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Posts posted by Kyet
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I predict SSD-bot cheesing to escape areas.
An auto teleporter might be better.
I thought about that.
Currently it has a safeguard where it won't pick up anyone who is buckled. So if someone tries this this, you can simply buckle them for a minute to see if they're attempting it.
There is also a safeguard which prevents it picking up the same person more than once. So no matter what, this will only pick you up once per round.
I have debated making it ignore people SSDing in areas that they don't have access to. Haven't coded that yet, though. Probably will.
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This is a discussion thread for a PR I am going to put up after the freeze is over.
What does the PR add? A bot that automatically takes SSD people to cryo.
Why is this a good idea?
1) It stops SSD people littering the hallways
2) It frees their job slots, resulting in more usable job slots for everyone else
3) It frees up admin time currently spent stopping clueless newbies from attacking/stripping these SSD people
How does it work?
1) There's a bot, rather like an automated ambulance trolley, that lives in cryodorms.
2) When it detects someone is SSD (and alive, and not buckled to a chair, and on the station zlevel, and a few other conditions) it wakes up, zooms over to them, picks them up, carries them back to cryodorms, and dumps them into a cryopod.
3) If all cryopods are full, it drops them on the floor next to a pod.
4) If the person wakes up before the bot arrives, it won't pick them up. If the person wakes up in transit, they can hop off at any time. If they're put in cryo, they still have the normal cryo timeout to log back in before they're moved to long-term storage.
5) The bot will open any normal door, and closes them quickly behind it to prevent tailgating. It can path around most obstacles. It won't hurt you if it runs into you. It moves quite fast, and is hard for greytide to destroy.
Code comparison: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradis ... yep:ssdbot
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I was the admin who allowed the shuttle call.
Reasons:
- If I had not allowed the shuttle call by command, the crew transfer vote which passed around that time would have forced the shuttle anyway.
- There was no point in denying evac to force the crew to fight the blob, as the blob was already well past containment.
- At that point, our only options were nuke, evac, or evac + nuke after shuttle docks. I went with evac + nuke after shuttle docked, because that avoided spoiling the greentext for the antags who were working for it, but at the same time gave dramatic tension to the station's final moments.
Simply not allowing the shuttle at all wasn't really an option, because of the crew transfer vote passing.
Simply nuking the station wasn't a great idea because it would have been less fun for all, especially the antags.
I agree that an active blob should usually warrant a shuttle recall.
That said, there are some exceptions (e.g: crew transfer shuttle).
I believe that a rigid policy which, for example, forced us to ignore the results of player votes would be a bad thing.
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I worry that softening the line between antags and non-antags will result in confusion and bwoinks.
The existing "attitude towards NT" system is *meant* to do this already, but it doesn't work at all.
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Terrible Captains have never been the true concern. They can be fired quickly by a good NTR-HOP-HOS combo. The more sinister threat is, and has always been, severely sub-par Captains whom are bad enough to hinder operations and perhaps even warrant an official reprimand, but don't go far enough to be censured by CC or demoted by a unanimous vote. The admins are very active in stopping the more obvious griffins-in-blue, but are less capable of dealing with merely less-than-competent Captains. Just as security is attractive to new players with little mechanical knowledge, Captaincy is appealing to those whom like the idea of Captaining a space-ship or the like and lack departmental knowledge and have yet to develop the cool head and RP skills for the profession.
Is there a proactive, rather than retroactive, solution? Captaincy is one of the few jobs I could get behind whitelisting. Or perhaps something else?
There are several solutions:
1) Heads being faster to vote out Captains who are useless. IE: heads of staff holding them to account.
2) Complaints being made to CC, who can encourage them to shape up.
3) PRs like https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/5224 - which ensure newbies cannot play Captain, even if they've played SS13 on other servers.
Ultimately though, we don't force people to do their job *well*.
We just ask that they make an effort.
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If a Captain is seriously violating SoP and/or Space Law, and doesn't seem to care even when this fact is pointed out to them, fax CC.
CC reserves the right to demote Captains who are terrible at their job.
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I've always wanted to see this.
Not sure about the balance impact, but as a concept, it is interesting.
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I asked if I could put up a PR that increases job slots for some jobs with plentiful resources (things like Engineer, Scientist, Atmos, MD, Sec Officer, Cargo tech, Etc).
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to qualify as a "fix", and so will have to wait until after the freeze.
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A lot of it is really up to the heads.
You need them to tell you what they are up to.
Cap plans to stand on bridge all shift? Time to follow someone else.
Cap meeting a crew member? RD demoting someone who blew up chem twice? HoS going on maint patrol?
CE fixing mysteriously smashed lights? CMO in OR2 extracting embryos while xenos nest in turbine?
Following those heads is wise.
But you won't know that unless you keep in touch.
The trick is communication. Know where the heads are and what they are up to.
Remind them that they can call you for backup whenever they are about to do something dangerous.
Never be a thorn in their sides - or they won't call you when they would benefit from having you around.
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whenever an ERT is spawned, also spawn a CentComm Officer with the objective of demoting all heads of staff. Not part of the ERT, mind, but the NT Rep's boss. Or, at the very least, Captain, HoP, HoS, for being inept enough to need an ERT in the first place. Guaranteed, at least one of those isn't going to come quietly, so that, in turn, creates more !!FUN!!
Problems with this:
- Only admins can play CC officers. Generally, only Game Admins+ do it. It will often/usually be the case there is no GA+ who is willing/able to take on the role of CC officer with objective to replace command. If that was a requirement, it would lead to ERTs not being sent when they should be.
- Requiring an ERT does not imply any ineptitude on the part of Command/Sec. It is entirely possible that simply nobody is willing to play sec, or there is an adminbus event, or the threat is something nobody could have predicted/countered with resources available (e.g: lots of meteors). There can be any number of reasons why an ERT can be required without command/sec having done anything wrong.
Every single War Nuke Op, where I've been a nukie has gotten an ERT, including one Gamma
In general, I believe that sending an ERT during nukeops rounds is a bad idea, and so, in general, I won't do it.
However, I cannot speak for all admins, especially those in other timezones. And there are always special cases.
For example, server pop makes a huge difference. In a highpop round, arming the crew works wonders.
In a lowpop round, with barely 30 players, its possible there might be no security, and the rest of the crew wants to hide rather than fight.
In that scenario, yes, an ERT would be essential to avoid a totally one-sided fight.
In general, though, I am not keen on sending ERTs in nuke ops rounds.
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If they are so common-place, why not smuggler satchel a toxin bomb underneath where they come from? Or bolt and emag the door to slow them down?
Most ERT calls I think are fine... the ones I get annoyed with are like last month when we were a nukie round, and they instantly got Gamma upon a War declaration. Seemed excessive for a 110+ man server at the time, vs 5 nuke ops. (1 of which shot themselves on the shuttle and we had to do surgery to fix them... and the other got lost in Telecomms and never made it to the station).
Typically, nuke ops, including war ops, do not get ERTs sent.
War ops usually lose, simply because having the whole crew armed is better in a fight than having a small number of ERTs. Nuke ops often get energy shields, which means that arming crew with shotguns and other projectile weapons from cargo is often going to be more combat-effective than ERTs with energy guns can be.
Normal ops tend to either win or fail before an ERT can arrive and do their work. So, in that situation, ERTs are often redundant.
So, in both cases, ERTs are not super useful during nuke ops. Not as useful as simply arming the existing crew.
As a result, personally I try to avoid calling ERT during nuke ops rounds.
Gamma alert for nuke ops is a bad idea. Actually, Gamma alert is a bad idea in most situations.
The equipment in Gamma is powerful enough that very few antags can fight gamma-armed crew and win.
Gamma is generally reserved for out-of-control xenos or blob, when there are not enough ghosts able/willing to to be sent as ERT.
That, or adminbus antags with weird and wonderful powers. Either way, not something you should expect to see regularly.
I've always felt that calling an ERT should be an instant relief from command for the relevant department heads, and Captain.Why? Calling an ERT is about as blatant an admission as you can get that "We have lost control of the situation".
"Ohh, cap, you let a traitor on your station run amok and murder most of sec? No problem. Turn in your ID, Commander BigGun ERT is now in command of the station. HoS, you go ahead and turn your stuff in too, for failure to do your duties."
I like the idea in concept. Problem is, most of the time, nobody is even willing to play ERT commander.
Expecting there to 1) be an ERT commander, and 2) that commander being willing to replace the Captain, is expecting too much.
ERTs are already functionally independent from command, and able to command of the situation if they want. They still don't.
Trying to force them to do something they are not really equipped or willing to do, even though they already have the chance to, probably won't end well.
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No, messing up the station to such a point that command send an ERT request doesn't make you automatically deserving of a victory. If anything, the opposite is true - the best antags complete their objectives or run their gimmick without ever being caught, let alone needing to murder a ton of other players. Remember, you're taking people out of the round. Do it if necessary for your objectives/role, but taking lots of people out of the round unnecessarily isn't being awesome.
This is objectively wrong - I'll certainly agree that the most skilled players are capable of consistently performing a flawless greentext, but that is definitely not the best antags. Greentext is fucking nothing, absolutely trivial once you're robust. The best antags are the ones that define the round, the ones that produce a tangible and coherent threat to the rest of the station. In short, the best antags are the guys that get the ERT called on them.
Defining a round doesn't require you to kill the entire security force. You can be the clever bomber that sets up bombs with long fuses, then broadcasts their location. You can be the guy who pens the captain and uses a dna scrambler to make everyone think him a fake. Etc. There are many ways to generate interesting situations without murdering everyone in sight. Often, these more creative solutions are more memorable than simply murdering everyone. You see murder all the time. When's the last time you randomized the Captain's DNA, convinced the HoS they were a changeling, and got them executed? That's more likely to have OOC talking after the round.
Generally, an antagonist ought to aim to be the one OOC is talking about after the round, above any and all else. And generally, by the time an ERT is called, he has managed to do that, but an ERT is also a direct counter to that - a slap-down, if you will. Aside from sheer robustness, an antag has no equivalent-level answer to this threat; it's entirely one-sided. Essentially, the ERT is a direct check on too-robust antags, and I really, really, really don't think that should be in the game at all.
Ever heard of Syndicate Infiltration Teams? Or the dreaded SST?
As traitor, emag a comms console or fax machine. Contact the Syndicate. With a well-written message, supplying a good reason why you need backup. Exactly like command does when they request an ERT. You might be surprised what can happen.
This isn't limited to traitors, either. Though, for other antags you might need to ahelp/pray it rather than using fax/console.
Seems to me that the ERT, in general, is a panic-button stabilizing force. That is, they get the situation under control. Doesn't that kinda go against the entire nature of SS13?
SS13 is not meant to be raw chaos. Here, it is meant to be a mix between action and RP.
Just as there are buttons that induce chaos, there are buttons that stabilize.
The game needs both.
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We just had a late-night Cult round. One or two cultists, names unknown, spawned cult armor and managed to robust all of Sec. Literally, all of them dead on suit sensors. Command had a vote to call the shuttle, which resulted in a unanimous "Yes", due to Security being all dead or bleeding out and hostile armed cultists now having the run of the station. In my own words, "It's only gonna get worse from here".
The Captain called the shuttle.
Almost right afterwards, the admins recalled the shuttle, and instead dispatched a Code Red ERT.
I believe I was the admin who recalled the shuttle and sent a red ERT instead.
Reasons:
- If memory serves, their objectives were to sac one guy and escape. They were not summoning Nar'Sie or otherwise needing to murder all of sec/command. Yet that was what they seemed to want to do. And their method of doing so generated ahelps.
- This happened only an hour into the shift. It wasn't an unwinnable situation, and there is precedent for CC asking crews to fix their issues rather than just give up and evac.
If the cult had not decided to murderbone security with swords and cult armor, to the point command decided to evac the whole station, then I doubt an ERT would have been sent.
From there, things went back under control right quick. The ERT killed the few obvious cultists, then swept the station for more, and there wasn't really much of note happening for the rest of the round. 19 cultists escape, cult victory.For all the power of the ERT that you're complaining about, for everything that happened, the cult still escapes with 19 guys, and greentexts?
I'm pretty salty that the Cultists got denied their run of the station there, and this is coming from someone who was playing Command. A few of them managed to outrobust the entire Sec force, Command was shitting bricks, and we were all set to have the cult take over the station and have an actual evac shuttle. The ERT robbed them of that, forcing the Cult to basically lay low for the rest of the round.
I don't think it was the ERT that stopped them having the run of the station. I think it was the stream of mechs that robotics churned out.
It's like this with blob, too. Nuke ops as well. Occasionally Vamp, Traitor, or other more mundane antags. A Blob is robust or the crew is unrobust, a decisive play is made, the blob seizes control of most of the station, Oh, ERT, get fucked. A nuke op is spotted, immediately code red ERT, good luck getting dat disk now. A traitor out-robusts all of Sec and has the run of the brig, oh, ERT, get fucked. Even if you robust the ERT, they'll just escalate to Code Gamma and send a bigger, meaner ERT.ERT is not an automatic "antags are screwed". I have seen many ERTs die to antags, or just not be helpful. Earlier today I saw a comment in Discord that some people don't even bother calling ERTs because they're too useless/greytide right now.
ERTs are not generally sent unless command tell CC they are needed (via fax, ERT request, or shuttle call), AND the game admins on duty at the time agree it is a good idea to send one.
Robusting an ERT does not guarantee a second, meaner ERT. If a meaner (e.g: gamma) ERT is sent, most of the time, that's in a situation with blob or xenos, and in those cases they're usually sent late enough that the blob/xenos still win regardless.
Why this? ERT seems really anti-fun to me, like no matter what happens they can just request an ERT to dunk on an antag. I mean, if an antag can cause the station to devolve to the point where an ERT would be justified, hasn't he deserved his unmolested victory? Wouldn't it be better for the round to call the shuttle, rather than letting it time-out to the 2hr mark yet again?Many, perhaps even most, ERT requests by command are denied. Sure, they can ask, but asking does not necessarily mean they get it.
No, messing up the station to such a point that command send an ERT request doesn't make you automatically deserving of a victory. If anything, the opposite is true - the best antags complete their objectives or run their gimmick without ever being caught, let alone needing to murder a ton of other players. Remember, you're taking people out of the round. Do it if necessary for your objectives/role, but taking lots of people out of the round unnecessarily isn't being awesome. It is actually being kind of a jerk.
Oh, and regarding the shuttle in this case: why do you think there was a crew transfer vote around 13:40, which passed, and led to an early crew transfer?
I called that when I realized a lot of people were dead from the cult battles, the cult had pretty much won (sec was never going to catch them all, they had teleport runes, multiple outpost bases, etc) but sec also wasn't going to get a chance to fight them head on, as they were spread out. It seemed like in that situation, nothing much would change in the last 20 minutes, so I called a vote to see if people wanted crew transfer, and the vote was something like 26 Yes to 10 No, so the shuttle was called at that point.
The ERT did not stop the cultists greentexting. All it did in this case was stop command ending the round early, and instead, have the round end when the majority of players in the round wished it to.
This is because ERT is functionally identical to Deathsquad - Unrobust people who already died, given mondo gear to make up for it. All the gear in the world won't help you if you shoot disablers at carp or slip off into space. You used to be able to slip Deathsquad, you still can EMP an ERT and watch them click their guns at you.The problem is that ERT, when it works, is essentially a counter to Got Gud. That is, that it exists strictly to counter high robustness, and, in theory, ensures that high skill doesn't control the round. I'm opposed to this because I'm firmly of the opinion that the counter to Got Gud is and should be Git Gud. We shouldn't have ERT (or Deathsquad, or Perseus, or whatever else) to hold people's hand. SS13 is not a game where peoples hand should be held, and it really, really, really, really ought to reward the sort of robustness that gets an ERT called in the first place.
Edit: Added more 'really'
ERT is not remotely the same as Deathsquad. DS gear is way better, their mission is to kill/nuke not help, they're sent for different things, etc.
Admins pick DS members manually. They could be regular ghosts.
ERT/DS are not the counter to high-skill play by antags.
Plenty of antags do their thing without getting caught. Or outsmart/outrobust the ERT that is sent. Or simply get the shuttle called instead.
It would be more accurate to say that ERT are the counter, by organized command teams, to antags who murderbone.
And that DS are the counter to out-of-control blobs/xenos/rev/etc where the entire station has been taken over.
If the counter to everything bad is "git good", that just encourages the most combat-efficient actions to be taken at all times.
That leads to a dramatic increase in "playing to win" or potentially "powergaming".
There has to be some value assigned to RP, a believable world, etc.
That's partly what the ERT/etc provide. If you murder all of security, and the station is going to chaos, yet command send a signal to HQ, it would almost be immersion-breaking for HQ not to send some sort of armed response team in that situation.
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The spirit of the rule is "don't harm SSD players".
Doing the above would harm them.
Therefore, don't do it.
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Name of Event: Lost Contact.
One Sentence Description: Static feed has been bleeding through the gateway from a [NT/Syndi] Origin, I recommend sending a small team to observe or trace the signal.
Plausible as an announcement.
Map Changes: No (gateway map might be edited slightly but that can be performed in-game)
Creating syndicate bases is doable.
Description details: Have an abandoned or crash landed ship/station either in space or on land designed similar to the beach with debris and remains of it's inhabitants scattered round maybe place down some old gear as well like security belts or kitchenware depending how you want the crash site to make a resemblance of. what lays inside if the cause of interest as a A.I. unit could still be mounted inside or have it on a card laying nearby. If the crew decides to take it with them and activate it on station we could have it as:
I have done a 'crashed syndi ship' event before. The main issue is making sure it isn't discovered while I am still building it. In the gateway, that's less of an issue.
A. A fully operational A.I. now allowing the station to operate with more optimal performance/responses from them.
B. The A.I. has become corrupted but it seems to be running normally and cannot be detected through A.I. law set speech or Intellicard until it begins it's full routine. Allowing it to have a more malicious or malignant turn on the station.
C. the A.I. could be from Syndicate origin tasked as merely a ploy or bait for NT or other companies and upon station re-activation it will attempt to contact nearby Syndicate outpost to at minimum. Send a SIT (Syndicate Infiltration Team.) to sabotage the station to the point of irreverseable repair. Or bring a shuttle with a contaminant on board putting the crew in peril such as a Biohazard 5 or Viral 7.
It would be fairly easy to have an AI core (or on a card) in the gateway. It would also be fairly easy to set it to malf once it got back to the station.
I am not sure actual AI cores can be teleported, though, so you might not be able to push the core into the gateway. Also, there would need to be some warning for crew - it might strike crew as unfair if the AI they just had on a card, and law checked, suddenly went malf the second they got it back to station and into a core, where they could no longer see its laws.
I am not sure the AI core would need a SIT as backup - a traitor/malf syndicate AI on the station would be quite dangerous enough by itself. If the syndicate were going to send a team, their objective would need to be retrieving it, rather than helping it.
There's also the question of the AI's objective. What sort of objective are you suggesting for this AI?
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If I'm having a drink with someone in the bar, it doesn't matter if their name is Joe Smith, Hank Hill, or Sonic The Hedgehog.
Similarly, it doesn't matter if they're a generic human, someone in a mafia costume, or they're going all out to look/act like a well-known cartoon character.
If I find them interesting, I'll interact with them, no matter what their name or costume is. If I don't, I won't. It is that simple.
Their name/costume doesn't matter. Whether they're pretending to be a well-known character or not doesn't matter.
What matters is whether they are interesting. Original characters are more likely to be interesting, but originality is only one factor of many.
This is a 2D spaceman game. Let people be who they want. If you don't like it, well, you can usually just ignore them.
Policing character names/uniqueness is not a worthwhile use of admin time.
and their fursuits
Also, making this comment (especially in small font) is severely corrosive to your credibility.
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So, a tendency I've noticed recently and a pet peeve of mine is people being salty. They get salty and they get nasty to others.
I get it, I get salty myself. Everyone does and that's understandable. I think it's amazing a 2d spessmen game can get people so involved and thus so worked up.
But please, I beg of you, do not take this out on others. If you are salty at something, understand that this is -your- problem. If you see yourself getting salty, get up from the computer, go get a drink of water, breathe, and realise it's a game. We're all here to have fun, and if you find yourself getting salty more often than you're laughing, you're doing it wrong. Being salty is not an excuse to be an asshole, yet I see people say "I know I'm being mean but i'm salty". The answer here is either don't be salty, or don't be an asshole.
Even after years I still get my heart pumping when I'm an antag sometimes, and get angry when someone cheeses it and beats me. And I can aghost around after death.
But please, just take it a bit less seriously, and be excellent to each other.
Here's what I do to prevent myself getting salty:
- Don't complain. If tempted to complain, do something else for awhile instead. Usually, if you just do something else for an hour, your desire for raging/salting/complaining will go away in that time. 90% of things that might make you salty can be dealt with by simply ignoring them for an hour, and they'll go away in that time.
- Respect your opponents. In general, if someone actually manages to kill me, I'll give them a karma point for it. It is only sporting.
Here's what I say when other people are salty:
- If there is a legit code/balance issue: "Could you log an issue in ?" / "Maybe open a discussion about it on the forums?"
- "What could you have done differently to avoid that?"
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Tested this a little today.
Their disguise ability is neat, and the little worm-Yin are surprisingly cute.
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There are lots of cheap hosting services.
Putting the forums, wiki and database there would keep them up while the game server was down.
Even things like the discord bot would work. Downside: potential lag between SS13 server and database server.
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If people are not willing to look at blinky/flashy newscasters, with a variety of custom stories (often with both text and pictures), why do you think they'd take the time to read wanted posters?
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After many updates, etc, this ultimately did not work out.
My closing comment from the github:
Unfortunately, given what I've heard from asking around just now, I don't think the maintainers are ever going to merge this, no matter what, even assuming I kept addressing all comments.
So... RIP Terror Spiders.
If anyone on a downstream fork of Paradise wants to use my code, message me or something. I'm happy to work on it (and/or let you do so) for another codebase, I've just given up hope it will ever be merged here.
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Sprite request closed, as the PR was rejected.
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Last time injunctions were brought up, even as a concept, the response from the folks in charge of Space Law / SoP was "hell no".
I don't see injunctions getting a second life anytime soon. They're just too abusable.
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I'm not any kind of hardcore coder, so I might be totally out of my depth here - But I propose all new features from this point forward be placed on indefinite hold while we resolve some of the 267 (at time of writing) open issues on the Github.
Otherwise, I worry that it'll just start snowballing with new features getting added, and before long no one attempts fixes because it'd be "too much work."
I think we have the opposite problem: too many fixes, not enough serious new features/improvements. Yeah, Vox tail sprites aren't perfect, and you can put beakers in cakes - but more seriously, there are entire jobs (Atmos Tech, for example) that have been nerfed into oblivion and only major feature/improvement work will make these areas of the game meaningful again. The focus on fixes over features / serious improvements are why we have a game with such major, unaddressed flaws - nobody wants to take on the major work required to change these systems into something more fun.
This problem actually got so bad that we (a group of github contributors who regularly worked on new features) felt we needed to create a new space just for ourselves so we could chat about feature development in an environment that was supportive of it.
Most PRs are fixes. In fact there are a great many contributors on github who only do fixes, and rarely or never add substantial new features.
Partly this is because fixes are way smaller, faster/easier to code, and easier to get approved than features. Partly this is because some(most?) people prefer to work on fixes. Partly, it is due to culture - our culture rewards fixes way more than it rewards work on new features.
In any case, features are already in the minority. They need more support, not less.
I am skeptical that a feature freeze would even result in a lot more bugs being fixed. The people who want to do bug fixes, are already doing them. The people who don't, and prefer to add cool new things / do major overhauls of broken stuff, aren't going to have their minds changed by the hold you propose. It is just going to discourage them from contributing.
Post-Freeze PR: SSD Bot
in Suggestions
Posted
The list of criteria for pickup is currently:
- Must be a /mob/living/carbon/human (ie: no borgs, no simple_animals, etc)
- Must be on cyberiad zlevel
- Must be not dead
- Must be SSD (controlled by a player who is logged out)
- Must not be anchored
- Must not be handcuffed
- Must not be at our home position in cryodorms
- Must not be someone we've previously tried to pick up, and failed
- Must not be on a space tile
- Must not be buckled/attached to anything
- Must not be in a completely inaccessible area (e.g: behind a bolted door)