How to fix war ops

[deedubya]

So, it's no secret that oranges and even certain members of the administration don't like war ops. Something something glorified TDM, misses the entire point of the game, encourages tiding/powergaming to it's worst extent. Honestly, all of these are valid points against the mode. But what if we could fix all that shit with one simple change? A change that was inspired by me playing a dynamic round as a war op.

When war is declared by an op team, the game will automatically choose two players from the crew to awaken as sleeper agents. They'll work just like sleeper agents usually do, except the only objective they'll have is "Ensure the station is destroyed by a nuclear blast." To reiterate above, this was inspired by me playing as a war op during a dynamic round where regular tators also existed, and the tators immediately bought syndie keys and helped out by causing trouble for the crew before the team arrived.

So how does this fix the issues with war ops? It'll restore the natural order of a typical space station 13 round simply through re-adding the paranoia of potential traitors being among the crew itself. Thus there's reason to still respect the chain of command. There's still reason to not just bolt open the armory and the ID console as soon as war is declared. It doesn't simply devolve into a TDM of ops vs crew since any member of the crew could be fighting for the other team. It potentially gives the crew more to do during the lead-up as well as the sleeper agents can attempt to sabotage the crew's preparation efforts. Basically all the shitty aspects of war ops get wiped clean just by this one simple change.

"but hold on you're giving war ops two free teammates with 20tc each, and paranoia to the crew, how is that fair" Right now I'd wager that war ops tend to lose more than they win. They're horribly outnumbered, and the station has no shortage of ways to fight off a crew that they know is coming. Ever see an entire nukie squad get wiped by a maxcap? I have. It was hilarious as shit, but just proves how outmatched operatives truly are when facing a unified force. That being said, if you want to help balance it out, perhaps give the crew an extra 10k in cargo points when war is declared to compensate? Have it come in a couple minutes later, with an accompanying centcom announcement to the effect of "Due to a confirmed nuclear emergency, wartime funds have been granted to your station's crew for immediate use."

[zxaber]

This is a fine idea, I think. If balance is affected, the TC warops bonus could be adjusted. Though the sleeper agents could probably get by with no TC and act like blood brothers. If you're feeling generous, maybe give them a syndi radio implant, but I don't suspect there's a particularly large need for them to talk to the ops members during setup, and if they get the same Syndi HUD icons they'll all be buddy buddy when the ops do land.

I've said it before, but my opinion is that Warops is better than normal/stealth ops. It's TDM for sure, but the round won't long no matter what happens, and Warops at least spares people from putting in the front-load of project work. Nothing like taking twenty minutes to do SM piping only for steath ops to swing by and wreck you before you actually get to the fun part. Stealth ops consists of ~4-6 antags having fun, at best an equal number of already-armed sec officers potentially having fun, a Captain and AI* playing keep-away for fun, and the entire rest of the unarmed crew getting mowed down because most players won't beat firearms and hardsuits with extinguishers or floor tiles.

*Assuming the OPs don't just casually yeet the AI from existance as they pass by.

[Screemonster]

Maybe make "activate sleeper agent" a thing that ops can buy instead of regular reinforcements so the war ops call isn't a guarantee that there's traitors among the crew, just that there might be?

[Istoprocent1]

tl;dr

Essentially a post about enabling Dynamic on all servers, because it really is the best gamemode and makes other gamemodes such as WarOps shine with added paranoia and reduced ability to metagame.

[deedubya]

Maybe make "activate sleeper agent" a thing that ops can buy instead of regular reinforcements so the war ops call isn't a guarantee that there's traitors among the crew, just that there might be?

I think this is actually a better idea in concept, but not what the mode needs at this moment in time. I think the sleeper agents need to be guaranteed at least for a certain period of time in order to drill into the community's head that war ops is not an excuse to tide AA and bolt the armory open.

tl;dr

Essentially a post about enabling Dynamic on all servers, because it really is the best gamemode and makes other gamemodes such as WarOps shine with added paranoia and reduced ability to metagame.

The problems of war ops still exist even with the possibility of dynamic, so no. It's a core issue with the game mode itself. While the solution was inspired by experiences with dynamic, dynamic itself is not a guaranteed solution.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

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