/tg/Station 13

Is a fundamentally flawed mechanic that doesn't mix with the flow of rounds/gamemodes

1. Strictly speaking of winning the current gamemode, there is no mechanical reason not to emergency launch, not doing so is giving antagonists a chance to complete their objectives (see: cult, nuke ops)
2. Crew on the shuttle is encouraged to launch at the first sign of trouble rather than wait for others, robbing the round of a possibly interesting climax/last stand moment with people scrambling to get survivors and the wounded inside
3. Potentially ruins the round for the entire server as most traitor objectives require you to be on the escape shuttle and arguably the only way to win for normal crew is to survive on the shuttle
4. Round ending calamities such as loose singularities (one of the main reasons stated for this feature to exist) are nowadays extremely rare for this feature to be kept
5. Due to the reasons stated above, early launching is very frequently abused

There's two ways I see to fix this:
1. Just get rid of the damn thing
2. Emergency launching halves the launch timer instead of instant takeoff, so trying to early launch 5 seconds from docking gives people enough of a heads up to hurry

Admins bwoink nerds who early launch 4noraisins

Im not convinced they do.

it strikes me as a mechanic added to soothe whiners back when the shuttle was first made longer.

literally just 5 minutes ago i finished a round where i was a captain who authorized the last swipe for early launch, a tesla was coming down the hallway and we were waiting as long as we could before launching to let people get on. it was cool and dramatic and fun. also we do ban people who just launch to powergame or "because LOL" or whatever.

that said it could probably use a nerf, maybe make it cut the shuttle launch time in half like red alert does to the shuttle timer? or maybe even a quarter, but also make it so you can cancel the early launch?

Whatever punishments are being handed out are obviously not harsh enough or too far apart because I still routinely see it being used during extended, but this isn't a policy thread

The situation you describe is a drop in the bucket compared to "early launch to not make the nukies win" or "early launch because there's a traitor killing people somewhere and also i'm bored", both bringing the round's climax to a screeching halt for anyone that isn't present on the escape shuttle

From a code/mechanics perspective, early launching is a somewhat flawed feature, but it adds more than it takes away. The potential to take away from certain scenarios exists, but it also exists as an option for not only crew but also traitors(emagged consoles/multiple IDs) to get the fuck out early for any multitude of reasons. Early launching due to some sort of calamitous event(nuke ops have the disk, cult has halos, meteors, singuloth/tesloose, etc etc) seems to happen a lot more often than powergame/lolrandumb early launches.

If you think that people aren't getting punished/discouraged from abusing it often enough, that's not a code discussion, that's a policy discussion. Positive depth of play shouldn't be removed from the code just because you're under the assumption that policy and intervention doesn't protect it from rare cases of abuse well enough.

I disagree

oranges wrote:I disagree

maybe you didnt do anything about it as an admin, but i know that i and others do, it's not really a subjective thing that you can disagree on

Yeah I'm getting annoyed with it, after seeing a blatant meme early launch today I grilled the 3 who swiped on it and noted the 3rd who was responsible for the launch, then put the whole server on notice. Gonna drop notes and eventually 5m bans if people continually meme launch.

PKPenguin321 wrote:

oranges wrote:I disagree

maybe you didnt do anything about it as an admin, but i know that i and others do, it's not really a subjective thing that you can disagree on

except it is, because the admin team does jack shit about it and bareyl has coverage even in prime time.

Saying the admin team does anything about this kind of stuff is just a joke

oranges wrote:

PKPenguin321 wrote:

oranges wrote:I disagree

maybe you didnt do anything about it as an admin, but i know that i and others do, it's not really a subjective thing that you can disagree on

except it is, because the admin team does jack shit about it and bareyl has coverage even in prime time.

Saying the admin team does anything about this kind of stuff is just a joke

Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

t. been bwoinked for an early launch before(I had a good reason though, so no note for me lads)

oranges wrote:

PKPenguin321 wrote:

oranges wrote:I disagree

maybe you didnt do anything about it as an admin, but i know that i and others do, it's not really a subjective thing that you can disagree on

except it is, because the admin team does jack shit about it and bareyl has coverage even in prime time.

Saying the admin team does anything about this kind of stuff is just a joke

it isn't, admins not being good enough has never really been a reason for outright removing things. that's too widely applicable of an argument; i'm sure somebody's gotten away with a non-antag plasma flood when admins werent on, doesnt mean we're removing plasma fires. if an admin doesn't punish a rulebreaker, that's on the admin and the rulebreaker, not on a game mechanic that is involved secondarily.

Auto-note system maybe? nothing that would be punishable by themselves but it would be good to see established patterns, for example suiciding at roundstart and early launching the shuttle.

Its a code solution but it would make catching certain behaviors easier. depending on the metrics measured.

Lack of proper oversight isn't an issue, only a compounding factor

Dr_bee wrote:Auto-note system maybe? nothing that would be punishable by themselves but it would be good to see established patterns, for example suiciding at roundstart and early launching the shuttle.

Its a code solution but it would make catching certain behaviors easier. depending on the metrics measured.

if you want to know those things it'd be better to query the logs for it than fuck around adding notes to people that may or may not be removed later

Just log early launching with ckeys as a unique entry so if you cared you can easily parse.

I was a head (forgot if CMO or HOP) in the round PKP was referring to, there's definitely valid usecases for emergency launching.

We just need to make it clear that it should be used for reacting to immediate emergencies (Bombs/Singulotesla/OPs/Facerolling Cult)

A possible alternative I forgot to mention is to require all 3 IDs to be swiped within 5 seconds of each other, which wouldn't be much of an issue during a real emergency but would prevent the current trend of wordless swipe and forget whenever a head gets on the shuttle

Mickyan wrote:A possible alternative I forgot to mention is to require all 3 IDs to be swiped within 5 seconds of each other, which wouldn't be much of an issue during a real emergency but would prevent the current trend of wordless swipe and forget whenever a head gets on the shuttle

You would have more assholes using 3 stolen IDs then. A better way would simply have early launch require a reason being typed in. This would give documentation for admins as well as context for other heads of staff.

If the reason listen for the initial swipe is "lol im bored" other heads of staff would probably be less likely to swipe along with it. And if you cant spend 5 seconds to type out a reason to swipe you have more pressing issues than early launching.

Dr_bee wrote:

Mickyan wrote:A possible alternative I forgot to mention is to require all 3 IDs to be swiped within 5 seconds of each other, which wouldn't be much of an issue during a real emergency but would prevent the current trend of wordless swipe and forget whenever a head gets on the shuttle

You would have more assholes using 3 stolen IDs then. A better way would simply have early launch require a reason being typed in. This would give documentation for admins as well as context for other heads of staff.

If the reason listen for the initial swipe is "lol im bored" other heads of staff would probably be less likely to swipe along with it. And if you cant spend 5 seconds to type out a reason to swipe you have more pressing issues than early launching.

Yeah, because I really want to mash out "BRUH" as fast as humanly possible when a tesloose is bearing down on the escape shuttle. I'm sure the admins will love parsing through the "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" shuttle logs as well.

re:admins handling misuse of emergency launch -- i also have issued punishments for players emergency launching with no notice to the crew or consideration for the situation.

re: auto-note: the last I checked the emergency launch counter was a buggy piece of shit so it has a high risk of erroneously noting people

bandit wrote:re: auto-note: the last I checked the emergency launch counter was a buggy piece of shit so it has a high risk of erroneously noting people

It is more of a general idea of automatic data collection so admins could more easily track certain undesirable but hard to catch behaviors, such as roundstart suiciding and shuttle launching. I may make a thread of its own. I sadly wouldnt know where to start actually coding it.

the thing is, as an admin, automatic data collection tends to be spammy and/or unreliable, often both