Population Issues

[miggles]

Bottom post of the previous page:

This kind of sucks.
With only 72 people online at the time of this screenshot, there are 34 assistants. That's 34 useless people cluttering the hallways without much to do and possibly creating trouble for security, etc.
There really isn't a need for this. Boxstation was not built to accommodate 70+ people, and rounds on Sibyl are clusterfucks because of it.
Should there be a player limit?

EDIT: Not to mention that Badger is constantly lowpop because everyone plays on Sibyl, where there's no lack of people to be found.
Having 2 servers is bad when they are not well balanced, this is what causes server wars and cliques and shit.

[Rhisereld]

Okay Rhisereld, why is Box better than Metastation in your opinion?

Personal preference.

[Cipher3]

Okay Rhisereld, why is Box better than Metastation in your opinion?

Personal preference.

Alright, I was just looking to see if there were specific reasons people felt Box was better or overall impression.

[Steelpoint]

There are several reasons why people prefer boxstation, in no particular order.

• It's iconic/they are used to it: Like de_dust2, Boxstation is a very iconic station design and very familiar for players, and when the game can be very complicated from the get go, having to force people to relearn a new map can be daunting.
• It's well maintained: Very few station's are regularly updated and maintained as Boxstation is.
• It's a good size: The station, for the most part, scales well with the server population. It never feels too crowded until you reach absurd levels of population

[miggles]

outside of goonstation and like, colonial marines, pretty much every server runs box
i just dont understand how some people can prefer the same map over and over, on every server, for years
unlike de_dust2, the map doesnt change at the end of the match. it restarts on the same one.
i dont dislike box and i still play on it since it seems like the only way any reasonable amount of people will play on a server is if it has fucking box on it, but i have still yet to find a single reason that i can sympathize with to prefer box over meta.

also, the size issue is exactly what im complaining about in this thread. there's often way too many people online and too few resources to accommodate, not to mention just generally cluttering the halls with people

[paprika]

Once again, box should be on badger because of maintainability and population issues, not preferential opinionated 'i like this map better!' shit.

It's a pain in the fucking ass to do big overhauls to the map and then have to do it AGAIN because metacide isn't around and we have no active map maintainer for metastation. I'd maintain metastation myself, but like most coders, I'd rather make an entirely new map and scrap metastation entirely, simply using metastation as a source for copy+paste because people like metastation AS IT IS NOW. I felt uncomfortable making edits to metastation on NT's code because of this, it felt weird and stupid because I'd rather maintain a map like box that everyone edits that isn't so personally tied to metacide. I'd feel bad if I was metacide and people messed with my map, and I know he probably doesn't feel that way, but that's just how it is.

Until metacide comes back, we should switch to box. Period. There's no real argument against it other than 'well the 20ish people who play badger prefer it!' which is a fucking retarded argument when the 100+ people who play sybil are having bigger issues with population and shit. If you really, REALLY like metastation, track metacide down and see if he'll put the effort in to rig it back up for server 2 and make more frequent updates.

Box is /tg/ station's development map. Coders who make changes should not have to be forced to edit metastation as well, that should be the responsibility of the person who made the alternate server 2 map. METACIDE WAS PERFECTLY HAPPY WITH THIS AGREEMENT. He does most of not all the metastation updates, coders let him do whatever the fuck he wants to it. Now that metacide is not present, we go back to box until he shows up again. It will both a) boost the population and b) increase the amount of people who like metastation.

Think about it like this: Server 2 goes box. More and more people play there. People grow used to playing on server 2 as their home server and regular on it more. Metacide comes back or we get a new map for server 2 like efficiency or something with an active map maintainer, and people on server 2 get used to it because while it's not box they don't want to leave server 2 and enjoy giving the map maintainer feedback most of the time towards the development of the map. This is how server 2 and metastation got started in the first place, this is why people like metastation, etc. Map knowledge is a VERY large part of ss13 too.

[fleure]

Why not change which map is the official development map?

[Steelpoint]

Why not change which map is the official development map?

Because that would require a metric ton of effort on many mappers in order to get the new map up to scratch.

It would be far easier to make your own station at that point, there's only so much you can do to improve a premade station, a blank canvas offers far more freedom.

[fleure]

Because that would require a metric ton of effort on many mappers in order to get the new map up to scratch.

It would be far easier to make your own station at that point, there's only so much you can do to improve a premade station, a blank canvas offers far more freedom.

Right, so we can still do a map from a blank canvas? Also how up to date and suitable for large populations is Asteroidstation at the moment? That's been getting a lot of positive feedback lately.

[Steelpoint]

Because that would require a metric ton of effort on many mappers in order to get the new map up to scratch.

It would be far easier to make your own station at that point, there's only so much you can do to improve a premade station, a blank canvas offers far more freedom.

Right, so we can still do a map from a blank canvas? Also how up to date and suitable for large populations is Asteroidstation at the moment? That's been getting a lot of positive feedback lately.

If you want to make a station that's all well and good, I've been told it takes over 20 hours to create a map and that's if you know what your doing. Also Asteroidstation lacks proper testing and active developers, I would offer up my in development map, but it's called "shitty_station" for a reason.

[paprika]

Making a maintainer or general coder/people who give a shit vote on what map should be changed (if changed at all) would be a good idea if other maps present themselves to support our population. There's other good map frameworks out there, but outside of departmental efficiency (like chemistry being near robotics/science for acid kind of things) there isn't really much that makes a map 'good' outside of personal taste. Whether or not a map is cluttered with detail/etc is all preferential and something we shouldn't really be bothering with until the population issues are sorted out since /tg/ is in kind of a growing pains stage right now.

My personal opinion is that mapping is a hard and dedicated thing for ss13 and mappers who take the time to make their own map should be trusted with the ability to maintain it themselves with no external help and also have the authority to reject ideas for modification. Box simply became the developmental /tg/ map because it's what we've always had. But there are certainly better configurations out there, and a crowdsourced effort to make a new map (or simply making a 'team' of people dedicated to it) would be a good idea instead of switching to a new map. That's what cog at LLJK is, but cog kinda has its own dedicated mapper from what I can tell who's very passionate about map aesthetics.

[fleure]

If you want to make a station that's all well and good

Well I don't see this discussion going anywhere until someone, or a group of people, step up to it. Box has populatuion issues, and if we concede what paprika says, that and maintainability should be the only choice for a map. Nowhere else to go except getting on with it, or stop having this discussion.

[paprika]

No, the servers have population issues, it's not an issue within box, the game itself was designed for 50-70 players, and we have 100 on the main server at seriously peak times, which means server 2 is struggling. The fact that most people shy away from server 2 when there's 30 assistants on sybil because of map issues means that since metastation's lack of dedicated development is both a maintainability issue and a preference/gameplay issue we should switch server 2 to box.

The ENTIRE GAME itself has not enough job slots to support sybil's overpopulation. This wasn't an issue when basil was more popular, but now that most of the dedicated fans of metastation, and metacide himself are gone, there's no real reason to not go box other than to upset the small minority of people who prefer metastation.

Mapping won't solve overpopulation, making server 2 more appealing for the 100+ people on sybil will. Regulars on sybil who are tired of new players and want to play with people more familiar with the game should be the target audience for basil, but nobody from sybil wants to go to basil because >metastation

The most you could do map-wise to curb the population issues plaguing box is expand it for more virology slots/etc, but even then it would suck dick for security and the SINGLE AI. More AIs? How would you balance malf?

Expanding the map itself and adding more jobslots instead of making server 2 more appealing is stupid. Plain and simple.

[fleure]

Expanding the map itself and adding more jobslots instead of making server 2 more appealing is stupid. Plain and simple.

I kind of agree, only in the sense that you don't need to expand caps on roles that are obviously singular or limited, like AI, captain and other heads, and I don't see the harm in expanding slots for other lower ranked jobs, particularly "grunt work" roles like miner or janitor, providing the map has room to accommodate it. What is worth considering is if the effort and drama is worth the extra ~10% of slots. It'd be nice if someone could take that challenge on, but we could have a repeat of Meta where they get burned out and no one knows how or wants to keep maintaining it.

What about a hard population cap on the servers?

[paprika]

Nah pop cap doesn't count in observers. An assistant cap would work better.

[miggles]

idk the exact number but theres about 35~ normal job slots
15ish assistants would put the cap at 50 players
if both servers had box that would probably be enough

but i dont know if people prefer having shitloads of assistants or not
and also you have to factor in Ifs like what if there's only one non-assistant jobslot open, the assistant cap is met, and the person trying to join is jobbanned from that role? etc

[paprika]

Easy jobs to expand:

Sec officer
Miner
Cargo tech
Engineer/atmos tech
MD
Botanist (there might be a lot of these slots already though i dunno also mass-growing shit is a large part of making the job not boring)

All of these jobs can be expanded with little to no map editing, just by adding more job lockers/etc. But I really feel like box on server 2 would help the pop and even things out as well as a 30 assistant cap because beyond that and we're in crazy overpop territory that we rarely reach but it does happen

I could port assistant registration too so people could apprentice for the single-role jobs like a chaplain's nun, a head chef's sous chef, a bartender's waiter, a CMO/CE/HOS/RD's personal assistant, etc.

[miggles]

badger has asteroidstation now
pops are almost equal
will it last

[miggles]

whatever you say inti

[Random Players]

Also a case of some people waking up, some going to bed. The 'big test' will be tommorow.

[Steelpoint]

People will always gravitate towards Sybil, if Sybil goes down people go to Badger (very slowly) until Sybil is back, then they move back to Sybil.

Right not the server count for me is 30 to badger 80 to Sybil.

Just bloody swap Badger's map to Boxstation and call it a day, that's the only way you will ever get people to consistently play on Badger in reasonable population numbers. Once you've got a reliable playerbase on Badger then swap back to Meta/another map.

[MMMiracles]

majority of people who play badger play it either for a different map or for the regulars who go there. you'd be more or less fucking with the people who actually enjoy playing on different map that doesn't have 80+ people on average.

[Saegrimr]

majority of people who play badger play it either for a different map or for the regulars who go there. you'd be more or less fucking with the people who actually enjoy playing on different map that doesn't have 80+ people on average.

So lets make a third server with ministation so they-

Oh wait.

[Malkevin]

Ministation ironically ended up being overpopulated, pretty sure for a time it was also having a higher pop than server 2.

Main problem with meta is that its so fucking huge and compartmentalised that no one sees each other.
Wouldn't be a problem ironically if it was the map on Sybil, that suffers a massive over population problem.

Easy jobs to expand:

Sec officer

All of these jobs can be expanded with little to no map editing, just by adding more job lockers/etc. But I really feel like box on server 2 would help the pop and even things out as well as a 30 assistant cap because beyond that and we're in crazy overpop territory that we rarely reach but it does happen

Actually not as simple as that, just had a round where the starting number of sec officers was increased to ten.
We had 8 officers at round start.
Granted it was cult, but it proved to be overwhelmingly difficult to manage.

You'd have to do something like my suggested security overhaul with the sergeants and two sec teams, to delegate the responsibilities out.

[MMMiracles]

Main problem with meta is that its so fucking huge and compartmentalised that no one sees each other.
Wouldn't be a problem ironically if it was the map on Sybil, that suffers a massive over population problem.

>huge



comparison in sizes between box and meta. they are literally the same size. it just feels huge because it doesn't get a pop over 30 on average, so its gonna feel more spaced out.

[cedarbridge]

Ministation ironically ended up being overpopulated, pretty sure for a time it was also having a higher pop than server 2.

Main problem with meta is that its so fucking huge and compartmentalised that no one sees each other.
Wouldn't be a problem ironically if it was the map on Sybil, that suffers a massive over population problem.

Easy jobs to expand:

Sec officer

All of these jobs can be expanded with little to no map editing, just by adding more job lockers/etc. But I really feel like box on server 2 would help the pop and even things out as well as a 30 assistant cap because beyond that and we're in crazy overpop territory that we rarely reach but it does happen

Actually not as simple as that, just had a round where the starting number of sec officers was increased to ten.
We had 8 officers at round start.
Granted it was cult, but it proved to be overwhelmingly difficult to manage.

You'd have to do something like my suggested security overhaul with the sergeants and two sec teams, to delegate the responsibilities out.

At large numbers of sec officers, the HoS has to transtition from MrRobustMan to an actual manager. The same function an active and attentive Warden already does a lot of the time.

[Steelpoint]

Metastation is huge because it's designed to be as large, and somehow cramped, as possible.

[Timbrewolf]

Player caps are a good idea. The station isn't made to hold an infinite number of players. Some of the game modes (Nuke jumps to mind immediately) change drastically based on how many people are present. Nuke or Rev shouldn't even be a possible option until we hit like 30-40 players, and should stop being an option once the station hits 70+ players.

Ideally we should have a lower-pop station (capped at like 60) running on one server and a server with a different layout and settings geared for a higher pop (capped/rebalanced to be comfortable with 90-100 players) on the other. If you can just copy/paste code and leave the layouts unique it would be perfect IMO. Not sure how comfortable BYOND is with keeping code and layout separate.

Again, there is no "hard" player cap, but there is a point in the game at which it does stop working the way it's intended. Miggle's OP picture is a great example of that. There is a limit to how many people can actually be playing on the server before things get fucked up whether you want to believe that or not. Even MMO servers will tell you they're full up at times and that you have to wait or go somewhere else to play.

Us not having a cap, while every other major server that hosts SS13 does, isn't an example of us being "Liberal" or "Forward thinking".

It's us being too nearsighted to realize we got problems. It's us being behind the curve.

EDIT: Regarding metastation, I like playing there a lot but not because of the station itself, it's because of the people who are there. The layout itself sucks and has a lot of problems but nobody to fix them. I hate to say it, but ditching it completely and moving on with something that's more uniform would be for the best. I mean come on you can use a singulo beacon to perfectly decapitate sec without a second thought. Balancing issues like that are all over its architecture. On Box you can fire the singularity at sec but the trade-off is you create a major hazard on the station in exchange for taking out your worst enemy. THAT'S balancing.

[paprika]

Metastation is huge because it's designed to be as large, and somehow cramped, as possible.

This and also the fact that you cover more ground on metastation compared to /tg/, whereas on /tg/ there is literally no reason to go to arrivals at all.

EDIT: Regarding metastation, I like playing there a lot but not because of the station itself, it's because of the people who are there. The layout itself sucks and has a lot of problems but nobody to fix them. .

I-i'm making a map for server 2 if it helps

[Lo6a4evskiy]

Main problem with meta is that its so fucking huge and compartmentalised that no one sees each other.
Wouldn't be a problem ironically if it was the map on Sybil, that suffers a massive over population problem.

>huge



comparison in sizes between box and meta. they are literally the same size. it just feels huge because it doesn't get a pop over 30 on average, so its gonna feel more spaced out.

They would be the same size, if they were actually empty white boxes with borders.

[miggles]

..except if they are 2 empty white boxes with different borders, and the same area, they're both the same size

[Lo6a4evskiy]

Because walls, doors, machinery, windows are all open spaces where people can run around and do stuff

Guess what, layout matters.

[oranges]

No caps, ever, 100+ players is fun

also I dislike meta because it' compartmentalized which means you miss the interactions you get on box, not because of it's size

[Steelpoint]

Whenever I oversee people talking about our server populations I only see people praise the fact that our server is the only server not to have a player cap. People seem to enjoy the unrestricted cap more than people who detest it in my opinion.

It would be good to have a up to date stats page so we can truly see what our server population is over a long period.

[Timbrewolf]

No caps, ever, 100+ players is fun

also I dislike meta because it' compartmentalized which means you miss the interactions you get on box, not because of it's size

Whether it's fun or not is beside the point that it's broken loose of its moorings. You might be personally having a good time, but there's a total breakdown of a lot of balances and simple human resources occurring.

If I smash a computer monitor with a baseball bat and turn it on I might describe the patterns it makes as "pretty" but that doesn't mean it's functioning as intended.

[Malkevin]

Because we can't code it to let you back in if your ckey is still attached to a mob, right?

[Cipher3]

Oh no I disconnected mid round and can't rejoin because someone took my spot.

An actual valid problem.

Now I have to play on the map I don't like, guess I'll just not play.

Whining.

[oranges]

If there a player caps and I can't play on a box server or a server with decent pop I'll just not play

[Lo6a4evskiy]

Because we can't code it to let you back in if your ckey is still attached to a mob, right?

Wouldn't it be simpler to just limit assistant job slots? Then people can still observe.

It's still a bad idea though. I'm trying to come up with benefits and I truly cannot.

[leibniz]

Antag scaling has been toned down so I dont really see the point of limiting the population instead of scaling job slots.

[Timbrewolf]

It's a de facto truth that the server becomes a clusterfuck once it hits like 70+ people.

If you can't see that it's not an absence of a problem, it's a lack of perception. Ask anyone who plays a job that's really involved with the population. Ask the geneticist or CMO how the line at the cloner is. Ask Sec how their day is going. Ask an admin how busy they are trying to keep track of all of this. Try doing any of those things for yourself.

But if there's a playercap I might not be able to play!

It's nothing personnel, kid. But it is kind of the entire point of having a player cap. Yeah, some people will not be able to play on one server because it's full. But the game will be that much better for everyone else.

If you're such a picky player that you refuse to play SS13 here if you can't be on your preferred server that's your problem. Try to be more mature about it.

If we can have one 60 and one 100 pop server we shouldn't run into a situation where people can't play here at all. Our concurrent connections has yet to hit that density AFAIK.

It could be easily accomplished by taking our current box station, slapping a 60 cap on it and pushing it over to Badger, then putting a 100 cap on Sibyl and reworking the map and job counts to accomodate that many people.

Part of the reason we currently have such a chaotic, violent shithole is because we're cramming almost twice as many people into one server than any other station that hosts this game.

[Steelpoint]

Again, this is not something people hate. Most people I overhear talking about our player cap praise that we have a uncapped server population.

Unlike other multiplayer game's, we are stuck on a single station forever meaning that your server choice is really your map choice, and frankly people like Sybil's Boxstation more than Badgers Meta/Asteroid and forcing people to move to another server is not something I like.

I honestly think we should do to certain station jobs (MD, Cargo Tech, Engi, Scientist) what Ikarrus did to Security Officers, scale their job slots based on server population and spawn in additional supply closets to account for it.

[Timbrewolf]

Unlike other multiplayer game's, we are stuck on a single station forever

Say what?

/tg/station has gone through multiple station revisions over its history. We currently run two different station layouts, and at one point we had three servers each with a different station on them (though one had a different host, it was still part of the /tg/ group).

If someone is "stuck" on a server it's because they don't want to adjust or change.

[leibniz]

If someone doesnt like highpop they could play on the server with the lower population.

[Steelpoint]

Unlike other multiplayer game's, we are stuck on a single station forever

Say what?

/tg/station has gone through multiple station revisions over its history. We currently run two different station layouts, and at one point we had three servers each with a different station on them (though one had a different host, it was still part of the /tg/ group).

If someone is "stuck" on a server it's because they don't want to adjust or change.

What I meant by that Anon is that we do not swap out to different maps in game. Map changes rarely occur.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

If someone doesnt like highpop they could play on the server with the lower population.

There. We can just close the thread right here. Here's a simple fact that shows that people prefer highpop anyway.

Your reasoning, Anon, really applies only to admins, who have no choice but to police server no matter the population. People can see the population when they join. People still choose to join and play the jobs you specified despite your claims that it's a "clusterfuck". I'm sure many people enjoy that too.

Instead of forcing people to join the server they don't want to join (more like leave because they won't join lowpop/different map anyway), give the second server something to offer, be worth joining for once.

[Aurx]

>Here's a simple fact that shows that people prefer highpop anyway.
That would only be true if the servers were completely identical aside from mean population. They are not, so player preference cannot solely be attributed to mean population.

[Malkevin]

Most people play on Sybil because playing on a different map is scary.

[oranges]

I think liebniz nailed it. If you don't like the high population why are you not playing on badger, if it's true that high pop is really truly awful we would see the two servers populations moving towards equality and I've not really seen that.

Reality is that most people enjoy having more people because after all, people to people interactions is what the game is about, more people = more game.

[paprika]

Because high pop > low pop

Sybil highpop is bad but badger >20 pop is worse.

Isn't this obvious?

[Lo6a4evskiy]

>Here's a simple fact that shows that people prefer highpop anyway.
That would only be true if the servers were completely identical aside from mean population. They are not, so player preference cannot solely be attributed to mean population.

So? My point is, if people prefer server one even when it's high pop, let them. Why does it matter why exactly they prefer it? They still do. Forcing people to go to the server they wouldn't otherwise choose is fucking stupid.

[miggles]

I think liebniz nailed it. If you don't like the high population why are you not playing on badger, if it's true that high pop is really truly awful we would see the two servers populations moving towards equality and I've not really seen that.

Reality is that most people enjoy having more people because after all, people to people interactions is what the game is about, more people = more game.

because i want to play with around 50 people
not 70-100