An Open Discussion About RP NukeOps

[Wrench-1]

As someone who became a RP Nuke OPs when i was gonna gimmick as a clown.
I can say this...

That one round was fun, but I felt I could have done 200 times better. I was caught off guard to begin with.. so I had to improvise and do things with a team.
Admins did allow us unlimited resources, but I also noticed most players were also new to Nuke Ops.
So we devieced a plan... insted of going in guns blazing. We were going to do several smaller things to announce ourselves.

1st: Kidnap the clown to "Kill off comedy" then present ourselves as: "TIME TO GET SERIOUS" (this plan was scrapped)

2nd: Subvert the AI using an Emag and free form, while another squad was distracting security on the other side.
This plan failed since the inflitrator didn't know how to use free forms and emags.

3rd: Find the captains disk. (never happened cause we were already exposed at this point)

So in the end... we announced ourselves as inbound, took over the kitchen, announced again, then activated the nuke and started the fight. It was hectic and fun.
Any witnesses that didn't wnt to fight us... we just said: "Best evacute the station"

If I was prepared and I knew my crew better... (I was the commander that round, so I was using cameras and giving info to the ops to do their jobs. So I wasn't going in doing it myself) I would have done it differently.

Infact... I remembered my "Pizza Nuke idea" after the round and I facepalmed!

OF COURSE! We should have delivered all kinds of pizza's poisoned in many ways then deliver the Nuke in a pizza box.. OUR TARGET WAS THE DANG KITCHEN! WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT SOONER?! AAAAGH!

But... we went for it.. still had fun. Crew and Ops had fun, despite being a flop for us. But hey... I wasn't mad. It was great.

That said:

Nukies are THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE AND MURDER RAMPAGE antagonists of the game.
They leave the littlest area for roleplay variaties. Not cause they don't have options.. THEY HAVE PLENTY.
They can get a nuke in the spot without destruction or murder...
It's just Nukies have only 1 end goal. "Place and set off the nuke"

Sure Changelings need to "Kill X" amount of players and how they do it doesn't matter.
But changelings can interact much much differently and can ignore objectives to cause issues.

Nukies simply HAVE to do the Nuke as it's their core. If they don't... what's the point of playing em?

Now would I like to see Nukies more on RP? Yes. But more rare. Just like wraith's are rare.
Wraiths are absolutely fun guys who cause chaos.... but have a hard time rping things.
Where as Nukies can RP much better then the wraith but their end goal remains "THE NUKE"

What we could also do with Nukies to make em less round ending is "Removing the nuke all together for a mini nuke"
Insted of Nuking an entire station ending the round, The Nukies have to nuke a section of the station... prevent it and Nukies might return to try again.
Now if we do this... Nukies can decide many ways of delivering the Mini nuke and setting it off.
They can decide to bail the mini nuke or commit to it.
The difference in this idea would be... It would cost tokens to spawn mini nukes, thus they are trading FIRE POWER for RETRIES.

Also just like normal Nukie rounds.. they will have two spots to nuke. So it's not like once they fail nuking science for example.. you can reinforce science and make sure they never come in.. Ooh no they got a second spot.

Does this also mean Nukies could set two mini nukes at a time and do  divide and conquer strategy? YES! Thus twice the nukey fun spread out.

So now if nukies win by setting off a nuke (and probably dieing to it). They won the round regardless, but the RP goes on. Surviving nukies can gloat and get arrested and such. But they won... period.

I would also like to say that this form of Nukies will be considered "Nukie "LITE" and mayhapse can mix with a few other antagonists too depending on server size.
I'd ban traitors and spy/thieves from this mix, but allow maybe a changeling or vampire or wraith at best. Something sneaky that benefits from them but also is against them.

As for the other banned Antagonists...
Blob and Flock are abit harder to add...due to their overwhelming nature but they can be reasoned with like Kudzu folk so that can be fun interactions.
Werewolves I would DEFITINALLY LIKE to see despite being rampage heavy.. cause one of em them ain't bad.
Wizards... are just perfect for RP.. but I do feel like most will rampage.

Nukies on the other hand would be fun "pace breakers"
But I also think on RP, you need to be on a WHITELIST to be these.

Just like HoS/NTSC are whitelisted. I think allowing the more murder antags to spawn when whitelisted would be useful.

Mostly I do agree that Nukies just seem fun in RP, as the captain's disk has no use 99% of each rounds. It only has use if:
- Admins make it useful like spawning nukies.
- An antagonist or crewmate makes it their goal for some reason.
- It's an objective/tradable for spy/thieves/traitors.

So by adding nukies to the mix, that disk will not be tossed aside or left and forgotten.

Some good points here. I like the idea of the Mini Nuke being a way to keep them destructive but not cause round ends. However I'm not a fan of them being locked to a whitelist simply because I'm not a fan of players being excluded from playing an Antag role. Treating Nuke Ops as an exclusive club does not bode well at all, and there's also the consideration that not everyone uses the Forums or the Discord, and this feels like it'd exclude those players.

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I play rp for a pace that doesnt involve the wanton violence of teamfight modes, and when I want to teamfight, I play classic. in the rounds I've seen and been a part of, nuclear on rp plays the same as nuclear on classic, so there isnt a fundamental rp experience I'm missing out by playing nukies on classic. it's also a fast-moving, high-energy gamemode I'm willingly exposing myself to when I go on classic; personally for me, I'd prefer not to play every security round on rp looking over my shoulder for the first 20 minutes and wondering if it'll be nukies and I'll have to Perform Heroically or whatever. That's not the pace or energy I play RP for.

super not major but it's also currently a win condition for the crew to have all living nukies cuffed and in the brig; just by nature of the round type, that's pretty rare to happen; if nuclear was on rp, I imagine it would only happen as often as it does now currently anyways. At least for teamfight, there's not really an incentive on RP to not launch yourself into the face of danger and risk your life, so most nukie stuff would be to the death anyways, I imagine. Anyways, that said, in the rare event sec gets something to do post-bomb with arresting and interrogating nukies, it's a round-ending condition anyways, so doing that wouldnt extend the round for any longer and provide more intrigue.

I mentioned it a little but there is maybe a major paradox in a continuous-round/dynamic antag scenario for nukies: people should want to retain their job and the allure of teamfight is to be a part of the event, and it's best when people are, as wrench says; you want to throw yourself into the fight. that's a *good* thing imo. but there's also no need for self preservation; there's no penalty for dying really, the "other side" doesnt gain points or anything like they do in something like pod wars, cloning is quick and easy, but noticeably also falls behind on nukie rounds to the extent you really only have one shot at the bomb as crew. If everyone throws themselves at everything and dies, but the round goes on...who's left to play the rest of the round?

I think my last thought on this is just that there will almost always be a perceived unfairness in escalation for a handful of people no matter what if nukie rounds pop up. if we take from earlier that most nukie rounds on rp are played straight with little verbal escalation, they breach and the first people to be in the vicinity get killed with little time to respond or even realize what's happening. those people then miss out on the 10 minutes of fighting and die mostly meaningless deaths since they dont get to mount a response. if it happens on classic, it happens and is bad luck, but I get the sense people playing rp would be more apt to feel like they were cheated out of an experience because of a lack of escalation, versus chalking things up to bad luck. and like! maybe rightfully so, it sucks to get hit with being the loser or not getting to be a part of the round! on classic, it's expected there are people who this is going to happen to (it may even be you), and the rounds end relatively fast. it's part of why I think having Announced event nukie gamemodes is workable but normal-rotation nukies isnt; on announced mode, the premise of Danger is set up immediately and universally for all players. That way it isnt super surprising if you're shoving boxes in cargo and wind up in crit 10 seconds later without really knowing why because an infiltrator got you. when you have the announced pretense of danger, that feels more acceptable without escalation. if it just Happens, I wouldnt be happy at all, I had no time to react and no knowledge that the particular nature of the threat for the round was a non-escalating, non-selective rampage antag.

This is why its good to openly discuss this because I hadn't considered this. Its true, various people on RP play it for their own reasons, and quite a few like yourself like a slower pace environment, but have the ability to opt into more aggressive rounds simply by playing Classic. 

But it raises another interesting point in that there's various people that play RP that crave for action, and I'd count myself as one of them. I've frequently been told to, "just play Classic if you want action" and thats all well and good and works at satisfying me sometimes, but I don't personally jive with Classic Culture and the "greytide" culture and "play to win" mentality. I like playing this game to tell stories with others, either by conversation, or murdering them horribly. Besides, there's something I find a lot more appealing about a Nuke Op monolguing ominously at all of the Crew about why they're here and what's about to happen, vs them just saying "cringe NT LOL" and then slipping into a vending machine. Not saying the former doesn't happen on Classic, but its often the latter. It's a weird middle ground about wanting a balance of action, and story. 

I know there's been frequent mention of opening a Nightshade-esque server where RP is needed, but all Antags are on. I know there's audience for it, and I'd be fully down with its existence, but I know there'll be further concern about splitting RP Server culture, which is already a concern when it comes to talking about Servers 3 & 4.