/tg/Station 13

So how much knowledge about how magic spells work does the crew have?

I ask because I recently failed a wizard round hard because I mind swapped with the captain and there was a clown observing. He immediately goes and bashed my head in (while im in the captain) before either of us come to.

Is this legit knowledge or borderline metagaming? I not salty that I died 5 min into round since I was mistaken about the idea that improving mindswap a couple times would reduce knockout time. I am a little shocked that the first response to the captain and another dude in wizard costume falling down is to brutally kill the captain with a fire extinguisher.

If thats the way the server roles cool. It just makes it harder in my mind to enforce not meta gaming the hot spot locations for nuke ops or knowing someone is a blob by following them into a remote area of maintenance.

and before its said.

I know I need to get better...

Sorry for trying something different than global spawn or jaunt + enath

Currently there's no real rule on what exactly the crew can know about antagonists and their powers.

On mind swap, it is a extremely risky spell and using it in a public corridor with people to witness it will usually end in your described scenario.

we're not bay
players can know just about anything and use it in game, outside of information on the current round happenings

We allow players to know what Nanotrasen's enemies are and generally what they are capable of including, to a reasonable extent, their abilities.

For example, you know changelings are horrible monsters that can inject all sorts of toxins into you, that they can regenrate and shapeshift, and they usually come in groups.

What we shouldn't allow is knowing some of the more granular details, like exactly how much damage an armblade deals and use that to determine who is under attack by a changeling through the crew monitor. Or calculating the current station population to determine the exact number of antagonists at any given time.

We're actually really lax about this. You can know just about everything about an antagonist. As long as it doesn't go full autism mode into behind-the-scenes game code.

Fair enough again just checking because its a slippery slope but if thats the call cool.

Mind swap is absurdly powerful just be sure to be alone with your target next time, if only for a few seconds which is all you need.

IIRC, one of the other non-kosher bits of knowledge are the possible locations for the syndicate shuttle to land.

beequeen is correct.

It's also worth pointing out that you are perfectly allowed to RP not knowing the details of enemies, etc.

Isn't the clown's clumsiness a genetics issue, anyway, or am I just mistaken again?

DemonFiren wrote:Isn't the clown's clumsiness a genetics issue, anyway, or am I just mistaken again?

Traitor clowns are clean SE'd there for are able to shoot guns.

If they shoot themselves in the face, it means they're not a witch traitor!

Fantastic.

Theres a big difference between knowing what a changling is and knowing exactly what they do, how they do it, and killing someone on the spot because you think they could be a changling.

I used to prick people I didn't like IC with pens all the time, just to watch them scream down the hall screaming "SMITY IS A LING!!!" over the radio.

Honestly, if we know exactly what tools a traitor has at their disposal, then why shouldn't we know what mutation a changeling can develop?
If I'm alone with one person in a sealed room, notice nothing and suddenly can't talk and am freezing, should I feign ignorance?

I think the problem is the "tiny prick" message doesn't even show up for anything sting-related anymore. I think a failed transformation sting still shows it, if I read the code right. I'm not certain.

Either way its like doing the old maintenance mario kart to hit all the good loot. You're meta-ing a concept that doesn't exist anymore.

Maintenance mario kart?

I'm sure most of the long-time assistant players had a route planned in order to grab all the static spawning loot that used to be in maint before it got randomized. I know I had one. It was like roundstart mario kart trying to grab em before the other greyshits did.

Loonikus wrote:Theres a big difference between knowing what a changling is and knowing exactly what they do, how they do it, and killing someone on the spot because you think they could be a changling.

I used to prick people I didn't like IC with pens all the time, just to watch them scream down the hall screaming "SMITY IS A LING!!!" over the radio.

Yeah but it wasn't just "You feel a tiny prick", it was "You follow a tiny prick" followed by a message about feeling sluggish.
If that doesn't sound like a ling has just injected you with some debuff sting I don't know what does.


Looking at the code though it looks like the sluggish message comes from the hunger system, so them getting the message right after being injected is just bad timing

In response to the clown thing, it's not 100% that the clown will shoot themselves. I personally think testing the clown for clumsiness (let's say, making him shoot a stun gun a bunch of times) is shitty as fuck. It also doesn't even make sense from a practical stand point, as if you are promoting a clown to security you almost WANT them to be a traitor, so that way they don't get stripped the moment they try to arrest someone and end up getting stunned by themselves in the middle of the hallway.

Hijacking this thread:
Can we arrest people who metagame like that on the grounds that they're clearly in contact with the [syndies/lings/cult/vampires/wizards/blobs/etc]?

Aurx wrote:Hijacking this thread:
Can we arrest people who metagame like that on the grounds that they're clearly in contact with the [syndies/lings/cult/vampires/wizards/blobs/etc]?

I think Bay has "suspicious conduct" in spesslaw for that sort of thing.

Aurx wrote:Hijacking this thread:
Can we arrest people who metagame like that on the grounds that they're clearly in contact with the [syndies/lings/cult/vampires/wizards/blobs/etc]?

I'd ask the HoS or lawyer about it first but after that sure, I could see throwing them in the interrogation room with the detective for a while. It makes sense from an IC perspective to be suspicious of someone who seems to know very specific details about cults/the syndicate etc. etc.

Aurx wrote:Hijacking this thread:
Can we arrest people who metagame like that on the grounds that they're clearly in contact with the [syndies/lings/cult/vampires/wizards/blobs/etc]?

Hah, I've seen this happen before and it was hilarious. They didn't get brigged, though, just stuffed into interrogation and probed a bit. He was stubborn, but it was still entertaining to watch.

So I'm going to say okay if it was long these lines.

QuartzCrystal wrote:In response to the clown thing, it's not 100% that the clown will shoot themselves. I personally think testing the clown for clumsiness (let's say, making him shoot a stun gun a bunch of times) is shitty as fuck. It also doesn't even make sense from a practical stand point, as if you are promoting a clown to security you almost WANT them to be a traitor, so that way they don't get stripped the moment they try to arrest someone and end up getting stunned by themselves in the middle of the hallway.

Clowns (well actually the Clumsiness mutation) will cause:
-Guns to explode in your hands when fired
-You to stun baton yourself
-Flash yourself
-Cuff yourself

Can't remember if theres any RNG on this.
I also do remember there was atleast one clown that abused this 'disadvantage' by breaking into the armory and exploding all of security's guns.

I believe it's worth noting that any non-antag clown can take a little mutadone or grab a clean SE to remove their clumsiness. Powergaming? Likely. But lack of clumsiness should never be taken as evidence of antag status.

Violaceus wrote:Attention!!!¡

Can you admins please educate trialmins that we are actually on /tg/station and not Baystation...

Just look at this:

https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2844


Both vekter and peoplearestrange act like crew have no right to know about antagonists.

Little harsh, it's not an act its genuinely what I thought was the case from hearing some time back.Its never really been made clear and my mistake if I am wrong, given what Ikarrus has said.
Also slightly out of context post given that the ban wasn't really around meta/powergaming but the fact they right out killed someone.

Annnnnnnnnnnyway.

Be nice if there was some clarification on this. My personal ten cents would be that a little meta knowledge is fine, but true powermeta is just too far (like the old thing where people would call the shuttle out round start to see if it would be returned to check if it was a rev round etc).

A good policy to have is "Anything someone could observe from the game world is kosher" where as knowing things based around a mechanical limitation of the game, something no one could ever see in the universe, is not ok.

That means knowing what spells do is fine, because a person could see the spell happen and notice the effects and thus the knowledge could exist. Even though it means you ultimately understand a game mechanic that is fine.

Contrasted to that is the idea that looking at the shuttle spawn points isn't ok because it isn't something you should be able to observe in universe, it exists purely as a mechanic rather than something that exists in the world. Same with knowing that some aliens are reincarnations of crew members and thus have certain knowledge, or knowing that the shuttle auto-recalls in response to certain round types.

On the topic of level of knowledge and it's meta use.

Intentionally moving or otherwise objects to prevent sabotage/or capture.

This came up last night in a basil round, an engineer (who coincidentally was a antag so it's not a example of real meta) used the excuse of moving parts of the engine away and hiding them, to prevent sabotage (unbeknownst to us, to complete his nefarious plot which backfired on him). However I've seen this been done before by non-antags. Is it ok for someone to hide parts of the engine, and wire solars based solely on the reason that the engine will be sabotaged - despite no tators being acknowledged in the round?
In tandem is it ok for example, for the Chief Engineer to say, move his station blueprints (a tator objective) and hide them in a place nobody will ever find (except by sheer luck) or move it to a different z-level where probability of it being found is almost zero, based solely on the reasoning that the blueprints are a tator objective and hiding them will prevent greentext?

They are both high value items that have actual significance beyond being a potential objective. Hiding either of them just because they're valuable would cross the line imo. One example I can think of is a CE building a space vault just to hold their blueprints, going out of their way just to fuck up a potential traitor, as well as any legitimate uses of it.

That's just poor sportsmanship.

But I'm okay with putting away the engine parts when they're not in use.

QuartzCrystal wrote:In response to the clown thing, it's not 100% that the clown will shoot themselves. I personally think testing the clown for clumsiness (let's say, making him shoot a stun gun a bunch of times) is shitty as fuck. It also doesn't even make sense from a practical stand point, as if you are promoting a clown to security you almost WANT them to be a traitor, so that way they don't get stripped the moment they try to arrest someone and end up getting stunned by themselves in the middle of the hallway.

There IS a 100% guaranteed way to test clown antag status. But I'm almost afraid to say it because I know that the second I do some motherfucker will try it. (It's also stupid and, IMO, a bug, and I keep meaning to github it. )

I like to think that all the crew have to sit through a hellishly boring 3 hour long power point presentation that outlines what all the traitor "types" are, what gear they use, and what spells they use.

But this would omit things like nuke ops preferring to bomb the telecoms APC, etc. Just things like what gear they use, what it looks like, what their suits look like, so on and so forth.

Moving the PA parts away seems perfectly acceptable if the station is already getting power from an alternative source, since that's an IC hazard and no reason to leave them out. Actually hiding them seems a bit dodgy though, unless someone has tried sabotage it previously etc.

Yeah, if you've set up a huge solar array/the supermatter/whatever, hiding a piece of the PA is really, really advised because otherwise some chucklefuck brand new engineer will roll in and try to set it up. And probbably fail. And then the crew will lynch YOU.

Putting some in secure storage and shutting that seems reasonable, at least.