Shooting first and asking questions if we're still alive later.

[Sightld2]

Bottom post of the previous page:

viewtopic.php?t=35040&view=unread#unread

I was playing pacifist moth sec this round, I think the last thing Jeff heard from me was "Cy-yb-o-or-gs R-R-OU-U-GUE"

I think Mister Jaeden raises a good point bringing up this section of the RPR6
"...-The overall status of the station factors in to the severity of committed crimes and the proportionality of security response-..."

Wonder how this one will turn out.

[conrad]

The hypno-grenade and hypno-flash are both zero rep items. If what you need is a gun, the makarov is 100 rep, which you can get by punching people four times, which is not the end of the world on Terry. Or you can get a laser gun from armory using a hand tele.

If your gimmick is to bone, yeah, progtot's gonna stop that. But I wouldn't consider "get big gun kill people lmfao" a gimmick.

So far the thing with most substance was honestly saying you don't like the thing. But saying it "stifles creativity" is just not true; the most interactive items are either zero rep or low enough rep that the "punch someone twice" objective unlocks it.

If you want to kill people the most ideal thing is probably like, a desword with noslips or the ebow (which is 0 rep now iirc?). A big gun can absolutely be leveraged in a lot of RP opportunities as a scary big gun really. The makrov doesn't really have the same fear factor. If we're talking about roleplay. But this is also something I don't really like- yeah you can rp but use the less cool looking small iron instead of the epic sexy big iron

Yeah but now we shifted from "I can't do it" to "I can't do it how I like it" and you're not gonna change that by pointing at a maintainer and going "what do you even know you don't play tg".

[kieth4]

Thanks for actually answering this time.
Progression traitor isn't the problem, as I have said the time locks aren't related to progression existing. They would be there regardless. If your answer really is "making literally anything not available at all times is problematic" then yeah I guess you're right and there's nothing that can be done to satisfy you.
But I'll try anyway.

Hypnoflashes aren't locked at all and you can buy them the second a round starts, so no problems there and that might be a relief to you.
You could use your carefully hoarded immediately available reputation to purchase a radioactive microlaser, which at a high enough power setting will both stun someone and make them hypnotically vulnerable, and then just walk up to someone and mesmerise them.
If you need specifically a .357 revolver then yeah you're SoL, but by now you could likely buy a pair of makarovs for the two of you while you pick up whatever matching outfits you're going to wear. Otherwise if you just want a weapon having two bodies is already a good advantage for stealing guns or batons from someone else using your emag, c4, teleporter, toolbox...
You might get in trouble while trying to steal guns from someone else but like... isn't that the point? What are you gathering a hypnotised posse for if not to get into trouble? Isn't that your job?

I will submit, I don't know what you even wanted the revolver for because you didn't say. If you wanted to hold someone up with a gun in order to have them surrender for hypnosis you'd need to wait at least until you could get a Makarov and even then, people might not actually be that scared of a Makarov when it doesn't kill them in two shots.
Having restrictions is certainly going to be more restrictive than having no restrictions, but we have so many tools that you can buy immediately, which I see people regularly creatively use (even when observing TG) that I will admit it is often very hard for me not to discount people saying that they vaguely rather than specifically "can't do any gimmicks" as lack of creativity.


As it doesn't seem to be commonly known which things are or aren't locked behind time, here's a full list of every item which is locked and how long you would need to do nothing for in order to unlock it.
This is a from roundstart timer not a how long I have been present timer, so if you become a traitor after 15 minutes you already have access to everything which appears at 15 minutes.

As we've said, doing secondary objectives fast-forwards this so if you do any of those the early ones tend to cut somewhere between 5-10 minutes off these values.
Pet murder is 3-6 minutes. Assault is 4-8 minutes. Petty thefts are 4-8. Heirloom destruction is 8-12. Sleeper surgery is 8-15 (but you'll only get it at minute 0 if you are in a department with a surgery bed). These are the objectives available the minute the round starts and later ones which usually require you to kill someone (though frankly, heirlooms often require that) are much more.
Kidnapping for some reason gives an absolutely pitiful amount of reputation but it does tend to give you 5+ tc so I guess that's the tradeoff.

Spoiler:

5 minutes (might as well not exist idk why we limit anything for 5 minutes)
Cash briefcase (lol why?)
C4
Clown Car
His Grace

10 minutes
Makarov
Throwing Weapons
Origami kit
Bag of C4
Gorilla Serum
Pie Cannon

15 minutes
TComms blackout
Combat Baking Kit
Gorilla Cubes (why is this different to the serum?)
Clown Bomb

20 minutes
ESword
Power Fist
Gloves of the North Star
Power Sink
Bag of X4
PDA exploder (??? i guess its annoying to lose your PDA at round start but skill issue)
Advanced Mimery
Laser Arm
Chemical Gun
Power blackout

30 minutes
Random bundles
Dual Eswords
Holoparasites
Revolver
Hacked Law Upload
Sleeping Carp
Singularity Beacon (rip)
Pizza Bomb
Minibomb
Big Bomb
Big EMP Bomb
Reverse Revolver
PKA Pressure Mod
Concealed Mech Weapon Bay
Spiders
Blast Cannon

>30 minutes
Elite MODsuit
Bunch of costumes

Anything not on that list you can just buy whenever. I would list those but there's like forty items.

Now if you asked me I'd say that Pizza and PDA bombs, Pie Cannons, anything with creates Gorillas, and AI Law Uploads are certainly higher than they need to be (frankly not sure any of them need a time lock at all) but you can see the themes are reasonably clearly:
- Anything which just lets you kill people very quickly and does nothing else.
- Anything which causes a significant amount of damage to a large area very quickly.

Thanks for the response.

Hypnoflashes aren't locked at all and you can buy them the second a round starts, so no problems there and that might be a relief to you.
You could use your carefully hoarded immediately available reputation to purchase a radioactive microlaser, which at a high enough power setting will both stun someone and make them hypnotically vulnerable, and then just walk up to someone and mesmerise them.
If you need specifically a .357 revolver then yeah you're SoL, but by now you could likely buy a pair of makarovs for the two of you while you pick up whatever matching outfits you're going to wear. Otherwise if you just want a weapon having two bodies is already a good advantage for stealing guns or batons from someone else using your emag, c4, teleporter, toolbox...
You might get in trouble while trying to steal guns from someone else but like... isn't that the point? What are you gathering a hypnotised posse for if not to get into trouble? Isn't that your job?

I will submit, I don't know what you even wanted the revolver for because you didn't say. If you wanted to hold someone up with a gun in order to have them surrender for hypnosis you'd need to wait at least until you could get a Makarov and even then, people might not actually be that scared of a Makarov when it doesn't kill them in two shots.

I think the hyponoflash in its current implementation is complete ass to use kinda, In the regard- yeah the gun was for getting people to submit via "fear rp" if you can call it that- I've had it fail with makrovs but work with the 357 really- the two shot gun as opposed to the kinda, pew pew makrov is probably why.

Having restrictions is certainly going to be more restrictive than having no restrictions, but we have so many tools that you can buy immediately, which I see people regularly creatively use (even when observing TG) that I will admit it is often very hard for me not to discount people saying that they vaguely rather than specifically "can't do any gimmicks" as lack of creativity.

I don't think that every single gimmick is out of the window here- If I presented such a point I misspoke. I just believe that (at least from my experience on LRP) a lot of gimmicks struggle if you can't start getting them done straight away and/or have a big scary tool to assist you in doing said gimmicks. This is, probably, due to the nature of LRP where everyone is constantly arming up and the further into the round you get the more lethal tools are in the hands of people who probably shouldn't have them- I view kidnapping as somewhat neigh impossible task that cannot occur without impending death the kidnapper past like 10-15 minutes for example. To that end, I feel like Old Traitor worked well- if you wanted to steal you got your contractor kit and popped off.
In that sense, I bought up your hours because I don't want to discount your opinion on this matter entirely (you are obviously a maintainer) but I'm not too sure if you understand the environment where a lot of these things occur (and at least from my perspective as a lrptoid, the issues come)

Pet murder is 3-6 minutes. Assault is 4-8 minutes. Petty thefts are 4-8. Heirloom destruction is 8-12. Sleeper surgery is 8-15 (but you'll only get it at minute 0 if you are in a department with a surgery bed). These are the objectives available the minute the round starts and later ones which usually require you to kill someone (though frankly, heirlooms often require that) are much more.

If you're going to do a gimmick on let's say LRP, a lot of these things will be hard to pull off without getting caught and getting fucked- obvs if your goal is to murderbone you won't care and you'll go BRRRRR but if you're trying to set up you'll be taking a lot more care so I discount these as things you'd do specifically when going for a gimmick. Hopefully that makes sense? It's also why I didn't include less time in my earlier post with the timer. When you are going to roleplay some fat gimmick you don't want to be caught and get absolutely owned so you vibe.

Anything locked on the list can and was in the past used for gimmicks (if it existed back then kinda). The reason why timelocks are pointed to as "progtot" is because progtot added the timelocks. The only thing I think is acceptable locking are bombs.

I think progtot excels if you want to murder people because you just wait and get get more gear than ever before but in terms of wanting to do some crazy rp stuff from the start of the round it can really hinder your ability.

Thank you for sharing your mind rlly, I think we'll disagree forever on this matter kinda but that's ok.

[kieth4]

The hypno-grenade and hypno-flash are both zero rep items. If what you need is a gun, the makarov is 100 rep, which you can get by punching people four times, which is not the end of the world on Terry. Or you can get a laser gun from armory using a hand tele.

If your gimmick is to bone, yeah, progtot's gonna stop that. But I wouldn't consider "get big gun kill people lmfao" a gimmick.

So far the thing with most substance was honestly saying you don't like the thing. But saying it "stifles creativity" is just not true; the most interactive items are either zero rep or low enough rep that the "punch someone twice" objective unlocks it.

If you want to kill people the most ideal thing is probably like, a desword with noslips or the ebow (which is 0 rep now iirc?). A big gun can absolutely be leveraged in a lot of RP opportunities as a scary big gun really. The makrov doesn't really have the same fear factor. If we're talking about roleplay. But this is also something I don't really like- yeah you can rp but use the less cool looking small iron instead of the epic sexy big iron

Yeah but now we shifted from "I can't do it" to "I can't do it how I like it" and you're not gonna change that by pointing at a maintainer and going "what do you even know you don't play tg".

Sorry if I was unclear previously, but let me phrase it in a clearer way.

I can achieve anything I want really. This isn't an issue, If I am playing more optimally I can own everyone with a makrov.

When doing an rp gimmick, I want to roleplay as a cowboy with a big iron for example.

Old tot let me do one straight away, the other doesn't so in a sense yes. I cannot do the rp gimmick how I like to w/o like sweating/optimal gameplay and that makes me . Hopefully this is more clear

[WineAllWine]

The hypno-grenade and hypno-flash are both zero rep items. If what you need is a gun, the makarov is 100 rep, which you can get by punching people four times, which is not the end of the world on Terry. Or you can get a laser gun from armory using a hand tele.

If your gimmick is to bone, yeah, progtot's gonna stop that. But I wouldn't consider "get big gun kill people lmfao" a gimmick.

So far the thing with most substance was honestly saying you don't like the thing. But saying it "stifles creativity" is just not true; the most interactive items are either zero rep or low enough rep that the "punch someone twice" objective unlocks it.

If you want to kill people the most ideal thing is probably like, a desword with noslips or the ebow (which is 0 rep now iirc?). A big gun can absolutely be leveraged in a lot of RP opportunities as a scary big gun really. The makrov doesn't really have the same fear factor. If we're talking about roleplay. But this is also something I don't really like- yeah you can rp but use the less cool looking small iron instead of the epic sexy big iron

Yeah but now we shifted from "I can't do it" to "I can't do it how I like it" and you're not gonna change that by pointing at a maintainer and going "what do you even know you don't play tg".

Sorry if I was unclear previously, but let me phrase it in a clearer way.

I can achieve anything I want really. This isn't an issue, If I am playing more optimally I can own everyone with a makrov.

When doing an rp gimmick, I want to roleplay as a cowboy with a big iron for example.

Old tot let me do one straight away, the other doesn't so in a sense yes. I cannot do the rp gimmick how I like to w/o like sweating/optimal gameplay and that makes me . Hopefully this is more clear

If you've got a plan for a gimmick just ask for a TC trade

[kieth4]

The hypno-grenade and hypno-flash are both zero rep items. If what you need is a gun, the makarov is 100 rep, which you can get by punching people four times, which is not the end of the world on Terry. Or you can get a laser gun from armory using a hand tele.

If your gimmick is to bone, yeah, progtot's gonna stop that. But I wouldn't consider "get big gun kill people lmfao" a gimmick.

So far the thing with most substance was honestly saying you don't like the thing. But saying it "stifles creativity" is just not true; the most interactive items are either zero rep or low enough rep that the "punch someone twice" objective unlocks it.

If you want to kill people the most ideal thing is probably like, a desword with noslips or the ebow (which is 0 rep now iirc?). A big gun can absolutely be leveraged in a lot of RP opportunities as a scary big gun really. The makrov doesn't really have the same fear factor. If we're talking about roleplay. But this is also something I don't really like- yeah you can rp but use the less cool looking small iron instead of the epic sexy big iron

Yeah but now we shifted from "I can't do it" to "I can't do it how I like it" and you're not gonna change that by pointing at a maintainer and going "what do you even know you don't play tg".

Sorry if I was unclear previously, but let me phrase it in a clearer way.

I can achieve anything I want really. This isn't an issue, If I am playing more optimally I can own everyone with a makrov.

When doing an rp gimmick, I want to roleplay as a cowboy with a big iron for example.

Old tot let me do one straight away, the other doesn't so in a sense yes. I cannot do the rp gimmick how I like to w/o like sweating/optimal gameplay and that makes me . Hopefully this is more clear

If you've got a plan for a gimmick just ask for a TC trade

Forgor about this

[bluedino1025]

As a sec main, a ton of us get horrifically burnt out not because of the antags (thought constant red stars and the bullshittery of progtot do help, also the fucking roundly space dragon) but because the crew have a constant urge to fuck with us. If you do anything wrong as security people are going to go out of their way to let you know, and they'll usually just scream SHITSEC which creates a horde nine times out of ten. And yeah, people constantly interfere with arrests I actually got metagrudged for a few weeks because I brigged a clown during a wiz shift. Mimes especially are the worst about fucking with sec, they always leave invisible walls and then of course can't talk to you so it's just a giant headache.

Anyways, on a less salty note. Dynamic really doesn't let you interact with the crew, which sucks! When I play sec I play it RP first and arresting antags second, but I never get a chance to talk. I can't talk to the traitors because they're off doing progtot shit and being sneaky, heretics are usually cool unless you're a target, but the rest are mainly just murderbone or want you dead. Hell, even as my completely mute character I'll point at my handcuffs if I need to arrest them, I prefer letting people go to sec on their own, but I just can't anymore. Dynamic also just keeps throwing shit at you, it isn't as bad now, but it still sucks ass.

And onto defending Jeff. He's one of the Big Three Manuel HoS's (Janel and Olivier <3). If I see Jeff is HoS and I'm crew, I know I'm safe. If I see him as sec, I know we're gonna be coordinated and well led. If I see him as antag I'll probably shoot him, because it's funny. I certainly don't think he should eat a ban for this as I've done practically the same thing, hell even worse, with no notes or anything. And I would have done the same in his case, if sec is getting fucked, the station is out of control, the ai is malf, there's fifteen fucktrillion antags, and a mime who I had placed in a cell because he was arrested with a group of antags starts breaking out, then yeah I'd shoot him. I do agree with Timber here, it's largely due in part with his notes, seeing as I fired lethals into a crowd because they shoved me on a black orbit, which I didn't even get bwoinked for let alone noted. Hell, I even ahelped the next day admitting to it as I saw it as a rulebreak and I was told "It was black orbit, I would've done the same." Mind you I have like five or six notes, if I had more then I probably would have caught shit for it. And Jeff usually does RP, hell a lot of sec wants to, issue is is that we can't. If we try to do anything with the crew we'll probably get shovestunned for our Gamer Gear or immediately have to run off to catch someone who sprayed graffiti or opened a rift or we just get shot by nukies. And the second all hell breaks loose, we have to constantly worry about every antag and we have to do it all perfectly because we have the crew and the admins breathing down our necks. Dynamic actually reached a point back when I actively played Manuel a ton where if a shitter was being annoying I'd stun them, cuff them, and table slam their leg and break it before tossing them out.

TLDR; Jeff is cool and shouldn't be banned. Manuel sec sucks dick. Dynamic murders sec players. I literally break people's legs with no notes and will break more. Jeff should talk more but at the same time the only way to survive as sec once everything goes tits up is to activate tunnel vision. Jeff also usually puts the crew first. Mimes are dickheads. So are clowns.

Anyways my crippling caffeine addiction is winning and I just used my brain too much so I'm gonna go mentally pass out.

[dendydoom]

snip

thanks for giving your thoughts. i agree that manuel sec is getting battered by dynamic and i'm fully behind tweaking dynamic to make it easier on them, let them RP more and ease the inevitable burnout that happens with every hos main.

all i wanted from this situation was for jeff to say literally anything. "stop or i'll shoot!" "if you don't go in a cell i'll open fire!" "prison break! execute them!" "i guess i just have to put you down myself if you're going to break out!" "i'm sick of dealing with you and i don't have time for this!"

literally anything before opening fire. again, i'm not looking for an essay or some pensive, overdramatic monologue to turn this into a thespian performance piece, i just wanted something to be said to turn it from a video game into a story.

he had the time to do so. if he did not and the mime was running for an open exit or charging jeff with a fireaxe, then i would be fully behind wordlessly capping them. but i watched the mime break out and stand locked in the cell hallway with nowhere to go. the warden tried to baton the mime but was crushed by the firelock. jeff dragged them out and then stood on the other side, staring at the mime, not saying anything because there was an invisible wall in front of the only exit. the mime, with nothing to do, started to futilely try to release will nodder (the detective pending demotion) because will was the only one trying to talk to the mime by claiming that jeff was going to execute them.

he had plenty of time, if he was going to stand there and wait for the wall to dissipate, to say literally anything to turn this from a silent run-and-gun into a meaningful interaction that puts an end to the mime's story. that is literally all i'm looking for. jeff killed a lot of people that round (by his own hand or by his orders) and i have no issue with any of them because they were deserved in the context of the round. but the mime was brigged for 10 minutes in a timerless cell for crashing into someone with a skateboard and then was silently shot to death for trying to walk out of their cell. this is not a story, and there were enough missed opportunities on the way to their early grave that i just don't see it as another run-of-the-mill rule 10 issue.

i have a feeling the jobban was not only the result of his note history but also his refusal to budge on the matter when he discussed it with TBM in ahelps. would it have been 7 days if it was my ruling? i can't say, i don't think so, but i've been told i'm too lenient...

[iwishforducks]

The issue is quite a few things are also locked behind reputation which means you're still heavily encouraged to do objectives unless you want to sit twiddling your thumbs for 40 minutes. I get that part of this is so that traitors don't just buy 20 TC worth of bombs and bomb the medbay shiftstart.

We wouldn't remove reputation, it's a gear timelock. The alternative is waiting.
Waiting is boring, which is why secondary objectives were added in the first place.
People see a shiny slot machine lever so they pull it.
People now only pull lever instead of being fun.

F

Literally nothing takes 40 minutes to unlock except for cosmetic showoff gear though.

imo reputation feels like feature creep. if the objective was to stop roundstart brainless desword boning/medbay bombing then why were so many items included in the timelock, and why wer objectives added to help skip said timelock?

i think one of the worst parts about this feature creeping is that it’s used as a damn talking point. “oh it’s never actually 15 minutes because you can do objectives to speed up the process!”

i think it’s crazy that you talk about FOMO and then immediately go on about how it’s a player problem that people are simply “pulling the lever”. like god bless just fucking remove side objectives and remove all the useless feature creep with it

[AsbestosSniffer]

As a sec main, a ton of us get horrifically burnt out not because of...the fucking roundly space dragon

People really don't talk enough about how painful Space Dragon can be, especially on Multi-Z stations like Tramstation, in lore they really like eating stairs it seems. I do pity sec for exactly things like this, they have a tonne of shit to deal with.

[kayozz]

I think personally the dynamic scaling on Manuel needs 'fixing' and Sec need a bit more leniency from the admins.
If Manuel is to be encouraged to continue to be an RP server, we shouldn't be really punishing players who RP as strict or lenient, or even tyrannical or cowardly variant of HOS if the situation the calls for it. Like in real life in any police force or jail system, we'll have 'by the book' cops, crooked cops who might take bribes, or no-nonsense cops who in a Black star/ prison riot situation might be forgiven for making mistakes. Each player will react differently. One might start blasting, another might try defusing, whilst another will wander into maints and die stupidly.

My point is... we shouldn't be encouraging 'cookie-cutter' lack of styles or lack of archetypes/ one size fits all styles of play.

It's the nature of the game. The SM sometimes blows up, Toxins catches fire, Virology has leaks and sometimes Sec gets stressed out with a wave of growing threats.

I'm not criticising anyone here, admins too, have to make snap decisions, but sometimes it seems maybe admins might just look at notes and temp bans, which influence punishments, which breed more notes and temp bans.


--- edit:
A tough HOS might make tiders think twice and also encourage sneakier antag types of play, all adding to the emergent dynamics of gameplay that is the basis of SS13. Whilst a less strict HOS might be known for charisma and negotiation or a 3rd might be known for a completely different style of playing.

[Jacquerel]

i think one of the worst parts about this feature creeping is that it’s used as a damn talking point. “oh it’s never actually 15 minutes because you can do objectives to speed up the process!”

I didn't say "it's not 15 minutes" I said "it's not 40 minutes". The point was correcting it to the correct value of 15 minutes.

[iwishforducks]

i think one of the worst parts about this feature creeping is that it’s used as a damn talking point. “oh it’s never actually 15 minutes because you can do objectives to speed up the process!”

I didn't say "it's not 15 minutes" I said "it's not 40 minutes". The point was correcting it to the correct value of 15 minutes.

i should have been more specific that i was being generalist about said sentiment. for example, conrad’s post exemplifies this sentiment:

Bro it takes 10 minutes for you to have everything you need to do whatever you want. 5 if you're doing progtot stuff.

If 10 minutes feels like 40 minutes for you, the problem isn't progtot.

That's without including stuff that you can get roundstart. Like sleepy pen + poison kit, chameleon kit and hand tele.

sorry i just have a pure hatred for progtot at this point. dont mistake the bone i gotta pick with it for me trying to pick a bone with folks personally

[Archie700]

Let's be clear here.
Jeff lasered the mime to death because the mime tried to escape and free the detective.
The detective was in prison because he disagreed with Jeff and broke the heretic knives.
The mime tried to escape because he was left alone with no idea on what his sentence was and was encouraged by the detective as he told him that the HoS will kill him.
He was left alone with no idea because Jeff just shunted him into the transfer center without fully establishing what his crime actually was.
His crime: interfering with an arrest - by bumping into the sec officer twice with a skateboard by accident and lag, while not resisting.
There is a way to play a strict HoS. This isn't it.

[CPTANT]

His crime: interfering with an arrest - by bumping into the sec officer twice with a skateboard by accident and lag, while not resisting.

And how exactly was sec supposed to know this when it was repeated by a character that by definition does not speak?

General state of the station also definitely played a role. If the permabrig is out of comission and the brig is full of enemies of the corp the reaction is going to be a lot different then if this would have happened on a quiet moment.

[dendydoom]

His crime: interfering with an arrest - by bumping into the sec officer twice with a skateboard by accident and lag, while not resisting.

And how exactly was sec supposed to know this when it was repeated by a character that by definition does not speak?

General state of the station also definitely played a role. If the permabrig is out of comission and the brig is full of enemies of the corp the reaction is going to be a lot different then if this would have happened on a quiet moment.

the mime and the detective pending demotion were the only ones in the cell block. everyone else had been executed, which was fair enough, because they were antags and one of them tried to attack jeff. the mime was just standing there, and put an invisible wall in front of the only exit to stop jeff from coming in and killing him.

jeff had admitted that he didn't know why the mime was in the brig in the first place. in lieu of releasing them, he told the warden to keep them locked up. they had been bucklecuffed in a cell without a timer set.

and you know what? fine. i don't expect the hos to keep track of every person at every moment and deduce on a dime which ones are dangerous and which ones are skateboarding hooligans while the fall of rome occurs around them. the context of the chaos of the round does matter a lot. but when you're standing there patiently waiting for the wall to disappear so you can kill someone who has so far not shown any reasonable means of attacking you, the very least you could do is throw them a line before you laser them to death while they're trapped.

that way, at the very least, the player can see that they were one (very small) part of the greater story. they were executed by a head of security who was losing control of the situation and had to make a difficult call to put the lives of his officers over this possibly innocent mime. very dramatic and compelling stuff. but instead from the mime's perspective they were thrown in a cell and then wordlessly shot 10 minutes later with no clue why or what the thought process was of the person who did it. i feel like players on the rp server deserve a tiny bit better than that. jeff is a good player and i would like to see him continue to play and enjoy being the hos but i also think if he spoke a little more in these situations when it's possible then he would be letting a lot more people into the interesting stories of the round.

[mrmelbert]

Manuel admins need to cancel midrounds more often, especially if they notice security is being overwhelmed or another antag is attempting a roleplay based gimmick.

[Constellado]

Manuel admins need to cancel midrounds more often, especially if they notice security is being overwhelmed or another antag is attempting a roleplay based gimmick.

Once I was acting captain and a nukie arrived pretending to be cc official with the name Chad Nuclear Operative. I was in the middle of RP with them when a dragon showed up.

I ended up using all of my gun ammo and defensive tools I had in hand for the dragon. When I was walking back to continue the RP, I was stopped by another nukie.

I really wanted to see how the Chad Nuclear operative would go about getting the disk, but alas, dragon ruined it.

[saprasam]

i think we should leave the job of protecting the station from evil to the noble assistants who run into danger with nothing but a spear and a bit of luck

[mrmelbert]

Once I was acting captain and a nukie arrived pretending to be cc official with the name Chad Nuclear Operative. I was in the middle of RP with them when a dragon showed up.

I ended up using all of my gun ammo and defensive tools I had in hand for the dragon. When I was walking back to continue the RP, I was stopped by another nukie.

I really wanted to see how the Chad Nuclear operative would go about getting the disk, but alas, dragon ruined it.

Yeah stuff like Dragons and Blobs which have absolutely no roleplay opportunity should readily be cancelled by admins if people are actively doing something unique.
They detract sooo much from the round.

[CMDR_Gungnir]

[snip]

I agree with everything here. I used to love being a Det Main, I used to be one of the recognisable ones. I've had heretics straight up admit that the reason they sic'd all their ghouls on me was because I was too good at my job and they needed me out of the way for a while. But the current trend with Dynamic just pushed it towards being unplayable.

In the past, things worked well enough to gather evidence and bring people in. You could afford to play it loose with them and tracker/release. Because people knew you'd be more lenient, they were willing to be, too. It created a great cat and mouse dynamic between Sec and the Antags, you got time to actually RP and work.

Now? I'd gather enough evidence to have strong enough suspicions to bring people in, but of course they didn't have anything on them, so it's all just circumstantial, no matter how much I believe it. We're forced to let them go. I manage to get conclusive evidence. I am halfway through calling it on the radio when I hear a call out of "HELP MEDBAY, JOHN TRAITOR BAD". By the time Sec has gotten there and grabbed him, the QM has called out that the CMO is a Heretic who just tried to sacrifice him, an officer has found another Heretic in maintenance and gone radio silent, no longer on sensors, we've just gotten an alert that a Dragon spawned, and the Clown is screaming about a Blob.

And that's on a GOOD round, on most rounds I don't have time to do any investigations before the same thing happens. The role's functionally pointless half the time because people are either so afraid of being caught and RR'd when the chaos kicks in that they do nothing or they go 10,000,000% in the hopes of amping the chaos to the level that they're physically unstoppable.

On the note of Jeff, my main static literally hates him IC because when we'd have shitters griefing the Sec Team, she'd suggest that we just kill them and be done with it, and he'd be strictly by-the-book about it. But that never gets brought up in these situations, that he's one of the people pushing back against Sec getting overly violent, when things aren't reaching that level. All anyone brings up is "Sometimes Jeff gets a little gung-ho when shit hits the fan" but don't realize that shit not only hits the fan, but has since splattered across the entire room, near enough to every single round lately.

It's not just dynamic that's the problem, either. While the sheer number of antags, as well as the massive influx of round-ending threat midrounds is definitely a major problem, the fact that LITERALLY ANY ANTAG YOU RUN INTO COULD ALSO BECOME A ROUNDENDING THREAT IF YOU LEAVE THEM BE means that you can't afford to play with kid gloves because you never know if that dude is just acting small so you leave him alone and he can speedrun a Battlecruiser.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

While rounds are constantly a sea of indeterminate chaos where station-ending threat after station-ending threat arrive in quick succession, usually before the previous one has been handled, leading to insanity like being independently attacked by three different kinds of antag while fighting a superoutbreak (I hate space dragon on busy rounds it should only ever spawn on "quiet rounds" where jackshit is happening)...

...a lot of people really underestimate the latitude that yelling "GET ON THE FLOOR OR ILL BASH YOU, PERP" gives you when they don't get on the floor and you subsequently bash them.

[iansdoor]

Manuel admins need to cancel midrounds more often, especially if they notice security is being overwhelmed or another antag is attempting a roleplay based gimmick.

You say that like it is easy. You got 10 seconds to notice that the event needs to be canceled. That is an issue I see alot on running local for testing anyways.

[RedBaronFlyer]

Manuel admins need to cancel midrounds more often, especially if they notice security is being overwhelmed or another antag is attempting a roleplay based gimmick.

You say that like it is easy. You got 10 seconds to notice that the event needs to be canceled. That is an issue I see alot on running local for testing anyways.

No idea how code works but I feel like this could be solved by having the gap between dynamic going "okay we're gonna spawn this antag" and "we are spawning this antag now" be bigger

[iansdoor]

Manuel admins need to cancel midrounds more often, especially if they notice security is being overwhelmed or another antag is attempting a roleplay based gimmick.

You say that like it is easy. You got 10 seconds to notice that the event needs to be canceled. That is an issue I see alot on running local for testing anyways.

No idea how code works but I feel like this could be solved by having the gap between dynamic going "okay we're gonna spawn this antag" and "we are spawning this antag now" be bigger

Gotcha! I'll let you know, game admins got 10 seconds to cancel the dynamic injection and if missed, time of actual injection is then a ~5 second afterwards.

I genuinely don't know if that would make the key difference to dynamic. I have had and seen plenty of folks that roll whatever 4 minutes before the shuttle arrives. Which leads to folks shrugging on what to do, then classic default to syndie bombing, ttv, hellfoaming the shuttle.
I think to myself, "does late joining antagonist promote RP?", my opinion is nah. The injection rate is weird in what it rolls for, cause there ain't a limiting factor to accounting alive and functional crew in a current moment of a mid-round injection.
Anywho, have another blob on the house.

[NecromancerAnne]

Yeah stuff like Dragons and Blobs which have absolutely no roleplay opportunity should readily be cancelled by admins if people are actively doing something unique.
They detract sooo much from the round.

I wouldn't mind more time to cancel midrounds sometimes. Maybe 30 seconds or so before firing. Is that a config option? It should be.

Also goddamn bless Chad Nuclear Operative. He managed to induct a traitor, set up a listening post on the station, directly walked up to the HoP and asked to see the disk, did a lot of cool roleplay trying to pretend not to be the most obvious nuclear operative ever to exist, managed to steal the disk, gave it to the other ops, and stayed behind on the burning station to hold off security on his own so that the rest could get away.

What a fucking legend. I loved it.

[TheRex9001]

Well with the new dynamic manager system admins do actually have the ability to control the options dynamic has for antags, on a round to round basis. Effectivly this means admins can sorta recreate gamemodes.

[iansdoor]

Well with the new dynamic manager system admins do actually have the ability to control the options dynamic has for antags, on a round to round basis. Effectivly this means admins can sorta recreate gamemodes.

My issue is that there ain't nobody on sometimes and 8/10 are tots at lowpop hours.

[MooCow12]

With what happened with the mime, I feel like security staff would be alot more chill if space law included that time the person spent in custody counted towards whatever sentence they are given.

Instead the common mentality is “you must be in this specific box unable to do anything for x amount of minutes” which is a very uncaring and passive approach to dealing with prisoners, just sec having to roughly estimate how long someone has been in custody would go a long way towards making the process more engaging and less cold / strict of an interaction

[JupiterJaeden]

The detective was in prison because he disagreed with Jeff and broke the heretic knives.

Yo archie, I ain't gonna comment on the rest of it but just so you know, this ain't why I cuffed the detective. I did that because he started stunning me while I was executing the other antags lol. The heretic knife breaking thing was not even remotely on my mind at the moment and I would never demote someone over it unless they did it like repeatedly against orders. He broke the knives before I even got a chance to tell him not to.

[JupiterJaeden]

With what happened with the mime, I feel like security staff would be alot more chill if space law included that time the person spent in custody counted towards whatever sentence they are given.

Instead the common mentality is “you must be in this specific box unable to do anything for x amount of minutes” which is a very uncaring and passive approach to dealing with prisoners, just sec having to roughly estimate how long someone has been in custody would go a long way towards making the process more engaging and less cold / strict of an interaction

I always do this already, btw. I factor in time spent in cuffs or time spent being healed in medbay when passing down any kind of timed sentences or when setting gulag points.

This mime was not given any kind of formal timed sentence at all, he was just bucklecuffed to a cell by an officer to be out of the way while the others were being executed. I don't know where that exact officer went to next, they probably ended up dying somewhere out of the brig.

[Misdoubtful]

Manuel admins need to cancel midrounds more often, especially if they notice security is being overwhelmed or another antag is attempting a roleplay based gimmick.

Sometimes I feel like one of the few that actually does this. I'd love to see the stats across all the servers for midround cancels at some point. Maybe even per admin, just for fun.

[RaveRadbury]

Yet another player who takes their job so seriously that they put the role before the rules.

You hate to see it.

[Pepper]

why is there no way to weight the ratio of filled sec/command roles to the amount of antags that can spawn

[NecromancerAnne]

There are some negatives to that approach. It's very possible to bottom out early round antagonist spawns by joining late as security if that system was in place. And while it might seem absurd to expect active efforts to abuse the system in that way; where this functionality did exist on other servers that I played, it was actually abused by players to lower the potential presence of antagonists/potentially being a target of said antagonists by joining late if you fully intended on being security that round. Since you benefit either way by late joining, most sec just did that.

Of course, progtot does weaken that strategy a little bit by making the objectives change dynamically over the course of the round. But it'll keep you safe from roundstart heretics until they opt to reroll their heart targets.

[Pepper]

There are some negatives to that approach. It's very possible to bottom out early round antagonist spawns by joining late as security if that system was in place. And while it might seem absurd to expect active efforts to abuse the system in that way; where this functionality did exist on other servers that I played, it was actually abused by players to lower the potential presence of antagonists/potentially being a target of said antagonists by joining late if you fully intended on being security that round. Since you benefit either way by late joining, most sec just did that.

Of course, progtot does weaken that strategy a little bit by making the objectives change dynamically over the course of the round. But it'll keep you safe from roundstart heretics until they opt to reroll their heart targets.

why not make a failsafe that guarantees a sleeper agent spawn if security latejoins very shortly after roundstart?

[Cheshify]

Manuel admins need to cancel midrounds more often, especially if they notice security is being overwhelmed or another antag is attempting a roleplay based gimmick.

All admins on every server should feel no stress about fully disabling dynamic and random events whenever they want to DM a round. I set threat to 0 and manually trigger every random event and antag spawn pretty often, and it makes for some of the best curated rounds in terms of threat

You as an admin are more than just a banbot, we should never be beholden to Dynamic as a superior force of round management when we are thinking and feeling creatures that can make judgement calls on what's probably fun. DM in good faith and you will never be in trouble.

That also doesn't mean "make sure the station wins every round and every antag gets stopped and the threat is always manageable." No, sometimes it's okay to crush the station under a meteor storm while a space dragon tears through service and the clown has just driven his clown car into the active singulo.

However, unlike dynamic, you can hold off next round when the players are sick of survival stories and want to chill, RP, and build projects. Dynamic is flawed because it can send wizards five rounds in a row at random.

[NecromancerAnne]

why not make a failsafe that guarantees a sleeper agent spawn if security latejoins very shortly after roundstart?

It might be reasonable to establish a failsafe for some antagonists, but not others. Not every antagonist is injected into the round consistently with their roundstart counterpart, such as lings only being added via space, and there being no alternative for antags such as blood brothers.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily disagree with security presence more strongly influencing antagonist spawns than at present, but it is no simple implementation.

Just last night I saw a 80 threat round on a 25 man strong station, and a little under half the people in that round were antagonists. And they were very active. And worse yet, there was exactly zero security presence. These kinds of scenarios are cropping up a lot, and it would be nice to have it be at least slightly more accounted for in antagonist numbers.

[Jacquerel]

I know that downstream where there is only low pop we just put a hard cap on "percentage of players who can be antagonists at once" after which it just stops picking any new ones

[CMDR_Gungnir]

Yet another player who takes their job so seriously that they put the role before the rules.

You hate to see it.

How is THAT your take-away from this whole situation?

[RedBaronFlyer]

Yet another player who takes their job so seriously that they put the role before the rules.

You hate to see it.

How is THAT your take-away from this whole situation?

Never underestimate the absolutely baffling takes people can have. I'm at least happy a few of the admins and a headmin or two finally said what everyone else has been saying for months in regards to dynamic being a clusterfuck that can actively hinder RP + Cheshify accurately pointing out that too many antags are station ending threats and that too many antags are station killers if allowed to linger long enough.

I unironically think Oranges put it best with this:

so, dynamic is good because it lets us prevent "alright guys we killed the wizard, there are now no more threats" but we've tuned it to the desires of insane crack addict "security congaline that threatens to press the big red X if they go 5 seconds without shooting an antag" players

And TheBibleMelts with:

yeah but thats the thing
security don't have time to deal with people properly anymore
because progtot and dynamic are just like
FUCK YOU HAVE 7 HERETICS
BY THE WAY THERE'S A GUY WITH 80 TC's ABOUT TO RUIN THE STATION
HEY IS THAT A NUKIE?
security needs time to fucking breathe and actually roleplay being a cop
security is actively discouraged from any manner of roleplay because if they try to interrogate a dude, or spend 3 minutes brigging somebody for a law break, they have a ticking time bomb about to go off in 8 parts of the station

[CMDR_Gungnir]

Yet another player who takes their job so seriously that they put the role before the rules.

You hate to see it.

How is THAT your take-away from this whole situation?

Never underestimate the absolutely baffling takes people can have. I'm at least happy a few of the admins and a headmin or two finally said what everyone else has been saying for months in regards to dynamic being a clusterfuck that can actively hinder RP + Cheshify accurately pointing out that too many antags are station ending threats and that too many antags are station killers if allowed to linger long enough.

It's wild to me, seeing you taking such a hard stance and saying that.

Not that it's a bad thing, I just remember you as being one of the more chill people who took everything as it came. I stopped playing anywhere near as much as I used to because of all of this, so seeing this is like...

It's good seeing that I'm not alone, but it's disappointing seeing it's becoming such an issue that even you're losing your patience with it.

Edit:

Honestly, as much as Oranges and TBM are both very correct, I still think the bigger issue is just that pretty much everything's round-ending if left alone. Even with 20 antags, if they're smaller scale you can still afford to take your time, because the power of the others will stay largely the same, and you can get to them after. The urgency comes from the number of them and what they're doing, rather than "The longer I take, the harder they'll be to deal with, and the more likely that the round comes to a hasty conclusion, putting a hard stop to the RP or projects people were working on."

[RedBaronFlyer]

Yet another player who takes their job so seriously that they put the role before the rules.

You hate to see it.

How is THAT your take-away from this whole situation?

Never underestimate the absolutely baffling takes people can have. I'm at least happy a few of the admins and a headmin or two finally said what everyone else has been saying for months in regards to dynamic being a clusterfuck that can actively hinder RP + Cheshify accurately pointing out that too many antags are station ending threats and that too many antags are station killers if allowed to linger long enough.

It's wild to me, seeing you taking such a hard stance and saying that.

Not that it's a bad thing, I just remember you as being one of the more chill people who took everything as it came. I stopped playing anywhere near as much as I used to because of all of this, so seeing this is like...

It's good seeing that I'm not alone, but it's disappointing seeing it's becoming such an issue that even you're losing your patience with it.

Edit:

Honestly, as much as Oranges and TBM are both very correct, I still think the bigger issue is just that pretty much everything's round-ending if left alone. Even with 20 antags, if they're smaller scale you can still afford to take your time, because the power of the others will stay largely the same, and you can get to them after. The urgency comes from the number of them and what they're doing, rather than "The longer I take, the harder they'll be to deal with, and the more likely that the round comes to a hasty conclusion, putting a hard stop to the RP or projects people were working on."

I meant it more in this way:
Although I heavily disagree with the ban, at the very least, it's brought up the conversation that dynamic has been a bit too spicy to the point that security has no time to breathe. I like rounds where the station goes to shit, I like rounds where some stuff happens, and I like rounds where there isn't that much antag stuff going on. I was fed up because dynamic being fixed in early September actually made dynamic worse IMO. I have issues with a majority of antags being potential round-enders because it means that security is heavily incentivized towards always operating on shoot-to-kill mode, which I don't think is good for a roleplay environment. I'm happy that dynamic has been tweaked (at least on MRP) to be a bit more chill and that admins now have the ability to dungeon master a round a bit more by controlling antagonist spawns.

As for the "Never underestimate the absolutely baffling takes people can have." Yeah, I need to cool off a bit and not instant react to things I disagree with. I was acting assholish because I was a bit annoyed by that being their take of the whole situation when it very clearly wasn't a "Officer Shitsec laser guns a clown that slipped him in the hallway that had a syndie balloon" situation.

I've never felt like I've been a relaxed person who took stuff as it came, to be honest. I've felt more like I've been overly uptight about stuff. I definitely need to work on not getting riled up easily, though.

[CMDR_Gungnir]

I meant it more in this way:
Although I heavily disagree with the ban, at the very least, it's brought up the conversation that dynamic has been a bit too spicy to the point that security has no time to breathe. I like rounds where the station goes to shit, I like rounds where some stuff happens, and I like rounds where there isn't that much antag stuff going on. I was fed up because dynamic being fixed in early September actually made dynamic worse IMO. I have issues with a majority of antags being potential round-enders because it means that security is heavily incentivized towards always operating on shoot-to-kill mode, which I don't think is good for a roleplay environment. I'm happy that dynamic has been tweaked (at least on MRP) to be a bit more chill and that admins now have the ability to dungeon master a round a bit more by controlling antagonist spawns.

As for the "Never underestimate the absolutely baffling takes people can have." Yeah, I need to cool off a bit and not instant react to things I disagree with. I was acting assholish because I was a bit annoyed by that being their take of the whole situation when it very clearly wasn't a "Officer Shitsec laser guns a clown that slipped him in the hallway that had a syndie balloon" situation.

I've never felt like I've been a relaxed person who took stuff as it came, to be honest. I've felt more like I've been overly uptight about stuff. I definitely need to work on not getting riled up easily, though.

The way you feel (or even truly are) and the way people perceive you are very rarely the same thing, because six different people will see someone six different ways. The whole "not getting riled up easily" thing is what gave that impression to me. You obviously had your takes and opinions, but you didn't usually get heated about them.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong in getting heated about them. We all love this game dearly and want it to be the best thing it can be, and it's natural that sometimes passions lead to flaring tempers. As I said, that's why it was kinda nice to see, because it shows the severity of the problem when someone who usually doesn't get heated, does.

But, yeah. The problem is though, how much of this can you fix with Dynamic? Even if we reign it back in, when every single antag in the game can be a round-ender, can Security really afford to roleplay, still? Even with 3 traitors, while they're trying to roleplay with one, one of them's doing a gimmick, and the third one is stealth-rushing objectives in order to get that battlecruiser out.

That dude they went "Alright, here's your five minutes, now behave, alright?" in good faith to will still call in a battlecruiser, all it does is give them a better chance of stopping him mechanically. It still means the options are "remove from round, or round gets force-ended."

[Jacquerel]

The point of locking people up for five minutes isn't to stop them from summoning a battlecruiser though it just means you get to hang out.
It is the job of the crew to fight a losing battle. Something does actually need to end the round eventually.

Like "the game can still end if there are three traitors" is working as desired and intended.

[CMDR_Gungnir]

The point of locking people up for five minutes isn't to stop them from summoning a battlecruiser though it just means you get to hang out.
It is the job of the crew to fight a losing battle. Something does actually need to end the round eventually.

Like "the game can still end if there are three traitors" is working as desired and intended.

It shouldn't be the job of the crew to simply be playthings for the antags' amusement, that's horrid design.

There are still things that can end the round, even without progtot, even without Dynamic being how it is. Manuel never reached the roundlengths Campbell got even back then.

Rounds CAN end by the shuttle, instead of a forced "The round is over" scenario like the Nuke. And antags were able to do that just fine without their round-ending Final Objectives in the past, even on Manuel.

[Jacquerel]

There is no crew win condition and hasn't been since we removed "the round ends as soon as a wizard dies" (which we removed because it sucks). Even if every antagonist loses (and even in scenario here the game congratulates the crew for outsmarting a team of cultists or operatives), the game ends with the crew abandoning their post anyway, not in victory.
That doesn't make you "playthings" because everyone enters the game already knowing that this is a crisis simulator and that is the basic gameplay framing.
The crew don't and can't win, they just survive for a while. That has been the game everyone has played for over a decade, including you.


Any scenario where the game ends because the crew whips around and says "uhhh we're all bored and want to start over how about we all RP just quitting our jobs for no reason" is a failure of the game design (or admins not making something happen). Preferably it happens because of the act of someone who is playing the game.

[RedBaronFlyer]

I guess I'm just weird but I never saw a crew peacefully leaving the station after an hour and a half shift as being a failure to be honest. I can see it being an issue if every shift ended like that, though. To me, part of the reason I like SS13 is because it's a sandbox. I would heavily dislike it if every single round was the equivalent of a Left 4 Dead match where you are state-mandated to have peaceful moments and crescendos every shift. I get how in some games a "stalemate" can be bad (for instance Team Fortress 2 dev commentary goes to great lengths to explain how and why they did stuff to avoid stalemates)

Sometimes not all that much antag stuff can happen and it's okay, sometimes the station can get fucked 15 different ways and that's okay.

I've had some of my best SS13 memories on all three threat levels, from managing to be a lone survivor of a shitshow on tram, to a huge rage cage battle where we did fights for like, 50 minutes, and when a rat king came to a deal with the captain in exchange for living on the station and worked with cargo to set up a miasma chamber and cargo was printing money.

[Jacquerel]

I guess I'm just weird but I never saw a crew peacefully leaving the station after an hour and a half shift as being a failure to be honest. I can see it being an issue if every shift ended like that, though. To me, part of the reason I like SS13 is because it's a sandbox. I would heavily dislike it if every single round was the equivalent of a Left 4 Dead match where you are state-mandated to have peaceful moments and crescendos every shift. Sometimes not all that much antag stuff can happen and it's okay, sometimes the station can get fucked 15 different ways and that's okay.

I don't really hugely disagree with this despite my last sentence, although I'd always prefer there to be a reason than "well there's nothing going on, we should leave so we can roll for something else" (this is another role for admin GMs).
What I'm really objecting to is the idea that it's a failure of game design that even a small number of traitors are capable of ending the round if they choose to and are given the opportunity. That's literally what we put them in the game to do.

The majority of rounds don't end with a "forced ending" cutscene of a nuke going off or an eldritch entity consuming the station (and traitors can't even trigger those most of the time), they end when antagonists have done their job of being sufficiently dangerous that the crew gets out of there.

[RedBaronFlyer]

I guess I'm just weird but I never saw a crew peacefully leaving the station after an hour and a half shift as being a failure to be honest. I can see it being an issue if every shift ended like that, though. To me, part of the reason I like SS13 is because it's a sandbox. I would heavily dislike it if every single round was the equivalent of a Left 4 Dead match where you are state-mandated to have peaceful moments and crescendos every shift. Sometimes not all that much antag stuff can happen and it's okay, sometimes the station can get fucked 15 different ways and that's okay.

I don't really hugely disagree with this despite my last sentence, although I'd always prefer there to be a reason than "well there's nothing going on, we should leave so we can roll for something else" (this is another role for admin GMs).
What I'm really objecting to is the idea that it's a failure of game design that even a small number of traitors are capable of ending the round if they choose to and are given the opportunity. That's literally what we put them in the game to do.

I don't really think the issue people have is that "omg traitor can call a battlecruiser" so much as "we have seven traitors all capable of calling in a (battlecruiser, making the AI malf, calling in a black hole, zombies, becoming a space dragon, and creating a resonance cascade to kill the station), three heretics that can ascend and merc the station, a cult that destroys the station, revolutionaries that effectively destroy the station" this isn't even to mention stuff like spiders and xenos which effectively end the station as well, and blob that actually does kill the station. We also have random meteor storms that can range from denting windows to instantly spacing 80% of the station.

We have too many station-destroying threats and not enough mild or minor threats. Thief got removed despite being a perfect example of a potential low-impact antagonist that had a messy implementation. By tossing out oldtot and replacing it with progtot it made it so that every single traitor is a ticking timebomb where security is pressured into dealing with them but not dealing with them too hard, lest they draw the ire of admins and players.

[Jacquerel]

I don't really think the issue people have is that "omg traitor can call a battlecruiser" so much as "we have seven traitors all capable of calling in a (battlecruiser, making the AI malf, calling in a black hole, zombies, becoming a space dragon, and creating a resonance cascade to kill the station), three heretics that can ascend and merc the station, a cult that destroys the station, revolutionaries that effectively destroy the station" this isn't even to mention stuff like spiders and xenos which effectively end the station as well, and blob that actually does kill the station. We also have random meteor storms that can range from denting windows to instantly spacing 80% of the station.

We have too many station-destroying threats and not enough mild or minor threats. Thief got removed despite being a perfect example of a potential low-impact antagonist that had a messy implementation. By tossing out oldtot and replacing it with progtot it made it so that every single traitor is a ticking timebomb where security is pressured into dealing with them but not dealing with them too hard, lest they draw the ire of admins and players.

It's my bad for not using quotes but I was replying to a specific sentiment that "it doesn't matter if there were fewer antags because even if there are only three of them they are still capable of ending the round if you don't RR them" rather than a general sentiment.
The fact that they can end the round is a feature because we want the round to end.

They can do this even without pursuing final objectives, and are encouraged to because ending the round is largely speaking their role.

[TheLoLSwat]

part of the job as security is making tough choices with limited resources (especially time and trustworthy personnel). Its a stressful job but knowing that youre just the indomitable human spirit against an unbeatable cruel universe helps a lot.