Abductors: Murderboning and giving nuke disk to operators

[MortoSasye]

We currently have the following on abductors, from this policy discussion:

https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic ... 33&t=28039

They are a side antagonist meant to inject some chaos and funny shenanigans into the round, not ruin it for everyone.

However, a heated discussion in adminbus lead to multiple admins holding different opinions regarding the abductora position as an antagonist, and different understandings of the above.

With the objective of everyone handling these cases from the same point of view:

Are abductors allowed to murderbone? If so, why hold the policy forbidding them of giving the objective to their brainwash victims?

Are abductors allowed give the nuclear disk to the operatives? If so, why let them end the round in an extremely quick way? It would also prevent them from doing their job, which is abducting people.

Thanks in advance.

[PKPenguin321]

Abductors themselves can basically blink in and out of most situations. Having someone basically teleport behind you, smack you into near crit, and then vanish before you can retaliate is pretty lame. I got bwoinked for doing this so I should know
Brainwashing people into going on killing sprees is at least a bit more fair I guess since they can't just up and vanish when things get hairy, but causing lots of mass death as abductors definitely feels against the spirit of their role

[Cimika]

I would rather abductors stick to abducting people and giving them funny brainwash with no other impact on the round, personally.

[wesoda25]

They’re a side antagonist which is supposed to indirectly influence the round through abduction, experimentation, and surgery. To achieve this goal, they are given insanely powerful weapons and tools. Coders don’t seem interested in nerfing them, so it falls upon us to use policy to ensure they don’t abuse these things.

Just impose the policy to “Not directly or majorly influence the round” upon them or something similar. Wacky situations will still be possible through the rule of fun, it would just be better practice for them to ask permission from admins before embarking on these ventures.

[Pandarsenic]

Abductors can be extremely boring. The first time I encountered them, they repeatedly sleep-stunned me without actually performing surgery until I got tired of it and ghosted so I could at least observed, at which point I discovered that I was being sleepbatonned for several minutes straight because they didn't actually know how to perform their surgery.

Another Awkward Abductor Highlight is them returning their kidnapped people to the station in ventilated/flaming locations without realizing it, causing them to die of exposure before they woke up.

My initial thought is that they would probably benefit from getting Obsessed-style rules, where "You have objectives" means "Try to do the interesting creepy thing. Don't kill everyone you can get your hands on."

I think, at a policy/culture level, Abductors will be at their best when they're encouraged/required to try to do funny stuff instead of asshole stuff with their objective. Play up the goofiness of their idea - they're literally gray dudes who kidnap and probe the crew, add and remove Organs of Dubious Provenance, etc.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

no suicide brainwash, no shuttle recalls, no environmental grief (flooding, sm, ai), no explicit kill everyone brainwash
policy is now complete

[Mothblocks]

Side antags need to realize they are the sidepiece and stop doing their best to take over rounds. Abductors should not be putting people in situations where they are brain controlled to sit in a corner or whatever should they lose their gland, or causing people to mass suicide/die. You capture, experiment, release, repeat and you might lose if you dont make it in time.

Abusing the role like this is how you get it nerfed/removed if admins arent going to tell you to knock it off, if you abuse your toys and admins are gonna let it slide people are gonna want to clamp down on it codewise.

I still agree with whatever aligns with this.

[cacogen]

The first time I encountered them, they repeatedly sleep-stunned me without actually performing surgery until I got tired of it and ghosted so I could at least observed, at which point I discovered that I was being sleepbatonned for several minutes straight because they didn't actually know how to perform their surgery.

The abductor baton has always been retarded. It is the most unfun and anti-roleplay weapon in existence. You cannot nerf it though, because oranges is also retarded.

Are abductors allowed to murderbone? If so, why hold the policy forbidding them of giving the objective to their brainwash victims?

Are abductors allowed give the nuclear disk to the operatives? If so, why let them end the round in an extremely quick way? It would also prevent them from doing their job, which is abducting people.

Not with the laughably overpowered baton they have.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

well u can prevent being abducted with simple tinfoil and prevent batong sleep with coffee latte, they arent that op

[cacogen]

It sleeps you for two minutes, can be reapplied infinitely and doesn't require recharging. It's nice to be reminded it has dumb counters most people don't use and probably don't know about but it's laughably overpowered which stands in stark contrast to the 'nerf everything' mentality that's been applied to the rest of the game for the past five years or so.

It also prevents any roleplay with the abductors and any counterplay on the ship (which was fun fighting in that tight space and using the closet to stage an ambush when it happened to me precisely once with particularly incompetent abductors).

It's miserable to be a victim of because being asleep for an indefinite length of time at the whim of another player is worse than being dead because you can't observe or hear anything or see anything and you don't know how long it's going to last and whether you should just give up your round and ghost. The game shouldn't give that sort of power to players.

It doesn't have to be as extreme as it is for abductors to capture people non-lethally (e.g. lower the sleep time, prevent it from being applied when the target is already asleep) but you can't nerf it because there are certain issues that oranges decides to take personally that he absolutely must have his own way on regardless of whether it's good for the game or not.

To try to maintain a semblance of being on-topic, they supposedly have the overpowered baton so they can non-harmfully abduct people (but this is an post-hoc rationalisation for why it shouldn't be nerfed). It would be stupid to let them murderbone because it would be too easy for them, be immensely unfun to be a victim of and end the round virtually every time it happened.

[Pandarsenic]

It's miserable to be a victim of because being asleep for an indefinite length of time at the whim of another player is worse than being dead because you can't observe or hear anything or see anything and you don't know how long it's going to last and whether you should just give up your round and ghost. The game shouldn't give that sort of power to players.

Just going to repeat that my first encounter with them was being consecutively sleepbatonned and ghosting after about 4 cycles of it only to find they didn't actually know how to do the surgery at all, yeah. Nothing but the thirst for greentext stops them from just stripping and spacing people they've slept.

[Cobby]

You could nerf the baton I don’t see how that changes murderboning.

If they had a normal stun baton would you change their policy?

[Pandarsenic]

You'd still have to nerf a lot of their stuff to bring them to parity with other strong antags who are solo (or meant to operate solo on the station) like the ninja, wizard, etc.

Honestly I'd rather admins just be more willing to go "Hey you guys need some help figuring out that surgery" and "You're a side antag, act like it instead of trying to ruin people's days or you'll get a jobban from Abductor," and call it a day.

maybe do something with having them actually need to do anesthesia instead of sleepbaton, so that people can yell at them if they take too long, but even that isn't that big of a deal as long as they just hurry the fuck up instead of sleeping people for 10+ minutes

[cacogen]

You could nerf the baton I don’t see how that changes murderboning.

If they had a normal stun baton would you change their policy?

Dunno but you don't need to go further than the baton to know they aren't balanced for murderboning

[Jonathan Gupta]

You could nerf the baton I don’t see how that changes murderboning.

If they had a normal stun baton would you change their policy?

Dunno but you don't need to go further than the baton to know they aren't balanced for murderboning

coding change, the baton for abductor makes the abdcutor. They can heal as a team and just fucking recall do the op surgery use the baton for resurrect surgery and get back in the damn game. They shouldn't fucking murderbone and they can't within rules.

[Jonathan Gupta]

A fun thing I did once was have someone from the station abducted turned into an abductor via giving him a agent helmet vest and some other shit along with the tongue at the end we won that shit easy(He also had regen organ) Didn't know much about abductor but is what it is.