/tg/Station 13

I'm not sure if this is a policy thread, so please close it if it's a code issue.

Abductors as they function at the moment I'd view as a failure, they have the possibility to allow for a lot of cool gimmick things to happen with the many glands and an opportunity to directly influence the round without straight up murder which I think is a super cool thing. The glands are also cool and can change how people play in reaction to them alongside Hypno.

However, abductors spawn a bit too late and by the time they're able to spawn the shuttle is coming in 4 or everyone is armed to the teeth and make it impossible to do anything, furthermore, hulk makes their one weapon completely useless and them unable to do a thing and that gets unlocked and lapped up around 30 minutes in. Moving them to round start would allow them to influence the round in a positive way.

It's an antagonist that isn't killing people but instead moving to silently change the crew and be a subversive force within and throughout the round. This is a nice change of pace from all the murder antagonists and will allow a lot of the normal crew who aren't usually involved to get involved by being stolen and made to do stuff or getting cool glands, unlike other antagonists that grab players (Revs prioritise robust usually, cult makes a priority of robust players, flesh heretic gets robust ghouls) abductors don't particularly target these kinds of players and instead grab anyone they can or less robust players because they don't want to get btfoed and killed meaning more people would get grabbed.

I will address a point of criticism I received when bringing this up on discord,

my point is that the abductor baton is too strong to ever make it into a round as a shift-start role because the crew being able to fight back at that point is severely handicapped in that "setup phase"

I don't think the crew being weak at the start of the round is a bad thing as it allows the antagonist to interact with the round without being validhunted to shit. As abductors don't kill and instead stun and grab players, I don't think them being strong is a bad thing as it allows them to add subversive elements easier into the round. Whereas the stun is frustrating if they go around stunning players, yes, from my experience this isn't really the case and at most they stun a few people and run away. I would like to at least trial this to see if it spices up rounds at all or if it ends as a frustrating mess.

This would be a fun thing to see. It would keep people guessing as to whether people are going off sensors from heretics, changlings, tots, or maybe a spooky Grey dude

Opposed, because abductors are absolute AIDS. It isn't fun at all to be knocked out and slept for 15+ minutes while the first time abductors figure out what they're supposed to be doing. Abductors, right now, are the actual worst antagonist on roster currently.

Implement it with a coding change where players become immune for the rest of the shift to their baton after 10 minutes of being knocked out by it, and I would be okay with it then.

Honestly my questioning boils down to this:

Are they balanced for mid round?

For late round?

For round start?

I suspect people wouldn't take so long to un-ass their heads about how to Abductor if playing as one wasn't so rare

I don’t think you want abductors to be grabbing someone 5 minutes after the round begins, that’d feel weird.
Maybe they should be light (spawn in the first half of the round or if heavy rulesets fail to draft) rather than heavy (spawns after that) though, if my understanding of dynamic is correct.

I also suspect you'd see a lot less amateur abductors taking 15 minutes to do anything if it wasn't so incredibly rare to play them for more than 5 minutes at a time. That being said it would seem to somewhat defeat the specialness of abductors if they happened at round start every few rounds.

If they were rare, sure. Like around once a day per server rare.

I say they should be made light ruleset antags and not heavy. Abductors are not equivalent to Blob.

Abductors are there to make some goofy chaos but they just get clapped every time they spawn and it's disappointing because they have really cool potential.

Capsandi wrote: ↑Tue Oct 04, 2022 8:55 pm If they were rare, sure. Like around once a day per server rare.

So wizard tier?

While it's not roundstart abductors, I offer this https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/70324 . It'll let abductors spawn a good deal earlier into the round and it comes with Mothblocks approval.

Indie-ana Jones wrote: ↑Wed Oct 05, 2022 10:04 pm While it's not roundstart abductors, I offer this https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/70324 . It'll let abductors spawn a good deal earlier into the round and it comes with Mothblocks approval.

Excellent, I hope that we now see some cool abductor play because of it. Many thanks!

We see abductors in a favorable position as a midround antagonist role, but we believe that any further alterations to have it roll shift-start may require several balance considerations (outlined above in the thread). However, this is squarely an issue of the codebase to handle, and we wait to see how that may be handled. To further this discussion, we recommend the Coding Feedback forum.