RP, chaos and antag density

[KingMorshu]

I'm a little late to the party, but as a mostly secmain I can probably weigh in a little bit here. Granted, whatever I say here is from the perspective of Goon 4, since that's pretty much the only place I play these days. I'll go over the points here:

The energency shuttle is almost never called early. The times it happens it very often comes down to admin shenanigans or rogue AI's/mass bombing

I like this and think it fits RP. I don't think the "goal" of a round should be the shuttle getting called early, it should more be about a story being told. An Antag can tell a great story without mass destruction, or with it. It comes down to the good story.

Security has the tendency to "deathball", meaning having 3-4 secoffs running to antag-related occurrence st once.

I do see this happen, but honestly, if antag chooses to escalate that far, it sometimes takes that many people to pose a challenge to them. I've had my fair share of rounds that it took all of security to even mount a challenge, and sometimes they still get away with it...which either way, is a great story playing out!

Departments, if they are not targeted by antags, very often does not get involved at all in antag-related activity.

Departments very often suceed in shovimg amtag activity towards security and are able to stop caring about what actually be a station-wide concern

As others have said, this makes sense to me from an RP perspective. Unless it's spilling over into their department, the department is targeted, or indeed, the entire station is at risk, it makes sense for folks to stay in their lane. Oftentimes, upon speaking with other departments when I make the rounds as security, they have their own RP and little stories playing out. I'm not saying they can't or shouldn't be interrupted, but it would make sense they would choose not to get involved.

Even worse, multiple secoff players voiced to be highly discouraged to use tools provided by the station to them

I haven't so much seen this issue on 4. Perhaps this is more of a thing on 3. I don't discourage anyone from using their tools so long as it's proper escalation, and I don't think I've witnessed anyone else doing so.

Rough rounds comes down less to antag activity, but more often to self-antagging or shuttle chaos

Same here, I don't tend to see a lot of this and when it does happen, it tends to get handled very quickly, (security or admins).

Currently, antags don't provide enough difficulties to everyone on the station to sufficiently challenge the station.

I would respectfully have to disagree on this, although maybe it is again the server difference. There are mostly antags who get insanely creative and it oftentimes takes a coordinated effort to stop them, if we do in fact even succeed in stopping them.

That is why, looking at these things, i think RP can need more antags. Make antag activity be the cause of rough rounds. Make the shuttle come early. Force security more often to deputize the station or call for help.

Respectfully again, imo, I believe this is the wrong approach and idea of RP. I don't see the goal of RP as the antag bringing the entire station down around everyone's ears and mass chaos everywhere. It's about good stories playing out, which sometimes could very well very be the result of mass chaos. But it can also mean a story playing out in the bar, with two old buddies reminiscing about the good old days. It could be security officers bonding or offering a self defense class to the crew. Maybe there is a station accident and it's large enough everyone gets involved and pitches in, or it could be as simple as holding a service in the chapel for the fallen with candles (which I try to do every shift, which has inspired RP from people that is still going on!) This is the RP aspect I love about Goon so much...it's all about the story. Sometimes it's many small stories going on, sometimes it's a big one with lots involved, sometimes chaotic, sometimes not.