/tg/Station 13

Part 2: https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic ... 18#p100418 (full list of antags)
Part 3: https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic ... 13#p100447 (How threat works to generate antags)

So I've been talking about datum based antags for a while now, and I've started putting pen to digital paper to iron out the details here and stop the mental feature creep before this project becomes too big to do. The following is ALL up for debate and critique. It doesn't represent the whole of what I'm planning, but I'll post more as I properly verbalize it. I'm hoping to get this done within a month or so (Not a promise).

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The Primary Goal

Game mode code is an extremely old system with very little standardization between modes. It locks in a number of game mechanics at round start that really don't need to be and makes inserting or mixing antag types a confusing headache. My work on mulligan (which I stopped to work on this) was greatly inhibited by the dozens of strangely handled edge cases between antag types. It's reached a point where I feel that it would be easier to stop building on the proverbial swamp that is game mode code and build a new, more solid foundation based on a better atomized system of datums.

An antag datum is the new unit of measure here. An antag datum is located within the mind of a player, and also referenced on a global list in the corpse of the old game mode code. For antags that work alone the datum is unique to them. For team based antags there will be a shared datum that every player in the team shares that keeps track of their progress as a group. Special roles within a team mode (like gang leaders or rev heads) might have a separate datum in addition to the group datum. A player may have multiple antag datums at once if they share multiple antagonist roles.

What Does What

An antag datum should track:

-Who can hold that datum (valid candidates)
-What gear or abilities that antag gets
-Where they start/if they're exempt from the job system
-Where this antag draws candidates from (roundstart|late join|ghosts)
-Rules for conversion/deconversion
-Victory/failure conditions
-Any antag roles that may be blacklisted for having confusing or bad synergy (like blob/wizard)
-Tracking for how an antag is doing in the course of a round (living/dead|objectives complete/incomplete|ghosted/siliconed/animaled/whatever)

The remains of game mode code will house:

-the game mode itself, as a properly weighted list of antag datums to hand out
-A number of global lists that divvy up each kind of datum

Adding a new antag in the middle of the round should be as easy as giving a player an antag datum, removing an antagonist status should be as easy as deleting that datum. Everything that makes an antag an antag should attempt to be contained within the datum to reduce loose ends that would need to be handled elsewhere otherwise.

Consequences for game modes

Datumizing antags will mean that we can easily decouple antags from modes, and sprinkle them liberally across the rainbow of rounds. Balance will change radically as it will become balanced more around the "threat" each antag brings to the table rather than the "threat" of a mode as a whole

The end game here is to remove all meta about what antags could practically be in a round. Seeing a tome shouldn't mean you can relax about changelings, seeing a wizard shouldn't automatically clear the AI. More options means more paranoia, and it means you can still get caught flat footed. Every round will be weighted against its population in terms of what it can handle. As an example a blob round with more than 60 people ready results in two blobs. But under the new system if the game picked blob as a round type you might see 1 blob, 3 changelings, and an abductor. Obviously this will invoke a lot of balancing on live servers, so I'm going to apologize ahead of time for that.

The idea here is that a game mode will represent the biggest threat in the round. If the game rolls changelings, you won't see a wizard, but you'll probably have to contend with at least one other minor threat, like maybe a traitor or two, or an abductor. Of course you won't be able to tell that a round is a changeling round at all unless you can confirm that there are many changelings around. If you just find one it could as easily be a gang round with a solo ling floating around in the crossfire.

Because of this big change some modes will change rather drastically, a few will be retired outright.

*Abduction: Retired. Tests have shown that while these guys are fun to play, they don't really threaten people much, and are more suited to a side role among more active antagonists. Abductors will become a semi-rare threat in most other game modes.

*Blob: Two blob rounds during high pop will become much rarer. Threats besides the blobs will appear but MOST antags won't be able to win if the blob wins. These antags will have to carefully balance fucking people over with not letting the blob win. The round will not end if the blob(s) are defeated, but will if the blobs win.

*Changeling: These rounds won't be quite so boring anymore :^)

*Traitorling: Retired. Traitors and lings will become a fairly common occurrence in many rounds, and traitorling "rounds" will be simulated by either a few lings in a traitor round or a few traitors in a ling round.

*Cult: Some cultists may have other antagonists roles. Antagcultists should work to "win on both fronts" if they're in a cult, and should probably be open with there extra abilities to their fellow cultstimers. See section on "priority".

*Extended/Sandbox: No change, no threats

*Gang: Very large rounds may start with more than two gangs. Gangsters cannot be on two gang teams at once, but they can still be in other team antagonist roles like a cult or a revolution. In general gangster status should take a lower priority to revolutions and cults when it comes to conflicts of interest (ie killing a head if your a revolutionary is fine even if he's an aligned gangster). See section on "priority".

*Malfunction: Low level threats will be spawned in addition to a malf if the round can handle it. Like blob most antags cannot win if the malfunctioning AI wins (especially if it explodes the station). The round will not end if the malf loses, but will if it wins.

*Meteor: Low level threats will be spawned if populations are high enough. Meteor mode will still be a laggy mess.

*Monkey: Infected monkeys will almost never be seen outside of monkey mode. The mantra here is that you can assume nothing, so you may see a monkey or two once in a blue moon outside of monkey mode. Likewise infected monkeys may also be other antagonists, and hilariously most objectives can still be completed even if you're a monkey. Mode will not end if all monkeys are eradicated.

*Nuke ops: The number of ops may scale more actively with population. Because they're on the same team, operatives will be aware of traitors on the station, and traitors might do well to signal to ops and try to team up with them. Mode will not end if all ops die, and if the round ends with no threats that care about the nuke disk alive, the station won't lose if they left it behind.

*Revolution: Number of rev heads may scale more actively with population. Rounds will not end suddenly: If all the rev heads die all revolutionaries are spontaneously deconverted. If all heads die a nice big station announcement will publicly hand over the station to the rev heads. At this point the revolution will cease to be antags. If any loyalty implanted staff remain at this point, they will gain counter-revolutionary antag status to allow them to fight to the last man if desired. The shuttle may be called without dealing with counter-revs, the revolution will be considered a success unless the former rev heads are killed by the counter-revolutionaries, in which case everyone loses.

*Shadowling: Being a shadowling thrall will garner the highest loyalty possible. You don't betray the shadowling for anything, if there's any antag status you have that conflicts with the shadowlings well being, it's lost on conversion. See section on "priority". Shadowlings themselves may have additional antag statuses as well.

*Traitor: Will probably become more common in terms of percentages due to the loss of traitorling. Low level side antags will be a fixture of traitor rounds, and there will be potential abound for metaing the round type as something else.

*Double Agents: Survives mostly intact. Mini rings of double agents may appear in other rounds, but no matter where they appear they still can't buy bombs [sad_trombone.wav].

*Wizard: Wizards may come in several power-levels to allow lower level threats to face smaller crews. Other antagonists may be common if population is high enough, and the propensity of chaos will mean that crazy situations are always the most likely here.

*Ragin' Mages: Retired. A chance of multiwiz will be put in as a rare fight for high pop crews.

Priority in antaging

If a person comes to hold contradictory objectives, there will be a trump system to see which wins out:

*Shadowling thrall holds the highest priority. If you have an objective as any other kind of antagonist to harm someone on your new team, it's removed outright.
*Cultist come next. If the cult is targeting a shadowling for sacrifice (you poor bastards) thralls can't be converted at all, beyond this anyone on team cult is safe from their fellow cultists.
*Revolution gets third tier here. Revolutionaries in a cult/thralled with a head are deconverted, but if the cult is trying to sacrifice a non-revolutionary and contains no heads, you can be both at once. Note that if a head later joins your other team, you get dereved at that point.
*Gangsters are the low men on the priority poll. If your gang contains elements the shadowling/Cult/Revolution want dead, you lose your gangster status. Gang status will still trump things like a traitor objective to kill a teammate however.
*All solo antags share the basement level. In general you can be multiple solo antags at once without conflicting (unless you're a blob in which case you don't have to deal with any of this)

It's important to note two things here: You don't redtext an objective if you're on a team with a target, the objective is just gone. The other thing to note is if you later lose the trumping team, your old alliances/objectives will come back into play.

A few cool new things

Admins will be able to pick any mix of antags they want prior to round start and run it at as a roundtype. All warranties on game balance voided here.

The mulligan system will be rebooted into a new form where antags may be brought on as old ones are neutralized or achieve greentext. It will never be as frantic as tensioner, but rounds should never be completely empty of threats (unless it's extended).

A streach goal here is to allow any roundtype to be played even at low pop. Lowered threat versions of antags (detailed in a later text wall) will be created to be smaller threats to smaller crews. Multiple copies of smaller threats may also become side antags for other round types in high pop situations. As an example maybe a wizard that can only use three robeless spells.

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There's more to write but I need to stop for now. More details will be added as new textdumps soonish.

I was planning on making datum-based gangs whenever design on it stabilizes.

I think you'd probably be better at it than I am though, so do you want me to leave it to you?

Ikarrus wrote:I was planning on making datum-based gangs whenever design on it stabilizes.

I think you'd probably be better at it than I am though, so do you want me to leave it to you?

Some antag types already have datum holders for some of their stuff (like changelings) that I'll need to merge together at some point so it wouldn't be a crime if you did some of my work for me, but you definitely don't have to.

If and when I get started, I'll check with your first.

What's the best way to reach you, because I hardly see you in IRC?

Ikarrus wrote:If and when I get started, I'll check with your first.

What's the best way to reach you, because I hardly see you in IRC?

Honestly I usually just respond to "get your ass on IRC" requests when people leave them for me on github PRs. Otherwise there's an email address listed in https://github.com/Incoming5643 that you can use. I really do just look on github a lot.

Incoming wrote:*Gang: Very large rounds may start with more than two gangs. Gangsters cannot be on two gang teams at once, but they can still be in other team antagonist roles like a cult or a revolution. In general gangster status should take a lower priority to revolutions and cults when it comes to conflicts of interest (ie killing a head if your a revolutionary is fine even if he's an aligned gangster). See section on "priority".

This sounds like way more trouble than its worth. Honestly I think the various mixed antags just shouldn't be. I never really liked traitorling to begin with but revcult and revgang? Seriously?

Incoming wrote:*Nuke ops: The number of ops may scale more actively with population. Because they're on the same team, operatives will be aware of traitors on the station, and traitors might do well to signal to ops and try to team up with them. Mode will not end if all ops die, and if the round ends with no threats that care about the nuke disk alive, the station won't lose if they left it behind.

I'm not entirely certain on this, while it'd be nice in theory for the nuke ops to gain a stealthy member it also changes up the balance a bit if you suddenly have a crew member with an ebow firing down maintenance.

Incoming wrote:*Revolution: Number of rev heads may scale more actively with population. Rounds will not end suddenly: If all the rev heads die all revolutionaries are spontaneously deconverted. If all heads die a nice big station announcement will publicly hand over the station to the rev heads. At this point the revolution will cease to be antags. If any loyalty implanted staff remain at this point, they will gain counter-revolutionary antag status to allow them to fight to the last man if desired. The shuttle may be called without dealing with counter-revs, the revolution will be considered a success unless the former rev heads are killed by the counter-revolutionaries, in which case everyone loses.

Now THIS sounds awesome.

The priority system sounds like it will lead to a lot of headaches and ahelps, unless its made really blatantly obvious with POP UP AND CHECK THESE THREE BOXES IF YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND level of "pay attention".

I will be disappointed if this isn't the return of Instant round end Wizard Malf

This is really awesome and interesting.

The glaring issue with this however is that balance is totally fucked, and balancing itself would have to change gone more general, taking into account all threats instead of just standard crewmen. For example c4 would be ridiculous against malf.

Honestly since any team antag is a pretty big threat I doubt the priority rules will be something that nearly ever is relevant, it's just the sort of thing that needs to exist to cover edge cases.

Just to put this out there my vague, very unfinalized, balancing for this stuff places a revolution coinciding with a cult (as both exist today) at a population minimum of 60 players with a chance to occur (based on currect round type odds) of ~.34%. Meaning you might have to deal with both at the same time once every three hundred rounds.

"Won't be able to win" isn't going to stop me from maliciously sabotaging blob fight attempts, or anyone else. Blob is going to suck if side antags start showing up.

One of the more urgent things to be fixed. Godspeed.

Part 2 starts now:

The Big List of Antag Datums (changes will be highlighted in red)
Note: Some of these might not be done during the initial pull, but they're all things I'd like to add and think already have a place in tgstations play style.

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Traitor Based (gets an uplink, relatively common to find in other game modes)

Traitor: Threat low. The classic, 20TC, a few objectives. Loses Martyr objective. Loses escape alone objective.
Double Agent: Threat low. Has to kill another Double Agent + Escape alive, 20TC with explosions removed.
Martyr: Threat medium. 20TC, has to die to win, objectives comprised entirely of kill/sabotage missions.
Hijacker: Threat medium. 40TC, nuke op uplink. Must escape alone. More prone to join late in rounds.
Shadow Operative: Threat high. 40TC, nuke op uplink. Must detonate the station's nuke, spawns knowing the code. No survival objective. Only joins late in rounds. Only ever one, and never with nuke op based antags. Requires active captain to spawn.

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Changeling Based (gets special abilities, relatively common to find in other game modes)

Changeling: Threat low. Objectives tend to focus on identity theft and regular theft. Limited power choices. Debrain objective removed. "Going quiet".
Greater Changeling: Threat medium. Objective tend to focus on killing, absorption, and brain stealing. Gets more (all?) powers. "Going loud".
Bodysnatcher: Threat high. Changelings with additional ability to turn victims into changelings (standard ones). Only roundstart antagonist, rarely found outside of changeling.

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Wizard Based (magic spells and such, very rare to find in other game modes)

Sorceror: Threat medium. Spawns on station as a normal crewmember, but has access to three robeless spells of their choice. Objectives similar to a traitor.
Wizard: Threat high. Five spell slots, can pick anything a wizard can pick now. Shinangans everywhere. Almost never seen outside its own game mode.
Apprentice: Special rules. Spawns through wizards. Have preset magical abilites and must protect their summoner.

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Blob Based (Needs to eat the station to win, all blobs share the one objective, can't share this antag type with any other type, blob victory ends the round, very rare to find in other game modes, and never at round start.)

Lesser Blob: Threat medium. Has a reduced growth rate compared to true blobs, cannot split or use factory nodes. Only type that spawns outside of blob mode.
Blob: Threat high. Typicial growth rate for a blob. Can split once, which creates a lesser blob.
Greater Blob: Threat very high. Enhanced growth rate for a blob, can split as often as it wants (creates lesser blobs) but can't create normal expansion nodes. Growth rate degrades with every split it undertakes. Strictly a high pop blob round challenge.

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Revolution Based (Needs to kill the heads to win, all rev types are exclusive [you won't normally see them mixing in a round] appearence in other game modes varies.)

Anarchist: Threat low. A sole rev. No conversions. Not expected to win much. Appearance rate in other modes is better than other revs.
Cadre: Threat medium. 2-5 revs spread across round start population. No conversions but late joins may be part of the cadre. Balanced for low pop rev situations. Cadres may appear in other game modes somewhat rarely.
Revolution: Threat high. 1-3 rev heads with conversion tactics that can't defeat loyalty implants. Presence halts the escape shuttle until the revolution is decided one way or the other. Almost never seen outside of its game mode, a single rev head may spawn once a blue moon if the stars align.
Counterrevolution: Special rules. Comprised of loyalty implanted personel still alive at time of revolution victory. Tasked with killing the former rev heads, but can never win, just make the revolution fail. Once the station falls the revolution has won, even if the old heads are revived.

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Gang Based (Tag and dominate the other gang/station to win, always spawn with at least two gangs. appearence in other game modes varies.)

Street Gang: Threat medium. A small number (2-5?) of gangsters on each side choosen at round start. No special tools or dominator, no gang bosses or conversion. Low pop gang. Tasked with wiping out the other gang. Somewhat rarely appear in other modes.
Gang: Threat high. As they exist now, Two (maybe more in high pop?) gangs with leaders who can convert and buy tools compete to place down a dominator and take over the station. Round ends with gang victory.


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Cult Based (Friends of Nar Nar, if Nar Nar is summoned shuttle will leave even in the presences of antags that usually prevent it. Revolutions, gangs, blobs, and malfunctioning AIs all lose if Nar Nar shows up. Somewhat rare to find outside its mode.)

Acolytes: Threat medium. A small number of cultists who can't convert more people. Never have to summon narsie as an objective, will have to sacrifice and at least one of them must live to see centcom. Low pop cult. Somewhat rare appearance in other modes.
Cultists: Threat high. The proper cult experience, with narsie summonings possible and conversions. Extremely rare to see in other modes.

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Abductor (Steals people and drives them nuts, always spawn in pairs, ayy lmao. Can't share antag types with any other type except changeling. Fairly common to find in other game modes.)

Abductor: Threat low. As they exist now, start on the saucer and need to abduct a certain number of people to win. Hopefully we can make the objective actually work.

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Shadowling (Converts people and turns into a wizard-like antag that hates the beach. Can't be changelings. Very rare to find outside its mode.)

Shadowling: Threat medium. As they exist now, need to convert a certain number of living people to become physical gods. If the shuttle is called due to an accendant shadowling the shuttle will leave even if other threats that typically prevent its departure are present (they are credited with a win if still alive at round end). If a shadowling is converted to gang/cult/revolution, all its thralls also join.

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Malfunctioning AI (Countdown to victory, prevents the shuttle from leaving, cannot be a traitor at the same time, A malfunction victory prevents most other antags from winning, cosmically low chance to appear outside game mode.)

Malf AI: Very high threat. Victory ends the round. Can be cheated out of a victory by other antags that take over the station if they act first (blobs, gang takeovers, nuke op detonations).

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Nuke Ops (Get that fucking disk, crashes the station with no survivors, cosmically low chance to appear outside game mode.)

Nuke Op: Very high threat. Usually consists of five members, could come with fewer to balance for low pop op. Nuke ops know who traitors are, and traitors can escape on the nuke shuttle with the operatives. Nuking the station ends the round if successful.

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Infected Monkey (EEE! EEE! EEE! Badmin only.)

Monkey:

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Misc Antags (none of these are naturally spawning)

Shadowling thralls: Created by shadowlings, shadowlings thralls all die if the shadowling wins, thralls with other antag status can still "win" if they manage to complete these tasks without slighting the shadowling.

Abductees: Created by abductors, abductees get power incontience and a fluff objective. Freeeeeeeee antag.

Survivalists: Created by summon guns (wizard). Survivalists want to gather guns, and also fire guns.

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[Let me know if I missed any, I'm not doing antags for mobs that have intrinsic antag status like blood demons]

I think this is a interesting way of shaking up the game, moving away from game modes that present one form of antagonist into a unique form of game where there's usually one primary antagonist but many or several sub antagonists that appear at random. This opens up the way for rounds that are entirely unique every time.

I think being an hour into fort building/mechspam and having some guy latejoin, revolver the captain, and then blow up the station without anyone even knowing it was happening would be more frustrating than fun. Love the rest though.

Alright, this looks pretty fun

Sadly, no love for Security rolls, but then again I'm not entirely surprised

Scones wrote:Alright, this looks pretty fun

Sadly, no love for Security rolls, but then again I'm not entirely surprised

Counter revolutionary is mostly security, since it effects only the loyalty implanted.

I could code in a dirty cop antag, but I felt like most people would say that was a bad thing.

Kor wrote:I think being an hour into fort building/mechspam and having some guy latejoin, revolver the captain, and then blow up the station without anyone even knowing it was happening would be more frustrating than fun. Love the rest though.

High threat antags will tend to follow other high threat antags. Rounds where low grade lings allow a three hour round usually won't ratchet up into this spontaneously. I say usually because besides infected monkeys I want the potentiality for ANYTHING to be on the table, even if it is vanishingly unlikely.

Just some sec special role you can obtain would be cool.

I don't like the Hijacker. If the current Security-changing plans/PRs go through, escaping alone might once again be a viable objective for a regular, 20TC traitor.

I also dislike the Changelings, but that's because I dislike the way /tg/ does lings in general. They shouldn't be traitors with superpowers, they should be more body horror-focused like Goonling (although perhaps a straight port would be a bad idea).

Gang mode is a mess right now. The idea is good in theory, but in practice one gang leader usually dies/goes afk a few minutes into the round and then it becomes super-Rev. Your proposed Street Gang version is actually superior in every respect. One thing I would suggest is for street gangs to also be able to tag, just to show fellow gang members which areas are under their control and thus safe.

I'm going to fight this change tooth and nail until cult conversion trumps shadowling thralling.

Once your eyes have been opened to an old god, not even some hokey pokey mind control can shut them.

Cult lyfe 4ever

On a serious note, it's going to be impossible to balance multiple antag types. You'll try and try before realizing that some combination of antags were just never meant to exist. If game types are going to involve more "mixed" antags, each round is basically spinning the RNG wheel to determine if the crew is irrevocably screwed.

Yea metagaming is reduced, but in return roundtypes lose themes and coherent narratives, every round just becomes "orgy of violence station 13".

I'm all for more chaos, but every round doesn't need to be a crazy wacky mis-match of antags. Reduce the godawful traitor/traitorling/DA games and make Station Emergency a new mode that will readily incorporate multiple antag types for these crraaaaazzzyyy situations.

The minor novelty of having a malf AI during wizard or a blob burst during a revolution or nukeops working with traitors is not worth how incredibly unfair most of these rounds will be.

I can't wait to see traitors get messaged by NukeOps less than a minute into the round and having the disk thrown onto solars before someone even decides to play Captain. Or trying to control a blob while a traitor blows a couple max caps right where the crew is rallying. Or attempting to stop a revolution that has lings supporting it.

These modes are delicately balanced, and already most of them fail to achieve a decent crew/antag power balance. Traitors, the most vanilla of antags, are often terrible on their own, but throw them into half of the other modes and you start getting some really stupid stuff that security just won't be able to handle.

Also yeah. Shadowlings stronger than the Geometer? Fucking heretical.

And maybe a vigilante sec officer/detective who has to kill criminals? Would probably upset people less than the old "traitor officer arrests you at random and then murders you."

I mean it'd upset the greytider who got shot in maint by the detective but greytiders are worth upsetting. Not sure how to track their objectives, maybe just give them open ended ones with strict OOC rules

☨The path to salvation is paved with the blood of heretics, holy water, and loyalty implants☨

Vigilante sounds interesting

Why not a very low chance for all of Security to have special roundstart text, spawn in the alt. blues, and be called "Private Security Force", the stipulations being that they are paid to protect the station, not necessarily to follow orders of the Captain or brig people for petty crimes

Scones wrote:"Won't be able to win" isn't going to stop me from maliciously sabotaging blob fight attempts, or anyone else. Blob is going to suck if side antags start showing up.

Yea just going to reiterate this.

I've seen admins do this before. A single decent antag can guarantee that the blob wins.

Fighting a blob in NE maint? Guess who just put a powersink in SW solars.

Fighting a blob in science? Guess who's about to maxcap the entire blob fighting team.

Fighting a blob in engineering? Guess who's about to run about bopping everyone with a bag full of medscan irradiatiors (ok that's hilarious but the point still stands that it would suck to lose to this and there's virtually no counter-play).

Fighting a blob in space? Guess who grabbed a double esword and a jetpack.

Every antag is balanced around the crew being able to meta them and counter-play their behavior. Take that out and it's just a mess of unstoppable violence that's going to send every dedicated sec player running from this server.

Oldman Robustin wrote:Every antag is balanced around the crew being able to meta them and counter-play their behavior. Take that out and it's just a mess of unstoppable violence that's going to send every dedicated sec player running from this server.

These colors don't run.

But yeah several gamemodes are ruined by side antags, I once saw a traitor in malf - We just used his uplink to buy 3 C4 and killed it ezpz.

Having to deal with a traitor or two at the same time as a blob is definitely tricky, but I don't think it's without counterplay. A single blob against a crew of 55 people is already fighting an uphill battle, and even with power sinks making lasers unusable or losing half a dozen crew to a bomb, I think the advantage could still go to the players just by virtue of having more bodies to throw at it. Presumably crews just barely big enough by current standards to make blob possible won't have any added antags.

I do agree about the Shadow Operative antag seeming a bit anticlimactic. Maybe it should be more possible for the crew to stop the nuke from going off even after someone enters the code.

Hijackers are a thing because it's a very difficult task to do currently and usually forces you to kill a bunch of people, I assigned it a higher threat to reflect that.

You can think of "threat" as a currency of antags, its based on active players right now.

During roundstart the majority of threat will be put towards the primary antags, and the remaining threat will get a weight role among the other roles that can afford it. Because they're both "threat cheap" and coded to be common low grade traitors and changelings will usually eat up these slots. If there's enough threat to spare, you might find something bigger on the side though.

After round start the threat will be measured by the status of the antags, threat will be refunded if the antags are in states that make them less likely to raise hell: A full refund if they're unrecoverablely dead (or void of living members for group antags), a majority refund if they're dead, and a moderate refund if they've achieved greentext (sans escape objectives obviously) or gotten brigged. Once this refunded threat reaches a state where the game can afford more antag(s) the game will seek to bring them in, either from new joins (late join antag system), existing crewmates (mulligan system), or ghosts (off station antags). There'll be some times of peace factored in between threats to keep things from getting too nutty. The game will also try not to spend threat if the round is already on the path to an assured shuttle call, but this is very subjective.

Currently threat is quantized like this: 1 threat is 1 living player at round start. At roundstart the primary mode is choose for its cost of active players, and secondary antags are choose but cost twice as much as if they were the primary mode antagonist.

So if you had 38 people at round start you would have 38 threat. The game picks cult (20 threat) and then also picks up two changelings (2*4 threat*2 multiplier) for a total of 36 threat used. Coincidentally just for fun lets point out that one of the starting cultists is also a changeling.

The remaining 2 threat is thrown into the pool for later use. Threat can fluctuate depending on how the station is doing. Every living player is still giving their 1 threat, but if people start to die the total threat can drop. Having negative threat won't remove antags, it just has to be overcome before the game decides that anything else needs to get involved.

Lets say that 40 minutes into the round the cult has had a net add of 6 members at 2 threat each but both changelings have gotten themselves cremated. Outside of the antags 8 other people have died and 12 have late joined. At this point the threat is:

38 roundstart + 12 latejoined - (20 cult inital + 6*2 extra cultists) - (8 dead nonantags + 2 dead lings) = 8 threat

The points at which the threat system calculates are chosen at random, but will generally occur somewhere between every five and ten minutes. If a threat surplus is found the game will decide to either spend it then and there or hold it over for the next calculation. If the next calculation has less surplus threat it will usually spend it to avoid losing it outright later in the round, but as long as the unused threat keeps piling up the system will have a chance to keep stockpiling it, and when the hammer finally drops with a lot of unused threat, that's when the chance of something big being added to the round can happen.

When the points ARE used the antags suffer the same x2 threat cost multiplier. There's a chance I might remove the multiplier if a situation occurs where the primary antag(s) all got dunked.

The threat values for every antag type are still something I've got to hammer out, but I vaguely listed them as low/medium/high/very high to give a vague notion on how "hard" it would be to have them jump into a round outside of their typical round type. Even outside of threat costs antags also have a rarity when comparing which to pick, so things like wizards out of nowhere will still be a very rare occurrence.

I'm so fucking ready for this

Blacklists for antag interactions will be a thing, but I want to actually see that people won't entertain the idea of these things before I outright forbid them.

I'm curious to see how Security will stand against these threats. Hopefully, we just get more Security players - Numbers have seriously been lacking lately.

A lost of threat for having an understaffed security department could be a thing, but ironically I'd have to do some working to have it affect round start antags because I fixed jobs being chosen before antags a few months ago.

This also means you could artificially "taunt" the threat system into spawning antags by opening and filling a lot of sec slots. I find this pretty hilarious.

Incoming wrote:You can think of "threat" as a currency of antags, its based on active players right now.

How feasible is it for different crew roles to be worth different amounts of threat? I imagine that heads of staff and security might be more relevant than clowns when measuring the station's ability to stand up to antags.

Since the check doesn't run constantly it wouldn't matter too much if we segmented it out like that, it's just be another pretty subjective number to nail down.

It's not going to be easy assigned these threats, some things will certainly end up under or over priced for the first incarnation, that's why I'm apologizing ahead of time for when this finally goes live, because there's a pretty good chance during those first few days that the hotfixes will come pretty furiously.

Just as a quick example a malfunctioning AI is currently valued at its roundstart number of 25 threat. This means that in this system a malfunctioning AI is roughly as dangerous as six changelings. Is that a fair comparison? I have no idea, it's real apples to oranges sometimes.

Arete wrote:

Incoming wrote:You can think of "threat" as a currency of antags, its based on active players right now.

How feasible is it for different crew roles to be worth different amounts of threat? I imagine that heads of staff and security might be more relevant than clowns when measuring the station's ability to stand up to antags.

Are you kidding? The clown is potentially one of the most terrifying things any antag could face. Also potentially one of the least terrifying, but such is clownhood. Clown robustness level varies wildly between "Assistant without maint access or tools" and "reincarnation of Dante Smith".

Clowns are overhyped and gated, between the clumsy gene and slowdown shoes.

This is cool as shit, but so many antag rounds will be fucking awful with other antags thrown into the mix.

The street gang thing in particular will be awesome as fuck.
Without the whole conversion and domination thing, it will be way more relaxed, and could actually like, involve RP for once.

Could you do something like have a greater weighting on the round start antag?
So with the malf example, it's got threat of 25 - so it needs that much for the round to start as malf. But in terms of adding more antags after, it could have a value higher then that (35 for examples sake).
This wouldn't effect it's chances of appearing roundstart, but would make it less likely to have piles of traitors and other random shit 5 minutes in.

Actually, thinking about it, you'd probably want it to scale even higher, for many game modes. One malf can often win even with 60+ people. If the malf is only worth 25 in terms of mid game antags, there would be enough threat in a 60 man round for 4+ changlings right off the bat, for example.

Edit: Properly read your 2nd post thing, which sort of covers this, but the point still sort of stands. The big 'round ender' antags like ops/blob/malf/etc will turn super shitty super fast, with other antags milling around.

All syndicate agents should get an extra headset with a syndicate dongle if nuke ops and traitors will be thrown into a similar mix.

lumipharon wrote:Actually, thinking about it, you'd probably want it to scale even higher, for many game modes. One malf can often win even with 60+ people. If the malf is only worth 25 in terms of mid game antags, there would be enough threat in a 60 man round for 4+ changlings right off the bat, for example.

But at the same time, those changelings are going to be running around EMPing everything and working with win conditions that require them to make sure the AI is destroyed. The antags that can't supersede other antags' objectives might actually be weakened significantly by this system.

If they lings try dick over the crew, or dick over the AI, either way, it's going to break the balance of the round, as shown by the whole 'c4 into the malf' thing.
Like, AI goes delta, ling goes monkey and crawls into the core and it's ggnore in 5 seconds.

lumipharon wrote:If they lings try dick over the crew, or dick over the AI, either way, it's going to break the balance of the round, as shown by the whole 'c4 into the malf' thing.
Like, AI goes delta, ling goes monkey and crawls into the core and it's ggnore in 5 seconds.

That doesn't seem unsolvable. This will probably end up bringing in some changes that give different antags some counterplay against each other.

honestly using powers/spells from the pipes are all hilariously imbalanced in the right situations, and fixing them is an open question. It's kind of outside the scope of this.

This is fun but again it's going to be hell for Security

Metaknowledge + No-tolerance for non-antag shittery is going to just sky fucking high out of necessity

Arete wrote:Having to deal with a traitor or two at the same time as a blob is definitely tricky, but I don't think it's without counterplay. A single blob against a crew of 55 people is already fighting an uphill battle, and even with power sinks making lasers unusable or losing half a dozen crew to a bomb, I think the advantage could still go to the players just by virtue of having more bodies to throw at it. Presumably crews just barely big enough by current standards to make blob possible won't have any added antags.

I do agree about the Shadow Operative antag seeming a bit anticlimactic. Maybe it should be more possible for the crew to stop the nuke from going off even after someone enters the code.

>Wall off a section of maint with r_walls
>Save resources to split ASAP
>Split before the crew even finds you, there are now 2blebs.
>Focus on factories next, laugh as the crew is forced to walk through smoke to fight you
>Smoke injects chems regardless of any protection or internals you're wearing
>2 smoke injections is enough to kill you with some chems
>Maint is a 1x1 corridor

Honestly blob is more of a "Was the blob player awful?" test. Only thing that stands a chance against blebs is the new maxcap dunkage, and I'm sure that will be nerfed long before blobs are reasonable again.

The lowpop antag versions and the threat system make it seem like lowpop is going to get a lot more enjoyable when this is done.

I fucking love this proposed system, but as far as I'm concerned, blobs should never occur with any other antag with the possible exception of, like the baby cults/baby revolution or whatever.

Overall this system reminds me a bit of the director that is used in the Left 4 dead games, and I think it'll be very interesting to see how this pans out.

Scones wrote: Why not a very low chance for all of Security to have special roundstart text, spawn in the alt. blues, and be called "Private Security Force", the stipulations being that they are paid to protect the station, not necessarily to follow orders of the Captain or brig people for petty crimes

That's a interesting idea, aside from a sprite change the system would be interesting as security now only answers to the HoS and Centcom. Though honestly I think unless this Private Sec Force or Merc Company gets different gear then its just going to be Blu Sec but with the Captain not in the picture.

I like that idea even more than the old "pick your sprites as HOS" idea!

Steelpoint wrote:Overall this system reminds me a bit of the director that is used in the Left 4 dead games, and I think it'll be very interesting to see how this pans out.

Scones wrote: Why not a very low chance for all of Security to have special roundstart text, spawn in the alt. blues, and be called "Private Security Force", the stipulations being that they are paid to protect the station, not necessarily to follow orders of the Captain or brig people for petty crimes

That's a interesting idea, aside from a sprite change the system would be interesting as security now only answers to the HoS and Centcom. Though honestly I think unless this Private Sec Force or Merc Company gets different gear then its just going to be Blu Sec but with the Captain not in the picture.

That's stupid, do not split security. They are often understaffed as it is, even in super-high pop.

I'm pretty sure Scones meant that there's a chance that ALL of security will be replaced with the private/mercenary security force.

I don't like the idea of totally removing objectives/group status. It takes away opportunities to RP and betray people, which is the coolest part of this sort of thing.

I meant the WHOLE department.

Give them ARGs or something silly, force antags to work differently with the knowledge that these guys are not going to tase and cuff you for petty theft, they are going to hunt you with assault rifles for being an obvious fucking threat

Just for a second I imagined a team of Marines from Doom 3 sweeping through the place.

I actually do think this semi-sec antag system might be unique and interesting. This gives security a sort of antag mode that's not really a antagonist.

Essentially Security would become a sort of merc/military force with access to equipment designed for lethality and not non-lethal combat, but the downside is that this merc force will give the datnum system a lot more threat to work with.

For example, officers would normally give 1 threat each as per the current design doc, but if they are replaced with the uncommon merc security then each officer might be worth more threat, from 2 to 5.