Feedback on RP Antag Tuning Merge

[Nerkson]

I have not gotten to play much in the last month due to work occupying a lot of my time, however I am now more free to play again. Today I joined a round on low pop server 3 to find that, of the ~25 people actively playing, 4 were vampires and 3 of the vampires were command staff. One had late joined, from what I was told, but it was still an incredibly large amount of antags to deal with, especially when they each began making thralls.

A merge from earlier in the month mentions that it tuned antag numbers to prevent things like 1 ling for 40 crew from happening, but this feels like an extreme swing in the other direction. I've talked to a few people since my round and learned that this is not uncommon on low pop, where 12 gang members and 3 sleepers can appear in a round with only 4 officers. I've also heard that due to how the game spawns in specific roles, command staff tends to be overwhelmingly full of antags which greatly changes the dynamics of a round when you can just rogue the AI at a moments notice (that did not happen today, but they easily could have done that). 

I'm not sure if I am simply experiencing an outlier here. If you have any experiences with the new spawns, I would greatly appreciate hearing them.

[Kotlol]

I do think sometimes there are too many antags but sometimes there are enough passive antags.

The reason the number was increased is so there is more to fight during rounds, but in truth... it now makes one overarching antag in a round less likely to happen.

It speeds up antag encounters by having more of them... wich keeps the action going but it also prevents antags from passively esclating and building up.
IT BECOMES TIRING.... Ooh this antag wants to RP and do a big scene aaaand.. there is antag number 2 blowing up the east wing... okay now antag 3 is killing an officer on the west wing... and ooh look antag 4 comes out of the woodwork and is attacking medbay.

At that point security and command is too spread thinly to even entertain antag 1 and kinda enforces vigilantism more... wich as someone who's often security see it happen a lot. Heck I seen people trying to kill antags I arrested as security more often. And I have to go.. KNOCK IT OFF.
Even if I am an antag it happens a lot... or I get dragged away to get beat up and die half way through security since security somehow didn't notice me being in critical.

I feel like antags lately just are more combat focussed rather then great big ploys. The ones that do.. tend to get overshadowed by other antags actively killing people.

THAT SAID... do I want to lower the numbers? No... we will get less aggresive antags as times go on. I'd say give it 2 months.. since a month ago... antags being aggresive has been more prevelant.. this month more admeme's are happening wich is great too. Though some I do see on repeat abit.

[Silent Majority]

At the moment it makes me feel I can't give as much time as I want to an antag.

I shall relate to you my most recent sec round as example to explain what I mean.


Around minute 15 i noticed clear signs of an attack. I investigated. I questooned repevant individuals. I wrote my findings down. I was roughly 1 minute short of preventing the murder of one staff member by a vampire chief engineer.

We set a trap. I did some rp. The thrall and ce attacked me with saws as i spoke with them in a private location. Sec sprang to action. 5 minute fight. 15 minute conversation i. Brig, antag ce exiled. About 25 minutes trom when i. Noticed that original attack.

The HoP and RD and another where vampires and they killed 3-4 people while we dealt woth one the standard way. This was on 30 pop so we had rought 25% of then population as antsgs and the majority of command as antsgs. The exile lasted less the 10 seconds. The remaining 45 minutes in a basicallt zeeo rp constant fight with little interaction outside of hitting each other continually

Sec bas had irs basic ability to investigate crimes reduced while raising the number of opponents and this runs a bit contrary to what was the standard even up till recently. This os particularly prevelant with specifically vampires who are an antag producing antag and thralls where recently buffed to no longer gurgle.

Many or the times I've seen this kinda complaint has been related to amlarge humber of command vampires. So maybe make command taie up more "space"? Maybe use a different algorithm for under 30? Maybe reduce the vampire numbers a little?

Its a weird transition...because i frequently see complaintd of valid hunting or people upset they got "stopped to early" wnich can be hurtful to sec. But if sec doesnt stomp down every antag people scream at us that we arent stopping enough antags.

So with the increased outright violence of antags lately the general vibe seems to be we need to just kill then if they prove to be even a little violent, but that also punoshes anyags who want to so a bit or just do.some smaller stuff.

Ive also recently see a vampire attack no one. Try to flash a random enegoneer after rp. The engineer was fine because maskn blocks glare for some reason(why) they then killrd the vampire. The vampire was then cloned. Interrogated for half an hour. Exiled. Came back and was immediately killed. That doesn't feel right either.

Most of these issues seem to be with vampire specifically for "difficulty figuring out how to respond" and i feel like its affecting everyone so possivly vampire numbers, specifically, need a look at.

I personalty think vampire shouldn't be a mode and instead shoild appear with other antags. However I've tnought that a long time.


I'm not sure of a solution. But i do think some more viewpoints need shared and discussion should happen.

On the topic of vampires again: thralls where adjustrd to account for less vampires. Now that their numbers are doubled maybe thralls need to be re-examined?

[GARGATHUGANOKSREVENG]

On the topic of vampires again: thralls where adjustrd to account for less vampires. Now that their numbers are doubled maybe thralls need to be re-examined?

i don't care about rp servers but for the love of god decrease the vampires instead of nerfing thralls back into the ground, the reason people don't wanna be killed by vampires is because being a thrall sucks an ungodly amount

[Silent Majority]

Yeah the distance they have to maintain is punishing but different discussion i guess

[Emimiyu]

Link related to latest antag tuning : https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/25201

I am pretty sure the changes was only made on non-human specific mode specifically because these three modes are the ones that are guilty of rolling too few antags for too many crew. This does not give changes to mixed, gangs, traitors, or spief. Also, gang round still have midround spawns like ghosts and sleeper, if all gangs are dead. Might want to read the current PR related to antag tuning first before just pointing fingers.

This is just my assumption, but non human round may had less antag spawning, even oddly on classic you can get just two lings vs 40 pop, because they tend to rely on killing people to thrive. But the number was too small compared to mixed where they can spawn more non human, than other modes. Sleeper also rarely even roll at this round, it would take even 70 minutes to spawn a few. Though, I do think the newer tuning is a bit extreme...? But I am not sure either, because mix have more chances to roll and still have more antags.

Though, I think, what can be a very big issue is latejoin weight. I do not dislike latejoin weight, but at certain hours, latejoin weight is odd. For example, on salvs round, if the pop went from 50 to 20, game will usially spawn 4-5 salvs, while if the pop went from 20 to 20, you get 3 salv spawn as usual. From this anecdote, it seems latejoin weight can make the numbers of antags too many for "transitioning pop" (when round went from highpop to lowpop). So you would ended up with antag spawning for highpop on low medium pop. At the same time, on pop that went from low-medium to high, have less antag spawning and latejoin. I have seen rounds with 60 people but only 3 traitor instead of usualy 5-6.

The sec issue.... I think lately there are less sec mains, more newer players so more people avoiding sec roles? But what I've seen with sec and command, they will always focus on one antagonist and surround them, even if they have many numbers. Rarely anyone would be told or choose to go off to look for other antags. People would rather surround one antag in interro.

I think, there was another proposition to remove non-human specific antag mode and focus more on mixed rounds? I am not sure if it is better, but it probably give less chances of the game rolling 4 vamps who all thralls.

Also, I do not have strong opinion about the current antag tuning. It is a very mixed issues.

[Silent Majority]

Ah. Mine was anecdotal and just using examples i experienced.

I hadn't thought about the weighing; that may be a point but i do think and usually continue to think mixed rounds for non humans always "feel" better to me, on the antag side at least, because it let me keep the feeding needed to build up more quiet since the traitors tend to be louder/the spiefs cause more outright chaos

[Emimiyu]

Ah. Mine was anecdotal and just using examples i experienced.

I hadn't thought about the weighing; that may be a point but i do think and usually continue to think mixed rounds for non humans always "feel" better to me, on the antag side at least, because it let me keep the feeding needed to build up more quiet since the traitors tend to be louder/the spiefs cause more outright chaos

I think making all mixed do make the three non humans spawn rarer. But I have a stupid idea, what if we have mixed(aliens), where it focus on the three antags instead? It seems better than just ling/vamp/arc focused. Risk that they may work together which already happened in mixed.

[Kotlol]

I like to point out where a lot of antags cause more issues... for everyone including other antags.

There was a round of gangs where I was a leader and I went: "Let's go full cult mode"
Within 5 mins one of my members came in strapped with a bomb. (Oh god)
I wanted to do this whole cult thing with my team but half the team does what normal gangs do.. cause issues and kill other gangs.
While 3 of us wanted to do the cult thing and grow our influence SLOWLY and not fight other gangs right away.

You guessed it... within 20 mins bomb guy suicide bombs security cause they were arresting him and a fellow gang member.
2 of my gang members were wiped out within that explosion and also made our base area unstable... yay...

I never got arrested since "I NEVER GAVE THE ORDERS OR DID CRIME"
Security was amazing that round! 10/10... but we couldn't do much RP. Nor could Security.. and I tried to keep it in line to get some fun build up.

And this is what I mean with too much antags. I don't think gangs are bad and this was just a hard example of "group doesn't fully want to group"
But...for security? This was litterly antag on top of antag...
I also learned later the other gang just started dieing a lot... I don't know to what but it wasn't the bomber. Some died, some left... only 1 member remained wich was bad.

So back to the main issue.. too much antag means they antag on eachother as well, wich is fine.. but when one bombs a whole department while the other one was trying to take control of it... it kinda ruins it for them too.
I don't know.. i feel like Antags still feel too pressured to make BIG FIGHTS happen lately insted of fun scenerios.