Can we bump threat on manny a little bit?

[Jake]

Hey there, at some point last year Manny received a permanent reduction to its threat curve. Being from EU I'm mostly active during low-pop hours. I do enjoy MRP because people take their job more seriously, not because I want a safer environment. It's not uncommon to run into shifts that drag past the 90-minute mark with very little happening inbetween, barring the occasional black orbit.

Then, judging by the server configuration, some settings are just strange (thanks Melbert for the info) https://tgstation13.org/parsed-logs/syb ... c.mrp.json, midround traitors are effectively disabled with a weight of 0. There's also heretics being capped at 1 roundstart.

Regading midround tots, I don't know if this decision was made before or after progression was stripped from midround/latejoin traitors, but considering that midround tots are now a static threat with no way to get stronger or to abruptly end the round with a final objective, I don't see why they should be disabled.

As for heretics, I think having them capped at 1 per roundstart actually increases the chances of them ascending. The game spawns 4 rifts per heretic present; that's pretty much 8 free points you are free to get at your own leisure if you craft a cicatrix.

Aside from these 2 oddities, I think rounds need to have a better injection of threat; mid rolls are probably in a good place, save for sleepers being disabled; I don't have a lot of hard data to back up some of the things I'm claiming; I'm talking purely from experience here, so if you disagree or I'm objectively wrong on a few things, by all means let me know.

[britgrenadier1]

Agreed. We could use some more plot drivers and general action on Manuel. Right now it feels like 5 sec officers show up and curb stomp a singular traitor and then the threat is just gone.

[Redbert]

I'm glad you're saying that threat feels low on low pop hours. I was thinking of making a thread for this exact thing but I was unsure of how it would effect off hours.

I pulled data for the month a few days ago and the actual numbers were 34.74 average used threat and 42.18 average base threat.
I'd hope the average used threat could be increased to 45 or 50.

I play during peak hours and it feels AWFUL, the large crew easily deals with the low amounts of threat thrown at them, leaving the rest of the round in a green shift.
This last week, I've played 27 rounds, a total of 7 of them had greater than 50 base threat. Only 4 of those 7 rounds actually had greater than 50 used threat.

Ideally threat would scale based on population, a 30 pop crew will have more trouble handling 30 threat than a 70 pop crew, but that's a code issue at that point. Fortunately, if the common opinion across the board is that it feels low, I'd hope we can bump it up without worry.

[BonChoi]

Not a fan, the amount of antags in a 30 threat round is sufficient enough for me to have fun, I think. The issue is that security staffing / skill can vary wildly on highpop, and if the amount of security / security's relative skill is too low it's going to end up making every round with 50+ threat hell, not to mention that I feel like 50+ threat rounds always end the same way. Either the station gets blown to swiss cheese and we're forced to leave or a blob wins / loses (and when they lose they've done enough damage to station infrastructure to warrant a shuttle call.) As for heretics, I hated how there would be 3 of 4 in one round, causing secure areas to be hacked wide open with half of the station covered in rifts that make you want to kill yourself when you look at them and are able to rip your arms off if you touch them, not to mention the fact that they'd seldom be closed by anyone so they'd usually just hang out all shift. I think the level of threat we have now is fine.

tl;dr: I don't want it

[Rustybuckets6601]

I feel that some more action is needed yeah

[TheSmallBlue]

On high pop I think threat is high enough, if not a bit too high, but in low pop it's true that Manny becomes quite the slog

[mrmelbert]

FTR Midround Traitors were disabled as a part of a "test" 4-5 months ago. Not sure if anything came about it. (But evidently they're still off)

Right now it feels like 5 sec officers show up and curb stomp a singular traitor and then the threat is just gone.

I don't like the idea that we need to balance the dynamic curve around 5 sec players going out of their way to make all the antags redtext.

If anything this means that A. there's more room for solo antags to do unique gimmicks (why aren't they doing gimmicks? because they get no leeway from sec / the crew) and B. there's more room for sec to give leeway (why aren't they giving solo antags leeway? because the antags aren't doing gimmicks)

[Redbert]

FTR Midround Traitors were disabled as a part of a "test" 4-5 months ago. Not sure if anything came about it. (But evidently they're still off)

Right now it feels like 5 sec officers show up and curb stomp a singular traitor and then the threat is just gone.

I don't like the idea that we need to balance the dynamic curve around 5 sec players going out of their way to make all the antags redtext.

If anything this means that A. there's more room for solo antags to do unique gimmicks (why aren't they doing gimmicks? because they get no leeway from sec / the crew) and B. there's more room for sec to give leeway (why aren't they giving solo antags leeway? because the antags aren't doing gimmicks)

Isn't it security's job to make the antags redtext? They need that goal keeper to make the round interesting for them, right? A free antag round is no fun. More threat usually means less security anyway, as most of these players also have antag turned on.

It doesn't feel like the solo antags are doing gimmicks anyway, they're just stealthing their way to the end. whether it's high threat or low threat doesn't seem to change that. If anything, it is more likely they're doing nothing and waiting for some chaos so they have an opportunity to do their round objective, and if there is no chaos, they just do nothing the entire round. I'm hoping that slightly more chaos gives room for these players to work with instead of wasting threat.
I agree with the leeway part though, higher threat does mean that security is less likely to give leeway to an antag, they've already got a lot on their plate.

I'm sick of these back to back to back 'greenshifts'. Engineering, medical, and security content is pretty dependent on antags cooking. If there is no chaos, there is less content. I can't keep myself busy with personal gimmicks for the 7th round in a row, I'm not that creative.

I'm also not asking for the return of the black orbit hell we had a few months back. I just want a small bump of like 10 average threat, as a treat

[britgrenadier1]

FTR Midround Traitors were disabled as a part of a "test" 4-5 months ago. Not sure if anything came about it. (But evidently they're still off)

Right now it feels like 5 sec officers show up and curb stomp a singular traitor and then the threat is just gone.

I don't like the idea that we need to balance the dynamic curve around 5 sec players going out of their way to make all the antags redtext.

If anything this means that A. there's more room for solo antags to do unique gimmicks (why aren't they doing gimmicks? because they get no leeway from sec / the crew) and B. there's more room for sec to give leeway (why aren't they giving solo antags leeway? because the antags aren't doing gimmicks)

In practice however, if there is one traitor per 5 sec then odds are 5 bored sec officers will run at him for content. I don’t really blame people for that either tbh. Gimmicks thrive when they capture the attention of a portion of the crew, and the rest are busy dealing with the usual stuff.

[carshalash]

I mean, if you rush to round remove any threat you see, then people will exclusively play stealth.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I feel like manuel's in a good balance between "Only a few antags, spend more time doing regular sec stuff buddy" and "Would you like to meet The Wizard? Too Bad!" rounds tbh

[RedBaronFlyer]

I like the threat level Manuel is currently at.

[dendydoom]

i personally have no desire to change this. we just had a war on all fronts to get threat reduced because mrp was becoming dysfunctional with how rapidly rounds were escalating.

there will be downtime in rounds. you will run out of things to do. you will run out of antags to fight. this is compounded by whether or not you play for 12 hours a day. soon enough you'll have a round that cranks everything up to 11 and doesn't stop until it's over.

i'm open to CAREFULLY tweaking dynamic in an informed way for minor changes, but personally i feel absolutely 0 need to start grabbing the threat lever and ratcheting it up and down over and over every couple of weeks again.

EDIT: it's also worth noting that it's not as easy as setting some variable on config and this leading to perfectly foreseeable changes to threat and rounds. you can fuck around with it all you like, sometimes it'll change dramatically and sometimes it won't do anything. you have to then observe it for a set duration to track what changes are actually in effect.

to my knowledge some of this is being worked on so that we can be more granular with tweaks but i'm not sure what stage this is at.

[Jake]

i personally have no desire to change this. we just had a war on all fronts to get threat reduced because mrp was becoming dysfunctional with how rapidly rounds were escalating.

there will be downtime in rounds. you will run out of things to do. you will run out of antags to fight. this is compounded by whether or not you play for 12 hours a day. soon enough you'll have a round that cranks everything up to 11 and doesn't stop until it's over.

i'm open to CAREFULLY tweaking dynamic in an informed way for minor changes, but personally i feel absolutely 0 need to start grabbing the threat lever and ratcheting it up and down over and over every couple of weeks again.

EDIT: it's also worth noting that it's not as easy as setting some variable on config and this leading to perfectly foreseeable changes to threat and rounds. you can fuck around with it all you like, sometimes it'll change dramatically and sometimes it won't do anything. you have to then observe it for a set duration to track what changes are actually in effect.

to my knowledge some of this is being worked on so that we can be more granular with tweaks but i'm not sure what stage this is at.

Well bringing back midround tot for starters would be interesting, they are not as threatening anymore now that they lost access to progression and final objective.

I understand things used to be insane back in the day, i was here during the progtot rework when pretty much every crewmate was a traitor, just maybe experiment with the configs to shake things up a notch.

an occasional greenshift is fine, 3 greenshifts in a row not so much.

[dendydoom]

Well bringing back midround tot for starters would be interesting, they are not as threatening anymore now that they lost access to progression and final objective.

I understand things used to be insane back in the day, i was here during the progtot rework when pretty much every crewmate was a traitor, just maybe experiment with the configs to shake things up a notch.

an occasional greenshift is fine, 3 greenshifts in a row not so much.

progression objectives were removed from midround traitors so that admins (and dynamic) can throw in some easy midround antags that won't doom the station because it's 30 minutes in and everyone is a little more relaxed.

i personally like this change. midround traitors are a good fire-and-forget antag to add into a round to give it some action. with progression objectives we had to be very careful about adding more to a round because each one of them could easily reach their final objective and end the game.

[Jake]

Well bringing back midround tot for starters would be interesting, they are not as threatening anymore now that they lost access to progression and final objective.

I understand things used to be insane back in the day, i was here during the progtot rework when pretty much every crewmate was a traitor, just maybe experiment with the configs to shake things up a notch.

an occasional greenshift is fine, 3 greenshifts in a row not so much.

progression objectives were removed from midround traitors so that admins (and dynamic) can throw in some easy midround antags that won't doom the station because it's 30 minutes in and everyone is a little more relaxed.

i personally like this change. midround traitors are a good fire-and-forget antag to add into a round to give it some action. with progression objectives we had to be very careful about adding more to a round because each one of them could easily reach their final objective and end the game.

Yeah that's my point, now that they are not as threatening anymore, they could be brought back, midrounds tots currently have a weight of 0 on Manuel and therefore disabled.

Mid round tots also have access to contractor kit, which revolves around kindapping not murdering, it fits Manny more than the other servers.

[DrAmazing343]

I will say that there's really not as many greenshifts as people are making it out to be; consistently, it's seemed like things are just about as chaotic as usual on average, just with less black orbits. I'd not be opposed to careful research and testing of Dynamic configs/settings to change up the chances of certain antags (I for one have been really missing seeing cult or revs more than once or twice in two or three days) or overall just ensure everything gets played in variety.

Off Topic

Contractor is one of my favorite antags in the game because of how much it fits Manny and my overall attempts to keep round-removal off the table. Keeps people in the game AND allows a traitor the dopamine of progression. LOVE IT!

[Not-Dorsidarf]

People are also pretty bad at estimating the threat level on any round that doesn't have a plasmaflood, a final objective, and multiple killing sprees tbh.

[britgrenadier1]

i personally have no desire to change this. we just had a war on all fronts to get threat reduced because mrp was becoming dysfunctional with how rapidly rounds were escalating.

there will be downtime in rounds. you will run out of things to do. you will run out of antags to fight. this is compounded by whether or not you play for 12 hours a day. soon enough you'll have a round that cranks everything up to 11 and doesn't stop until it's over.

i'm open to CAREFULLY tweaking dynamic in an informed way for minor changes, but personally i feel absolutely 0 need to start grabbing the threat lever and ratcheting it up and down over and over every couple of weeks again.

EDIT: it's also worth noting that it's not as easy as setting some variable on config and this leading to perfectly foreseeable changes to threat and rounds. you can fuck around with it all you like, sometimes it'll change dramatically and sometimes it won't do anything. you have to then observe it for a set duration to track what changes are actually in effect.

to my knowledge some of this is being worked on so that we can be more granular with tweaks but i'm not sure what stage this is at.

Something to note is that the war to get threat reduced was during the black orbit hell Manuel had for a bit. Shortly after a coder reworked dynamic threat distribution we had a period of time where the average spent threat was something like 70 per round. Nowadays it’s sitting closer to 35. Downtime is fine, green shifts are fine, but when you have a night where 3-4 rounds in a row are green or low threat it’s abysmal.

[Constellado]

It seems an easy fix here is to keep threat the same but turn on midround traitor.

The threat right now for me feels fine, but I am the kind of player that likes low antag rounds more than high antag rounds. I also play lowish pop, so that skews things further.

I also want more heretics. I will not stop this triade till more roundstart ones (2) show up.

[dendydoom]

Something to note is that the war to get threat reduced was during the black orbit hell Manuel had for a bit. Shortly after a coders reworked dynamic threat distribution we had a period of time where the average spent threat was something like 70 per round. Nowadays it’s sitting closer to 35. Downtime is fine, green shifts are fine, but when you have a night where 3-4 rounds in a row are green or low threat it’s abysmal.

this is ultimately the issue with messing around with the overall threat weights. it's entirely possible that turning it up will not have the desired effect of cleanly escalating the current threat we get. it needs to be tweaked and then observed to see what effects the changes have.

It seems an easy fix here is to keep threat the same but turn on midround traitor.

to my knowledge (i had to ask around about this because the narrative i've heard in these threads confused me) sleeper agents are enabled and don't get midround objectives any more:

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/79020

[spookuni]

to my knowledge (i had to ask around about this because the narrative i've heard in these threads confused me) sleeper agents are enabled and don't get midround objectives any more:

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/79020

As of 2/4/2024 the weight of the dynamic midround ruleset "Syndicate Sleeper Agent" is set at 0 in Manuel's specific config / the dynamic.mrp.json.

This effectively soft-disables the ruleset from being run under normal conditions, as the chance of it being picked in a normal light antagonist dynamic injection is null.

The ruleset still exists codeside and isn't disabled there - and as such can be run manually by admins or if the weight is adjusted up in round-by-round config settings despite it's soft-disabled status.

Edit to clarify: this only applies to Manuel / MRP, it's a dynamic config derived disabling not a code level disabling.

(I'm trying to keep an up to date record of the injection weights and derived chance of injection in the dynamic.mrp.history.txt file serverside if any other keyholders want to crosscheck my work later.)

[xzero314]

I also want more heretics. I will not stop this triade till more roundstart ones (2) show up.

Lets keep it at one. As soon as you add in another round start heretic at all then it becomes a race for influences again which sucks. It would be really cool if we had a heretic awakening antag like midround sleeper traitor though

[dendydoom]

to my knowledge (i had to ask around about this because the narrative i've heard in these threads confused me) sleeper agents are enabled and don't get midround objectives any more:

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/79020

As of 2/4/2024 the weight of the dynamic midround ruleset "Syndicate Sleeper Agent" is set at 0 in Manuel's specific config / the dynamic.mrp.json.

This effectively soft-disables the ruleset from being run under normal conditions, as the chance of it being picked in a normal light antagonist dynamic injection is null.

The ruleset still exists codeside and isn't disabled there - and as such can be run manually by admins or if the weight is adjusted up in round-by-round config settings despite it's soft-disabled status.

Edit to clarify: this only applies to Manuel / MRP, it's a dynamic config derived disabling not a code level disabling.

(I'm trying to keep an up to date record of the injection weights and derived chance of injection in the dynamic.mrp.history.txt file serverside if any other keyholders want to crosscheck my work later.)

thanks so much for clarifying this so clearly.

in that case i am completely wrong and stand corrected. unless there is some intentional code-side reason for sleeper agents to be disabled (eg they're meant to be replaced by spies? unsure...) then i'm in agreement that there's no real reason to keep them disabled, and i would be entirely open to enabling them again.

[Jacquerel]

as far as I am aware they have been disabled only in config and it wasn't a codebase request, spies are a separate thing

[Constellado]

I also want more heretics. I will not stop this triade till more roundstart ones (2) show up.

Lets keep it at one. As soon as you add in another round start heretic at all then it becomes a race for influences again which sucks. It would be really cool if we had a heretic awakening antag like midround sleeper traitor though

Being able to play heretic at a reasonable amount (not ONCE A MONTH OR TWO) and having competition is something I would rather have.

[Bmon]

I want more round start heretics, it should not be set to one with only the chance of there being late join heretics which might not even happen

[Higgin]

I could also see bumping heretics again with how they seem to have been doing - especially with Spies displacing some of the threat that previously went towards progtots going dummy at any point they appeared (rather than now being without progression as latejoin/midrounds,) the one roundstart heretic feels like they very often have a feast-or-famine run with a spotlight on them once influences show up that points towards famine.

One to three would be nice again, I think.

[kieth4]

We are going to have a look at dynamic and probably re-shuffle a lot of threat/antags/shit at some point. It's pretty complex, but when we do it we'll hit manny too.