[MRP] Are Regal Rats restriction exempted?

[Vekter]

Title. Nothing in the current list really covers them. We could probably lump them in with other ghost roles but if so we should make it clear that's the case.

I would say that, logically, they should be restricted to only attacking anyone who tries to interfere with their domain. Some random idiot in maint could be yelled at and threatened to leave, but they shouldn't be actively killing people unless they're either encroaching on the Rat's domain. If they're supposed to be king of maintenance, they should only really care about anyone interfering with what they rule over.

[Cheshify]

There's no policy for this yet, but it feels odd for regal rats (animal royalty monstrosities) to run around wordlessly killing people with swarms. Messing up people who enter their domain, kill a rat, or otherwise inconvenience them should be the very baseline for this antag to off people.

[Vekter]

I always imagined them to be a play on that old trope where someone would go down into the sewers and find out a massive colony of mutant rats ruled over it, except replace "sewer" with "maintenance". In that case, it makes zero sense for them to care to kill anyone outside of their domain unless provoked.

[Timberpoes]

If they're not on the list, assume they're not restricted (or may not even actually be a full antag, depends on their objectives).

[Jacquerel]

While I don't know if there's any admin policy set, regal rats currently have no objectives or antag datum.
They do have default flavour text, which reads "You are an independent, invasive force on the station! Hoard coins, trash, cheese, and the like from the safety of darkness."
If you are treating this as what they are intended to do, it implies (as Vekter said) fortifying an area against theft of "their belongings" and not wandering generally around the station except to conduct raids on goods that they desire, rather than general murder.

That said, players will reasonably often also kill them on sight so mostly relying on the 50 rat ambush technique isnt a huge surprise.

[NoxVS]

Can you even control the rats? I thought they were just hostile and blindly attacked unless you used the whole rat thing to change someone's faction

[Jacquerel]

Can you even control the rats? I thought they were just hostile and blindly attacked unless you used the whole rat thing to change someone's faction

you can give them rudimentary instructions but its mostly to follow you, sit around, attack one thing in specific, or return to their normal ai control

[Indie-ana Jones]

You'll also get muted IC if you use the same commands too much, so your control over the rats is limited unless you come up with a unique way to say the keywords to get past the spam filter. Something to note also is that rats only knock people into soft crit, so it's up to the rat king whether or not someone lives or dies

[Higgin]

Title. Nothing in the current list really covers them. We could probably lump them in with other ghost roles but if so we should make it clear that's the case.

I would say that, logically, they should be restricted to only attacking anyone who tries to interfere with their domain. Some random idiot in maint could be yelled at and threatened to leave, but they shouldn't be actively killing people unless they're either encroaching on the Rat's domain. If they're supposed to be king of maintenance, they should only really care about anyone interfering with what they rule over.

Was just about to come and make this thread, so thank you - and then my post got deleted, so I left it for the day. Fuck my life.

This thread from 2017 seems to be the most concrete precedent for how to treat map-spawned ghostroles (which should be the category where regal rats fit.)

Basically: they aren't antags, but they do get massively relaxed escalation. They're responsible for following their flavortext not unlike sentience'd mobs and posibrain mechs. At least on LRP, they seem to only really be covered by rule 1.

I think having them hew to their flavortext has similar problems to old nightmares. The objective is open-ended. With relaxed escalation, it's very prone to being stretched - you can come up with a lot of ways to justify your behavior after the fact. Even if you're protecting your "domain," you can easily engineer yourself into position for conflict around which the role is designed. You've got armies of potent simple mobs (mice don't mess around,) create miasma, poison food, and create messes when you scrounge.

Since rats are slippery with ventcrawl and can pry doors, they have a lot more power to choose their fights. At a certain (but unclear to me) point, say when the whole crew is starting to see them as a nuisance, I think it's probably fair for them to start choosing fights and attacking back rather than being entirely defensive (or having to have a paper-thin excuse to cause trouble.)

I think it would be better to treat them as an antag, potentially even with a low cost in dynamic on spawn, and make them restriction-exempt rather than trying to litigate the difference between low-esc and no-esc behavior. This is what's been done with nightmares. On MRP, you still get the odd friendly nightmare that stands out, but I'm not sure anything was lost by lowering the expectations to where they're basically a valid grief/murderbone role at base.

Even if MRP wants to be better than that, most rats and nightmares aren't. Unless they're turned into a more discrete role with concrete objectives and a very clear cutoff around when they become unrestricted (i.e. post-ascension for heretics, post-final objective or hijack for tots,) there's less to be gained from keeping them from being too aggressive outside of a particular patch of maints than there is to be lost in trying to fight out the particulars of when they were and weren't in-bounds in any given round.

Regal rats spawn with hostile AI if not possessed in my experience. There's as much good reason to let them run around as any friendly antag might manage to sell you on or you might have for keeping a dangerous simplemob alive.

We should bring them into line with that reality by defining them as an unrestricted antag instead of letting them potentially be one in all ways but name.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Regal rats are also one of the only side roles who dont NEED to be told "Go attack the crew" to cause trouble. They trigger air alarms and cause stinky miasma diseases passively just by existing, so the crew are usually pretty eager to club them even before they start breaking shit in maint and causing trouble.

[RedBaronFlyer]

I always thought rat kings/nightmares worked off of extremely loose escalations. Aka a rat king can decide to just start murdering the crew, getting along with the crew, or being a neutral party. Likewise the crew can just waltz up and kill the rat king then and there.

Also at this rate all the Antags will be unrestricted on Manuel.

[TheRex9001]

I don't think they should be, regal rats are just animals who should aim to dig up trash and control maints.

[TheBibleMelts]

they're as much antagonists as the space hermit is. they are a roleplay role that should abide by their flavor text to their best of faith interpretation of it. hoard your trash, claim your kingdom, gather your minions. you are rat.

they are afforded relaxed escalation rules to kick the ass of any who interfere with their attempts to do so, but they are not an 'antagonist'.

[kieth4]

they're as much antagonists as the space hermit is. they are a roleplay role that should abide by their flavor text to their best of faith interpretation of it. hoard your trash, claim your kingdom, gather your minions. you are rat.

they are afforded relaxed escalation rules to kick the ass of any who interfere with their attempts to do so, but they are not an 'antagonist'.

The fuck is a space hermit...wake up TBM we're not in 2005 anymore...

[TheBibleMelts]

The fuck is a space hermit...wake up TBM we're not in 2005 anymore...

i'll have you know i only threw out my hip twice this week.

anyway, my last post was thumbs-up emoji'd by both fikou and cheshify so we're going to go with that as the answer.

they're as much antagonists as the space hermit is. they are a roleplay role that should abide by their flavor text to their best of faith interpretation of it. hoard your trash, claim your kingdom, gather your minions. you are rat.

they are afforded relaxed escalation rules to kick the ass of any who interfere with their attempts to do so, but they are not an 'antagonist'.