/tg/Station 13

Recently I proposed a change and made a PR to make it so that abductors traumas would be far easier to cure the traumas given, either being fixed by straight-up neurine or the simpler brain surgery.

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/59849

Truth be told, I went with that approach as a compromise to outright removing it. I believe that the trauma aspect of abductors ruins the entire premise, it outright encourages players to rush to medbay after their abduction to get fixed. Doctors will instinctively just start an organ manipulation surgery when this happens in widespread abductor situations, quickly removing all aspects of the antagonist excluding the objective.

The focus of the antag is on the organ and the interactions that come with it, abductors is the only way to be able to get these organs. Being given these organs can open up fun opportunities depending on what one you get (Outside of the spiderling one which we should probably remove).

The brain surgery/lobotomy procedure is also a massive problem, brainwashing surgeries will be undone after these surgeries. I personally find it quite fun to do personal brainwashing on abductees to try and spice up the round. Having it be rushed to be completely removed so that they can go back to speaking is kind of a massive disappointment and spoils the fun.

Abductors at its core is a fun antag, it can encourage creativity and trying to make interesting scenarios/experimentations on the crew. Throwing out these scenarios in favour of randomly generated brain traumas is really fucking lame. It should continue to encourage the experimentation aspects of being abductor by aliens. With the changes to the limb grower, it would be fun to include one to the default abductor set up so we could get some fucked up crewmembers with VERY mismatched body parts.

Feels like to me you're giving a roundabout solution for the real solution which would be making alien organs inoperable with a trait.

Armhulen wrote:Feels like to me you're giving a roundabout solution for the real solution which would be making alien organs inoperable with a trait.

Brainwashings being undone due to the traumas would still remain with that proposal.

carshalash wrote:I believe that the trauma aspect of abductors ruins the entire premise

This.

Although unlikely, it's possible for an abductee's round to be ruined by bad trauma rolls. It's very easy for the trauma rolls to make the round worst for the abductee, even if their entire round isn't ruined by it.

Abductors are one of the few non-lethal non-conversion type antags that most players I've talked to seem to enjoy. I think this is because while most antags limit player freedom (Through round removal, or conversion) abductors tend to give abductees fun goals which the abductees can have many different ways to complete, in a minor way giving players more freedom as opposed to taking freedom away. The traumas the abductees get from experimentation nullify this bonus, effectively limiting an abductee's ability to complete the abductee objective or just play the round entirely.