Making Station Heads protected roles

[spookuni]

Bottom post of the previous page:

With the all of the recent discussion about the playability of heads of staff as actual authority figures, I think it's a good time to bring this proposal back up - making heads of staff protected roles that can't be antagonists.

Part of the problem with command that isn't the captain or HoS having any real authority is the underlying meta consideration that the RD, CMO and CE and HoP can all be antagonists looking to fuck the station over, which undermines what little authority heads are actually able to exert. Security walking into R&D to see the Research Director dragging one of their scientists on the ground who's screaming for help to be demoted can't actually, on a meta level, assume that the reason they're dragging a cuffed person away is legitimately to demote them and leave the Director be. With how powerful most traitor head roles are (With full access to the role locked traitor items of their subordinates, plus the heavy access and useful gear of their head status) it's not even a good idea to trust that the heads are working to the station's benefit, of all possible antags on the station they're the most well equipped to screw you over.

This is to say nothing of the absolute clusterfuck that is an acting captain traitor, and how little fun it is to play with in a scenario with a traitor having full access to literally every part of the station.

Hopefully having heads of staff be reliably, if not competent, at least not trying to actively murder everyone, would help promote the heads having some form of tangible authority over their departments.

[terranaut]

With the all of the recent discussion about the playability of heads of staff as actual authority figures, I think it's a good time to bring this proposal back up - making heads of staff protected roles that can't be antagonists.

Part of the problem with command that isn't the captain or HoS having any real authority is the underlying meta consideration that the RD, CMO and CE and HoP can all be antagonists looking to fuck the station over, which undermines what little authority heads are actually able to exert. Security walking into R&D to see the Research Director dragging one of their scientists on the ground who's screaming for help to be demoted can't actually, on a meta level, assume that the reason they're dragging a cuffed person away is legitimately to demote them and leave the Director be. With how powerful most traitor head roles are (With full access to the role locked traitor items of their subordinates, plus the heavy access and useful gear of their head status) it's not even a good idea to trust that the heads are working to the station's benefit, of all possible antags on the station they're the most well equipped to screw you over.

This is to say nothing of the absolute clusterfuck that is an acting captain traitor, and how little fun it is to play with in a scenario with a traitor having full access to literally every part of the station.

Hopefully having heads of staff be reliably, if not competent, at least not trying to actively murder everyone, would help promote the heads having some form of tangible authority over their departments.

are you misunderstanding the purpose of this game?
there's supposed to be paranoia and distrust. adding more protected roles goes against the core design idea of the entire game premise.

[Technoturnovers]

I have never had any issue getting mobbed while demoting someone, I literally just telebatong them all the way to sec and nobody stops me.

[cacogen]

You need to be a maverick who is impinging on the freedoms of somebody's metafriend in a situation that isn't cut and dry and then you will know that the chain of command is worthless and you must lock up your enemies before they get the chance to do the same to you

[sinfulbliss]

You have it a bit curvy.

Antags are cool at the start.

Player X chain murderbones which causes Y/Z to start gearing up next shift and just deleting antags on the spot because its not fun to sit out of an hour game.

This means now any other antag is now further encouraged to murderbone because the chain murderboners have ruined the opportunity for everyone else, and the "play to lose" meme becomes less enticing every hour you could just be playing a different server or game.

We love the only playstyle in the game that forces you to join in or just leave (which I imagine most people have done now which only reinforces turbomurdering because those people are the ones who make up a strong amount on LRP now).

That sort of makes sense, but I don't see how validhunting encourages antags to murderbone. If anything it encourages antags to be extremely quiet and stay hidden, to take very few risks and sneak around. That's also pretty boring but is favored over being overt and getting round-removed.

If the antag can plasmaflood the station and kill you for any reason, it makes it harder to justify keeping them in the round. MRP antags are constrained by the rules to be less dangerous, so sec/crew can play with them more. That can be a lot of fun as well, just a different kind of fun.

This is a roleplaying game. You should play your role. The freedom is to give you the space to do that, but in a perfect world the goal is to make the story of the round better. MRP fails at this too mind, people grow attached to each other's/their own characters, and become afraid of being proper antagonists

It sounds like you're saying the motive of LRP is to make roleplay better, but LRP is intended to have less roleplay than MRP, right? IMO the freedom in LRP is there because some players like just doing what they want (within reason), even if it comes at the cost of a good deal of chaos/dying/station-borked-in-30-min. It also does create interesting dynamics that aren't as present in MRP, like tide vs. sec dynamics, RDMs, more fighting and conflict between departments, etc.

On the other hand, some players prefer the constraints to facilitate their ability to actually play the game and do their jobs without interruption, which is equally understandable.

[EagleWiz]

I don't see any problem with traitor CE, or that much problem with traitor RD and CMO - the real issue IMO is traitor HoP, who basically has legitimate all access. Theft missions? Easy. AI subversion? Not that suspect. Access to security areas? As long as the warden doesn't make a fuss, yes. Close security positions and open up a bunch of slots for service staff? Who's going to notice? Not to mention that if they identify fellow traitors they can hand out all access to them like candy.

[Valorium]

It seems like the best compromise is to just make Acting Captains incapable of being antags. Just change the config so heads are selected before antags just for head roles, then check if there's a captain registered, then whoever gets auto-promoted is removed from the antagonist pool. If that's possible, should be simple as. Sure, it's a protected role, but it's still keeping the net number of meta-protected roles to the same number there would be if there was a roundstart captain to begin with - plus that allows heads in general to still be antagonists, which maintains the whole issue of "heads getting antagonist lmao" but that's neither here nor there.