Stealthtags and You: Stories and Thoughts

[DrAmazing343]

Hello again little gay people in my computer.

We all know the hallmarks of the Stealthtag; the "black orbit" that last an hour and forty five minutes with nothing but vandalism, maybe a cracked door or missing fire axe, and the long-dead clown having been beaten to death by a Security that's >this< close to killing themselves because their frontal lobes have received no stimulation at all for most of the round. By this time, perhaps even the ever-crashing shores of the Grey Tide have quieted, and the Captain's just keyed the intercom for an apathetic "S....Shuttle vote?" when all of a sudden

CLUNKBOTTOM SHITSTAIN HAS TORN THE VOID ASUNDER, ASCENDING, BLAH BLAH BLAH

and three announcements about Battlecruisers hit, the 1990-cha-cha of the Malfie goes off, the ling pops an armblade and is put down summarily by three people, and most importantly, a round is damn near wasted unless someone creative or motivated did something to truly make it special.

Now, this is hardly a doomer thread like some others talking about the uselessness of lowthreat/greenshifts, I'm specifically talking about rounds where the crew's wound up like a spring, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but instead slowly lose that tension as monotony and a letdown happens. Others probably breathe a sigh of relief, only to get their wonderful sandcastle kicked over as the superpowered antags that've been quietly running objectives for forever bulldoze over them.

Now that I've got all of my flowery bullshit diatribe out of the way, how do you guys feel about stealth-antagging and the overall state of rounds where almost all antags choose to do so? Should stealthtag options be nerfed, or more loud options encouraged? Is it good for the health of the game one way or another, or are we perfectly fine where we are?

More importantly, when will Runtime get a PR for Revival Surgery to work on her, too?!?!

[SkeletalElite]

I mean nothing happening for an hour and 45 minutes sucks but it'd be a lot worse if those ascensions/final objectives weren't there to end it. Plus if you''ve had nothing better to do for that long sec should be juiced up with night vision + weld shield eyes or xray eyes, AEGs, hellfire lasers, laser carbines, shotguns with scatter lasers, SWAT masks + tear gas grenades, gorilla gloves, pressure potioned clothes, speed potioned SWAT armor, augs and mechs. You probably won't have all of that, obviously, but getting to go all out when geared with late round equipment against the big bads is pretty rare and interesting so I think it's fine to happen occasionally.

[chocolate_bickie]

Stealth tagging is just the natural consequence of the rarity of antagonism and the validing nature of certain players.

No one wants to 'waste' their antag fighting two seccies with batons backed up by some parameds with death syringe guns and an assistant with 5000 hours and a chair.

[Itseasytosee2me]

Ya know, I think its fine, and something that we should take into account when balancing the amount of antagonists on a station.

► Show Spoiler

I so desperately had to resist cynic posting and blaming so many different things for the existence of stealthtagging including but not limited to:

• Dynamic
  MRP policy
  Admins
  Prog tot
  Heretic
  Defibrillators
  Stun batons
  Security Mains
  LRP policy
  Rule 4
  Traitor objectives
  Dynamic (again but for a different reason)
  Our combat system (but for a different reason than stun batons)
  Friendtags
  Players who engage with friendtags
  Ghosts
  Myself
  Traitor Items
  The uplink system
  The stamina system
  LRP players in general
  MRP players in general
  A straw man that I made up
  A correlation that does not exist
  A slippery slope that will never exist

[DrAmazing343]

-essay without the essay snip-

If you're genuine about any of these, do write about it in a thought-out way! Even a little cynical/doomposting can be valuable for spurring a discussion; though, I'd personally cut down the list a bit to focus in on one or two of those, if you want to discuss further in this thread.

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

Okay, hear me out - we give traitor a temporal recall implant that they can use to bind themselves to a tile, and if they get stunned down, they can use it to recall to their safe haven. However, every time they use it, it creates small visible tears in space in the area, so security can locate their safe area by hunting for the tears, and set up an ambush there.

Let's traitors get one or two get out of jail free cards allowing them to go a lot louder than before, and also gives security a fun hunt to do after they see a traitor use it once.

Maybe second chance mechanics with cat and mouse built in will help.

[Itseasytosee2me]

-essay without the essay snip-

If you're genuine about any of these, do write about it in a thought-out way! Even a little cynical/doomposting can be valuable for spurring a discussion; though, I'd personally cut down the list a bit to focus in on one or two of those, if you want to discuss further in this thread.

Alright fine but you asked for it.

Dynamic as it currently stands and as per its original implementation makes balancing antagonist power impossible. This is not just something that needs to be tweaked or adjusted to make better. It is a fundamental design flaw that dynamic introduces. To create good stories, we need to balance the chaos and order, create a rises in tension, and add drama and intruge. The range of quantity of antags that dynamic can spawn is staggering, and it makes it impossible to balance the game around. There should be a flat amount of antagonist round start, the math that determines how many antags can be as complicated as you want, based on the amount of population, heads of staff, security, types of antagonist in the round, whatever, but it needs to be something we can balance around. Midround antags can and should exist, but they should not be added abitrarly, instead they should be introduced per the state of the round. Station in disarray because traitors are running rampant and sabotaging? Perhaps now would be a good time for a group antag like pirates to match the stakes of the round and get some dead players back in the game. Are there traitors still mostly quiet for now, but the tension is rising? Some light antagonists to help heat up the pot like sentient disease or obsessed would do nicely. Are the traitors caught and the station secure? Well, we should readd some intrigue with some space lings or some syndie sleeper agents (although currently I think these guys are poorly implemented). This sort of system would expose alot of gaps for antagonist and mechanical niches to fill.

All of this to say that if we had a balanced system, we could account for about how many antags don't have that much of an impact on the round, and adjust the math accordingly. Stealth antags wouldn't be a problem, and we wouldn't have to worry about their presence detracting from the round. Plus, antagonists are expected to be stealthy, if we can't facilitate that playstyle with code we have failed.

[DrAmazing343]

Okay, hear me out - we give traitor a temporal recall implant that they can use to bind themselves to a tile, and if they get stunned down, they can use it to recall to their safe haven. However, every time they use it, it creates small visible tears in space in the area, so security can locate their safe area by hunting for the tears, and set up an ambush there.

Let's traitors get one or two get out of jail free cards allowing them to go a lot louder than before, and also gives security a fun hunt to do after they see a traitor use it once.

Maybe second chance mechanics with cat and mouse built in will help.

Traitor getting one of the most hated Heretic mechanics is kind of wild. Speak of, I have to use blade break sometime...

-essay with the essay snip-

I do agree with your final statement of the necessity of antag stealth; I do particularly enjoy the paranoia aspect of the game, but it's kind of rough for antags leaving zero trace at all to even start being paranoid about. That's part of the gripes that made me curiously write this post.

However, speaking of Dynamic; I do agree with the sentiment of wishing for Dynamic to more properly assess the state of the round and inject antags on a more accurate-to-the-round scale, but I don't know if that's truly possible with a fully automated system as we have now. Not to turn this into a thread about Dynamic, but do you believe the prior Secret gamemode system was better for the purposes of creating stories and/or encouraging antags to do their antaggery in interesting ways?

I'd love to see more thoughts on this. It's like a straw into someone's skull for me to drink their brains out.

[Itseasytosee2me]

However, speaking of Dynamic; I do agree with the sentiment of wishing for Dynamic to more properly assess the state of the round and inject antags on a more accurate-to-the-round scale, but I don't know if that's truly possible with a fully automated system as we have now. Not to turn this into a thread about Dynamic, but do you believe the prior Secret gamemode system was better for the purposes of creating stories and/or encouraging antags to do their antaggery in interesting ways?

I'd love to see more thoughts on this. It's like a straw into someone's skull for me to drink their brains out.

Secret rounds were certainly more coherent in there theming, and also tended to be balanced better. All of the different round types had a general story structure that could be expected to be followed. They were balanced in such a way that they hardly flopped or went way over kill, at least not as much as dynamic. Antagonist cross interaction is not bad, but dynamic just throws all of them together into a batch with no consideration with how they might interact.
All this said, the game mode system lacks flexibility.

What I would personally like to see, is a storyteller system, in which there are multiple round types which are each controlled by an AI controller. This would allow us to maintain balance, and keep a cohesive theme for each round. The goal of each storyteller is to maintain a threat to the station until eventually bringing an end to the round.
Heres an unpolished idea for a storyteller:
Syndicate high command:
Starts off with a proportional amount of syndicate agents and potentially changelings on the station.
Antagonists have a global chaos level, which represents how much damage they have done to the station, calculated with amount of deaths, high value items stolen, and other milestones.
Centcomm has a alert level: Command has the ability and responsibility to confirm the presence of syndicate agents via the communications console, the more evidence provided the more dire the situation become to centcomm.
If all of the antags get killed before chaos can get too high, the syndicate activates some sleeper agent (potentially predetermined), or sends in some infiltrators.
Once chaos is high enough, we start a timer, if the shuttle isn't called by then its time to escalate further. If the centcomm alert level is low, we get some big threat to clean up the station, either syndicate or third party. If the alert level is high and in high chaos, we get a Crew sided event, an ERT, mercenaries, internal affairs agents, whatever. Once we reach this point, another round end condition becomes available to the crew, in which the surviving crew stands triumphant in the ruins of the station, otherwise the crew flees from the chaos on the escape shuttle, potentially with enemy agents still within their ranks.

[dendydoom]

it used to bother me when i was new because i was a hungry sec main who felt like every second not drenching my baton in the blood of my sworn enemy was an affront to god, but it really doesn't bother me now. stealth is very difficult to pull off properly, and it's a reasonable approach to the round. if every antag went loud immediately then we'd have a thread on "are antags even capable of subtlety?"

i think it's a little lame to put the greentext above engaging with the round so that you're wordlessly spending the entire round rushing the endgame objective but this isn't because of being stealthy, it's that they aren't even trying to be interesting with the stealth. social engineering and manipulating people ICly is a really cool thing to pull off and see happen. i've had antag rounds where sec was convinced i was incapable of any wrongdoing. one time i slipped out the back, iced my target, then pretended to help sec with the investigation so that i could contaminate the crime scene to give myself plausible deniability.

it's difficult to make a sweeping generalization about stealth antags because each antag is designed very differently. i've always seen traitor as a sort of toybox of dangerous/deadly props that you can use to create your own freeform approach, much more open ended where people will see you as more than just "traitor," whereas something like heretic generally has quite a linear path of progression, and with how weak it is at roundstart being loud or obvious with your antaggery will just get you mulched with nary a second thought because all heretics are seen as interchangeable (the only real difference in how to approach them being what path they took.)

not every story has to be loud to be good, but there has to be a story there in the first place.

[kieth4]

This is the different between boys and men..........girls and women.............a boy plays stealth for fear of getting killed a MAN plays loud for death does not matter.

[NecromancerAnne]

Make of the experience what you will. Even if everyone else is derivative, and the code itself is now pandering to derivative play more than it ever has, that does not mean you have to capitulate to that. There are plenty of folk in the community still proving that there is something special in the sauce that makes discovering and concocting unique scenarios and events through the antagonist system a real possibility. You just gotta dig around and get creative.

Besides, I'm pretty sure we'll see a turn in the design at some point in the near future; things don't stay the same forever.

[Jonathan Gupta]

Stealthtags dont work if you just use your heart to lead the way.

[warbluke]

Be the change you want to see.
And by that I mean rush the fireaxe and break all the external windows in the first ten minutes because it's funny.

[PapaMichael]

Is it anywhere near as bad as you're saying?

Heretics, regardless of how stealthy they're being, shit out rifts and sacrificed targets everywhere that make their existence pretty obvious.

Traitors following their objectives leave a slew of dead pets and sabotaged items across the station.

Nearly all antags leave people dying or vanishing from suit sensors.

On MRP at least, the only thing I've witnessed that comes close to this is when (usually in lowpop hours) an antag manages to kill the acting captain and the one or two secoffs, and then just runs around gaming their objectives while encountering zero resistance, but they're usually blatantly obvious about it.

[DrAmazing343]

Is it anywhere near as bad as you're saying?

Heretics, regardless of how stealthy they're being, shit out rifts and sacrificed targets everywhere that make their existence pretty obvious.

Traitors following their objectives leave a slew of dead pets and sabotaged items across the station.

Nearly all antags leave people dying or vanishing from suit sensors.

On MRP at least, the only thing I've witnessed that comes close to this is when (usually in lowpop hours) an antag manages to kill the acting captain and the one or two secoffs, and then just runs around gaming their objectives while encountering zero resistance, but they're usually blatantly obvious about it.

You’re 100% right; it is hardly as bad as I’m saying. I stuck a bunch of hyperbole in the original post to stir up discussion, but just as much as it is hyperbole, there is truth to it. I’ve seen situations where people get disappeared and no evidence turns up because people were too perfect, too stealthy, and it cheapened the round.

Just the same, as Dendy says, there’s a pretty visceral satisfaction both as the player and as dchat watching someone genuinely social engineer kills, evidence, or whole cases to their favor. Just as stealth can be boring, so can it be exciting!

Again, this thread was half and half to hear stories, too. Feel free, all of you, to post epic frags you lied your ass off to get. All policy and no bragging makes a spessmen horizontal and lifeless.

One of my favorite bits of social engineering I’ve done was getting discovered nearly on top of my own rune, bullshitting my way away to drop all heretic stuff, reporting a shiftstart rune that Randy Highlands immediately called me out for bullshitting him, and then when Sec’s attention was sweeping that bit of maint, I swept back to the original rune to wipe it clean with my greenhand before the Detective could loop back to it with the almighty Forensics Scanner that would inevitably show my nitrile threads.

Fantastic times.

[Higgin]

if they were stealthtags i wouldn't have stories

[DrAmazing343]

if they were stealthtags i wouldn't have stories

Could be revealed after the fact, discovered in the act, or your own stories. I know about you and your contingency. You ought to have some espionage stories!

[Constellado]

Half my antag rounds are forced to be stealth for the first 30 to 45 minutes because I am most likely trying to build a epic base or trap or some other weird device somewhere.

Tesla coil station anybody? (Atleast the Tesla coils are easy to see)

[nianjiilical]

i always go stealth antag as malf because i have no faith in my ability to do anything without being caught and having the 17 pro gamers show up at my core

even thought borgs always want to kill and murder......

[Misdoubtful]

There is a very vivid difference between a stealth antag and a passive antag that provides no value.

Antags that do absolutely nothing are the ones I have zero issue removing the role from, adding antags that cause issues specifically for them, or just outright inject more threats into the round.

Being an antag isn't a right, and if someone isn't going to actually use it to add any value in the slightest to the round (even if it means going around breaking all the APC's or windows or something) or at least have plans in motion, I'm left questioning why they have the role to begin with.

Other servers in truth ban people from antag if they do nothing with the role and sit on it, so that those that do want to do something with the role will have the opportunity to exactly that.

But if they do LITERALLY anything to cause conflict, to create problems, to drive things forwards, even if its in the background, what's the issue? Sometimes people don't have much choice but to play it safe to accomplish that when the servers can be so bloodthirsty. But like what I mean with all of this is that stealthtagging is almost just encouraged at this point, they might get dunked on otherwise.

But still, long as they are doing something.

[oranges]

i aint reading all this shit but happy for you or sorry it happened ig.

[DrAmazing343]

The line in the sand between stealthtag and passive antag is a very important one to draw notice to, actually, yeah.

I think part of my grief is with the passive antag that completes objectives so cleanly nothing comes of it at all, or one that brings round end in very short order with little done to foreshadow or line up for a climactic moment.

Banning someone from antag for any part of their playstyle (aside from obvious murderbones/restricted types reflected in our current ruleset) is, imo, far too much, but I will say I certainly will judge if you use it for nothing.

But if they do LITERALLY anything to cause conflict, to create problems, to drive things forwards, even if its in the background, what's the issue? Sometimes people don't have much choice but to play it safe to accomplish that when the servers can be so bloodthirsty. But like what I mean with all of this is that stealthtagging is almost just encouraged at this point, they might get dunked on otherwise.

Great point, as well. It's interesting to see the "balancing" of the antags and their incentives to stealth, loud, or what have you; and certainly, so too do some antag roles necessitate stealthtagging not to get dunked.

In any case, I do think it's almost always far more interesting when an antag is robust/creative/willing to stay in the light and seize their protag/villain moment in the spotlight, despite gameplay. Clara White of Manuel Heretic fame is a great example of this; as is Will Nodder, and even Clyde Rosensteel from Sybil. Folks who don't know them and the way they play antag won't get this whole paragraph, but those that do will probably be quite polarized about it, and I think that, too, is a good thing. Being able and willing to play a loud antag and yell over comms and all that... it's viscerally interesting, to me, at least in a way that a lot of stealthtag isn't. It encourages far more the "cinema-worthy" cat-and-mouse and banter that I've come to really really love about the game.

We can only hope, stealthtag or not, that players continue to innovate and strive towards interesting and badass stories in the spessmen horizontal simulator.

[DrAmazing343]

i aint reading all this shit but happy for you or sorry it happened ig.

back to the c*der cave with ye....

[kinnebian]

its kind of funny that when people start disappearing the response is not paranoia and distrust of people near you but instead an ooc annoyance at the perps

[DrAmazing343]

its kind of funny that when people start disappearing the response is not paranoia and distrust of people near you but instead an ooc annoyance at the perps

It really is like that sometimes, right?

It is really odd that in a game so easily laden in paranoia and distrust, oftentimes someone going missing is just kind of brushed off or not noticed at all. When someone dies without full sensors, it’s a cheeky CMO or AI announcement, instead of the grim tiding of something worse abouts. Hardly any rounds really cultivate that atmosphere that something is horribly, terribly wrong.

Maybe putting more emphasis on alert levels could help? Imagine police state sec sequestering people in their own departments, enforcing a buddy system for necessary workers; this is HARDLY doable for multiple rounds, but it’d make for an interesting one or two round experiment.

There’s a middle ground to make it all work, I can feel it, but sadly, me and the far more intelligent people you folks are can’t quite seem to find it.

We’ll figure it out SOMEDAY. It’s only been, what, 20 years of SS13?

[warbluke]

antags go stealthy because they're not strong enough to take on most anti-antag forces, but if they were strong enough they'd just start boning instead of doing objectives.

[EmpressMaia]

Having instant communications is probably an issue. Maybe comms iffy and less functional and maybe there will be more paranoia.

[Itseasytosee2me]

I think its due to the fact that antagonists rarely present a personal threat to any given crewmember, and in the scenario in which they do (nukies, murder boner) it’s obvious who the threat is.
Its hard to get that exact sense of paranoia unless it is you personally who is at risk.

[DrAmazing343]

Comms are honestly an underrated thing to sabotage; but, then again, with limited information, it tends to be an annoyance more than it is an indication something's gone horribly wrong, unless half the station is suddenly spaced.

The personal threat, thing, too, is hard to convey. You can stand in a room with a desworder and if there's other people in the room there's half a chance they might leave you be, and half a chance they'll kill everyone, but in the end it certainly doesn't leave room for paranoia. It is funny how much bystander syndrome/the flouride stare kicks in in these situations, which I've also made a thread about.

One of my rounds this morning I stood in Medbay with the AI calling me out, in full infil suit, stripping the Acting Captain, and the (non-medical crew) kept working around me to heal and rez people. I wasn't trying to be evilbad and have an evil aura, but it was weird how nonchalant it all felt.

[EmpressMaia]

also medical is an issue, theres no paranoia when you die unless you are RR'd because youll get up really quickly unless medical is completely bombed out

[EmpressMaia]

when the halloween filter was on i unironically felt paranoia in most rounds because maintenece was dark and scary and things were hard to makeout on station.

[Jacquerel]

hard to makeout on station.

Well yeah we aren't skyrat

[conrad]

hard to makeout on station.

Well yeah we aren't skyrat

At time of writing nothing is Skyrat.

[Constellado]

The most paranoia I have had was with admin events.
That's because I have no idea what will happen next, and that allows me to just play the game and be immersed in the experience without having to think about OOC things like "they are this antag that I saw a thousand times."

What my character knows in those situations is what I know, and it makes it very easy to feel the fear that they have.
It is very easy to be afraid of things you do not know.

[warbluke]

Combine all antags into one so you never know what you're going to have to deal with. Does that ling have fireball? Can the blob convert you to the revolution? That wizard has an LMG and no magic what the fuck is going on?
Seriously even a one month test merge please it would be really cool.

[Itseasytosee2me]

also medical is an issue, theres no paranoia when you die unless you are RR'd because youll get up really quickly unless medical is completely bombed out

I say this kind of thing alot, like alot alot.

However, I don't think its really possible to make ground on this issue. Ever since cloning was removed (I think 3 years ago now?) the code base has taken more and more steps into removing permanent ailments, making round removal harder, nerfing effects that are were round removal to ones you can recover fully from, and making it easier for medical to get a person to a good as new.
This is the direction we have been heading, and it has such coder conviction behind it that I am convinced it can't stop.

If I had ultimate power over the github, I would make cheap revival only feasible on a time limit, and other forms of revival requiring specific conditions as well as permanent costs to the recipient.

[Constellado]

Even with RR, Its not scary. I play a character that yes, IC I get scared and act like it. OOC though I am not because its antag #106 doing the things antag #54 did and I dont find it scary, ive seen it before. What is truely scary is seeing things in the game that should not be there. Something that doesnt fit in with what was seen before. Thats how you get paranoia.

Paranoia is also having a person help you and then have them slowly give hints that they are not normal, making you wonder if they are about to backstab you.

[Kitfox]

i always go stealth antag as malf because i have no faith in my ability to do anything without being caught and having the 17 pro gamers show up at my core

even thought borgs always want to kill and murder......

amen i aint fuckin robust in the least so if i dont stealthtag i just get valided instantly and then the round's out an antag anyway

[DrAmazing343]

Even with RR, Its not scary. I play a character that yes, IC I get scared and act like it. OOC though I am not because its antag #106 doing the things antag #54 did and I dont find it scary, ive seen it before. What is truely scary is seeing things in the game that should not be there. Something that doesnt fit in with what was seen before. Thats how you get paranoia.

Paranoia is also having a person help you and then have them slowly give hints that they are not normal, making you wonder if they are about to backstab you.

This is why even the smallest admin event has me more paranoid than 90% of rounds these days, in a good way.

Whenever the path and co. show up I know shit's about to get spooky. Likewise, when dendy ran a narrative round yesterday with robotic clones of a bunch of the crew, that shit had me wondering what was coming next at the edge of my seat.

Just as brevity is the soul of wit, so, too, is novelty the soul of horror. I love that shit.

[MooCow12]

Half my antag rounds are forced to be stealth for the first 30 to 45 minutes because I am most likely trying to build a epic base or trap or some other weird device somewhere.

Tesla coil station anybody? (Atleast the Tesla coils are easy to see)

The bolts go thru airlocks and blast doors fyi so you can armor them/hide them but that also increases the amount of time you have to spend cooking.

And same sometimes I'll still be stealth working on shit when the shuttle is already called its so shitty.


The only time i'm not stealth for most of the round is when I know the round is gonna abruptly / shuttle called early thanks to wizard/nukies/cultists/revs simply existing so time to spam single tanks and hopefully ruin the other antag's round too.

i always go stealth antag as malf because i have no faith in my ability to do anything without being caught and having the 17 pro gamers show up at my core

even thought borgs always want to kill and murder......

Thats basically how malf ai works though, you dont just scale with your malf points you scale with your borgs silently preparing countermeasures (if they are smart enough) there is basically a laundry list of things you have to do as ai to be viable. Alot of those things you have to do involves simply denying gear/hulk/bombs from being made in the first place though.

With the biggest thing on the list probably being to get beepsky on the same tile as you and setting him to hacked (basically the borg has to move you off of your starting tile so beepsky can go there then the borg sets you back ontop of beepsky. This hard counters anyone teleporting onto your core to snipe you.

[ekaterina]

In my experience, there's only paranoia if the player has something to lose. Antag status, unique loot... some sort of attachment to the round. Otherwise, dying isn't anything special.