TDM and Security cannot deconvert

[J_Madison]

Discuss the policies that cover TDM modes where security cannot deconvert and take desperate measures under duress.

Examples are following
All TDM modes:
Lack of sec.
Lack of high ranking staff.
Security overwhelmed.

Cult(s).
Lack of Chaplain.
Cargo converted.
Lack of botanists (holy melons).

Gang/rev.
Lack of implants.
No Cargo control.


Really, what are sec meant to do under these conditions?
Roll over and die?

[DemonFiren]

just
like
git gud lmao

[BeeSting12]

I'll go ahead and quote what I said in the original thread:

If you can't deconvert the person, execute them. I rarely get bwoinked for doing this and when I do it's usually to figure out what evidence I had for it, or the rare occasion it wasn't valid. Not a very hard concept to grasp, your title pretty much says it all. T D M, team DEATH match. Nonlethal deconversion is a privilege to the antagonist, not a right.

The rules say that antagonists are valid. V A L I D, valid. They can be killed with no punishment to the killer. If the antagonist cannot be deconverted or contained in any other means until you can get methods to deconvert, I'd even encourage you to kill them. Will you get called shitcurity for doing what needs to be done? Yes. Is it within the rules? Yes. Is it shitty to do? No, not really seeing as your opposition would do the same to you given the opportunity.

[J_Madison]

just
like
git gud lmao

my sec officer almost ate a ban for actually git got gutting good because he killed two departments
don't tell me to git gud when my gud is the guddest

[Nilons]

I'll go ahead and quote what I said in the original thread:

If you can't deconvert the person, execute them. I rarely get bwoinked for doing this and when I do it's usually to figure out what evidence I had for it, or the rare occasion it wasn't valid. Not a very hard concept to grasp, your title pretty much says it all. T D M, team DEATH match. Nonlethal deconversion is a privilege to the antagonist, not a right.

The rules say that antagonists are valid. V A L I D, valid. They can be killed with no punishment to the killer. If the antagonist cannot be deconverted or contained in any other means until you can get methods to deconvert, I'd even encourage you to kill them. Will you get called shitcurity for doing what needs to be done? Yes. Is it within the rules? Yes. Is it shitty to do? No, not really seeing as your opposition would do the same to you given the opportunity.

You're 100% not wrong, but in situations as described above you get net loss fun. What I think Jmad is looking for here is an alternative that can either be fun for everyone or an addition that would help alleviate those circumstances. On the subject of validity yes, cultists can get fucked, be sneaky if you dont wanna catch a harm baton. But when someone who isnt a cultist, has nothing to do with a cult, and has never even heard of a narsee gets bludgeoned to death because they work in the same department as one sloppy cultist its pretty lame, and not against the rules or policy. While taking into account that losing is part of the game it happens way too often that in the circumstances described above more non cultists get lynched by sec than cultists.

[J_Madison]

yeah that's my biggest regret.

when it's a hectic round and I'm at my wits end, I'm not happy because I survived the round, or I deconverted some people.

I'm sad for the people that got killed when they were innocent and had their round ruined. They don't deserve it. They deserve better.

[D&B]

Sadly the process for deconversion is convoluted and kinda punishes playing it like that too. You need both a chaplain and implants to deconvert and keep safe, it would probably be better if one step got removed so that security can actually fight back in the conversion factor. If you have no implants you can just raid cargo and order more but if there's no chaplain you're fucked, the non converted are fucked (or converted) and the round just turns into a cluster fuck.

Maybe if holy water could be ordered it would be easier to deal with cults and non cultists.

[BeeSting12]

I mean, I still feel pretty bad about killing people and taking them out of the game for 30 minutes. It's not a good solution but it's the only way to keep you from being a doormat. If you ask me, it is a lot funner for me to have an actual challenge to go up against as a team antagonist, a lot funner than security being a doormat. It's near impossible to detain the dozens of possible/confirmed cultists, revs, etc, over the course of the round for long amounts of time while waiting for the means for deconversion, or knowing they won't come.

Let me give you a scenario where security went full nonlethal on a gang round, this happened a long time ago, before gangs were disabled. IcePacks can back me up on this that it was cancerous for the prisoners. Basically, security immediately secured cargo upon gangs being confirmed. Miners, techs, and QM were all implanted. Priorities were changed, mindshields were ordered. (loyalty implants at the time) Security started arresting all suspicious personnel and bringing them into cargo, bucklecuffing them to one of the dozens of chairs set up, in rows. The techs were managing prisoners with a few officers, escapees were generally shot dead or recuffed. Implants came in, we implanted everyone, and I'm gonna be honest, we got more nongangsters than gangsters. The leaders were taken into the warehouse and shot. It was literally a concentration camp set up in cargo. This is when things got bad... We started arresting everyone. Everyone was hauled into cargo to wait 10+ minutes for implants. Latejoins and everyone, cuffed and forced to wait for implants. Bryce Pax asked to be gibbed, others went catatonic. Then meteors hit cargo and a ton of prisoners died so the shuttle was called. Luke Cox was HoS here by the way.

Now, sure, those prisoners got to play in the round after they were released. But at that point, I'd rather die and observe than be buckled to a chair for 10-15 minutes. That's one of those options that will prevent people from dying but I'd still say it's worse than killing them on sight. It also requires a staffed security. The final option is being a lot less strict/paranoid on conversion based rounds which will result in less arrests, and less deaths. Basically you'll be steamrolled. I feel bad for people who get killed during the mode, especially nonantagonists and people I search for BS reasons, but it's "us or them." That's how the mode works, could be a code/gameplay problem, but not really a policy problem since you won't be bwoinked for any of the three ideas I outlined.

[Atlanta-Ned]

"Welp, the mode is trash so security gets to be trash to" is a poor excuse.

What the fuck happened to playing for the sake of having fun? Why is it all about this delicate balance of departments vs. antagonists instead of focusing on playing so that the other person has fun? Why does your survival trump a couple of scientists being allowed to proceed with their round? Maybe have a chance to get converted.

What the fuck am I even posting in this thread for? Kor or someone else is gonna come in with something smarmy and undermining anyway. Fuck everything.

[captain sawrge]

"Welp, the mode is trash so security gets to be trash to" is a poor excuse.

What the fuck happened to playing for the sake of having fun? Why is it all about this delicate balance of departments vs. antagonists instead of focusing on playing so that the other person has fun? Why does your survival trump a couple of scientists being allowed to proceed with their round? Maybe have a chance to get converted.

What the fuck am I even posting in this thread for? Kor or someone else is gonna come in with something smarmy and undermining anyway. Fuck everything.

Dying because you tried to play passively vs. a cult isn't fun
Also this is all entirely out of player control its totally moot to try and blame them for code and policy issues

[Atlanta-Ned]

Dying because you tried to play passively vs. a cult isn't fun
Also this is all entirely out of player control its totally moot to try and blame them for code and policy issues

We have ALWAYS had cult. This isn't some new thing that popped up one night. This is a player problem, no doubts about it. Conversion modes suck because ''''''''we'''''''' let our policies and attitude swing towards whatever the fuck we have right now. It sucks, and it's unfun.

It used to be diligently doing(RPing) your job if you didn't win the antag lottery that round while everything falls apart around you. Now it's about doing as much as fucking possible to screw over the other antags before they do what they're designed and intended to do.

[Nilons]

Dying because you tried to play passively vs. a cult isn't fun
Also this is all entirely out of player control its totally moot to try and blame them for code and policy issues

We have ALWAYS had cult. This isn't some new thing that popped up one night. This is a player problem, no doubts about it. Conversion modes suck because ''''''''we'''''''' let our policies and attitude swing towards whatever the fuck we have right now. It sucks, and it's unfun.

It used to be diligently doing(RPing) your job if you didn't win the antag lottery that round while everything falls apart around you. Now it's about doing as much as fucking possible to screw over the other antags before they do what they're designed and intended to do.

This, cult was pushed into being genocide or die and it can be pushed out of it.

[captain sawrge]

It's only a player problem because admins and coders enable them by reinforcing that type of gameplay in their decisions

[D&B]

Yeah we always had cult but we didn't always have:

1.people acting like other conversion modes antags (you're guaranteed to have someone flashing people every round now.)
2. People disarming or obstructing sec just because they can
3. People actively seeking conversion (and nothing happening when you ahelp it.)
4. Clock cult

I might sound scunmy saying this but I'm selfish, I don't feel like I should put my in game time into risk due to how the modes play. It's not even my own in game life I care about, I'm not the kind of person to out other officers into the line of fire just so two scientists or two whatever role you are can be converted sooner or later. It's an uphill battle every time and you either buck up or watch in deadchat while everyone calls you shit.

[Atlanta-Ned]

I might sound scunmy saying this but I'm selfish, I don't feel like I should put my in game time into risk due to how the modes play.

You can't play this game selfishly. You just fucking can't. The instant you do, everyone loses and it turns into 2D TDM ValidHunt In Space™. Which is exactly what's happened. What the fuck happened to dying not being punishment enough? Didn't we add like a billion ghost roles so deadchat could still do stuff while waiting for the round to end?

[Nilons]

I might sound scunmy saying this but I'm selfish, I don't feel like I should put my in game time into risk due to how the modes play.

You can't play this game selfishly. You just fucking can't. The instant you do, everyone loses and it turns into 2D TDM ValidHunt In Space™. Which is exactly what's happened. What the fuck happened to dying not being punishment enough? Didn't we add like a billion ghost roles so deadchat could still do stuff while waiting for the round to end?

You can't put the weight of other players fun onto people to this extent. Its not their job to make sure everyone has fun, all players can be held accountable for is actively ruining fun purposefully.

[Nilons]

I might sound scunmy saying this but I'm selfish, I don't feel like I should put my in game time into risk due to how the modes play.

You can't play this game selfishly. You just fucking can't. The instant you do, everyone loses and it turns into 2D TDM ValidHunt In Space™. Which is exactly what's happened. What the fuck happened to dying not being punishment enough? Didn't we add like a billion ghost roles so deadchat could still do stuff while waiting for the round to end?

You can't put the weight of other players fun onto people to this extent. Its not their job to make sure everyone has fun, all players can be held accountable for is actively ruining fun purposefully.

[captain sawrge]

I might sound scunmy saying this but I'm selfish, I don't feel like I should put my in game time into risk due to how the modes play.

You can't play this game selfishly.

You can, everyone does, and throwing your life away is usually very boring especially when there's no special circumstances, it's just that you ended up making the error of playing sec officer during any one of our four conversion roundtypes.

There is no reason players should have to forfeit their round to antags. Conversion modes punish passive/defensive security play. It's not fun to lose in any other game, SS13 isn't an exception.

[Atlanta-Ned]

I might sound scunmy saying this but I'm selfish, I don't feel like I should put my in game time into risk due to how the modes play.

You can't play this game selfishly. You just fucking can't. The instant you do, everyone loses and it turns into 2D TDM ValidHunt In Space™. Which is exactly what's happened. What the fuck happened to dying not being punishment enough? Didn't we add like a billion ghost roles so deadchat could still do stuff while waiting for the round to end?

You can't put the weight of other players fun onto people to this extent. Its not their job to make sure everyone has fun, all players can be held accountable for is actively ruining fun purposefully.

I should restate that as "maybe don't dick over other people 100% of the time, even when the rules say you can".

[J_Madison]

What the fuck happened to playing for the sake of having fun? Why is it all about this delicate balance of departments vs. antagonists instead of focusing on playing so that the other person has fun? Why does your survival trump a couple of scientists being allowed to proceed with their round?

you (by you, I mean the previous admins) didn't ban the really awful players quick enough.

let them slowly ravage the server over several months and make the rounds just awful to play
and slowly, people broke, and played to prevent that.

[onleavedontatme]

Dying because you tried to play passively vs. a cult isn't fun
Also this is all entirely out of player control its totally moot to try and blame them for code and policy issues

We have ALWAYS had cult. This isn't some new thing that popped up one night. This is a player problem, no doubts about it. Conversion modes suck because ''''''''we'''''''' let our policies and attitude swing towards whatever the fuck we have right now. It sucks, and it's unfun.

It used to be diligently doing(RPing) your job if you didn't win the antag lottery that round while everything falls apart around you. Now it's about doing as much as fucking possible to screw over the other antags before they do what they're designed and intended to do.

We had rev and cult.

And then we had rev and cult and gang and clock cult and shadowling and hand of god.

>what they are designed and intended to do

Hit critical mass and stomp me? Do you leave the carry in dota alone because its not fair if you harass him while he is weak?

>you should just RP!

It's a fucking minefield of ways to get banned and all the cool shit is being coded for the antags who are allowed to kill you in repetive and mundane manners so its not much fun anyway. It is selfish and unrealistic to expect other players to just sit around and not have fun for your benefit.

[onleavedontatme]

Telling team A they have to lose on purpose and be sportsmanlike while team B doesnt and having team A react negatively is not evidence of a player problem. They recognize they're getting shafted and have decided not to play punching bag.

You expect them to be an unpaid entertainer/clown who volunteers their free time so that the antags can have fun with no limits or regard for others?

[Nilons]

Dying because you tried to play passively vs. a cult isn't fun
Also this is all entirely out of player control its totally moot to try and blame them for code and policy issues

We have ALWAYS had cult. This isn't some new thing that popped up one night. This is a player problem, no doubts about it. Conversion modes suck because ''''''''we'''''''' let our policies and attitude swing towards whatever the fuck we have right now. It sucks, and it's unfun.

It used to be diligently doing(RPing) your job if you didn't win the antag lottery that round while everything falls apart around you. Now it's about doing as much as fucking possible to screw over the other antags before they do what they're designed and intended to do.

We had rev and cult.

And then we had rev and cult and gang and clock cult and shadowling and hand of god.

>what they are designed and intended to do

Hit critical mass and stomp me? Do you leave the carry in dota alone because its not fair if you harass him while he is weak?

>you should just RP!

It's a fucking minefield of ways to get banned and all the cool shit is being coded for the antags who are allowed to kill you in repetive and mundane manners so its not much fun anyway. It is selfish and unrealistic to expect other players to just sit around and not have fun for your benefit.

A carry in Dota is not a good analogy here, you get a big map they show up on whenever they farm and you know they're in the game from loading screen, you are right though. I don't think we should force players to lose, but this needs to be acknowledged as a problem and not dismissed as "that's just the game dude" because we have control over what is and isn't the game. Would a possible solution be to limiting antag features being added like regular features being added? I.e if you wanna or your new toy you need to make a successful merge that adds to a nonantag job. Sawrge is right, it is a code problem, so let's try to fix it. Making a policy change here will be much more difficult and hard to get everyone to agree on, but as soon as we can agree that it is a problem the sooner we can move towards the solution.

[Screemonster]

Telling team A they have to lose on purpose and be sportsmanlike while team B doesnt and having team A react negatively is not evidence of a player problem. They recognize they're getting shafted and have decided not to play punching bag.

You expect them to be an unpaid entertainer/clown who volunteers their free time so that the antags can have fun with no limits or regard for others?

I'm reminded of a thread I saw when I was browsing bay's ban requests forum just to see the shit they got upset about.
There was a malf round. As on oldmalf. But of course it's Bay, so ~roleplaying~ had to happen.
So the AI decided to arrange a party. This would be the perfect thing for crew morale and it was keeping their spirits up and allowing them direct their efforts towards a common goal. The heads agreed, and the crew pulled together, remodeled the bar, chef and botanists pulled out all the stops, got the entire crew in on getting things ready for this thing.
Meanwhile, it was hacking APCs. When it was ready, it made an announcement to proceed to the bar, the celebrations were about to commence. Then "Oh, and there's a special surprise announcement I've been asked to make by central command."
CODE DELTA.
Two minutes on the clock. And of course it bolted them all in the bar and depowered the doors. And every door on the way to its core. Obviously it won.

Cut to the forums, and instead of people talking "holy shit we suspected nothing", people were calling for the AI to be banned. Because it's "bad roleplaying" and "powergaming" to get the timer down that low before calling Delta. Literally someone in the thread was saying that it's not fair for the round antagonist to not "give them a chance to win".

Security are finding themselves in the position that AI player found themselves in.

[Steelpoint]

What was the outcome of that ban thread Screenmonster?

On topic. Security has always been forced into a violent disposition during crew conversion modes, I think most admins accept that security will likely end up accidently killing plenty of innocent people.

When you ask the question, is it right to kill a hundred innocent people to kill one guilty person, sadly security has no choice but to answer in the affirmative. More so because that one guilty person can easily turn those hundred innocent into guilty if given time.

[Screemonster]

iirc, they kinda forced the AI guy to issue an apology for the way he was playing. Which I find sickening to be frank.

And Nilons is right in that the DOTA analogy is flawed because sec don't know about the cult at roundstart - which means they have to play every round as if there could be one if they don't want to get turbomurdered in the event that there is.
In a traitor round, executing some pair of assistants that picked a disarmfight with an officer would get you banned and yelled at by deadchat for being shitsec, but if they're revs pulling your punches gets you dead. And mocked by ghosts for being shit and unrobust.

[InsaneHyena]

>I was bwoinked for killing people in the conversion rounds!
Tell them to fuck off. If you are banned or given a note, start an admin complaint and laugh.

Also, despite how much I love cult - and I love it so much, I fuck it, I always found deconversions in it annoying. Something must be done about them, and I'm considering '''coding''' a balance PR.

[imblyings]

like kor said, there's not much to be done unless we tell both teams to chill out. It's the old 'if you want more ''''rp'''''''''''''' you need to remove the antag free for all license' catchphrase.

[oranges]

It used to be

[Leon962]

Maybe if holy water could be ordered it would be easier to deal with cults and non cultists.

Religious supplies crate comes with a flask of holy water, which is about three deconversions.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Maybe we should remove gang and clock cult, and re-implement oldcult and see if that makes everything less incredilbly turbo-hitler for ss13. Because everyone says conversion mode rounds are awful and the response is "we've always had them"

but conversion modes other than rev have changed immensely and become way more powerful, with powerful new modes being added to the point where *sec is being removed for one TDM conversion mode which couldn't be balanced with having them as an opponent*

[Pascal125]

Maybe we should remove gang and clock cult, and re-implement oldcult and see if that makes everything less incredilbly turbo-hitler for ss13. Because everyone says conversion mode rounds are awful and the response is "we've always had them"

but conversion modes other than rev have changed immensely and become way more powerful, with powerful new modes being added to the point where *sec is being removed for one TDM conversion mode which couldn't be balanced with having them as an opponent*

I don't think Joan would ever allow that...
Oldcult was nice because it actually required people work together and share words to transcribe tomes if they wanted to make any progress. It meant it was less snowball-y on their side. But the thing is, it always had the problem of some not knowing how to or simply leaving without ever sharing words or picking up a tome, which would often make things difficult when you tried to learn words or use a rune. Somehow i can only see that issue being increased if it were brought back now. But i might be wrong.

Anyways. Yeah, if you can't deconvert them reasonably. I feel as though your only option kind of is to execute them. They could be one, they might not be. But generally being dead gives them more freedom then being restrained to a chair all shift. And they're less of a threat, too. They'll complain and moan either way. Might as-well not force yourself to endure it ICly. That isn't to say it's what i enjoy doing. But i don't exactly see an alternative most times, and from my personal experience it's painful to just sit there all day waiting. It sucks if you're not one. But you're often a potential risk in situations like these.

If you don't crack down on a revolution. within minutes. The entire Crew will swarm you and Cargo will be ordering guns. This often ends in security's immediate demise. And bombs.
If you don't crack down on a cult. Within minutes, they'll be building a base and stun-papering officers. They only need nine people to summon, and they often do this very quickly. Clock is the same, just more robust if people know how to use it.
If you don't crack down on gangs, well. It's anybody's game but generally they'll shoot you before they shoot themselves. Often with insta-crit automatic weaponry via surprise attacks.
If you let people run around without even bothering to deconvert because you can't. Chances are they'll wind up trying to kill you sooner or later; too.
Generally the way these modes work. Is one side "Snowballs" the other. And it's often dependent on if security can find out and secure de-conversion methods fast enough.
So they'll often take measures to prevent security from being capable of deconverting. They kind of ask for and cause it when they leave no other option.

And i say this as a security officer who goes out of his way to ensure Implants/Holy Water can be secured often unnecessarily risking my life to try to make it happen.

[Reece]

I love playing cult, Rev and Gang as security.

It basically lets me play as the bad guy from WW2. Last Rev round we didn't manage to get implants for everyone, so I had to break out two boxes of body bags, lined them up in a row and shot people on them so we could most efficiently slaughter the station. Funniest shit ever bringing the last few over there and having them go ballistic when the two attending officers were there zipping up the last of previous shot lot.

Fun times.

[XDTM]

The lack of fun is from those that are executed while not being cult and from the security who cares about these people. Of course there are security players who just take the excuse to gleefully murderbone with the armory and have fun doing so.

[Reece]

The lack of fun is from those that are executed while not being cult and from the security who cares about these people. Of course there are security players who just take the excuse to gleefully murderbone with the armory and have fun doing so.

Once the implants run dry there's no real option beyond execution, if you release the guys back into the wild all that happens is they get culted again.

[ShadowDimentio]

If you can't deconvert easily just kill the antags. Only start slaughtering everyone indiscriminately when you have no means left to deconvert and the station has gone to hell.

[InsaneHyena]

Maybe we should remove clock cult

Do it. Do it now.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

If you can't deconvert easily just kill the antags. Only start slaughtering everyone indiscriminately when you have no means left to deconvert and the station has gone to hell.

The difference between a non-antag and an antag in conversion modes is that one becomes the other thirty seconds after you release them from the brig after arresting and searching the department.

In a serious case of stuff like rev or cults sec -cannot- let anyone go. If you're proven nonantag and implanted, you're on the sec team. If you're proven nonantag/deconverted and not implanted they have to keep you in the brig to stop you inevitably getting reconverted with the infinite free converts conversion antags get and wasting their limited deconversion supplies, and if they cant prove you nonantag they cant let you go in case you're an antagonist / you WILL be converted by the antagonists.

[ShadowDimentio]

I release people after searching them if I have no implants and find no antag candy on them, not worth the headache of trying to babysit them when they potentially haven't done anything while they try to escape.

[TehSteveo]

Conversion modes by their nature are obviously TDMs; where we use to have just two and not weighted as much as they are now. Add in current or attempted conversion modes such as clock cult, gangs, shadowling, and hand of god. Add in even pseudo-conversion modes like TC zombies , Traitor AI using borging machine, and the different tools the wizard gets that gains them teammates.

So, at the time in the past we were more or less willing to let heavy handedness and nature of the round play out; to where admins usually let things slide more during said rounds and we were all fine as they were not as common. Now we are super exposed and want something done because of it. At first it resulted in admins yelling at security for playing rough when they're literally team A during this modes and team B is generally trying to kill them. That was not fair and I argued that security shouldn't be punished because the game mode. Especially when the role is reversed and you are security and caught by the team antagonist; are they going to go out their way to remove your implant and convert you? Hell no. They kill you and that's the end of it. You're lucky if they shard and construct you during cult or maybe debrain you to serve a slaved AI to their cause.

I remember discussing this issue during my headmin tenure. So at this point it's either let the mode play out or both security and the team antagonist get told to conform to better rules, such as the team antagonist not to murder randoms, but make an attempt to convert them first.

[Atlanta-Ned]

It used to be

If you're going to undermine me with arbitrary numbers, at least don't half ass it. My first connection here was 2013-04-22. I played one round of cargo tech and went back to Nox because the movespeed here was too slow.

[J_Madison]

3 revheads dead, no revs harmed, short ~18 minute round.

No implants ordered.

Why?
Rev round called early, revhead 1 killed by security, revhead 2 was a lizard and shock-gassed in a locked room by AI, heads in brig, several "robust" revs were snatch and grabbed whilst getting disguises/making stunprods/being retarded. Implanted and released armed.

During raid on cargo, revhead 3 tried to convert newly implanted conscripts and got killed.

This is a case of quality vs quantity, few vs many, and the importance of a basic conversion and reconversion process.

[BeeSting12]

3 revheads dead, no revs harmed, short ~18 minute round.

No implants ordered.

Why?
Rev round called early, revhead 1 killed by security, revhead 2 was a lizard and shock-gassed in a locked room by AI, heads in brig, several "robust" revs were snatch and grabbed whilst getting disguises/making stunprods/being retarded. Implanted and released armed.

During raid on cargo, revhead 3 tried to convert newly implanted conscripts and got killed.

This is a case of quality vs quantity, few vs many, and the importance of a basic conversion and reconversion process.

added all the heads names to my meta robust list :^)

in all seriousness, this is a perfect example of a rev round going well for security and nonrevs. it's the rounds where security ISN'T that high quality/not enough of them where security and the heads are forced to start executing people who may or may not be a revolutionary.