Creating spiders as a non antag.

[MortoSasye]

Is it not allowed for non antag players to create spiders even when they have clear directives to not kill innocents or cause destruction? This is the basic question that I want to be answered to on this policy thread after discussing a note made by an admin with a player.

My opinion is that punishing someone who made a clear directive to the spiders which wasn't antag-like in nature instead of the players in question that ignored said directive is unjust, but it seems that there are different opinions regarding this and clarification is in order for future decisions made by the admins when this sort of event happens.

[Shad0k]

At the time, the note was justified because the only spider with a clear directive was the one the xenobiologist sentienced.
With that said, now that new generations get directives as well, I see no reason to prevent non antags from creating them.

[imsxz]

spiders are cancer and i dont think ive ever seen spiders work when they lay over a few egg clusters because god knows 90% of the people wont read the directive because why would a spider not be antag?? And then everyone they kill will just assume the spiders are hostile naturally and start doing the same rinse&repeat.

IMO it should be treated like cargo making teslas in a public area... Don't really blame the person doing it unless they directly fuck it up or they do it a bunch and it ruins several rounds at which point ask them to cut it out for a bit. Bans for people doing silly memes like this isn't necessary IMO unless they're being excessively careless, if they're giving a good amount of effort to keep it safe only get involved for the sake of the server rather than to punish the player.

[Jimmius]

Spiders have no way of interacting with the station that isn't violent. Creating a self replicating swarm of hostile mobs with a single line of text saying "tee hee don't kill anyone" feels about on the same level as leaving maxcaps around on extended and then saying "well it's against the rules for non antags to bomb!" when someone inevitably sets them off.
If spiders were like magicarp, in that they had a use beyond horribly murdering everyone, then sure. But creating a swarm of spiders and then saying "don't leave xenobio" does not absolve you of the blame when they inevitably get bored and ignore you.

[zxaber]

I dunno, I've been a friendly spider once or twice. I even popped into the AI chamber and offered to drag the AI to the shuttle.

Sometimes it's fun to take a ventcrawling ghost role and just talk to people.

[knacker48]

The way I usually see "friendly" spiders play out is a few leave xenobio, someone attacks them cause they're constantly planting webs, the spiders fight back, the station call them rogue and then everyone dies to undying swarm of spiders. The only time when spiders are helpful is when your fight an even bigger infestation like xenos or the blob.

Also I feel like its almost impossible to get rid of spiders once a few have layed their eggs, aside from depressurizing the entire station. There's just too many and they breed too fast.

[Arianya]

tbh the code solution is to remove spider nurses from the pool and just let people have individual pet spiders without making a infinitely self-replicating army out of spiders + monkeys

[Arathian]

Hi. I am the guy who made said (non-antag) spiders that kiiinda ended up killing all non-spiders by the end (also a blob).

Quick correction. That happened ~3 days ago, and the bug fix for spiders happened a few weeks ago. The spiders were just murderboning. They did have a directive and they ignored it. The problem in that is both it was lacking memory and it had small text. Both of those are being looked at now and (supposedly) a coder will try to fix them this week.

Personally, I think it's fair to ban non-antag spiders till the change is implemented. Then it's up to spiders to not act like retards like any other non-antag position.

Finally, @Arianya:

That would be terrible. Spiders are extremely weak individually. Xenobio can already make faaar more powerful monsters. Spiders are strong only in numbers.

Is spidertide strong? Of course. But it's also extremely vulnerable. Broodmothers die in 2 hits and egg sacks in 1. From the time one becomes sentient to the time the first eggs burst, they will die if anyone looks at them sideways. The problem is one of oversight rather than the spiders themselves being OP. It needs like 30m of setup and 10m of breeding spiders to do it properly. And that's if things go perfectly.

I believe as spider figure out the strength of xenobio (due to people playing more of it lately), more scrutiny will fall over it, same as with chemistry. Chemistry is as powerful and far quicker, but if they do BS, they get arrested and they know it. It's just sec doesn't know xenobio as well. If they did bother to patrol every now and then, it wouldn't be a problem.

When I was traitor xenobiologist, I fed a spider 50 monkeys and set up a ghetto durand chain production and even semi-advertised I was a traitor and NO ONE came to check on me ever. This is a meta problem. I mean, you have xenobiology building durands and spiders, what did they expect to happen?

[datorangebottle]

Creating sentient nurse spiders as a nonantag should definitely be bannable, regardless of directive, now and forever. Much like maxcapping as a nonantag or releasing the engine as a nonantag, you are fucking the station over without good reason. The only impacts spiders can have on the round are violent[literally killing and eating everyone] or annoying[laying webs everywhere]. Sure, you can roleplay, but maybe a tiny, tiny portion of the spider population will do this.

Look at it this way. You have a remote-detonated bomb. You use the bomb to blow up a research facility. Who gets punished for bombing the facility, the bomb, or the person who set it off?

[D&B]

The real problem here is xenobio being able to make 4 types of armies as a non antag department for free

[zxaber]

Creating a sentient nurse spider is nothing like maxcapping a department. At the very best, it would be like creating a maxcap and then misplacing it for a shitter to find.

We punish silicon players that ignore their laws and kill or maim randomly, why not do the same with spiders that ignore their directive?

[Shadowflame909]

The real problem here is xenobio being able to make 4 types of armies as a non antag department for free

Literally all departments can do this. No joke

[datorangebottle]

Creating a sentient nurse spider is nothing like maxcapping a department. At the very best, it would be like creating a maxcap and then misplacing it for a shitter to find.

We punish silicon players that ignore their laws and kill or maim randomly, why not do the same with spiders that ignore their directive?

It's pretty damn close. Spiders have a reputation for just ignoring their directives and murderboning anyway, especially when you don't even have the first spider set one. You might as well just maxcap the entire station, because it's going to have the same effect- everyone will be dead and mad.

Second, there are a fuckton more spiders in a round than sillycons and it's a lot harder to enforce- the process of 'spiders kill somebody, they come back as a spider, rinse repeat' makes it nearly impossible to punish them individually without spending hours poring over logs and trying to figure out which ones killed someone without cause or violated their directives.

[cedarbridge]

It's pretty damn close. Spiders have a reputation for just ignoring their directives and murderboning anyway

So we ban the spider.

[Shadowflame909]

Precedent also makes you ban the maker of the spider.

Well precedent of admins. You make a sentient bomb, your responsible when it blows up.

[teepeepee]

no one forced them to spawn as spiders, it's their fault if they miss or ignore the message telling them they're not an antag, they shouldn't even assume it is that way tbh, being an antag should be something your maker bestows upon you

[confused rock]

I mean the only theoretically good thing a fucking spider could do is push cargo crates, so it isn't unreasonable to imagine "hey, I'm a spider who can do nothing but bite and plant annoying webs, maybe I'm here to bite and plant annoying webs."

[Cobby]

tbh the code solution is to remove spider nurses from the pool and just let people have individual pet spiders without making a infinitely self-replicating army out of spiders + monkeys

but then xenobio won't have a self-replicating army that also isn't golems!!!!!

Also didn't the PR that made directive unchanging alleviate the responsibility of the original scientist so long as they tell spider-zero to set the directive to something nonantagonistic?

The only reason the scientist was previously responsible was because there's no way past several generations that every spider is going to know they were bred out of nonantag actions.

[Yakumo_Chen]

Nobody bans the roboticist for making loads of cyborgs unless he's also uploading retarded laws to make borgs hostile.

Similarly we shouldn't ban xenobiologists who make mobs unless he gives them shitty directives. Spiders are bound under nurse directives and not just some hearsay from xenobio, hence they are responsible if they ignore that much like a borg would be responsible for ignoring its laws.

The main problem with spiders is that its hard to weed out the bad ones since they are all identical save a number, you would have to catch them in the act, and since spiders can reach in the tens of dozens within a short timespan, it can be hard to track which ones are being shit.

[SaveVatznick]

The way I usually see "friendly" spiders play out is a few leave xenobio, someone attacks them cause they're constantly planting webs, the spiders fight back, the station call them rogue and then everyone dies to undying swarm of spiders. The only time when spiders are helpful is when your fight an even bigger infestation like xenos or the blob.

Also I feel like its almost impossible to get rid of spiders once a few have layed their eggs, aside from depressurizing the entire station. There's just too many and they breed too fast.

This. I've had rounds where I, as a crewmember, ask the spiders to stop rampantly spreading webs everywhere, and some agree, and others do the wordless spidertide thing and continue to annoy people to bait some of the more ill-tempered crew into a reaction in order to start a spider-war. There's no way to tell if cocoons hold innocent crew or catatonic corpses either, combined with spiders seeming to lack a group chat (or universally ignore it). Our players on TG are either too dumb to keep track of who's who/what they should or should not attack, or so bloodthirsty they're fine starting station-wide wars. This doesn't jive well with how spiders are in this fuzzy area of "team antag with no team antag mechanics and not quite an antag, but can't do anything altruistic except annoy crewmembers by spreading webs everywhere". Either the spiders or the crew end up being too quick on the trigger and any amount of spiders above, like, 3, ends up making the spiders a romerol zombie-tier threat.

This likely feels like a code issue, and I do think removing reproducing spiders from the pool is the nuclear option in that it will guaranteed stop nonantag players from starting spider wars then claiming "I didn't know I couldn't do that / I told them not to but they did". However, if our playerbase miraculously drifts towards "Remembering which individuals are hostile and which aren't and coordinating around that as a spider faction which is neutral/ nonantag", I would think it could remain as is. You tell me which is more likely.

[Arathian]

>This likely feels like a code issue, and I do think removing reproducing spiders from the pool is the nuclear option in that it will guaranteed stop nonantag players from starting spider wars then claiming "I didn't know I couldn't do that / I told them not to but they did". However, if our playerbase miraculously drifts towards "Remembering which individuals are hostile and which aren't and coordinating around that as a spider faction which is neutral/ nonantag", I would think it could remain as is. You tell me which is more likely

If the spider directives become bolder and able to be recalled, and then we have a bigger mod oversight on spidertides, it's not that unlikely.

Spiders have a reputation due to (in the past) having no directives after the first generation. That was fixed just last week and now, theoretically, they can be like any other role. Once players figure out spiders aren't a licence to self antag, they will calm their tits.

Basically, the coding issue is more on the notification side imo. Also enforcement/bwoinking side.

[WarbossLincoln]

someone attacks them cause they're constantly planting webs, the spiders fight back, the station call them rogue

You don't even need to plant webs for this. There's always 5-10 people in a high pop round who will kill any sentient mob that's valid because they only play the game to make sprites horizontal. I used to meme around as a genetics monkey a decent bit but in the vast majority of rounds I would get killed wordlessly by some randomname who can't stop himself from killing any player controlled non-humanoid.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

i think sentient spider apocalypse is a fun event and should be kept as a late game rng event, xenobio sentient spiders get out of control 50% of the times regardless of antag status and admins usually ignore it as they have to adminpm 10+ ppl about why they killed x y z, sentient pots and gold slimes are almost free already so there is no need for an automated ghost spam message

[Shadowflame909]

The xenobiologist makes me as a green spider

Gives me the directive "Do anything you want bro"

Round-ender time

[Yakumo_Chen]

The xenobiologist makes me as a green spider

Gives me the directive "Do anything you want bro"

Round-ender time

Time to ban the xenobiololgist or not giving proper directives, then ban you for rule 1

[PKPenguin321]

The xenobiologist makes me as a green spider

Gives me the directive "Do anything you want bro"

Round-ender time

Time to ban the xenobiololgist or not giving proper directives, then ban you for rule 1

I would not ban him for rule 1 but yeah that xenobiologist goofed

[Shadowflame909]

Sadly he only got sentience potions 3 minutes before the shuttle docked.

Warned him on OOC after about it though. And said how lucky they were that nothing dangerous happened because of it

[Arathian]

So, any conclusion from this? I just want a general policy for future reference.

For now, I am not doing spiders as non-antag (even with friendly directives) but we have an update soon that will add bolder text to directives and the initial directive in the spider's memory. The issue of 3rd gen spiders not having directives has already been solved.

When the bolder text and memory are added I will sometimes spawn spiders as non-antag with appropriate directives unless otherwise advised.

[Cobby]

From this point on it should be,

Scientist is responsible for telling spider to do bad things and it/babbies do bad things.

Scientist is NOT responsible for telling it to do only good things and it/babbies do bad things.

Mommy is NOT responsible for setting a good directive and babbies do bad things.

[Arianya]

I'm personally still of the opinion that spiders are pretty much always a bad idea as a non-antag - it's giving someone a toy and telling them they can't use it issue. Inevitably spiders are going to get involved in iffy escalation when a human freaks out and calls for a spider purge or the AI tries to eradicate a rampant pest. In this regard they're worse then golems because golems can atleast build a funky building or make cocktails or one of 100 different things whereas spiders can only attack stuff, plant annoying webs or move.

About the only non-problematic non-antag uses for it I can think of are when there's a very clearly defined enemy that the spiders can attack (i.e. nukies/wizard) but these are also not the roundtypes conducive to xenobio having been done so its a bit of a catch 22.

From a policy point of view, I'm not a fan of xenobio having a policy enforced perfectly loyal spider army. Keeping with the sci-fi theme of SS13, this is the kinda hubristic scientific project that should inevitably lead to the downfall of its creator or the station.

From a code point of view, I don't like xenobio having an infinitely reproducing army of sentient mobs. I opposed the directive being put in when it was because it made spiders just another form of personal army in xenobio's already potent toolkit (and largely for no better reason then because Armhullen spent time coming up with spider subvariants)

[Cobby]

"I'm personally still of the opinion that spiders are pretty much always a bad idea as a non-antag - it's giving someone a toy and telling them they can't use it issue."

This is true regardless of which xeno simplemob gets spawned and sentience spammed? You can't create carp because they have deathbolt toys and can't use them etc.

Now with directive un-changing, children have no defense but ignorance or "I didn't see the message" so outside of you just disliking the feature, I don't see why the burden still needs to be on the scientist.

"I opposed the directive being put in when it was because it made spiders just another form of personal army in xenobio's already potent toolkit (and largely for no better reason then because Armhullen spent time coming up with spider subvariants)"

I would prefer you try to remove them from xenobio pool rather than dislike the feature that protects nonantag scientists from spiders abusing plausible deniability and opening for banbait.

[Arianya]

"This is true regardless of which xeno simplemob gets spawned and sentience spammed? You can't create carp because they have deathbolt toys and can't use them etc."

The carp doesn't replicate by itself indefinitely. Nor do most xeno simplemobs (and in fact xenomorphs were removed from the pool of spawnable-able mobs for reasons not dissimilar to spiders - they begged to be antagonistic self-replicating problems for the station)

"Now with directive un-changing, children have no defense but ignorance or "I didn't see the message" so outside of you just disliking the feature, I don't see why the burden still needs to be on the scientist."

a) Children have plenty of defences still - not the least of which is self-defence when a human gets pissed at them laying webs everywhere and attacks them. If you run into that situation, are you going to ban the spider? The xenobio who released a swarm of "don't be a dick" directive spiders? Just shrug and label it IC?
b) The burden should be on the scientist because he chose to spawn an army of spiders in the round. It's not like this is even a plausibly benevolent thing to do a la making golems who can fill gaps in the station's roster - they exist only to attack, lay webs and make more spiders.

"I would prefer you try to remove them from xenobio pool rather than dislike the feature that protects nonantag scientists from spiders abusing plausible deniability and opening for banbait."

I'm more then happy to PR that change - but I'll note that your reasoning for this is backwards "protects nonantag scientists" implies that the scientist is somehow innocent in this entire exchange. As noted, there's functionally no good reasoning to produce a swarm of spiders as a non-antagonist outside of extreme edge cases (war nukies and they somehow gave you enough time to make a spider army??)

To make a comparison - if a toxins scientist makes a bomb and hands it out to a random or leaves it in a public hallway, we don't talk about "protecting the scientist from the assistant abusing plausible deniability and banbaiting by detonating the bomb" - the scale of individual destruction may be different, certainly, but can you see how you send mixed messages by trying to protect the xenobiologist from a natural consequence of his actions where the toxin scientist isn't?

[teepeepee]

"This is true regardless of which xeno simplemob gets spawned and sentience spammed? You can't create carp because they have deathbolt toys and can't use them etc."

The carp doesn't replicate by itself indefinitely. Nor do most xeno simplemobs (and in fact xenomorphs were removed from the pool of spawnable-able mobs for reasons not dissimilar to spiders - they begged to be antagonistic self-replicating problems for the station)

"Now with directive un-changing, children have no defense but ignorance or "I didn't see the message" so outside of you just disliking the feature, I don't see why the burden still needs to be on the scientist."

a) Children have plenty of defences still - not the least of which is self-defence when a human gets pissed at them laying webs everywhere and attacks them. If you run into that situation, are you going to ban the spider? The xenobio who released a swarm of "don't be a dick" directive spiders? Just shrug and label it IC?
b) The burden should be on the scientist because he chose to spawn an army of spiders in the round. It's not like this is even a plausibly benevolent thing to do a la making golems who can fill gaps in the station's roster - they exist only to attack, lay webs and make more spiders.

"I would prefer you try to remove them from xenobio pool rather than dislike the feature that protects nonantag scientists from spiders abusing plausible deniability and opening for banbait."

I'm more then happy to PR that change - but I'll note that your reasoning for this is backwards "protects nonantag scientists" implies that the scientist is somehow innocent in this entire exchange. As noted, there's functionally no good reasoning to produce a swarm of spiders as a non-antagonist outside of extreme edge cases (war nukies and they somehow gave you enough time to make a spider army??)

To make a comparison - if a toxins scientist makes a bomb and hands it out to a random or leaves it in a public hallway, we don't talk about "protecting the scientist from the assistant abusing plausible deniability and banbaiting by detonating the bomb" - the scale of individual destruction may be different, certainly, but can you see how you send mixed messages by trying to protect the xenobiologist from a natural consequence of his actions where the toxin scientist isn't?

you do know this is a roleplaying game and spiders could perfectly just walk and talk like players do when they spawn as a xeno barmaid? do you not think players could manage that? I think they could, if they saw retards that abuse their second life (or first if they were observers) to be an antagonist even though they're explicitly told they're not

[Cobby]

We addressed the army-making directive changing codewise and that shouldn't have any more bearing from an admin POV than a carp misusing their abilities. Unless you're talking about spiders that don't get PC'd so they're just hostile which is fair and something that can be fixed codewise*.

The directive PR was made explicitly to protect scientists who made an army so he could DIRECT them away from "lol time to kill everyone". The toxin comparison doesn't hold because the bomb isn't sentient and can't self-detonate else it would be the bomb's fault if it was told to by the scientist to not self detonate and that order is enforced OOCly.

a) Children have plenty of defences still - not the least of which is self-defence when a human gets pissed at them laying webs everywhere and attacks them. If you run into that situation, are you going to ban the spider? The xenobio who released a swarm of "don't be a dick" directive spiders? Just shrug and label it IC?

You mean like the policy of "if a human steals your backpack as a golem you don't get to declare war on the station and boh bomb"? If someone is attacking you, you can fight back. If the station effectively declares war on a nonantag army then that's on them*.

they exist only to attack, lay webs and make more spiders... "protects nonantag scientists" implies that the scientist is somehow innocent in this entire exchange.

carp exist only to shoot beams

hiveminds exist only to shoot bullets

If he told them not to shoot beams/bullets but they turned the station horizontal you wouldn't ban the scientist...

again if you hate spiders and their ability to reproduce that's fine but that's code realm. With the implementation of directive and the overarching "they should follow their master", there's no reason to view them differently adminwise beyond your personal dislike for the feature.*


* spiders that don't get PC'd so they're just hostile is a fair argument that can easily lead to station chaos, but it's also something that can be fixed codewise. I'm fine with disallowing making spider army until then.

[Arianya]

We addressed the army-making directive changing codewise and that shouldn't have any more bearing from an admin POV than a carp misusing their abilities. Unless you're talking about spiders that don't get PC'd so they're just hostile which is fair and something that can be fixed codewise*.

The directive PR was made explicitly to protect scientists who made an army so he could DIRECT them away from "lol time to kill everyone". The toxin comparison doesn't hold because the bomb isn't sentient and can't self-detonate else it would be the bomb's fault if it was told to by the scientist to not self detonate and that order is enforced OOCly.

a) Children have plenty of defences still - not the least of which is self-defence when a human gets pissed at them laying webs everywhere and attacks them. If you run into that situation, are you going to ban the spider? The xenobio who released a swarm of "don't be a dick" directive spiders? Just shrug and label it IC?

You mean like the policy of "if a human steals your backpack as a golem you don't get to declare war on the station and boh bomb"? If someone is attacking you, you can fight back. If the station effectively declares war on a nonantag army then that's on them*.

I'm not sure why you see this as not self-antagging behaviour on the part of the scientist/spiders - Is the station meant to put up with shitty spiders shitting webs everywhere and smashing shit on the basis that if they declare war on the spiders it's their fault for wanting them gone? Let alone that killing individual "shitty" spiders is ineffectual when they're producing new bodies by the minute, and the fact that spiders will rush to defend fellow spiders being attacked in their view in most cases.

This stuff is fine if it's a antagonist but you're effectively giving free reign to any xenobiologist to hijack the round by releasing spiders with a "don't attack people unprovoked " directive that is basically paying lipservice at best to the idea that the army exists for any reason other then to irritate and ultimately murder people.

You keep selectively quoting parts of my post and avoiding the central issue - what value or purpose does a spider army serve that justifies making it for a non-antagonist?. You for some reason decided to make the bomb thing about sentience rather then the fact that the blame for creating the means lies on the scientist, not (entirely) on whoever ultimately detonates the bomb.

Magicarp can have benevolent uses - healing carp among them - and again, can't infinitely self replicate. Hivebot similarly only exists to attack things but can't self-replicate. The point is that spiders both only exist to attack things and replicate endlessly without outside intervention. They are functionally less dangerous xenomorphs - I'm sure you don't think the xenobiologist should be making xenomorph armies with a "don't self-antag " directive - so why is it different for spiders?

My issue isn't with spiders as a concept - nor with their ability to reproduce, necessarily - it's the fact that for some reason you see this directive as a god given right of scientists to be able to have a loyal spider army because ???. The ??? isn't me being sarcastic, I'm genuinely not sure what value there is there from your point of view.

I would be fine with spiders as a dangerous replicating xenobio mob that xenobiologists could experiment with at the risk of spider outbreak - that would effectively make them a less catastrophic xenomorph stand in - interesting, on theme, with potential to cause havoc but treated as unreliable and dangerous monsters.

I would equally be fine with spiders as non-reproducing exotic pets for xenobiologists who want a relatively innocuous but unique companion - it's quirky and again on theme, but doesn't make a massive round-ending threat.

But this idea that xenobio for some reason needs to have loyal spider armies is where I get stuck.

you do know this is a roleplaying game and spiders could perfectly just walk and talk like players do when they spawn as a xeno barmaid? do you not think players could manage that? I think they could, if they saw retards that abuse their second life (or first if they were observers) to be an antagonist even though they're explicitly told they're not

Sure, and drones could perfectly just not interfere with the round and ghosts could be trusted to be visible by living people and not ghost court people. The fact is that these issues are rarely black and white when they come up in gameplay and you get people grinding their teeth when they get told off, regardless of which side they're on. This is acceptable for stuff that is a positive value add to the game but again - I don't see where that value is for spider armies on non-antagonists.

[teepeepee]

The fact is that these issues are rarely black and white when they come up in gameplay and you get people grinding their teeth when they get told off, regardless of which side they're on.

These are all issues you as an admin are there to solve, I don't see how it's bad that you have to administrate when you signed up to be an administrator
With drones you can get away with saying "muh hard enforcing" because of logging limitations, but with spiders there's no such thing, I'll say the phrase you seem to dread so much "just ban 'em lol" with them being abusers

This is acceptable for stuff that is a positive value add to the game but again - I don't see where that value is for spider armies on non-antagonists.

That's just your oppinion, obviously the scientists spawning sentient spiders do see their positive value, and I'm sure there's cases of sentient spiders being spawned not resulting in apocalypse, I'm just not willing to search through infinite logs to find it
My point is that there's obviously potential for people on their second life to just rp casually and enjoy being able to be back in the round, even if in a more limited way, and they should not lose it because of people who abuse it just because you don't feel like banning them, like you did with drones removal

[cedarbridge]

This is acceptable for stuff that is a positive value add to the game but again - I don't see where that value is for spider armies on non-antagonists.

That's just your oppinion, obviously the scientists spawning sentient spiders do see their positive valuel

Not really. Our playerbase has done a fine job in the last few years of demonstrating that they're very commonly and capable of operating without a rational basis. Were this not the case we wouldn't have cargo teslas. The fact remains that the "value" players see in these random acts of stupidity is "it exists so I can do it."

[Arathian]

Sorry, but why is "this is fun" a bad thing?

Like, maybe I am confused, but the discussion here keeps going around to "this can be abused ergo it should be removed".

Literally everything in this game can be abused. SM crystal explodes semi regularly. Often by traitors. Should we make SM unexplodable due to that?

Spiders are fun AND spiders are balanced.

Spiders allow dead players back to the game. Spiders (as antag) are a fun player made "event" while as non-antag they can have a goal or even an RP goal (I made them build a nest in xenobio).

To be quite frank, your replies here sound like you can't be arsed to mod rulebreakers so let's throw out the whole thing. Why?

Is really the only appropriate way to be antag to get a double esword and murderbone?

[Jimmius]

Is really the only appropriate way to be antag to get a double esword and murderbone?

read the title of the thread

[Arathian]

Is really the only appropriate way to be antag to get a double esword and murderbone?

read the title of the thread

Considering the thread was made after my request, I am aware of what's it about.

My frustration stems from the proposal to remove spiders altogether as an option, not whether or not spiders should be considered inherently an antag tool.

I hoped my slightly ranty post above made that clear. Spiders are fun and a fun tool to use. I would hate to see them removed because mods don't wanna mod.

[Jimmius]

the thread is about if you should be able to make spiders as a non antag, so you don't have to worry about spiders being taken away from you for antag rounds. Ari's posts are on the money with regards to spiders as a non antag though.

[Arathian]

the thread is about if you should be able to make spiders as a non antag, so you don't have to worry about spiders being taken away from you for antag rounds. Ari's posts are on the money with regards to spiders as a non antag though.

Fair enough. My b.

[Gamarr]

Spiders breeding is just another one of those things that got added and then left to just wallow in the sea of other half-baked things. It goes too fast and there's very little input for nurses outside of corpses in order to start breeding, much like slimes. They're better than slimes to a degree because they don't starve to death either afaik.

Just move xenobio to fucking lavaland where it belongs along with the toxins dept for quarantine.

[Isy232]

Or give sentient spiders some kind of hivemind so the smart ones can scream at the retards violating their laws.
There is already a specific spider that had the specialty of hivemind, maybe give it big text hivemind?

[Cobby]

" what value or purpose does a spider army serve that justifies making it for a non-antagonist?. You for some reason decided to make the bomb thing about sentience rather then the fact that the blame for creating the means lies on the scientist, not (entirely) on whoever ultimately detonates the bomb. "

Having people you can 100% trust in a TTT-esque game is extremely helpful, even if you're not the bad guy.

It's the same as carp (not healing) and hivebots with the added bonus they can self-replicate for even more 100% loyal spiders assuming those babbies are sentient (I addressed this earlier) and are following the directive/rules. Literally all these simplemobs can do is shoot stuff/walk/talk/pick fights but we don't ban them because they can't self-replicate????

The only issue that arises is if someone is not following those orders. If you tell the spiders to be good and they are webbing/grieffing why do you need to get banned? If a hivebot starts busting tables and picks a fight then kills someone, do you ban the hivebot or the scientist?

I don't see how this is a hard concept to understand outside of your negative perception of the feature clouding your stance (which is fine I guess so long as you remove them codewise rather than pseudoremove them with your admin powers). You can lead the horse to water but you shouldn't get banned if they don't drink.

Again, I'm perfectly fine with addressing non-sentient spiders getting a code solution if that's your issue but I'd prefer this conversation be based around the assumption those aren't a byproduct.