Ideas for improving Rev

[Clean Your Teeth]

Personally, I'd like to figure out what needs to be fixed with Rev, but... What is the problem?

As I see it, there are two main issues with Revs (though depending on your PoV they may not really be issues):
1) they usually devolve very quickly into a mad mob scramble of Revs vs Heads & Sec, and there's not a lot of variety - Rev's cover tends to get blown early & one side or the other has usually 'won' by about 15 minutes in
2) they can drag on for a long time if it turns into a game of hide & seek

On the first point, I think that a lot of the reason Rev rounds go the same way each time is that, as it stands, its very challenging to try and do anything stealthy as a Rev Head. 

Even if you want play it cool, just flash a couple of people you can corner solo in your department, and try to set up something longer term, there are 2 other Head Revs out there who are probably just immediately flashing everyone they can see, and once the secret's out it won't be long until someone tries to loyalty implant you & your own followers. At that stage having more converted people is crucial for winning the inevitable mob brawl, so the best option ends up being flashing as many people as you can as quickly as you can.

I'd suggest giving Rev Heads a better way to ID each other / communicate at round start to coordinate plans more - maybe say they have a brain chip that allows silent (machine-talk-like) communication with other dedicated revolutionaries, and also negates loyalty chips to give an in-universe explanation for that? Or a custom gang-like radio channel, or even just like conspirators on RP1 by giving them the names of the other Rev Heads & a suggested meeting location. At the moment you can wander the corridors and look for the other 'R' symbol-havers to make plans, but while you've spent 5 minutes trying to find your partners the revolutions probably already been outed & it's mob time.

I think that'd be a fairly small change that gives Rev Heads much more control over the round & the ability to at least set up some sort of plan that isn't "run through the corridors flashing everyone". You'd also (hopefully) get the Rev Heads sharing tips with each other so they don't get busted, make coordinating breakouts/rescues easier, and it'd also mean that the fun of making elaborate team plans that go to hell the moment you try to implement them would no longer be limited to Nukie rounds! 

Could also be combined with giving Rev Flashes more of a mind-slave like effect message to encourage converted Revs to listen to their Head Rev & not go off like a loose cannon. It'd also means that Rev Heads are still free to play a round exactly as they do now if they'd prefer.


As to the rounds dragging, there are a lot of suggestions from people on this already, (and I think this has been suggested in some form before) but perhaps at some point where stealth shouldn't be a factor any more (~45 minutes? 60?) There could be a CentCom announcement that they're teleporting in an anti-rev crate, which will contain some improved implant gear (even just a couple of revolver-like implanters with 6 shots would be a massive step up from the standard implant guns), but if the Rev's get to it first they can subvert the crate & get target trackers for the Heads of Department instead. 

The crate could be guaranteed to arrive at the Bridge to give the 'winning' side a clear view of where they need to establish control of, or a random location to give the 'losing' side a bit more of a chance (or a randomly selected but announced 1-minute beforehand location for something in the middle)

(I also don't know whether the Heads would ever really need Rev Head targeters? As far as I've seen Rev Heads tend to be less stealthy than the Heads of Department, and loyalty implants failing on them exposes them reliably, but I don't really have a feel for whether Rev Heads hiding & dragging rounds on is an issue the same way that Heads of Department hiding is, especially when loyalty-implanted former Revs can spill the beans to the Heads on who converted them)

This should give a clearly winning side the tools they need to get over the line, encourage a final confrontation between the sides over the crate if it's evenly matched, and give the losing side a final hail-Mary plan.
(It'd also give both sides new strategic choices; do they gather there to ensure they get the crate but make the whole side vulnerable to a single bomb, control the corridors to/from the area and try to ambush the other side, take their Heads with them or leave them behind somewhere 'safer', just send 1 person to try and get the crate & bring it back etc. etc.)

Hiding as a Head who's lost control of the station would still be an option, but you'd have a higher bar to pass in either getting to / destroying the crate first, continually avoiding people with trackers finding you or getting rid of the trackers some other way; fewer people will be able to pull that off & if someone does it'll be more interesting.


Territory control / having 2 revolutionary teams is an interesting idea, but would take the game mode a lot closer to gangs, and I like the idea of it being more of a subversive / independent thing

[OMJ]

Personally, I'd like to figure out what needs to be fixed with Rev, but... What is the problem?

As I see it, there are two main issues with Revs (though depending on your PoV they may not really be issues):
1) they usually devolve very quickly into a mad mob scramble of Revs vs Heads & Sec, and there's not a lot of variety - Rev's cover tends to get blown early & one side or the other has usually 'won' by about 15 minutes in
2) they can drag on for a long time if it turns into a game of hide & seek

On the first point, I think that a lot of the reason Rev rounds go the same way each time is that, as it stands, its very challenging to try and do anything stealthy as a Rev Head. 

Even if you want play it cool, just flash a couple of people you can corner solo in your department, and try to set up something longer term, there are 2 other Head Revs out there who are probably just immediately flashing everyone they can see, and once the secret's out it won't be long until someone tries to loyalty implant you & your own followers. At that stage having more converted people is crucial for winning the inevitable mob brawl, so the best option ends up being flashing as many people as you can as quickly as you can.

I'd suggest giving Rev Heads a better way to ID each other / communicate at round start to coordinate plans more - maybe say they have a brain chip that allows silent (machine-talk-like) communication with other dedicated revolutionaries, and also negates loyalty chips to give an in-universe explanation for that? Or a custom gang-like radio channel, or even just like conspirators on RP1 by giving them the names of the other Rev Heads & a suggested meeting location. At the moment you can wander the corridors and look for the other 'R' symbol-havers to make plans, but while you've spent 5 minutes trying to find your partners the revolutions probably already been outed & it's mob time.

I think that'd be a fairly small change that gives Rev Heads much more control over the round & the ability to at least set up some sort of plan that isn't "run through the corridors flashing everyone". You'd also (hopefully) get the Rev Heads sharing tips with each other so they don't get busted, make coordinating breakouts/rescues easier, and it'd also mean that the fun of making elaborate team plans that go to hell the moment you try to implement them would no longer be limited to Nukie rounds! 

Could also be combined with giving Rev Flashes more of a mind-slave like effect message to encourage converted Revs to listen to their Head Rev & not go off like a loose cannon. It'd also means that Rev Heads are still free to play a round exactly as they do now if they'd prefer.


As to the rounds dragging, there are a lot of suggestions from people on this already, (and I think this has been suggested in some form before) but perhaps at some point where stealth shouldn't be a factor any more (~45 minutes? 60?) There could be a CentCom announcement that they're teleporting in an anti-rev crate, which will contain some improved implant gear (even just a couple of revolver-like implanters with 6 shots would be a massive step up from the standard implant guns), but if the Rev's get to it first they can subvert the crate & get target trackers for the Heads of Department instead. 

The crate could be guaranteed to arrive at the Bridge to give the 'winning' side a clear view of where they need to establish control of, or a random location to give the 'losing' side a bit more of a chance (or a randomly selected but announced 1-minute beforehand location for something in the middle)

(I also don't know whether the Heads would ever really need Rev Head targeters? As far as I've seen Rev Heads tend to be less stealthy than the Heads of Department, and loyalty implants failing on them exposes them reliably, but I don't really have a feel for whether Rev Heads hiding & dragging rounds on is an issue the same way that Heads of Department hiding is, especially when loyalty-implanted former Revs can spill the beans to the Heads on who converted them)

This should give a clearly winning side the tools they need to get over the line, encourage a final confrontation between the sides over the crate if it's evenly matched, and give the losing side a final hail-Mary plan.
(It'd also give both sides new strategic choices; do they gather there to ensure they get the crate but make the whole side vulnerable to a single bomb, control the corridors to/from the area and try to ambush the other side, take their Heads with them or leave them behind somewhere 'safer', just send 1 person to try and get the crate & bring it back etc. etc.)

Hiding as a Head who's lost control of the station would still be an option, but you'd have a higher bar to pass in either getting to / destroying the crate first, continually avoiding people with trackers finding you or getting rid of the trackers some other way; fewer people will be able to pull that off & if someone does it'll be more interesting.


Territory control / having 2 revolutionary teams is an interesting idea, but would take the game mode a lot closer to gangs, and I like the idea of it being more of a subversive / independent thing

I really like the idea of letting the rev heads know the other rev heads at round start.

[Wisecrack34]

Teeth clean man is correct imo, please make the nerds code

[Flourish]

I think loyalty implants should also have a delay.

[NateTheSquid]

there's no way to avoid being revved, the flash stun stacks and slows on the first hit, and the conversion takes like 2 seconds. this is annoying if you want to avoid conflict and just do your own thing, because then everyone is a rev, so if you're a rev, heads/sec will annihilate you on sight, and if you're not a rev you won't make it to security for them to annihilate you because the entire station will beat you to death.

should at the very least be a little harder to convert people, maybe just less of a stun, especially given people either don't want to be rev, or follow around the rev heads and line up until they get revved

[Technature]

The problem with balancing rev is that it relies on quietly gaining steam until it becomes impossible to stop without heavy planning.

Making it harder to convert people would affect the entire game mode, possibly allowing the first person to scream over the radio what's going on before doing so would be rule breaking.

I understand the frustration as there's not a lot to do to balance the game mode sadly.

[OMJ]

What if the rev flash acted like the old rev flash (silent & instant) for the first three people revved and from there acted like the current rev flash?

[MagicStudiosGuy]

Give each revhead a pinpointer to a random head. They could all be to the same one, or different ones, just random. This helps stop games of hide and seek.

[Frank_Stein]

So, I played a round of Rev recently. Tried to be cautious and thoughtful about it, heading to research and trying to isolate scientists and get them to make chems to poison food which I would have served to the heads.

But I guess the other Rev Head clued the in the detective, who found me out by Loyalty implanting random people until they got one of the two people I had managed to convert, who rated me out, and I ended up spending the majority of the round flashless, with no one as part of the Revolution.

An admin actually intervened and dropped off a second flash for me to keep the round going. 

Poor planning on my part, but I think this highlights some flaws

1. The other Rev heads and Revs you create will compromise your plans
   
2. You can just lose your ability to make more Revs
   
3. The risk reward for creating Revs is disproportionate to the ease of loyalty implanting people
   

[MagicStudiosGuy]

Yeah when people you convert get reverted, they can easily blow up everything you planned, and it is inevitable, unlike with mindslaves. I think revs should either be mindslaved or just forbidding them from ratting you out once they get beaten up or implanted. That way security doesn't know exactly who the heads are five minutes in because one rev decides to solo the captain.

[Wisecrack34]

How about if someone gets de-revved just let them know that they're not allowed to remember anything that happend while as a rev

[MagicStudiosGuy]

Also give a message to non-revs of someone getting derevved so sec doesn't keep beating someone until they are in crit.

[Flaborized]

I think loyalty implants should also have a delay.

Just played a rev round where I was a rev and I 100% agree with this. It feels like you have to avoid taking any risks to not get de-reved since implants are instant. If the crew starts using them early enough (as they should) they will dominate revs since they now mark everyone who is implanted as Not a Rev.

[Frank_Stein]

I think loyalty implants should also have a delay.

Just played a rev round where I was a rev and I 100% agree with this. It feels like you have to avoid taking any risks to not get de-reved since implants are instant. If the crew starts using them early enough (as they should) they will dominate revs since they now mark everyone who is implanted as Not a Rev.

What if the delay wasn't in implanting someone, but a delay on when the implant kicks in?


So, if you're not sure if someone had been a rev, you could implant and just wait it out, or handcuff them and babysit them until it kicks in?

A loyal Rev would then have options to fight back before the implant kicks in, or even suicide to protect giving up info

[Roomba]

What if the delay wasn't in implanting someone, but a delay on when the implant kicks in?


So, if you're not sure if someone had been a rev, you could implant and just wait it out, or handcuff them and babysit them until it kicks in?

A loyal Rev would then have options to fight back before the implant kicks in, or even suicide to protect giving up info

The question then becomes 'why babysit them at all' when you could just beat them half to death, implant them, then continue beating them to death. Either way, the resulting corpse won't be a problem.

As it stands, even with instant loyalty implants, most of the heads/sec don't seem to grasp the idea of 'rev does not give you free reign to kill random people'