Toxins

[Scones]

I made a thread about the bomb cap but maybe that's not exclusively the issue

I feel this should be prefaced by me saying I have no problem with things exploding. It's SS13. Shit happens, holes in the station are the norm. However, I think the current state of toxins is so genuinely unfun for the majority of the crew with the exception of the bomber that it REALLY needs to be looked into.

Right now it takes <10 minutes (Maybe even 5, Forceful or Fragnostic know) to get 6 5/10/20 bombs. It's obscene. I don't mind the bombs existing but the fact that it is quick + easy to make them alongside the fact that toxins has no security measure in place makes it way too deciding for EVERY gamemode. Traitor, ling, gang, rev, cult - All of these have become overshadowed by the bomb. If someone is an antag, they will make bombs. And they will blow things up. It's too easy to do and it just isn't fun or interesting anymore. It's been ages since I got killed by a bomb detonation; what is seriously the worst is having to wander around a blown out station for twenty minutes all because one person was allowed unrestricted access to something that is a huge administrative grey area for sec to ride the ass of.

Bombs are cool and all and I know it's supposed to be a HIGH DANGER WORKPLACE, but there is nothing even remotely comparable to them. They decide gamemodes. Almost EVERY gamemode. Toxins has been but is now more than ever an antag factory, because bombs are not used for mining but there are still six valves which is more than enough to really fuck shit up.

I don't know how to fix this, because it IS ridiculous to expect Security to have someone monitoring toxins at all times without being allowed to just say "No there is no fucking reason for you to make bombs stop I'm taking your toys". Lower the bombcap? Maybe. Probably better to either lower the transfer valve count OR secure them, maybe in a wall safe in the RD's. Because again, there is no reason for people to make bombs at roundstart. It's solely for antag hunting/antag shit.

tldr - bombs are way too impactful right now and are a headache like no other to play against, almost every gamemode has been broken down to "Who controls toxins?". It isn't fun or interesting.

[onleavedontatme]

You forgot that it instantly ends blob as well.

My only problem with doing anything about toxins is that it's pretty much the only reliable way (other than the singulo) to force a shuttle call.

[Cheimon]

I agree, it's been a very long time since I saw any long round without some sort of bombing (or singularity release, I guess). Particularly from toxins. It seems like they're a hard counter to a bunch of strategies to the point where players can't live without them.

It is getting a bit stale. Maybe it would be interesting to trial 'no bomb' rounds where explosives were removed from the game? It could certainly be a refreshing change of pace.

[Amelius]

One word. No.

The most that makes sense to me is to put toxins in it's own pseudo-satellite area surrounded by rwalls like virology, easily viewable from the head office. We wanted more lethality and shorter rounds, gating one of the last few decent departmental pieces of equipment for traitors that isn't locked behind mining actually coming back with minerals is pretty damn bad. Cheridan already took away lockboxes for zero fucking reason, so non-traitors can't make equipment even if they get all-access, after 30~ minutes of research and the magical mineral faerie visiting which sometimes never does and sometimes not with varied minerals, unless you already have the entire armory in your backpack already. (i.e. you've been to the armory to get firing pins, when you could just take the guns there instead), and you can't remove (and not destroy) firing pins from active equipment, so it's not like you can even steal a taser and supplant the pin into an SMG or something either.

Nope, instead let's just continue nerfing everything and making everything as h u g b o x as possible as we have for the past two years. I'm sick of this shit.

Also, bombs are one of the few ways to force a shuttle-call. Laguloth sucks balls now for antags because of fastmos and such that makes it impossible for them to actually do anything other than lag.

[Bombadil]

One word. No.

The most that makes sense to me is to put toxins in it's own pseudo-satellite area surrounded by rwalls like virology, easily viewable from the head office. We wanted more lethality and shorter rounds, gating one of the last few decent departmental pieces of equipment for traitors that isn't locked behind mining actually coming back with minerals is pretty damn bad. Cheridan already took away lockboxes for zero fucking reason, so non-traitors can't make equipment even if they get all-access, after 30~ minutes of research and the magical mineral faerie visiting which sometimes never does and sometimes not with varied minerals, unless you already have the entire armory in your backpack already. (i.e. you've been to the armory to get firing pins, when you could just take the guns there instead), and you can't remove (and not destroy) firing pins from active equipment, so it's not like you can even steal a taser and supplant the pin into an SMG or something either.

Nope, instead let's just continue nerfing everything and making everything as h u g b o x as possible as we have for the past two years. I'm sick of this shit.

Also, bombs are one of the few ways to force a shuttle-call. Laguloth sucks balls now for antags because of fastmos and such that makes it impossible for them to actually do anything other than lag.

You can emag test firing pins you ninny.

Your bitching is unfound

[lumipharon]

lucky there are no other antags in the game other then traitors, right?
And lucky that all traitors get emags, eh?

[Oldman Robustin]

This is one of those issues where there's certainly a better system that could exist, but I really don't think we should touch it until a much bigger underlying problem is fixed (much like soul shards and juggernauts were dealt with, everyone is happier). It's like what we SHOULD'VE done with parapens. Parapens were a HUGE symptom of a HUGE underlying problem (traitors can't be anything other than a loot pinata for security without them), but we just removed parapens one day and kicked the can on the bigger issue down the road for a couple years.

My motivation for bombing is often this: I get antag, I realize that any plan I make that doesnt involve a revolver is going to end up with me dead and spaced within 10 minutes. Even the revolver plan involves me standing in a dark narrow section of maint and shooting whoever comes my way, talk about fun and gripping combat.

I can fool around with agent ID's, voice changers, and all sorts of goodies all day long but when it comes to the kind of antagonism people actually care about, the kind of antagonism that drives a round (which isn't = lel asked AI for jetpack), syndicate TC doesn't give me the options I want. If I had a way to communicate more reliably with traitors (paying antag currency for the ability to get back stabbed will never be something that antags are going to do) then I'd be much more incline to hang up the toxins work and do something more interesting. If I had better tools or more TC (cough) that didn't limit me to ONE WEAPON + EMAG/THERMALS then I'd want to experiment with new ideas more.

But as it stands your options for being an overt traitor are GUN + ONE 6TC UTILITY ITEM or STATION WMD'S.

Which is why I find all this traitor balance talk just comical. I'm like "YOU REALIZE I CAN COMPLETELY DECIMATE THE STATION EVERY SINGLE TRAITOR ROUND WITH A 100% SUCCESS RATE RIGHT?" Oh god traitors might get access to an esword, ebow, AND adrenals? or Emag + Dbl Esword AND EMP implant?

JESUS H CHRIST A TRAITOR WITH THAT XTREME GEAR MIGHT BE ABLE TO KILL 3-4 PEOPLE BEFORE BEING ASSRAMMED BY BORG/COOKED FLASHBANGS/BOLTED DOORS, WE CANT ALLOW FOR THAT KIND OF CARNAGE! BETTER JUST GO RELEASE THE SING WITH 15 SECONDS OF EFFORT AND WIPE OUT 30 CREW AND DESTROY 50% OF THE STATION INSTEAD.

Er yea, stop being pussies and let lings/traitors have what they need to survive as hostiles for more than 10 minutes or else it's just going to continue defaulting to the state where destroying the station within 10 minutes of roundstart is our most attractive option. Do that first and then we can have a serious conversation about Toxins.

[Saegrimr]

Everything oldman is ranting about is also a secondary symptom of the large population during most rounds.
You simply cannot hide on box, the swarm of valids will descend on you.

There's no single fix, multiple things are compounding on to make this a problem.

[Oldman Robustin]

Shortly after my post we had this round:

http://i.imgur.com/nqDoMq8.png


Could've rolled ANY of the highpop game modes, gang war, nukeops, revolution, cult, malf, wizard, blob, etc.

Yet in a row where we could've had 6 hostile heavily armed commandos show up (5 ops + borg), operating as a unified force with their own private comms and specialized weaponry, to try and kill us all... and instead we get 5 traitors, 3 of which have objectives that literally nobody will ever care about and only one of whom actually takes a kit that is actually capable of harming someone.

The revolver traitor provides a brief window of excitement and intrigue before its back to Extended, then Traitor #5 mercifully released the sing so we had an excuse to go home.

This isn't just some cherrypicked hyperbole, this is every fucking traitor round now.

[oranges]

What if we made all traitors able to see other traitors via a hud?

[Actionb]

I don't mind the station blowing up after ~40 minutes or the brig+medbay being turned into space. That's either forcing a shuttle call or antagonizing the crew. Great job!
But I do mind the station becoming swiss cheese via 6 maxcaps at once 15 minutes into the round - traitors do that just for the sake of lol chicky boom which is the problem.

(And make strong blob tiles blast resistant or SOMETHING. Using a bomb, thereby destroying large parts of the station, to contain the blob should be the LAST option, not the first.)

[Steelpoint]

Traitors do that because what the fuck else are they supposed to do?

I play sec almost exclusively and yet I know for a fact that traitors are just shit as antagonists. Unless they've got a Revolver and 5000 rounds in maintenance, or they've rigged a suicide bomb on them, than there's not much they can do.

We really need to make individual traitors far more powerful, and I think the best solution is giving them more Telecrystals and/or lowering the price of offensive weapons and equipment.

What's funny is that this is so god damn easy to do it can be done within several minutes, yet due to 'drama' and controversy it's likely never going to be done and we'll end up removing toxins from the game.

[Miauw]

oldman's problems seem to mostly lie in the fact that everybody validhunts like no tomorrow so traitors cant do interesting shit because they'll just get dunkt.

[Incomptinence]

I would say much the same things about the singularity.

Just we let people actually guard that without barreling down on them screaming METAGAMER METAGAMER like we do with toxins, like I am pretty sure part of the AI sub rulings is forcing it to ignore one of the big two game ending devices being cooked up over in science.

Not that you can really guard science properly without a black ops raids because the department is huge and overly secured at the main loop entrance and any actual threat in there can slip out through maint while you wait or break in. Actually thinking about it every job area in science except R&D has a maint door (so does the hall) if the traitor gets any warning they just c4 / emag outa there no wonder so few bombers get stopped pre-delivery.

[Bombadil]

ALLAHU AKBAR.

Making bombs is so easy its ridiculous.

But hey If anyone fucks with me it sure is easy to go Cuban Pete on their asses or the station if im an antag

[Jalleo]

I have to say that for this short term we have to make things cheaper and also make changelings and others able to use R&D weapons the emag excuse is bad.

Toxins is caused by the compounding issue of balance we need a overhaul for how bombs can be made.

Long term we need the datum antag to remove the amount of stale meta there is.

The whole issue we are getting is the amount of items are not giving enough variable options for each single piece.

There is more that can be said but we should focus at a specific issue causing this at a time.

One step fowards two steps back is not a good idea

[TheNightingale]

oldman's problems seem to mostly lie in the fact that everybody validhunts like no tomorrow so traitors cant do interesting shit because they'll just get dunkt.

And that's not a problem that can be solved with code, unfortunately. That's a problem with the playerbase.

[Amelius]

oldman's problems seem to mostly lie in the fact that everybody validhunts like no tomorrow so traitors cant do interesting shit because they'll just get dunkt.

And that's not a problem that can be solved with code, unfortunately. That's a problem with the playerbase.

> Everyone validhunts like no tomorrow.
> This didn't use to be an issue when we had higher antag rates, more deadly traitor equipment, and so forth.
> Now it's an issue and the solution is to do fuck-all and leave the double scaling nerfs, one that makes fewer antags (more recent) (SoS), and the other implemented a year ago that forced logarithmic instead of linear scaling to the antagonist selection, so you have shitall antags anywhere above and including 50 people.

[onleavedontatme]

oldman's problems seem to mostly lie in the fact that everybody validhunts like no tomorrow so traitors cant do interesting shit because they'll just get dunkt.

Validhunting is a silly boogeyman. Validhunting isnt what stops traitors, people crying out (completely reasonable) and then the traitor being outnumbered several times over by officers and cyborgs, who are all individually much stronger, much better coordinated, and 100% being able to trust one another, is what fucks them over.

Even if we made a rule that non security couldn't attack traitors they'd get stomped by security.

[Bombadil]

oldman's problems seem to mostly lie in the fact that everybody validhunts like no tomorrow so traitors cant do interesting shit because they'll just get dunkt.

Validhunting is a silly boogeyman. Validhunting isnt what stops traitors, people crying out (completely reasonable) and then the traitor being outnumbered several times over by officers and cyborgs, who are all individually much stronger, much better coordinated, and 100% being able to trust one another, is what fucks them over.

Even if we made a rule that non security couldn't attack traitors they'd get stomped by security.

I miss the paranoia of not knowing if the Security officer was a traitor. We should try a trial period for security where we go back to traitor sec

[lumipharon]

remove AI, + assistant sec maint for a week, on top of buffing traitor numbers.

Seriously, just try it - I guarantee it would be way better for traitors.

[Amelius]

Just remove secmaint, keep assistant maint. That's how it was a year or two ago. Fuck it.

[bandit]

oldman's problems seem to mostly lie in the fact that everybody validhunts like no tomorrow so traitors cant do interesting shit because they'll just get dunkt.

Validhunting is a silly boogeyman. Validhunting isnt what stops traitors, people crying out (completely reasonable) and then the traitor being outnumbered several times over by officers and cyborgs, who are all individually much stronger, much better coordinated, and 100% being able to trust one another, is what fucks them over.

Even if we made a rule that non security couldn't attack traitors they'd get stomped by security.

I miss the paranoia of not knowing if the Security officer was a traitor. We should try a trial period for security where we go back to traitor sec

This, exactly. Security - the possibility of traitor = a dedicated validhunting force every round. I don't see why this isn't obvious to everybody.

[Cheimon]

But that's the point of security: to stop murder and general criminality. Are you complaining that they do this? It's obvious and fine.

[Scones]

This isn't a thread about traitorsec

[Oldman Robustin]

The shit scaling is going to be reverted, I'm very confident about that, it's just how many months/years we have to endure this shit until enough people finally get it through their fucking heads that having a round where you could face off against 5 nukeops and a syndiborg instead you get 5 traitors who have a fraction of Nukeop resources and are generally hostile to one another and 60% have objectives that arent even considered antagonism.

Kor's precisely on point here. A mid-pop round starts and security staff already match or exceed the traitor's numbers. Sec has their own channel, have absolute trust in one another, have better combat weapons (im talking their DEFAULT weapons) and protection, along with the massive boon of AI support, loyal crew support, and a series of Admin rulings that basically keep the amount of fuckery they suffer from to a minimum.

Meanwhile the named traitor has THE ENTIRE CREW hostile to them, while rarely another traitor might reach out for help, it's more likely he'll just shoot you in the back for your gear.

The scales are beyond stacked, it's not even fucking close anymore.