Ideas for improving Rev

[Dauntasa]

loyalty implants shouldn't even derev people, they should just prevent people from becoming revs if they aren't already

the concept of someone losing antag status is incredibly flawed and leads to all sorts of problems and should just go away entirely. see: mindslave implantees who, unless explicitly told not to, hang around medbay making it as obvious as possible so that someone will pull it out of them, or who get killed in a completely unrelated manner and then cloned, upon which they rat out their boss as loudly and as often as possible.

[warcrimes]

loyalty implants shouldn't even derev people, they should just prevent people from becoming revs if they aren't already

the concept of someone losing antag status is incredibly flawed and leads to all sorts of problems and should just go away entirely. see: mindslave implantees who, unless explicitly told not to, hang around medbay making it as obvious as possible so that someone will pull it out of them, or who get killed in a completely unrelated manner and then cloned, upon which they rat out their boss as loudly and as often as possible.

[Flaborized]

Played another rev round recently, this time as a headrev, some ideas I have about the mode:

It's frustrating as a headrev not knowing who is and is not implanted. Revheads should have some sort of HUD indicator that tells you "THIS DUDE CANNOT BE CONVERTED" to indicate people who can't be converted. Very unpleasant to take the risk of flashing some dude and have it not work because they have an implant you're not capable of seeing. Maybe they should see the L HUD indicator that secHUDs see with their special magic revolutionary eyeballs or something.

Deconversion is way too easy. I'm not against the idea of revs being deconverted, I think that's an integral part of the mode and somewhat part of what makes the mode fun (the struggle between two forces converting crew to their side), however, I largely think that deconversion should take place after a fight. Currently there's two primary ways revs are deconverted: Being implanted or being knocked out with brute force. Implants are instantaneous, so if you are a rev and you're fighting a sec officer who has a baton, flash and loyalty implant, it's objectively the best idea for them to try to implant you instead of using their other stun tools. Implanters should have a delay, if that causes problems with mindslaves then make those ones use Syndicate Technology to be instant. There should be counterplay against implants: If a fellow rev sees you getting implanted, they could sprint face first into the sec officer at lightspeed to interrupt the progress bar, meaning that the loyalist in the fight would have to have all revs disabled or at least unable to shove before going for the implant.

The knockout punches deconverting are bad too in my opinion. When I'm a rev I feel like I'm unable to take any real risks because if I get into a fight and get smacked enough to knock me out once (which is not the end of a fight anymore necessarily!) I'll be deconverted. As a revhead I feel like I'm not able to ever arm up my fellow revs because it's so easy for them to get de-revved. I've seen monkeys punch the revolution out of someone and once saw someone accidentally click themselves with a toolbox during a fight, which knocked themselves out and deconverted them. 

Other issue: Stalemates/Delays

Lots of rounds go on too long because things that should count as dead don't. These include: Being braindead, being in a locker/disposal chute(for several minutes), being in a pod in the vicinity of the station but not on it, or any combination of the three. There was talk of changing the way being off station works to better keep heads and revheads on the station and not stalling the round, and this issue is (I think) the biggest problem with rev rounds now. The "GIB EVERYONE LITERALLY EVERYONE AT 55 MINUTES" solution is funny and thematic with NT but also it's not really that satisfying of a conclusion, and it sucks when the round has to go on for that long because the captain is braindead in a bush or something.

I think it would be nice to give headrevs some way to identify the location of heads. Lots of rev rounds I watch will be drawn out much longer than they should because the RD is doing chemistry, totally unaware that there's a revolution, but nobody decides to check chem and it turns into a sort of scavenger hunt, "Hunt down the last head of staff". If a pinpointer is too strong in the hands of headrevs maybe they could get a spy thief style program on their PDA that gives the location of each head. Something like "Research Von Director - Location: ARTIFACT RESEARCH". 

I don't think rev needs to be balanced necessarily. I think that the mode could be completely unbalanced and favor one side over the other to an extreme degree and still be good, all that matters is that it's fun to play for all parties. The fun of playing a head or sec is that feeling of fending off a big revolutionary group or the tension of narrowly avoiding assassination at the hands of like 15 revs chasing you in the hallway, and the fun of playing a rev is fighting the heads and sec with a big group of other revs, using numbers to counter better gear than what you have. It's a cool mode and when the issues it has don't come up it's really really fun for both the antags and not the antags!

[Frank_Stein]

Maybe the trick should be in tweaking the win conditions?

Instead of merely assassinating the Heads, maybe Revs need to shoot for percentage based conversion amount and hold that for a certain amount of time? Something like 70% of the crew converted?

Killing a head could lower that down 5 to 10 percent, so you could win more easily?

This could help avoid stalemates

[Zamujasa]

Change loyalty implants to loyalty flashes. Let loyalty-flashed people see other loyalty-flashed people the way revs see fellow revs. Flashing would take the same amount of time as a rev flash. Converting someone of the opposite type could take 50% longer.


I still think some sort of king-of-the-hill mechanic would be good in forcing a resolution to the stalemate. After X minutes, whoever can maintain control of the bridge for long enough (or offs the other side) wins. It'd give a reason for everyone to come out of hiding and storm a central area.



The most boring variant I've seen was a rev head bolting themselves in some maint closet with a mechanics teleporter and a thindow; you'd get flashed through the thindow, and if you didn't get converted you'd be arrested and murdered, otherwise you'd get let out. it basically resulted in one head rev never moving for 50 minutes.

[UrsulaMejor]

Change loyalty implants to loyalty flashes. Let loyalty-flashed people see other loyalty-flashed people the way revs see fellow revs. Flashing would take the same amount of time as a rev flash. Converting someone of the opposite type could take 50% longer.


I still think some sort of king-of-the-hill mechanic would be good in forcing a resolution to the stalemate. 

What if the mechanic was, "in the event of a stalemate, whichever side has more followers at 60 minutes wins?"
and only let the heads use loyalty flashes
that way, they gotta get outta hiding and start converting peeps back or they're sure to lose

[OMJ]

I think the best way to address stalemates is having the station nuked @ the 45 minute mark if there's no conclusion by that minute.

[MagicStudiosGuy]

At 45 or 55 minutes teleport all heads and rev heads into an arena and force them to fight to the death for control of the station.

[kyle2143]

I think the best way to address stalemates is having the station nuked @ the 45 minute mark if there's no conclusion by that minute.

Isn't this essentially what happens now? Everyone explodes if the game hasn't ended at 45 minutes or some similar time? Maybe it's 50 minutes.

Either way, this doesn't work. Rather, most people don't consider it to be a reasonable way to end stalemates because it still involves people sitting on their hands for upwards of half an hour if some idiot head decides to hide out doing nothing for that time.

[Zamujasa]

At 56 minutes is a warning, at 61 minutes everyone gibs, based on an unscientific observation from earlier today

In fact that round had ended just moments earlier when an admin announced that the last station head was in the bridge, braindead

[MagicStudiosGuy]

A rev round a few days ago had a warning at 55, everyone gibbed at 56.

[Zamujasa]

Given the admin intervention with the "last head on the bridge" announcement, I'd be wililing to guess that the delay was either because of them or perhaps the timing is random, though I definitely remember the 55 warning and very-soon-after gib too. Hm.