[MERGED PR] Random gang member selection at roundstart

[github_bot]

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About the PR
Turns on the experimental toggle that makes gang member selection random and disables recruitment. Essentially this acts as if every gang leader immediately recruited random people to their gang. Gang member names and jobs will be in chat once you spawn. Gang name is shown to you when the leader chooses it, similarly the locker location is shown to you when the leader places it.

For now this PR exists just as a temporary test merge to test the waters on the idea. I don't plan on merging it unless there's positive feedback on this.


Why's this needed?
Recruitment leads to weird meta strategies of picking only the most "robust" people on classic and to awkwardness of having to justify why your character would join a gang on RP. I'd like to try out this alternative idea and see how it holds up.


Changelog

Code:

changelog
(u)pali
(*)Experiment: Gang members are recruited randomly at roundstart instead of being recruited manually.<br>Give feedback <a href="https://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid=21701">here</a>.

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[Kotlol]

What you suggest is basically.. CONSPIRATORS but with gang mechanics.
Not a bad one though. Just pointing it out.

Would love to see a test of this.

[Meggal Bozale]

I would absolutely LOVE to see gangs be random assignment. It would also be nice if civilians got something to do in gangs other than survive as well. IME being security/ai/cyborg on gangs is not always Fun™, you sorta just sit on the backlines and watch the violence unfold, and get killed if you get in the line of fire.

Stopping people from recruiting only the "robust" people is definitely great, and gives newer players who may not be aware of how gang recruitment works to get in on the fun.

[krimelizard]

robust nerds whining rn.

good change, gangs is just robust metabuddy fest in classic. it's really not interesting to anyone except to turbonerds.
only concern is afk players, but it could be solved by giving players who rolled gang member a notification to join a gang, and if they deny or run out of time, another player is selected.

[unfunnyperson]

Really interested to see how this plays out. I think this will lead to less murdery gangs which is good.

[Bartimeus]

I like that this prevents the meta of just picking the most robust people, and that it will likely help with the RP issue of gang recruitment being hard to work with and a fair bunch of people refusing to join gangs which leads to slower starts.
Not sure about lockers being pre-placed though. I like the flavor of being able to spawn your locker where you please and setup your little base of operation around it.

[pali6]

Lockers aren't pre-placed. I worded my description poorly (will edit soon). Gang members are shown to you when you spawn in. Gang name is shown to you when the leader chooses it. Gang locker location is also shown to you when it is placed by the leader.

[pali6]

What you suggest is basically.. CONSPIRATORS but with gang mechanics.
Not a bad one though. Just pointing it out.

Would love to see a test of this.

It shares one aspect with conspiracy (random choice of a team of antagonists that are crew).

As far as I know there were not multiple competing conspiracy teams. Nor a leader. Nor did they have tracked goals with rewards. Nor did they have a game mechanic that gives them a location to center around. Etc.

I feel like it's a bit disingenuous to call this "basically conspirators".

[Lord_earthfire]

Personally, i think it is needed for classic. but i think for RP we will loose some opportunities for gimmicks.

There are quite some gimmicks which are heavily depending on getting a whole department or special people on board. Like it's one of the ways to get an antagonistic cargonia going properly.

I could see this replacing the way it currently works in classic and going with a 50/50 split of random assignment/posters or RP. Or at least until conspirators are added back in.

[HatSir]

It's definitely a lot when a whole department / the most robust players get in on it. Maybe it could be implemented as a mix of roundstart players, and only a few recruitment posters to keep the gang style? Having a mix of both could feel pretty unique.

It also feels odd to be a gang leader... who doesn't even have a gang to start with.

[Kotlol]

I feel like it's a bit disingenuous to call this "basically conspirators".

Didn't mean to insult.

[Mouse]

Might want to require a certain population level for gangs.  We just had one where literally every roundstart nonhead was a member of a gang and uh.  Not that fun.

[Brixx79]

This should help newbies trying to gang as well with extra communication. I'll never forget my first time as a gang head; Ran right up to another gang head and tried to recruit him and his new recruit who promptly attacked and killed newbie me...

[KikiMofo]

Maybe instead of making it default make it an option for gang leaders on locker spawn if they want to randomly recruit people? Though maybe the people they recruit don't want to be in a gang that round and that would make things awkward. Maybe give them the option to kick someone out of the gang and then randomly recruit someone else? OR make it so the randomly recruited person has the option to opt out of it and then it picks someone else?

[Kotlol]

I'd say we got room for both methodes on the game.

RP can keep the recruitment, but on classic random UNLESS ADMEME'D.