/tg/Station 13

Space dragon is the least fun midround for crew.

Unlike pirates there is no RP involved, and unlike blob there is no cool wars of attrition as crew and blob gain or lose ground.
Dragon shows up puts a stop to anything going on then either dies or ends the round, acting as a hammer to the nuts of antag plans and crew projects.
Blob is a far more effective and thematic take on a drop everything threat, I have never seen a round where a dragon plays a central part in its overlaying story.

Technically, the least fun midround is Sentient Disease.

Anyway, no. It's interesting and fun and provides a distraction for antags to do their shit.

I honestly forgot Sentient Disease existed

Could we disable sentient disease on mrp instead?

Indie-ana Jones worked on Space Dragon a lot (and a lot of the midrounds in general) - i'd recommend talking to him if you want to see changes before simply petitioning space dragon to be disabled. he's a nice guy too, so any excuse to talk to him is a good one

iwishforducks wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 4:04 am Indie-ana Jones worked on Space Dragon a lot (and a lot of the midrounds in general) - i'd recommend talking to him if you want to see changes before simply petitioning space dragon to be disabled. he's a nice guy too, so any excuse to talk to him is a good one

thanks! I will go ask him a few things at some point then.

warbluke wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 3:26 am Could we disable sentient disease on mrp instead?

I've been tempted to just wholesale remove it. It sucks, it's extremely binary (you either get cucked early on by masks or ruin the round for a large chunk of the station) and there's zero actual meaningful interaction between the disease and crew.

I do agree with the premise that you are basically never going to RP with a dragon, but I think the occasional unambiguous threat showing up is fine

Jacquerel wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 2:36 pm I do agree with the premise that you are basically never going to RP with a dragon, but I think the occasional unambiguous threat showing up is fine

I feel like the lack of direct RP is made up for by how big of a threat it is and how people will be distracted handling it. It's not that the dragon itself can be roleplayed with, it's how the crew interacts around the threat of the dragon.

warbluke wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 3:26 am Could we disable sentient disease on mrp instead?

Everywhere, please.

Not all RP has to be reciting poetry to one another. Some things should be big and dangerous and threatening with actual consequences for ignoring it.

And sentient disease should stay simply so I can give them silly names like hysterical pregnancy.

BrianBackslide wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 6:44 pm Not all RP has to be reciting poetry to one another. Some things should be big and dangerous and threatening with actual consequences for ignoring it.

And sentient disease should stay simply so I can give them silly names like hysterical pregnancy.

1) A good antagonist on MRP should not only provide opportunities for conflict and RP, but should also drive those factors by requiring players to work together in interesting ways.

2) I would agree if more Sentient Diseases didn't name themselves some lazy variant of "COVID 20" or "Super-AIDS".

it kinda sucks that the space carp and the dragon are just like: incredibly fast, space-capable (and therefore usually making a depressurised area wherever it can constantly) repositioning, deadly, stationwide threat, spawning teleporting adds, and fully allowed to do shit like beelining for apcs and gas cans, while spewing masses of fire everywhere.

No, dragon is fine.

In all but the most incompetent hands, Space Dragon is a gear/crew check.

Do you have guns, ammo, armor, and healing to fight it?

Do you have the numbers to cycle in and out?

There's intricacy within positioning, actual click skill, and all of those fun things, but as stated above, it does a LOT for what it is.

If you don't meet the gear or crew check, it just kind of hurts to play against, oftentimes. Perhaps this is part of where the fatigue comes in; I've noticed Space Dragon rolling quite often, especially lateround after or during active antag cooking, when the station is hardly poised to meet the check. In these situations, it's just not a very fun antag on MRP, where late-game fatigue appears even more pronounced. Perhaps instead of disabling, a tweak to the odds for rolling would be in order?

Yeah, typically Space Dragons damage is limited, but good lord do space dragons absolutely fuck the station up something fierce when the station is already in the terminal collapse phase due to dynamic. I actually like space dragons.

Sentient disease is way less fun of a mid round. I could write a three page essay on why sentient disease is probably the worst antag in the game from a crew interaction perspective. It’s just not fun to either die tediously via stun locks to something out of your control, or to sit in your department for ten minutes while medical medical makes a cure, just to get infected anyways because some random paramedic wandered in while hacking up a lung and obviously sick.

Sentient disease usually shuts down a round and almost never enhances it for a majority of the crew.

Space dragons definitely aren't...terribly great unless things are already super fucked or the dragon got fantastic locations for its portal. And the majority of the time that I've seen it win are when the crew have already called the shuttle and it spawned right before it arrives so nobody can recall so it just gets a free win and an easy bone (that's such a shit mechanic by the way but this is policy).

These grumblings about the code problems aside, is it bad for MRP? It's pretty whatever. I would think of it similar to a blob. A nice mixup for some action, not much more. It isn't offensive enough to bother me much and I don't think it detracts from the experience. I have seen some dragons interact funnily with the crew. I would rather that they stay than not.

Removing dragon because it doesn't promote RP is kind of stupid when Blob literally has no means of communicating
Just cause its MRP doesn't mean we can't have the odd threat show up to make the crew actually do their jobs, if we started removing antags for being disruptive we'd end up like Skyrat

dragon's a lot like blob: big scaling singular threat that if you don't attend to it can very plausibly end the round.

unlike most blobs though, it's mobile, it isn't constantly scaling (each portal represents a breakpoint of sorts,) and it doesn't necessarily end the round. it can also communicate!

the structural differences are enough to argue that if anything dragon is better suited for MRP than blob, but they're also different enough to create distinct situations, approaches to dealing with them, and cool possible stories.

pls no kill dragun on mrp

We are not interested in disabling dragon on MRP at this time.