Revolution, the Protractors, the Detractors.

[Chada1]

As it stands, the gamemode of Revolution has a fair many problems with it. I think the announcements for the Loyalists and Revolutionaries are a good start but there's a massive imbalance between the two Antagonist factions that makes the mode tilted towards one outcome a little too much. I believe the outcome that is most common and problematic is one where the Loyalists subvert a large part of the Crew and shut down the Revolutionaries, I will outline my observations that lead me to this conclusion now.

1. The Loyalists begin play with a Head of Staff as a Head Loyalist and two random Crewmembers as Head Loyalists.
2. The Loyalists are capable of recruiting Loyalty Implanted Crew to their ranks, ensuring that they do not have to fight against the Head of Security and Captain.
3. The Loyalists have a much more inconspicuous title that doesn't raise eyebrows, which enables them to recruit publicly without worrying about being arrested/questioned.

In reverse, let's now look at Revolutionaries.

1. The Revolutionaries do not begin play with any Heads of Staff as a given, but do begin play with three random Crewmembers as Head Revolutionaries.
2. The Revolutionaries can only recruit from non-Loyalty implanted Crew, and to take over the Station, they must overthrow the Head of Security and Captain.
3. The Revolutionaries have a very suspicious title, and everybody who they attempt to recruit have reason to be wary of them. Due to this, and their danger to the HoS/Captain, they can only recruit from the shadows, since every failed recruitment is a potential threat.

This is why I am absolutely convinced these two are Not on equal footing.

My solution is to try to equalize them more, make the Loyalists have to actually fight to control the Station instead of having it handed to them. Here are my ideas.

1. Allow the Loyalists to continue to begin play with a single Head of Staff, this doesn't need to change.
2. Make LI's block Loyalist recruitment the same as Revolutionaries.
3. Maybe change Revolutionaries to be called a Union or something and change Loyalists to be called something else too.

To go into detail on what this would change... #1, Loyalists can have a Head to be a little aHead, that's fine. #2, ensuring the Captain and HoS cannot join the Loyalists will make the Loyalists have to either justify their actions to them or stage a coup, which will in turn give the Revolutionaries more room to grow and fight against them, and in some cases the Captain/HoS may find a short common ground with the Revs, if the Loyalists fail their coup. #3, This is one that I am more conflicted on, as it has some dynamic elements to it. I don't know what to change their names to, but I know the Revs could use a less suspicious flavor so they could be given as much leeway as the Loyalists to recruit.
 

Well there's how I think I would fix this problem, how would you fix this problem?

Edited April 9, 2019 by Chada1
Small correction.

[The lancer]

In my rev rounds at least, which are not many since I play on deadhour, the problem is that noone does anything. The round usually starts with one or two revolutionaries, and zero loyalists. The revs seem to have the same constant issue that people do not want to join them, so anything that may end up doing is resorting to minor antagonistic behaviour towards the establishment, behaviour which in some cases even makes security pity them, and no arrests are made.

[Carver]

Renaming the revolutionaries to unionists doesn't make them sound any less evil. If I had to come up with new name it'd be something like 'Contenders' or 'Fellows', unassuming (and less violent-sounding) but still adequately explaining what they are in one word.

As noted above, the issue is mainly just nothing happens. Often either no one ever recruits anyone, or they try and fail (either because people don't care at all, people don't really feel motivated to do so, or the head revs/loyalists are just bad at it or aren't particularly charismatic characters) then either sit about doing nothing or act like cartoon villains. The impatient acts of villainy often further alienate their agenda towards the crew, as well.

There's not really any easy fix to the mode, as the 'culture' of the Aurora crew typically lends them toward following particularly well-known/charismatic characters. So when you see new/inexperienced/unknown heads of either faction, they have to work especially harder to recruit and have to be extremely proactive about it. The advantage of (Head of Staff) Loyalists being that those with command whitelists usually have fairly established characters, or have the (OOC and IC) experience to rally a group of people together.

[Chada1]

This can be locked and archived. (Old)

Edited April 24, 2020 by Chada1

[Chada1]

Bump.
I think I've decided to take you up on your reflavor of Rev @Carver And I'll see what it takes to rename them to 'The Fellows' and 'The Contendors', which of these did you have in mind for Revolutionary/Loyalist and do you have any fresh ideas to go with them?

Edit: It's also worth noting that the revs are on much more equal ground now with the loyalty implants removed and uplinks, so that stuff I won't touch. I just want to re-flavor it.

Edited April 24, 2020 by Chada1

[Carver]

It's a year later but from what I recall I picked the names for both being roughly apolitical and somewhat on their definitions. Intent was 'Contenders' for Revs, 'Fellows' for Loyalists.

I don't have any balancing ideas for the moment as I haven't seen enough of the recent rev changes to argue for or against anything. Best I can say is that if you go with the reflavour, keep an eye on how it affects recruitment statistics and accommodate accordingly if it ends up particularly one-sided over many rounds.

[Peppermint]

Rev has been edging out far more than loyalist recently.

 

The only issue imo is that the vast majority of head revs use the TC they've given to buy themselves a shit ton of gear that never gets used, rather than using it as it was originally meant to as to arm the revs and reduce the balance issues with sec's armoury and shit. Making it clear it's supposed to be used to help everyone would be nice.

[Carver]

Ideally with the apolitical rename, Sec may be more or less inclined to take a neutral stance or support the Contenders.

[Chada1]

Here's the PR.
https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/8747

Edit: Removed the Icons, see further below for them.

Edited April 25, 2020 by Chada1

[Chada1]

The changes as done in the PR are:

The 'Revolutionaries' were renamed to The 'Contendors', 

1. The Contendors are more or less the same as the revs used to be, except they're flavored to be much less antagonistic to the Crew, now with their name title and presentation it should be a lot easier to recruit Crew to the team.

The 'Loyalists' were renamed to The 'Fellowship',

1. The Fellowship now gets access to the old Rev uplink, and they can no longer recruit mindshielded persons. They don't get a head by default in their team, either. These things put them on equal ground with the Contendors which should make neither of the two absolutely eclipse the other.

This serves to put the two teams on equal grounds and make for more open-ended rounds I hope, it should also fix the things that I see wrong with the mode, suggestions are welcome but reminder that I'm a fledgling coder so whatever you suggest can't be so complex or I'll likely not be able to implement it

Edited April 25, 2020 by Chada1

[Chada1]

The Hud Icons were changed again, this is what they are now:

[Peppermint]

Without being able to recruit key positions like HoS and Captain, rev rounds will die out very quickly as nobody will push things forwards.

[Chada1]

Those key positions were only ever able to be recruited by the Loyalists and it lead to them completely stomping the revs into the ground. Now neither can recruit those positions and they both get a large amount of TC + announcements.

The Captain/HoS remaining impartial in the situation actually enables the narrative more than it pulls it apart, just because once the HoS/Captain take a side, that side is at a ridiculously massive advantage since both of these roles have the most soft power all across the Station out of any other roles.

So, if the Fellowship OR the Contendors recruited the Captain/HoS, you'd immediately see the opposite team p. much have to go into hiding to avoid being arrested or worse, both of these things not exactly being great for the round progression either.

This is the state of the current rev team, tho, they're in constant hiding until near the end of the round because they CAN'T actually recruit in public without the Loyalists (Lead by a head, and maybe even having recruited the Captain or the HoS) arresting their entire group. Which is what this change is stopping, with this change both teams can recruit in public from the beginning of the round up until one recruits enough people/gathers enough resources to shut the other down.

Contendors/Fellows will never be able to safely recruit if the HoS/Captain join the opposing team.

Edited April 25, 2020 by Chada1

[Kintsugi]

Here is my opinion on rev rounds. I want to know how you think your changes will make it so these eight must-haves are no longer necessary. What do you think the average rev round will be like with your changes? How will it play out?

[Chada1]

24 minutes ago, DanseMacabre said:

Here is my opinion on rev rounds. I want to know how you think your changes will make it so these eight must-haves are no longer necessary. What do you think the average rev round will be like with your changes? How will it play out?

I'm hoping my changes make it not play out the same exact way in every round, like the current setup currently does (The Loyalists recruit freely all across the Station, the revs can recruit few people, and then shut down the revs#3194857). This tho doesn't mean it won't have good and bad rounds, I can't fix that, but hopefully the round quality varies more than it currently does (Both higher and hopefully not much lower) but some of these problems are eliminated.

1-4: You still need a good gimmick, but the gimmick provided at round start is at minimum just. 'We're creating a group for X thing.' (<= Fellowship replaces the Loyalists) followed by the Contendors (<= Contendors replace the Revolutionaries) being like 'We're creating a group to oppose X thing', which should make gimmicks a little easier since you really only need one gimmick from the Fellowship and then the other group to oppose it to kick everything off, this also means the Contendors don't really need to agree to your gimmick, if all the narrative requires is for them to oppose it for the tension to build.

5-6: This problem won't be completely removed but the new way the teams are setup should make it a lot easier to involve more people, since both teams get 50 tc, announcements, and are reflavored to be less antagonistic sounding. I mean if someone walks up to you and says 'I'm recruiting for the revolution' are you going to join them? Yet if someone walks up to you and says 'I'm loyal to the company, aren't you?' you're more likely to say yes. That's the main problem with the teams rn  ? The Revs can't recruit as easily as the loyalists and they never will be able to so long as they're literally called 'Revolutionaries', the Fellowship and Contendors should help make that less of a problem.

7-8: Command Staff and Security should both be less likely to shut down the gimmicks with these changes I think since they'll be less likely to be recruited into the opposing team (The Fellowship who replace the Loyalists), both of the teams also get a lot of TC and equipment which should make them and their underlings entirely capable of fighting back against the Station if the Station decides to try to fight them. And Security is less likely in general to steamroll the contendors in particular since both the fellows and contendor teams are non-company aligned, the replacement for the loyalists isn't 'With the company' anymore. Hope that answers your questions.

Edited April 25, 2020 by Chada1

[Chada1]

As of now, this is merged. Try it out and post here on your thoughts ?

Tho I ask you to be constructive and try to give me ideas of how to alter it more.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Chada1

[Chada1]

I'm going to have this thread locked and archived again and open a new one to be put into projects for feedback. This one is like, years old, and I need people to get concise information that can't be mistaken for outdated for good feedback.