/tg/Station 13

Nerf loyalty implants so they can't prevent conversion. Problem solved.



Oh, you want details on my reasoning? Security fights tooth and nail against these types of antags and uses whatever tactic they have available, No matter the brutality, because they are the ONLY poor motherfuckers who can fully and reasonably expect to die violently and early if they lose to the tide of darkness.

You see, Loyalty implants are not a boon, They suck ass honestly, because it means either you live, and significant portions of the ghosts hate you, significant portions of the crew wants to kill you, and you're department has more blood than any mop could ever fix. Or alternatively you die, because you couldn't be made to swap sides without extra effort and risk to remove the implant, this should go away. Don't you see? loyalty implants as is forces security to ruin fun for people! They got no real options but full blown murder, because their back is to the wall.

My proposition is that implants shouldn't prevent conversion, they should instead, indicate when conversion has happened. If someone is converted it should have a solid red light when viewed through sec-huds. Letting those who have them know, in no uncertain terms that the target is not acting in the best interests of central command.

This will of course lead to a deepening the snowball effect, wherein conversion antags grow in power very quickly, like a snowball rolling downhill growing in mass faster and faster, But my proposition also includes a return to the old methods of deconversion, Head trauma for revolutionaries, Holy water for either cultists, Gangs stay the same, When they get implanted, it destroy the implant to fix em, this changes the meta a bit, because if the implant glows red you might not know if it's a cultist, or a rev. and a sec officer without an implant might be anything, and must be corrected immediately if you're an intelligent HoS.

This is the best of both worlds. Sec can still trust eachother, because they still can't be syndicate, and if they were another sort of antag, they could SEE it. meanwhile convert style antags can view officers as a great prize, rather than a meal. All while the uninvolved crew can still trust the average officer, because getting battoned and dragged into maintenance won't necessarily mean death, it might just mean the beginning of a whole new life, filled with valids, and bloodshed.

Also, With this community, I'm sure someones gonna suggest that the evil jackbooted shithead security players will 'Accidently' get converted, so they can freely fuck with anyone they want to, and stomp on your poor innocent balls every conversion round.

So I'ma get this message in early so I can quote it at you faffers when you suggest it.

A security officer is THE MOST vulnerable to non-converted security, because either they have a bright red light indicating their ill intent, or no light at all when one should be present.
And they still start with these new nerfed implants. so... Yeah, when the fit hits the shan, Security is sure to weed out problem children within their own ranks whenever possible.

Nar'sie Cult and Clockwork Cult are fine as conversion antags because you actually have to capture people alive, drag them off to convert them, and have a buddy with you, while preventing them from screaming out for help. The problem is that rev and gang are too similar in their conversion methods. One mode needs to be reworked, and I lean towards gang. Goofball of all people had a good idea: rework it to be mafia-themed.

Luke Cox wrote:Nar'sie Cult and Clockwork Cult are fine as conversion antags because you actually have to capture people alive, drag them off to convert them, and have a buddy with you, while preventing them from screaming out for help. The problem is that rev and gang are too similar in their conversion methods. One mode needs to be reworked, and I lean towards gang. Goofball of all people had a good idea: rework it to be mafia-themed.

gangs issue is more that you have no way of knowing who's already in a gang and by trying to recruit you could easily get caught and your gang instaloses because without a boss it literally can't win

If I was to redesign gang with a mafia theme, I would make 5 or so people members at roundstart, possibly from the same department (mafia family and all). They would have a shared objective similar to a traitor objective, although a bit more grandiose (assassinating all sec or heads, destroying R&D servers, destroying telcoms, etc.). The godfather would be given three single-use conversion items to recruit people for the job. We could even have two competing mafia, with a traitor working for the other mafia in each. I can already imagine the paranoia.

so uhhhh..... How about that loyalty implant idea? anything wrong with my thinking here?

Falamazeer wrote:so uhhhh..... How about that loyalty implant idea? anything wrong with my thinking here?

The idea sounds good in theroy, but as someone who plays HOS constantly, as soon as i run out of reconversion equipment, assuming i want to bother playing security at all after my entire staff gets converted 20 seconds in. i'll start killing those with red blinking lights.

Killing someone is easier than trying to get the supplies to deconvert them only to have them go get converted again, this is why loyalty implants prevent conversion entirely.

You could try it though, i'll bet you a steam game that security just gets pissed off and either
A: doesn't play security anymore
or
B: Bitch on the fourms about it untill the end of time.

John_Oxford wrote:
Killing someone is easier than trying to get the supplies to deconvert them only to have them go get converted again, this is why loyalty implants prevent conversion entirely.

but... Like I said in the OP deconversion reverts back to the old ways, holy water and concussions, except for gang, which already works the way it works and my proposal doesn't change that.

Batons to the head are re-usable, and holy water is abundant if you play your cards right, so instead of the tug-o-war until sec runs out of implants we 'enjoy' today. you get this.

Making loyalty implants less useful would almost definitely just increase the amount of executions by security.

Falamazeer wrote:so uhhhh..... How about that loyalty implant idea? anything wrong with my thinking here?

What would be the point of the implants?

Gang already has super easy implant breakers, and takes two loyalty implants to actually work which makes them pretty fucking worthless already. Guess what gamemode everybody complains about turbo shitcurity in? That's right, its traitor uh, gangs.

unfortunately, security's psuedo-antag status in cult and gang modes is a preventative measure, which this would not fix

i still think that cult and gang are the two problem modes due to the speed of the game; revolutions are usually more tame, as the revs act faster and more aggressively, contrasting the planning and buildup required in cult and gang objectives

speed up the deconversion process by adding an implanting/deconverting machine, making gangsters/cultists more identifiable, or re-adding something akin to blunt-trauma deconverts (although obviously something different and less likely to kill the deconvertee) are still more desirable solutions in my opinion, as they would give security more breathing room to add to their ranks without forcing people into concentration camps in cargo or anything of the sort

remove implant breakers

add fake implants that fool sechuds :^)

IcePacks wrote:unfortunately, security's psuedo-antag status in cult and gang modes is a preventative measure, which this would not fix

i still think that cult and gang are the two problem modes due to the speed of the game; revolutions are usually more tame, as the revs act faster and more aggressively, contrasting the planning and buildup required in cult and gang objectives

speed up the deconversion process by adding an implanting/deconverting machine, making gangsters/cultists more identifiable, or re-adding something akin to blunt-trauma deconverts (although obviously something different and less likely to kill the deconvertee) are still more desirable solutions in my opinion, as they would give security more breathing room to add to their ranks without forcing people into concentration camps in cargo or anything of the sort

I half-agree with this. Cult by itself is fine in my opinion, because it works exactly as intended: it starts out rather weak and gradually builds up to a nearly unstoppable force if not nipped in the bud. I would like to see runes unlocked via converts or sacrifices, just like clockwork cult. Other than that though, it's mostly fine. Gang, however, is a massive problem because it's little more than a slower, more painful rev.

Remove conversion modes?

Screemonster wrote:remove implant breakers

add fake implants that fool sechuds :^)

This would make the problem measurably worse; security's line of logic in all of these scenarios is that anyone can be an enemy; making it so that the singular identifier (if that) for an ally of sec can be falsified will remove the only group of people that they won't be forced to treat as an ostensible enemy. We can argue that this'll end all the whacky martial law shit by rule of the fact that they can be backstabbed in the process of it, but in practice this would cause security to become almost, if not completely, unplayable.

Nobody likes waiting to die over thirty minutes. Security, the one relative force of good on the station, becomes a gang or a cult in of its own during these rounds and as a result "griefs" regular crew as a preemptive strike on antagonists disguised as regular crew. In some scenarios, this results in the sec-gang outnumbering the crew, and terrorizing them as a result. Considering what I also witnessed in a 22-sec officer round, this might have more to do with the numbers being difficult to manage as much as it has to do with the fear of being outnumbered or singled out and killed by an ambiguous friendly.

It would be fan for slow conversion antags but it'd be a nightmare for rev who can flash you quicker than a stripper in tearaway clothing, and it's both significantly easier and mroe worthwhile to just stunprod an officer, take off his glasses and flash him than drag him off to surgery or kill him.

I'd rather Gang mode get converted into a straight team mode with no conversion/deconversion. I remember a mafia mode getting suggested a while back and after re-playing Town of Salem I'd like to marry the two into a strange, incestuous marriage. I'd name my ideas but it's not related to the OP.

So basiclly you want to make conversion rounds more of a bloodbath, expecially in revs where as you said security would only be able to deconvert by beating them over the head?
Security is not going to waste shittons of medkits to repeatedly heal people while they beat them over the head. This is the best way to make security have to kill the entire crew to win.

Remove conversion modes. Problem solved.

Seriously why do you think that simple changes will fix anything when they never have and never will, most conversion gamemodes are inherently flawed and designed to keep people 'in the round' even though that just dicks over security by adding more people that can murder/loot them without getting banned lmfao

kevinz000 wrote:So basiclly you want to make conversion rounds more of a bloodbath, expecially in revs where as you said security would only be able to deconvert by beating them over the head?
Security is not going to waste shittons of medkits to repeatedly heal people while they beat them over the head. This is the best way to make security have to kill the entire crew to win.

It already is, Once the implants run dry, there ya go.
Hell, give security back the sleeper, problem solved.

Then implants will (as I proposed) indicate who needs a couple of sharp blows to the head, and it'll be a tug-o-war to control the station, rather than an attempt to take back control doomed to fail, due to limited resources, followed by a bloodbath on both sides.

paprika wrote:Remove conversion modes. Problem solved.

Seriously why do you think that simple changes will fix anything when they never have and never will, most conversion gamemodes are inherently flawed and designed to keep people 'in the round' even though that just dicks over security by adding more people that can murder/loot them without getting banned lmfao

I actually enjoy playing HoS in a conversion antag round. Gives a feeling of tension, and you always have something to do. Problem is with mechanics, especially gang.