/tg/Station 13

I haven't seen Kilo for a long time. Do we really need the population limit of 40 for Kilo? I'd say I had a lot of fun in medium and high pop Kilo rounds, and restricting the config so it is only an option on lowpop just feels unnecessary to me. It is a small map, but I don't think that's a problem even for higher population, and had many functional and fun rounds at all population ranges in Kilo.

Maybe raise the limit to 70 pop?

kilo runs all the time on lowpop and works quite nicely

kilo is hell on highpop

I'm not certain how I feel about this, so I'll throw out some of my personal/maptainer thoughts and observations and I eagerly await to hear what other people think. I think that the numbers had some level of "arbitrary" assignment to them, and I recall witnessing some discussion in the back channels over where the goalposts should be set for this sort of thing (before I became a maptainer)- and I think it was just eventually determined that Kilo should be the one with a maximal popcap.

I haven't played Kilo on high-pop for a while, but it really is one of our more cramped maps by design. Although it has had substantial reworks to ensure that it has the "floor" of materials in comparison to other maps (as well as more excess in places such as the Chapel area or Maintenance), it's still just "cramped" due to the designed lack of inter-departmental hallways and weaved room connections. It also has a lower bomb-cap than any other map as well (https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/63750). It makes perfect sense for it to have some sort of upper-pop requirement, but this leads to another conclusion that I came to while thinking about this.

On /tg/station servers, should any map have an upper population limit? I'm going to attach this line of reasoning to this thread because Kilo is the only map that we have it set to (as declarated by viewtopic.php?p=628568#p628568). What is the administrative/player effect we're trying to reach by restricting the maps people can vote on? If it's higher population and the people on that specific shift decide to vote to go on the smaller map, why do we restrict them?

Of course, that leads to another line of dialogue. Lately, people aren't paying much attention to the automatic map vote periods unless someone calls attention to them in OOC (i.e. "DELTA, DELTA, GO DELTA") because people can sometimes be glued to the attention unfolding on the emergency shuttle as opposed to that annoying selection of five maps (a la Tragedy of the Commons, except where no one does something). That's just what I've personally witnessed playing on Sybil where we've been seeing ZERO people vote on maps on 50-60 population shifts, and I would be interested to see if we are having a similar situation on other servers. It also happens where one or two players decide to vote (and no one else) and those 1-2 people select Tram for a laugh, setting the stage for the next shift. I don't know if player behavior would result in apathy towards the vote after we get too many "one guy picks Kilo" moments, which means more people will vote to prevent undesired "cramped" shifts. There is still the stigma around Kilo that leads to people pissing away entire rounds (by either suiciding or abandoning the station) on lower populations, and I don't know if removing the upper-pop-cap limit on it will exacerbate this behavior.

These are just a bunch of feeder questions to get some more balls rolling because this is a pretty nuanced situation, and I'd like to see what other people think about this. Kilo has had a few departmental reworks since the config update earlier this year, and I don't know if what applied in January still applies today. Apologies if this comes off as scattered.

Yes we do need the 40 pop limitation. The changes made to it are good, but it's still a cramped ass map that has no reason to be inhabited by >40 spessmen unless some admin forces it to meme or for an event.

I see it frequently on lowpop and do not want to see it on high pop.

better question, does delta have a minimum pop requirement? that map is way too big for lowpop and im sure that most of the crew will meet for the first time on the evac shuttle

blackdav123 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 06, 2022 1:31 am better question, does delta have a minimum pop requirement? that map is way too big for lowpop and im sure that most of the crew will meet for the first time on the evac shuttle

This is about kilo, not delta.

cybersaber101 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 06, 2022 1:38 am

blackdav123 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 06, 2022 1:31 am better question, does delta have a minimum pop requirement? that map is way too big for lowpop and im sure that most of the crew will meet for the first time on the evac shuttle

This is about kilo, not delta.

sorry let me go post in the delta population requirement thread

blackdav123 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 06, 2022 1:31 am better question, does delta have a minimum pop requirement? that map is way too big for lowpop and im sure that most of the crew will meet for the first time on the evac shuttle

Deltastation's minimum popcount is 40. Tram has a minimum of 25, and Meta/Icebox have no restrictions on population.

dragomagol wrote: ↑Mon Jun 06, 2022 2:19 am

blackdav123 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 06, 2022 1:31 am better question, does delta have a minimum pop requirement? that map is way too big for lowpop and im sure that most of the crew will meet for the first time on the evac shuttle

Deltastation's minimum popcount is 40. Tram has a minimum of 25, and Meta/Icebox have no restrictions on population.

good to know thank you

I don't find it a problem to have even 70 players on Kilo. It's fun to have a bunch of players in one area, it increases the likelihood you run into people and have interactions, it's rarely a bad thing. It's not like the map is so cramped that you're cramming people into one room like sardines or anything.

I play ss13 only on high pop for the most part and when it didnt have the pop limitations I pretty much just went to go play something else while waiting for the round to end. Its too small for higher pops and since its the smallest map it benefits low pop quite a bit by making it seem like theres more players than there really are. High pop kilo sucks ass and makes the station seem overpopulated.

san7890 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 06, 2022 12:15 am [Snip]

I feel like we can easily solve that problem by letting the vote continue into Post-Round, after the shuttle docks at CentCom.

Far as I remember, overcrowding was the biggest reason people hated Kilo. No one really gets up in arms about it anymore.

It's a fun map, but not when having three people in your department means dealing with place swapping every other step.

I can see how Kilo can get overcrowded on LRP, but why is it not enabled for highpop on MRP? Kilo's medbay is probably the only source of contention that I can see for higher population play.

The more confined nature of Kilo brings players into conflict more as opposed to Delta and Tram, which can feel like ghost towns at times even at Manuel's max pop.

BrianBackslide wrote: ↑Mon Jun 06, 2022 11:30 pm I can see how Kilo can get overcrowded on LRP, but why is it not enabled for highpop on MRP? Kilo's medbay is probably the only source of contention that I can see for higher population play.

The more confined nature of Kilo brings players into conflict more as opposed to Delta and Tram, which can feel like ghost towns at times even at Manuel's max pop.

Because Kilo saw the exact same amount of complaining about overcrowding at highpop on Manuel as it did on the LRP servers.

It occurs to me that Kilo is even more compact than my initial impressions, which were already very compact, since maint is full of garbage (simplemobs and actual items) that makes it largely dead space.

Maptainers don't seem to show any interest in this and we hold no strong opinions