Critical Lowpop Theory

[Marlon P.]

A recent thread about providing a basic level of electric power to the station during lowpop, where often there are no engineers, had a few negative responses from even staff that seemed to say that Lowpop was not worth the effort to accomodate, mostly due to any accomodations negatively impacting highpop rounds.

This is very frustrating, because writing off the entire server for the time we call lowpop, which can go from 6 to 12 hours, means that's time spent effectively wasted. It's a systemic issue when the game's mechanics and structure prevent rounds from functioning without the bare minimum of staff, and when there seems to be indifference from staff.

If the game can't be played by the handful of crew during lowpop because the entire station shuts off from a loss of power, then there's no incentive for those players to even come onto the server. And with those players not coming, anyone else in those timezones will see the dismal state of things and also not want to join for long.

We are enforcing a negative feedback loop that will ensure lowpop will always be written off.

If there's nothing that we want to do about it, then why bother having the server up? Shut the server down for lowpop hours and save the host on maintenence fees. Otherwise, what are we getting out of it?

The other alternative is finding solutions to let lowpop people join the server and participate without being shoehorned into playing the same mandatory job over and over again just to get the server running. Asking someone to cryo, join as an engineer to get the station functioning, cryo again, then rejoin as their intended character is NOT an acceptable solution that we do not ask anyone else to do during highpop.

The most minimally invasive method of making the server playable for lowpop players is as simple as giving them the means to keep the station's bare essentials powered.

Lowpop hours have unique problems and needs that should be addressed. The players during that time are just as valuable to the server as highpop hours. There has to be ways to accomodate lowpop players just enough to let them run around and do their thing without obliterating highpop.

If that's not true, then we need to find the minimal amount of acceptable playercount and shut the server down during the hours when that number drops too low. 

How do we do that? 

[Colfer]

21 minutes ago, Marlon P. said:

Asking someone to cryo, join as an engineer to get the station functioning, cryo again, then rejoin as their intended character is NOT an acceptable solution that we do not ask anyone else to do during highpop.

If somebody wanted the guarentee of getting an engineer, they could simply ghost and then join as a maintenance drone. Your time spent as a maintenance drone counts towards your respawn timer, meaning the next time you ghost, you effectively will have some of your respawn timer duration spent.

 

23 minutes ago, Marlon P. said:

If the game can't be played by the handful of crew during lowpop because the entire station shuts off from a loss of power

Maintenance drones can pull portable air scrubbers, which can be hooked up to the hydrogen tanks in atmospherics and then drag them to the engine to turn them on (If you want to do this, both should require around 8000kPa and 20 or so shots to be on the safe side.)

 

24 minutes ago, Marlon P. said:

A recent thread about providing a basic level of electric power to the station during lowpop, where often there are no engineers, had a few negative responses from even staff that seemed to say that Lowpop was not worth the effort to accomodate, mostly due to any accomodations negatively impacting highpop rounds

This is because engineering has very few things to do and redesigning the station in order to allow normal people to access solar panels of some kind, or redesigning access to allow the average joe into where solar panels currently are is unnecessary due to the aforementioned maintenance drone setup. It takes me approximately 14 minutes to: 
Set up the engine filters, and insert hydrogen into scrubbers, and scrubbers into the engine intakes.
Set up RCON while the main SMES is depowering
Go and build a R&D tech processor so if any scientists join that cant do R&D, they already have high research levels even on low pop.
Go and plant some diona pods for when I ghost so I can play around as a nymph.
Go and construct a lifeform stasis unit with highly upgraded parts incase somebody needs medical care without a patient active.

All of the aforementioned, need I remind you, takes only 14 minutes. I can then rejoin the round within less than 5 minutes and spawn as a new character with the self certainty that everything is right in the world.
The problem with lowpop with no engineers is already solved, its easily accessible and takes ALMOST MINIMAL EFFORT to do, the problem isnt with the game and staff dismissing low pop. The engine is very easy to setup even as a maintenance drone, its just that nobody wants to try and do it, leading to the issues you've highlighted

[Marlon P.]

A player stopping the game to do busywork just to make it possible to play the game is not something we ask anyone else.

There has to be systems to accomodate lowpop without ruining entire jobs.

A power saving mode tripped on at least.

Medical can be done with basic first aid. Blown appendixes may just be a doomed situation however, but there has to be ways to make redundancies for empty engineering.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Marlon P.

[Colfer]

2 hours ago, Marlon P. said:

Stopping the game to do busywork just to make it possible to play the game is not something we ask anyone else

1. The game doesnt stop in its entirety as we wait for one person to setup the engine.
2. Yes, engineering is an extremely important department because they maintain the power primarily as well as the stations structure. There is a reason why the power runs out when there is no engineers. There is no reason diseases should become rampant with no medical personnel to make vaccines, or hunter killer IPC's should be running about because theres no security on duty. But like I said, it takes MINIMAL EFFORT and 14 minutes worth of time if your trying to do everything you possibly can. 
 

 

2 hours ago, Marlon P. said:

There has to be systems to accomodate lowpop without ruining entire jobs

The system you are refering to, the 3 hour lifespan of power in the previous PR, was only disliked because it ment engineering only optionally needed to setup the power. This didnt ruin the entire job as if somebody had made the engine always on roundstart, removed engineers and made repair nanites fix every problem on the station as soon as it occured. It was simply a change people didnt like. I don't know what else you could be refering to.
Becoming a maintenance drone to setup the engine before power packs its bags and leaves is the system in place to accomodate lowpop, as I said, its at most 20 minutes out of a 2 hour round. And you could vote continue if you want an extra 10 back as compensation (assuming your vote succeeds)

Edited January 4, 2022 by Colfer
Edited as I misread a part of a reply on the second half.

[Marlon P.]

It seems like there is a miscommunication.

When i say ruining entire jobs, what i mean is a solution to accomodate lowpop (such as giving them alternate means of maintaining power) "ruining" the job for highpop. Such as engineers no longer having anything to do during normal operations.

I also mean to say a player stopping to cryo and join as an engineer or maint drone and then rejoining as their normal character. Players are not usually asked to do this in standard situations.

I have to ask though; what makes a maintence drone wiring solars any less invalidating to engineers? Their job is still being done by someone else.

[Colfer]

5 minutes ago, Marlon P. said:

It seems like there is a miscommunication.

I edited my comment just now as I noticed the miscommunication.

It is true that a player stopping to cryo and join as an engineering or drone then rejoining isnt normal. But this is why somebody whos conserned if power will be setup or not should wait for the round to start before joining if they want it.

Onto your second question. Maintenance drones wiring solars or setting up the engine doesnt feel invalidating to engineers as these arent typically seen when engineers are around. As maintenance drones are lawed not to interact with other beings and probably are spawning in order to do something other than start the engine. Thus, engineering either A: Feels as if that their job was done out of necessity since there were no other people spawning to do it. / Or B: Feels as if that their job was done by another capable engineer since it was preformed by a player. / I have rarely (but have) had an engineer complain when I setup the engine when they arrived on station.

To add to your point, there could be a check in place that starts some kind of contingency plan if nobody readies up for engineering AND the smes runs out during the course of the round. But thats all I could see.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Colfer
Added more stuff and didnt want to make a second comment for no reason.

[Marlon P.]

I understand where you are coming from. I don't personally have the best answers. Hopefully anyone that plays lowpop will post there experiences here and what they feel could help make the station(and soon to be ship) at least a little more accommodating with a skeleton crew, if at all possible.

[Captain Gecko]

I also believe that "joining as a maint drone then respawning" is not an acceptable solution, for two reasons.

- One, not everyone knows enough/is condident enough to set up the engine to properly without mistakes, and I speak out of experience, with a bunch of lowpop rounds somehow ending in supermatter delams, may it be from lone engineers, borgs, or even, once, a maint drone. Plus, not everyone is interested in learning about it. I've been playing SS13 since 2017 and I still know nothing but the basics of medical and didn't get interested enough to start learning yet, and I assume it might be the same for some players as far as engineering goes.

- And two, most people don't want to do that. I know I don't, but that may also be due to the fact that as a science main I have a bunch of tricks (and mostly tools) up my sleeves to have things to do. Still, it's discouraging, and kind of unfair; as stated before, in no other context would players be expected to do that. Telling lowpop mains to do that will probably discourage them even more from playing.

But it doesn't matter that much. We have the previous thread to discuss the power issue, and as far as the lowpop problem goes in general, I think we're looking in the wrong direction. The problem is not so much lack of power, but the lack of players to begin with. May the station be powered or not, if no one else is in the station, it gets kinda boring for most, and that's the main thing dissuading most people from playin in the first place (the famous vicious cycle).

 

Firstly, do we even know if we can achieve normal/high number of players during what is currently deadhours? I'm in European timezones, and I can't play deadhours most of the time, because it's afternoon... And I'm busy working! I think we should make sure at first that avoiding deadhours is even doable. I'd like to see a poll or something just to make sure. We'll be assuming that is doable, though, right now.

So anyways, we need to find a way to bring player in first. Lack of power may a problem among many, but for most of the people I've played with during deadhours, lack of power isn't that much of a problem. Lack of power, in truth, is more of a consequence than a cause.

So once again, we need a way to bring in players. My idea would be to bring something unique to deadpop rounds, (perhaps that would also explain the lack of actual crew on the station/spaceship while at it). Something that, say, the moment the crew gets above 5 or 6 players, turns off. It could be a source of power demanding more or less active work on a much smaller scale than the whole station to adjust the gameplay to the reduced crew. It could be outside threats playing with the crew, hell, it could even be sorts of ghost role that spcies up whatever happens on station because BY GOD I have played so many shifts as the SOLE person on the station while over a dozen of players were ghosting (which is fun... For ME)... It could even be a combination of all of these!

You know, once I get time I'll actually give proper, precise ideas, but so for my main point is that focusing on the only problem of the lack of power isn't what we should fous on so much.

Edited January 24, 2022 by Captain Gecko

[Zelmana]

Perhaps the solution is to mitigate lowpop.

[Marlon P.]

53 minutes ago, Zelmana said:

Perhaps the solution is to mitigate lowpop.

How?

[Zelmana]

@Marlon P. Logically, more players.

[Tristan63]

just have the SMES start full or something, maybe prewired solars

[Marlon P.]

On 05/01/2022 at 19:33, Zelmana said:

@Marlon P. Logically, more players.

How do we get them?

[Zelmana]

27 minutes ago, Marlon P. said:

How do we get them?

Maintaining them is just as important. Why have most of our more active playerbase left the server in recent years? It's not that hard to see, they usually tell us why, or at least someone else makes a statement on why x or y person is no longer here.

The SS13 playerbase is narrowing, and if you drive away foundational members your playbase will start to slip.
I am not sure if this is a thing we do anymore- but we used to release some statistics. Seeing ban dates / drama ragequits of prominent players overlaid a graph of total player population would be interesting.

That's another point, but I think it feeds into our player retention capability.

[Zelmana]

1 minute ago, Zelmana said:

Maintaining them is just as important. Why have most of our more active playerbase left the server in recent years? It's not that hard to see, they usually tell us why, or at least someone else makes a statement on why x or y person is no longer here.

The SS13 playerbase is narrowing, and if you drive away foundational members your playbase will start to slip.
I am not sure if this is a thing we do anymore- but we used to release some statistics. Seeing ban dates / drama ragequits of prominent players overlaid a graph of total player population would be interesting.

That's another point, but I think it feeds into our player retention capability.

Ah-

Just after writing this I went to r/ss13 and searched "Aurora" to find discussions about the server and the state of HRP.
I found an interesting thread. Skull showed our statistics page.

https://ss13stats.skullnet.me/server/6bef2e4c8112f4a20e726baf0153ff377a247d902843216197f8e7f31cf11e62

@Skull132 Is this R? Could we maybe draw this out over the past year? Either way, good data for the conversation.

[WickedCybs]

We had prewired solars for a time, until the roof zlevel had to be removed.

I think adding another array and havig it prewired would be fine.

[Skull132]

On 07/01/2022 at 19:07, Zelmana said:

Ah-

Just after writing this I went to r/ss13 and searched "Aurora" to find discussions about the server and the state of HRP.
I found an interesting thread. Skull showed our statistics page.

https://ss13stats.skullnet.me/server/6bef2e4c8112f4a20e726baf0153ff377a247d902843216197f8e7f31cf11e62

@Skull132 Is this R? Could we maybe draw this out over the past year? Either way, good data for the conversation.

It's Go, and the stats aren't maintained over a month. Could get longer periods from the server database.

Also, regarding past times. Admins would regularly press the button to automatically set up power during low-pop up until a few years ago. So perhaps some automated systems would actually be valid for here, and would have precedent.

[Zyrus]

On 04/01/2022 at 12:33, Colfer said:

If somebody wanted the guarentee of getting an engineer, they could simply ghost and then join as a maintenance drone.

If people don't want to learn the systems as an engineer, what makes you think they'll want to learn the systems as a drone? This is just deflecting the issue with a thinly veiled 'git gud scrub' feel to it.

People will roleplay what they want to RP. Trying to force them to RP your way is what drives people off server, and hearing that staff seem to have written off lowpop is just another reason for me to continue to stay away.

[OffRoad99]

1 hour ago, Zyrus said:

If people don't want to learn the systems as an engineer, what makes you think they'll want to learn the systems as a drone? This is just deflecting the issue with a thinly veiled 'git gud scrub' feel to it.

People will roleplay what they want to RP. Trying to force them to RP your way is what drives people off server, and hearing that staff seem to have written off lowpop is just another reason for me to continue to stay away.

Not to mention...playing as a maintenance drone hardly classifies as roleplay.

[Sparky_hotdog]

Just thought I'd add to this. The argument that you can ghost -> maint drone -> set up the engine -> ghost - > respawn is sound in theory, but I tried it the other day during low pop and either I'm an idiot or it just doesn't work.

Now it's highly plausible I just couldn't read the wiki page correctly, as I've never played engi or been taught to set up the SM, but it seems to me you need some atmos tanks moved from storage into the chamber, which drones cannot move (because they're too smol I guess).

Of course, you could join as a stationbound, but they feel more like characters to me so I would be inclined to not just ghost as soon as I'd set up, and also you'd have issues with ghost respawn times without some ahelping.

tl;dr The solution isn't as simple as maint droning

Edited January 25, 2022 by Sparky_hotdog
Missed some punctuation

[Captain Gecko]

1 hour ago, Sparky_hotdog said:

ow it's highly plausible I just couldn't read the wiki page correctly, as I've never played engi or been taught to set up the SM, but it seems to me you need some atmos tanks moved from storage into the chamber, which drones cannot move (because they're too smol I guess).

Take what I say with a grain of salt because I am BY NO MEANS an expert in engineering, but from what I've heard you have to use one of these pump things instead, something that, as far as I am aware, is not explained on the wiki.

And yes I agree, and I said it already myself, maint-droning just for that is a hassle at best.