Remove Succumb

[evandorf]

4 minutes ago, TheGreyWolf said:

it would seem humans actually use

This is why they pay you the big bucks.

EDIT: For clarity's sake, I should note this was a joke. We do not pay our devs since poor devs are more easily motivated.

[Acetrea]

25 minutes ago, TheGreyWolf said:

it would seem humans actually use

edit: Forgot another variant, of course.

Can you translate this for non-coders?

[baldsuspect]

Yeah I succumbed. I am not going to sit and debate the merits because there is nothing left of substance to add that wasn't covered in the first page of discussion. @NM_ hit the target pretty dead on.

But please do not paint a picture of people succumbing in some weird Machiavellian bad faith without any context. I don't really appreciate having to come out, create a forum account, and say I am not some weird evil person who spends his days antagonizing until he loses a fight and then immediately rage-quits. I just felt that my character's participation in the round could reasonably end at that point and I was OOCly ready to stop playing the game.

Edited Thursday at 05:41 by baldsuspect

[benbot16]

1 hour ago, Acetrea said:

Can you translate this for non-coders?

The human part means you can succumb if you've reached shock stage 50 and you're under 60% total health (where get_total_health is your max health minus fire, brute, tox, oxy, and brain damage). Humans usually have 200 max health, but some species (e.g. monkeys) have different amounts.

Shock stage itself is essentially just a representation of how long your character's been in a certain amount of pain (see carbon/human/life.dm, the threshold depends on the amount of shock you already have). At around 30 shock, you start randomly stuttering. You're locked to shock stage 61 and above when you're in asystole, and that's also about the point when you start getting weakened randomly.

The robot part is just enabling succumb when you're at 33% health or below. At ~70% a robot's armor is knocked out, at 60% health a robot's voicebox is knocked out, and at the 33% threshold you've usually either had your power cell knocked out (sleeping you) or had your actuators knocked out (effectively locking you down).

[MattAtlas]

8 hours ago, veeqies said:

Dying because you're bored and forcing medical to possibly face malpractice charges and causing a security investigation to take place isn't a good reason to allow unrestricted succumbing,

This is the real problem - I think any argument basing itself on "robbing medical of gameplay" is unsustainable. Reason being that there are a million things in this game that can "rob" you of gameplay; is Security killing a mercenary robbing you of gameplay? Does an explosive implant rob you of gameplay? Does a cyanide pill rob you of gameplay as well? No department is owed gameplay, this is a design philosophy we've always had, it goes for events just as much as normal gameplay. Note that this does not mean that a round should not have gameplay for you at all, but rather that there can be rounds where you won't have as much gameplay, and that is fine.

Succumbing itself is not different from going to cryogenics in spirit. Both are done because you don't want to play the round any further. However, just as much as you should not assume that someone is going to cryogenics out of bad faith, you shouldn't assume that someone is succumbing because they want to "rob" you of gameplay. That person is not obligated to stay in the round for your sake - it's simply unsustainable to want to force someone to stay when the rest of their round will likely be staring at a black screen and then a brig door. Some people are fine with this gameplay, others aren't. That's fine just as much as it is fine for someone to cryo if they don't like the current rev gimmick.

The real frustration, in my opinion, comes from when someone succumbs and for some reason people start thinking it's malpractice. This is nothing some LOOC wouldn't clear up, but this can be solved mechanically pretty easily. What has to be done is making succumb work on brainmed, making it give a custom death message, adding a special description on examine that indicates that this person succumbed, and adding some autopsy data. For the record, if you are being investigated for malpractice when someone clearly succumbed, you can adminhelp it as well and admins will handle it.

For these reasons, I am voting for dismissal - succumb should not be removed. It can be improved to the point that it will not be a problem at all.

[Lordnesh]

To be absolutely clear. I have not once said, or ascribed intentionality to the effect, that people succumb in order to deliberately deny other people gameplay. My point has always been that the consequence of succumbing has the effect of denying gameplay to other people. A consequence that can largely be avoided if people would ghost/cryo instead. 

 

I have witnessed multiple times, in LOOC, OOC, and Discord, that this is done to avoid gameplay/roleplay that they don't wish to engage with (ie medical/prison). NOT that they were doing it out of spite.

 

I 👏 Don't 👏 Take 👏 Issue 👏 With 👏 People 👏 Not 👏 Wanting 👏 To 👏 Engage 👏 In 👏 Certain 👏 Kinds 👏 Of 👏 Roleplay 👏 

I don't necessarily agree that it is something we should encourage. I feel like we shouldn't have a culture where people can eject themselves from the round once they've got their frags in, but that's my personal opinion.

My point is that, with the ability to ghost/cryo, people have a better tool already available to them that doesn't have the same consequences for others that succumb does. That's why I think it should be removed/restricted. The only thing it offers that ghost/cryo doesn't is instant gratification. If you need to die for narrative purposes you can ahelp to have an admin kill you. If you need to go you can say so in LOOC and ghost. If you don't want to stick around for the last 10 minutes of the round in the brig there's a cryo tube there.

[Lordnesh]

2 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

This is the real problem - I think any argument basing itself on "robbing medical of gameplay" is unsustainable. Reason being that there are a million things in this game that can "rob" you of gameplay; is Security killing a mercenary robbing you of gameplay? Does an explosive implant rob you of gameplay? Does a cyanide pill rob you of gameplay as well? No department is owed gameplay, this is a design philosophy we've always had, it goes for events just as much as normal gameplay. Note that this does not mean that a round should not have gameplay for you at all, but rather that there can be rounds where you won't have as much gameplay, and that is fine.

Except that all the examples you listed don't 'rob' people of gameplay the same way that succumbing does. It's a difference in kind. I fully agree with you. Sometimes there are rounds where, for various reasons, we don't get to engage in medical gameplay. And that's okay.

Security executing a prisoner I'm fine with. At least that's something I can interact with. The spec ops blowing up I can interact with. Cyanide pill I can interact with. Someone falling over dead for no reason? That's not something I can interact with. I just have to shrug my shoulders and ignore them.

[ASmallCuteCat]

If the Succumb changes go through (special messages and autopsy data) will the antag items that accomplish similar be changed in any way? I imagine that if you can use the Succumb verb then the cyanide pill and bomb implant won't be bought anymore, since they cost crystals (i think) whereas using the verb is free.

[evandorf]

I should also point out that not all antags have access to the uplink and other options, nor is succumb strictly an antag verb. It’s a tool for anyone to use and IMO that’s the way it should remain.

[MattAtlas]

1 hour ago, Lordnesh said:

Security executing a prisoner I'm fine with. At least that's something I can interact with. The spec ops blowing up I can interact with. Cyanide pill I can interact with. Someone falling over dead for no reason? That's not something I can interact with. I just have to shrug my shoulders and ignore them.

The problem at the heart of this is that currently the weirdness comes from the fact that succumb does not work with brainmed, meaning that someone can inexplicably drop dead at 100% BA because they have 180 brute + fire damage, despite them being in no real risk of dying. Obviously this is pretty shit and inexplainable IC, hence why I said that Succumb needs to be made to be brainmed-compliant Once this is made to work with brainmed and you can succumb at 5-10% BA then it'll be fine. Especially because they will not be able to succumb except only immediately after a firefight basically.

24 minutes ago, ASmallCuteCat said:

will the antag items that accomplish similar be changed in any way? I imagine that if you can use the Succumb verb then the cyanide pill and bomb implant won't be bought anymore, since they cost crystals (i think) whereas using the verb is free.

Cyanide pill I don't think that's in the uplink if I remember right, it's just given to mercs at roundstart. Explosive implant accomplishes things other than just dying so it'll stay as is.

[Kintsugi]

I see absolutely no reason to compel people to play the game against their will. Succumb allows people to take their exit when they’ve lost all character agency or when it would be most suited for roleplay. If people are using it to avoid roleplay because they’re only here to frag, they should be dealt with by moderation.

[veeqies]

10 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

This is the real problem - I think any argument basing itself on "robbing medical of gameplay" is unsustainable. Reason being that there are a million things in this game that can "rob" you of gameplay; is Security killing a mercenary robbing you of gameplay? Does an explosive implant rob you of gameplay? Does a cyanide pill rob you of gameplay as well? No department is owed gameplay, this is a design philosophy we've always had, it goes for events just as much as normal gameplay. Note that this does not mean that a round should not have gameplay for you at all, but rather that there can be rounds where you won't have as much gameplay, and that is fine.

Succumbing itself is not different from going to cryogenics in spirit. Both are done because you don't want to play the round any further. However, just as much as you should not assume that someone is going to cryogenics out of bad faith, you shouldn't assume that someone is succumbing because they want to "rob" you of gameplay. That person is not obligated to stay in the round for your sake - it's simply unsustainable to want to force someone to stay when the rest of their round will likely be staring at a black screen and then a brig door. Some people are fine with this gameplay, others aren't. That's fine just as much as it is fine for someone to cryo if they don't like the current rev gimmick.

The real frustration, in my opinion, comes from when someone succumbs and for some reason people start thinking it's malpractice. This is nothing some LOOC wouldn't clear up, but this can be solved mechanically pretty easily. What has to be done is making succumb work on brainmed, making it give a custom death message, adding a special description on examine that indicates that this person succumbed, and adding some autopsy data. For the record, if you are being investigated for malpractice when someone clearly succumbed, you can adminhelp it as well and admins will handle it.

For these reasons, I am voting for dismissal - succumb should not be removed. It can be improved to the point that it will not be a problem at all.

My main gripe was with how succumb functioned and how it could be used, if it is improved to a point where succumbing is clearly distinct from any other death, shows a unique message on an autopsy report and overall makes the death obvious to the players both OOCly and ICly - that I'm fine with. Knowing that dropping dead at 100% BA isn't the intended behavior and usage, I'd like to retract my statement. I believe succumb can serve a lot of good (especially for the aforementioned antag gimmicks). 

Pretty sure a thread on how succumbing could be improved would be more useful now that this thread's come to a close.

[UltraNumeron]

Succumbing, at least from how I use it generally happens under a few conditions. Outside of just people stuck in a buggy death state with no help.

1. The round is ending soon, there isn't much time left to have much meaningful roleplay at the pace things tend to go.

2. Done by antags who have already been shot down at the climax of the round, when the story of the round is finished and the outcome is clear.

For some characters it can be good to stick around to get some last minute interrogation in, or end with a prisoner being taken. But often I feel its good for the bad guys to die with dignity, and let the end of the round be a breather to have the crew settle with the consequences of whatever has happened. Brigging tends to be slow and messy and can mess up the tone at roundend.

As for gameplay, medical is not owed much the same way half our jobs don't really have much gameplay. Although it is bad manners to succumb without good reason.

[Lordnesh]

On 05/03/2026 at 08:12, MattAtlas said:

Once this is made to work with brainmed and you can succumb at 5-10% BA then it'll be fine.

At that point you may as well just remove succumb, since you would be effectively making it unusable in general it at such a low threshold.

On 05/03/2026 at 08:12, MattAtlas said:

The problem at the heart of this is that currently the weirdness comes from the fact that succumb does not work with brainmed, meaning that someone can inexplicably drop dead at 100% BA because they have 180 brute + fire damage, despite them being in no real risk of dying. Obviously this is pretty shit and inexplainable IC, hence why I said that Succumb needs to be made to be brainmed-compliant Once this is made to work with brainmed and you can succumb at 5-10% BA then it'll be fine. Especially because they will not be able to succumb except only immediately after a firefight basically.

I disagree. I think the problem at the heart of this is that Succumb offers nothing of value that is unique to it alone. Despite what some people seem to believe, removing succumb will not suddenly compel people to engage in roleplay/mechanics they find boring/unappealing. Until the recent uptick in succumb use, people could already opt out of medical/prison roleplay/mechanics through other means. They simply went AFK or asked to be put into cryo in LOOC. I pretty much only play medical, and I have seen more uses of succumb in the past 1-2 weeks than the past several months. Despite this, people weren't kicking up a fuss about being forced to stick around and be treated in medical, or questioned by security. Succumb has been a non-issue for I don't know how long, and it is only recently, when people became more aware of it, that it has become an issue. The fact of the matter is that succumb offers little to no benefits, while having a pretty obvious detriment.