/tg/Station 13

Vibe check thread on threat. I’ve heard quite a bit of grumbling about blue shifts (the creation of the devil) lately. Whatever Terry has cooking is probably a bit much for Manuel, but we could definitely use fewer slow rounds and more action.

Give me that 40-45 threat average please it’s the sweet spot.

I think it's clear that Dynamic needs some kind of rework; constantly chasing that perfect threat level doesn't seem to be doing anything in the long run. We've had way too many threads about it for it to be a consistent fix.

E: I guess this is kind of off-topic. I don't care about changing it that much tbh; if you think it'll help, then do it, but I don't know if we want to screw around too much with specifics like this right now.

Every time any admin mentions threat is fucked up or dynamic is broken or whatever in the admin channels, I pull the stats from the feedback database and calculate it.

Every single time Manuel averages 40-45 threat shifts with usually at least one super low threat shift a day and occasional super high threat shifts. And Terry averages 55-60 threat shifts with usually at least one super high threat shift a day and the occasional super low threat shift.

The median threat also tracks within a couple of points of the average, so distrubtion tends to be fairly clean too.

Over the course of a month, dynamic's threat distribution is fine. Over the course of a week, it's fine. Over the course of a day, it's fine. But over the course of a single person playing across any of those time periods, the numbers can be a total crapshoot.

And the collective hivemind of all people playing the game are more impacted by placebo than by reality when it comes to subtle dynamic tweaks. On a few occasions threat has been changed without telling anyone and nobody noticed. Sometimes it has been communicated weeks after the changes are made and players often give feedback that it was better during the time period it was already changed but they hadn't yet been told.

I don’t particularly care what the median data set is for any of ours servers across a month, week, or even a day. That data tracks threat distribution on every single round when we really only care about 5-6 rounds every day at peak hours.

Threat feels low during those peak hours because there are more people. The only way we can do anything about that is adjusting the curve up.

threat has psyoped people into thinking it's the threat value what makes rounds chaotic, when in reality it's who gets antag and what they do with it

manuel shifts often have low levels of chaos because either terminal rpers or anxious wrecks get antag and do nothing with it all shift, or someone gets antag and is quickly caught by the five hypercompetent manuel security statics/forced to play super quietly so the former doesn't happen

you can't fix the first issue whatsoever and you can't fix the second without more security restrictions which are always dubious. i know dramazing wanted to do something like that in the candidate thread, but that has not happened yet (or even spoken of?)

britgrenadier1 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 7:22 pm I don’t particularly care what the median data set is for any of ours servers across a month, week, or even a day. That data tracks threat distribution on every single round when we really only care about 5-6 rounds every day at peak hours.

Threat feels low during those peak hours because there are more people. The only way we can do anything about that is adjusting the curve up.

With that in mind, I've made all the necessary changes to the MRP override dynamic configs to ensure the threat averages the 40-45 sweet spot.

Timberpoes wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 8:01 pm

britgrenadier1 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 7:22 pm I don’t particularly care what the median data set is for any of ours servers across a month, week, or even a day. That data tracks threat distribution on every single round when we really only care about 5-6 rounds every day at peak hours.

Threat feels low during those peak hours because there are more people. The only way we can do anything about that is adjusting the curve up.

With that in mind, I've made all the necessary changes to the MRP override dynamic configs to ensure the threat averages the 40-45 sweet spot.

Thanks king

Edit: let’s make sure to doc those changes in the config changes channel too

carlarc wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 7:31 pm you can't fix the first issue whatsoever and you can't fix the second without more security restrictions which are always dubious. i know dramazing wanted to do something like that in the candidate thread, but that has not happened yet (or even spoken of?)

I walked back that idea even back during the campaign— it’s still a problem I’d like sorted, but there’s no real way to handle it via restricting security FURTHER, I realized after several pointed conversations.

Instead, I’ve been spending my time breathing down necks about powergaming and (at least in asay) recommending we keep that sorta stuff in check. I’m still open for suggestions in a policy sense but I’m not sure it’d help- hence, just trying to curb the worst behaviors and then occasionally going loud myself when I roll it. God bless NecromancerAnne for the Pipegun rework. Best shit for gimmicky loudtagging in a loooong while.

Raising threat is still the way to go I feel, more often than not Security has to deal with one Threat at a time, because of how little happens In our shifts.

I like the level it's at currently on Manuel, but yeah, high threat level doesn't necessarily equal a high threat round. I've seen rounds where security neutralizes most of the high level threats early on so a 60 threat round feels like a 15 threat one, and I've also seen 30 threat rounds kill half the station because security was composed of one poor single secoff and they were face down dead in some part of maints 15 minutes in.

(which the issue of security feeling pressed to try and clamp down on antags is an entirely unrelated issue of it feeling like every antag is designed to become nuclear if left alone to fester long enough)

I'm a bit cautious about raising threat because those few weeks back in September 2023 where it was like 50-70+ threat every round was the closest I ever came to just putting down the game for good. Dynamic isn't dynamic, it's (mostly) the same antags every time but with different spicyness levels. It's absolutely tedious when it's the same exact shit every round with the same antags speedrunning the same boring-ass skyrim randomly generated objectives which rolls into more antags which rolls into the station blowing up every round, it's not special if the station gets nuked every round.

I don't like this. We had a thread not too long ago about raising threat across the board. Then another thread complaining that the threat was too high (the one RedBaronFlyer mentioned).

This is becoming the "Hobbits approaching, open the gates" meme. How many policy threads are necessary until there's a sweet spot of threat that doesn't require another policy thread?

After the work that Timberpoes has done, I think our threat levels are more or less right in the sweet spot we intended. We've liked what we've seen from the Dynamic changes and so I'll close this thread out.