Round length forced extensions

[Oldman Robustin]

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/13190

Shuttle cannot stay called before the one hour mark unless the station is blown to shit or someone has murderboned roughly a third of the crew.

Before my long ass statement below, I'll say one other thing. The majority of rounds are less than one hour, and the VAST majority of rounds feel like they were long enough or too long. Only a tiny fraction of games are ended by a shuttle call that felt "too soon" for the round conflict to hit its stride/climax. This change would affect a significant percentage of games and force them to be extended solely on the basis of a coder's belief that rounds should last an hour unless there's been a complete disaster. This is a terrible idea.

My novel on the subject:

This is the absolute worst thing I have ever seen. The short-sightedness here is absolutely staggering.

Cult research is gone, there is absolutely no reason for any antag to need 25+ minutes to make their presence known or put a plan into action.

Why is it so hard to comprehend that there are shit rounds and its OK to end them quickly. Under the old system I would RARELY be inconvenienced by a shuttle rush that wasn't justified and didn't get recalled. Currently I NEVER experience this problem. Revs don't care about the shuttle, Slings can add a whopping 15 minutes to a shuttle call, Gangs can recall remotely, Malf/Bleb don't care, and if anything most Wizard rounds should be called sooner if possible. Shuttle rush is a valid option during NukeOps and a fair timer for the Ops to put up or shut up. What's left now... cult? Cult can easily target a head for conversion... or just sac and use their ID if you don't have a head as one of your startercult in the first place, or if youre really that worried then give cult a shuttle delay rune that requires multiple chanters and deals lots of brute, drains blood, sacrifices someone, whatever.

That brings us down to traitors and lings (HoG is so unfinished I won't even address it here). These guys are freeform antags and half an hour is more than enough to put your plan into motion. If you reallllly need more time then work stealing a head ID into your plan as a fair requirement for single-handedly dragging the round out. This is a terrible solution to a non-existent problem.

I'll go further and say that almost nobody pushing/supporting this has any significant experience playing Captain/HoS. These are some of the most high-stress/responsibility roles on the station and one of the few saving graces is that if you put your foot down and say its time to go, your word is usually enough. It's an absolutely fair tradeoff for making these positions endure the shit that they do by giving them the power to end a round at their discretion (while everyone else still has the power to object, fight back, get access and recall it themselves... if its really a questionable call). It's really goddamn easy for the botanist to whine about a 35 minute shuttle because he hasn't perfected super-weed yet, but it should be the people who the round is actively punishing (Cap/Sec) who have the greatest say about when we get to leave. I'm generally disgusted when I get BWOINKED as captain asking for better reasons for a shuttle call, or when traitors whine in OOC that I didn't give them enough time to make the entire escape into uranium flooring, come to the bridge and kill me if you don't like my shuttle call. Plus it doesn't get to the part where I don't even KNOW when I can call the shuttle. Under the current system I check the console, get an ETA, and know I can come back in X minutes to call the shuttle if its needed, under this new system my option is basically camping out in my office and spamming the button since god knows when I can call the shuttle.

The amount of "coder insights" in this PR is frightening, its like what I would write down as a parody or caricature of the out-of-touch coder making big changes for positions and roles they scarcely understand... except some of you are serious. Even the values used by @Incoming5643 indicate they have no clue what they are doing. 70% integrity? 50% of crew as non-antags? I think we already covered that these changes pretty much are exclusively for traitor/ling and those values would only be relevant if someone had maxcapped several areas of the station or released a singularity. Having that as the MINIMUM requirement for calling a shuttle before the one hour mark is just absurd. 70% survival is also a high barrier for traitors/lings to hit outside of maybe DA. Most traitorling rounds will not generate enough lethality to hit this threshold and so they will default to one hour minimums. The vast majority of rounds do not last over an hour, this would be a HUGE forced extension to our most popular gametype.

I'll give you what a shuttle call looks like from my perspective (as one of the, if not THE most experienced captains on this server):

1) I call it because nothing is going on. It's a traitorling round and we've already burnt a few lings, crushed a few holoparasites, and the only traitors left are people who stole a jetpack, handtele, blueprints, or whatever and are basically non-antags for the remainder of the round (as well that the 1-2 people who don't even realize they're traitors). This is not me "running from a threat", this is me concluding that the round's conflict has reached its natural conclusion and that absent admin intervention the round has become extended and thus it would be unhealthy to force security and other "high responsibility" positions to sit around staring at walls so that a botanist and xenobiologist can finish their meme of the day. This is a very common situation and being able to call a shuttle once the conflict with traitors has fizzled out is literally one of the only things maintaining my sanity. Being chained my position and forced to continue "captaining" while radio goes silent for minutes at a time is just torture. Yes I called the shuttle, no there's no emergency, yea I know that, go fuck yourself, if you feel so strongly about it by all means nominate yourself for captain next shift and run things your way. We've reached a wide consensus that this game is not fun to play without antags to drive a conflict (or some other admin intervention to create some sort of purpose to the round). I hate that its even called an emergency shuttle, that designation should stick with the 5 minute red alert one.

2) I call it because we've passed a critical threshold for shittiness and the shuttle has to come as a necessity to mitigate the inevitable shitshow. This is a decision that utilizes every aspect of the experience and wisdom that I have and you coders sure as hell don't. One of the things I'm best at in this game is having a sense for when we've passed a threshold of no return for death, chaos, and the end of anything resembling order. The list is virtually endless but I'll give a few examples: Mass sabotage of the power network with no crew engaged in repairs, armory looted with 2 or less members of security active, all-access has been distributed to multiple antags and the number of unauthorized all-access kiddies outnumbers the security who can stop them, a competent rogue AI in most low/med pop games, any number of other misc. situations where a round is going to shit without a high bodycount, yet (xeno infestation can take several minutes for victims to actually die, and it may take 15+ minutes for sufficient number of crew to be facehugger, abducted, and finally burst to bring a survival rate under 70%). This is just as critical as the first category, these shuttle calls are absolutely mandatory for cap/sec sanity and survival. There are situations where I KNOW that security has lost control and it's the ultimate insult to my authority/experience to say "well yea you and security have lost control and the shift is inevitably falling into a spiral of murderbone and destruction, but we can't let you call that shuttle until you're well into that spiral... assuming you're not one of the first to die (hint: you often are) at which point nobody is in a position to call the shuttle and you've earned yourselves 30 minutes of murderbone, ERT, and mass graves. I can't fathom anything worse than sitting there in a 40-person round as captain, with one officer as my only security member, with bombed comms, the armory gone, sing floating somewhere south of containment, morph eating anything useful that traitors haven't stolen, and brainrot spreading among the crew... only to be forced to sit in my office mashing the shuttle button until we pass some invisible threshold confirming what a shitshow we're in. No.

3) The other shit that wouldn't be changed by this PR (multiple maxcaps, sing eating station, etc.).

Being a captain or sec is often comparable to a real job and there's a reason so few people do it. Locking them into 1 hour extended rounds or inevitable shitshows will pretty much dwindle these job slots down to masochists and people like "Adolf Hitler" who play the high visibility roles as a joke just to unleash some terrible meme on everyone. I play this game because I enjoy the conflict at its heart, I don't run from a good fight, but this PR does nothing to promote the "good fight" and does everything to shit on round quality for those increasingly rare veteran players who fill high-responsibility roles.

"BUT U SHUD STAND AND FIGHT DA NEW COPS"

Yea I plan on it asshole, but I don't enjoy having to fight them and let them murder some set number of crew before we can leave, and if we win I don't enjoy sitting on my ass for another 15 minutes watching the paint dry in escape because there's still one op who got lost leaving the shuttle and is currently jerking off on derelict. God forbid that operative completely flop and crew sustains virtually no casualties while a lone operative remains lost in space or just hiding in a maint locker with no real plan to go after the disk. Who's ready for one hour new cop rounds?! Being captain is already so much fun, I can't wait to adminhelp for the shuttle 2-3 times a day.

"BUT U SHUD STAND AND FIGHT DA XENOS"

Ok my entire security team is now stripped and covered in resin infested with alien larvae, there's no serious resistance left, everyone is screaming for a shuttle call, but since they haven't burst yet either I sit here just mashing the call button every 30 seconds until enough people are dead that we can START the process of leaving (at which point we will certainly be dead by the time the shuttle actually arrives) or I can risk leaving and trying to help the crew but if I get lel-instantteleportationleapstunned by a hunter and nobody else is around to call the shuttle before aliens overrun the bridge then we get to endure 30 minutes of slow extermination followed by ERT which gets sent to call the shuttle because the captain couldn't 45 minutes into a round with a third of his crew serving as alien baby incubators

Do I need to keep going here? Have I conveyed how incredibly shitty this is for those of us who try to bring some semblance of order to low/med pop games where captain/security are outnumbered by assistants 8:1 (and that's not a joke).

[Steelpoint]

As I have been saying on the PR I vehemently disagree with this change, my reasoning's are better summated by Oldman but I believe the merging of this PR is not only a insult to members of the command and security staff, but it will have a negative effect on many rounds due to the infinite reasons why a shuttle needs to be called but it will not have reached one of these mythical and unreasonable conditions to allow the shuttle to arrive.

[Oldman Robustin]

Oh right I don't just get to sit in my office smashing the call shuttle button, I get to smash that button then I have to hang around and wait 2-4 minutes for the mysterious centcom recall and THEN after the recall timer has passed I get to repeat this process until some invisible threshold has been met.

[Nitrousoxide]

Hey man you could start executing random crew members until 30% are dead or blowing up large chunks of the station as a non traitor.

[Oldman Robustin]

Round 1 of Personal Testing:

- Gang round, security beat the gangs easily but the round dragged on for an extra ~15 minutes 30 minutes (first call was near around the 35m mark, this PR recalled that shuttle which would've gotten us out at around the 50m mark, HBL's shuttle was called closer to 40-45m and we were out around 55-60m, if not for admin intervention shuttle would've been called at 60m at the EARLIEST and round wouldve ended around the 75 minute mark).

DEAD: ADMIN(HotelBravoLima) says, "Gang round; one gang had two bosses who quickly got cuck'd, an the other was Tsar doing literally nothing at all for half an hour."
DEAD: ADMIN(HotelBravoLima) says, "Shuttle auto-recalled but I used my admin magic to make it come this time"

Off to a good start lads! Nothing says fun like tacking HALF AN HOUR onto a gang round where every gangster is already dead or deconverted!

@Nitro

I'd legit consider the executions, certainly for validsalids, it would be funny if I could get suicide/execution volunteers to push for the threshold during a round that obviously needed a shuttle.

[Cik]

oh jesus is that why that round went on forever?

christ there was nothing going on for like 30 minutes. i was a mediborg and i don't think i injected ANYONE for 30 minutes due to no one being wounded at all.

[Amelius]

I 100% agree with Oldman. Some rounds are better refreshed because the antags are too ded/retarded/etc. to offer any sort of meaningful interaction.

Heck, under the current proposal you couldn't even call for an opsvasion unless they murderbone. Horrible shortsighted change.

[Amelius]

then work stealing a head ID into your plan as a fair requirement

Except you can just emag into the bridge or Captain's office and recall without anything in seconds. Zero prep required. Or you can build your own console with low R&D tech or the extra board in tech storage, whatever.

[JackHunt]

It's fine when the round already has constraints on shuttle calling because in that case it's literally doing nothing. But oh man, having just played a long round, it was really dumb. Sitting around with nothing interesting happening anywhere was just blah.

I feel the 10 minutes before the shuttle arrives is a great catalyst for action by antags. It forces their hands but is still plenty long to pull off the murder/heist you were planning on. Otherwise it seems like the requirements for the shuttle being called are way too harsh and it caused a real bummer of a round.

[ShadowDimentio]

I fucking hate long boring rounds, but I also fucking hate when the shuttle is immediately called whenever antags are confirmed like Nops.

I'm hesitantly in favor of this being added.

[Incoming]

All I ask is that people actually read the Pull Request before making snap judgements. This actually covers a fairly small percentage of rounds.

[invisty]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The mechanics of shuttle calling aren't the problem. Shuttle calling IS the problem. Ending the round due to boredom on the pretense of "evacuating" is utterly absurd and does not at all make sense. It reveals that people are disinterested in "slow" gameplay and permits a few individuals of strong volition to dictate the pace of the game, so they can get their antag rolls more frequently.

Remove the shuttle altogether. Implement a fixed shift length that can be extended but not shortened. Install more escape pods, and have them be a rare conditional objective for events like nops where escaping is an objective.

To those who are against the OP's change: How do you feel about the escape shuttle, and what would you recommend we do to improve it?

[Oldman Robustin]

It covers a small % of rounds but makes them objectively worse.

Forcing a head of staff/AI to endure a round against their will, or even the will of the station, even once the the shuttle has fueled, based on hidden mechanics that do a poor job of actually tracking the conditions meriting a shuttle call... is never going to enhance rounds.

[invisty]

Oldman can you put in a poll for PR support/rejection?

[Incoming]

Honestly with that first post I wouldn't think a poll would be very objective. It's fine to have one all the same though.

Forcing a head of staff/AI to endure a round against their will, or even the will of the station, even once the the shuttle has fueled, based on hidden mechanics that do a poor job of actually tracking the conditions meriting a shuttle call... is never going to enhance rounds.

"How dare I make someone playing as a leader of the station actually keep track of the station"

[Atlanta-Ned]

"How dare I make someone playing as a leader of the station actually keep track of the station"

Have you actually tried that when things go to shit? It's like trying to herd drunk, retarded cats.

I vote no on this PR.

[lumipharon]

Lets take a looksie.

Malf, rev and blob are uneffected.

Gang: Pretty hilarious effects here. Gangs don't need to use their recall tools for most of the round any more since even after finding out it's gang, sec/heads can't call the shuttle until most of the crew is tryin to murder them, or they've held out for a fucking hour. This cucks the crew side even more then they already are in this gamemode.
Also if sec are successful, and stomp the gangs out, they're left with their dicks in their collective hands for a fucking hour because they can't call the shuttle, and the roun won't end because the one/few surviving gangheads can't do shit because everyone's implanted/they've lost their gangtools etc.

Cult: Basically the same shit. Rather then having to convert a head/steal an ID to keep the shuttle called, the cult can merrily ignore it and keep doin their thing, until they've converted 30+ people/murderboned 20+ people/summoned nar'sie.
Also if they have the 'escape with X cultists", which implies getting the shuttle called, then they have to either convert far, far in excess of their actual requirement, or murderbone the crew. Basically, go loud or don't go home.

Wizard: Why would you ever not want to shuttle call as soon a possible in a wizard round? You either have ye olde murderboner wizard, kor-meme wizards with supermatter swords and shit or summon all the rape wizard. None of these would I want to be on a station with, and all of these can cause huge amounts of death and destruction in the 15 minutes between a shuttle call and round end - if they don't recall themselves.

Nuke: This required a big fat exception to the rule for this game mode, which is itself highly meta and metable (shuttle doesnt recall if nuke ops are on station).

Traitor/ling/DA: 90% or more of these antags have an objective about escaping the station. Which means it's in their direct interest to get the shuttle called, most likely in under an hour. Which means their two options is A: murder a 3rd of the crew, or B: utterly fuck the station with bombs and singulo. Yes. I'm sure forcing the most common antags to do shit that most of the community has been againt, every round will turn out great.

I enjoy long rounds, and autism projects. I can happily spend 2 hours turning the white ship into a fully fledged science ship or a floating space bar, or make a supermatter engine with 6 shards and more power output then most stars.
But you know what? Me havin my fun project when 40+ other people want to go home because all the antags are dead/half the station is uninhabitable/the singulo is loose/the station is getting overrun with gangsters/cultists/aliens/spiders etc etc does not justify this auto-recall bullshit.

If people are calling the shuttle over literally nothing, which does happen, then fucking job ban them or warn them for being shitty, don't add some rediculous coded solution to force longer rounds on people.
For example, I personally dislike it when certain people just bomb the fuck out of the station every round they can. But that's a player issue, where one or more people are doing something I don't like. I wouldnt code out bomb valves or some retarded shit, I would (try) change people's behavior, or talk to admins about rule 0/1 people being dicks.

[Hibbles]

I'm confident that my large number of connections is coloring my perspective on this with Le Bias but shorter rounds are superior to longer ones 90+ percent of the time. I already hate any game mode that inherently recalls the shuttle, and support shuttle calls even when there's not 'solid reason' for it. Long rounds sap hours of your life you will never get back. An hour total is perfectly fine and offers nearly the entire range of 'usual' SS13 experiences. From doing your job's minigame to completion, to battling with traitors or nuke ops or the bleb or whatever, to messing around and running some gimmick. There's edge-cases, but uh.

Maybe there's a reason that isn't invalid for why people have played the game in such a way as to have our average round be 45-90 minutes in length and both admins and players consistently take steps to keep it that way?

Please change this back.

[Atticat]

I'd rather we add something allowing antags to more easily recall than make people wait an hour during traitor/changeling rounds + 15 minutes.

Like an item you could buy (portable recaller) for X amount of TC. At least this way when your shuttle is recalled you have an event; hunting down the recaller instead of waiting around for nothing.

[Zilenan91]

But that's shit, because you know there'd be chucklefucks who'd wait the maximum time possible and spam these to piss people off.

[Shaps-cloud]

From an admin perspective please remove this, no one wants to stay on the station a lot of the time but the shuttle autorecalls anyway, making the admins have to manually speed it up anyway

[DrPillzRedux]

This is an awful addition. If the shuttle really shouldn't be called an admin will pretty much always intervene. I rarely see bad shuttle calls. This just promotes escape alone traitors having to murder literally everyone to be able to call a shuttle instead of causing chaos here and there to encourage it. All this does is prolong rounds that should be ending.

Plus any meta shithead could abuse this on syndi's by calling it and seeing if it's recalled to tell if it's nuke.

[ThanatosRa]

Compromise. Half an hour to 45 minutes instead.

[Zilenan91]

Just don't have it at all. If you want longer rounds, design the game around longer rounds, don't force a game designed around shorter rounds to have longer rounds.

[Atticat]

But that's shit, because you know there'd be chucklefucks who'd wait the maximum time possible and spam these to piss people off.

I'd rather trace their location and go on a manhunt than wait around and do nothing though, annoying as that IS.

[Zilenan91]

But there's a lot of ways to get around the station fast enough that tracking it would be too slow to be reliable.

[Scones]

i don't play this game enough to give relevant opinion on most things but holy shit this is one of the more stupid things i've seen in a while

i get that some people like longer rounds, but forced extension isn't the way to achieve that. when a gamemode is meant to end, it should probably end.

also, I am a firm believer that the shuttle should come/go in every gamemode, regardless of if it explodes in transit or the round just won't end sometimes on docking.

[Hibbles]

From an admin perspective please remove this, no one wants to stay on the station a lot of the time but the shuttle autorecalls anyway, making the admins have to manually speed it up anyway

This bears repeating. We're just going to keep manually forcing the shuttle to actually come like it legitimately should when the players call it.

[Incoming]

Whelp changing player behavior is hard, changing admin team behavior is a split codebase. You win for now, but I swear to god I'm going to figure out how you guys can have fun with longer rounds again.

[Incomptinence]

Most bad calls are IC interactions anyway. Keep grubby code fingers out of it.

Even then the guy who goes "WE CAN FIX IT" is at this point so often wrong they are one of my favourite jokes in the game.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

I'm just putting this one on ADD personally.

[Zilenan91]

stop necroposting

[Incomptinence]

Whatcha talkin bout zile thread is 2 days old.

[Zilenan91]

It isn't open anymore, so it's necroposting since nothing we say here is relevant.

[DemonFiren]

No, it's shitposting.

It's necroposting if the thread is dead, instead of pointless.

[onleavedontatme]

I dont think this would have worked out very well but I am dissapointed in some admins declaring they wouldnt even let it be tested.