/tg/Station 13

Its something that's bugged me a lot but I don't want to cripple the game by changing it without some serious thought and reflection. As it exists currently, an assailant can KO a target and drag-murder them down a hallway as fast as the defenders can chase the assailant to save the victim.

1) This makes for really pointless chases because what's even the worth of chasing a victim if you're never going to catch them before its too late?
2) It doesn't make sense that some nerd with two occupied hands is running at full speed while dragging a human sized object across the ground AND attacking at the same time.
3)Allowing it to continue only aids the current solo murderbone epidemic.

Proposal:

1) Dragging a human reduces you to walk speed or applies a similar slowdown.
2) Roller beds count as their own deal so medics can pull the bed without the slowdown associated with pulling the person.

The proposal:

1) Cures the combat retardation related with dragracing combat.
2) Gives medics a reason to carry folding roller beds.

This would completley fuck security when trying to arrest people or when trying to fight the various conversion antags that highly outnumber them.

Kor wrote:This would completley fuck security when trying to arrest people or when trying to fight the various conversion antags that highly outnumber them.

all the more reason to take a look at conversion modes, IMO

though I can't really think of a response to arresting people that's true

Kor wrote:This would completley fuck security when trying to arrest people or when trying to fight the various conversion antags that highly outnumber them.

You mean it would require security to fend off the defenders instead of dragracing away with the stunned and cuffed revhead? I can't see how this is a problem. If conversion modes are so crippled right now that the only way to make them functional is to leave in such a basic error in combat, its the modes that need fixing.

sounds like a nerf to some of the big gaps of stun combat, which is a good thing I think?

its the modes that need fixing

How would you go about this?

And even if you fixed those modes, how would you make an arrest in a hallway during an 80 person round viable?

Kor wrote:

its the modes that need fixing

How would you go about this?

By fucking removing them all except rev

It's not even that it's a thing with revs, although this would nerf both sides, it's that in 80+ people high pop rounds, people drag others away for shits and giggles. It's currently balanced because it works both ways- Revs/Cult/Antagonist/Greytide can do it and security/guy dragging his metabuddy can do it.

Kor wrote:This would completley fuck security when trying to arrest people or when trying to fight the various conversion antags that highly outnumber them.

Just make it so that security officers are able to drag living, cuffed humans without a slowdown, problem solved.

Sligneris wrote:

Kor wrote:This would completley fuck security when trying to arrest people or when trying to fight the various conversion antags that highly outnumber them.

Just make it so that dragging a living, cuffed human does not slow you down, as an exception.

Alternatively, just make standing cuffed people not cause the slowdown.

There is often not time to cuff people until you are back in the brig.

But if you do think cuffs to snag one person out of chaos is somehow viable, won't the murderspree people just do it with cablecuffs?

Oh, yeah. That's a good point.

... Make security able to drag humans without a slowdown?

Sligneris wrote:Oh, yeah. That's a good point.

... Make security able to drag humans without a slowdown?

Snowflaking skills to jobs is awful.

Sorry, added strikethrough to make it more clear that I'm half-joking. Wouldn't be the first snowflake job skill, though.

I do like the idea of dragging humans causing a slowdown, though - especially if they're dead. Encouraging the use of roller beds and body bags would be a great thing.

Sligneris wrote:Encouraging the use of roller beds and body bags would be a great thing.

And why is that?

(Both are actually already useful by the way)

By the way I wanted the exact same thing for the exact same reason back when we had old speed, but people convinced me it was unworkable. It's still kind of dumb but it is far more manageable now that people cant drag victims away faster than gunfire.

Something feels weird about people casually dragging corpses around and staining hallways with their blood in the process. Bloodstained floors and clothes are the kind of thing you'd expect to be a clue to a murder, not just everyday sight.

Sligneris wrote:Something feels weird about people casually dragging corpses around and staining hallways with their blood in the process. Bloodstained floors and clothes are the kind of thing you'd expect to be a clue to a murder, not just everyday sight.

Welcome to SS13

Whodunnit aspect of this game is dead, I tell ya.

Drag speed as it is is fine really. This sounds more like an annoyance than a fun thing to be added. Ya know, something irritating like freon or water vapor that looks fun when it's PRed but turns out to be a pain in the ass later on and no fun for anyone.

Sligneris wrote:Whodunnit aspect of this game is dead, I tell ya.

Crewmembers having a casual disregard for life and shrugging off absurd violence has nothing to do with whodunnit or the lack thereof.

Kor wrote:

Sligneris wrote:Encouraging the use of roller beds and body bags would be a great thing.

And why is that?

(Both are actually already useful by the way)

The only thing bodybags are good for is avoiding blood trails, which nobody really cares about.

Rollerbeds are ok for emergency surgery I guess? Nobody carries a full set of surgical tools to a bomb site.

Rollerbeds stop patients from leaving their blood all across the floor when you move them

Kor wrote:Rollerbeds stop patients from leaving their blood all across the floor when you move them

rarely used from my expereince, though, so I think the bodybag/rollerbed buff mentioned previously could be interesting

would make spotting powergamers easy as they'd be the ones with the box of bodybags in their backpack too :^)

Kor wrote:how would you make an arrest in a hallway during an 80 person round viable?

By fucking murdering shithead assistant that pull people away from arrests like the dumb cunts they are.

Or you know, ban the usual group of greyshits that do this all the time because they're clearly a problem if entire gamemodes and combat intricacies revolve around their ability to interfere for shits and giggles.

Saegrimr wrote:Or you know, ban the usual group of greyshits that do this all the time because they're clearly a problem if entire gamemodes and combat intricacies revolve around their ability to interfere for shits and giggles.

ITT: we manage to turn another thread into "too much/little IC crime"

Qbopper wrote:ITT: we manage to turn another thread into "too much/little IC crime"

• Shitters grab people and run down the halls to murder them without anything that can be done, lets fix it.
• Sorry it can't be fixed without slowing down security and letting them arrest people without imperfect people memes.
• Then remove the shitters

Hmm yes I started this.

Or you know, ban

Now we are talking rule solutions instead of code solutions.

And if we're talking rule solutions it might be easier and saner to have a rule solution to the same few people wiping out the station all day rather than redoing several game modes to accomodate a combat change that wont stop those people anyway.

If Ronaldo or whoever kept showing up to play football/soccer at some casual weekend game in the park and just kept the ball away from everyone the entire time so that nobody else could have fun, people would probably just ask him to leave rather than rewrite the rules of the sport.

Kor wrote:

Or you know, ban

Now we are talking rule solutions instead of code solutions.

And if we're talking rule solutions it might be easier and saner to have a rule solution to the same few people wiping out the station all day rather than redoing several game modes to accomodate a combat change that wont stop those people anyway.

If Ronaldo or whoever kept showing up to play football/soccer at some casual weekend game in the park and just kept the ball away from everyone the entire time so that nobody else could have fun, people would probably just ask him to leave rather than rewrite the rules of the sport.

We can't do that because MUH POLICE STATE AND SLASH OR MUH SEKRET CABAL!!!!!1!!

Kor wrote:And if we're talking rule solutions it might be easier and saner to have a rule solution to the same few people wiping out the station all day rather than redoing several game modes to accomodate a combat change that wont stop those people anyway.

If Ronaldo or whoever kept showing up to play football/soccer at some casual weekend game in the park and just kept the ball away from everyone the entire time so that nobody else could have fun, people would probably just ask him to leave rather than rewrite the rules of the sport.

The code solution was to make the usual grab and stab saxing down the hallway useless, and making holed-in gang conversions more of a bloodbath instead of a stun and run.
Your point made against that is "but tiders stealing people from sec"

So uh... Yeah your move I guess?

Why bother dragging someone alive when it will be much easier to flashbang and shoot everyone with a shotgun.

Might as well just spray and pray and then I'll probably be able to drag my corpse since anyone else will be slowed down by damage/on crit/trying to avoid more fire

And eat the bwoink when shooting Innocents of course

I don't follow.

Cedarbridge said

3)Allowing it to continue only aids the current solo murderbone epidemic.

He wanted to nerf solo murdersprees.

You acknowledge such a balance change would be unplayable without heavy rule enforcememt (and again, we are all only pretending for the sake of argument that Cedarbridge has rewritten several conversion game modes in an unspecified way)

So I am saying why not direct that enforcement at the root problem (roundly muderspree) instead of dealing with a cascade of balance and rule issues afterwards.

Kor wrote:I don't follow.

Cedarbridge said

3)Allowing it to continue only aids the current solo murderbone epidemic.

He wanted to nerf solo murdersprees.

You acknowledge such a balance change would be unplayable without heavy rule enforcememt (and again, we are all only pretending for the sake of argument that Cedarbridge has rewritten several conversion game modes in an unspecified way)

So I am saying why not direct that enforcement at the root problem (roundly muderspree) instead of dealing with a cascade of balance and rule issues afterwards.

You're reading more intent into that statement than was actually there. Removing the ability to full speed whisk away a victim removes that currently uncounterable murder method. It makes the murderer actually have to fend off defenders instead of merely hold down a button to continue at the same unreachable speed. It reintroduces combat to the combat system if even only in part.

I never said anything about banning people for murdering people as an antagonist.

I know you never proposed banning them.

I am proposing banning them if your end goal is less unstoppable murdersprees.

I have watched (on and off) 7 years of balance and rule arguments all skirting around this issue. No matter what tweaks you make to the combat and how many features you remove people like Amelius or Robustin will be able to kill everyone else. They will find a new "uncounterable" method and have moved on while we spend months cleaning up the balance issues this will cause eveywhere else.

And again we are all just talking about zany hypotheticals until you have a design document for how you're going to redo every conversion mode (the ones that security already lose on a regular basis) to allow them to have a fighting chance in a pitched battle against enemies that outnumber them, often with equal or better gear.

This really feels like making an issue out of nothing.

Both antags and sec benefit from dragging. Chases never feel pointless, if someone is expending energy to keep someone down then its that much harder for them to fend off pursuers. I think we strike a fine balance.

Im contemplating a general stun nerf though, nothing huge, probably just 1-2 ticks off common stuns that come a little too easily. That would impact this issue too. After testing I just feel the ebow and stun baton last a little too long for comfort. Two baton smacks is enough to kill two people without any guns or specialized melee weapons.

But reading through the first few replies its pretty clear this is just a proxy for other complaints.

>Guy flashes someone
>Manage to stun them
>They've run into a crowd of people

Your choices are:

A: Run into the crowd and hope they aren't revs
B: Throw a flashbang and hope they disperse
C: Kill them right there

Results:

A: You get mauled by revs who save their boss or you retrieve the revhead
B: You either grab him and escape or enough manage to avoid the flashbang to chase you down and kill you
C: You either get lucky and kill them, whereupon you'd better hope they were actually a rev or else you just murdered an out-of-uniform roboticist and the adminhelp is incoming, or you get mauled by the revs/vigilantes trying to stop you

Basically git fucking good, the dragspeed is fine. Hell it lends to an interesting dynamic of weighing the options of dragging a guy to make sure he stays alive/dead, an action that in the heat of the moment with sec/antags reaching for their guns can be very difficult.

And yeah this is just another "Guys dragspead is a problem! Oh and while I've got you, lets remove conversion modes and traitor gear too..."

I think the large problem that not many Roleplayer-types like to admit is that it isn't exactly fun if everyone bought an emag and stole the objective with gloves so it's never seen again or killed just their target silently, cremated them, and hid in a locker indefinitely until the round ends. While there are some murderboning tactics that are really overused and just lame, there is almost a need for AT LEAST aggressive play by antagonists in the round to give people something to do and act as a foil to many of the linear job "progression" systems we have. This is vital because most jobs often act as foils to antagonists once they get to a certain threshold, so really the game has been setup around the premise that you want to do damage everywhere because everywhere has the potential to frick you up should you leave them untouched [which is a good and bad thing].

On the other hand, it isn't exactly fun to get booted out of the round because someone is murderboning. It's an unfortunate situation where we're stuck between boredom and and choosing one or the other frikken sucks, but that's also part of the fun. You honestly never know what's going to happen, as even the enraged dual esworder #5091321 can act as an interesting situation depending on how others tackle the problem.

I'm with oldman when he says we're at a pretty good place.


UPDATE

so really the game has been setup around the premise that you want to do damage everywhere because everywhere has the potential to frick you up should you leave them untouched [which is a good and bad thing].

After some second reflections, I think this is the largest offender of conversion modes. Since everywhere there's a potential to frick you up, and you now have several of these departments in kahoots, it opens for very easy snowballing on either side. Maybe that's also the most enjoyable part of conversion modes, I dunno.

Kor wrote:I know you never proposed banning them.

I am proposing banning them if your end goal is less unstoppable murdersprees.

I have watched (on and off) 7 years of balance and rule arguments all skirting around this issue. No matter what tweaks you make to the combat and how many features you remove people like Amelius or Robustin will be able to kill everyone else. They will find a new "uncounterable" method and have moved on while we spend months cleaning up the balance issues this will cause eveywhere else.

I've parroted this line for ages. The stupid grudgecoding nerfs of whatever the meta is at the time is a huge waste of time because your nerfs will either not be enough to keep whatever it is from being the meta, effectively changing nothing, or it'll succeed in ruining whatever it is as a viable strategy and then the murderboners will just find something else to murder everyone with, changing effectively nothing.

The only final solution is to go full nazi mod mode and constantly police people's fun, banning everyone you don't like and anyone that calls you a douche. See: CM where an admin blinded and bwoinked me for shaking up a few resting people on the shuttle as a prank.

I dont know why this is such a controversial change, it makes smacking someone and yakkey saxxing away with them down to beat them to death with no counter impossible, meaning one person cant be a god vs several just because they spam WASD and click on mobs whild dragging.

Other servers have this feature and it is not the end of the world. People screwing with security arrests will find that it is very hard to drag their friend away, and attacking an officer with nothing is a recipe for getting stunned and beaten.

some slowing down of combat would be a good thing, even if it is just pulling people around. If anything it makes the attacker have a harder time moving changing the location of the battle if they want to hide bodies, thus giving security some help in tracking violence down. Hit and run tactics would still be viable if you just, for example, decapitate your victim and steal the head.

On the subject of repeatedly antagonizing security as a non-antagonist, it probably should eventually get you in trouble OOC wise, or at least give the crew carte blanc to kill you or the command staff to fire you (out of a mass driver, into lavaland)

Random bunch of other considerations

-Why wouldnt I just drag a rollerbed behind me for combat

-Normal civilian work becomes even more tedious if pulling lockers/crates etc causes slowdown (and if they dont I can kidnap people in them)

-I could kill gravity to avoid this

-I could ride a vehicle to ignore this

-Good luck getting a ling into a cremator in time

-Makes it far less effective to save people from gunfire/hostile mobs/space wind/singularity pull/falling down at a blob etc

-Dragging another willing person behind you is the least annoying way to have them follow you right now

-Would cult talismans last long enough to slowly move people?

-Nuke op has killed the captain. He has to fend off the whole crew now while searching the body.

-If its harder to snag lone targets it might ironically encourage more mass murder. Kill everyone nearby rather than risk a chase

maybe make the slowdown only effect those whose target is laying down(suddenly, greytiders being arrested everywhere start resting upon being cuffed)

Dr_bee wrote:some slowing down of combat would be a good thing

You can't really slow down combat in which ranged one hit take downs are king. Going slow is death when you have no real defenses but evading attacks.

Kor wrote:This would completley fuck security when trying to arrest people or when trying to fight the various conversion antags that highly outnumber them.

I love it. You get to murder people for aiding and abetting.

But if you want to nerf drag, you could always leave cuff drag unaffected. But if you really want to fuck it up, you could differentiate cuff drag speed and zipties drag speed. I don't know.

Maybe have the drag speed only affect downed people.
And if someone is handcuffed nothing is changed. But if the handcuffed person tries to move around it slows the movement; its like a dog going to the vet it knows it can't stop you from pulling it through the door but it sure as hell will try. It would say something like Tidey Grey, is struggling

Kor wrote:Random bunch of other considerations

-Why wouldnt I just drag a rollerbed behind me for combat

-Normal civilian work becomes even more tedious if pulling lockers/crates etc causes slowdown (and if they dont I can kidnap people in them)

-I could kill gravity to avoid this

-I could ride a vehicle to ignore this

-Good luck getting a ling into a cremator in time

-Makes it far less effective to save people from gunfire/hostile mobs/space wind/singularity pull/falling down at a blob etc

-Dragging another willing person behind you is the least annoying way to have them follow you right now

-Would cult talismans last long enough to slowly move people?

-Nuke op has killed the captain. He has to fend off the whole crew now while searching the body.

-If its harder to snag lone targets it might ironically encourage more mass murder. Kill everyone nearby rather than risk a chase

I feel like most of these are non-issues.

1 - i just don't see anyone bothering to do that just for some more drag speed. It takes some time standing still to drag and drop the body on the bed, compared to ctrl-click.
2 - Shouldn't slow down locker-pulling. If you try murderboning with a locker, you'll find out that you can't hit people in a closed locker.
3 - How is that an issue, you can counter slips with no-grav but who does that
4 - Good way to handle it, vehicles aren't common and they can use the advantage.
5 - In my experience lings almost always get a revive before getting cremated, either they get beat down ad infinitum or they escape the first time, depending on powers. This won't change that.
6 - People on help intent could simply give no slowdown, when conscious and unstunned. In other cases having to risk a bit is justified.
7 - See above.
8 - Yes. The procedure is stun, remove headset, cuff. Then you have all the time you want.
9 - Stay still and vulnerable for 5-10 seconds or move immediately to safety but slower. Seems like a tactical decision to evaluate rather than moving since there's no downside.
10 - Stun-cuff will still be a thing. Dragging someone in cuffs publicly should not be a good idea in any case, so yes, if they don't flaunt their kidnapping they can do it. Murderboners never had the intention of keeping targets alive in the first place. As for kidnapping in populated rooms, you should need either a distraction or killing bystanders. Killing for the sake of an objective instead of just for the pleasure of it is justified, in my opinion.

Kor wrote:I know you never proposed banning them.

I am proposing banning them if your end goal is less unstoppable murdersprees.

I have watched (on and off) 7 years of balance and rule arguments all skirting around this issue. No matter what tweaks you make to the combat and how many features you remove people like Amelius or Robustin will be able to kill everyone else. They will find a new "uncounterable" method and have moved on while we spend months cleaning up the balance issues this will cause eveywhere else.

You're taking one thing that I mentioned that this could aid in resolving in part and turned it into THE REASON for the proposal. Its really obnoxious.

Oldman Robustin wrote:This really feels like making an issue out of nothing.

Both antags and sec benefit from dragging. Chases never feel pointless, if someone is expending energy to keep someone down then its that much harder for them to fend off pursuers.

There is no balance. I can keep somebody down infinitely while running at full speed down a hallway, into maint and I'm gone. All without any slowdown. You don't have to "fend of pursuers" because nobody can move faster than you while you keep them stunned and off into maint/space. There's no interesting combat or interaction here. The attacker wins, the victim loses, nobody can stop them except a lucky janitor.

cedarbridge wrote: The attacker wins, the victim loses, nobody can stop them except a lucky janitor.

Yeah you catch up to the attacker, use your weapon or steal the victim and run. It works both ways. This will change nothing except make it harder for security and antagonists alike, and it won't be fun for anyone. We'd have to rebalance every gamemode because frankly this would ruin most of them

BeeSting12 wrote:

cedarbridge wrote: The attacker wins, the victim loses, nobody can stop them except a lucky janitor.

Yeah you catch up to the attacker, use your weapon or steal the victim and run. It works both ways. This will change nothing except make it harder for security and antagonists alike, and it won't be fun for anyone. We'd have to rebalance every gamemode because frankly this would ruin most of them

Ask me how I know you only read the part you quoted?

As for gamemodes:

Cult: Has been changed and jiggered with so many times that "oh no we'll have to rebalance this mess again" is a meme.
Rev: Revs can't stun the HoP and turbo drag his ass down a hallway to his death while sec is helpless to do anything but shrug their shoulders and wait for the round-end text scroll. Sec can't do the same to a random revhead without having to actually fight against would-be rescuers. I see no problems with this whatsoever.
Nukeops: The ops might actually have to dunk the cap and secure the disk without treating non-war OPs like war ops? Break in, dunk the cap, secure the area around the cap as a team, get the disk, get out. The only thing this does is require ops to do something they should have been doing already, stick together and work together. I know we're allergic to teamwork in our gamemodes, but come on. Additionally, "stun/gun cap, speed drag into space gg" is interesting in exactly zero ways.

Did I miss one?

I'm sorry if I read to much into you mentioning murdersprees.

90% of policy and balance threads always seem to have "stuns are stupid" or "murdersprees are stupid" at the root of it though, and nobody really wants to tackle those issues, so we're stuck going in circles messing around at the fringes forever as a general trend.