Slot Machine RNG Buff

[Kamikaze Mongoose]

Before the changes to slot machines, the rng was a little generous and it only took 500+ or so credits to keep getting more and more money. After the change, it became the opposite; instead of a little generous, it became a bit awful to use.

I've spun a few thousand times this last week or so and I haven't seen any winnings go past 50x. At 1000 credits betting, that's only 50k. Slots used to give you 100k or even 1m if you got really lucky. Unless you're already stacked and willing to only make exponential losses, there's no point to bet 1000 credits per roll the way things are. It feels like a massive risk to even go above the 20 credit default to be honest.

I understand that slot machines aren't there to make you rich irl, but in an hour long (or less) goon station round, shouldn't it at least be beneficial to make money with?

I propose we buff the odds of winning at slot machines!

[Grifflez]

"The House always wins" is a saying for a reason.

[Tarmunora]

It's... gambling. Literal gambling.
And 1.) Slot machine being a reliable source of income is frankly absurd
and 2.) The player already has a 10:9 edge on the house so... yeah.

[Kamikaze Mongoose]

If the house was real, I wouldn't win the lottery 1+ times every time I bought 50 tickets. Nobody benefits from your loss at a slot machine and nobody gets fired when you win the lottery over and over. Stock machines are also pretty consistent at giving you money which isn't very close to stock options in real life.*

Why are slots the only useless method of gambling?

[Kotlol]

In my opinion... the slots are just a flavor mechanic like the lottery.

It just gives alot of money wich you can use that round for "something"
No one really benefits from it gameplay wise, EXCEPT:

- Giant bee wranglers.
- Antagonists who use money to buy expensive pod weapons/cargo stuff for their tricks.
- Podrodders (those engines be expensive)
- That weird guy who only buys things from vendors but never makes them with departments.
- People who are getting gouched by Mining's expensive materials.
And...
- HoP's who have an objective to have alot of money in their bank.

[Flaborized]

Gambling mechanics shouldn't be as profitable as old slots were, since it wasn't so much *gambling* as it was putting in a certain amount of money and then sitting there pressing a button and generating more money. I think that gambling should be risky, with high payouts and high losses, so you actually have to contemplate doing it vs. just repeatedly trying to get a massive payout.

---

If the house was real, I wouldn't win the lottery 1+ times every time I bought 50 tickets. Nobody benefits from your loss at a slot machine and nobody gets fired when you win the lottery over and over. Stock machines are also pretty consistent at giving you money which isn't very close to stock options in real life.*

Why are slots the only useless method of gambling?

I don't think either of these are particularly good arguments. It's obvious that there's not *really* people making profit off of the slot machines in-game, following the logic of that argument why should slot machines *ever* fail to pay out? Just because a company doesn't directly benefit from you losing doesn't mean that the game should be obligated to not represent slot machines *as if* they were run by a company that wanted to steal your money, though as far as I know the odds are slightly tipped towards the player anyways. 

Secondly, the stock market is dusty, old, and honestly feels incomplete. It's a system that's thought about so rarely that I feel the reason it's a consistent source of income is accidental, and not conveying a design goal to 'add profitable means of gambling' like your argument implies. It's just not a really foundational system that informs how other mechanics should work.

[Kotlol]

Secondly, the stock market is dusty, old, and honestly feels incomplete. It's a system that's thought about so rarely that I feel the reason it's a consistent source of income is accidental, and not conveying a design goal to 'add profitable means of gambling' like your argument implies. It's just not a really foundational system that informs how other mechanics should work.

I forgot about the stock market shennigans. Probably my least favorite flavor mechanic to get money due it's clunky design.

"If" anything... most money is earned by getting dumb luck, doing cargo/mining , growing money trees but not doing the job.

I think the best department who uses credits and wants to have it are genetics cause they can purcase supplies to speed up their progress insted of doing genetic testing to make their own.

It would be neat that alot of other departments could "Skip" some of their research by spending their wage in credits or ask for more budget....
Hmm.. gonna make that a seperate suggestion.

[Frank_Stein]

[Kamikaze Mongoose]

Putting video game gambling to the same standards as real life gambling is the bad argument here, especially at the level that it's present in goon station. It *should* be something you stick money into and get more out of. Gambling in real life is designed for you to fail and keep you spinning anyway because it's a hussle. Gambling in video games isn't there to hussle the player, it's a time-gated game mechanic to get to other in-game content. And to clarify, this is gambling without real world currencies involved since goon station gambling doesn't use real world currency.

In general, video game gambling is designed to let you win. It's comparable to maxing your level in an MMORPG in that it spaces out every instance of gaining exp/money so that you reach the end goal in a measured amount of time.

Lotteries and Stocks have no legitimate risk to your profits, the only catch is that it's a process that takes a long time for a big payout. Slot machines used to fill the opposite niche; small but consistent profits over small periods of time. You juggled these systems to keep enough money in the slots to generate more income while putting everything else into a variety of long term options. It was a satisfying system that worked together very well.

Gambling irl is designed around getting currency with real world value, so why would a game like space station with no real world trading use the same standards? Goon rounds are an hour long or less on average, why wouldn't we balance gambling with time the way we balance other in-game features with time?

[Waffleloffle]

quite frankly I would feel uncomfortable with any marked QoL improvements to any of the gambling systems in the game. maybe, on paper, it's good design, there's just something deeply uncomfortable and irresponsible to me about Recreating Casinos, But The Way That Gets People Excited And Willing To Gamble

I'm biased here by both being prone to addictive impulses myself and knowing several people that are. that being said, the thought of what virtual gambling mechanics goon has being designed with intent to frame them as a Legitimate Economic Strategy puts a pit in my stomach. there's potential harm that could be done here, and it goes beyond how much meaningless funny money you can lose in a round

[Haprenti]

How about making it so if you win too much you just get banned from gambling on slots by the company behind them.
That way there's no limit to how much you can lose, but there is a limit to how much you can win and keep playing.

This could take the form of a per-id ratio of winnings / amount wagered limit. If this ratio goes over a fixed limit (with a minimum amount of times played to prevent reaching it instantly on lucky first pulls), your ID gets banned for suspected cheating.

This ratio and the expected return of betting could be chosen such that it's inevitable to eventually reach this ratio. That way you can at least win a bit, but if you haven't won big/jackpot by the time you reach the ratio, you are prevented from using any slot machines any further, forcing you to go back into the round.

1. You can still make a bit of money, not much most of the time
2. If you're lucky, you can still hit it big
3. You cannot keep clicking the machine for 20min
4. You automatically get set on arrest upon being banned, for suspected cheating
5. Some high value rewards will most likely immediatly push you over the ratio unless you've been astronomically unlucky before, only a cheater would be able to win those

That said, I do see Waffle's argument of not wanting to portray slots positively, in which case these machines can remain as "decorations with interactions", which I assume is what "flavor mechanic" means.

[Kamikaze Mongoose]

We're playing a game that actively encourages players to find interesting ways to murder or commit suicide and collect Pokemon style badges in the process. I feel that making slot machine RNG a little less punishing isn't the same thing as promoting gambling as being a positive influence to the playerbase.

[KikiMofo]

Only thing I have to say about this is if the reliable ways of making money are getting nerfed then the prices of items people want to buy should also be reduced.
We don't need to play SS13 for inflation or recession. We already have that IRL.

[Lord_earthfire]

So,we got two conflicting positions here.

First, we want to make it tedious to win on the slot machine, simply because it is non-engaging for the player and other crewmember to have someone play on the machine all time for powergaming reasons.

Secondly, we want to have slot machines for RP opportunities they present and we want more options to generate money.

Now, why do we need to have the connection between both? My proposal would be a rework in how slot machines work with hacking:

Have the machine an internal reservoir. It starts with 2000 credits when the machine is spawned on map start (no money duping :3). The machine drops used money inside the reservoir (also prints bank added money into it).it retrieves the money fron the reservoir before printing new credits when paying out.

Now, here comes the kicker: if the service panel is removed by screwdriver, you are presented with different cables. I would say 7. One of these cables enables you to pry the reservoir out when pulsed. Another cable locks the machine out of bank access and makes it give out from its reservoir only (means you may not get money at all if none is there). The 5 other cables are special: when pulsed, the machine internally crushes up its components, making it unusable and destroys the reservoir. When ANY cable is cut, the same mechanism kicks in. Pulsing any cable afte the internal destruction will have no effect.

The reservoir can also be accessed by blowing up the machine. I recommend the same beaviour like secured chests (5% low severity, 50% medium severity, 100% high severity).

And make them mechscan-able, if they aren't

Now, this proposed change as two effects: firstly, if you want some quick bucks, you need to do some hacking with a risk that insulated gloves do not protect you from (which means building several machines for testing).
Secondly, this makes slot machines be able to be used as components for your own casino. You can restrict bank access so people need to feed in cash for RP AND you are able to cash out on your machines later.

Of course on classic that will mean 90% of the casino machines will be broken. But it's more engaging for the player who wants the money.

If that becomes a problem, add in an 8th cable with a twist: this one must be pulsed after the first reservoir cable to make it be able to be pried out. Pulsing it before the first one also crushes the machine. So we essentially lock it to mechanics with ruckengineering acess only. But i would so that as the next step and not from the get go.

[Garash]

Think of it this way, the way you make money through gambling has to be fair compared to the ways to make money.
If you can *reliably* put in 1,000 credits and end up with more than 100,000, then it really sucks for the cargo or botanist that spent all shift making that amount of money if they could just gamble for a shorter amount of time and/or effort.

Wishgranter artifact and lottery are ok because, unlike slots, they don't happen every round.

yass said that the odds were 10:9 in the player's favour, so if you put in 900 credits over 9x 100cred. bets, on average you're gonna end up with 1,000 credits. Maybe the odds could be bumped a bit more, but don't expect the wild 100:1 odds it seemed like OP said they were.