Gang Wars - Official Discussion Thread (Wonk)

[Kaet]

Maybe people could remove tags with the sponge/mop?
That would help people who want to hold a neutral area to stay neutral.

[Cogwerks]

Cleaner can remove tags I think.

[Dachshundofdoom]

ELDRITCH BALLERS (Dead)
Areas Owned: 48
Members: Jeb Maxwell (and others, forgot to copy this bit)

Last gang round I played. I was a miner, went off and marked up mining, Hemera, and Zeta. I'm not sure Hemera and Zeta should be valid territories, seeing as the closest other gang had like, 6 areas. If our leader had only not apparently committed suicide...

On that note, there should be some way to nominate new leaders in case of a suicide. Hell, make it take a minute of BYOND time and send an alert to every other gang that it's happening, just let us do it. It's just stupid to lose a round because your leader suicided or something, at least not without a very slim second chance.

[Cogwerks]

Well you can sell out and join other gangs instead, but maybe there oughta be a message about you feeling really bummed out or something if your gang leader dies.

At least one gang leader has already come back from death, getting cloned by his single follower, and then systematically murdered all the leaders of the huge gangs. He won.

This would kinda complicate things a lot, but how would you guys feel about having a score-based victory instead of just turfs? Let's say... 5 points per turf controlled, 2 points per surviving member, 30 points for having your leader survive, maybe a few other tracked things too?

[Readster]

This definitely feels like a score based game mode. Also that means you can add in score reducers to encourage good behaviour. For example (and this is a terrible example so don't use it, just something similar) -10 points for every civilian killed within your territory, or something like that. Something that encourages the preservation of neutral civies.

[atomic1fire]

One thing I found kind of fun, if slightly jerkish is beating up gang members as a neutral and collecting their spray paint cans. I had three.

[FrontlineAcrobat4]

score-based sounds good, don't penalize killings neutral crew members though, because certain neutrals will go out of their way to kill gang members and gangs should not be penalize for defending themselves.

[Readster]

Like I said, it was a terrible example. I just wanted something to show how it could potentially be used.

[Dachshundofdoom]

Yeah, make it score based so you don't autofail if your leader bites the dust and you never get a chance to clone him. Sounds good.

Wait, would the leader count as alive and still the leader if he was borged? Because it would be pretty awesome if a gang modified the laws to let the AI and borgs kill people not in their gang, destroyed all means of changing the laws, then borged a bunch of their own members to vastly increase their survivability and dangerousness.

[Preid]

On the topic of score, perhaps accumulated money should be counted to a gangs total score. This would encourage the extortion of 'protection money' from normal civilians as well as provide a new source of conflict for gangs who want to control the largest amount of cash.

[Cogwerks]

Yeah, make it score based so you don't autofail if your leader bites the dust and you never get a chance to clone him. Sounds good.

Wait, would the leader count as alive and still the leader if he was borged? Because it would be pretty awesome if a gang modified the laws to let the AI and borgs kill people not in their gang, destroyed all means of changing the laws, then borged a bunch of their own members to vastly increase their survivability and dangerousness.

Borged leaders count as alive AFAIK, I've seen a couple of gangs win with like CYBORG EPSILON-43 was the leader of the SALTY DAGGERS

On the topic of score, perhaps accumulated money should be counted to a gangs total score. This would encourage the extortion of 'protection money' from normal civilians as well as provide a new source of conflict for gangs who want to control the largest amount of cash.

I was considering that but I feel like it oughta only count physical cash, otherwise one guy can just steal the HoP's card and then loot the entire station budget onto it.

Maybe gangs could get a unique special goal like "escape with 30 cannabis leaves between your members" or "escape with $10,000 in cash between your members" or something to get a big point bonus?

[Cogwerks]

Since this is a very new mode and we're still trying to figure out the rules for it ourselves, people are still pretty unsure of how to behave, so uh...

A REMINDER FOR SECURITY: GANG MEMBERS ARE PRETTY MUCH REGULAR CREW MEMBERS WHO ARE PROBABLY BREAKING A BUNCH OF LAWS. THEY AREN'T REALLY TRAITORS.

They're not fair game to execute on sight unless their gang is really being awful to everyone.
If the ZESTY LOCOS are just sitting around tagging up the bar and growing weed, you can arrest them and question them if you really want to, but that's a pretty provocative move on security's part. You'd probably be better off worrying about stopping the DEATH KNIVES who are busy murdering the LOS GRAMPAS or whatever. I fully expect things to escalate when guards bust a gang member for tagging and that gang then retaliates, and it's cool for the guards to avenge their buddies if the LOS GRAMPAS ice a cop, but it'd be nice if heads of security would stop just automatically ordering executions for anyone who has a spraycan. I'm not gonna say any of this stuff is straight up against the rules since it's all pretty context-based, but consider this a strong discouragement against being a jerk without a good reason.

If you're a neutral crewmember, please don't just go "oh hey an ~~~~ANTAG*~~~~~" and start bashing in skulls just because someone is wearing an owl mask. If the owl gang fucks with you, go ahead and fuck with them, and if a neutral person starts picking fights with the owl gang, owl gang oughta kill that busta dead. Mess with gangs at your own risk, and expect to be arrested for murder too if you start killing gang members. Don't expect to be considered 'neutral' if you're acting like a vigilante.

If you get recruited to a gang, don't just start toolboxing everyone else unless your leader wants you to, since you'll just make their goals a lot harder if the whole station gets mad. Neutrals can be recruited, they can be extorted, they can be bribed, you can set up a protection racket with Medbay... people who aren't in your gang aren't automatically enemies to be murdered. Acting like that may very well make your gang lose.

If you're in a gang, expect to be attacked by other gangs if you go off wandering around. You are totally welcome to murder other gang members - but you should probably use some discretion there, since it'can start a war and/or attract security's attention. In some cases it can be pretty useful to make a temporary alliance with other little gangs against the inevitable big bad gang. You could also try beating up other jerks for information or try to convince/coerce them into joining your gang instead.

If the captain orders all gangs to be killed... you might wish to set aside your differences temporarily to kill that dang captain, and if one gang starts a war with security or vice versa, it is totally okay for other gangs to offer their services to protect the station. A constantly shifting balance with a lot of corruption makes for really fun rounds.

I'm going to work on some of the victory conditions and in-game prompts a bit.
Gang Mode is definitely a loose, goofy gimmicky mode with a lot of crime and mischief expected, but it's a lot more fun for everyone if you police yourselves a bit and go for played up rivalries over automatic murder. Changing the win conditions to a score-based thing will probably help that, if it's not putting quite so much emphasis on killing the other leaders... what do you guys think?


*people who say antag are the worst fyi

[mozi]

One thought is that if you want to encourage these sort of ad hoc cultures and dealings, more information is key... Sometimes it's difficult to know the other gang's names, let alone which outfit or tag corresponds to which, which gang is the biggest, or has the most turf, etc.

If I could look at something that says, oh I'm the GRUMPUS GANG and the CAPER CABAL has low membership but the ANTAG ASSOCIATION has a jillion members and 42 turf zones, then it'd be a lot easier to reach out to the CAPER CABAL, or start lobbying the neutrals to rise up against the ASSOCIATION.

Putting the ability to pull up that info on the gang HQ object would be a good way to do it, I think.

[Cogwerks]

Infinite Monkeys said he's gonna change the tags from an overlay to a decal/mess style object, so it'll be a lot easier to pass a name var to the graffiti. Then you could put your mouse over a skull tag and you'd see the name of the gang that made it.

[APARTHEID]

Add-on to Cogwerks post:

Yes! YOU! YOU THERE! You can be a superhero! The one that the station deserves and needs! Please don't adminhelp when you're completely destroyed by a gang or two, but you're welcome to try to fight Crime. As tenuous and loose as the rules are, you're going to be in a worse place than the gangers and the neutrals; you're a vigilante. Don't expect anyone to help you if you pull that gimmick, but you're free to do so.

Expect Sec and the gangs to beat the shit out of you. Good luck, Owlman!