/tg/Station 13

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What effect would increasing the number of gangs have for higher population games?

Saltycut wrote:Not sure if this was mentioned somewhere in the thread, but currently spraying graffiti tag on the wall always proceeds with pushing the wall. That leaves fingerprints and means that that person with forensic scanner can easily obtain a list off most of the gangmembers without even catching them redhanded spraying. Not sure if that was intended by or should be posted as a ballance issue since its greatly buffs security side during this game mode.

Spraycans (which was coded by someone else) was extremely buggy when it was introduced. I've fixed all the significant ones, but at the time I wasn't aware that this bug affected gameplay as you describe. I'll take another look at it for the next gang update (Which is coming very soon!)

invisty wrote:What effect would increasing the number of gangs have for higher population games?

It would result in a greater number of gangs I imagine.

Practical effect would be that since there'd be more gangsters and more sides that tags would be more apt to get overwritten, which means that gaining the required percentage to win the round would be harder to do without slaughtering the opposition (or having someone else do so). That said stalemates would probably be more likely too.

Incoming wrote: stalemates would probably be more likely too.

Doubt it. 3 gangs? How much MURDERING do you think would happen as a result?

Had a gang round today, was my first being a gang boss.

I had to say it was pretty enjoyable. We were based mainly out of science, they seemed to be based out of cargo.

Had several drive by shootings/beatings of our gang members outside science, smuggled guns from right under the noses of enemy gangsters, then later made the AI systematically hunt down all of the enemy gang.

I gotta say though, loyalty implants barely got used, and sec ended up all getting dunked. When implants do get used though, both gangs are pretty heavily fucked.
The gangwide message thing still isn't live on the server, and it is badly needed - organisation is a bitch without it, and that was with most of the gang being on the sci channel.

Gangsters bags to dunk on peoples head to kidnap them. Shit would be great.

Another thing would be a way to extract names from enemy gangsters, with some gang tool. This would of course come with a very high chance of death, but if they pop a name out during the screaming, you're good to go.

From the few rounds I played, I must say that I greatly dislike the entire focus around rushing everything, especially as a head member of the gang. Converting people as fast as you can, then spraying everying as fast as you can or you'll fall behind and lose. Obviously, this kind of discourages amusing gang RP which is a shame. Do gang points really need to be tied to the amount of controlled areas? Why not have areas give a minor combat bonus instead, that would make intruding on enemy areas slightly more risky aswell.

What do I like a lot is how chaotic and destructive this mode is on the crew. Security gets destroyed by gang members with guns and public areas end up littered with bodies of opposing gang members.

Still no gang clothes or low-rider janicarts tbh gamemode will be shit until this gets fixed

Update is up. It's not done yet, but you can preview what I have so far.

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/9857

Ikarrus wrote:

Update is up. It's not done yet, but you can preview what I have so far.

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/9857

Awesome! You actually implemented my suggestion!

Don't forget the option to order (rebalanced) Tommy guns once the round escalates!

literally all I care about is one random name gang being the Mesons

I hope that recruitment has been tweaked.

Last I played it was a true struggle to get more than ~8 gang members. Even then, 25% will always go disappear, sleep in a dorm, go braindead, etc. Leaving you with 6 active members. Maybe half of those actually respond to your orders, follow directions, and will actually use the gear you give them.

So you're left with a 60 person round where maybe 6 people are actually engaged in a conflict, and most of the time that conflict is manifested by spraying stuff on a wall.

Now with the new objective (which isn't a bad thing IMO), it's not enough just to beat the other gang. The entire station will want to rush you as soon as the announcement goes out. Flashbangs, bombs, etc. will all be quick spoilers to a fun event. Even if one gang stomps the other, they still don't have the resources to take on the station.

TL;DR gangs need a modest buff to their recruitment rate. It's not fun being in a gang round as a non-ganger/non-sec anyway. Antags will flat out ignore you and you never really have any IC reasons to mess with them either, only the janitor will have a role to play and he will probably just get poked with a pen first chance someone gets. Everyone else just sits around while the antags/sec have their conflict.

Speed up the recruitment, make the gang mode feel like a station-wide event and not fucking Counter-strike 5v5 where I get more entertainment by suiciding and spectating than trying to participate in the game-type as a neutral. The hostile takeover is a step in the right direction, but both for the sake of gang's having a chance and more players getting involved there needs to be less CD on the conversion pen.

Yeah, recruitment could do with a buff. We had a very long gang round with active bosses yesterday but still the population of gangsters was pretty fucking low.

A recruitment buff is already ready to go live from an earlier update, but the servers usually aren't that quick to update to the latest code.

Things you can expect:
- Flat recruitment cooldown times. Cooldowns no longer get longer the bigger your gang is
- Cheaper recruitment pens at 30 influence each.

These things should show up in the in-game changelog when the servers update.

Update is ready to go. I've updated the PR's description with the full changes.

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/9857

Please note that all numbers have been pulled out of my ass. They'll probably need tweaking after a couple of rounds.

A gang member dying should reduce control or influence somehow, either by a set amount or a percentage, since gang often runs into a problem where one gang has essentially all but won but the round has to wait until control reaches a certain percentage/the winning gang figures out that they have to spray paint things.

Could you explain to me how that would solve that problem? I'm not even sure it will be as much if an issue with the new objective.

GW feels a tad snowbally right now. I think the acceleration of recruitment is good but if one leader is slow at recruiting they are going to be forever behind unless the other gang gets a ton of sec attention.

I think the best solution is some kind of comeback mechanic, like if enemy gang outnumbers yours 3:1, boss/LT's get access to a high power pen with 1-3 uses (depending on what's balanced) that will recruit enemy gang members.

Every gang I've been recruited into has been quite behind and it feels almost inevitable that you're going to lose. Using the pen becomes a 70/30 chance of poking an enemy gang member and giving yourself away, and winning a fight against them is a losing proposition. So you're left trying to poke the few crew who aren't converted and aren't behind some dept-restricted door while praying sec intervenes on the enemy gang before the enemy gang finishes you off.

Dominator is fun as fuck

Oldman Robustin wrote:GW feels a tad snowbally right now. I think the acceleration of recruitment is good but if one leader is slow at recruiting they are going to be forever behind unless the other gang gets a ton of sec attention.

I think the best solution is some kind of comeback mechanic, like if enemy gang outnumbers yours 3:1, boss/LT's get access to a high power pen with 1-3 uses (depending on what's balanced) that will recruit enemy gang members.

Every gang I've been recruited into has been quite behind and it feels almost inevitable that you're going to lose. Using the pen becomes a 70/30 chance of poking an enemy gang member and giving yourself away, and winning a fight against them is a losing proposition. So you're left trying to poke the few crew who aren't converted and aren't behind some dept-restricted door while praying sec intervenes on the enemy gang before the enemy gang finishes you off.

Yeah, that's what the intention behind the cooldowns were. But they don't scale well with high population rounds.

I'm looking into ways to promote comebacks.

New Tweak PR is up. Numbers are subject to change before merging.

Check the description here for more details.

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/9928

Those Tommyguns are ridiculously strong, stronger than LMG probably. What was the reasoning behind them? It's not like stechkins are inadequate for gang on gang violence, are they meant to be used on sec? Doesn't that go against the spirit of the mode?

Yeah from what I saw I think their higher tier weapon should be something else. The tommygun is just a ggnore for security.

It was pretty funny to waste three sec officers in rapid succession but I was under the impression the weapon was going to be rebalanced for use in gang

I added a tommy gun nerf.

Lumbermancer wrote:Those Tommyguns are ridiculously strong, stronger than LMG probably. What was the reasoning behind them? It's not like stechkins are inadequate for gang on gang violence, are they meant to be used on sec? Doesn't that go against the spirit of the mode?

Well the new GW is definitely going to fully engage security before its over, which is great.

Before Sec would even struggle to have IC reasons to care about gangs. Tags aren't really noteworthy compared to most crew misbehavings, and most gang violence took place in maint against each other.

I like the showdown now, Sec gearing up to take down a dominator vs. the largely improvised defenses of a gang. Armor + Riot Shields goes a long way to making Stetchkins feel like flea bites. Plus it's always fun when sec really gets to take the gloves off.

I also think the CD reduction for the losing gang is a good comeback mechanic, though it still doesn't address the situation where there's a major shortage of targets to convert. I was a LT. earlier and spent nearly 10 minutes looking for someone to convert. Three people were "mind resistant", everyone else was tucked away safely in their dept. Still GW is already more fun and balanced than a majority of game modes.

There are three solutions that I can come up with to counterbalance the 50/50 chance of single gang domination that results in the round becoming rev lite.

One is to have a third gang. Fraction the crew a bit more, and two of three subsisting is expected.

Two is to give cooldown reductions for being 'behind' in recruitment, in comparison to the other gang. It would also make choosing who to convert more strategic as well.

Three is to give resource bonuses for being 'behind' in recruitment.

A mix works too.

I guess with the "dominator" or whatever it's called, tommy guns make more sense. Still i'd like to see more emphasis put on melee and improvised weaponry. Maybe give them unique crafting recipes. Maybe give them some kind of expensive prototype weapon that disables loyalty implants.

Had a good long run as Omni leader, even though we ended up losing in the end.

Couple bits of input:

-Gang outfits need footwear, executive suits and Science white shoes are a poor match.

-Tommy guns need purchasable ammunition drums. Make it expensive, sure, but they still need it.


I really like Gang War, because it allows for some RP(When we took over the bar and distributed suits and fedoras, everyone suddenly and inexplicably developed a Joisey accent, and the need to say 'nyeah' and end their sentences with 'See?'), but the powergame-heavy play style enforced on Sybil means that gang outfits are gonna get people lynched by validhunters once they enter the public metaknowledge, and Sec searching, assaulting, and implanting people just because they're wearing a fedora or leather jacket is going to become commonplace. Not only will this result in nonantags being hurt, but it will make Gang War rounds thoroughly unfun, and you will see outfits going entirely unused to counter validhunting.

Timer feels a bit short. 55% control, but not even a minute or so until we won.

Other than that, nice chaotic and fun round. Me and my homies walked into a shootout with sec and the other gang and we had a nice three way pewpewing going on. The tommy guns are strong as fuck though, as soon as we rolled them out, it was over for sec.

Yeah, that turned out to be a bug.

Gangs are supposed to get bonus time reductions on their takeover attempt depending on how many territories they controlled. But the bonus is not supposed to apply itself when the timer is lower than 3 minutes.

So it caused them to basically instant-win. I've fixed the bug in a hotfix which is live now.

Wearing the gang-outfit should give you a small incentive, maybe 1 income per member wearing full colours? Besides RP, you currently only make yourself a target using them.

Let gang members walking around in gang uniforms give influence points.

It would fit nicely with the grafiti in that you get influence by making your presence known.

Tunder wrote:

I really like Gang War, because it allows for some RP(When we took over the bar and distributed suits and fedoras, everyone suddenly and inexplicably developed a Joisey accent, and the need to say 'nyeah' and end their sentences with 'See?'), but the powergame-heavy play style enforced on Sybil means that gang outfits are gonna get people lynched by validhunters once they enter the public metaknowledge, and Sec searching, assaulting, and implanting people just because they're wearing a fedora or leather jacket is going to become commonplace. Not only will this result in nonantags being hurt, but it will make Gang War rounds thoroughly unfun, and you will see outfits going entirely unused to counter validhunting.

Well make gang clothes available from other sources. Maybe let cargo order them and start with a set in the costume vendor.

Fedoras are definitely available. Leather jackets are in the biogenerator, black suits are in the laundry room, colored jumpsuits are already fucking everywhere, just make it bannable to metagame based off clothing. It's not hard.

just make it bannable to metagame based off clothing.

That's dumb. Gangs are IC knowledge, like every game mode. If gang presence is confirmed, you best be sure every person wearing GANG COLOURS will get frisked.

I feel that people are getting the wrong idea about gangs. They are trying to run it like Cult - subtle and trying to blend in. A gang, by its nature, obtains power from notoriety. There is a reason why gangs must tag locations with spray paint. It is a declaration of their presence. Gangs should NOT hide who they are or try to blend in. They are people who yell "TUNNEL SNAKES RULE!!!" and mark territory on the station as their own. Stealth should not be a thing in gang at all!

That gets you dunked and AI/Sec valid hunted before your first tag is done spraying

Loyalty implants were a mistake

Give gangs some kind of expensive prototype gun to disable people's implants. We can pretend it's Shadowrun.

Gun Hog wrote:I feel that people are getting the wrong idea about gangs. They are trying to run it like Cult - subtle and trying to blend in. A gang, by its nature, obtains power from notoriety. There is a reason why gangs must tag locations with spray paint. It is a declaration of their presence. Gangs should NOT hide who they are or try to blend in. They are people who yell "TUNNEL SNAKES RULE!!!" and mark territory on the station as their own. Stealth should not be a thing in gang at all!

If you want the game to be played that way, you have to change the code or the policy to encourage it.

bandit wrote:Fedoras are definitely available. Leather jackets are in the biogenerator, black suits are in the laundry room, colored jumpsuits are already fucking everywhere, just make it bannable to metagame based off clothing. It's not hard.

But Sec will argue that anything they find as a result of metagaming is the real reason they arrested the gang member in the first place.

Or shitty gangers who spray tags or shoot people in public view will ahelp that they were only arrested because of their clothing because they're either retarded or salty.


The policy surrounding gang war should be altered. Sec shouldn't be allowed to validhunt or nonhuman gangers unless they see them committing crimes, AI should avoid involvement, and gangers should be reclothed in gang outfits upon being converted, and only be allowed to attack rival gang members or people dumb enough to wear gang clothing.

I think most people agree that this is the most fun when it's mainly gang v gang combat, not gang v sec.

If it was policy/spacelaw/whatever, that being in a gang (whether the antag or just some rp gang) itself wasn't a crime, then sec wouldn't/shouldn't be shitting on the gangs as soon as they hear about them. Instead, it would be cracking down on gang violence/graffiti'ing the station etc.

It would make it more interesting if sec was putting people into the gulag/perma/brig for actual crimes committed/conspiracy, as opposed to 'you're a gangster, implant or kill'.

Okay, I'm not going to be seeking an administrative solution to this --I consider needing one is a result of bad design.

I'm considering adding some form of implant removal tool. Specifically an implanter that kills all implants inside a given target. The sort of implanter that needs the target to remain still for about 3 seconds. It would cost about 10 influence, but only has a single use.

In theory this should make it easier to remove implants from people without needing to use medbay, without while keeping implants just reliable enough to use.

You could make an EMP of high severity kill implants? EMP might be too accessible in the form of singulo, though.

invisty wrote:You could make an EMP of high severity kill implants? EMP might be too accessible in the form of singulo, though.

I do kind of like the image of gangsters dangling captured officers over the singulo in order to scare them into turning crooked.

AI Law changing at the onset of gang is pretty shitty, and seems to happen in every Gang War round.

EDIT: Also, in the face of validhunting Sec, possession of spray paint and nothing else should only be punishable with brig time. Implanting because they have paint but no weapons, or implanting people with nothing suspicious on their persons whatsoever is questionable, and does nothing but bad for the round.

Pull Request: Loyalty Implants and Gang Mode
https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/10004

Ikarrus wrote:Pull Request: Loyalty Implants and Gang Mode
https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/10004

Good shit. I hope it adds a solid balance.

Just sayin', making implants no longer deconvert, it means you're going to see a whole lot more executions/harmbatonning, generally speaking, for major crimes especially. Dunno if that's intended usage.

I also removed tommy guns for a bit to see how it affects the game. To see if a high-end weapon is even needed or if they just detract from the game.

Either they were too weak and pistols become way better than them, or their high cost demands high power that might not be very fun to play with (2-click death). A middle ground may exist, but I want to see if it's even worth it.

Pistols and switchtools are pretty robust. Gangsters working together is fun. Encouraging gang bosses to save up their points to spend it on a super weapon that only a few people can use might not be the best way to do things.

At the very least it will soften the nerf security is going to get. Not having to fear the instant death from tommy guns might be a good tradeoff.