War Ops was a mistake.

[Dr_bee]

While it seemed like a good idea on paper in practice it is basically a free "have 20% of the station kill themselves and get TC for doing it" button. I rarely if ever see ops choose to forgo war-mode, especially on high pop.

Nerf the amount of TC the ops get substantially, make war mode have a different objective or remove the feature entirely. War ops rounds typically are all the same anyway, especially considering that operatives only need to kill whoever is holding the disk and not the entire station.

[Stickymayhem]

Agreed. Clock cult showed us that "Wait 20 minutes for anything to happen" just isn't fun gameplay.

[Lazengann]

Yeah it sucks. Even if it's removed, they could always pray for an admin to do it.

[D&B]

Agreed. Clock cult showed us that "Wait 20 minutes for anything to happen" just isn't fun gameplay.

Clock Cult and War ops are incredibly different so I don't know if it's plain ignorance or bad faith for you to compare both.

[bman]

nothing wrong with it tbh, the reason people GO LOUD is because they wanna be cool moint pan big team leader guys and not because of the tc boost which let's be honest is gonna get sunk into a couple of borgs and a mech or a pod and that just makes it more interesting

[PKPenguin321]

Agreed. Clock cult showed us that "Wait 20 minutes for anything to happen" just isn't fun gameplay.

Clock Cult and War ops are incredibly different so I don't know if it's plain ignorance or bad faith for you to compare both.

Clock cult had a sort of similar war mode. I think the comparison is fair in at least a handful of aspects.

[Dax Dupont]

Yeah but clock cult had special defenses and the enemy team was anywhere from one poor sausage to 90 clock lovers.
Nuke ops assault at least is somewhat fun, but we should probably tweak some aspects of it or only make it be a possiblity in 1/2 of ops rounds.

[Yakumo_Chen]

War Ops was fun once every few op rounds but now they do it almost every single time and it's getting stale

[Cobby]

Making it require all minus 1 to start war would be a huge plus (assuming admins also enforce that you can't kill people for not wanting to do war).

[Mickyan]

I think declaring war should come with some requirements so that there's more to it than just choosing how you want the gamemode to play out

Example: nuke ops start as usual, the team has until the twenty minute mark to finish a secondary mission (this could be for example breaking into the vault and stealing the secret documents, or bringing back the body of any head of staff) which once accomplished allows them to declare war. Once war is declared, the shuttle is locked until the twenty minute mark and the operatives get an amount of extra TC depending on how fast they finished their objective ( essentially it scales with how much time the station has to prepare afterwards).

This allows for nuke ops to come up with a few more tactical options, such as:
1. Start as stealth ops, if discovered and things go south, or if opportunity strikes, go for the secondary mission and retreat to regroup and declare war
2. Set out to do the secondary mission as fast as possible to get the most TC and declare war.

Pros of doing this:
1. War isn't declared 1 minute into the round, people are less likely to suicide if they have some investment into the current round
2. No 20 minutes wait, the two teams engage right away, the crew gets secondary objectives to defend instead of focusing entirely on the disk, operatives may decide to leave a squad mate(s) behind on the station to sabotage while they gear up for war so no more "it's war ops so no antags until 20 minutes". This also means if one operative wants to stealth while the rest of the team wants to go to war, they can technically do both if they play their cards right.

[imsxz]

War ops is the only way the crew reasonably stands a chance. A proper blitz ops team beats any captain short of a literal metagamer.

With stealth/blitz, you have 10-20 minutes of doing your job as you normally would, only for ops to be called out and either delta called or round end moments later. Sure, in war ops, the captain can be a retard and lose the disk as soon as they begin the assault, but generally the crew will be able to provide a strong defense for the disk holder and at least stand a chance.

[subject217]

War ops is the only way the crew reasonably stands a chance. A proper blitz ops team beats any captain short of a literal metagamer.

Only because the average Captain is really bad and even a good Captain can still get unlucky and screwed over. Also because of things mostly unique to /tg/ like movespeed (not to open up that can of worms) and the amount of griff that is tolerated.If you have any legitimate ideas for improving one of the oldest and longest standing game modes you should stay so instead of defending a shitty, dreary iteration on it that makes 25% of the crew commit suicide every time.

Mickyan's idea is actually really good, I like it a lot.

[angelstarri]

I feel like War Ops is pretty balanced on the merit that the Syndicate team might be as robust/unrobust as the station is. Even then, the station has plenty of time to prepare defenses/research&order weapons/get ready in general for a Syndicate assault, that may go from a small, very well equipped strike team to a large team without much equipment and support. Consider that even when 10% of the station suicides because war ops, that's still 6-8 people from a station that has 60+ players or more in non-peak times.

If the Syndies get the disk from a heavily defended station, plant and defend the nuke, and the crew is unable to defuse it, then they deserve the win. Why do people think otherwise?

[somerandomguy]

I feel like War Ops is pretty balanced on the merit that the Syndicate team might be as robust/unrobust as the station is. Even then, the station has plenty of time to prepare defenses/research&order weapons/get ready in general for a Syndicate assault, that may go from a small, very well equipped strike team to a large team without much equipment and support. Consider that even when 10% of the station suicides because war ops, that's still 6-8 people from a station that has 60+ players or more in non-peak times.

If the Syndies get the disk from a heavily defended station, plant and defend the nuke, and the crew is unable to defuse it, then they deserve the win. Why do people think otherwise?

The nuke can't be defused/destroyed at all as long as the ops aren't dumb and leave the disk in it

[wesoda25]

I feel like War Ops is pretty balanced on the merit that the Syndicate team might be as robust/unrobust as the station is. Even then, the station has plenty of time to prepare defenses/research&order weapons/get ready in general for a Syndicate assault, that may go from a small, very well equipped strike team to a large team without much equipment and support. Consider that even when 10% of the station suicides because war ops, that's still 6-8 people from a station that has 60+ players or more in non-peak times.

If the Syndies get the disk from a heavily defended station, plant and defend the nuke, and the crew is unable to defuse it, then they deserve the win. Why do people think otherwise?

The issue isn’t how fair it is. War ops is pretty well balanced. The issue is everyone is sick of war being declared every fucking time. I prefer blitz no matter how OP it is just because its not as much as a waste of time.

[Luke Cox]

Make war declarations automatically spawn an ERT. Ops should have to think twice before declaring war.

[Anuv]

War ops already lose enough.

There seriously needs to be a 20 minute lockout on suicides/ghosts taking ops roles, though. Should only be available for people who observe at roundstart.

[Lumbermancer]

War Ops is a mistake, because it's an antithesis of what SS13 is supposed to be.

[Cobby]

saying this is what ss13 is suppose to be is the antithesis of what ss13 is suppose to be.

[Lumbermancer]

dohoho

[oranges]

War Ops is a mistake, because it's an antithesis of what SS13 is supposed to be.

oh I'm sorry, I didn't realise you were the creator and sole owner of ss13's vision

[Lumbermancer]

oh I'm sorry, I didn't realise you were the creator and sole owner of ss13's vision

Space Station 13 is a paranoia-laden round-based roleplaying game

War Ops is neither paranoia-laden nor roleplaying inducing.

[oranges]

unlike our wiki, the game evolves

[PKPenguin321]

unlike our wiki, the game evolves

evolution generally implies improvement

[D&B]

unlike our wiki, the game evolves

evolution generally implies improvement

Not an argument when sloths and pandas exist

[PKPenguin321]

unlike our wiki, the game evolves

evolution generally implies improvement

Not an argument when sloths and pandas exist

note that i said "generally," as well as "implies," not "literally defined as"

[ShadowDimentio]

War ops is the only way the crew reasonably stands a chance. A proper blitz ops team beats any captain short of a literal metagamer.

Only because the average Captain is really bad and even a good Captain can still get unlucky and screwed over. Also because of things mostly unique to /tg/ like movespeed (not to open up that can of worms) and the amount of griff that is tolerated.If you have any legitimate ideas for improving one of the oldest and longest standing game modes you should stay so instead of defending a shitty, dreary iteration on it that makes 25% of the crew commit suicide every time.

Ops can burn through the station and swipe the disk after shooting the captain dead before the crew often even knows they're there. It's a hysterically effective strategy.

[oranges]

unlike our wiki, the game evolves

evolution generally implies improvement

yes, which is why taking a single persons opinion (other than mine) about what was an improvement or not is silly

[PKPenguin321]

unlike our wiki, the game evolves

evolution generally implies improvement

yes, which is why taking a single persons opinion (other than mine)

based

[Lumbermancer]

unlike our wiki, the game evolves

[Bawhoppennn]

When War Ops was first added, I remember everyone talking about how it saved Ops from becoming a Rev-tier mode. How times change.

[BeeSting12]

whats funny is that if you log onto bagil youll get a few suicides on ops but on sybil everyone is overjoyed the ops mode rolled. the gamemode just rolls too often on bagil and people get tired of it.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I feel like War Ops is pretty balanced on the merit that the Syndicate team might be as robust/unrobust as the station is. Even then, the station has plenty of time to prepare defenses/research&order weapons/get ready in general for a Syndicate assault, that may go from a small, very well equipped strike team to a large team without much equipment and support. Consider that even when 10% of the station suicides because war ops, that's still 6-8 people from a station that has 60+ players or more in non-peak times.

If the Syndies get the disk from a heavily defended station, plant and defend the nuke, and the crew is unable to defuse it, then they deserve the win. Why do people think otherwise?

The nuke can't be defused/destroyed at all as long as the ops aren't dumb and leave the disk in it

detonating a BOH within 7 tiles of the nuke is an instant crew victory

[Dr_bee]

how about instead of 20 minutes of waiting war ops just gives the crew a bunch of weapons and such for free from nanotrasen, this will keep op rounds short while keeping it as the knock down drag out war that it is supposed to be.

Also give the ops a better ship for war mode if possible, something that is actually a war ship instead of an infiltrator, war mode is the "going in hot" button after all.

people might be a bit less willing to kill themselves if they get free neat weapons out of war mode instead of 20 minutes of boredom.

[Lumbermancer]

Then rework this into separate mode, you will get much more leeway into making it the team deathmatch you want. The downtime between announcement and action is what kills me.