/tg/Station 13

Something that drives me up the wall on manuel is the fact that you get bonked for even taking a stun baton from a beepsky... yet, somehow, it's totally fine for an assistant to beeline for an EVA suit and go to space an grab a fucking 40mm grenade launcher that's capable of insta-critting most people, or an esword, or a stechkin-equivilant, or a literal SYNDICATE BOMB, or so many other things. Or even just going down to lavaland and beelining for tendrils/ruins, without doing any mining whatsoever...

Where do we draw the line? What is it about these sources of gamer gear that make them ok to get? Is it tied to job? Can curator powergame space but not assistants? Can assistants beeline for tendrils and not mine, or can only miners refuse to mine? Are non-miners allowed to get mining gamer gear regardless of anything? Or should miners be forced to mine regardless of anything? There's also the obvious case to make; if we ban non-antags from powergaming space or lavaland, only antags will do this, causing a huge metagame red flag to appear saying "I'M AN ANTAG! I'M AN ANTAG! VALID ME VALID ME VALID ME!". I have no rebuttal. This is true. Which is why I hope this discussion serves to bring to light this inconsistancy in our rules, and maybe even inspire people to pursue code solutions if no satisfactory policy outcome can be achieved.

Also, this isn't me taking a shot at people who enjoy this kinda stuff, that's fine, I just noticed this as a glaring inconsistency in the rules and I want some clarification.

Tendril chests require mining points for keys now.

RaveRadbury wrote:Tendril chests require mining points for keys now.

Even with that, the question of non-miners running around lavaland raiding the ruins is still relevant. Dont need a key to grab the antique laser gun. Hell, even just miners avoiding everything but megafauna and the ruins.

Who is bonking you for stealing a stun baton from an NPC, literally ruining nobody's day, until you decide to break an actual rule, because I want to put them in the stocks and throw tomato.

The issue is when a player does the same predictable power game move round after round after round, I'm not going to bwoink someone for doing it occasionally.

Well. This is a weird one to think about.

Lets preface with the Manuel powergaming stance:

Do not powergame. Powergaming is gearing up or preparing in other ways to face an issue that is not related to your job and is not currently a credible threat. Someone going missing on the station, and then you making a stunprod to wield whenever you go into maint is powergaming. However; knowing there have been murders occurring across the station, and grabbing a stunprod while you go to fix wires in maint is fine.

Is having a gun or weapon in space/lavaland powergaming because you are geared for threats that are certainly all around in space/lavaland?

It feels weird to consider things being role specific when things like public mining exist and space being 'free content'. Having the gear to deal with the obvious dangers of both also makes sense too.

Does this apply for having them on the station? Does their use or lack of use on the station matter? What if that person intends to go back to space/lavaland to continue the 'good fight'?

Holding onto gear when you take a breather on the station also just makes sense, it'd be silly for people to have to leave their things outside for example. Someone could always just arrest them IC too. So there's a potential gameplay aspect that could be fun?

In the vein of events, and things that add to a round: are these things being aimed for super hard to get geared / be powerful / etc? Is this happening naturally instead? Is this detracting from the round?

There's a big difference between having an armory in your back pocket and having protection. That protection isn't always going to be had in a manner of maxing out the chances of winning at something, nor always to do something that negatively impacts the round, right? There is a difference from natural gearing from something, and going out to get that gear just in case, or something else unnatural.

Not the mention the universal:

The issue is when a player does the same predictable power game move round after round after round, I'm not going to bwoink someone for doing it occasionally.

Also:

Something that drives me up the wall on manuel is the fact that you get bonked for even taking a stun baton from a beepsky

This feels IC and like something that should be left for sec to deal with. If admins are getting involved in even small time crime, whats the point of having sec? Who is sec at that point? Why remove gameplay for sec to get involved in?

Maybe I'm out of touch, but I always felt powergaming was pretty clear and easy to spot in its most basic form. Playing for unrealistic advantages, minimizing the chances of others being able to succeed, maximizing your own chances, playing in a way that prevents others from having fun/forces them to play your game, etc. Where does exploring space or killing some lavaland enemies fit that bill? I don't quite see it. Maybe someone else does?

Manuel players are pretty famously extreme powergamers who speedrun gamer gear stockpiling to delete antags so i dont know where the idea that the anti powergaming rule has any teeth comes from

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:Manuel players are pretty famously extreme powergamers who speedrun gamer gear stockpiling to delete antags so i dont know where the idea that the anti powergaming rule has any teeth comes from

News to me. Seems like the same ol' shit you see anywhere else. I don't see it much at all over Manuel's history. The few examples of people who did do that got told to knock it off. And they pretty much did.

This is one of those things where it's not what they're getting, it's how it's being used. So I don't think there's a reason they should be disallowed, but if someone's breaking the rules with them, they get a bwoink.

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:Manuel players are pretty famously extreme powergamers who speedrun gamer gear stockpiling to delete antags so i dont know where the idea that the anti powergaming rule has any teeth comes from

Hey it's funny how you're bringing this up as another admin because, y'know, you can enforce the rule too

NikoTheGuyDude wrote:Something that drives me up the wall on manuel is the fact that you get bonked for even taking a stun baton from a beepsky...

Genuinely, players shouldn't being bwoinked for this, although they may later be bwoinked depending on how they use said stun baton. Context sensitive bwoinks.

NikoTheGuyDude wrote:... yet, somehow, it's totally fine for an assistant to beeline for an EVA suit and go to space an grab a fucking 40mm grenade launcher that's capable of insta-critting most people, or an esword, or a stechkin-equivilant, or a literal SYNDICATE BOMB, or so many other things.

Again, context sensitive.

I should mention that there has actually been a player historically banned from going to space on Manuel because he powergamed it every single shift. If a single player is constantly going to space every single shift to gather validhunt gear (and believe me, I heavily restricted to arsenal of validhunt gear available and replaced it with space cash, tacticool turtlenecks and camera bugs) then it can be dealt with all the same on a case-by-case basis.

What a player does with that equipment and the context around it will dictate bwonkies.

Different people going to space on different shifts is just a thing that happens. Space is a part of the game. The only roles prohibited from going off to space on MRP are Heads of Staff and Security. If it's the same person doing it every time to validhunt, then that is a different story.

NikoTheGuyDude wrote:Or even just going down to lavaland and beelining for tendrils/ruins, without doing any mining whatsoever...

Tendrils chests require keys to open and those keys require mining vendor Disney Dollars to purchase - So they have to do some mining to open them. Lavaland is kind of this weird limbo area where we generally don't consider it powergaming to go there and kill things - It would be ban baity to do so. It exists for players to visit.

Ruins is ehh, see same answer for space. Context sensitive bwoinkies. How do you use the tools and equipment you get from Lavaland is the key question.

NikoTheGuyDude wrote:Where do we draw the line? What is it about these sources of gamer gear that make them ok to get? Is it tied to job? Can curator powergame space but not assistants? Can assistants beeline for tendrils and not mine, or can only miners refuse to mine? Are non-miners allowed to get mining gamer gear regardless of anything? Or should miners be forced to mine regardless of anything? There's also the obvious case to make; if we ban non-antags from powergaming space or lavaland, only antags will do this, causing a huge metagame red flag to appear saying "I'M AN ANTAG! I'M AN ANTAG! VALID ME VALID ME VALID ME!". I have no rebuttal. This is true. Which is why I hope this discussion serves to bring to light this inconsistancy in our rules, and maybe even inspire people to pursue code solutions if no satisfactory policy outcome can be achieved.

Also, this isn't me taking a shot at people who enjoy this kinda stuff, that's fine, I just noticed this as a glaring inconsistency in the rules and I want some clarification.

I genuinely don't see any inconsistency in the rules. There are legitimate reasons to go to space and weird fluff items like language books, space cash, cosmetics and rare tools were added to loot spawns in order to address the massive amount of gamer gear. Lavaland is also offstation content and is likely to fall within the same general rules. Or sometimes you just want to explore space for fun or a change of pace.

As long as players aren't completely fucking the shift up by going to space or Lavaland, I can't see why we'd restrict it. We can deal with edge cases of people abusing this priviledge as and when it pops up, as we have done in the past.