Gang improvement idea #735096

[lumipharon]

So I brought it up in another thread, and what feedback it got seemed generally positive, so I decided to make a seperate thread to talk about it.

Essentially gang has a huge problem right now where gangs delay dropping doms for as long as possible because it's an all or nothing gamble that will cuck you if you fail. This leads to long, drawn out shitty rounds, either because the dominant gang waits till absolutely everyone outside their gang is dead before dropping a dom and sitting around doing nothing for 10 minutes/fighting off the last 2 enemies, or a weak gang panic dropping a dom right before the shuttle leaves and just getting fucked, but still drawing out the round another 15 minutes or so.

But any way, the idea...

• Make the dominator act as a (non portable) gangtool for the gang heads.
• Remove the ability to recall the shuttle from regular gang tools (ie: gangs will need a comms console or dom to recall) Edit: After more thought I don't think this will help that much
• Give access to cheaper and/or exclusive items via the dominator gangtool (ie: cheaper guns, defensive gear, healing stuff, etc)
• Buff the dominator HP and/or allow it to be repaired (so often the dom gets killed while it's still being actively defended, which is pretty meh)
• Let gangs drop (atleast) 2 doms always (currently you can only drop 1 if the shuttle is called)
• Give a buff to influence for deploying a dominator (either a flat X influence per influence cycle thing, or a small multiplier to the rest of your income)

Essentially it would encourage and reward gangs to drop doms earlier, and hopefull encourage more big fights, since gangs will have a static object that needs to be defended.
It's a pretty basic idea, so I'm sure there are lots of flaws and/or ways to improve on it, so feel free to share your thoughts or call it a terrible suggestion, just provide reasoning either way.

[kevinz000]

Maybe make it be able to buy items but not nesassarily start countdown before being able to do so. There won't be a message saying where it is but the gang still has to defend it and it'll have a light glowing from it.

[PKPenguin321]

sounds good on the surface, but i can't see it working in practice.
remember HoG? you had to place your most vital construction at the very beginning of the round. if the gang does this, they will have to do as the HoG deities did, and hide it some place in maintenance or something, where it will probably just get discovered anyways. the risk vs reward here doesn't really pay off. gangs would still not place dominators early. if the shuttle is called, they will have no good way of recalling short of planting a dominator, and will proceed to spaghetti it up with an unprepared and mostly undefended dominator (kind of like how it is now, except that once the dominator dies, the shuttle still hasn't arrived and the round drags on longer).

on the flipside, however, once a gang places their dominator late into the round with an already large gang force, they are now much more likely to succeed, as they have cheaper tools and items from it.

tl;dr: I see what you're trying to do with encouraging gangs to place dominators earlier, but in the end all this accomplishes is buffing the current strat of waiting until the last possible minute.

[Zilenan91]

Or just let gangs drop as many dominators as they want (only 1 at a time) but only allow them 2 activations of it to win. Aka they can have it "off" and be an immobile store and base for their gang, and can activate it to try to win whenever they want, but they can only do that twice.

[PKPenguin321]

Or just let gangs drop as many dominators as they want (only 1 at a time) but only allow them 2 activations of it to win. Aka they can have it "off" and be an immobile store and base for their gang, and can activate it to try to win whenever they want, but they can only do that twice.

It would be like the hall of mirrors, but dominators.
WHICH DOMINATOR IS THE REAL ONE???

[Yakumo_Chen]

It would be like the hall of mirrors, but dominators.
WHICH DOMINATOR IS THE REAL ONE???

Probably the one that's glowing and blinking as opposed to the 'off' state that has little/no animation.

The problem that you create with that strategy is that dominators act as walls that you can't easily decon (not sure if you can remove them at all?), so you could essentially guard the real dominator with a wall of other, offline dominators.

[TheNightingale]

Or just let gangs drop as many dominators as they want (only 1 at a time)

You can only place one at a time.

[CPTANT]

hmmm removing the recall function of the gang-tool and having the dominator recall the shuttle would be a good change to solve this problem.


Giving more influence/ cheaper goodies at the dominator would be a good change to do in conjunction to really promote dropping that dominator.

[Yakumo_Chen]

I need to stop posting at 5 AM because I apparently can't read

[lumipharon]

sounds good on the surface, but i can't see it working in practice.
remember HoG? you had to place your most vital construction at the very beginning of the round. if the gang does this, they will have to do as the HoG deities did, and hide it some place in maintenance or something, where it will probably just get discovered anyways. the risk vs reward here doesn't really pay off. gangs would still not place dominators early. if the shuttle is called, they will have no good way of recalling short of planting a dominator, and will proceed to spaghetti it up with an unprepared and mostly undefended dominator (kind of like how it is now, except that once the dominator dies, the shuttle still hasn't arrived and the round drags on longer).

on the flipside, however, once a gang places their dominator late into the round with an already large gang force, they are now much more likely to succeed, as they have cheaper tools and items from it.

tl;dr: I see what you're trying to do with encouraging gangs to place dominators earlier, but in the end all this accomplishes is buffing the current strat of waiting until the last possible minute.

The problem with HoG is that the diety HAS NO CHOICE about placing their core, and has fuck all minions to protect it at round start, so if it gets detected the crew is guaranteed to be able to overwhelm it.
With this idea, placing an early dominator is purely optional (recall being not needed until atleast 20 minutes). If the gang chooses to drop a dom super early to get cheaper shit, then that's a gamble they've chosen to take, that could reward them as they run around with cheap uzi's, or fuck them in the ass, but they would have atleast 1 more try, either way, so it's not as ggnore as HoG.

One flaw I see is that the crew will shuttle call as soon as possible, if nothing else but to try flush out the locations of a few doms when the gangs aren't yet strong enough to take on a full sec raid.
A way around this would be to have the recall trace thing not work until later in the round (30 minutes, 40 minutes, whatever. So they'll know that a dom is probably down, but not where.

With regards to lategame strong gangs having more of an advantage, frankly I'm fine with that (also encouraging gangs to dom rather than pissing about is half of what this suggestion is for). I don't think the mode should ever be balanced around sec having a fair chance of beating MULTIPLE HOSTILE GANGS, and it's an advantage that every gang can take advantage of, so GvG it still evens out (but with more gear thrown around), but GvS will give an advantage to the gangs, which is in my opinion preferrable, since gang rounds ending with just everyone implanted and all the gangheads executed is pretty dull.

[Zilenan91]

Or just do my idea where gangs can place as many dominators as they want (with only 1 being "alive" at a time) but only allow them 2 activations to win as well as making the immobile dominator a store where they can buy stuff

[PKPenguin321]

I don't know, I just feel like overall what gang will turn into is
1. Gang with some department head will recall the shuttle (via comms console) and inevitably be the dominant force
2. Gangs without department heads wont recall (gangs already rarely recall with the mobile ones)
3. Gangs without department heads will place a dominator at the very possible last second
4. Gangs without department heads will lose
5. Gangs with department heads will wait until the last second to place a dominator and have 10,000 guns and shanks

[lumipharon]

1) How does having a department head "make you a dominant force"? It's in no gangs interest for the shuttle to be successfully called. Recalling using a comms console benefits ALL the gangs.

2) If no gang (because it only takes 1 person, in whatever gang to recall) has the balls to recall, then they all lose. If they drop a dom to recall it atleast causes fights, which if you're implying the gang is not strong enough to beat sec, is still better then what would otherwise happen, which is recalls with mobile tool in maint forever, and sec slowly implanting everyone for an hour.

3) Dominators under this scheme improve your income/gives price savings. If they still want to only have doms down at the last minute(an inactive dom keep in mind makes no sound or light, and if you haven't recalled from it no one will inherently know where it is), then that's their fault/decision not to take a risk.

4) If, as above no one else has recalled, despite the fact that will also make them lose, AND you've had to recall yourself with a dom, AND you're still not strong enough after 20-30 minutes with all the dom perks/recruiting/time to setup defences to stop a sec assault, then eh, you can't just handhold plebs to victory.

5) Again, if they choose to still only place doms at the last minute, then they're missing out on potentially a significant amount of extra influence every 3 minutes, and cost savings/extra gear for the rest of the round. So sure, if they managed to save 500 influence and beat down all the other gangs that had better income/cheaper guns then yes, they can get a bunch of cheap guns at the end of the round. Good for them, everyone else will have had cheap guns the entire round with which to shoot this gang with.

This isn't some magic bullet to make the round better, but man you're looking at it very pessimistically.

[PKPenguin321]

1) How does having a department head "make you a dominant force"? It's in no gangs interest for the shuttle to be successfully called. Recalling using a comms console benefits ALL the gangs.

2) If no gang (because it only takes 1 person, in whatever gang to recall) has the balls to recall, then they all lose. If they drop a dom to recall it atleast causes fights, which if you're implying the gang is not strong enough to beat sec, is still better then what would otherwise happen, which is recalls with mobile tool in maint forever, and sec slowly implanting everyone for an hour.

3) Dominators under this scheme improve your income/gives price savings. If they still want to only have doms down at the last minute(an inactive dom keep in mind makes no sound or light, and if you haven't recalled from it no one will inherently know where it is), then that's their fault/decision not to take a risk.

4) If, as above no one else has recalled, despite the fact that will also make them lose, AND you've had to recall yourself with a dom, AND you're still not strong enough after 20-30 minutes with all the dom perks/recruiting/time to setup defences to stop a sec assault, then eh, you can't just handhold plebs to victory.

5) Again, if they choose to still only place doms at the last minute, then they're missing out on potentially a significant amount of extra influence every 3 minutes, and cost savings/extra gear for the rest of the round. So sure, if they managed to save 500 influence and beat down all the other gangs that had better income/cheaper guns then yes, they can get a bunch of cheap guns at the end of the round. Good for them, everyone else will have had cheap guns the entire round with which to shoot this gang with.

This isn't some magic bullet to make the round better, but man you're looking at it very pessimistically.

i just dont see why we can't leave recalling on the tools, is it really that hard of a compromise? all i'm saying is that it won't encourage gangs to place dominators earlier, while it encourages the crew to call the shuttle sooner, which is the opposite of what i believe it is you want.

[lumipharon]

If you say that you don't think putting recall on doms only will help encourage placing doms or whatever, that's fair enough, but it's not what you said.
But if we do ignore the recall changes, the rest of changes would still be able to stand on their own merits, so yeah, I think you've got a fair point.

[PKPenguin321]

If you say that you don't think putting recall on doms only will help encourage placing doms or whatever, that's fair enough, but it's not what you said.

Yeah I can be kinda shit at conveying ideas sometimes, my bad

[lumipharon]

OP edited to reflect the above.

[kevinz000]

1) How does having a department head "make you a dominant force"? It's in no gangs interest for the shuttle to be successfully called. Recalling using a comms console benefits ALL the gangs.

That ONE NIGHT when I got made ganghead and I could walk the halls screaming gang propaganda and taunting security with absolutely no one in a position to stop me?

[lumipharon]

I suspect that was helped by the fact that security consisted of 1 officer there were no other heads of staff (at round start?), and you had memearmour.