Make kill objectives more common #33764
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Please no. |
ScarKy0
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P3: Standard
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Hmm ok, maybe we need a new objective type then instead. Maybe a coerce / hurt someone but not killing them? |
Many other forks have a "teach them a lesson" objective that requires you to kill your target, but only once. They can be revived afterwards and the objective still counts. Some forks have this objective for killing jobs like janitors and scientists, but for higher risk jobs like security officers and heads, it's an explicit kill or maroon. |
Teach [character name] a Lesson. "[character name] owes a lot of money to [syndicate company]. Teach them a lesson and rough them up severely, so they know not to mess with [syndicate company]" |
The exact opposite, IMO. Thief objectives are the epitome of a boring syndicate round. Get an emag, thief gloves, and a storage implant, and you get what you need every time. The only exceptions to this are the nuke disk and RD’s hardsuit, but those are so rare that they are barely rolled once in the entire server every 5 syndie shifts. By the nature of how stealthy theft is, the round is barely effected by it, so a round where every syndie has a steal objective is straight boring. We have survival shifts and the actual thieves if you want a break from PvP. For example, a syndie stealing the hypo is annoying as a CMO, but you can still do your job just as effectively. It adds effectively no meaningful gameplay as sec, a competent syndie will have hidden it off their person or used a storage implant, and all sec can do is random searches that serve to annoy the rest of the crew. The round isn’t progressed in any meaningful way, and now that the syndie has completely their objective, the round stalls for them. They have 0 incentive to continue progressing the round as an antag, as any further action by them could lead to getting caught, so, they do nothing. Once enough syndies have done this, the round devolves into a boring extended shift until someone decides that evac is needed because nothing is happening. This isn’t just conjecture, I see it all the time on Lizard of all places. You will play sec or med, and realize that the shift has been incredibly boring because NOTHING of note has happened. Some minor mobs, a wave or two of people, but no urgent revivals, no desperately searching maints for dead officers, basically 0 healing at all for a full medbay of doctors. The round ends, and you realize it’s because the syndicates silently completed all of their objectives, and had no reason to go loud. The game NEEDS antags to be willing to kill or damage the station to be make a majority of the departments worth playing at the moment. Pure steal objective syndicates go against that. Now, even though I’ve said all this, there is a place for steal objectives with syndicates, especially with accompanying kill and escape objectives, as it makes the syndicate actually think about what they want to prioritize, and not fall into the same boring pure thief meta. A syndie that needs to steal, but also needs to kill, may prefer to just kill the head, take their stuff, and run to kill their other target before being caught. So overall, I agree with this PR. A balance should be struck, where most syndicates have to escape with 1 kill and 1 steal objective, some rarely having only thief, and some rarely having only kill. Both are equally boring after long enough, and should not be the norm. |
Whuh? Where did Lizard Sel Fantags go? 😕 |
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please dont incentivise round removal even more |
Could always make cloning more common to compensate. Not saying to make cloning as trivial and/or cheap as it used to be. Then there was also the idea with centcom and mercenary reinforcements to generate more non-antags to replace dead crew. |
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Ah yes, exactly what SS14 needs, more round removal! /s |
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Please keep it constructive, folks. The Nth rendition of "don't do this" is not adding anything to the discussion, we heard it the first time. |
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Murder is fun for sec and a challenge for the syndicate, I find the most boring syndicate shifts when everyone has steal objectives. Another sec report of a head who lost an item due to thief gloves is so boring for security and does not produce anything interesting in shift. Oh no… my qm digigiboard… time to tell sec who can't do anything nor affects the shift at all. The purpose of antag is to push the round forward by creating drama. There is no drama in something most people don't know is stolen, on the other hand your engi buddy got stabbed in maints and was barely saved by the security team is much more dramatic. |
On the other hand I offer you And then your just left with a missing crewmember and have to evac because hop STILL can't alter job slots |
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That or they get spotted by one person and suddenly have to round remove the whole station |
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Murder objectives have the same impact as steal objectives on the crew, except for the fact that one person gets round removed(worst case scenario, multiple) and people have to evac due to hop not being able to do their job due to missing features. |
I think that speaks more to how powerful those items are more than anything else. The thieving gloves and storage implant are easily two of the most powerful syndicate items in the game! 4 tc for basically free AA from capt or gun from a cadet is really powerful and there is basically zero reason NOT to buy the storage implant because of how powerful it is. The thieving gloves can lead to fun situations so them being very powerful isn't a super big deal in my mind, but the storage implant is really not a fun item. It basically just nullifies the steal objectives! I think a good way to fix it would be to blacklist all steal objectives from it so you can't just hide whatever you want in there, but also significantly reduce its TC. Something like DeltaV-Station/Delta-v#2286 |
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DeltaV also has what I'd consider to be a better implementation, and that is to change kill objectives for non-heads to "teach them a lesson" which turns green if the person is just killed. This allows for all kill objectives to still continue to play the game after they get revived. Heads still need to be round removed however. DeltaV-Station/Delta-v#2184 |
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I feel like this could work if the "Teach them a lesson" goes through, yeah |
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Well that's not what this PR is about tho, overall o do agree with his pr, rounds with a ton of steal objectives tend to be ultra boring, and going back to the teach them a lesson, that only works with MRP, because people on LRP remember who killed them.Also about "captain was gibbed an hour ago" well why does no one know who dis that to capi, thats just a skill issue, did capi go into maints alone with coords off? |
Not just captain, who's gonna think anything's wrong when janitor no. 3 suddenly goes missing? Nothing. People outside of sec shouldn't be particularly concerned with these things anyways unless they are a target or a witness. And dismissing a valid criticism of a specific scenario as a skill issue is denying the premise of the question as a whole. |
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Well i was talking about the captain's case, if you are talking over crew as a whole, i woulnt really mind making kill objs more likely to target security/command rather than john station #4 passenger that is nowhere to be seen. If you are just a random crew, well you can have coords on and try to call on radio before dying if you are able, you are not the protagonist, is a multiplayer game, sometimes its your turn to die and other times is your turn to kill, its part of the game. Round removal is not an issue. (When its justified) |
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Thats another thing though, security and command are already massive targets for murder or round removal in any case so it would be a redundant change thats will only make people want to play them less. Round removal is certainly an issue and thats why its so rare to see and why its actually worthy of exeuction. steal objectives currently are fine because it gives security and command work to do while not causing chaos amongst the whole crew which is ideal. |
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The whole point of the game is chaos, its not a job simulator
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I shouldnt have to tell you how wrong this statement is from anyones perspective |
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The point is a CERTAIN amount of chaos. Thus, it can not be said that more chaos is always objectively good. |
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Along with the fact that the game also quite literally is a job simulator, pick a social deduction game at random and I'm sure it will have some form of job or town-sided tasks. This does not change for ss13/14. If the game were all about chaos and not giving a fuck about your jobs then everybody would be busy validhunting or powergaming. Related issue is that some departments don't have enough to offer for some people, causing validhunting/powergaming/job abandonment. |
tbf if sec doesn't worry about why nobody has seen John Janitor in the last 20 minutes, they're not doing their job. Sec is supposed to protect NT assets, and that includes staff, so staff disappearing should be investigated. The problem of course is that this would involve talking to people instead of shooting their guns... |
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finally something to prove robustness as a syndicate (stealing/saving is boring) |
TheShuEd
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S: Undergoing Maintainer Discussion
About the PR
This PR adjusts the weight of traitor objectives, reducing the frequency of steal and social objectives.
Also, the difficulty level of escape to centcomm, steal rd-hardsuit, keep alive, help progress is lowered slightly so traitors dont just get 1-2 of those.
Why / Balance
Currently it's quite common to get only 1-2 steal/social objectives and then escape to centcomm. This PR will throw in more kill objectives in the mix.
Also, by reducing the social objectives it'll be harder for the syndies to group up.