An Open Discussion About RP NukeOps

[Wrench-1]

The intention of this thread is to openly talk about the NukeOps Gamemode on the Roleplay servers, and the thoughts about it becoming a potential permanent part of RP rotation. This thread is not intended to try and convince admins to make a change and add NukeOps as a permanent gamemode for the RP Servers, but to discuss general thoughts about the Gamemode on RP, what works about it, and what doesn't work about it, and hypothetical improvements that could be applied to the Gamemode (if any) to get it to work in a way that works with the RP Server Ruleset.

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I've been playing this game on and off now for over two years. Over that time I've almost exclusively dedicated my time to the Roleplay Servers, with bits and pieces played on the Classic Servers and some brief stints on Nightshade, but overall most of my experience with this game has been through the Goonstation Roleplay Servers. But before playing, I watched a fair bit of Tomato's streams and there was one round that has stayed with me this whole time and is what originally sold me on the game, starting from the point where Tomato first encountered a team of Nuclear Operatives, breaking into the Science Department and murdering his colleagues. By now, its an iconic clip, and I know there are few people that hold the clip in a similar regard with it being a reason why they started playing the game in the first place. Since then, NukeOps has become a Gamemode I've personally held in high regard, and whenever one occurs, I am over the moon! It is by far, my favourite Gamemode to actually participate in.

But sadly, I can count the amount of NukeOps rounds I've been apart of on two hands, with the total number of RP NukeOps rounds I've been apart of on one hand. Why is that? Well, as we all know, the Roleplay Server selects from a reduced selection of Antagonists in order to better facilitate RP interactions, and avoid rounds ending early due to met objectives, such as a Nuclear Victory/Defeat in this case, or having rounds turn into murder fests where EVERYONE has to stop what they have planned, and become involved in stopping the Antagonist, otherwise the Round will end in crew failure. These are very valid reasons to have a limited selection or Antags, but I do want to touch in it a bit more later down the line.

Nuclear Operatives, as they are currently, are still very much a "murder" Antagonist. However, with their kit I believe they have the ability to still provide memorable RP moments, and memorable interactions while still simultaneously being violent and highly dangerous. Take for example, a team of NukeOps making surgical strikes on key departments of the station and taking hostages to exchange for credits, or the Auth Disk. A team of NukeOps heading in with a feigned attempt at diplomacy holding a meeting on the Bridge, where after sometime they all execute the Heads of Staff in one move, and gain the upper hand. Or perhaps something more light-hearted, like for instance a team of NukeOps boarding the station to deliver Pizza, or throw a Birthday Party for the Captain, with all situations ending with the Pizza being a bomb, or the Captain's Birthday gift being a swift gunshot to the head. All of these are moments I would love to see on the RP Servers, and I can imagine they'd garner some good general reactions from the Community. Overall I've noticed NukeOps rounds tend to be considered some of the most fun rounds for a lot of RP Players.

Of course, while NukeOps having a gimmick to run is all fantastic and definitely in-line with expectations, I believe there's also nothing wrong with NukeOps playing their hand totally straight, and just going in with the intention to kill and set off a bomb. This can still provide fantastic RP moments. For example, a team could break into Cargo and start murdering the staff there, leading to members of the crew being devastated because they've lost friends and colleagues, maybe in some cases a loved one or spouse. This has the potential for players to go deeply into grief RP and allow them to take a route with their character they may not normally get to do, if they wish. The key issue with NukeOps playing their role straight is Escalation. Their attacks weren't escalated, therefore it came out of nowhere. However I've always felt NukeOps could skirt this line and be perfectly fine due to the fact that they're heavily armed soldiers, carrying big weapons and wearing high-tech SYNDICATE armour. Any NT employee can take one look at them and KNOW they are not friendly and here to murder. Their escalation is not done through words, but through their presence. Them simply existing is escalation enough, in my mind.

But the problem I'm very much aware of is that they're Antags that take over the whole round and leave no room for folks that just want to do some personal RP in their department. While they can be ignored, it is 100% for the best that all crew become involved. And despite that, even if they are ignored by a few that continue their own RP, the round will end automatically should victory conditions be met and of course, cutting any ongoing RP short. There's a few solutions and changes I can think of for this. For example, if the NukeOps fail and the bomb is destroyed, the round should still continue. I know RP players are still very happy to continue playing out the round, interacting and telling stories, even after the Antag Threat has been handled, or even if there wasn't any at all. I am imagining the process of Security interrogating any captured Nuclear Operatives, or hunting down and remaining rogue ones. Engineering and the rest of the crew helping to rebuilding all the damage done to the station, and various other players talking about their experiences, either saying how traumatic it was, or how awesome it was. The potential for RP following onwards from the attack is quite frankly limitless. Of course, should the nuke go off, the round will end. I'd reckon this'll give players a very tangible and OOC reason to stop the NukeOps, as maybe they don't want them to end the round, yet.

Wrapping up my own personal thoughts for now, but I want to touch on one last thing. That being the blacklisting of Antags. While the intention is definitely good, I do believe the total blacklisting of more violent Antags has lead to RP rounds becoming somewhat stale. Players know that each round they play, there is a high change of them not running into much in the way of trouble unless they're actively going out of the way to find it, or they're playing Security. A lot of current Antags that the RP server has tend to play very passively, almost timidly. It has frequently, for me at least, lead to rather unengaging rounds where Antags don't do much, or act friendly and I'll be fair, the round begins to drag. Implementing more aggressive Antags, preferably at a low chance to happen like Wraith, will in my mind spice up rounds and keep players on their toes. Peaks and Valleys of action and adrenaline will keep things fresh, and I cannot see any harm in that.

Of course, this is an open discussion. Feel free to agree, disagree or leave your own points. This is something I've wanted to talk about for a LONG time, but the Goon Discord is not the best place for it!

[Kotlol]

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.

[nefarious6th]

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.

[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.

[TDHooligan]

goddamn guys, there are so many words here. condense all this down if you really want people engaged

Nukeops is triggered manually, which sets a couple precedents:
- Every nukie knows there's admin oversight, and that they'll be watched
- It's a unique gimmick that is quite rare
- Admins keep you guessing what the point of the nukeops folk is

Due to the fact there's admins about, nukies have a lot of leeway to open discussion with them and negotiate a more fun entry plan. regular players will also understand it's a rare event, and act accordingly

The moment this enters standard RP rotation:
- There is no admin to nukie communication, leaving nukies stranded with a set of RP-inappropriate gear and an rp-inappropriate win condition
- Nukies have less guidance and are mostly unattended with big firearms (this is bad on RP)
- Players who want to RP an extended round will be disappointed (but without a special admin gimmick to make it worth it)
- People will generally assume nukies are always hostile as admins can't subvert expectations or undo damages

Whitelisting an antag is also not fun, there aren't a huge number of people who are whitelisted for anything, even mentor.
Way I see it, it'll become "the round where the whitelist nerds get to ruin 20 minutes of your roleplay by stomping on you with machineguns"

[Wrench-1]

goddamn guys, there are so many words here. condense all this down if you really want people engaged

Nukeops is triggered manually, which sets a couple precedents:
- Every nukie knows there's admin oversight, and that they'll be watched
- It's a unique gimmick that is quite rare
- Admins keep you guessing what the point of the nukeops folk is

Due to the fact there's admins about, nukies have a lot of leeway to open discussion with them and negotiate a more fun entry plan. regular players will also understand it's a rare event, and act accordingly

The moment this enters standard RP rotation:
- There is no admin to nukie communication, leaving nukies stranded with a set of RP-inappropriate gear and an rp-inappropriate win condition
- Nukies have less guidance and are mostly unattended with big firearms (this is bad on RP)
- Players who want to RP an extended round will be disappointed (but without a special admin gimmick to make it worth it)
- People will generally assume nukies are always hostile as admins can't subvert expectations or undo damages

Whitelisting an antag is also not fun, there aren't a huge number of people who are whitelisted for anything, even mentor.
Way I see it, it'll become "the round where the whitelist nerds get to ruin 20 minutes of your roleplay by stomping on you with machineguns"

NukeOps being triggered manually is a nice middle-ground but it comes with a major issue. That being it mostly happens at peak hours, which for me is always at way past midnight and I'm either asleep, or too tired to play. I don't really fancy staying up that late for the chance of getting a NukeOps round, selfish as that might sound. 

Tweaking the win condition is always a possibility. Having it so the round doesn't end upon victory or defeat, but instead carries on so folks can RP through the aftermath. I've also seen conversion about NukeOps, but without the Nuke. Allow for longer planning phases but, on the other hand I can see that just turning into a group of heavily armed Goons rampaging the station with no goal.

[Waffleloffle]

I think it's for the best that they remain as an admin-curated treat for basically all the reasons that hooligan mentioned, as well as echoing mona's point that most actual on-station interactions between nukies and civilians, well... go about the same as they do on classic. there's not much potential for actual rp between nukies and everyone else once they're on-station with the bomb unless everyone intentionally holds back, and to some degree, plays dumb - while server culture generally applauds holding back a little as either antag or sec, all it takes is one person to open fire to instantly turn things from diplomacy to bloodshed

I would love to see a team-based antag in rp rotation that, well, Isn't Conspirator, but I think trying to draft nukies for that role is a poor fit. the whole design ethos of nukies fly in the face of the more longform, less chaotic rounds that the rp server seems to be built for

[Dhaidburt]

I would love to see a team-based antag in rp rotation that, well, Isn't Conspirator, but I think trying to draft nukies for that role is a poor fit. the whole design ethos of nukies fly in the face of the more longform, less chaotic rounds that the rp server seems to be built for

I feel like you're onto something here. Conspirator vibes are more "Shadow Government wannabees" than "Group of mustache-twirlling nere-do-wells out to reap chaos" that previous examples of great moments touch on. A middle ground between the two, still involving infiltration of the station and having above-average armaments but not devolving the round into a meatgrinder.


I myself have taken to playing RP for more casual games of ss13, though I'm not opposed to nukies as a whole as a very rare event. Random events like white holes, stationwide radiation, and spacial distortions that spawn enemies all add a bit of panic to the game that various departments can interact with without demanding the focus of all departments. Nuke-ops should be on that kind of level, dangerous and to be handled but not so dangerous that everyone must drop all they have in order to handle the situation. Your chef doesn't have to drop their pizza-cake just so they can chase the traitor, why should they for all other antags?

I do agree though, there should be more options for types of antags. The worst rounds are low-pop games where you just want to leave because NOTHING interesting is happening for an hour, and I'd bet those kinda rounds would love nukies to actually add some spice or just end their life.

[Silent Majority]

I shall be simple and to the point in my response.

You have to plan your systems around the worst possibility, rather then the best.

While nukies present many amazing and interesting rp opportunities, leaving it in rotation would result in rounds of 'haha funee gun go brr' where a bunch of people hopped up on stims with guns that kill in 2 seconds bust down walls and start gunning people without a word.

Its wonderful to have some action. But this kind of stuff is far better for us if admins can keep an eye on it and it doesn't become griefing to a level that simply is not fun.

It is my, sincerest, hope that the niche the nukie's fill will be filled for rp by the Salvagers.

[Lord_earthfire]

Personally, i seriously thing we need on RP:

1. More team antags
2. More antags that force a coordinated team effort of the crew

For 1, we only have conspirators. Or a traitor wasting 50 - 75 % of their recources. We had vampires, but these are non-vaible for team gimmicks since the zombie arm change. That is a design space that is somewhat lacking.

For 2., there is none. Except for a really robust antag that takes the rounds spotlight, which is a great accomplishment. This is the main reason i think nukies, as much as blob and flock, should be added to the game. People are left too much to their own devices and able to stay in their departments or metagroups. While this is normally good, i don't think that should be a thing every round. That's what antags are for. Causing chaos and forcing people to adapt.

There does not need to be RP with the antag itself. But rather around the antag. When people scramble around to fight a blob, that creates engaging scenarios. The prople make their own RP out if it, that's at least the experience i have with blobs, zombies and nukies so far on RP.

So even the worst scenario, the rampaging nukies, create RP, just not with the antag itself.

I think there needs to be a few changes before they should be added to RP, though. I think the easiest would be to give them the nuke just after minute 30. If they go guns blazing from the get go without the nuke, they should be reminded of the escalation rules. Maybe, if no announcement from the syndicate battlecruiser was send, and there are nukies at minute 20 on the battlecruiser, auto-send an announcement that tells the crew "hey, there is a freaking nuke incoming". The nuke should be the climax of the round, not the start.

The biggest problem i see currently is that we are at that point talking about changes to an antag for RP. While we have that with the changeling, i know that is a bit frowned upon because it deviates the codebase between classic and RP.