/tg/Station 13

These 2 changes singlehandedly severely hampered the overall fear and paranoia of space station 13.
Timberpoes's id card changes made it so that getting extra access to dangerous areas was incredibly obvious, this made it so you can see dangerous assistants from a mile away, no getting the jump on someone, no fear that your coworker has stolen access to the armory anything who is dangerous cant conceal sensitive area access, you can easily run away from most threats without them suprise attacking you.

A similar story can be said with guns being made bulky, EVERYONE sees you are carrying lethal weaponry and can react accordingly, people can no longer conceal firearms without being traitors, regulating concealed carry to only traitor weaponry is just bad for the game's paranoia and setting as a whole. You always see a suspicious assistant having stolen armory guns because they are bulky, where before you had to be cautious as anyone could have all access and a gun hidden in their bag

So aside from the impact on paranoia, what other benefits and cons do you see from these changes? Do you think it would outweigh what paranoia we would lose by what it has added to the game overall?


With balanced regards
-BONERMASTER

I'm looking through closed and merged PRs trying to find these changes you mention but all I found was Vekter being a crybaby (https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/76228) and goof trying to ruin security (https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/62727).

sadly i disagree massively wrt id changes: i was a sec main before the change and personally i felt that there was no "paranoia" to someone like an assistant having AA. we would just take their ID. the era of the hop being able to hand out AA from their pad computer was low effort and, frankly, kinda sucked. bad hops would hand out AA and there would be no accountability for it, there was no interesting procedure around investigating it from a sec pov, and there was no challenge to assistants gaining AA, they just knew to either sweet talk the hop or break in when their console is still logged in or kill them and take their ID and give themselves AA on their basic assistant ID. the only thing i will concede is that, if we're strictly speaking about paranoia, then yes, playing hop made you very paranoid because you had a target on your back from pretty much everyone. in reality this just meant that bad hops would give out AA to whoever asked and good hops would just never leave the bridge, which would make their secondary role of running service impossible next to being a button pushing access monkey.

now it takes a lot more effort on their part. they have to weigh up their options to gaining access to certain departments. getting access on your ID only to the places you need so you have to plan ahead, or compromising and getting half the access you need on a silver card, or stealing someone else's ID, or convincing the AI/a borg to let you in without alerting everyone, or figuring out the departmental wires, or risking it all to obtain the illustrious captain's spare ID, etc etc etc. i believe it to be a positive change that adds more nuance to the game by removing an option that was so superior to any other course of action that they weren't even worth considering.

for bulky guns i don't really mind either way. personally i think that rushing AA to empty the armoury into your backpack was lazy, rote gameplay that became very boring very quickly because it's all people would do.

Hold on... are you talking about changes that were made literal YEARS ago? I thought this was the usual crying about merged PRs because spessmen hate change!

I feel sorry for the HoP. Before the ID changes they'd have huge queues of people asking for ID changes. Now I normally see them getting one or two visitors per round.

And now they're not even the head of the cargo department. What are they even supposed to do? Poor, useless HoP.

WineAllWine wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 11:22 am I feel sorry for the HoP. Before the ID changes they'd have huge queues of people asking for ID changes. Now I normally see them getting one or two visitors per round.

And now they're not even the head of the cargo department. What are they even supposed to do? Poor, useless HoP.

QM being made a head is the real problem in all of this.

it's a disgrace, i tell you. would never have happened in my day. QM allowed on the bridge? we wouldn't have stood for it. absolute travesty.

tg is so over.

WineAllWine wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 11:22 am What are they even supposed to do

go boss around and help out service

Actually pretty intelligent design argument, I hadn't thought about this but come to think of it yeah. ID access being so restrictive now means if you hide in your department you pretttyyy much guarantee that you're safe from anyone who might want to assault you, unless you hear hacking sounds but in that case you have plenty of time to react.

And the gun argument checks out too, although I'm not sure if it makes sense for non-traitors to be able to conceal laserguns and stuff? I don't think the paranoia is needed for non-traitors.

Nah, I feel like the gun changes were necessary for balance. I at least know that if I jump someone, even if they do have a gun, odds are they won't have more than one on them. Nothing sucked more than getting into a fight with someone and finding out they had the whole damn armory in their backpack.

Longestarmlonglaw wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 10:43 am These 2 changes singlehandedly severely hampered the overall fear and paranoia of space station 13.
Timberpoes's id card changes made it so that getting extra access to dangerous areas was incredibly obvious, this made it so you can see dangerous assistants from a mile away, no getting the jump on someone, no fear that your coworker has stolen access to the armory anything who is dangerous cant conceal sensitive area access, you can easily run away from most threats without them suprise attacking you.

A similar story can be said with guns being made bulky, EVERYONE sees you are carrying lethal weaponry and can react accordingly, people can no longer conceal firearms without being traitors, regulating concealed carry to only traitor weaponry is just bad for the game's paranoia and setting as a whole. You always see a suspicious assistant having stolen armory guns because they are bulky, where before you had to be cautious as anyone could have all access and a gun hidden in their bag

bro the game doesnt revolve around getting easy all access or stuffing a bunch of guns in your bag from the armory.
the traitor has literally a PLETHORA of ways to not only get easy access anywhere, but also carry a high amount of firepower on oneself. even just the makarov is deadly, and they fit easily into bags.

in short:

skill issue

WineAllWine wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 11:22 am I feel sorry for the HoP. Before the ID changes they'd have huge queues of people asking for ID changes. Now I normally see them getting one or two visitors per round.

And now they're not even the head of the cargo department. What are they even supposed to do? Poor, useless HoP.

I actually find it super amusing to still have to explain to old players, in game, why I LITERALLY can't give them AA

these are good points but I think there have been changes with much fewer positives in comparisons to these that have been implemented.

biggest one to me is modsuits: why do they take so long to pull off?

if you are trying to nonlethally deal with someone in a modsuit then you will need to spend ~20 seconds taking off their damn modsuit just to take off their gasmask just to take off their radio, and during this whole time your options to silence them are literally only beat them into crit

the only way to do nonlethal gimmicks as an antagonist in this day and age is to either buy radio jammer/emp (for the few antags who can even do this) or sabotage comms itself (good fucking luck if theres an AI or you arent an engi).

suit sensors have the same problem of being unaccessable without spending ages fullstripping a guy.

I think the best solution to this would to be 1. buffing the speed at which modsuits come off and 2. add a way to silence people without requiring specific equipment, like making strangle victims unable to speak.

your first mistake was assuming that the maintainers care anything about PRs being positive for the game's health

Given how long ago these changes were made this is hardly a real claim that they've had a negative impact given it's taken someone fucking years to actually complain about it

AA being given to everyone was a nightmare administratively also so I don't think many admins are going to disagree with that change

The Timberpoes guy's a punk-ass bitch. Fuck 'em. What did they ever do for us anyway?

blackdav123 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 2:48 pm these are good points but I think there have been changes with much fewer positives in comparisons to these that have been implemented.

biggest one to me is modsuits: why do they take so long to pull off?

if you are trying to nonlethally deal with someone in a modsuit then you will need to spend ~20 seconds taking off their damn modsuit just to take off their gasmask just to take off their radio, and during this whole time your options to silence them are literally only beat them into crit

the only way to do nonlethal gimmicks as an antagonist in this day and age is to either buy radio jammer/emp (for the few antags who can even do this) or sabotage comms itself (good fucking luck if theres an AI or you arent an engi).

suit sensors have the same problem of being unaccessable without spending ages fullstripping a guy.

I think the best solution to this would to be 1. buffing the speed at which modsuits come off and 2. add a way to silence people without requiring specific equipment, like making strangle victims unable to speak.

skill issue

It is true that HOPs have basically nothing to do these days

Not-Dorsidarf wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 3:47 pm It is true that HOPs have basically nothing to do these days

aside from changing id's and opening clown slots I dont really see them up to much

Many armory / high value items fit in bags and its not bad that you have to think about what to carry instead of being able to backpack the entire armory. QMs suck ass and is not a real head but the changes were necessary. Even if HOPs have less "reach" and overall things to do, they actually have something resembling a real job and not giving themself AA + hiding AA somewhere in their office + hiding AA somewhere in arrivals + being super hopcurity or hiding in bridge

Super Aggro Crag wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 3:05 pm your first mistake was assuming that the maintainers care anything about PRs being positive for the game's health

The mining order PR and the silicon/headset language removal PRs have me convinced that the maintainers get rilled up about nonexistent problems, then descend on the TG GitHub with their shitty PR nerfs like the Mongol hordes.

Silicons being translators is actually bad now, M’kay :^)

People spending 600 credits to listen to a single language is bad now, M’kay :^)

At least mining orders don’t suck now. Who knew listening to what the players would say about a PR that largely affects them would create a good middle ground?

WineAllWine wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 11:22 am I feel sorry for the HoP. Before the ID changes they'd have huge queues of people asking for ID changes. Now I normally see them getting one or two visitors per round.

And now they're not even the head of the cargo department. What are they even supposed to do? Poor, useless HoP.

Repurpose their massively useless office with another department. You have AA as HoP, steal boards for chem stuff and make a second pharmacy. Or sell drugs.

Or build another SM. Make the nation of Hopistan. Secede the bridge from the station.

Chameleon Holster being able to hold 1 las-gun would be a pretty neat buff to a largely unused item

We should make those little laser pistols from kilo head lockers standard on all maps. That way people can steal themselves some easily concealable guns.

conrad wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 5:21 pm You have AA as HoP

Gone are the days of giving yourself AA.

ekaterina wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 6:07 pm

conrad wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 5:21 pm You have AA as HoP

Gone are the days of giving yourself AA.

You start with an entire box of blank silver IDs.

The one change I dislike is the chameleon ID getting nerfed. I wish it could still have AA, it's syndicate technology after all

I think the main issue that really cut out paranoia from the game was the fact that you really don't have to fear antags a majority of the time anymore. We've made them pretty weak to the point that the chances one will actually try to kill you, especially if you're a job that hangs out in a more public area of the station, is extremely slim.

This mainly applies to Heretic and Traitor. Sure, we used to have a lot more of one traitor with a de-sword get AA and proceed to slaughter the entire crew and all, but the changes we've made to counter that gameplay ultimately rose the bar much higher for anyone to get anything done. Traitors are only a minor annoyance now unless they:
1. Hijack the AI or enough cyborgs
2. Know how to make bombs
3. Know how to abuse chemistry
4. Are superiorly robust to an extreme extent
5. Did xenobio the entire round (albeit I almost never see this anymore)
6. Is a head of staff and got acting captain at roundstart

Other gimmicks or means to an end might be cooler or more fun for everyone involved, but there's little room for creativity and/or error when lasers melt targets (due to the bulky guns change, they are almost security-exclusive weapons as well) and batons pretty much counter melee combat entirely. Supposedly, we have made these changes in order to combat murderboning and to encourage stealth traitor gameplay, but I feel that we didn't really consider how interesting stealth traitor really was at any given time. Stealth traitor essentially just boils down to, "I exist but you won't know that until round-end ", because what makes them stealthy is the fact they have almost no impact on anyone's round at all, so nobody has any reason to care if they get stopped or not in the first place.

Likewise, we have heretic. Heretic starts off with extremely minimal power and grows very slowly to being an actual threat. I feel there's a lot of obtuse mechanics that aren't explained well at all (you need to shove funny hand targets to get a workable stun, why? And why isn't this mentioned anywhere, as its extremely important?), and Heretic is expected to consistently reach targets who will be surrounded by other people or hidden away in an area they don't have access to without being given tools to actually facilitate getting access to those targets and securing those kills. Ultimately, unless the player in question is superiorly robust, they're just going to bide their time until an actual station threat shows up or that person dies in a freak accident and can safely be procured that way. This usually results in rounds where you could have several heretics and the only evidence they existed was a visible rift in the hallway and security hauling away some shmuck you didn't even know was suspicious. Also, because of the crafting component of Heretic, more of them also results in them competing over crafting resources (the mad dash to the dorms for cloth is always funny to me), which then weakens at least some of the individuals of the group and really screws over latejoin heretics. On top of all of this, unless you behead your sacrifice target, they also get revived and get to continue helping the station as if nothing happened.

Overall, I don't think those two PRs were what killed paranoia on /tg/, but rather it was more of a death by a thousand cuts. We really nerfed a lot of tools antagonists used to get their jobs done while buffing their counters as to help mitigate the effects an extremely robust antagonist player could have on the round. Mind you, not all of this was even done in mind of nerfing antags as a whole, but changes we also made to prevent non-antagonists from abusing certain strategies and consistently mucking up every round they were in. However, this ultimately resulted in the current state of the game we find ourselves in where our two most common antags are also our least effective at creating an interesting narrative because we made many changes to mitigate their impact on the round as a whole in order to keep the worst of the worst in-line.

I think you underestimate the power of running away and planning. The new experimental teleporter puts in tons of work. Once I assassinated my target by spying on him through a window and teleporting an x4 on a stick right on top of them with a briefcase launchpad. I think the changes make you think outside the box a bit. And by the way you can still fill your pack with disablers, dragnets, caps laser, and hos's laser.

The last time i was killed by a traitor it was a guy emagging open my maint door and blowing me away with dual -wielded autorifles then putting my body in a locker

i watched a guy on meth airlock into the brig and shoot down 2 members of sec alongside myself with a 357 inside of about 7 seconds

WineAllWine wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 11:22 am I feel sorry for the HoP. Before the ID changes they'd have huge queues of people asking for ID changes. Now I normally see them getting one or two visitors per round.

And now they're not even the head of the cargo department. What are they even supposed to do? Poor, useless HoP.

become owlman justice warrior

Kendrickorium wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 8:42 pm i watched a guy on meth airlock into the brig and shoot down 2 members of sec alongside myself with a 357 inside of about 7 seconds

anti stun chems are pretty ridiculous, i've found it effectively impossible to take down people hyped up on meth or ephedrine unless i laser them down. and even then im more likely to get shoved and have the lasergun taken.

Timberpoes wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 3:23 pm The Timberpoes guy's a punk-ass bitch. Fuck 'em. What did they ever do for us anyway?

Why is AA an administrative nightmare? The deign doc says the justification and what it mentions is a bad thing, but for some reason, i see it as a "good thing" care to elaborate?

Longestarmlonglaw wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 9:33 pm

Timberpoes wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 3:23 pm The Timberpoes guy's a punk-ass bitch. Fuck 'em. What did they ever do for us anyway?

Why is AA an administrative nightmare? The deign doc says the justification and what it mentions is a bad thing, but for some reason, i see it as a "good thing" care to elaborate?

I decided it was a bad thing and the document you are reading is mine.

Easy access to AA made traitoring require zero traitoring tools because you could just get AA and most rounds usually had plenty of that floating around by midround.

Now you either have to consider a specific set of ID's to achieve your goal, or use specific hacking tools to break in to areas.

BeeSting12 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 9:30 pm

Kendrickorium wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 8:42 pm i watched a guy on meth airlock into the brig and shoot down 2 members of sec alongside myself with a 357 inside of about 7 seconds

anti stun chems are pretty ridiculous, i've found it effectively impossible to take down people hyped up on meth or ephedrine unless i laser them down. and even then im more likely to get shoved and have the lasergun taken.

pre or post laser buffs?

Im all for increasing the amount of wildcard slots on silver and grey ids, you still have some restriction, but a bit more freedom

I have just thought of this idea so maybe it's terrible but I think maybe there could be something in it.

It might be cool if HoPs had like, a minigame where they put an ID into the computer and it shows up with a grid, and then they can tetris-style try to fit as many different accesses onto the grid as possible. Each shift the shape of each access block would be different. Silver IDs would get a bigger area to play with

the current ID system isn't very fun but it's far better than how it used to be
nearly every round would involve a mob of tiders breaking into cap's, killbaiting them and getting IC'ed, then they spread AA and its impossible to do your job, security gets killbaited for stopping them from robbing the armory
people always point to progtots for why murderbone isn't as common anymore but i think new ID is half of that, because now it's not practically free to go to the armory

not mine, but good comic about the spare spawning on the cap's desk

Super Aggro Crag wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 3:05 pm your first mistake was assuming that the maintainers care anything about PRs being positive for the game's health

*cough *cough Lethal lasers buff *cough

Fren256 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 29, 2023 12:08 am

Super Aggro Crag wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 3:05 pm your first mistake was assuming that the maintainers care anything about PRs being positive for the game's health

*cough *cough Lethal lasers buff *cough

the laser buff was really good for the game they melt people its insane, all armory needs is those cowboy pistols back and sec is elite

Indie-ana Jones wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 8:22 pm I feel there's a lot of obtuse mechanics that aren't explained well at all (you need to shove funny hand targets to get a workable stun, why? And why isn't this mentioned anywhere, as its extremely important?)

Elaborate, please.

dirk_mcblade wrote: ↑Thu Jun 29, 2023 4:25 am

Indie-ana Jones wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 8:22 pm I feel there's a lot of obtuse mechanics that aren't explained well at all (you need to shove funny hand targets to get a workable stun, why? And why isn't this mentioned anywhere, as its extremely important?)

Elaborate, please.

stuff like fingerprints, blade snapping, focuses, and securing corpses quickly are all crucial things to know when playing heretic but each noob trap wont be understood by new players until they've died to their mistake and they get to try again with their once-a-month heretic roll so they can reach the next instant death trap on the learning curve

blackdav123 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 29, 2023 5:19 am

dirk_mcblade wrote: ↑Thu Jun 29, 2023 4:25 am

Indie-ana Jones wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 8:22 pm I feel there's a lot of obtuse mechanics that aren't explained well at all (you need to shove funny hand targets to get a workable stun, why? And why isn't this mentioned anywhere, as its extremely important?)

Elaborate, please.

stuff like fingerprints, blade snapping, focuses, and securing corpses quickly are all crucial things to know when playing heretic but each noob trap wont be understood by new players until they've died to their mistake and they get to try again with their once-a-month heretic roll so they can reach the next instant death trap on the learning curve

Okay but why does shoving with the stinky hand stun?

dirk_mcblade wrote: ↑Thu Jun 29, 2023 6:35 am Okay but why does shoving with the stinky hand stun?

If someone is horizontal like from a wallshove for example and you hit them with the mansus grasp it stuns them

CoffeeDragon16 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 10:45 pm nearly every round would involve a mob of tiders breaking into cap's, killbaiting them and getting IC'ed, then they spread AA and its impossible to do your job, security gets killbaited for stopping them from robbing the armory

then ban them from the server

BeeSting12 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 9:30 pm

Kendrickorium wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 8:42 pm i watched a guy on meth airlock into the brig and shoot down 2 members of sec alongside myself with a 357 inside of about 7 seconds

anti stun chems are pretty ridiculous, i've found it effectively impossible to take down people hyped up on meth or ephedrine unless i laser them down. and even then im more likely to get shoved and have the lasergun taken.

we didnt even get the chance to TRY and stun him or shoot at him, it was all over in literally 7 seconds

crazy funny

Longestarmlonglaw wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 9:33 pm

Timberpoes wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 3:23 pm The Timberpoes guy's a punk-ass bitch. Fuck 'em. What did they ever do for us anyway?

Why is AA an administrative nightmare? The deign doc says the justification and what it mentions is a bad thing, but for some reason, i see it as a "good thing" care to elaborate?

the days of the greytide having easy access to AA is over. its been over for years. you'll get used to it

as a captain main i was sad to see it go but the game is way better without it

It's also retarded ICly for a command staff to be able to just hand out AA to anyone. Even the silver cards would probably be nixed by any real world organization with any sort of internal control structure since you could effectively give yourself AA by just having multiple cards. Still better than the ability to give yourself a skeleton key.