/tg/Station 13

Non-Terry/Bagil players need not apply bye bye do not post here we don't want your opinions.

When I hear powergaming the first thing I think of is manuel player trying to get all of xenobio done in 20 minutes so they can validhunt harder with tons of stabilised extracts but I'm curious to hear what the people who play on the good servers think so please discuss.

unwrenching the plasma pump instead of inverting it

Giving yourself a major advantage before the shuttle call mark in the round.


So powergaming: Fixing Securities flaws at roundstart

Not powergaming: Building a dangerous weaponized mech 1 hour into the round.

Powergaming: Killing all the megafauna and coming back with a guardian, heck armor and a lava staff 20 minutes in

Not powergaming: spending 30 minutes augmenting yourself and getting a chainsaw arm.

It simply depends on the time frame because it gives antags enough time to act whilst not ignoring the sliding time scale of round progression which will inherently lower the value of traitor tools as the crew gets their equivalents.

Like finding e-sabers, getting meteor slugs in your shotgun, getting kevinz meme cannon, death nettles, etc etc.

powergaming is when I see something and say “that’s powergaming”

dunking a xeno bio retard who thinks all his slimes will save him is a great feeling and I never want them to stop doing it.

not slipping on soap

if you dont slip on soap you are powergaming - you choose to not die instead of dying to allow for roleplay to happen

Xenobio is not powergame because it needs to be actually powerful to powergame it. Not shitty ass oil slime cores or simplemob memes that can take 30+ minutes to do (75% of a terry round), or purple crossbreeds that are just miner pens+ (which take a ton of time to make unlike the one press meme pen)

A few examples of powergame :

- Spare rush as nonantag (because the assistant just NEEDS that aa)

- Roundstart lexorin or whatever posion syringe gun as nonantag

- Space "exploring" for the sole purpose of getting an m1911/accelerator laser cannon/whatever space loot thing you can find then instantly teleporting back to the station to be annoying with muh cool space guns

- General definition : people not doing their job/doing antag-typical things in their job like making posions as chemists in order to acquire more power/validhunt strength. Powerful things you get from doing your job properly do not count, such as roboticists making mechs (but if you rush mechs like some people do it is powergamey) and xenobio making "powerful" crossbreeds (their purpose is experimentation/science/making slime things to help the station in my eyes) Miners going after megafauna is special because they have fuck all else to do other than just run along 1-wide tunnels with their plasma cutter if they want to do their job of just mining to the fullest extent. If it helps your job - it's ok. If it's something your job is expected to make/do - it's ok. If it's something people would expect antags in your job position to do - it is not.

- Reinforcing areas as sec is NOT powergame as it directly corresponds with their goals and should be done as soon as the warden hears the code blue announcement. The best sec/command players would prepare for the threat stated in the centcomm report - revs likely? Make sure flashes are not being handed out. Cult? keep a look out for maint blood. An important distinction is that you should only look for signs of the antag being present, not actively work against it preemptively by doing things such as mindshield implanting random people solely because of the centcomm announcement. Once their prescence is confirmed you can start.

Tl;dr, fuckwad chemist with grenades, lube spray, lex gun, and no meds handed out/plumbed bad.

Usually I consider it as playing with a checklist. It isn't necessarily just filling in basics (getting tools, getting glubs, getting welder protection), since those allow you to more easily interact with the in-game world, and necessary to do a whole host of stuff.

It's more going to extremely big lengths to be able to answer most any issue IMMEDIATELY, even if the equipment you otherwise acquire or powers you seek out aren't part of your department or offered to you by people who are. While I don't want to throw him under a bus, kevinZ is an example of someone who over prepares to quite an immense degree that catching him with his pants down is literally requiring you to one shot him a lot of the time, assuming your attack sticks. You'll see it more as scientist or RD, and he plays those roles because of how easy it is to move through the core power up departments. He is better at it now and keeps it to departmental stuff at least, but it can be a bit jarring to consider his checklist to another's.

It's almost certainly cutting out weaknesses or limitations. Personally, I think it is more fun when you need to prepare with a limited amount of time. There is a difference between knowing what you need and trying to figure out how to get it right now to deal with X problem, and having already, unprompted, sought out that solution and have it for a problem you aren't even aware exists yet. Powergaming usually comes from an anxiety about dealing with the unknown. Which is fair. The game has degrees of asymmetrical design that make it easy to slip into that. But routines often can be extremely detrimental to more than just your play. Using kevin as an example again, knowing his checklist is knowing what does and doesn't work, so it is a kind of metagaming he has forced upon the familiar to succeed and unfamiliar to discover and inevitably fail when they encounter it.

This is mostly important for nonantags. I think antags, being what they are, are engaging in a kind of puzzle of effectiveness, mind game, deception and efficiency, and by their nature should be powergaming. They only have so much they can draw from to succeed, and so their basics broaden to include stuff that if sought by a nonantag end up running into powergaming, just because what they are solutions too tend to be end states (flashes, flashbangs, batons). It isn't powergaming to accept in the badman role that the game is unfair and that the only solution is to broadly tell everyone you are, today, going to make this game miserable for them, because the alternative is failure at the expense of themselves to satisfy a sense of 'honor' that players sometimes expect antags to follow (which is really double speak for 'please allow me to win').

This results in a fairly destructive cycle of sorts that incentivises and encourages those players prone to excessive overpreparedness to do what they do. They see the antag man doing it, know that the advantage they gain for doing so is extremely significant, and so do it as a matter of course to answer what might not be a routine engaged by everyone who plays those roles and broadly isn't necessary until you encounter it and come back later the solution.

stan_albatross wrote:
- Reinforcing areas as sec is NOT powergame as it directly corresponds with their goals and should be done as soon as the warden hears the code blue announcement.

cringe take completely goes against the reason the station has those intentional design flaws in the first place

1v1 me in minecraft NOW NOW NOW

powergaming is unwrenching the plasma pipe so the AI can't use it
powergaming is doing something that makes a mess or doesn't make sense to be better off in a single round
powergaming isn't being good at your job

ok retards did you read "terry players only " in the OP? no one gives a fuck about you mrp /sybil opinion

I play on Terry when it has pop. It's just frustrating when it crashed back to back so eventually I just get exhausted by it. Also I lag a lot worse than the other servers. I am largely not attached to any single server.

i think powergame could be associated with being new to the game / ineptness, as always rushing certain strats and over responding to threats means you are scared of losing, true players always have control of the situation and escalate the powerlevel finely as threat grows; suspicious clown ? go near it anyway as you can always prank him back once he slips you while pulling an esword out of his pocket with a smoke/lube voicenade and thermals

powergame is when you, for no other reason byond the fact you can, go out of your way to minimalize counteryplay against you.

an example would be rushing insulated gloves, glasses, sec headset, and a makeshift baton only because it prevents you from being shocked,flashed,flashbanged, and having someone get the jump on you.

no one enforces it though so im not sure if you're asking the practical definition or the "textbook" one/ If we're going by the practical one it is literally just making the AI not able to flood plasma as that is the only one people will ever care to enforce. Hell if you just make it LOOK like the AI is sending plasma to distro you can probably get away with it.

imagine playing the game without tools/gloves/medkit tho thats not "powergaming" thats just asking for suicide

Tlaltecuhtli wrote:imagine playing the game without tools/gloves/medkit tho thats not "powergaming" thats just asking for suicide

unironically this is the problem

if you play on basil/terry and you dont take pre-emptive measures to either avoid common antag tools or fuck them over when they kill you you're just going to get steamrolled by the really good players

and yeah obviously people who play the game more should definitely be better than those of us who aren't robust, im not trying to argue that, but how can you justify not grabbing powergamer tools in any way other than a moral code that ultimately makes it more likely you're going to get dunked on

playing on basil/terry is basically a tutorial on how to powergame through repeated deaths and learning "oh thats how people do it"

edit: to be entirely honest you could argue that one of the only big differences between being robust and not being robust is knowing how to powergame, and maybe knowing how to deal with byond's interfact

''maximizing to win something'' ''cheesing'' or being ''unbeatable/robust'', twisted word.

The actual key to being robust is not just knowing how to do everything and getting all the gamer gear you can quickly. It's knowing how that these are unnecessary and you never needed them in the first place, and it is a pointless cycle. Don't poison yourself with the toolbox.

Shadowflame909 wrote: Powergaming: Killing all the megafauna and coming back with a guardian, heck armor and a lava staff 20 minutes in

Not powergaming: spending 30 minutes augmenting yourself and getting a chainsaw arm.

doing your job is powergaming but spending time just to be more protected from threats isnt

Choosing your race as felinid so you have the hivemind chat and 3-4 other cute cats metafriending you at all times.

Fikou wrote:

Shadowflame909 wrote: Powergaming: Killing all the megafauna and coming back with a guardian, heck armor and a lava staff 20 minutes in

Not powergaming: spending 30 minutes augmenting yourself and getting a chainsaw arm.

doing your job is powergaming but spending time just to be more protected from threats isnt

Focusing on frivilous OP stuff instead of doing your job and helping out the game is sweaty

And the other one is what I imagine is an assistant who has no job

tumesuo wrote:Choosing your race as felinid so you have the hivemind chat and 3-4 other cute cats metafriending you at all times.

i will say this again
powergaming is "ooga booga me take all the good shit to minimize failure at the expense of others"
make long paragraph explaining what powergaming is and you're overexplaining