/tg/Station 13

Howdy, I will be posting this on policy side as that is something that needs to be looked at and headmin domain has control over such.

Topic: Low population experience part 1

I can't say for much for anyone, but dangerous events time during low population is too short activation and abrupt to dealt with properly in a crew of 5 or less. I know folks stick out on sybil and used to on Basil, but the amount of just random space bears and gravity anomalies is way way too high for something that is basically back-to-back with your bare bone access. There are more dangerous vent events on icebox, since gravity cannot be uncharged.

Thoughts towards this change?

EVENTS_MIN_PLAYERS_MUL 1 for it start rolling. RNG is real awful sometimes.
https://github.com/tgstation-operations ... ptions.txt

I would experiment with trying a few multipliers with polls to see what the players think.
I am unsure what the sweet spot would be exactly but this would be a welcome change.

I think sweet spot would be around 10-15 players, probaly enough to have a functional station running if they ignore any events like flux its kinda on them

Biggest detriments to current lowpop experience are running out of power, gravgen anomalies, lack of lathe materials, and most importantly, lowpop murderboning/free antags with no one to challenge them.

On the anomaly front, disabling anomalies at under 10-15pop would help for sure. It's only one part of the many issues listed above, but we can talk about the others on separate occasions.

The anomalies that are the most annoying are gravgen going down and the anom that'll mess with the SM when there's no one to fix it. Also anoms that cause a bunch of hostile creatures to spawn in vents, or spiders that'll slowly but surely web up entire hallways, and greytide virus and the anom that destroys all the lights. Gravitational anomalies are not a problem, but the exploding ones can be.

Anomalies, gravity generator blackouts, electrical storms, and Greytide viruses are the BANE of lowpop. They all require tools or ID access to fix which you might not have convenient access to or the relevant crew member staffed. Additionally, since events are weighted on lowpop, you may get MULTIPLE gravity generator blackouts, greytide viruses, and electrical storms back to back, many times during a shift.
This looks something like Electrical storm into Gravity generator blackout into ANOTHER electrical storm all in the span of maybe like 30 minutes. A wretched experience.

However, dangerous vent spawns can be fun to deal with. Gearing up to deal with a swarm of non-sentient giant spiders can be a highlight of a 2 hour round of lowpop nothing.

Any reduction in random events would be welcome breathing room. It is difficult to focus on juggling department needs with a handful of people, so it usually falls to a dedicated "Anomaly neutralizer" person. New job content! I would even go so far as to welcome some sort of expensive machine we could build to cut Random Events in half, or even flip the Toggle Random Events button altogether.
Don't wyci me

DeathHasForm wrote: ↑Fri Apr 04, 2025 10:19 pm Any reduction in random events would be welcome breathing room. It is difficult to focus on juggling department needs with a handful of people, so it usually falls to a dedicated "Anomaly neutralizer" person. New job content! I would even go so far as to welcome some sort of expensive machine we could build to cut Random Events in half, or even flip the Toggle Random Events button altogether.
Don't wyci me

WYCI

I think this is a pretty cool idea, these random events are pretty shitty when you're playing low pop

Since Rex is interested in this, it is going to be passed on to the incoming headmin term.

We’ve discussed this and come to the unanimous conclusion to not make any change to the EVENT_MIN_PLAYER_MULT since it affects the minimum population of every event, for example changing the mult to 1.5 would make heart attack only roll on 60+ pop, to make impactful changes in this area for events that bother lowpop it would be better to make a pull request to the codebase and alter the min_player var on the events that are issues, like greytide.

Due to https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/90659 being merged we can now alter the population caps of events on a per event basis, so please discuss any potential changes you would like to see here!

Lowering the frequency of events in general during lowpop would be a godsend. Every lowpop shift is greytide followed by light breaking followed by greytide; half of the station is pitch black or venting to space more often than not, and if you drop what you're doing to fix it, it just happens again somewhere else.

Supermatter surge should probably require more than 0 players. If there is no one to fix it, then it'll just result in a massive hole for the first person to join a round during deadpop hours.

I'd appreciate a minimum on the extremely destructive events that require a full crew to fight/repair, see: blob, dragon, supermatter surge, meteors, probably something else im forgetting

kinnebian wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 7:51 am I'd appreciate a minimum on the extremely destructive events that require a full crew to fight/repair, see: blob, dragon, supermatter surge, meteors, probably something else im forgetting

Hard agree with kinnebian i think for extreme antags like dragons blob lone op, (round ending threats) etc should atleast require 25-30 people(Granted not everyone usually fights the antag but it atleast would allow a bigger fight then 3-4 people trying to kill something thats just super strong or regens to much gauranteeing round ending threat to end the round, unless some miracle happens.)

and for destructive events like meteor supermatter surge you should probaly sit fine at 15-20(Though most of the time meteors just ends in a shuttle call)

With the ability to modify parameters for individual events we have started with the following

These events now require a minimum population of 15 to trigger:

• Anomaly: Gravitational (High Intensity) (kills gravgen if it 'pops')
• Gravity Generator Blackout
• Grey Tide
• Supermatter Surge

We'll be closing out this thread, which started life describing a config parameter that no longer exists You're welcome to open threads to address specific events or dynamic configs.