The New Pulling Gripe Thread

[Cirrial]

Hi. It's me, renegade coder Cirrial. Grr, etc.

For those of you who just joined us, the game has had a mechanic involving pulling items behind you. For a long time, this meant that you could move at normal speed while dragging anything behind you, be it a screwdriver, a bee, a friend, your unconscious victim, a crate full of unconscious victims, or what have you.

In an effort to promote use of the many ways to transport goods through the station, a change was made that meant humans dragging items would be slowed based on the heaviness of the item. To combat the problem with incredibly speedy abductions, it was made so that prone humans "weighed" more than standing ones (you can imagine dragging someone on the floor is slower than sort of frog marching them along behind you, I'm sure). 

The community was divided on these changes.

The coders agreed that there was enough community unhappiness that a partial revert would be done. The functionality is not completely gone, but is toggled off by default except in the following instances:

• If someone is on the floor, and their intent is not set to HELP, they will slow people down when dragging.
  
• Containers that contain mobs with their intent not set to HELP will slow people down when dragging.
  

However, demonstrating we can never, ever have nice things, people are now complaining that they missed items being heavy.

So I am opening another poll. Another one. Here we go, people. I am not including "remove the delay when pulling unwilling people" as an option because this particular nerf is not open for debate. You want to speedily abduct people, figure out a smarter way of doing it.

Oh, right, and there will be consequences if someone decides the appropriate way to provide feedback here is to go on a long fuck-you rant against the coders.

[ferriswheel1]

The main reason people seem to want heavier objects (such as crates and lockers) to be difficult to pull is the severe under use of some very interesting transport systems for bigger objects. The pulling nerf was, I think, partly to encourage more use of these. 

Transport Systems 

• Belt Hell
  

• MULE bots
  
• Mail system
  
• Cargo Pads 
  
• Disposals chutes 
  
• Forklifts
  
• Cargo carts 
  
• Pod cargo bays
  

Transport systems didn't tend to get much use before the nerf, as dragging crates or lockers at full speed through the corridors will get it to your destination much much faster than any transport system. Most transport systems didn't get much use after the nerf, either, largely because of them being: 

• Still being too slow/inconvenient to use, with the best examples being belt hell and the MULE's 
  
• Mainly used by or given to quartermasters, one of the least played job roles. There weren't enough ways for ordinary crew to move stuff around easily. 
  
• Largely suited to long-distance transport, when most people just wanted to pull a crate a short distance. 
  
• Unreliable, in the case of many automated transport systems.  You never know when sending something off whether it'll be received, stolen or lost in the bowels of the station forever. 
  

In many ways, the pull slowdown was a very incomplete fix for getting transport systems used more, they're far too flawed and awkward to work well currently. They're an eclectic mess of different systems, some slightly useful, others frustratingly bad. I'm planning on posting a thread concerning how transport systems could be improved. I'd support slowing the movement of heavier objects only if transport systems could be improved to the point where they're preferable to pulling.

[Sundance]

Agreed with ferriswheel. The transport system would need to be looked at.

That said, I'm a fan of reducing the pulling speed of the big offenders, but only minorly. Like frank said in the previous thread, you should be able to catch up with someone dragging something.

And only the big offenders. And I mean minorly, it should be the same slowdown as what was like to pull a cart. Everything else (exluding human mobs) should be normal speed.

[Frank_Stein]

Agreed with ferriswheel. The transport system would need to be looked at.

That said, I'm a fan of reducing the pulling speed of the big offenders, but only minorly. Like frank said in the previous thread, you should be able to catch up with someone dragging something.

And only the big offenders. And I mean minorly, it should be the same slowdown as what was like to pull a cart. Everything else (exluding human mobs) should be normal speed.

 
Yeah, that's my position and one I think people who hated the orginal change could agree with

[Wire]

I think this revert is already a reasonable compromise between the original change and a complete revert. Keep it as is in my opinion.

[Musketman12]

cirrial for bestmin

[Ed Venture]

I think this revert is already a reasonable compromise between the original change and a complete revert. Keep it as is in my opinion.

I'm with Wire. Keep it as is now and let's move on.

[Sundance]

I'm honestly for the democratic approach. If people feel this is the best method, then fair enough.

However the points that ferriswheel's make are still pretty relevant and perhaps are suited for a different thread.


ninjaedit: I still think disabling the sprint function when dragging things would tackle the issue of "sudden theft syndrome" as it would mean the victim would be able to sprint after the player, while not limiting the function of people dragging things as a whole.

[Frank_Stein]

ninjaedit: I still think disabling the sprint function when dragging things would tackle the issue of "sudden theft syndrome" as it would mean the victim would be able to sprint after the player, while not limiting the function of people dragging things as a whole.

I wouldn't mind this either. 

Currently the system stops drive by kidnappings, but large scale theft of crated/lockered goods is still unaddressed

[Mordent]

Hi, it's me, someone who was adamant that the original pretty severe pull penalties were okay (barring random items that were missed as exceptions).

I'm fine with it mostly being reverted (to its now current state). I have the following questions/suggestions:

• If a crate has people in it, is the slowdown applied if any people inside do not have HELP intent, or is it applied per person who does not have HELP intent (e.g. assume slowdown is to 80% of normal speed - if it contains two people with non-HELP intents is the speed 80% of 80% (64%), or is it a blanket full-speed/slowed binary?
  
• The slower speed for those without HELP intent seems to be reasonable. I would still be for making this a blanket thing for crates/lockers whether they have people inside or not. The reduction really isn't that terrible for anyone who's already writing up a rant about "Quartermasters are spacemen too!", and it would give meaning to the other methods still as well as reducing drive-by stuff-snatching.
  
• Is there any reason for not having it affect pull speed for standing people on non-HELP intent? An example situation would be a cuffed individual being dragged to the brig now HAS to lie down in order to slow their brigging (not such a problem for those being abducted by antags as they're normally stunned/neurotoxined anyway). I'm fine with laying down being a requirement to resist arrest, as it means that if someone bumps into the person pulling them they can't immediately take off as they would need to get up first. Just a discussion point.
  

[Frank_Stein]

Lying down to annoy an arresting officer is hilarious though

[Ed Venture]

Lying down to annoy an arresting officer is hilarious though

Yeah I am ok with that. AS a officer gives me more of a reason to beat them up and give them more time in the brig for resisting arrest

[Noah Buttes]

long fuck-you rant against the coders.

[Dr Zoidcrab]

This is a good compromise, it makes it possible to catch up with abductions without making them impossible, I'm also ok with the idea of it being applied to all crates and lockers, and other large objects.

[Paineframe]

I like that the coders are trying to encourage people to use the alternate methods of transporting objects, but it boils down to a simple question: how often do you send things to someone else, and how often does someone else send things to you? In spite of the supply request consoles everywhere and the supply request program in every PDA, the most common method of ordering things from QM is still to go get all-access, wordlessly run into Cargo, shove the QM out of the way, and order whatever you want yourself.