Increase the maximum number of mercenaries and raiders that can be in a team.

[Kintsugi]

Four is simply too low, in my opinion - during lowpop, four is fine. Usually security won't be stacked and with four people, a mercenary team can control the station if they are a successful team. But if there are sixty people on the server and security is full - they are outnumbered 2:1 by sec alone, not even factoring in ERTs - and some ERTs outnumber them and outgear them. 

 

Anyway. I'm proposing we bump the upper limit of people in the off-station baddie teams up to six from four. 

[Mcspizzy]

I was always under the assumption that it was more than four, but that we just never had enough players for it. Six is a good number for mercs, in most conventional armies, the smallest unit cohesion - the squad, is six. Make it six!

[rrrrrr]

Six or seven sounds like it'd be a good number as the maximum; not big enough that mercs would steamroll the station, but not small enough that they're more or less impotent in the face of a fully staffed security department.

[Arrow768]

This already exists in the form of the antag_scaling_coeff.
Depending on the number of players in the game / readied up the antag count is increased.

[Kintsugi]

14 hours ago, Arrow768 said:

This already exists in the form of the antag_scaling_coeff.
Depending on the number of players in the game / readied up the antag count is increased.

Well, if that's the case, then the requisite number of players needed for five or six mercenaries needs to be lowered. I have never seen more than four at a time on Aurora.

[Scheveningen]

Flip side of this suggestion: If a bunch of people who ready up for security roles also have antag roles switched on, the entire security department is vacant while mercs/heisters get 5-6 heads to bash into the station.

[Susan]

Four mercs are more than enough match for a full security team, please do not arbitrarily stack more.

[Carver]

More or less agreed with the above two posts. The more slots for nukies, the less security there are at roundstart more often than not. Four allows for a very strong showing if the players are competent and utilize tactics - any more than 5 would just result in them being able to bumrush everything on a whim without even needing to spend a telecrystal.

[N8-Toe]

six I think is a good number. 

[Carver]

5 is the ideal limit. You'll never have more than 5 combat-ready Security to contest it (CSI and Detective don't count), and you often have less than that anyways due to how both tend to draw from the same pool of players. Six gives the superior manpower to always run over them with ease using just the base merc equipment and a basic grasp of tactics.

[Scheveningen]

Five would be fine. No more than that.

Make sure crossfire ignores this rule and stays at 4-4 for each side, imo.

I'd actually argue it's high time mercs and heisters both get their bases overhauled, but that may not be relevant to this thread.

[N8-Toe]

Security has the homefield advantage, as well as support of medical/engineer/synths. so I don't think six is to much. As well as the station will have 15-25 people usually to pull from as well if security gets clobbered. so I think a max of six. maybe scale it with pop so with very high pop the amount of hostiles goes up. 

[Carver]

If Security gets ran over, as would be expected with 6 (capable) operatives, then you should be turning to ERT instead of militias. If the five syndicates believe they need reinforcement(s), they can also opt for a syndicate cyborg (tc investment, and quite powerful) or attempt to hail for them via an emagged comms console (small tc investment, admin jurisdiction - who by then should have a fair judgement of if the round needs more).

[Butterrobber202]

On 05/07/2020 at 06:19, Arrow768 said:

This already exists in the form of the antag_scaling_coeff.
Depending on the number of players in the game / readied up the antag count is increased.

 

On 05/07/2020 at 21:10, DanseMacabre said:

Well, if that's the case, then the requisite number of players needed for five or six mercenaries needs to be lowered. I have never seen more than four at a time on Aurora.

Probably because there's a sizeable group of players that don't join roundstart. They wait til roundstart has triggered, then join, presumably to avoid the higher pop secret gamemodes.

[Carver]

It's also a valid method to avoid antag draft after the reversion of draft mechanics in relation to the round vote.

[Kintsugi]

Bump