Lower threat

[TheRex9001]

Currently on Terry at least the threat has been insanely high, during the average shift the threat has been 70.5 with 51.4 spent threat spent roundstart (data collected on 10 rounds on the 10/09/2023) and this is just the average, the actual amount of antags the game spits out has resulted in most rounds having 6+lings + at least 1 round ender. To me at least the game has been made less fun due to it, you rarely if ever get to do projects and you see a ling train every other round. The moments of complete chaos towards the end of LRP shifts have been turned into a constant slog of just tons of antags everywhere and the story/interactions suffer due to it. In my opinion I would at least like to see a lowering in threat spent roundstart to cause the chaos to once again come in around the 20 minute mark.

[Misdoubtful]

I will say that Rex did take the time to gather some info on this to come to the conclusion, and we're hoping to kind of think tank this collectively and have it be an incentive to figure out and publicize some of the strange things that we ran into.

Such as this graph gore:

► Show Spoiler

Atlanta Ned is also working on something to see about readily providing a simulation of dynamic for servers as well so people can see and know what's up at any time.

[Vekter]

I don't think raising or lowering threat is the play here, whatever is causing this is probably something fucky in dynamic itself.

[TheRex9001]

I don't think raising or lowering threat is the play here, whatever is causing this is probably something fucky in dynamic itself.

I can tell you that the headmins told me that this was something they did, hence why I'm asking for a soft reversion/change to it.

[Indie-ana Jones]

I think something is causing Dynamic to dump its threat into all roundstart antags. There was a round where something similar happened on Sybil yesterday.

That being said, a lot of rounds on Sybil midpop to highpop haven't had enough action, so I do want them to continue experimenting with upping the threat, it just seems something went wrong here.

[Fatal]

Given every round I play seems to have 85 threat or higher and playing black orbit / midnight sun every round means it's more a battle for survival than a chance to do anything else, these kind of rounds are fun occasionally but not at this volume

So I definitely support a reduction in threat, the game is just unfun to play when there's over 20 antags (I believe there was one round with 8 or 9 changelings on top of a nuke ops team and multiple heretics / traitors) multiple times a day

[warbluke]

Yesterday there was a round where three out of four traitors had me as an assassinate objective, on a round with fourteen players. I don't know if that was a dynamic issue or a progtot issue or a lowpop issue, but it was most definitely an issue.

[PotatoOfChaos]

Constant 60-70's are no fun. Having to do 5 traitor + 2 ling + 2 heretic + blob + (whatever) round after round isn't that fun.
Experienced those streaks before, and they were never any good.
Lower it.

[Indie-ana Jones]

What server are you guys playing on? I wish I had the level of activity you're describing.

[Jacquerel]

i think it's bugged and not a result of policy or config

[kieth4]

These have genuinely been some of the most fun in rounds rounds that I've had on tg. Progtot is dogshit and this has allowed actually other traitors to act as a shield (or not spawn normal tot at all) allowing some excellent action, I've been incredibly happy to face heretics and lings then traitors (who actually gear up and don't die)

Spending threat roundstart has also led to so many more interesting scenarios as opposed to what we had of:

2 tots,

get caught doing stuff killed.

1 new tot, gets caught. Dies.

1 new tot gets caught dies.

such a boring loop.

In fact, the only roundstart threat you need to worry about is ling- everything else is giga gimped rounstart so idk it feels like a much smoother curve into fights and shit.

[Hans]

I say keep the increased threath its fun.

[cocothegogo]

this just in! local admin hates fun!

[iain0]

I'll just dump this here, and this is the last 3.5 months worth of threats, broken up into ranges of 5.

It'd not just high impact rounds (and not all of us play to have a 30-45 minute speed run TDM back to back to back), this new setup also creates a lot of dead rounds, largely due to low round start splits and low overall threat, an 80 threat shift doesn't mean squat when the round start threat is too low and all you get is mid round after mid round adding a tot here and there and maybe something bigger around 45 min by which time the crew is basically "bored call shuttle" anyway so most options are going to get a short run.

Note the sample size for september is much lower than the other 3 months, and yet we already have as many high /and/ low threat rounds as an average month would have had in total.

The balance is just whack and it feels like it alternates wildly between one extreme and the other lately, and it feels like I've interfered in more low-impact rounds than I had before recent changes.

Dynamic probably just has some bigger issues with the current way it lays things out, including the threat distribution, the threat split (round start / mid round), the costs of mid rounds (where "low impact" can drain a bunch of threat before any high impact rules get a chance later on, with nothing conserved for sustaining the threat or adding larger late round impacts that will drive the round towards conclusion), as such a lot of rounds end up either round start TDM rounds and thus last a typical 30-45 minutes total, or a slow roll that struggles to develop into something more significant in time due to starvation or the rolls simply being too late by the time it tries a major.

[CMDR_Gungnir]

I still think the best solution is to bring back gamemodes, run Secret, and just have Dynamic be a gamemode, since we've been trying for years now to get it into a good state and it can't exist as a be all end all.

[TheRex9001]

These have genuinely been some of the most fun in rounds rounds that I've had on tg. Progtot is dogshit and this has allowed actually other traitors to act as a shield (or not spawn normal tot at all) allowing some excellent action, I've been incredibly happy to face heretics and lings then traitors (who actually gear up and don't die)

Spending threat roundstart has also led to so many more interesting scenarios as opposed to what we had of:

2 tots,

get caught doing stuff killed.

1 new tot, gets caught. Dies.

1 new tot gets caught dies.

such a boring loop.

In fact, the only roundstart threat you need to worry about is ling- everything else is giga gimped rounstart so idk it feels like a much smoother curve into fights and shit.

I want to disagree here, the latest shift really have not been fun to me. Its just short 30-45 min tdm shifts, I like high threat shifts but I really don't want a high threat every single shift, its a lot more fun when high threat rounds come on occassion compared to every round.

[kieth4]

I think rex succeeded but idk maths

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/78281

[RedBaronFlyer]

I still think the best solution is to bring back gamemodes, run Secret, and just have Dynamic be a gamemode, since we've been trying for years now to get it into a good state and it can't exist as a be all end all.

Not sure if this is correct or not but I heard that when dynamic was added all the other gamemode code got removed.

[Jacquerel]

A PR fixing the bug may now be fixed

I still think the best solution is to bring back gamemodes, run Secret, and just have Dynamic be a gamemode, since we've been trying for years now to get it into a good state and it can't exist as a be all end all.

Not sure if this is correct or not but I heard that when dynamic was added all the other gamemode code got removed.

Even if true it doesn't mean very much, git means we can always restore old code.
It hasn't been maintained so it might not work any more but we can bring it back as a reference. That means it is not a policy decision though obviously.

[kieth4]

It happened