Automated ERTs and Deathsquads

[actioninja]

Been thinking about this one a while. Something to lengthen rounds, get more people actually playing, and give murderbones a real threat to worry about.
Suit sensors activation/death report being below a certain threshold, large amount of fire alarms triggered, high amounts of atmos air alarms, or high amounts of power alarms could trigger a new "antag" event spawn, the Centcomm Investigator.

The Investigator would be similar to the familiar Centcomm Internal Affairs agent, but with a different angle. Instead of performing routine inspection or negotiations or something of the like, they are there to determine the cause of whatever problem got them called in the first place, then return back to Centcomm and make a call on whether or not an ERT is needed, what type if so, and what they need to do. You could add some additional player agency by adding things like the ability to flag heads as "incompetent" and have them forcibly relieved of duty by a support officer, notes that would be visible to the ERT. They would be lightly armed, if at all, and there could potentially be multiple variants. ie, undercover agent, etc.

The investigator would have a deadman's switch. Just outright killing them would immediately trigger a security response team. There could also potentially be some kind of time limit, say, 15 minutes to perform their investigation and return, if they fail to do so a security ERT could be triggered as well.
Once their report is finished and submitted, the appropriate ERT would be called in correspondence to whatever their report was. The ERT's goal would be to attempt to correct whatever the problem was that caused the investigator to be called, and assist survivors if relevant. They also could potentially come with support officers as previously stated that would serve as a replacement head to flagged positions.

Deathsquads could be called automatically based on a deadman's switch on the ERT. If every single ERT member dies, a deathsquad could be spawned as well. If this has happened the round is likely too far gone for any chance of recovery anyways. This would be a true full power death squad with the objective to purge all remaining survivors. Maybe even make this an explicit round ender, give them lifeform scanners or something that lock on to the nearest living human, round ends when every crew member is dead.

Problems I haven't really thought of a good way to resolve:
1. What do you do with the investigator once they've finished their job or the ERTs once they've finished their jobs?
2. What if murderboners view this as a challenge and murderbone harder to trigger the ERT response?

Mostly posting this to get feedback and other ideas. Fire away.

inb4 "reddit spacing"

[leibniz]

no

[Jimmius]

yes

[Lumbermancer]

We've had this discussion few times before. My opinion is that it will devolve into murderboner race to see who can kill the most, and then survive against erp squad. Counterintuitively counterproductive.

edeet.
so the problem 2, as you've noticed

[Shadowflame909]

Lexia black has killed an entire deathsquad with a disarm button and a potted plant

[datorangebottle]

Problems I haven't really thought of a good way to resolve:
1. What do you do with the investigator once they've finished their job or the ERTs once they've finished their jobs?
2. What if murderboners view this as a challenge and murderbone harder to trigger the ERT response?

1. Give them a sleeper to step into when the job is done, that despawns them. If an ERT is spawned, they're guaranteed a spot on it if they want one. Otherwise, back to ghosthood.
2. Then they'll get put down by the ERT/deathsquad, probably. Working As Intended.


This sort of feature would have to be disabled on low/deadpop rounds, though. Imagine there's five people on a space station, you're the traitor, you kill one of them, suddenly an Inspector shows up...

[Caiggas]

I like the idea, but I agree it would have to be for midpop and up rounds.

I share the concerns with it becoming a murderbone race, although many of the murdered people would get a chance at being one of the responding roles.

Trouble with the Inspector getting a guaranteed chance on the ERT team is that they are going to call for ERT every time, so they can do that too. I'd say do the opposite. Take them OUT of the pool for ERT and Deathsquad. This makes sure that whomever agrees to take the role doesn't have any biases on their report.

[Nalzul]

In my experience as an admin ERTs and DS are hardly used because you're generally punishing a player for doing well. Investigators and Chronolegions are similar too in that you award shitters for acting like retards when you could just bwoink them (mainly for chrono though). Mind you, ERTs and DS have their time and places, but most of the time it is not the right situation to use them.

[BeeSting12]

In my experience as an admin ERTs and DS are hardly used because you're generally punishing a player for doing well. Investigators and Chronolegions are similar too in that you award shitters for acting like retards when you could just bwoink them (mainly for chrono though). Mind you, ERTs and DS have their time and places, but most of the time it is not the right situation to use them.

Either that or they'll see it as a challenge or goal to hit and murderbone more often because of it.

[Lumbermancer]

2. Then they'll get put down by the ERT/deathsquad, probably. Working As Intended.

You're missing the point. The possible issue arising from this solution is that you will get mass murderboner into subsequent ert every round.

[imsxz]

is that a worse alternative than mass murder>no ERT every round? murderboners will murderbone, the bad ones will die before they hit big numbers anyways.

[Shadowflame909]

I mean as i've stated before the strongest murderboners will just end up with Deathsquad gear.


send in a chrono legionare if the deathsquad fails/give the deathsquad nuke codes.

Edit: This is how I believe it should work.

Now, it's if 90% of the crew is dead, ai's dead, and no one can call it. The shuttles called.

I feel that it should be, if the shuttle is recalled. Then an ERT spawns.

If ERT dies, then deathsquad. I feel like this is fair, as if the majority of the playerbase is literally dead and out of the round, and an antag is preventing the game from ending. Even though this is against the rules, partially.


The game should have alternative methods to end the round. right?

[actioninja]

In my experience as an admin ERTs and DS are hardly used because you're generally punishing a player for doing well.

That's part of the goal here actually. Punish murderboners for murderboning really hard in a mechanical way that gives them something besides a bunch of unarmed dumbasses to fight.
The Deathsquad would be more of a round ender as stated. Get things moving if the shuttle isn't called and there's a few stragglers bumbling around while some carped up ert suit wearing motherfucker is going ham.

[Lumbermancer]

is that a worse alternative than mass murder>no ERT every round? murderboners will murderbone, the bad ones will die before they hit big numbers anyways.

Yeah but now murderboner doesn't happen every round. But if you create quasi-event-like challenge, it will come out of the woodwork.

[Dr_bee]

This is basically rewarding murderbone. It would be better if you just gave heads of staff a way to pay for an ERT instead of making it automatic.

Remember, murderboners want combat.

[Zybwivcz]

The only place where I think this makes sense is for a Paranormal ERT to spawn or at least have a chance to spawn on cult rounds once the cult hits halo stage.

Maybe make it an X% chance per minute after that point so it's not too predictable. Also maybe reduce or eliminate the spawn chance when the shuttle is being called, so the only counter to lategame cult is no longer just to call the damn shuttle and wait.

You could arguably have something similar for rev rounds that have reached the point where revs are a large percentage of crew but a head or two has managed to survive. Gives heads/loyalists a small chance to fight back rather than turn it into a boring 'search for the CE' end.

[Steelpoint]

Every single time this concept is brought up, for years, among the first things people say is that it is 'rewarding murderboners' and it'll become 'a goal to work towards' for mass murdering.

But will it?

Deathsquads are the most powerful force in the game barring admin shenanigans, they already have a lot of mechanics in their favour like mindshield firing implants, unslippable, insane armour that survived the armour purge and more.

A few minor tweaks and you can ensure that a Deathsquad will not even come close to some kind of reward for mass murdering. It won't be like GTA where you get to fight the army and possibly win, it should be akin to Nar Sie showing up, you've lost and you can't beat it.

Some quick tweaks for this concept could be these special DS could have firing pins tied to the user, not a loyalty implant. Their armour cannot be removed at all. The E-Shields get a firing pin and they won't work if someone else picks it up. Tracking beacon that can be set to follow the mass murderer, etc.

[Lumbermancer]

You are kinda missing the obvious, so let me point it out, again. Murderboner doesn't care that it dies. They don't care about rp, they don't care about objectives, they want to ruin your good time and disrupt the round. We are talking about assistant mains and ghost-role fishermen. The fact that super-powerful deathsquid comes is merely a cherry on top of the cake of shitting things up. And let's be honest, when deathqsuid/erp comes, the round will probably come to an end one way or the other soon.

[Steelpoint]

Then this system won't change much, perhaps a more guaranteed ERT might help keep some people alive.

If a person wants to mass kill everyone they will do so irrespective.

If that is such a issue then perhaps a better idea is to investigate disencouraging murderboners.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

>jo dinky kills half the station
>deathsquad called
>they kill the other half because they’re the fucking deathsquad that’s what they’re for
>10th round in a row

[4dplanner]

TBH I'm not sure about the ERT part, but summoning the deathsquad seems like a bad idea.

[Daxxed]

IC Issue

[Ayy Lemoh]

This is basically rewarding murderbone. It would be better if you just gave heads of staff a way to pay for an ERT instead of making it automatic.

Remember, murderboners want combat.

Then why did we punish admins for spawning deathsquads to fight clock cult? I thought murderboners wanted combat.

Call this a strawman if you want but I still find that to be a valid point. Clock cult may be a conversion antag however there is still an example, maybe even more, where admins got punished for trying to 'reward' antags with more dangerous foes.

[actioninja]

>jo dinky kills half the station
>deathsquad called
>they kill the other half because they’re the fucking deathsquad that’s what they’re for
>10th round in a row

Ideally the deathsquad would only be summoned if the round has hit "irreversible levels of fucked." More of an early round ender to spare everyone than anything else.