Give Manuel antags permission to murderbone with their departmental tools

[spookuni]

There's currently a lot of interesting stuff in the game that's locked behind the fact that using any of it will almost invariably kill a bunch of people, stuff like the creation of singularities and Teslas from a delaminating supermatter, plasma flooding as a non-AI, large scale hostile release of creatures or the creation of spiders from xenobio, the use of large explosives for anything other than surgical target only strikes, mass poisonings and chemical warfare, to name just a few. All of these present interesting paths for roleplay and interaction with other people and antagonists; back before plasmaflooding was effectively rendered malf-AI only (which generally results in comms being dead whenever it happens) I fondly remember several times where I or another would escape the release of plasma, and have to do our best to survive and re-establish contact with each other as the station burned down around us.

While I agree that people going on silent rampages with with the whatever is the best weapon they have to hand is stifling to roleplay, most of these tools would do more to promote roleplay and interaction than stifle it if they were allowed in reasonable amounts, so as not to become overdone and boring. In the spirit of that, I'd argue that it should be allowed that antags affiliated with a department should receive a blanket pass to use the tools of their department as they see fit, atmospherics would be free to put whatever they wish into distro, engineering would be free to delaminate the supermatter into whatever avatar of mass destruction they desire, scientists would be free to buy spiders and let them go ham, all of that kind of antaggery.

As an additional consequence, this would bring back a fair amount of the paranoia associated with the management of certain station departments, currently, it is extremely rare for things like atmospherics to be meaningfully compromised, as rules prohibit the use of the those departments in ways which kill large numbers of people. While atmospherics would not be as threatening as it is on the LRP servers, where any assistant traitor can break in and do whatever they wish with the station's plasma reserves, it would at least bring back some level of threat to the sub-department if the people charged with its upkeep can also use it for ill as they desire, an increase in paranoia that would also apply to other departments that have been effectively rendered toothless by current rules surrounding mass station destruction and player death.

I do foresee problems with allowing these kinds of mass destruction on low-population rounds, paranoia about what the engineers are doing can only lead to a forced degree of lane overlap in a situation where there is only one engineer. But I do think that for larger population rounds, bringing back high destruction options for traitors that lie within their departmental remit will allow for more interesting scenarios and roleplay surrounding the total breakdown of station order.
(Pls I haven't seen a singulo in ages I just want everyone to be eaten by the angry spinney disk)

[cacogen]

I'll take your word for it

[Cobby]

honestly should just consider coding something on either a per-antag or per-round basis that lets an antagonist / antagonists ignore the murderboning rules for the round if they so wish.

The problem isnt murderboning, I dont mind a good murderbone on occassion. The problem is the frequency at which it occurs when you leave it unrestricted aka being done at nearly every opportunity available. If we could limit but not bar murderboning so that way you could potentially get it on occassion that would be much more preferable.

Ideally though people should feel free to cause casualties in pursuit of their objectives, I tried to reword the murderboning rules to explicitly allow for that behavior.

[NecromancerAnne]

I think there is a considerable amount of player uncertainty about the limits on murderboning or going loud. Some rounds can last a while, so getting taken out early can be quite rough, but equally unfun is leaving the station a literal wasteland of life in minutes flat.

The proposal for departmental tools for mass murder is fine up until you hit a few very spotty elements:

Cargo's departmental tools include pod rockets for McAirstrikes, mosins and autorifles.

Mining includes fireballs and ash/lava starves.

Botany includes an unbelievably high amount of potential weapons of mass destruction.

To me there should just be a stipulation that grand sabotage as a means of creating chaos shouldn't fall under murderbone rules.

You should be able to create hostile environments or damage and ignore collateral damage and kills for the purpose of murderboning. If you use these to just go on a killing spree with a higher body count, it's just a bone with some spicy air or more holes in the hull. But if you're using it to make it easier to isolate your targets, then it should be fine.

Edit: to explain 'killing spree with a higher body count', I mean wandering around killing everyone you meet and not just carrying out your objectives. If this is in self defense, whatever, but some random hiding in maint bar while the rest of the station is on fire probably isn't proving a danger and geeking them on sight is probably unnecessary.

[XivilaiAnaxes]

Wait, are you telling me using lord singuloth as antag is counted as "murderbone" for banbot purposes?

Fucking lame

[NecromancerAnne]

It...sorta reads that way? I don't know, I wouldn't ban people for it personally because that just sucks so much out of the game and makes a huge number of potential tools and round outcomes entirely off limits, but depending on your view of the new murderbone rule, it kinda is. It's an indiscriminate killing tool and usually doesn't have any direct way of ensuring your target, if you are intending on killing someone, is caught by the singularity.

Setting up situations where you can evade these restrictions (IE placing a body in an open location, not making an honest attempt to hide it, then killing individuals who “stumble” upon it) or otherwise maximizing the kill count without justification is also considered murderboning.

Namely the last bit.

But there is also this clarification in the murderboning rule

2) Feel free to ask an admin to change your objectives or for permission to murderbone in the pursuit of running an interesting gimmick on a non-murderboning role. They might even be willing to make it easier to run!

I've not really seen anyone be given this and I don't know how often people even ask. Or whether someone will entertain a singulo as a good enough gimmick.

[Cobby]

You should definitely ahelp before intentionally releasing something like the singularity, especially when you aren't pairing it with something like a singularity beacon where you can direct it somewhat to a location so really you're just releasing it because you can.

Again we have to limit murderboning because there is no in-built way to discern the frequency at which people murderbone if you just wild west the approach to any degree. There needs to be a control on it, especially when some people like myself join manuel explicitly to avoid flavor of the month murderbone style at every available opportunity.

If person A murderbones via flooding on round 1 and person B murderbones via spiders on round 2 and person C via X on 3, I dont expect C to be blamed because he should have known there was already a culling of the station on rounds 1/2. On the flip side, people who are not A B or C have just been culled 3 rounds in a row with varying degrees of "how the fuck am i suppose to counter this". This is why I think murderboning should be strictly based on some code-end designation where the game can space out murderboning across rounds so it doesnt become an actual LRP environment, as I think murderboning also breeds powergaming/validhunting out of what people believe is necessity.

[Timberpoes]

In general I'd like to see Manuel antags empowered more to cause chaos, although I begrudingly accept being able to grant discretionary murder passes to antags who want to upset the apple cart of a fairly dull round is an acceptable middle ground that admins already possess.

I'd like to see something like this allowed, or if not this then some other steps taken to open up more opportunities for antags to actively antagonise the crew. Manuel lacks a lot of the paranoia and existential dread that our other servers still have and I'm fairly certain there's a way to remedy that without impacting RP other than "Ided, can't RP while ded, ban antag", which isn't exactly a bad thing in general in the context of SS13.

This post was deleted by MortoSasye on Mon Nov 09, 2020 9:56 am.
Reason: Off-topic

[Stickymayhem]

There's currently a lot of interesting stuff in the game that's locked behind the fact that using any of it will almost invariably kill a bunch of people, stuff like the creation of singularities and Teslas from a delaminating supermatter, plasma flooding as a non-AI, large scale hostile release of creatures or the creation of spiders from xenobio, the use of large explosives for anything other than surgical target only strikes, mass poisonings and chemical warfare, to name just a few. All of these present interesting paths for roleplay and interaction with other people and antagonists; back before plasmaflooding was effectively rendered malf-AI only (which generally results in comms being dead whenever it happens) I fondly remember several times where I or another would escape the release of plasma, and have to do our best to survive and re-establish contact with each other as the station burned down around us.

While I agree that people going on silent rampages with with the whatever is the best weapon they have to hand is stifling to roleplay, most of these tools would do more to promote roleplay and interaction than stifle it if they were allowed in reasonable amounts, so as not to become overdone and boring. In the spirit of that, I'd argue that it should be allowed that antags affiliated with a department should receive a blanket pass to use the tools of their department as they see fit, atmospherics would be free to put whatever they wish into distro, engineering would be free to delaminate the supermatter into whatever avatar of mass destruction they desire, scientists would be free to buy spiders and let them go ham, all of that kind of antaggery.

As an additional consequence, this would bring back a fair amount of the paranoia associated with the management of certain station departments, currently, it is extremely rare for things like atmospherics to be meaningfully compromised, as rules prohibit the use of the those departments in ways which kill large numbers of people. While atmospherics would not be as threatening as it is on the LRP servers, where any assistant traitor can break in and do whatever they wish with the station's plasma reserves, it would at least bring back some level of threat to the sub-department if the people charged with its upkeep can also use it for ill as they desire, an increase in paranoia that would also apply to other departments that have been effectively rendered toothless by current rules surrounding mass station destruction and player death.

I do foresee problems with allowing these kinds of mass destruction on low-population rounds, paranoia about what the engineers are doing can only lead to a forced degree of lane overlap in a situation where there is only one engineer. But I do think that for larger population rounds, bringing back high destruction options for traitors that lie within their departmental remit will allow for more interesting scenarios and roleplay surrounding the total breakdown of station order.
(Pls I haven't seen a singulo in ages I just want everyone to be eaten by the angry spinney disk)

TRANSLATION FROM MANUEL POST INTO NORMAL POST

Antagonists causing departmental disasters is fun and interesting.

Generic murderbone is not fun, but departmental disasters cause interesting conflict so antags should get to use them.

This would increase paranoia while restricting mass destruction to related job roles.

Potential issue: You will know who did the thing on lower population rounds.

END OF MANUEL TRANSLATION: 520 words compressed by 90.2% into 51 words

[remanseptim]

cringe anti bone stance yet based post condenser
a daring synthesis

[spookuni]

TRANSLATION FROM MANUEL POST INTO NORMAL POST

Antagonists causing departmental disasters is fun and interesting.

Generic murderbone is not fun, but departmental disasters cause interesting conflict so antags should get to use them.

This would increase paranoia while restricting mass destruction to related job roles.

Potential issue: You will know who did the thing on lower population rounds.

END OF MANUEL TRANSLATION: 520 words compressed by 90.2% into 51 words

Sticky pls let me have my word salad.

And I'm less concerned about knowing who did the bad thing on lowpop (which is mostly irrelevant bar deadchat salt) and more that the only way to prevent the bad thing would be to essentially break into every department to make sure they're not assembling a maxcap pyramid or something, which would directly contradict rule 10.

[NecromancerAnne]

This is why I think murderboning should be strictly based on some code-end designation where the game can space out murderboning across rounds so it doesnt become an actual LRP environment

You do sorta get that with some of the antagonists like ops and wizard. But those have a much greater amount of power afforded to them as well, so it's kind of a power trip rather than fight against the odds. Some level of murderboning is looking to force others into conflict on a mass scale as well as making people horizontal 'just because'. Personally I only did it because fighting people is fun and I enjoyed how people behaved when pressed, since being in that same position is also fun for me.

What exactly would the code solution look like do you think, if one is even possible to achieve? Something indicated in objectives or an alternative to standard traitor or some other solo antag?

[confused rock]

honestly should just consider coding something on either a per-antag or per-round basis that lets an antagonist / antagonists ignore the murderboning rules for the round if they so wish.

If we could limit but not bar murderboning so that way you could potentially get it on occassion that would be much more preferable.

Isn't that literally what hijack was

[Cobby]

I was thinking something like just letting an antagonist know they are able to murderbone in the current role even if the rules normally disallow it and giving an indication to admins like through check antags that would let them know they have this restriction removed as well. It would consider these "passes" as well as strict murderbone-enable roles like wizard and give less in the recent future rounds.

@rock no because you can consistently roll a hijack across rounds, especially since traitor is the most common gamemode, so you once again can get several rounds of murderbone. It's not the spacing im asking for. The game needs to be able to read that on round 1 there was someone that was given pass to murderbone, round 2 was wizard so that's also murderboning, so round 3 probably should not enable anyone at least at the start to be able to kill off the station for lols.

[XivilaiAnaxes]

My interpretation of the murderbone rules is "some guy who goes around murdering the entire station because they've mastered the autistic combat system or happen to live in the server room with no delay is lame and unrealistic"

Using your department tools to make a station wide threat (in the way the blob is a problem) doesn't come under this reasoning.

Further - summoning hordes of monsters that roam the station to cause chaos, performing a feat of sabotage that threatens to kill everyone, or forming a killteam that goes from point A to B in fulfilling their objective (steal/kill targets then gtfo) instead of roaming the halls to massacre are not part of the above scenario and should not be under the murderbone rule.

[Cobby]

the definition of murderbone supported in the rules doesnt line up with that currently though, and im not sure I agree with that either.

The question boils down to would you or I be okay with people sabotaging the non-existant singularity so it gets released, mass bombing the station the TTVs if they fill off the magic checks, or release spiders/xenobio mobs to "cause havoc" (which usually results in killing the station) every round? If so then we just disagree, if not then I dont think any blanket permissibly of certain actions will be acceptable because you have to assume as we've seen in LRP that people will use it to the point where it's no longer interesting or do it without any plan of improving the round but rather just get a huge killcount.

Again, the desired state relies on frequency these occur and much less on how the murderbone is done.

[XivilaiAnaxes]

Well it depends, how hard are you twirling your moustache as you shit talk the doomed station

[Coconutwarrior97]

We aren't interested in this at the moment since we think it will add too much of a meta element to the game wherein people will know it has to be an engineer who delammed the SM.
We're looking at other ways to give antags some more freedom to add chaos to the round but this isn't the way we would like to see it done.
That being said, if you are thinking of doing something like this feel free to ahelp it and an administrator may give you the OK if they think it'd help spice up the round.

Headmin Votes:
Coconutwarrior97: Yes.
Domitius: Abstain.
Naloac: Yes.