The crew ending midround

Suggestions
1

Here’s the scenario

You are having a good time on station, maybe you are an antagonist, maybe not, but what’s for sure, there is already some action going on and most people are having fun.

Then out of nowhere, a xenomorph appears from a vent and facehug several people in the room. This repeats until most of the station is now replaced with disgusting lusty aliens (not felinids).

No matter the end of this scenario, most other things that were happening prior to that are now gone and forgotten for the rest of the round (which is probably 3 minutes or so because the shuttle is already here).

A recurring problem

How many time did this happen to you? Countless time for me, so many gimmick ruined, so many potentially fun moments gone. The idea of SS13 is to “follow the flow” but xenomorph only destroys the flow that is already set, it doesn’t create any, it’s destructive and worst than even revolution. I barely ever saw a good midround xeno that actually helped with a struggling round.

Revolution is a conversion gamemode where the crewmembers can be retrieved. Cultist is a conversion gamemode where the crewmembers can be retrieved. Clockies are somewhat retrievable too but they keep teleporting like it’s a DBZ fight.

Point is that Xenomorph isn’t a gamemode, yet they also have this conversion aspect except the person converted actually is round removed and replaced with a silly acid spitting creature. It’s harmful for an already going round. Other midrounds don’t have this problem :

  • Ninja usually targets 2 people maximum
  • Abductors just make peoples silly
  • Nightmares aren’t strong enough to be that harmful except if the player really is that robust, but in the end, it’s a single player with an armblade
  • Revenants, while dangerous, are not round ending by themselves
  • Pirates are supposed to be only after money
  • Swarmers are supposed to only be after ressources
  • Blob is-

The Blob suffer from the same problem somewhat. It can ruin an already good paced round. BUT, while they can make blob zombies, they can’t snowball as easily as xenomorph.

Any ways to change that?

Here’s my idea :
First of all, make Xenomorphs a whole gamemode. Instead of having them ruin an already good round, they will have their own. The xenos will have a set timer before they are revealed trough a CentCom announcement. Once revealed, two things happens :

  • The shuttle cannot be called
  • Another timer starts. It’s the time until the “specialised ERT” arrive to help fight off the xeno menace.

Why would this be good? It would put the focus on xenomorph and give it a whole another military roleplay aspect. There are a lot of peoples that get infected but also some that straight up gets killed, this will let them have their fun if they prefer to played ERTs.

The only problem I have right now is that I don’t know how the round would end.

9 Likes
2

I agree on some stuff, something that i personally enjoy is when admemes recall the shuttle and send a NT message along the lines of ‘‘get back to work’’ because It’s honestly the worst when you’ve spent so much in a round and thanks to Command being AAAAAAAAAAA +bored at the first sight of a blob or Xeno on a midround shift they use it as an excuse to call shutle (and most of them usually end up saying OOC that ‘‘shift was boring anyways’’ and ‘‘nothing was happening’’)

In any case, having admemes enforcing recalls and sending ERT’s to help can give some ghost/dead player a chance to get back into the round

I don’t agree on xenos being a gamemode itself, i think we’re just suffering from an excess of Xenos just how some months ago we were having non-stop abductors, unsure if that’s thanks to someone editing the % of midrounds every couple of weeks or it’s just truly bad RNG, i personally like some variety on midround antags and latejoin antags that’s why TG has more dynameme iirc, they’ve also tweaked a bit compared to our version but yeah you get a chance of seeing some late traitors, heretic, wizards, etc + the midround antags themselves

Also i think at this point most player has the meta knowledge that if nothing happened in the first 1:30hs they know that a midround antag should be spawning around that time and after that it’s just ‘‘welp xenos are dead and they were the midround of the shift, time to wait for transfer vote or call shuttle before another one’’

That’s why having late antagonist alongside the midround can help on those situations, whether done by an admeme or a random chance based on a player antagrep

Also having some different midround antags helps on some variety, port spiders and buff a little vines + make man eater player controllable and you get to spice a round up in a more different way than Xenos that also allows for other departments/erts to act.

1 Like
3

Rounds aren’t supposed to always be in your favour, lol.

1 Like
4

I think this is simply an issue of not having a big enough midround pool coupled with xenos having access to round remove. And I say that as someone who hates everything about xenos - it’s objectively just the removal and frequency of spawn that sucks.

6 Likes
5

But being ERT when CC didnt have info on what threat you have is kinda fun tho (But this extremely dependant on an admin active AND usually need command to actually send distress message to CC)

I know you can metainfo from ghosting before, but the experience of being in a team of (supposedly) highly trained soldier , arrive to the station just to be abducted one by one, OR getting all robust mode and actually rescue what the remain of living crew and getting out of there. It is something else.

What we should have is automated ERT spawning system, like 30 minute after xenomorph been announced or something like that, ERT automatically spawned and can be taken over by ghost. This give reason to xenos to not just dilly dally around and playing safe because they can delay the shuttle indefinitley, give crew another method if they cant hunt the queen, to just hold out and wait for ERT to come rescue them.

2 Likes
6

Point is not about the rounds being in someone’s favor, it’s about the same boring scenario repeating over and over again

1 Like
7

30 minutes seems kinda long but idk.
In the end, ERTs really are fun and the idea would be to actively put them along xenomorphs so it doesn’t require admin actions.

2 Likes
8

Just stop letting xenos be able to delay the shuttle.
Boom. Camping solved, and they will go loud and fast, taking losses on both sides, like God intended.

9

The problem is not camping (since the shuttle goes after 10 minute or so) or who wins, it’s about how xenos constantly break an established pace

10

Well, that’s what they’re for… As most mid round antags lol, if we had extended no midround antag 24/7 it would be waaay more boring, I think some people complain of the full gib round removal or just the big rate of xenos lately as i said above

11

Easily meta-able. Bad idea. Also Xenomorphs already have this effect.

12

just allow only one xeno queen to grow in any given round

  • no more bs xeno round extension
  • xeno queens are no longer expendable and play more like the nurturers/defenders of the hive like they are meant to be
  • makes queen battles/hive raids more climactic
  • xenos prioritize the defense of their queen more to prevent the death of the hive
  • xenos can actually be rounded up and hunted down completely instead of being an unending threat
5 Likes
14

Hey that’s a great idea !

15

Xeno already have this effect as you said, so can’t realy be much worse

16

I added this mechanic because previously, people would just immediately call the shuttle on the first sight of a xeno, which was even more boring.

17

No, they delay shuttle departure. Wholly different.

They are also not the only source of this.

18

Xenos, Revolutionaries and Cult are team-death match. RP has zero value or weight in those modes in the first place because if you’re doing something other than clicking a sprite until it’s horizontal, you’re going to be the one who’s horizontal. I do agree that benos should be a separate, TDM mode like Revs/Nukies, however.

My personal opinion is that all team deathmatch modes should be removed in the first place as they’re completely incompatible with RP. But then, Bee is an RP server only in name (Hence the existence of NORP team deathmatch) so I doth protest too much.

2 Likes
19

Once i bred my own xenos and used telepathy to tell them I had a whole home prepared for them.

Then I teleported them into the lavaland syndicate base.

(keyword: ONCE)

1 Like
20

That’s a crazy good gimmick, I wish I was there to see it

21

In it’s current state yeah, RPing during these modes is very hard but it’s certianly not impossible. I’ve actually had some pretty decent Revrounds where we roleplayed recruting people instead of just running around flashing everyone. It is possible for these gamemodes to have RP value but the gamemodes need to be tweaked a little.

2 Likes