Guest Posted March 26, 2016 Posted March 26, 2016 Encourages antagonists to play stealth, Because this is a good thing 100% of the time, right? imagine cultists waiting at arrivals for the ERT to arrive acting as distressed crew, slapping their talisman and going to town. They would get shot. Also just a little above par with nuke ops planting a TTV right where the ERT shuttle docks. No bueno. or even attempt to fight the ERT. Getting the ERT called is not an achievement.
Dreviore Posted March 26, 2016 Posted March 26, 2016 Encourages antagonists to play stealth, Because this is a good thing 100% of the time, right? imagine cultists waiting at arrivals for the ERT to arrive acting as distressed crew, slapping their talisman and going to town. They would get shot. Also just a little above par with nuke ops planting a TTV right where the ERT shuttle docks. No bueno. or even attempt to fight the ERT. Getting the ERT called is not an achievement. I don't think you understand how powerful cult Armour is. I've had a group of cults take down an ERT. Surgically remove their Armour, and sneak off the station with the crew. In fact I've done it. ERT in my experience has never shot helpless crew begging the ERT for help. Even if the ghosts are metagrudging they tend to at least Roleplay. If a group of ERT (six people) walk into an area surrounded by cultists who are unarmed except their talisman for Armour, they'll often attempt to help them, then the cultists smack their talisman and go to town on the ERT. Cultists Armour is almost as robust as ERT Armour, but with a lot more mobility.
Guest Posted March 27, 2016 Posted March 27, 2016 You're putting an awful lot of stock in the cult being organized. Yes, they have their own communication net but it requires time, a rune or a talisman. ERT are guaranteed to stick together for a fair deal of time before they get split up into smaller numbers. Knowing how to drive a stake into the middle of them is on the antag to learn and exploit. The cult is often more than not carried by one or a few individuals willing to take risks to further their own advances. If they're powerful enough to the point where by the time the ERT arrives, then the ERT do deserve to be dunked on. I would be fine with heads of staff receiving due notice (such as a return fax copied at all faxes) if a trooper or two has already spawned in as ERT to assist, that way cult head of staffs can give their underlings due warning ahead of time. As for the other antagonists, well, they need to play it smart and not draw way too much attention and try to involve their targets enough so that they aren't out in the open and forced to murder an entire security force in public view. I would think this change would nudge antagonists away from the usual murderbone spiel they seem so attracted to as of late.
Garnascus Posted March 28, 2016 Posted March 28, 2016 I'm going to mention that calling in stealth ERT is a thing when command staff have sent faxxess requesting a stealth ERT; Admins have gone with that before. I'm not sure if newcode supports it or not, but it happened several times on oldcode. Only way to do it is ask for ghosts and then manually spawn people in. Something I personally have only done once and other mins only do incredibly rarely. There's a verb to force ERT that causes the normal announcement and lets ghosts join though. I never use it though.
Nikov Posted March 28, 2016 Posted March 28, 2016 I watched a whole ERT team get blown up and slaughtered before they got off their ship. Its all well and good to game out the odds of this, but its better to let people game out themselves, in game, how they want things to go down. It should be up to the officers making the call if they want an announced or unannounced ERT arrival, and it should be their job to send the announcement, not Centrals. If it is a circumstance where the ERT is needed quickly and quietly, say to rescue a hostage, then the Captain simply doesn't announce the ERT. If it is a circumstance where the ERT quells a general disturbance and sending the antagonists packing is possible, the Captain announces it. If there is no response when they call for an ERT, but want to try and scare the antagonists off anyway? The Captain can lie. Removing automatic ERT announcements give the command staff more options for dealing with problems. But as for the antags? If Antags want to find out if an ERT is coming, there's bug kits, stolen headsets, subverting the AI... ten thousand ways to find out what the officers are whispering in the meeting room. If you don't take that precaution its on you if you get blindsided. In short, making the ERT call silent broadens the scope of gameplay for both antags and heads of staff, injects some secrecy and suspense into the process, and makes it possible to lie about ERTs for good or for bad.
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