/tg/Station 13

Byond account and character name: Evsey9, Deeo Brundo
Admin: Thunder12345
Time and Server(Bagil or Sybil) incident occurred: 2018-02-01
ROUND ID HERE: 82905
Detailed summary: So, we had a really good clock cultist round.
Almost everyone was converted, but some people weren't.
Then the HOP decided to call for help.
Thunder12345 in response sent a DEATH SQUAD.
Keep in mind - a deathsquad is a squad of soldiers which have 2 shot crit guns which break everything + energy shields, so they COULD stand at spawn and... shoot up, quickly killing the ark.
They, however, did not - but even if you stunned one with your spear or kindle - another one would shoot you.
Hey, even if you get a pulse rifle - you can't really use it since they have energy shields which deflect any energy projectiles.
Now, I've got a question: How is a DS is balanced against a clock cult, no matter how big?
The deathsquad is the only reason clock cult lost.
The "its better than sitting 10 minutes not doing anything" argument doesn't apply, or could be turned around. If you wanted us to not sit around for ten minutes, doing nothing, perhaps, you could... shorten the ark timer, if you knew the crew wouldn't win? Or hey - send a code red ERT. That is at least more fair of a fight than sending an overpowered force which kills everything in it's way.
Another option would be to send some guns ( other than pulse rifles ). Hell, maybe a bunch of syndicate bombs, even. Honestly, there were many ways in which Thunder could handle this better, but in my opinion, a deathsquad is way too over the top.
Even the HOP that called for help did not expect a death squad:
This has also happened before, but probably not with Thunder, and it wasn't fair that time either.
Maybe this PR can set a rule about "no deathsquads on clock cults".

There were a couple of crew getting lasered to death before they even left the spawn room. Are you really this upset that you didn't spend an eternity sitting on your asses waiting for the round to end with literally no resistance? As for reducing the ark timer, I've tried in the past and haven't been able to find any way to do it. Also, a code red ERT would have been no different, they still spawn with pulse weapons.

Please explain exactly what you lost here, apart from everyone sitting with nothing to do and a line of text changing colour? You still had an entire round of fun, the only thing you didn't get was to sit around doing nothing.

I lost my sense of pride and accomplishment :(
EDIT: Didn't know that they spawned with pulse rifles. Code amber, then.
Also - there WAS some resistance. Crew members were firing at us first from spawn, even if not a lot, and we didn't have much power actually for many vitality matrices, which meant we had to sometimes retreat

line of text changing colour

Can we not pretend that nobody cares about winning or losing, or whether their characters lived or died, or how the story ends? Whether or not this thread is complaint worthy it's silly to say "lol its just text" when we expect our players to respect that text (try pulling that excuse when you bomb the shuttle with 30 seconds left, see how it works out)

Bit of an anecdote but I've played in a very dominant clock cult round and had other admins spawn death squads that we were able to kill, barely. I think if the clock cult basically has a guaranteed win, a deathsquad attacking providing an actual challenge is far better than having to wait 10 minutes for the ark to activate with no conflict. Can you really fault Thunder for wanting that?

PKPenguin321 wrote:Bit of an anecdote but I've played in a very dominant clock cult round and had other admins spawn death squads that we were able to kill, barely. I think if the clock cult basically has a guaranteed win, a deathsquad attacking providing an actual challenge is far better than having to wait 10 minutes for the ark to activate with no conflict. Can you really fault Thunder for wanting that?

DrWoofington did say that a code red ERT would've been alright. Deathsquads are pretty much the go-to "make the antag lose" button to press, though, so it's not really fair to send them as a challenge.

You can adjust the time remaining on clockcult via viewvar, but it's at best, obstruse and technical and at worst capable of breaking the round.

The lesson to take from this is that while it's possible for a dominant end game clock cult to wreck death squad, most the time players aren't robust enough to actually do it. Some good salt though.

oranges wrote:You can adjust the time remaining on clockcult via viewvar, but it's at best, obstruse and technical and at worst capable of breaking the round.

This, and that it provides no meaningful conflict whatsoever.

Again, anecdotal, but I'd take a high-action fighting loss over an effortless, boring win if given the choice every time.

PKPenguin321 wrote:

oranges wrote:You can adjust the time remaining on clockcult via viewvar, but it's at best, obstruse and technical and at worst capable of breaking the round.

This, and that it provides no meaningful conflict whatsoever.

Again, anecdotal, but I'd take a high-action fighting loss over an effortless, boring win if given the choice every time.

It wasn't high action, the entire problem the op had was that with a pulse rifle you can just dump shots up and eventually you'll win. Its a joke to win as a death squad

I don't like the idea of punishing an antag for winning, and I don't like how a stagnated round was handled like this when you could have edited the summoning time like oranges said. No I don't think we should ban thunder or something just don't like the direction that takes things if that makes sense

Not a huge fan of punishing antags for winning. Also not a huge fan of the "my antag round is sacred mentality."

I think a deathsquad was overkill. It probably made the round more interesting than it would've been without the deathsquad, noone wants to watch a bunch of clockies jack each other off for ten minutes. At the same time, it creates a lot of bad feeling from the cultists since it feels like they got shat on for winning fairly. I can see both sides here and I don't think it's actionable, but I would definitely do things differently if I were in thunder's place- send something that can still give the cult a run for its money while being fair or lessen the timer.

There is in fact a large difference between a code red ERT and a deathsquad.

Code Red ERT: Pulse weapons for everyone- The security officers are the only ones with a large amount of ammo and it's still exhaustible. No e-shields- It's plausible that they can be killed if they're disarmed.

Deathsquad: Pulse weapons for everyone with nearly unlimited ammo. Energy shields means it doesn't matter if they get disarmed- they're immune to their own weapons.

Overall, the code red ERT would be much more fair to send, and it would still be a fun challenge for the cult.

Thunder has a history of ruining big round-ending blowouts, as he has done before to me as Malf AI. Last time I saw Thunder in a complaint, it was me complaining that he extended my malf nuke timer by 10 minutes to ensure I couldn't win via Phazon memery.

Edit: https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic ... 53&t=12648

admins shouldn't be giving players a chance, if the antag has outsmarted or out-powergamed them all then that's ss13 for you

this quote from imblyings from my thread just about sums up the exact thing I see again here. He was also warned not to do this kind of thing again.

I think an Amber ERT is the right thing to send to replenish crew when everyone is dead or converted. Deathsquads are a meme and should be treated the same as catastrophic meteor spam, singularities and megafauna.

Aren't squids traditionally only ever appropriate when there's lusties aboard?

admins shouldn't be giving players a chance, if the antag has outsmarted or out-powergamed them all then that's ss13 for you

There's nothing fun or interesting or worth doing while waiting for clockcult timer.

That's why in general timers are bad because they don't react to environmental conditions.

Maybe thunder should have enabled ctf or just figured out how to varedit the cult timer but I don't bedgrudge them for spawning some people in, even if they got the weighting wrong.

Thunder could have handled it better and hopefully will in the future but I'm not gonna punish them over being ham handed as long as they learn to tone it down in the future.

Pulse weapons and energy weapon immunity aren't fun to play against, use something better (or just skip the timer) next time. If you want to avoid drama it doesn't hurt to ask the team leader first if they'd be up for a bonus challenge.