/tg/Station 13

Bottom post of the previous page:

I see what you're trying to do
you ejected the first bullet by hand, didn't you?

Follow your vision Kor

Kor wrote:

Qbopper wrote:I'm now regretting my wall of text post

It was a good post

Even though I think my points still hsve some merit (despite being aggro as fucking shit for no good reason) I still think it's important to address concerns like what luke says in his other post without going nuclear on him

I personally would rather see planetstation even if it means big changes, but that doesn't mean I should shit on anyone

This thread is reaching critical shitpost mass btw

You heard the man Kor, brave warrior LUCK "cocks" COX will not leet you code this, so stand aside

Wyzack wrote:You heard the man Kor, brave warrior LUCK "cocks" COX will not leet you code this, so stand aside

You can shitpost all you want, it doesn't invalidate my point. I'm just saying that this isn't going to work out the way Kor envisions it and that he's wasting his time. It's halfway to being a new game, and if he wants to pursue it further, he's best off making his own fork.

captain sawrge wrote:

captain sawrge wrote:

Luke Cox wrote:If Kor really wants to pursue this seriously, he's going to have to create his own fork

actually not autism

Now this is a quality shitpost

Random crazy thought, but hear me out: What if Kor made this as a spin-off game set in the SS13 universe? It could be a fork from the /tg/station code and act as a sister game. Kor would be completely unshackled from SS13, and have total creative freedom. The game could be run on our third server, and nobody would be upset because core /tg/station would be untouched. Antags, jobs, items, etc. could be tailored to the new gameplay. If Kor is ambitious enough, it's a win-win for everyone.

I come back and I see four pages of arguing between Luke and co.

This whole endevor is going to die under the weight of shit that's being spewed out in this impossible to follow debate.

Honestly, start a new thread at this point. It seems like little progress has been made on the actual OP of this thread, with 95% of this thread being dedicated to arguing over NPC mobs and the removal of cargo.

danno wrote:You mean the thing he was already basically fucking planning on doing
Are you this stupid or is this just masterful bait

He said he'd make it a map and eventually remove either it or the space maps

The only important things in this thread are the people who said they're willing to contribute and what they'll do

Progress is being made in that people with a history of contributing are signing on. The next step is running this past MSO and the maintainers. If that happens I'll make a trello or something for actual tasks and discussion. Any serious planning will likely not take place on the forums.

After thinking if over, I'll be more than happy to contribute my mediocre map making skills to the project.

PKPenguin321 wrote:

danno wrote:You mean the thing he was already basically fucking planning on doing
Are you this stupid or is this just masterful bait

He said he'd make it a map and eventually remove either it or the space maps

Which gives us two possible scenarios: Either half the playerbase leaves to play real SS13, or a colossal amount of development time is wasted.

I'll gladly spitball ideas all day long, but you still haven't answered my question Kor: Are you willing to bet everything on this?

kor just said "i am wi;lling to bet it all if i had one chance" in mumble there's your answer

ShadowDimentio wrote:I'll gladly spitball ideas all day long, but you still haven't answered my question Kor: Are you willing to bet everything on this?

You better lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it, you better never let it go

i dont see myself on the coding list kor do you not trust me ree

I realize that I'm the downer in this situation and everyone sees this as some cool new thing, but I just hope that everybody understands that they're making a solution to a non-problem that the general playerbase isn't going to accept because it'll change the fundamentals of the game (whether Kor means to or not). People who are contributing to this need to understand that there is a good chance that it will end up being one gigantic waste of their time. If you have to proceed, do it as a fork and everyone will be better off.

hey, can i sprite? I wanna be useful

I will also make shitty sprites

This sounds like a really awesome idea, it is something innovative and something new which i always find cool, i was already thinking at taking a shot at designing a station but this is bigger and something cooler then that so you can count me in on the mapping team for this one if this gets the all clear and green light.

Kor wrote:

Qbopper wrote:I'm now regretting my wall of text post

It was a good post

But given all the "focusing all resources in this new direction or it won't work" talk it was pretty clear it wasn't just a map

imo if the lava mobs are human controlled, it's just going to make it a competition of who wants to grief the station harder (assistants and lavamobs) versus who wants to keep the station working, and who is the most robust. If robust players decide they're sick of playing the good team, they can just go into lava mobs and wreck the station every time, like with ash ligger invasions.

I'd rather keep the space aspect of the game. Space is fun and the current game I still have plenty of fun every round, antag or not. Code additions to the game keep it plenty fresh and as a science / AI main I always have some kind of thing to do anyway, like tooling with a research area or just people-watching as the AI (and people are always interesting).

Even long rounds will have chaos eventually, but I think we should encourage longer rounds in the base game, rather then just taking the space out of space station.

Yakumo_Chen wrote:imo if the lava mobs are human controlled, it's just going to make it a competition of who wants to grief the station harder (assistants and lavamobs) versus who wants to keep the station working, and who is the most robust. If robust players decide they're sick of playing the good team, they can just go into lava mobs and wreck the station every time, like with ash ligger invasions.

And that's the conundrum regarding the mobs. You can either make them human controlled and have it be a grief fest, or you make them AI controlled and they become nothing more than a monotonous annoyance.

Even AI mobs would be more fun to play with than just an area that kills you if you don't have the right clothes.

XDTM wrote:Even AI mobs would be more fun to play with than just an area that kills you if you don't have the right clothes.

That's because you're supposed to stay on the station where everything is happening, silly. Not to mention that space is a major strategic element in core SS13 (spacing people, exposing areas to space, etc.)

>useless forum posts!

https://file.house/XHes.png

imblyings wrote:>useless forum posts!

https://file.house/XHes.png

Back to form on 65535 grass variants eh?

Luke Cox wrote:

XDTM wrote:Even AI mobs would be more fun to play with than just an area that kills you if you don't have the right clothes.

That's because you're supposed to stay on the station where everything is happening, silly. Not to mention that space is a major strategic element in core SS13 (spacing people, exposing areas to space, etc.)

With a dangerous planet you could do stuff like feeding your enemies to a monster den, and wandering too far while alone and/or unequipped would still be as dangerous as space, but people could push back some dangerous territory to make it safe for traveling, if they want to do an extra effort. Also space very frequently just loops back to the station, making it even less optimal for corpse disposal.
The danger would still keep people in, but with this, for example, if you get an uber-deadly grenade you don't have to sigh and trash it because you're not an antag, but you can instead run and lob it to a cluster of monsters, freeing that area and maybe getting resources or loot.

Construction in general would be greatly improved with a planet, since the lack of atmosphere makes new areas very hard to build, both because you need to pressurize it and because you need to also make a spaceproof passageway.

XDTM wrote:

Luke Cox wrote:

XDTM wrote:Even AI mobs would be more fun to play with than just an area that kills you if you don't have the right clothes.

That's because you're supposed to stay on the station where everything is happening, silly. Not to mention that space is a major strategic element in core SS13 (spacing people, exposing areas to space, etc.)

With a dangerous planet you could do stuff like feeding your enemies to a monster den, and wandering too far while alone and/or unequipped would still be as dangerous as space, but people could push back some dangerous territory to make it safe for traveling, if they want to do an extra effort. Also space very frequently just loops back to the station, making it even less optimal for corpse disposal.
The danger would still keep people in, but with this, for example, if you get an uber-deadly grenade you don't have to sigh and trash it because you're not an antag, but you can instead run and lob it to a cluster of monsters, freeing that area and maybe getting resources or loot.

Construction in general would be greatly improved with a planet, since the lack of atmosphere makes new areas very hard to build, both because you need to pressurize it and because you need to also make a spaceproof passageway.

And if someone is trying to kill you, you could just run out onto the planet. Space is great because it gives the station a sense of claustrophobia. Bombings are devastating not just because they trash a department, but because they impact the habitability of large chunks of the station. Moving the station to a planet is far more than just "filling in space". It changes the fundamental dynamics of the game.

I think the only way to convince kor of not doing this is to write your own ""design"" doc that shines better than this one. Personally I am not at all inspired to get away from space, and this doesn't seem to be well planned, you're going to end up with the current situation but on a different theme.

Scott wrote:I think the only way to convince kor of not doing this is to write your own ""design"" doc that shines better than this one. Personally I am not at all inspired to get away from space, and this doesn't seem to be well planned, you're going to end up with the current situation but on a different theme.

The reason I keep going on and on about this is because it feels like Kor doesn't understand why some of us think that this is a terrible idea. He's denying that PvE is going to be the driving force behind rounds or as PK pointed out, will railroad rounds down a single path of progression. This is a big fucking deal, and it has the potential to kill the server.

The main difference I'm seeing with this proposed change is that the game will take place on the surface of a planet, and that there will be a constant environmental threat the crew has to deal with.

So instead of the station acting in isolation and moving at the pace of the player antagonists, instead the station, from the get go, is working with the fact that there's a overarching 'threat' to the station from the beginning that is not a player antagonist.

This would mean that player antagonists serve to 'enhance' the events and chaos of the round, instead of being the only means to drive the round forward.

Steelpoint wrote:The main difference I'm seeing with this proposed change is that the game will take place on the surface of a planet, and that there will be a constant environmental threat the crew has to deal with.

So instead of the station acting in isolation and moving at the pace of the player antagonists, instead the station, from the get go, is working with the fact that there's a overarching 'threat' to the station from the beginning that is not a player antagonist.

This would mean that player antagonists serve to 'enhance' the events and chaos of the round, instead of being the only means to drive the round forward.

Precisely, and that's a problem. Other players will not be the primary source of conflict, whether Kor realizes it or not. People don't want to deal with lavaland-style mobs every round. The current setup is claustrophobic. You're stuck on an island with a variety of people who want to kill you. Along this lines, there's the massive issue of rounds being railroaded down a fixed path (and it is a big fucking issue, hence me bringing it up every other post) of getting established, gathering resources, and powering the gateway while fighting off mobs. It will be the same thing every round, just with murderboners with different gear trying to stop you. God forbid the area containing the gateway becomes somehow uninhabitable, in which case it's gg no re for the crew. Fundamentally and irreversibly (in terms of wasted development resources and/or player attrition) changing the game based on an idea with so many fundamental flaws is unthinkable and its implementation is an existential threat to the server.

Petition to ban luke "literally cannot stop sucking" cox from this thread, sign here: x______

Perhaps that issue can be resolved Luke if the path to 'victory' is not fixed every single time? With random generation in mind you could look into making there be multiple ways to get off the planet, and not all of them are available during a round.

Also some of your argument could be used against the current way the game is played, but this concept could help to shake up the meta if its done well.

Okay even now that we're on the same page the idea that this will kill /tg/ seems ridiculously foreign to me and makes it hard to take you seriously EDIT: lukes last post

I seriously doubt that even if this project goes as horribly as you claim it will it'll result in the death of /tg/station - absolute worst case scenario it's so abysmally bad we all hate it and force a rollback

Besides, didn't away missions get nuked for being TOO popular? It feels like people would prefer to have that PvE element, at least from my experience

well no they were mostly nuked for being a bit shit all round really, lavaland was a far superior execution of the concept

They were a good test bed for the concepts though

Steelpoint wrote:Perhaps that issue can be resolved Luke if the path to 'victory' is not fixed every single time? With random generation in mind you could look into making there be multiple ways to get off the planet, and not all of them are available during a round.

Also some of your argument could be used against the current way the game is played, but this concept could help to shake up the meta if its done well.

That's not the issue, not completely. Having any fixed goal for the crew that they have to complete to end the round is a terrible idea. As I said before, sandbox vs. linear. People should be free to make their own objectives, with the shuttle acting as a round-ender when people decide that they can no longer have fun.

Qbopper wrote:Okay even now that we're on the same page the idea that this will kill /tg/ seems ridiculously foreign to me and makes it hard to take you seriously EDIT: lukes last post

I seriously doubt that even if this project goes as horribly as you claim it will it'll result in the death of /tg/station - absolute worst case scenario it's so abysmally bad we all hate it and force a rollback

Besides, didn't away missions get nuked for being TOO popular? It feels like people would prefer to have that PvE element, at least from my experience

The reason I say that this could kill or severely damage the server is because if it is completed, it'll probably get left up for a while with the hopes of the playerbase caving in and accepting it given how the coders have dealt with unpopular changes in the past, during which time the server will hemorrhage players. If we do decide that it's good at first, /tg/station will cease to be a mainstream SS13 server and become a niche. If the coders do accept reality and remove it, we'll have spent months working on unusable content. I'll cede that this is a bit of a slippery slope but it's something that needs to be kept in mind when considering this. People who support this see it as a leap of faith, I see it as stampeding off a cliff.

Gateway missions were removed because they allowed large swathes of the crew to fuck off into filler content that contributes nothing to the game. You could compare this to putting the station in the gateway. What's to stop people from fucking off into the planet?

@everyone arguing PVE won't smother the game

What could traitors do?
What will traitors do?

If you set up a last stand scenario from the get-go, any traitors that need to survive to the end would have to not commit any kind of grand sabotage to maximise their greentext potential. Sure, murder one guy or steal an item, but blow up science? the engine? not a Chance. Every traitor will just stealth the whole round until there is just too many goliaths and not enough bullets. "Backstab at the critical moment?" More like snooze-fest for the first 40 minutes and then everything explodes as soon as the gateway kicks to life.

>Ok, then add more glorious death objective.
Well, now you have a traitor whose objectives undermine the success of other traitors, what do you get? That's right, double agent, where the traitors are the protagonists and the crew eats shit.

I don't see traitors working like they do now.
I see traitors either, becoming a background thing while every non-magic round devolves into more soulless powergaming for guns/energy until the reset button can be pressed, or everything exploding roundstart with the crew left to pick up the pieces, i.e. a new griff lottery with double the frustration since "lol no shuttle".

Iatots wrote:@everyone arguing PVE won't smother the game

What could traitors do?
What will traitors do?

If you set up a last stand scenario from the get-go, any traitors that need to survive to the end would have to not commit any kind of grand sabotage to maximise their greentext potential. Sure, murder one guy or steal an item, but blow up science? the engine? not a Chance. Every traitor will just stealth the whole round until there is just too many goliaths and not enough bullets. "Backstab at the critical moment?" More like snooze-fest for the first 40 minutes and then everything explodes as soon as the gateway kicks to life.

>Ok, then add more glorious death objective.
Well, now you have a traitor whose objectives undermine the success of other traitors, what do you get? That's right, double agent, where the traitors are the protagonists and the crew eats shit.

I don't see traitors working like they do now.
I see traitors either, becoming a background thing while every non-magic round devolves into more soulless powergaming for guns/energy until the reset button can be pressed, or everything exploding roundstart with the crew left to pick up the pieces, i.e. a new griff lottery with double the frustration since "lol no shuttle".

I hadn't considered the whole "traitors sabotaging themselves" thing, good point. Nuke Ops wouldn't make a whole lot of sense either. "This crew is stranded and has been left to die, but we should totally detonate a nuke they have for shits and giggles." Or rev, "we're on the brink of death and need every ounce of productivity we can get, let's murder command!" We would have to rework all our antags just for this to function, and at that point you might as well just make an independent fork with antags tailored to the gameplay, which as I stated earlier could actually work on the third server.

Off topic from the "this will kill /tg/station", I'm stuck in a car for a few hours and I'm brainstorming stuff for the hypothetical map - specifically monsters that have gameplay impacts beyond "walks up to the station and kills you dead"

Like, what if there's a monster that's attracted specifically to energy/light? if they picked up the scent they'd track down the source, so say you're running from a traitor and notice a pack of them outside. The antag has a dual esword, so you run out and the moron follows you. They see what he's got and swarm him, attacking him until he drops it - then they snatch it and bring it back to their lair. They don't care if you live or die (unless you aggro them by attacking first maybe?) and just want that sweet sweet energy. You can track them down and get it back, maybe they'd be an annoyance all round, stealing light sources/whatever

Or what about a hunter mod that prowls in a pack of one or two - if it sees a crew member it goes in for the attack, but it uses a nonlethal method (maybe a small amount of a chemical per hit that makes you pass out if it hits a threshold? Didn't think about this too hard, maybe would be better if it kept you awakw so you could scream on the radio). Once you're down, it grabs you and begins slowly retreating to its hive, then when it's there it pulls a xenomorph and puts you in some organic bindings. The idea is if you leave your friend to die (because if you go outside alone you're a dumbass) the materials of the binding slowly deal damage until you turn into a nice organic nutrient paste for the hive. You can find where they took them by examining vegetation/looking for tracks (why not make this go for anything?) but the tracks fade over time

EDIT: They could also go after other wildlife on the planet - maybe if you go into the lair and find a monster trapped you could rescue it, changing it's behaviour so that it becomes your friend where it does its own thing, but will generally follow you and attack anyone who attacks you?

Like, I'm not trying to ignore the issues people have, but there's been enough arguing about it, I figured I'd post something less depressing

I think Steelpoint is right here, in that we need more than one station goal to progress towards, as sooner or later someone will create the perfect "get off the planet" guide. Unless you want to close the codebase, that is.

Also, I think I once heard some coder saying that increasing map size would be possible, but (something).

Not a bad idea

Maybe have one escape type be "find the pieces to finish the gateway" scattered around the map and one based more on hunkering down and cranking out the pieces for a shuttle

You could have RnD work on stuff for the egines like warp drives/etc.and engineering builds the framework, and everyone else focuses on not dying by fauna

I can't think of anything else right now but I think you could come up with more ways to finish the round than those

EDIT: here's another - crew has to build a transmitter and send out a signal to centcomm. Could combine elements of the above, having the crew search for parts and making their own, then maybe a last stand against a swarm of mobs attracted to the signal once it goes out? Justified by "it's searching for centcomm's position" or some shit like that

EDIT AGAIN: I think the way to approach this is to create systems that allow for new things to happen. Using my last post as an example, those monsters go beyond just mindless carp reskins, they have their own basic (on paper, anyways, I have some idea of how their AI could work but I've never worked with AI before) "goals" they fulfill which can be exploited by players

The way to pitch features isn't "what does this thing do that's interesting", it's "what does this thing do that lets players be interesting". Any good sandbox game uses an approach like this, where you design systems that function without player input, but react in a way that makes sense when a human being inevitably throws a wrench into it

This has nothing to do with the rest of the post and some of you will say "no duh' but it's something I wanted to put in words anyways

Iatots wrote:If you set up a last stand scenario from the get-go, any traitors that need to survive to the end would have to not commit any kind of grand sabotage to maximise their greentext potential. Sure, murder one guy or steal an item, but blow up science? the engine? not a Chance. Every traitor will just stealth the whole round until there is just too many goliaths and not enough bullets. "Backstab at the critical moment?" More like snooze-fest for the first 40 minutes and then everything explodes as soon as the gateway kicks to life.

The idea is that the monsters are bad for the station, not bad for the station's survival. Not resisting the monsters effectively will mean the power's off, not "everyone dies". Maybe if they're completely unresisted, but at that point you have to just congratulate a traitor on a good job sabotaging.

Luke Cox wrote:God forbid the area containing the gateway becomes somehow uninhabitable, in which case it's gg no re for the crew.

God forbid the escape shuttle becomes somehow uninhabitable, in which case gg no re for the crew.

Luke Cox wrote:That's because you're supposed to stay on the station where everything is happening, silly. Not to mention that space is a major strategic element in core SS13 (spacing people, exposing areas to space, etc.)

Lava is better at disposing of bodies than space. Exposing areas to space can be replaced by exposing areas to the hostile wildlife or hostile flora that would grow into the open area. It's not the same but it's interesting too. This is kind of a poor argument because this thread exists literally to brainstorm solutions to these kinds of issues.

I think that in theory if the crew do not, or are unable, to combat the threat of the encroaching monsters that will not necessarily mean antagonists will suddenly lose.

The average crew member would be ill equipped to deal with a large contingent of monsters, and I can assume that security's stockpile of weaponry will be limited. The average traitor however is very well equipped to deal with monsters and other hostile NPCs.

So while over half the crew may be dead, and the station depowered, the traitors will survive.

-------------------------

On that note, I think that station bound antagonists should have some method of getting off the station or at least surviving the round.

Perhaps Traitors can buy a free 'escape ship' beacon that will summon a evacuation ship to extract them, or maybe they can buy a tool kit that can repair one of the ships broken escape pods for their own personal use.

(On that note, escape pods should be reworked so you can't stuff thirty people inside a two tile pod, maybe make them like goon's pods and they are a single man pod)

Jazaen wrote:I think Steelpoint is right here, in that we need more than one station goal to progress towards, as sooner or later someone will create the perfect "get off the planet" guide.

I have a few ideas for alternate goals (and I listed one in the OP, killing the source of the bad guys) but I don't want to promise insane feature creep before the skeleton of this is even off the ground. In the far future it'd be very possible to do randomized planet surfaces, different kinds of threats (evil bugs instead of evil demons, uncontrolled plant growth, whatever), different ways to escape (construct a communications tower and call the escape shuttle) and so on and so forth.

Luke Cox wrote:muh lore

Rev is already brainwashing, it doesn't have to particularly make sense. Times of great stress are exactly the kinds that encourage mutiny and revolt though. "These dumb assholes crashed our ship and stranded us here and now we're going to be eaten, fuck that why should we follow them?"

>nuke

Already makes absolutely 0 sense on SS13 because the syndicate has access to singularity beacons, and could easily destroy the entire station just by setting one up and cutting a single wire.

I don't think a syndicate team landing and finishing the job to make sure nobody escapes makes any less sense than the current one.

Iatots wrote:@everyone arguing PVE won't smother the game

What could traitors do?
What will traitors do?

I don't understand why you think traitors having to balance their wanton murder with a desire to actually escape would be a bad thing. Do you find consequence free murderboners enjoyable?

where the traitors are the protagonists and the crew eats shit.

This is already our game. I could fail to make it better, but I wouldn't be introducing a new problem.

CosmicScientist wrote:What happened to FTLStation13/Orion Trail13?

Someone else is already doing that, and it'd be a way bigger departure from SS13. The core gameplay would have to be entirely redone.

Sorry if I'm missing questions it's hard to keep up with this thread.

it really is, i keep writing extremely large replies then giving up when there's 14 new posts