Do you think shuttle calling is a SS13 design flaw?

[DiamondSentinel]

Bottom post of the previous page:

As for the antag reroll, either make extended come up more often to try and stop rerolls (as in, they have a higher chance to get an extended round than another antag round), or just stop developing antags besides fixing bugs. If antags stop getting more fun tools than the rest of the station, then people will care less about getting them.

this is my wet dream what the fuck

realistically, though. the majority of players seem to come here for that sort of gameplay, so it would alienate a lot of people to make such a radical change

Believe me. I love the ideas too.

My point with both of my suggestions is just that there's not really a realistic change we can make to the game without getting a new playerbase.

However, with the playerbase we have, I don't think we'll ever have trouble keeping players. People will keep coming back because it's the familiar, even if it starts to become less fun. Nightmares and new Clock Cult (to say nothing of the players in-game) are horrible, but I'm still playing on the server, because it's familiar.

[CPTANT]

Not like it matters because it won't ever get finished.

Probably not, but hey its a hobby.

[AnonymousNow]

~

Sounds right on the money, but it'd require a bit of a shift in the game (and datum antags).

[Steelpoint]

Its more a dream than anything, it'd require a massive change to the underlying game mechanics.

I'd say we would need to make the game and the environment far more deadly to people, hull breaches throwing people out into space, actual weapons being very dangerous and lethal, resources being in short supply, food mechanics maybe have an actual serious weighting instead of slowing you down, etc.

Certain antagonists would not see a major change, Traitors and similar would be mostly unchanged, maybe the 'escape alive' objective is replaced to steal an escape pod or something.

[AnonymousNow]

I'd say we would need to make the game and the environment far more deadly to people, hull breaches throwing people out into space, actual weapons being very dangerous and lethal, resources being in short supply, food mechanics maybe have an actual serious weighting instead of slowing you down, etc.

I don't think we'd need that, or want it. Or, at least, to such an extreme extent.

[DemonFiren]

actual weapons being very dangerous and lethal

Classic steelpoint, always buffing Sec.

[CPTANT]

actual weapons being very dangerous and lethal

Classic steelpoint, always buffing Sec.

lame meme 0/20

[Nilons]

Rounds that specifically have no shuttle like a gamemode would be great

[Anonmare]

Extend shuttle call timer, make it only possible to call the shuttle if a certain percentage of the crew are dead/braindead, delta alert is active, power level is below a certain amount, or a Syndicate ship is in range (and it's 25 mins past).

[AnonymousNow]

Extend shuttle call timer, make it only possible to call the shuttle if a certain percentage of the crew are dead/braindead, delta alert is active, power level is below a certain amount, or a Syndicate ship is in range (and it's 25 mins past).

Plus station integrity being below a certain amount, and we're golden.

[Steelpoint]

We tried that before and it failed miserably.

The issue was that the requirements to call the shuttle were so difficult to reach, and were utterly inflexible to the situations of the round, that you could see half the crew dead, entire departments destroyed and all sense of the chain of command crushed yet the system will still refuse an evacuation call.

It'd get to the point where the crew would actively damage the station to get it to the point where the evacuation could be sounded, amongst other things.

[AnonymousNow]

Sounds like a problem with the criteria, not the system itself.

On the flipside, we've got a shuttle that is very easy to call, but difficult to recall unless you have access (and the people who tried to get it called in the first place may try to kill you and will most likely have the access to seriously inconvenience you at the least). The shuttle calling system is a better simulation of entropy than the game itself at this point.

[Steelpoint]

I think the core problem was that after a lot of testing it was really hard to get a good criteria for evacuatrion.

Even if we did figure out that issue, the second hurdle was the fact that the system is inflexible for situations such as cult rounds, gang outbreaks, mass destruction, loss of command, anarchy, etc.

We had many situations where the station had fallen to utter shit, and everyone wanted to evacuate, but we simply could not due to fact that the station was not even close to reaching the criteria despite how shit the situation was.

Here is the main PR that proposed the change that was test merged for a while: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/27305

Code: Select all

The shuttle will auto recall if ALL the following are true:

A certain percentage of players are still alive (Defaults to 85%)
A certain percentage of players alive aren't antags (Defaults to 30%)
The station isn't damaged more than a certain rating (Defaults to 85% integrity)
The round hasn't gone over a certain length of time (Defaults to 1 hour)

[oranges]

make your own game if you think ours is so flawed with such a core mechanic

prove us wrong

[CPTANT]

Removing AI ability to call the shuttle would be an improvement.

No more lame "AI law 2 call shuttle"

If you want to call it actually get your ass to the console.

Still doesn't address the fact that calling the shuttle is just optimal play against traitors, changelings, wizards and cultists though.

[DiamondSentinel]

Removing AI ability to call the shuttle would be an improvement.

No more lame "AI law 2 call shuttle"

If you want to call it actually get your ass to the console.

Still doesn't address the fact that calling the shuttle is just optimal play against traitors, changelings, wizards and cultists though.

Except that, in that case, it becomes much easier for the shuttle to just absolutely never be called. It reduces the number of ways to call it from 2 pre-made consoles, 1 board, and R&D, plus an AI that's sentient and in a satellite surrounded by turrets, to just the premade ones. The 2 are easy to destroy (happens every other round for pete's sake), and R&D is also easy to destroy, so it's just secure tech storage.

[Togopal]

Code: Select all

The shuttle will auto recall if ALL the following are true:

A certain percentage of players are still alive (Defaults to 85%)
A certain percentage of players alive aren't antags (Defaults to 30%)
The station isn't damaged more than a certain rating (Defaults to 85% integrity)
The round hasn't gone over a certain length of time (Defaults to 1 hour)

Hot garbage

Also I love the compromise

Beyond this certain traumatic events will also always allow the shuttle to come at any point afterwards:

Code Delta AI
Live Nuke
Gang Takeover Attempt
Nar-Nar and/or Ratvar
Admin Shuttle Call
Nuke ops on the station

"The shuttle will be able to be called ONLY if it's too late"

This mentality is 10 times worse than the people who call the shuttle

[CPTANT]

Removing AI ability to call the shuttle would be an improvement.

No more lame "AI law 2 call shuttle"

If you want to call it actually get your ass to the console.

Still doesn't address the fact that calling the shuttle is just optimal play against traitors, changelings, wizards and cultists though.

Except that, in that case, it becomes much easier for the shuttle to just absolutely never be called. It reduces the number of ways to call it from 2 pre-made consoles, 1 board, and R&D, plus an AI that's sentient and in a satellite surrounded by turrets, to just the premade ones. The 2 are easy to destroy (happens every other round for pete's sake), and R&D is also easy to destroy, so it's just secure tech storage.

The shuttle auto calls if all consoles (and currently the AI) are destroyed.

[DiamondSentinel]

Removing AI ability to call the shuttle would be an improvement.

No more lame "AI law 2 call shuttle"

If you want to call it actually get your ass to the console.

Still doesn't address the fact that calling the shuttle is just optimal play against traitors, changelings, wizards and cultists though.

Except that, in that case, it becomes much easier for the shuttle to just absolutely never be called. It reduces the number of ways to call it from 2 pre-made consoles, 1 board, and R&D, plus an AI that's sentient and in a satellite surrounded by turrets, to just the premade ones. The 2 are easy to destroy (happens every other round for pete's sake), and R&D is also easy to destroy, so it's just secure tech storage.

The shuttle auto calls if all consoles (and currently the AI) are destroyed.

Oh? Huh. I've never seen that happen before. Well, that's neat. Gives the crew an interesting way to call the shuttle if there's no AI and no heads.

[AnonymousNow]

"The shuttle will be able to be called ONLY if it's too late"

Some of my favourite rounds have involved fighting through a broken and desolate station, picking up stragglers and trying to reach the next thing to keep us alive/get us out of here. Massive fires, power failure, meteor damage - they all result, frequently, in a hostile environment that you have to work through.

That kind of situation, where you're fighting for your life in a damaged tin can, seems to pop up so rarely nowadays. Coupled with the way people use the shuttle as a weapon against traitors, changelings, wizards, cultists etc., it makes me wonder whether or not people actually want to face adversity in the games they're playing, if they want a challenge, or if they just want to play atmos simulator in peace and start a fresh set of pipes to fuck up every half an hour.

Regarding the AI and how easy it is to get it to call the shuttle (literally any human, which is the vast majority of players, in most situations, can get it to call the shuttle at will by just telling it to). The way I see it, the only ways to fix it is to either remove its ability to call the shuttle (dangerous), give it the ability to recall the shuttle, or give it a seperate shuttle call timer of about 40 minutes. Coupled with calling a shuttle from a console, or by destroying consoles, or by Centcom intervention (which happens, often - including an instance in the past few months where an admin entered a round that'd gone on quietly for about an hour and forcecalled the shuttle for 0 minutes so they could reroll), there'd still be plenty - probably still too many - opportunities to call the shuttle, but at least it'd offset some of the damage.

[Atticat]

make your own game if you think ours is so flawed with such a core mechanic

prove us wrong

Look, I love SS13. And you've done more for it than I ever will have, but a certain russian already proved how fun an extremely dangerous environment can be. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but lasers being lethal, open airlocks sucking people into space, limited resources, the requirement to work together as a team or die alone, are all things that have been tried with success in that stupid russian rape simulator. So let's stop pretending like it's never been done. SS13 is a blast regardless, although I do wish things were more lethal. The station really isn't a deathtrap, and I'm under the impression it's supposed to be.

[LifeReign]

Raising the shuttle call time of the AI to 40 minutes and also removing the AI from the list of things to destroy to force a call (or at least until the AI can call it) could be interesting. Now if random human assistant wants the shuttle called at 20 minutes because he failed his antag role, he'll have to break into the bridge and captain's office to destroy the comms. Also makes it possible to call the shuttle without access and with a subverted/malf AI: just fight you way to the consoles and smash them.

[DiamondSentinel]

Raising the shuttle call time of the AI to 40 minutes and also removing the AI from the list of things to destroy to force a call (or at least until the AI can call it) could be interesting. Now if random human assistant wants the shuttle called at 20 minutes because he failed his antag role, he'll have to break into the bridge and captain's office to destroy the comms. Also makes it possible to call the shuttle without access and with a subverted/malf AI: just fight you way to the consoles and smash them.

Maybe make the AI only able to call if all heads are dead and/or all consoles are destroyed.

[The Clowns Pocket]

The shuttlecalling thing could actually theoretically be solved by letting people respawn after a long amount of time (I'm looking at 30 mins to over an hour). One of the big issues is that after a while you have people who are braindead (from boredom) or actually dead and they kinda get back in.

For obvious reasons I don't think this is something we should look into adding onto the server. It'd be like drones but worse, and on top of that while you could have a policy where you don't remember your previous life, in practice this is hard because it means (at best) outright acting oblivious to say, the guy who killed you with an e-sword.

Now you do have cloning and I am sure the issue of ghost-knowladge has been crept in before, but at least there you are allowed to remember such things like how you died and everything leading up to your death. You'd be an utterly new person if you outright respawned.

[AnonymousNow]

~

I like the sentiment, but I don't think that being dead is much of a deterrent anymore. One of my favourite things to do is make golems, and quite often when I end up in deadchat afterwards I'll find a dozen salty ghosts acting as if the dozen primed shells in xenobiology don't exist. The reason as to why completely eludes me.