Warops changes discussion

[oranges]

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/81854

[britgrenadier1]

we should instead remove stealth ops from ever being a thing. The station suddenly exploding at 35 minutes is no fun for anyone. War is incredibly fun.

[WineAllWine]

we should instead remove stealth ops from ever being a thing. The station suddenly exploding at 35 minutes is no fun for anyone. War is incredibly fun.

Obviously anything can be an opinion. but you're wrong. war ops sucks. The entire round becomes arming oneself and preparing for death. THIS SUCKS.
Compare to a round in botany trying to make some fun plants. You make some but dont quite reach gatfruits and then the station blow up

These both suck but scenario 1 sucks more

[Redbert]

When we get a war ops, we get nearly the entire station participating and preparing. You involve the entire server in a war declaration and the round ends in 30 minutes.
When we get stealth ops, we get 4-6 players participating in the threat. Nearly the entire station sits out on this event and the round is suddenly over in 30 minutes.

With war ops, you instantly know that it's not the time for a gimmick.
With stealth ops, you spend time preparing for a gimmick and you're hit with a delta alert 30 minutes into the round.

In terms of overall player participation and enjoyment, I think war ops is vastly superior to stealth ops, even if some players dislike it.

I agree with

we should instead remove stealth ops from ever being a thing. The station suddenly exploding at 35 minutes is no fun for anyone. War is incredibly fun.

Stealth ops is genuinely terrible.

[britgrenadier1]

we should instead remove stealth ops from ever being a thing. The station suddenly exploding at 35 minutes is no fun for anyone. War is incredibly fun.

Obviously anything can be an opinion. but you're wrong. war ops sucks. The entire round becomes arming oneself and preparing for death. THIS SUCKS.
Compare to a round in botany trying to make some fun plants. You make some but dont quite reach gatfruits and then the station blow up

These both suck but scenario 1 sucks more

can you elaborate on that position? Scenario 2 is pretty much like old non dynamic rounds where a wizard dies to a rando assistant at minute 20. No one gets to participate in the gimmick. With war, everyone on the station is participating in that round's gimmick.

[Yulice]

Stealth ops sucks donkey dick because if anyone half competent does it they basically have a free win and nobody realizes until the round is already over. War Ops you already know and it's a big cool event and everyone is participating.

[NecromancerAnne]

I highlighted elsewhere about the statistics for ops up to date to the tail end of 2023, as provided by Mothblocks on the best website on the net. I think it is relevant to frame why this PR has happened using it.

Looking at the graph, we can see that Sybil and Manuel both have relatively inconsistent statistics, and there isn't a strong correlation towards war or non-war. That's probably a good thing. At least there is a mixture for the experiences of the players with regards to ops.

However, Terry seems to correlate more strongly towards operatives declaring war. Sometimes by a significantly larger margin than non-war. No offense to wine here, but wine is mostly playing Terry. That tells me wine has probably, at least for the last year, had to experience more war ops than the other two servers would on a regular basis. I think that skews their perspective a bit in this regard. I would like to see how Terry's population aligns with its threat level as well. I swear someone, maybe Mothblocks, had those stats.

edit:

So in that regard;

• Would there be any noticeable change if the average threat is enough to reach the minimum at a give pop level for the server only interested in war ops?

• Do we actually need two hard minimums for war ops to occur, or should we be focusing on one minimum that works better for our round controller?

• Is this PR doing what it sets out to do, or is it just adding another variable to the config that ultimately doesn't accomplish much in reducing the frequency of war ops?

• Is there a better alternative?

[WineAllWine]

we should instead remove stealth ops from ever being a thing. The station suddenly exploding at 35 minutes is no fun for anyone. War is incredibly fun.

Obviously anything can be an opinion. but you're wrong. war ops sucks. The entire round becomes arming oneself and preparing for death. THIS SUCKS.
Compare to a round in botany trying to make some fun plants. You make some but dont quite reach gatfruits and then the station blow up

These both suck but scenario 1 sucks more

can you elaborate on that position? Scenario 2 is pretty much like old non dynamic rounds where a wizard dies to a rando assistant at minute 20. No one gets to participate in the gimmick. With war, everyone on the station is participating in that round's gimmick.

Perhaps I worded it poorly. I meant that, if stealthOps happens, we get a mostly normal end that ends early.
While if we get warOps there id no point doing your job and you may as welll quit

[WineAllWine]

I highlighted elsewhere about the statistics for ops up to date to the tail end of 2023, as provided by Mothblocks on the best website on the net. I think it is relevant to frame why this PR has happened using it.

Looking at the graph, we can see that Sybil and Manuel both have relatively inconsistent statistics, and there isn't a strong correlation towards war or non-war. That's probably a good thing. At least there is a mixture for the experiences of the players with regards to ops.

However, Terry seems to correlate more strongly towards operatives declaring war. Sometimes by a significantly larger margin than non-war. No offense to wine here, but wine is mostly playing Terry. That tells me wine has probably, at least for the last year, had to experience more war ops than the other two servers would on a regular basis. I think that skews their perspective a bit in this regard. I would like to see how Terry's population aligns with its threat level as well. I swear someone, maybe Mothblocks, had those stats. Would there be any noticeable change if the average threat is enough to reach the minimum at a give pop level for the server only interested in war ops? Do we actually need two hard minimums for war ops to occur, or should we be focusing on one minimum that works better for our round controller?

I agree entirely, and this is a very well put argument.

And it's why in my (shit)code I made it a config value. I suspect the minimum_war_value tp be higher on Terry

[NecromancerAnne]

I agree entirely, and this is a very well put argument.

And it's why in my (shit)code I made it a config value. I suspect the minimum_war_value tp be higher on Terry

Sorry I added a hasty addition to that post, I'm sorry!

[britgrenadier1]

we should instead remove stealth ops from ever being a thing. The station suddenly exploding at 35 minutes is no fun for anyone. War is incredibly fun.

Obviously anything can be an opinion. but you're wrong. war ops sucks. The entire round becomes arming oneself and preparing for death. THIS SUCKS.
Compare to a round in botany trying to make some fun plants. You make some but dont quite reach gatfruits and then the station blow up

These both suck but scenario 1 sucks more

can you elaborate on that position? Scenario 2 is pretty much like old non dynamic rounds where a wizard dies to a rando assistant at minute 20. No one gets to participate in the gimmick. With war, everyone on the station is participating in that round's gimmick.

Perhaps I worded it poorly. I meant that, if stealthOps happens, we get a mostly normal end that ends early.
While if we get warOps there id no point doing your job and you may as welll quit

Counterpoint: Your job isn't pointless on war, it just shifts. Now you're doing whatever your department can for the war. Engineering makes glass barricades, service makes quadsec and speedboost food, medbay prepares to get bombed, stuff like that. My issue with stealth is that I get 30 minutes into prepping for whatever I am doing for the round, do my roundstart chores, and then the round ends and I get to do it all again. Rounds get fun at the 35 minute to 1 hour 20 minute mark. If the round is ending at 30 minutes either way, I'd rather know about it and also get to fight against some 100tc operatives.

Plus killing is fun! Relaxing the powergame rules and having an epic us vs them fight is good for the soul.

[BrianBackslide]

In your pr body you mention that there's no point to be a chef as the station will be nuked or evacuated in 30 minutes.

As a chef main I profoundly disagree with the provided example. Chefs can easily access both lube slips through oil, and hot oil to fight nukies, PLUS banana cream pies. They have opportunities to engage in the mode. If that's not enough, that's a code issue on chef design in that they don't have enough earlygame content to participate.

Besides that, if nukies are forced into stealth, and they don't want to stealth, they're going to simply blitz and end the round in 15.

[Indie-ana Jones]

I think tying war-ops to a stupid invisible number as opposed to a far more tangible population requirement is unwise.

[mrmelbert]

In truth, Ops kinda sucks and we should do Goon Ops instead. Win win.

[NecromancerAnne]

In truth, Ops kinda sucks and we should do Goon Ops instead. Win win.

From what I can tell, the ops can always arm the nuke, but they have to arm it in one of two locations? And the disk reduces the timer? And also, they have to defend for 10 minutes and not just arm and ditch?

This sounds a bit like what actioninja was going to do.

[mrmelbert]

This sounds a bit like what actioninja was going to do.

Yep

[warbluke]

I haven't seen anything except lone ops in years. Can you create some sort of lone-war-ops instead so I could see that too?

[KingKuma]

Stealth ops sucks donkey dick because if anyone half competent does it they basically have a free win and nobody realizes until the round is already over. War Ops you already know and it's a big cool event and everyone is participating.

Honestly, I do wish war ops was a BIT less likely to always end in a crew major. The main reason I'd assume people don't declare war is because it's tactical suicide, even with the extra TC.

[Kitfox]

we should instead remove stealth ops from ever being a thing. The station suddenly exploding at 35 minutes is no fun for anyone. War is incredibly fun.

if i wanted to play shitty pvp in ss13's crap ass engine i'd click on tgmc instead of manuel

Obviously anything can be an opinion. but you're wrong. war ops sucks. The entire round becomes arming oneself and preparing for death. THIS SUCKS.
Compare to a round in botany trying to make some fun plants. You make some but dont quite reach gatfruits and then the station blow up

These both suck but scenario 1 sucks more

[DaBoss]

In truth, Ops kinda sucks and we should do Goon Ops instead. Win win.

If I have to spend 20 minutes waiting for ops to show up, I am not going to be happy if the next 10 minutes are spent deconstructing r wall spam in virology so I can click on a nuke 200 times. Goon ops blows.

[JustRandomGuy]

Stealth Ops, good competent Stealth Ops, Succ. No one wants the round to suddenly end out of nowhere.

But War Ops also Succ. Most war ops round feel the same. It's 20 minutes of the same routine and 20 minutes to see like 1 nuckie get swarmed by 15 people and die. But nuckies still choose war because MOAR TC even if it ends up biting them in the ass (No element of surprise, the station is armed and most nuckies have no clue what to do with so much TC)

The best nuckies are not stealth, war or successfull blitz but the ones that fluke a little bit. You are minding your own business and then 10 seconds later the armoury is blown up and people are yelling "nuckie cargo".

More to the point of the actual change. I don't like locking war behind "threat" as it's not actually a player facing variable. People already struggle with undersranding war ops restrictions such as pop.
Another problem is that in war ops half the antags simply join the crew. Limiting war ops to high end threat rounds just gonna make them even weaker in comparison to 5 heretics and 3 lings on station armed to the teeth.

Frankly if you want to tie war ops to threat simply make it its own gamemode. That way you'd be able to balance them separately and players would be able to choose what they want with antag preferences.

[Jacquerel]

I'm not really a fan of threat-locked variables generally speaking because it's kind of basically just a coin toss to the players and threat is a random number roll anyway. If we don't want people to do War we should remove it. If we want War to be limited in some other way, maybe it should be a separate and differently weighted antagonist than Normal Ops.
Alternately just add a random 25% dice roll that it's available or not, it's about as useful as tying it to the Threat calculation.

(Also it's reasonably possible that threat as a discrete number is going to stop existing at some point, but I wouldn't base too many current plans on that idea)

[RedBaronFlyer]

I'm astoundingly neutral towards nukies to be honest, be it stealth ops or warops. I would probably like them more if the meta hadn't landed on esuit + esword + eshield + combat stims ages ago, which is boring as shit and makes an overwhelming majority of crew weapons seem pointless. (with the optional fungal TB to GBJ the crew if virology/chemist forgot to make cures for it). The weakness of stealthops is that for 90% of the crew it's just "oh I guess we're dying now" which isn't exactly fun, though I think it's fun in a way to suddenly have to run for the pods.

My question for the goonstation idea is how you would prevent people from maxcapping wherever the nuke is being defended. It would either lead to rounds insta-ending because some guy maxcapped the nuke or this weird back and forth where one nukie tries to defend the nuke while the other two stay close to keep it from being defused but not too close to get blown up by the maxcap. Maxcap suicide bombing is already a big thing during warops but the nuke having to be in a place for 10+ minutes would multiply that issue several times over.

Either way, thank all that is holy that no-drop implants were removed; I'm amazed they were ever added in the first place.

[BrianBackslide]

Simply make the nuke detonate if it gets maxcapped.

[MooCow12]

Nukies in general is disrespectful of everyone's time because their mere existence results in shuttle call, even if they just declare war and then afk in their base so they can RP victory when they capture the station fully intact after the captain forces everyone to run away on the evac shuttle and abruptly ends the round for the other 50 players on the server.
 
Stealth ops is even worse because when the captain fails to do their job and secure the disk, the round abruptly ends after everyone spent 20 minutes of their lives setting up sm, setting up botany, setting up xenobio, scanning toilets, setting up toxins, doing half of genetics...

That and...the captain has no reason or incentive to secure the disk.


If you do not secure disk as captain you have a greater chance of

-Solo Ops spawning and you getting antag gear
-Solo Ops or stealthies getting it and abruptly ending the round allowing you to quickly get to the next round and roll for antagonist
-Having more space in your inventory that you would need.

Name one incentive for captain players to secure the disk and not immediately red alert call shuttle at first sight of nukies.

There is none because the only progression for captain is to either get antagonist gear or get to the next round, there is no incentive for captains to want to take care of their station.

That being said, actually fighting nukies can be fun and interesting and it tends to make up for the sudden round end either via stealth ops or captain red alert shuttle calling.


The fact that nukies have this massive impact on everyones time and empowers the captain to red alert call should mean nukies are always high threat to at least reserve them to more chaotic rounds.

[MooCow12]

More relevant point

If nukies themselves can spawn during a low threat round yet their existence gives captain a right to red alert call shuttle? Doesn't that mean captain has a right to red alert call over other low threat things or at least a combination of things that would be equal to nukie threat? Could a captain player literally take the arbitrary "threat" values used for dynamic to determine when they are allowed to call shuttle and use a value similar to nukie threat as an end all be all reason to always call shuttle?

[Jacquerel]

Simply make the nuke detonate if it gets maxcapped.

Then nukies would just blow themselves up to win

[Ezel]

Doesn't matter if you lock it to threat or pop 9 of the 10 times if nuke op prays to admin they'll force it anyways
Stealth ops isn't really fun you don't get to play with any real toys
Waroo sucks because you can go defrnsive like modsuit energy shield dsword but that isn't gonna stop the following
Explosives, Magic hands, Shocking grasp(force drops ur item like curator whip), powerfist(bypasses your shieldchecks and your armour values.) and crew gets 20 minutes to prepare whatever cheesy ham they for you

[WineAllWine]

More relevant point

If nukies themselves can spawn during a low threat round yet their existence gives captain a right to red alert call shuttle? Doesn't that mean captain has a right to red alert call over other low threat things or at least a combination of things that would be equal to nukie threat? Could a captain player literally take the arbitrary "threat" values used for dynamic to determine when they are allowed to call shuttle and use a value similar to nukie threat as an end all be all reason to always call shuttle?

In my considerable experience the bar for a captain calling the shuttle is really low. That being said, no, if I saw a captain calling the shuttle just because it's a black orbit I would CentCom recall it. You need to give some reason, however flimsy

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I think that *total* stealth ops is kinda shitty because unless you screw up badly, the captain is lurking with a bunch of armed people all the time, or someone happens to bump into you as you're lurking in maint to yell NUKIES!! its a guaranteed win as you jump the captain, strip him/blow him up to respawn the disk and dash back into maint.

WAR WERE DECLARED ops is better than that (especially for people who dont mind a 20 minute buildup where everything gets put on hold leading up to a 5 minute scrap followed by nuke/shuttle arriving).


I really wonder if we could experiment with a middleground where the crew DO get alerted even for regular ops, but only when the nukie shuttle lands on the station Z level (Which might encourage people to actually use the shitty drop pod) so you don't get "it was nuke ops?"'d but also don't get the 5 minutes in "welp, warops, I guess I'm gonna server hop and hope the other servers are having a normal round". Maybe a centcom announcement along the lines of "Unauthorised vessel detected in station proximity. Ship profile matches a Gorlex Marauders nuclear assault craft, prepare to repel boarders"

[DATAxPUNGED]

i think stealth ops are really fucking funny. You are just having a chill round them the nuke is armed and you go "what"

[zxaber]

we should instead remove stealth ops from ever being a thing. The station suddenly exploding at 35 minutes is no fun for anyone. War is incredibly fun.

Obviously anything can be an opinion. but you're wrong. war ops sucks. The entire round becomes arming oneself and preparing for death. THIS SUCKS.
Compare to a round in botany trying to make some fun plants. You make some but dont quite reach gatfruits and then the station blow up

These both suck but scenario 1 sucks more

Many of our jobs have a rough 15-20 minutes of "prep work" or very basic content that you have to get through before you reach the fun part. Science and their tech webs, mining and their gear, and so on. I don't hate this time spent, but the time is spent with the hope of an eventual payoff. So the round just ending because dynamic spawned content exclusive for Security and the Captain kinda sucks.

WarOps gives us two things; a warning to the crew to not spend twenty minutes slogging through the setup steps because you won't be getting to the lategame content; and a way to make Ops actually involve all the players outside of when they get gibbed at the end. It also gives anyone who doesn't want to participate a chance to just exit stage left, whether they hate WarOps or Ops in general.

[Sightld2]

WarOps is better than stealth every single time.