[Mechanics] Make authentication swipes for ERT have a 50% chance for failure

[Scheveningen]

As title says. ERT's quite easy to call and given that it's usually called when people happen to die, there's never a shortage of dudes who are always ready and raring to suit up in arguably imbalanced equipment to crush antagonists with. It is not fair for a guaranteed respawn of salty dudes who want to get revenge on the antagonists for having killed them.

If the authentication fails, CentComm will print out a response message that ERT is currently tied up dealing with [insert random excuse] in [nearby sector] that also supplements a 20-30 minute cooldown. 15 is too little and perhaps anything over 30, or even 30, is too much. A failure to call for ERT reliably will force the crew to resort to actually caring to fend for themselves and making an invested effort in staying alive long enough to be able to hold out against impending doom.

This would also, on occasion, give antagonists a neat little power spike for a short while to be able to do whatever they need to in order to accomplish their devilish ambitions.

[Kaed]

I'm into it. I've never been a fan of early ERT calls happening because the crew was shit at fending off antagonists and so command hits the 'kill all antags' button and an army of salty ghosts gets to come back for a validhunt after failing the first time.

Punishing antags for doing better than the crew is not something that should be inherently 'owed' to the command staff.

Edited February 1, 2018 by Guest

[Butterrobber202]

Give admins an override button just in case and it’s cool. I like the idea.

[MattAtlas]

Another way to fix that problem would be implementing distress beacons instead of the ERT swipes, with a chance to call an antag team instead of an actual ERT, such as raiders or some other new faction.

[Butterrobber202]

Another way to fix that problem would be implementing distress beacons instead of the ERT swipes, with a chance to call an antag team instead of an actual ERT, such as raiders or some other new faction.

How dare you play CM.

[BurgerBB]

I think there should be some IC and OOC rules about when ERT should be called to deal with a problem instead of a complete and utter unreliance on ERT. ERT are basically the solution to boring murderboning/destructive antagonists. It's either an ERT call that may or may not shorten the game time, or an emergency shuttle that will end the game in 16 minutes.

[Azande]

I like this idea, I've long supported the idea of outright removing ERT because it brings in an external factor to steamroll the antags out , which ruins any interaction of antags between the crew because antags now must focus on the angry ghosts of their victims in paramilitary gear.

This is a good middle ground. +1

[K0NFL1QT]

Most of the crew, and Command, are going to be incapable of protecting themselves from the sort of threat that justifies an ERT. Chances are, if you make an ERT call fail, Command won't live to make another one. -1.

[Guest Menown]

Considering people complain when Engineering forms their militia, when lowly assistants, janitors, chefs, ect fight armed mercenaries, and when medical starts sedating people that could obviously ruin them, I don't understand what the point of this is.

We want gung-ho raiders and mercs that have fucked up the security force to basically win because they're able to outgun the surviving force of what's typically unarmed, untrained civilians?

It'll turn the rounds into hostage rounds with no way of fighting back because now there's no guaranteed way to call for help. Hostage rounds lead to #fun torture RP and power-tripping antags that are able to fuck about because the entire station is at their disposal because there's no way to combat them.

I don't understand what's desired with this.

[Butterrobber202]

Most of the crew, and Command, are going to be incapable of protecting themselves from the sort of threat that justifies an ERT. Chances are, if you make an ERT call fail, Command won't live to make another one. -1.

 

Oh no not a round where the antag wins.

[Pratepresidenten]

Most of the crew, and Command, are going to be incapable of protecting themselves from the sort of threat that justifies an ERT. Chances are, if you make an ERT call fail, Command won't live to make another one. -1.

 

Oh no not a round where the antag wins.

 

Although the point of the game is not to win, it is a valid point. ERT is basically the "Im tired of the round antags/we're getting stomped on, time to end it" call button.

I am supportive of the suggestion, or something similar.

[Kaed]

Although the point of the game is not to win, it is a valid point. ERT is basically the "Im tired of the round antags/we're getting stomped on, time to end it" call button.

I am supportive of the suggestion, or something similar.

 

It's really more of a "we just lost, time to call in overpowered reinforcements" then anything else in practice. I remember being in a round once where an ERT was called barely a half hour into the round, because security ramboed their way into a TPK by attacking the mercenary shuttle.

At that point command felt justified in calling in ERT. And I can't really say that I don't think they were? It was an unusually bad situation for the station.

But I don't think that ERT call should be something that the crew is obligated to receive. They should be an Ace in the Hole that you can get if you're lucky, not an expectation.

If you really want to end the round because shit's so fucked you're done, call an Escape shuttle. It's certainly something that's capable of being stopped by the antags if they want to, unlike an ERT.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

If a merchant is made semi-random and irregular because 'the crew shouldn't rely on them', when the merchant is just 1 person who sells weapons and armor to antags OR station crew, why should an armed squad of loyalists with heavy weapons and the best armor in the game be available at any time? The ERT snowballs in power the more the antags kill, but even 3 troopers is enough to swing the whole balance of power around.

[LordFowl]

Implemented in https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/4236

Leaving thread open for feedback.

[K0NFL1QT]

Implemented in https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/4236

Leaving thread open for feedback.

 

Delayed ERT is better than none at all. As much as I dislike it, perhaps it's a fair compromise.

[Ezuo]

As I said in the comments on the PR, stopping the ERT from spawning straight up for half an hour is going a bit too far. A good idea would be to let the ERT spawn in, but delay the shuttle until an arbitrary timer runs out. It also seems like a good idea to add a risk/reward factor to the swipe, so that it isn't always a guaranteed win button for command. Give it maybe a 1/4 or 1/3 chance to spawn a mercenary strike team or something similar. The IC reasoning for the mercs showing up would be that they intercepted the emergency transmission, and have decided to swoop in and take over while the station is weak.

[HouseOfSynth]

I support this, giving command a "Fix everything" button really removes the potential antags can carry. It usually takes time for an antag to get through a gimmick and sometimes ERT forces them to accelerate into murdering people and such, a similar effect to antags accelerating their plans when CT is called. Also, there are not many antag types that can take on a full squad of ERT since the majority get outnumbered easily if you count sec giving a hand. Giving an antag a bit more room to move may increase their potential for a better story due to them not having to worry about said ERT.

So yeah, overall +1 from me.

[K0NFL1QT]

Giving an antag a bit more room to move may increase their potential for a better story due to them not having to worry about said ERT.

 

Give most antags more room to move and they will still wait until they are forced to act before they make any impact on the round. I'm looking at you, Vampire, Cult and Malf.

ERT has always been an expectation, except in certain round types where it is already explicitly removed. Emergency Response. As in, the guys you call when you have an emergency, and they respond even if it's just one guy they can spare. It's not always a max squad of competant powergamers on a valid hunt, either. Sometimes they fall down the command elevator shaft, or don't know how to operate internals, or even get on the ERT shuttle in the first place.

[Scheveningen]

Give most antags more room to move and they will still wait until they are forced to act before they make any impact on the round. I'm looking at you, Vampire, Cult and Malf.

 

I do not care about the minority of antagonists who are too afraid to do anything, this is a change being promoted on the behalf of the antagonists who actually want to do something in the round without command giggling like schoolgirls and gently slide their shiny slick ID cards into authenticators the first chance they see an antagonist performing the slightest bit of impact on the round -- demonetized by the way -- because frankly it's pretty pointless to have antagonists on a server where doing the slightest bit of antagonizing on the station will be inevitably met with command staff crying for massively overequipped security officers sourcepooled from a bunch of angry ghosts who want to ruin the round of antagonists that also "ruined" the round of theirs to begin with. Why is it even a thing that ERT exists to be commonly summoned half the time?

Like, isn't this HRP server heavily defined by antagonists doing shit more than actual roleplay? Forgive me if I say this after many years of believing otherwise but I'm trying not to be delusional and rejecting that times change to suit the new community. Why the hell does it need to be so hard for antagonists to do anything if our design is almost dependent on an antagonist model before a roleplay model?

You don't need skill to cause the round to radically change in your favor. Calling ERT basically spawns up to a group of six Slab Beefchunks with access to power armor, a wide array of utility that keeps them alive better than what security gets, and plenty of guns they can use at their disposal to kill the entire crew if they wanted to.

Edited February 4, 2018 by Guest

[K0NFL1QT]

It's wierd how we can both play the same server and have completely opposing interpretations of how rounds play out. In my experience, inactive antags are the majority (due to roundtype chances and gametype player minimums) and Command actually doesn't rush ERT unless it's completely warranted because antags are mass bombing and well armed. Most Command staff I see, both playing alongside and observing as a ghost, will hesitate on calling ERT until long after they should... and a lot of times will simply just not do it at all. Securitys most effective means of defending the station themselves, the shotgun slug, was already removed from their usual access. Now the extreme emergency response is going away too. What's next? Foam batons? Tickle guns?

Just for a moment, let's analyse the antag types and see if we can agree on securitys chances, here.

Wizard: Generally, either an uncatchable teleporting menace, with the Captains Spare ID, Headset, Antique laser and whatever else they picked from the Armory, or they're the fireballing Necromancer type with a skeleton army composed of the civilians they've ganked. Security can harm them with lasers, but are generally not enough to deal with these threats.

Ninja: Again, teleporter that probably got the Captains Spare ID, Headset, laser and their pick of the Armory. With their rigsuit, manauverability, access, and innate lethality, Security is simply not equipped to deal with this threat when they inevitably start murdering crew.

Cult: Cult has an array of tools that you are simply not allowed to understand as a non-antag, such as runes and constructs. Security can overcome hostiles with lasers, but cult robes are armored against tasers and stuns. A good cult will probably be operating out of a well prepared cult base. Easy stuns and lethal weaponry; somewhat balanced against Security if they ever do more than preach.

Changeling: Has access to easy means of incapacitating and killing crew, through stings and arm blades. They will usually stay stealthy as long as possible, and react only when caught in the act. A good majority of changelings never act so much as to claim a single genome; others will rush arm blade and claim heads. If you kill it, it revives; removing its head is meta.

Vampire: Another all access teleporter, but this time with the added bonus of straight up mind control. They can attack you and walk away and you cannot remember it. Given they can also control others, they are potentially either a great round antag or a total shitter. While physically vulnerable to securitys equipment, security is generally not capable of dealing with an experienced vampire player.

Mercenary & Heist: Combined due to similarity, Security is just not on an equal footing with these antag teams anymore. They have an abundance of EVA suits, ballistic and laser weapons that Security cannot match. If the antags decide to go hostile, expect a security TPK.

Malf: Not really much Security can do here, except flash and smash borgs. The AI will be locked behind bolted and shocked doors, neither of which Security is trained to deal with. You may be locked into a room you cannot escape, then your air vented. Malf is dealt with largely by engineering.

Autotraitor: Balanced, due to the antags versatility of available tools and their limited nature.

Rev: No additional tools anywhere. Securities equipment, along with whatever Science makes and Cargo orders, is all that needs to be contended with, and you can't exactly predict who will be Rev/Loyalist to guage how things will play out. Frequently the same gimmick, but could be something original now and then.

ERT are not the Insta-win button you all seem to treat them as. They're generally just officers with better guns, armor and access. I've seen ERT fail as much as or more than they succeed. Though if Skull has secret round statistics that show objective results, then that is better than opinion.

[Scheveningen]

ERT are not the Insta-win button you all seem to treat them as. They're generally just officers with better guns, armor and access.

 

Anyone who dies just respawns in better equipment, better guns, and better access and you act like none of these factors aren't a big deal when comparing them to regular officers, though.

You have a gun as ERT. You have authority as ERT to use it at your own discretion to handle the emergency. If someone so much as tries to approach you, you drill them with bullets or lasers, because that's the expectation of ERT during an emergency where shit has gone down.

By the time the entire security team dies, the round antagonists may have already taken considerable losses. At which point command just giggle as they call for a very substantial amount of reinforcements more than likely using the exact same players that had just died minutes ago.

It doesn't matter if the ERT are any good. They will respawn with the sole objective of killing the round antagonists, and the antagonists overall gain nothing from having killed the entire security force. All of their efforts and resources are wasted and they have to prepare to be assaulted by a team of people that just died or were just observing that will be suited in hardsuits with a wide variety of options for hardsuit-mounted weapons and utility to render antagonists super-dead with.

Does this not seem like a ridiculous thing? To be able to call reinforcements in the manner of just instantly respawning those that died into overbuffed security officers? Don't make it sound like ERT is hard, either. If you manage to get a fully kitted hardsuit, you by yourself are very hard to kill, when comparing it from team numbers varying from 2-6, you suddenly have far more variables to contend with than would considered to be reasonable to be able to deal with. ERT gets kitted out like a deathsquad and calling for them is almost always used as a panic button when the station starts to take losses against the antagonists.

ERT is the major reason why heist/merc teams will often just leg it the moment they arrive as there is no fighting an entire ERT team and it is rare they will ever split up when they're intent on hunting antagonists down.

[K0NFL1QT]

Thanks for the insightful response to the balance breakdown of antag types versus existing security. Oh wait...

Security are already inadequately geared to deal with half the antags. Removing ERT will just result in antags having largely unopposed free reign, safe in the knowledge that there is no repercussions once Sec is wiped and there is no additional escalation to deal with. It's not supposed to be easy to take over the station. ERT are Centcoms Emergency Response to situations that regular security cannot control. ERT is already disabled for some roundtypes. And keep in mind that it can take a good ten minutes after the call for ERT to even be ready to deploy.

Fowls change, while I dislike it on principle, at least has provisions that take into account crew deaths so that during situations where antags are on a rampage there is a better chance of a successful call being immediately responded to, but a delayed response otherwise. I think the base chance of 20 is much too small, though. You can have fully half the crew dead and still have only a 70% chance of a reasonable response, unless I misunderstand.

[Scheveningen]

Thanks for the insightful response to the balance breakdown of antag types versus existing security. Oh wait...

 

I didn't respond to any of it as it contained no substance worth responding to. All you did was just generalize every round type, which is disingenuous to say the least.

 

Security are already inadequately geared to deal with half the antags.

 

Any degree of stun measure security has is more than enough to incap threats you aren't intending to be killing. Conversely, if you die with a laser rifle as security you must be the one doing something wrong, not the antag.

 

Removing ERT will just result in antags having largely unopposed free reign, safe in the knowledge that there is no repercussions once Sec is wiped and there is no additional escalation to deal with.

 

As opposed to ERT being largely unopposed free reign to march around the station hunting down antagonists with their high-quality validhunter gear as a reward for dying? I'm not sure how it's fair that the people who died in the round and most likely did something to deserve it get a second chance to take revenge on the same people that killed them. That seems like pretty poor balance to me.

 

ERT is already disabled for some roundtypes.

 

Who told you that? That's not true at all.

[K0NFL1QT]

Security are already inadequately geared to deal with half the antags.

Any degree of stun measure security has is more than enough to incap threats you aren't intending to be killing. Conversely, if you die with a laser rifle as security you must be the one doing something wrong, not the antag.

 

Except stuns have been altered to have a reduced effect on armored targets. Just yesterday, I put five accurate stun shots from an e-pistol and five on target shotgun beanbags into an unarmored crewman, who was already injured, and they didn't drop until two hits from a stun baton were applied. Garnascus can verify, as they watched and commented in LOOC at the time. Stuns are not as godlike as they once were and are barely worth using right now; except Security generally has to prioritise live capture over killing in self defense unless their life is in danger.

 

Removing ERT will just result in antags having largely unopposed free reign, safe in the knowledge that there is no repercussions once Sec is wiped and there is no additional escalation to deal with.

As opposed to ERT being largely unopposed free reign to march around the station hunting down antagonists with their high-quality validhunter gear as a reward for dying? I'm not sure how it's fair that the people who died in the round and most likely did something to deserve it get a second chance to take revenge on the same people that killed them. That seems like pretty poor balance to me.

I think that's a disingenuous generalisation of no substance, but will respond. ERT are Central Commands asset protection force. Nanotrasen have vast wealth with which to equip specialised units, to deploy to their facilities which are the basis of their income, so that they aren't destroyed and the income continues to flow. They are meant to be well equipped but not excessively so, and they certainly aren't compared to what is possible. When Command calls ERT, they are accepting that they cannot deal with the situation and are calling in special defense teams to take over for them. You have a very jaded outlook on the situation and completely disregard the already antag-focused balance, and have repeatedly referred to ERT as little more than no-rp validhunters. ERT is a necessary counter balance to overpowered antag abilities and equipment.

 

ERT is already disabled for some roundtypes.

Who told you that? That's not true at all.

Uh. Revolution. Unless that was changed?

Counter proposal.

What if ERT calls, faxes and the AIs emergency messages were reliant on an emergency antenna, perhaps located in telecoms? If the antenna is powered and undamaged, emergency messages go through fine. If it's offline, then no emergency messages. Also, restrict ERT to players with Command Whitelists to reduce likelihood of the 'salty validhunter' meme, so you get players of trusted quality in these powerful roles.

[Faris]

I had a bit of a chat with [mention]Ezuo[/mention] and they had a decent suggestion.

I personally feel the flat 50% to be too high. I also feel antagonists are capable of defeating an ERT with organization or even through sheer trickery, I've never felt they were an instant win tool, though I can see where everyone comes from.

So, here is my suggestion about.

When an ERT team is swiped for, I'd propose a chance around 20% to spawn a wild card. I've never been fond of clear cut measures for this sort of thing. If it happens that the ERT check is failed, one among many groups may respond to the call instead. The following suggestions aren't set in stone and are open to modification. I'm also open to add more options.

 

Weightings

Raiders - 6

Mercs - 3

Military - 1

Raiders - Just a group of heisters. They could steal, work for the crew or the antag, or really anything they want.

Mercs - They'd be a tier above heisters, with a more combat focused set up. Again, they can really do what they want but with more emphasis on mercenary work. Do not confuse them for nuke operatives.

Military - An element from Biesel military is dispatched to the station to investigate the transmission. They hold no true allegiance to Nanotrasen, instead they have their vow to the Biesel Government. I feel this addition is nice since it acts as a legitimate counter to a fascist loyalist regime. Their primary goal would be to rescue Bieselites.

How specific they are depends on a lot of circumstances.

 

I did not include Nuke Operatives since that's a thing antagonists themselves can call with possible success. Death Squat / HAPT was also not included since they're a central thing and a step up above ERT.

My suggestion doesn't end here. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe if t-comms is down, the station can't actually send things to Central, which doesn't include the swipers. So we could tie in the swiper devices to a certain portion of t-comms that can be removed through guile or brute force.

There's also the idea that ERT becomes tier based, which depends on the sort of help the station requires. This means that for a medical issue, a medical ERT is actually dispatched, or through some work, an antagonist(s) can call an ill-equipped team to ambush, delaying any response for a while.

Do me a favor and mention me if you do reply to me specifically, I'd rather not miss anything.

NOTE: I am fully against the high rate of failure part of this suggestion. Or anything that extremely limits ERT as a whole.