/tg/Station 13

I've noticed a steadily increasing amount of meta, especially as I become more experienced with the game.

I feel I can generally guess a gamemode by the lulls and consistency provided by certain roundtypes such as blob, wizard, nuke ops, malf and so on, before they occur overtly. Simultaneously, I am getting sick of security being extremely lenient for vague reasons when it is obvious they are thinking "It's a wizard round so he is just a dick, not a traitor". This kind of meta irritates me a great deal, and it could very easily be solved. Multiple times as security, people have straight up said to me, "I can't be a traitor because there is a wizard!" in order to be freed, and then kick up a huge fuss when I ignore this reasoning.

Depending on the roundtype, traitors, even just a couple, should be thrown into the mix. It doesn't need to be all the time, and it doesn't need to be many traitors at all, but without some kind of variability, it becomes easy to predict the game and far too easy for people to metagame roles based on roundtype. It would also inject a little more chaos into these rounds, with the traitor perhaps.

The single issue I can see coming from this is rounds not ending. A wizard round would either cut a traitors time short or be painfully elongated by a single quiet antag. The solution I would propose would be to have the shuttle automatically called without a possible recall at the normal time, allowing the traitor ten minutes to get their shit done while preventing the round from going on forever.

It's a simple problem with a simple solution, but I'd love to discuss anything I missed.

I wrote early in the morning so I may revise it to be prettier later on.

A lot of rounds are already hell on security, it's best not to throw in 2 traitor-cultists into the mix.

Also, CAN'T RECALL SHUTTLE WIZARD ALERT ORDER SHOTGUNS

ExplosiveCrate wrote:A lot of rounds are already hell on security, it's best not to throw in 2 traitor-cultists into the mix.

Also, CAN'T RECALL SHUTTLE WIZARD ALERT ORDER SHOTGUNS

The absolute worst damage a traitor can do is bomb the station from Toxins, which is easy to catch anyway and rarely too devastating due to the knowledge required for big bombs. I think one or two more traitors (Not cultists) in even 25% of these rounds would provide significant enough doubt to avoid the problems I outlined.

Also the rounds I'm mentioning generally have an extra militia force comprised of the greytide and the heads, especially wizard and blob. Security is suddenly three or four times bigger as the vigilante group grows, so it wouldn't suffer too much from extra antags.

Wouldn't care to see this, honestly.
If you're doing something to be permabrigged during a non-traitor round, you deserve it. More so for playing the metacard.
Though I don't want to see traitors every round, then that's a new Meta.
There's Meta everywhere, it's unavoidable.

Also. If there is the possibiltiy of Emags during malf rounds, you have borgs killing the AI, which usually sucks during malf rounds

Helios wrote:Also. If there is the possibiltiy of Emags during malf rounds, you have borgs killing the AI, which usually sucks during malf rounds

On the other hand, "hello, I'm a friendly tator, let me emag your security borgs to fight blob". Which is also bad.

Lets not forget this could potentially throw balance out the window in team antag rounds, imagine Rev's or Cultists running around with Revolvers and Eswords, there was a reason as to why Head Rev's lost their traitor PDA.

While the idea is sound in concept, in practice it would give antagonists too much of an advantage, or it would overwhelm/kill off Security. There is no need for some traitors to kill off Sec before the Nuke Ops arrive on station.

Agreeing with steelpoint.
Sounds good, will probably end up being shit.

It sounds like away backhanded way to defeat the problem of metagaming. However we should more concentrate on stopping meta through upfront approaches. (Like how people no longer call the shuttle at round start just to check if its a Rev round)

Mixing game modes could be very fun and would help decrease metagame. But keep in mind that rounds are already quite chaotic. Plus, what would traitors do with nuke ops? Try to stop them AND get the objective? Doesn't make much sense from IC stand point. Try to help them and get blown up with the station? Also doesn't make much sense.

Plus there are rounds which end without shuttle ever being called, those being wizard, blob and malf. Rev doesn't even allow shuttle to come. What would traitors do in those situations?

Lo6a4evskiy wrote:Plus there are rounds which end without shuttle ever being called, those being wizard, blob and malf. Rev doesn't even allow shuttle to come. What would traitors do in those situations?

That's not hard: consider them to have escaped if they are alive at the end.

I just came into this thread, read the OP and thought "That would never work" before realizing I posted this last night.

Yeah it's a really sloppy way to solve the problem. I was very tired.

What if you add Wizard as a random event?

or lings.

Or space ninja oh wait

Ok I mean, maybe if it was coded to only take affect one or two hours into the game, and spawned in Ninjas or Wizards or Aliens or Traitors or whatever. Then it MIGHT be viable, otherwise it would be impossible to balance.

Would require blob, malf, and rev to be majorly tweaked. Also requires intelligent objective selection that tries to be both interesting and sensible.

Overall a good idea, but needs a lot (LOT) of planning. Chop chop. Which I'm not going to be doing.

Another problem here is that even one traitor in right circumstances can fuck up the station completely. Scientist with 6 max cap bombs, and then you get a blob. Someone subverts the AI, and then you get cult. Someone kills the captain and you get nuke ops.

Are you seriously worried the round will be too memorable? Or that people will have too much fun? I fail to understand the logic of how any of those things are bad.

Fucks things over for the crew as a hole.
If the station is a hole they cant fight blob. If the AI is subverted they cant fight cult as well. If the cap is dead nukes have a much easier time getting dat disk.

Getting blown up by a suicide bomb during a blob fight is the opposite of fun, it just screws over the entire human effort and renders everything they've done worthless since half if the human crew is dead and most of the supplies are stuck in space.

And that's just from a botched attack on the blob. Most gamemodes are balanced with that single antagonistic force in mind, adding traitors would just destroy what little balance they had. Cultists with ebows, revs with emags, the captain getting killed by a traitor during a nuke round!

Kelenius wrote:

Helios wrote:Also. If there is the possibiltiy of Emags during malf rounds, you have borgs killing the AI, which usually sucks during malf rounds

On the other hand, "hello, I'm a friendly tator, let me emag your security borgs to fight blob". Which is also bad.

then just throw 'em in the fucking permabrig/execute them for being an enemy to the corporation

ExplosiveCrate wrote:Getting blown up by a suicide bomb during a blob fight is the opposite of fun, it just screws over the entire human effort and renders everything they've done worthless since half if the human crew is dead and most of the supplies are stuck in space.

And that's just from a botched attack on the blob. Most gamemodes are balanced with that single antagonistic force in mind, adding traitors would just destroy what little balance they had. Cultists with ebows, revs with emags, the captain getting killed by a traitor during a nuke round!

I think the "someone screws their objective and just decides to fuck over the crew" scenario would be just rare enough to be fun instead of "not this shit again...". If it's considered a serious problem, blob/malf can always be tweaked. Which is fine, since they're the exact two modes that need to be redone anyways to account for the shuttle arriving. Perfect!

The second part is why I specifically said there would be "intelligent assignment" to prevent these situations. Nuke rounds shouldn't have the captain or any of his stuff assigned as objectives. Rev = no heads of staff, sec or head revs being assigned to be killed or as antags. Cult, same deal except the heads of staff are ok. No assigning blobs as objective targets. Additionally, the converter antags (cult, rev, wizards casting summon foo) shouldn't be able to convert other antags, nor can they be made round-start antags either.

This means the only way one would acquire an ebow as a rev is by killing someone else who has one. And if you could do that, well gee, you could instead just kill a security officer and take his taser. Even if you flash a traitor who happens to have an ebow on them, you still have to kill him using nothing but a flash and whatever melee weapons you have on you. Meanwhile, he's calling for security and you don't have anything to fight them. This only ends well for the rev head if he plans ahead.

I think some rounds it doesn't exactly interfere heavily with.
2 Changelings + Malf doesn't exactly break the game

Helios wrote:I think some rounds it doesn't exactly interfere heavily with.
2 Changelings + Malf doesn't exactly break the game

Are you kidding? Single changeling can robust a cyborg army.

Kelenius wrote:

Helios wrote:I think some rounds it doesn't exactly interfere heavily with.
2 Changelings + Malf doesn't exactly break the game

Are you kidding? Single changeling can robust a cyborg army.

Oh, right.
I forgot about that update, sorry.

Hell, even without the EMP scream they still have an AoE silicon stun and could take out at least 2 borgs with an armblade and at least 2 screams.