerfs myself. But without viable deparment weapons traitors now have to spend their TC on lacklustre shit like a one shot ebow. They rely on their PDA for their entire loadout instead of items to complement what they can grab from their workplace. Most of these items were nerfed for good reason though

AI wanted improvements like hotkeys, access to sec channel, invisible door bolts, all which let it be a more efficient antag hunter

People didnt want traitor sec because nobody likes getting killed after being arrested or having your fellow officer backstab you. Traitor AI seems likewise gone or very rare. Fair enough, all valid complaints. But now we have 8 or something heavily armed and armored guys plus robots plus a noclip ghost all dedicated to hunting antagonists and they're more or less going to be loyal and cooperating on a private channel.

Gibbing was made much harder. Welding tanks and C4 won't do it, and this generally means you have to drag the body through maint...

...which is crawling with sec officers who now start with access to that.

I'm sure there is more I'm forgetting

I'm not saying I know the solution or that the above wasnt well intentioned or didnt bring positive change as well, but I dont think many people (not all, plenty of people bringing up great points) really consider how seemingly unrelated changes impact the game as a whole. Everything is interlinked and feeds into each other.

Giving traitors enough TC that they can all buy adrenal implants and revolvers will certainly turn the round into a shit show, but not the kind of round many people would enjoy. Wouldnt help rev/cult/changeling either.
It's a structural problem and turning traitors into murderboner machines wont fix it

Scones · Post by **Scones** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 5:27 pm #94746

straight TC buff isn't helping and I hate repeating myself, nothing will change without serious dedication to reworking core systems (med and combat)

I'm just gonna murderbone every round if this gets merged to get the point across. Other people will do the same; It's a very shortsighted and hacky attempt to bushwack around a much larger problem

ThatSlyFox · Post by **ThatSlyFox** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 5:40 pm #94751

I also think we need to rework medical but with the current situation traitors need a boost.

Don't try and act like secuirty/crew can't handle murderbonering traitors.

Scones · Post by **Scones** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 5:41 pm #94752

ThatSlyFox wrote:I also think we need to rework medical but with the current situation traitors need a boost.

Don't try and act like secuirty/crew can't handle murderbonering traitors.

Merge this PR and see what happens

The bodies will be piled high because traitors will be able to BiS most equipment via uplinks and grab missing pieces with ease

Stun combat is the cancer at the heart of ss13

Amelius · Post by **Amelius** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 6:54 pm #94767

Kor wrote:>only traitor nerfs I remember being in demand.../traitors weren't nerfed very much

It isnt about the actual traitor gear. People did in fact demand numerous nerfs to traitors, whether they realized it or not.

People wanted the movespeed lowered. This means guns and flashbangs are now very powerful, and the AI is comparatively faster. It makes it much easier to track whats going on in a chase as well, I've found.

Genetics, polyacid, water, guns from science, chloral, stungloves, etc were all nerfed for one reason or another, often with popular support. Hell I coded some of the nerfs myself. But without viable deparment weapons traitors now have to spend their TC on lacklustre shit like a one shot ebow. They rely on their PDA for their entire loadout instead of items to complement what they can grab from their workplace. Most of these items were nerfed for good reason though

AI wanted improvements like hotkeys, access to sec channel, invisible door bolts, all which let it be a more efficient antag hunter

People didnt want traitor sec because nobody likes getting killed after being arrested or having your fellow officer backstab you. Traitor AI seems likewise gone or very rare. Fair enough, all valid complaints. But now we have 8 or something heavily armed and armored guys plus robots plus a noclip ghost all dedicated to hunting antagonists and their more or less going to be loyal and cooperating on a private channel.

Gibbing was made much harder. Welding tanks and C4 won't do it, and this generally means you have to drag the body through maint...

...which is crawling with sec officers who now start with access to that.

I'm sure there is more I'm forgetting

I'm not saying I know the solution or that the above wasnt well intentioned or didnt bring positive change as well, but I dont think many people (not all, plenty of people bringing up great points) really consider how seemingly unrelated changes impact the game as a whole. Everything is interlinked and feeds into each other.

Giving traitors enough TC that they can all buy adrenal implants and revolvers will certainly turn the round into a shit show, but not the kind of round many people would enjoy. Wouldnt help rev/cult/changeling either.
It's a structural problem and turning traitors into murderboner machines wont fix it

What you said. That said, I'd rather have every traitor/DA round be a shitshow murderfest than the stagnate nothing-fucking-happens rounds we've been having, by far. I'd rather, as a security member, be overwhelmed with the amount of crime occuring such that keeping the station intact would be an actual achievement, and you'd always be kept busy one way or another. I miss the days where, as detective, I could take a stroll as detective around maintenance 15 minutes in and find corpses and blood strewn about all around arrivals and chapel maintenance. I miss the days where I, as HoS would actually have to delegate personnel to situations as they developed, instead of having every single officer able, willing, and unoccupied to converge on a single antagonist since nothing is happening.

At least remove roundstart maint access for officers and fucking helmet cams. There's nothing worse than having an officer scream 'help' with no location and the warden/AI immediately checking their helmet cam to dispatch officers that can immediately close in on the area with their full maintenance access. And believe me, this happens almost every time, with no viable counterplay except by buying an EMP kit and somehow EMP + stunning before they can scream 'help', or anyone can see them. It necessitates an EMP kit, and even then there's risk of being seen, and since you also suffer the flash from the EMP, sunglasses suddenly become a requirement to kill a security member and not die from a bored sec/borg pileon in the process.

Regardless, more TCs will result in more 'explosive' rounds, and that means people will be kept engaged, some way or another, longer, which Sybil desperately needs right now. It's a bandaid-patch, not a fix, but it's definitely going to keep people (read: anyone voting 'lethal' or 'extremely lethal') active and playing for entire rounds, instead of going braindead halfway through due to boredom (security is especially endemic to this). Boosting traitor numbers will also help somewhat (they were nerfed a bit by SoS, knocking that back up can definitely help).

I'd like to see doubled TC as an experiment. I know people will end up murderboning for a period, but I'd drastically prefer that until a more permanent fix can be made. I hope others might agree with me.

bandit · Post by **bandit** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 7:58 pm #94791

Kor wrote:>only traitor nerfs I remember being in demand.../traitors weren't nerfed very much

It isnt about the actual traitor gear. People did in fact demand numerous nerfs to traitors, whether they realized it or not.

People wanted the movespeed lowered. This means guns and flashbangs are now very powerful, and the AI is comparatively faster. It makes it much easier to track whats going on in a chase as well, I've found.

Genetics, polyacid, water, guns from science, chloral, stungloves, etc were all nerfed for one reason or another, often with popular support. Hell I coded some of the nerfs myself. But without viable deparment weapons traitors now have to spend their TC on lacklustre shit like a one shot ebow. They rely on their PDA for their entire loadout instead of items to complement what they can grab from their workplace. Most of these items were nerfed for good reason though

AI wanted improvements like hotkeys, access to sec channel, invisible door bolts, all which let it be a more efficient antag hunter

People didnt want traitor sec because nobody likes getting killed after being arrested or having your fellow officer backstab you. Traitor AI seems likewise gone or very rare. Fair enough, all valid complaints. But now we have 8 or something heavily armed and armored guys plus robots plus a noclip ghost all dedicated to hunting antagonists and their more or less going to be loyal and cooperating on a private channel.

Gibbing was made much harder. Welding tanks and C4 won't do it, and this generally means you have to drag the body through maint...

...which is crawling with sec officers who now start with access to that.

I'm sure there is more I'm forgetting

I'm not saying I know the solution or that the above wasnt well intentioned or didnt bring positive change as well, but I dont think many people (not all, plenty of people bringing up great points) really consider how seemingly unrelated changes impact the game as a whole. Everything is interlinked and feeds into each other.

Giving traitors enough TC that they can all buy adrenal implants and revolvers will certainly turn the round into a shit show, but not the kind of round many people would enjoy. Wouldnt help rev/cult/changeling either.
It's a structural problem and turning traitors into murderboner machines wont fix it

Emptyquoting because this is almost an exact list of everything that needs to be reverted, one by one, to fix this problem.

Arete · Post by **Arete** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 9:10 pm #94816

Kor wrote:Giving traitors enough TC that they can all buy adrenal implants and revolvers will certainly turn the round into a shit show, but not the kind of round many people would enjoy. Wouldnt help rev/cult/changeling either.
It's a structural problem and turning traitors into murderboner machines wont fix it

Traitors having enough TC to buy adrenal implants plus other stuff doesn't strike me as a problem. An adrenal implant is a defensive tool. It means that the traitor can fuck up and get tased, but then gets another chance to do something interesting to the round.

Traitors all being able to buy murderboner gear is a legit complaint, though, and I'd support scaling the directly lethal gear (and only the directly lethal gear) with the TC increase. I wouldn't count singulo beacons under that though, they're already crazy expensive for something that doesn't guarantee that your target is killed and requires you to do a round-ending thing separately in the first place.

I don't think that nerfing sec should be part of the solution. Security should absolutely be more capable of standing up to antags than standard crew are. Sec just needs to be spread more thin by more antagonistic things happening on the station at once.

Post by **PKPenguin321** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 9:40 pm #94820

bandit wrote:
Kor wrote:>only traitor nerfs I remember being in demand.../traitors weren't nerfed very much

It isnt about the actual traitor gear. People did in fact demand numerous nerfs to traitors, whether they realized it or not.

People wanted the movespeed lowered. This means guns and flashbangs are now very powerful, and the AI is comparatively faster. It makes it much easier to track whats going on in a chase as well, I've found.

Genetics, polyacid, water, guns from science, chloral, stungloves, etc were all nerfed for one reason or another, often with popular support. Hell I coded some of the nerfs myself. But without viable deparment weapons traitors now have to spend their TC on lacklustre shit like a one shot ebow. They rely on their PDA for their entire loadout instead of items to complement what they can grab from their workplace. Most of these items were nerfed for good reason though

AI wanted improvements like hotkeys, access to sec channel, invisible door bolts, all which let it be a more efficient antag hunter

People didnt want traitor sec because nobody likes getting killed after being arrested or having your fellow officer backstab you. Traitor AI seems likewise gone or very rare. Fair enough, all valid complaints. But now we have 8 or something heavily armed and armored guys plus robots plus a noclip ghost all dedicated to hunting antagonists and their more or less going to be loyal and cooperating on a private channel.

Gibbing was made much harder. Welding tanks and C4 won't do it, and this generally means you have to drag the body through maint...

...which is crawling with sec officers who now start with access to that.

I'm sure there is more I'm forgetting

I'm not saying I know the solution or that the above wasnt well intentioned or didnt bring positive change as well, but I dont think many people (not all, plenty of people bringing up great points) really consider how seemingly unrelated changes impact the game as a whole. Everything is interlinked and feeds into each other.

Giving traitors enough TC that they can all buy adrenal implants and revolvers will certainly turn the round into a shit show, but not the kind of round many people would enjoy. Wouldnt help rev/cult/changeling either.
It's a structural problem and turning traitors into murderboner machines wont fix it
Emptyquoting because this is almost an exact list of everything that needs to be reverted, one by one, to fix this problem.

I agree. (Excluding a few choice things like polyacid nerfs, stungloves, chloral)
When I started playing (wasn't even that long ago, it was within the last two weeks that errorage was hosting), rounds were a lot more chaotic with a lot more murder and death. I remember actually being paranoid some rounds, constantly on my toes in case some lunatic burst into my department and started shooting. I remember almost always taking thermals as traitor for the self-defense mechanism of early detection, if only because it gave me a better chance at not immediately dying. I remember being a ghost and watching a traitor take down the entire station by himself (shoutout to Yig), and God dammit, it was fun.

Nowadays I hardly have to worry about a damn thing. On the extremely rare occasion that a traitor finds his way to me instead of grabbing his corgi meat and hiding in a pod for a few hours, he's rarely equipped well enough so that he can take me down. Simply by getting lucky with a disarm or two and then getting a chokehold, you can take down most traitors unarmed. The only successful traitors as of late are ones with ranged stuns, like the ebow (which causes you to lose most of your TCs and thereby makes traitors have less variety).

Bring back more death and explosions. Revert some of these bullshit nerfs. Make traitors something to truly fear, regardless of the situation. Let's bring paranoia and excitement back to SS13.

Incomptinence · Wed Jun 10, 2015 10:25 pm

Rev doesn't really need help. Having little to no unique gear of its own has turned out to be a tremendous blessing in nerfland because as stun gear gets weaker meat and mobs stay pretty much as strong as they used to be if anything it helps rev.

Akkryls · Post by **Akkryls** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 10:57 pm #94841

Honestly, it would be nice if it went one way or the other. Rather than having exceptions.
Currently we have an incredibly lenient system where nearly nothing gibs you, other than some minor exceptions which gib you with absolute ease (Syndie minibombs on the same tile, Super matter shard, etc.)

It's something I was complaining about a while back in OOC. I'd be happy to have the station be incredibly deadly, as long as everything was tuned to that level. It's kind of understandable to get pissed when the game is currently tuned to not removing you from the round, and then something comes along that permanently removes you from the round anyway.

Oldman Robustin · Thu Jun 11, 2015 1:15 am

Cheridan wrote:Traitors lie low because the second they do anything it's radio-bolt-tase-cuff-strip-execute. Making traitors more lethal won't help anything, unless it is overwhelming firepower like L6 SAWs to eliminate anyone who comes at them after detection, because Sec still effectively has a one-shot-kill and comparable numbers with greater teamwork.

More TC's means I can do shit like buy a revolver or throwing stars to stuff in an air cannon and kill people quickly enough that they can't yell on radio. Or I feel confident enough to pre-emag my escape route since I have enough weaponry to handle a patrolling officer who stumbles upon me. Etc....

legality · Post by **legality** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 1:20 am #94863

my 2 cents:

acid spray bottles please

make deathnettles very scary -- back to how they used to be, before they were nerfed to shit. botanists should be feared. mutated plants should be frightening stuff.

revert the taser/egun change

fast space again

buff toolboxes to 2011 levels of damage -- 12 force maybe?

bring back pistol whipping

return of stungloves?

make the AI upload easier to access to non-bridge crew

make it easier to emag borgs

head of staff traitors again

there's probably like 20 more I could think of, most of the game's lethality has been butchered over the course of the last four years at a very slow pace

edit: oh, and buff the chance for random events. add some of the more lethal viruses like wizarditis back into the virus event

increase movespeed

THE MIGHTY GALVATRON · Thu Jun 11, 2015 1:32 am

Making the station itself less secure could help. Less reinforced walls, less camera coverage, more broken lights; build the station like it was built by an incompetent construction crew on a low budget.

Scones · Post by **Scones** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 1:36 am #94872

legality wrote:acid spray bottles please

Already a thing

legality wrote:make deathnettles very scary -- back to how they used to be, before they were nerfed to shit. botanists should be feared. mutated plants should be frightening stuff.

50 damage a hit isn't good enough?

legality wrote:revert the taser/egun change

Not relevant

legality wrote:fast space again

Not relevant

legality wrote:buff toolboxes to 2011 levels of damage -- 12 force maybe?

That extra 2 force sure will save you

legality wrote:bring back pistol whipping

Did it ever leave?

legality wrote:return of stungloves?

Someone has been banned from git over this

legality wrote:make the AI upload easier to access to non-bridge crew

???? for what purpose ????

legality wrote:make it easier to emag borgs

Already super easy

legality wrote:head of staff traitors again

You don't play often do you

Post by **lumipharon** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 1:49 am #94877

acid spray is hacked medborgs only.
And the nuke op only chem thrower, if you have to tim put acid in it on station.

Cik · Post by **Cik** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 1:58 am #94882

i support giving more TC to traitors but 40 might be a bit far unless it's segmented, or some of the costs are changed. 40 TC as it currently is means that one or two traitors could effectively bomb the station into a crater. a 14tc syndibomb takes several engineers a while to fix, and in many rounds there aren't even any engineers. early morning you are lucky to have even one.

if 40tc is the way to go some of it should be required to be nonexplosive items, like camo projectors, camera bugs, or other stealthy traitory items. i don't really want to see dsword / explosive implant / freedom implant / stimpack combos, or at least until there is a full security complement. population scaling might be a better way of going about it.

i do support more tc though, 20 seems awfully limited; in many cases you will basically need a crypto, and then you can get one big item or a small sidearm to protect yourself, and not both. i do think that a stechkin or esword should be basically standard equipment that you take to protect yourself and that you should be able to get one of them and a syndibomb, power sink or singularity beacon if you want to.

legality · Post by **legality** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 1:58 am #94884

Scones wrote:
legality wrote:head of staff traitors again
You don't play often do you

I play about once a week now, with long periods of inactivity in between. I haven't been very active for any significant amount of time since the end of 2012, but I've been hanging around. I'm an old relic, and my opinions are just opinions. I didn't claim to be super well-informed on anything.

Scones wrote:
legality wrote:acid spray bottles please
Already a thing

Cool. I remembered them being removed awhile back.

Scones wrote:
legality wrote:make deathnettles very scary -- back to how they used to be, before they were nerfed to shit. botanists should be feared. mutated plants should be frightening stuff.
50 damage a hit isn't good enough?

50 damage a hit isn't what they did when I used my 100 potency deathnettles just about a month ago.

Scones wrote:
legality wrote:revert the taser/egun change
Not relevant
legality wrote:fast space again
Not relevant

These are both relevant to increasing lethality in their own ways.

Scones wrote:
legality wrote:buff toolboxes to 2011 levels of damage -- 12 force maybe?
That extra 2 force sure will save you

I remember them being extremely lethal back when I started playing. They were such a good weapon that an assistant wouldn't be caught dead without carrying one, which is where we get "toolboxing" from. It was your go-to weapon of choice before fire extinguishers became extremely common. Maybe it's just that the damage of a lot of other things has increased in comparison -- but that doesn't make sense, because everything was more lethal back then. Maybe the force was much higher? I'm not sure.

Scones wrote:
legality wrote:bring back pistol whipping
Did it ever leave?

It left in early 2011 I believe. Unless I've been hallucinating for the past four years and when you hit someone with a pistol on harm intent it still gives the text blurb "Spaceman1 pistol whips Spaceman2! and does bunches of damage with a small stun. Mind, I'm not saying that the stun should be returned or it should do the crazy near-esword levels of damage it did back then, but pistol whipping should do considerably more damage than it does now.

Scones wrote:
legality wrote:return of stungloves?
Someone has been banned from git over this

I don't pay attention to the drama. I do think it's a good idea though.

Scones wrote:
legality wrote:make the AI upload easier to access to non-bridge crew
???? for what purpose ????

Easier to break into as a traitor and change the AI's laws. I haven't seen it happen in a long time when it used to be a very common occurence. I see a lot of talk here about how traitors have it bad now that it's the entire security force and all the borgs plus the AI against a single traitor. Being able to do this helps even the odds a lot. Sec has the ion rifle now, secborgs have been nerfed to hell and back, and flashes still work and are readily available to security. If this change happens it might be wise to add flashes to a couple of more accessible areas of the station, so the non-sec crew has an easy to access way to combat borgs.

Scones wrote:
legality wrote:make it easier to emag borgs
Already super easy

Unless it was changed, not if they're paying attention.

Amelius · Post by **Amelius** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 3:50 am #94908

PKPenguin321 wrote:I remember being a ghost and watching a traitor take down the entire station by himself (shoutout to Yig), and God dammit, it was fun.

> That feel when in a robustness shoutout.

My dreams finally came true :3. I think you're referring to that round a couple years ago where I died in robotics to some random assistant after killing 37~ people (ghosts were counting). Good times, good times.

Anywho, I'm now an unrobust scrub due to a crappy router and thus, an inconsistent internet connection that fucks me up. I'm a bit out of practice too, given back then I played every hour of every day. All the general nerfs and constraints to tatoring don't help either.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 5:08 am #94926

All heads of staff barring the Captain and HoS can be a roundstart antagonist. The only exception is that the HoP can't be a round start Cultists but can be converted into one mid game.

callanrockslol · Thu Jun 11, 2015 9:38 am

Just have a week of 2011 in/v/asion rules/code and wait for everyone to ask for it to go back.

As much as we can talk about it on the forum about going back to superdeadly corpsepile thegenetaciststheydonothing I don't think most people would enjoy it.

We need to remove the pop cap and make more antags. More chaos and less crying.

bandit · Post by **bandit** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 10:26 am #94981

Unfortunately, more nerfs are coming down the coding pipeline, specifically this: https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/9895

By the creator of this thread no less, which means our feedback was completely pointless and ignored. What else is new.

Which leads me to more points:

Traitor items are too significant. It should be entirely possible for a traitor to never touch his uplink, instead relying on departmental items. The game is moving farther and farther away from this, and as a result, traitor items are both subject to insane creep (we have too many of them as it is) and relied on, boringly, in lieu of more creative, makeshift, improvised, sabotage-based, fun traitoring.

Most steal objectives are complete bullshit, more so than before. There were always one-off items like the RCD that you could just lathe, but now they're almost all like this. Corgi meat? Forget about kidnapping Ian, just wait for science to get a corgi cannon that shits out hundreds of them. Jetpack? Just ask a miner sitting on thousands of pointless points. Medal of captaincy? No need to kill the captain, just break the medal box. Meanwhile the objectives that typically required high-risk murder, like spare jumpsuits, are gone. Once again, it's a lot of seemingly innocuous changes combining to sap all the challenge and fun from traitoring.

Incomptinence · Thu Jun 11, 2015 10:47 am

Oh... oh oh oh okay.