/tg/Station 13

I've noticed that modern rounds always get chaotic way more fast on traitor/changeling, and honestly it sort of stifles the game when rounds rarely last longer than an hour.

Nobody wants 3 or 4 hour rounds, but I feel as though there could be a sweet spot that would sort of keep interest in the rounds going on, and have it much less chaotic up until the near end.

Something along the lines of cutting the amount of traitors / changelings at spawn, but adding new mechanics to latejoin antagonists where they keep spawning so long as the round is going. It feels like one bomb will detonate and that'll be the end of the round. A change like this could sort of shift the focus away from killing the antags and going home, and sort of having the antags exist as the more chaotic moments in a shift.

We used to have a sweet spot at around an hour a round. Lately it feels as if we've shifted towards the longer drawn out rounds that more fit with other servers.
Also both the tensioner and the mulligan code features were put in to basically do what you're asking, and both of them worked horribly and just threw too much shit at the station.

Nobody wants pseudo extended. Nobody wants to stay on the station once their department is a crater.
Unfortunately the way around this is to try and make it more fun to survive and rebuild, which doesn't seem to happen code wise.

> Nothing is happening, it feels like pseudo extended.
> The rounds are boring and monotonous, we need more, stronger antags.
> It's too chaotic (i.e. things are actually constantly happening), lower the antag rates! (Muh precious round is being disturbed!)
> Nothing is happening, it feels like pseudo extended.

Just please, leave it. These rates were how it used to be forever ago, and finally we're reliving a slice of the past. Hell, traitor is still basically 'nothing happens for 30 minutes -> bombs / singuloth escapes to end the round -> end' because they're UP as fuck and you have to abuse adrenals or water to get anywhere with them.

Hell, most rounds last probably around an hour right now, with exceptions in both directions depending on roundtype and skill of the antags. That's where we were, and should be on Sybil anyway.

1 hour is the perfect length.

Any longer and the dead and braindeads start to pile up, dead players have fucked off to another game entirely, and there's nothing left to do but wait in escape as the fire spreads, singulos eats the station, the dominator is counting down, etc etc.

optimal round length is dependent on the mode and how the antags perform
traitors is about an hour, unless all the traitors die, in which case it should just end ASAP
lings is the same deal
ops should be short and sweet
wizards should go on for maybe 45~ minutes unless the wizard dies early, in which case end it ASAP
blob should just be removed take 45 minutes maximum
malf should be a bit longer than others, maybe an hour and a half tops, unless the AI goes loud or gets caught early in which case end it ASAP
revs should be, hopefully, short and sweet (god forbid either side starts being campy and the round goes on for ages)
cult, shadowling, and gang are good for about an hour and fifteen minutes unless they get caught early

I'm not a fan of ending a round ASAP; it doesn't give you much time to celebrate. Calling the shuttle automatically, however - that might work. (It'd also prevent mulligan, I think?)

TheNightingale wrote:I'm not a fan of ending a round ASAP; it doesn't give you much time to celebrate. Calling the shuttle automatically, however - that might work. (It'd also prevent mulligan, I think?)

Shit idea. You're tacking on artifical round time by 10-20 minutes with zero antagonists onto rounds that take 45-60 minutes, just so that you can 'celebrate' every round that would otherwise end.

That gets extremely repetitive. It's like having a shittier mulligan, and probaly half the station would go instabraindead the moment that happened.

Amelius wrote:

TheNightingale wrote:I'm not a fan of ending a round ASAP; it doesn't give you much time to celebrate. Calling the shuttle automatically, however - that might work. (It'd also prevent mulligan, I think?)

Shit idea. You're tacking on artifical round time by 10-20 minutes with zero antagonists onto rounds that take 45-60 minutes, just so that you can 'celebrate' every round that would otherwise end.

That gets extremely repetitive. It's like having a shittier mulligan, and probaly half the station would go instabraindead the moment that happened.

It's truly pointless artificial time addition, Amelius is 100% right. Why the FUCK should the round end 15 after the antagonist is destroyed? What possible "celebration" could you hold in those 15 minutes? The greatest celebration for myself and what I assume would be the large majority of the playerbase would be watching the credits roll with the affirmation that we won, and talk about it in OOC instead of meandering about for an extra bit mumbling "yeah guys we sure showed that biohazard... time to wait while there are no antagonists for 15 minutes for no fucking reason lol"

PKPenguin321 wrote:optimal round length is dependent on the mode and how the antags perform
traitors is about an hour, unless all the traitors die, in which case it should just end ASAP
lings is the same deal
ops should be short and sweet
wizards should go on for maybe 45~ minutes unless the wizard dies early, in which case end it ASAP
blob should just be removed take 45 minutes maximum
malf should be a bit longer than others, maybe an hour and a half tops, unless the AI goes loud or gets caught early in which case end it ASAP
revs should be, hopefully, short and sweet (god forbid either side starts being campy and the round goes on for ages)
cult, shadowling, and gang are good for about an hour and fifteen minutes unless they get caught early

Reminder that the minimum possible roundtime in a gamemode that isn't nuke, bleb, or gang (assuming no "ANTAG IS DED" auto-ends) is 35 minutes. The optimum length for wizard is ten minutes longer than the absolute shortest round possible? I see you're not a fan.

Wizard lends itself to lasting less time than any other gamemode because it can fuck the station up faster than any other gamemode, to be fair

And it's about one main antag and perhaps the side antags he spawned. It can only be so long.

Wizards are in an annoying place, and they only really play out in a few ways.
Most of which are boring and need to have the shuttle inbound ASAP

The wizard dies not long after arriving

The wizard dies early, but took lich and is respawning off a pen in space

The wizard bullies the crew the length of the round, likely murderboners most because he took the tryhard setup

Summon round. Practically it's own game mode at that point

Wizard survives forever, but makes no progress and is just a jaunting whore extending the round for no fucking reason

Wizard makes progress, likely through tryhard setup, before being mobbed/lucky stunned and being brought down

Animation wizard, IE avoid windows at all costs: The Round

Or gimmick friendly wizard that gets max cap suicide bombed

Wizard rounds just seem better when they're short and sweet. There's something totally un-fun about the station being completely fucked and having to just sit in it for ages.

That doesn't mean I hate wizard, it just means I think it's better on a different time frame to the other game modes. A great wizard round is probably about 30-40 minutes: enough time for the wizard to set up (10), accomplish his objectives (20) and then for us all to evacuate/the wizard to die (30).

I'd even take this to the point of wizard rounds being on a coded timer of some sort, like the wizard's powers coming from a magic hourglass that only lasted 30-40 minutes. It would force them to get in, fuck up the town, attempt to cause some chaos to get things done, and then leave or die (or, conceivably, accumulate enough power that they don't need spells to survive).

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:

PKPenguin321 wrote:optimal round length is dependent on the mode and how the antags perform
traitors is about an hour, unless all the traitors die, in which case it should just end ASAP
lings is the same deal
ops should be short and sweet
wizards should go on for maybe 45~ minutes unless the wizard dies early, in which case end it ASAP
blob should just be removed take 45 minutes maximum
malf should be a bit longer than others, maybe an hour and a half tops, unless the AI goes loud or gets caught early in which case end it ASAP
revs should be, hopefully, short and sweet (god forbid either side starts being campy and the round goes on for ages)
cult, shadowling, and gang are good for about an hour and fifteen minutes unless they get caught early

Reminder that the minimum possible roundtime in a gamemode that isn't nuke, bleb, or gang (assuming no "ANTAG IS DED" auto-ends) is 35 minutes. The optimum length for wizard is ten minutes longer than the absolute shortest round possible? I see you're not a fan.

are you kidding? I love wizard but they really are a "get in, fuck shit up, get out" kind of antag and that kind of thing shouldnt be going on for too long

i'd prefer there to be more to a Wizard's objectives than just being a carbon copy of Traitor objectives, they really should be thematically appropriate and more magic-y.