Convert rules to mechanics #20064
Comments
Chief-Engineer
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T: New Feature
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Throwing in my ideas / feedback for a bunch of these. This will probably be long just because the post is long (sorry), but if there’s anything you think could be clarified / would work just feel free to let me know.
Canister bombs should be
Clown / Mime names should really exist anyways so that’s fine.
I’d be fine with the arrivals shuttle repairing whenever it goes to the terminal / leaves the station.
Grilles should 100% be nerfed anyways, probably just make them break after 2-3 shocks
I don’t think salvage mobs straying off is a massive problem? They’re hardly strong enough to do much and they’re fairly rare, but if someone was willing to code a wreck range system I wouldn’t have a problem with it.
Cargo orders requiring access would be kind of odd since that’s what the crates are supposed to mitigate, I’d rather see those buffed.
An auto-ban could probably be implemented for suiciding, but doing it for AFKing is kind of unreasonable when it’s inevitable people will need to AFK and it’s already allowed on heads if they’re ahelping / informing command. |
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AME - shouldn't allow user to set higher than safe fuel injection without being emagged, should instantly overload and explode when any piece is intentionally destroyed. This allows antagonists to still sabotage AME using one of their many tools, without it being a freebie button press at 30 min mark. For a potentially roundending action, it shouldn't be possible to trigger without directed effort. Singularity - Same treatment as AME, do not allow unsafe levels without emagging. It's a definite roundending action, it should require more effort than a freebie button press. There's many options of sabotaging the containment field, which at least needs a bit of effort and personal risk for such a significant sabotage. |
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Emag is strong enough as is, it shouldn’t be the sole way to do station sabotage. |
PA Usage should be careful thing coordinated with CE if he considers his department safe from traitors. It probly is only safe to have one to begin with at 20 minute mark. This nerf should come from server culture rather than mechanical one.
Is this a actual problem? I do agree with the clown/mime name thing maybe even musician? Entertainers in general. But actual implementation of alternative names might be akward.
Repairing the arrival shuttle and re-suplying it with crowbars and emmergency EVA stuff should fix all issues. Inconsistancies with station buildability and destructability just feels weird.
If all sec dead, adding automated deathsquad event might be fun assuming its not nukie round. But it might lead to some meta gaming and sec suicide cult.
I don't see point of reducing the mobility of salvage mobs. Inconsistant rules feel bad.
Access check for adding cargo order (not confirming) would be useful. Secure crates are already pain in the ass to open. don't make it harder. There are valid moments you need to open those crates (all with access dead, and zombies banging on the cargo door).
How about stored admin notice next time player join the game to tell them to set roles they do not want to play as 'never'. |
Truth is that won’t happen. A mechanical change should be done here, though I’m not sure what.
Deathsquad should never and will never be automated. ERT probably won’t ever be automated, even.
They really aren’t. You can very easily fill a random bit of maints with them and farm kills very easily.
You realize you still wouldn’t be able to order guns in these situations if an access lock on ordering it was implemented (as you suggested), right? They’re functionally the same, but I think discouraging people from beating open the firearm crates is better than not letting the QM order things on their own console and instead making the Warden / HoS walk over and hit order for him. Anything I didn’t point out in your reply I mostly agree with. |
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shocked grilles are cancer |
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Janny BOLO list subject with 1k hours' 5 cents:
Most issues with early mass station sabotage happen (AME/Singulo/Maxcaps) because they're not warned about and happen suddenly, leaving engineering to pick up the pieces or, if the saboteur has 3 braincells working - fucks up SMES's and raids substations beforehand, either of which are not warned about - in this case a generator gets set in bridge and the shuttle is called because its "too much work". AME warning about losing integrity (akin to how SM warns about it, implemented in parkstation), PA requiring engi access and logging its users can help. Fuck canister bombs though, drop the funny number two-fold.
Unironic cat&mouse game where every single permutation and pun on names like "Walter White" and "Adolf Hitler" would have to be accounted for.
A component for a tile that makes the bold red fuck-off admin alarm text on who broke it?
Cap damage, shorten stun time on electrocution. Hv+Mv is enough to crit a person without insulated gloves.
Tracker implant and a crew monitor exclusively used by hos/warden would allow a reaction from a hos/warden or the entire security department for when their department is going to shit. Spiraling is usually caused because command staff is aloof and/or traitors masquerading as security because confusion and chaos is the most important aspect to disrupting order, having security fight each other with bystanders not knowing who's who like its the cyberlife connor fight is even better. Tracker implant may be taking it too far and taking out any people that want to play shapeshifter, but with upcoming revs and mindshield implants we'd have the same situation like non-mindshielded sec being instantly outed as traitors. There's not much an extra security officer or two can do when order has hit the shitter and hos is now being served in the bar between two buns and cheese.
Salvage exists for 180 seconds per non-upgraded magnet. A player controlling a carp might want to continue playing as carp due to being Round Removed or any other reason. We don't really have a lot of gameplay after being RR'd, best case is borg (assuming your brain has not reached the nearest incinerator, in which case there's none of "you" on station anymore).
Judging by the ban appeals subforum destroying important infrastructure is an outright "no". Ideally the mob chewing on important infrastructure should get shocked on a percentage of total health (34%?, to die in 3 bites), so that it dies before it can destroy any infrastructure.
Most cargo departments start with microwaves. In the same spirit the ID/PDA crate should be locked to HoP. Any important order should be logged into command channels or by any other system only accessible by command staff. A cargo ledger console could be an option.
QM takes axe from bridge, minimal effect if QM is in on the powergaming, which he usually is.
Traitor mobs shouldn't have innate skills. t. metalgearsloth 06/09/2023 Giving traitors a guaranteed chance to use contraband properly is an innate skill imo.
I've had to dc because of a complete bitch of a neighbor setting his apartment on fire downstairs when it was round-start. This would require a system to excuse a person without handing them an L bozo ban from command.
Same applies. |
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also just add some fucking god-like deity of the maints that makes the 6th maint locker you open blow up and kill you on the spot because the maint raiders just keep on winning so far |
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now station is unpowered, you open 5 lockers with no crowbar. what do you do? |
Previously opened lockers dont count, otherwise L |
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new powergamer strat break open 6th and over lockers to avoid the maints demon |
Having the warning built into the profile editor just partially automates something that's a fairly frequent issue, so in some cases it makes it go from something where each case is relatively easy to deal with to something that requires no work in many cases. A warning system isn't intended to stop people being malicious and it's unlikely a true blacklist would either.
A honeypot would be allowing people to do enough "sabotage" to gain a high level of confidence that they're acting maliciously then either trigger an admin alert or other automated action. The system would either prevent any damage from actually being done, or repair itself so that innocent players weren't impacted.
Antags killing all of security is actually currently allowed by the rules late game, depending on how it's done. The issue is more along the lines of if it happens super early in the round, then it's sort of a round ending thing. There are certain edge cases, like nukies, that a solution would need to keep in mind.
I'm not sure what's currently common for them to do that causes them to get ahelped, iirc lights were electrified and that would have resolved most of the issues since it was common for ticks to run through the station breaking lights instead of actually defending the salvage. Most of the stuff with other mobs was around power/atmos/telecoms. Aside from that, it'd just be finding a way to keep salvage mobs defending the salvage instead of trying to run off to attack random people walking in the halls of the station.
For the crates, another option would be to do things like automatically send a fax to security when one is ordered. Emagging the ordering console could be an option to disable an access ordering requirement or disable an automated fax. I'm not sure how exactly to deal with the contraband use stuff, we don't allow it through rules in many cases because it's powergaming, so I'm not sure what the argument would be for making it less effective when non-syndicate try to use it other than it could be used to metagame antags. The metagaming possibility can be mitigated though, and overall it seems like it could be implemented in a plausibly realistic way vs seeming like a gamey restriction.
A lot of games temporary ban you from matchmaking if you quit during modes where players are expected to play though. The goal isn't to punish people for having to afk for whatever reason, but people who regularly afk through shifts as a head shouldn't be able to play those roles. A scaling automatic role ban system that varies the time based on how many times it has occurred recently would address this, and could do so without being overly harsh on someone who doesn't make a habit of it.
Yes, we regularly ahelp people for really bad names, or names of famous characters. The most common are characters from breaking bad, specifically Walter White, who people often try to play as a chemist that does nothing but fuck around. There have been rounds where we've had multiple breaking bad characters and it's likely that with no enforcement many rounds would be a mess of people trying to parody their favorite characters in a way that's disruptive to other players.
A deathsquad is probably too extreme. Ideally, an antag wouldn't have to worry about killing all of security, the game would just compensate to try to make it not end the round if done too early.
Apart from targeting objects, the main issue would be salvage mobs going around the station to attack people instead of defending the salvage. Maybe an option to deter this would be creating a weak laser turret that can easily kill unprotected salvage mobs, and maybe even only targets non-humanoids, then mapping those only on the exterior of the station near where the debris spawns.
Adding a notification when people suicide early or abandon head roles would probably be good, and some sort of notice would probably be required if any action, like a role ban, was taken, but the notice alone probably won't make a significant impact. People know that they can set their role preferences to never, they had to change preferences to get the head role, they just don't have significant motivation to if they're not willing to do it to affect the chances of getting a role that they actually want to play. Adding ghost roles to the late join screen could help, but it might also be used to metagame what's happening or going to happen in the round.
It would be a cat and mouse game if it were an actual blacklist or if it was meant to deter people who were acting maliciously. By having it just warn the person, but not prevent the name's use, you give good faith players the opportunity to correct the issue. Players who aren't acting in good faith can just ignore the warning, which can then trigger an admin alert and admins can treat the situation differently than a player who was simply unaware of the rules.
Ideally it wouldn't require an admin to be online to prevent negative impacts, but ya an admin alert would be a good step. Infinitely providing supplies necessary for survival also sounds like a good idea, but needs to consider people who will try to flood the station with those items. You also probably don't want every late join to have a free crowbar and eva suit, so maybe something with durability would be a good option.
It'd be nice if we had some good ways for early round removed players to be reinserted.
Making traitor items riskier for non-antags to use instead of having to deal with non-command using it to powergame and telling command that they're basically not allowed to use them ever seems like a better solution imo, but maybe there are alternative ways to address this. I'm pretty sure space ninjas have gear that's locked to them, which is a form of giving a traitor mob an innate skill.
Ya, it would need to be tuned to not be unreasonably punitive. A 3 hour role ban for a first offense as command within a few weeks is probably fine, it'd effectively role ban you for just a round or two and only step up to multi day role bans if it happened frequently. Just a warning message for infrequent offenses would probably be fine for all non-command roles since a role ban there is less likely to be effective, it would probably need to step up to short game bans if round start suicide as non-command was frequent. Like I said somewhere earlier in this reply, ideally the system wouldn't feel punitive to anyone who legitimately is having something come up, and would only significantly impact players who regularly abandon their role or suicide roundstart |
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under "Rule: Suiciding out of roles", added:
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edit: do note this is written before some of ce's and others' replies so it might have repeating points and shit, heavens almighty wall of text!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've a bad feeling about converting some rules to mechanics, such as early mass sabotage or murderboning for that example, it's going to be impossible to realistically counteract these mechanically, you'll make it harder or less fun but you wont prevent it, if someone is going to try to do it they'll find a way. This is a game of cat & mouse that will most likely end up being destructive to both the adminbus and playerbase. Either way I'll join into the one-billion-line comment club with my takes, suggestions and criticism regarding the issues described in the original megaissue.
It's going to be a miracle if the changes to shift this rule into the mechanics ground note the EARLY part, this might end up in "balancing" changes that end up not fixing the problem but still nerfing an item or mechanic.
If this issue is to be solved then the AME should take more time to overload and blare out an alarm to Engi comms or announcement comms that it is going to shit.
There has been an ideamen discussion about singulos a while ago, cba to find it but it has some really good takes, pretty sure Mirror approved them too.
Don't bother nerfing maxcaps or canister bombs, it's a mechanic that needs a rework rather than a nerf, it's still a knowledge check that takes like 30 minutes to make and then you suicidebomb and take half (or the entirety of) the station with you and will stay as such after most nerfs.
Large explosives should stay and I'd argue we need more of them, actually gives work to Engi which is the worst dept content-wise and has been for like 2 years now. If someone willing to address this exclusively for hardbombs and other large uplink explsoives then they probably need an availability timer of xyz seconds or something like that.
I agree with Equivocateur on the cat and mouse take, this is really going to be ass to include every single match out there and will (most likely) have unintended consequences as well.
This is more of an admin tool rather than a mechanic, assuming its going to be logged and alerted to an admin if someone goes into a round with a blacklisted username, which it obviously will as someone will set this requirement in the theoretical PR's comments.
Yea we need this, I think there's even a derelict for this.
Agree with Equivocateur with most takes here.
Alternatively make every structural entity on it indestructible, so lockers, tables, chairs, etc. can still be broken but not the walls itself. Or just mapping crutch and give it tiny fans under the walls.
Same as with the shuttle, it's not the ideal solution for either but both mechanics are incredibly one-dimensional and rarely interact with the other portions of the round after you're out of the shuttle and on the station.
Not really sure on how to implement this one short of multiple arrivals rooms or nonsense like holographic crowbars.
Yeah, no. As I said this is one of the few rules that should stay rules or better even suggestions, you can't outright remove or mitigate it, if someone is good enough at the game when compared to the rest of the station they should be able to murderbone all they want, 9/10 times this results in the murderboner dead, the 1/10 times they live through and either get the shuttle called one way or another, or have ERT sicced on them by an admin.
Camping electrified grilles is as good as camping in maint in general, 9/10 times you'll win anyway because of our TTK, surprise attacks and stuns of any kind. Just nerf grilles anyway, bullshit game mechanic that roundends you even if there's nobody near it.
If somehow all of sec is dead and never gets back into action or replaced by new hires then a spiral is fair game.
Minor antags probably should be able to grief if they really want to, if this is to be turned into a mechanic then them griefing should be more visible and they'll get stomped by engineering/sec/bystanders/whoever in the blink of an eye.
While this does completely nuke all possible non-bootleg-NPC gameplay I guess it's fine-ish.
Equivocateure something something agree with.
Literally unwinnable game, if someone wants to powergame they will powergame and no Jannie or mechanic will be able to stop them.
A bit too limiting and evicts situations like cargo getting guns despite sec refusing to authorize that and the situation escalating without a full on dept revolt.
Unwinnable cat and mouse game.
Innates for traitors in specific are bad, they get an uplink and codewords but outside of that they're a normal spessman, generally against this.
Automatically or systematically responding to suicide/disconnect caused by anything any point in the round is idiotic, the Captain might be forced off the game due to real life events, they might not even have time to depart the round in an IC-friendly manner because of said events, even if these automatic responses can be appealed I wouldn't like to wait through a full day or a half for a real life person (an admin) to review a roleban appeal on the forums. |
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Thanks for the long reply. I won’t reply to everything in it becuase this is kind of long enough as is, but honestly you’ve cleared up and provided good options for (most) of what I said. One thing I wanted to point out:
I don’t believe this is true. They have a microbomb in an attempt to prevent their gear from being taken, but if you manage to get it I don’t believe anything in particular is actually locked to them. |
Space ninjas aren't tots, they're a separate antag and a unique one at that, a policy like this would also just kill off antags like culties, heretic, etc |
all ablities require you to be a ninja, in le ss13 lore its a dna lock or something. and yes theyre not tators |
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this sounds reallg great, i dont have an issue of this. I also recommend adding a borg naming scheme too since its somewhat related (someone is working on roundstart borg names) |
Sorry, I incorrectly generalized traitor to antag. What I'm trying to say is that I'm not sure why we'd be against giving one specific antag, traitors, any sort of innate skill if we're fine with other antags having them and if we're already attempting to have the same end effect though rules. I get the desire for traitor items to not be useless to non-antags, but atm they're powergamer bait. In almost every case, a non-antag player has no IC need for an esword, but their only motivations for not taking it and carrying it around with them all round are the, typically low, risk of being mistaken for an antag by security, and the possibility that it's against the rules, depending on their role.
ty, I'lll add it to the list for completeness |
People secrete salt when they get mauled to death by a bear or a carp outside disposals when "IT SHOULDNT BE THERE". Thus the ahelps as far as I am aware. There are also tick players who play exclusively hit and run on the station and being a general nuisance to everyone.
"QM I emagged the order console!" This gives no incentive for the QM to not let him get his console emagged aside from the fact that everyone could use it, which is a non issue if you have it in the department and not in the public hallway. In fact this gives QM a reason to shield the guy with an emag from security.
The arrivals shuttle does a full lap in about 3 minutes total. Considering an average round on LRP is 90 minutes were looking at about 30 extra crowbars in a round. The crowbar might have an expiry date of 5 minutes after pickup if punishment.
Small-time role bans shouldn't be taken into account in administrative decisions and should be marked as automated in notes IMO. An admin seeing that you took 4 automated role bans in 6 months might tilt the admin into a more harsh punishment |
That's a good point. There's some motivation in that rules prohibit heads from allowing contraband use, but that's similar to the existing motivation to not powergame by ordering a bunch of guns for no reason because rules disallow it. I'm not sure what would be a good option then, maybe the emag thing is still possible if it also causes prices to be higher? (syndicate skimming money off orders) That's probably not a great solution because there'd probably still be some who just didn't care about the price increase as long as they could still afford guns.
For some reason I was imagining a crowbar per player, not one per shuttle. 30 crowbars is still a lot of crowbars, but this does seem more reasonable.
I agree they shouldn't be taken into account for admin decisions, which would require that at the very least they be marked as automated. I think I'd actually prefer if they were completely separated from normal role bans (at least for viewing) once expired so that they wouldn't even be seen most of the time |
Bounties give an exorbitant amount of money to care about a 25-50% price increase on guns as a rule. If the floor of cargo is ran by someone who is dead-set on getting a gun crate - they'll get their way with a gun crate. That's why I proposed a ledger system for cargo which A) logs every purchase and sale cargo has done and B) gives detective (a security role starved of mechanics) more things to do. On the topic of malicious actors "running the floor" of departments - there's no instruments of forcing accountability for heads of staff whatsoever and in lrp conditions they are never considered a traitor due to an unspoken rule of "heads cant roll tot". In other words - bad conduct stemming from command staff currently is only handled administratively by most as they dont want or are afraid to take action on a head of staff unless its absurd (CMO hypo'ing people to death, QM starting cargonia in all but name, etc). Any attempts to apprehend a head of staff is usually met with resistance from the whole fucking department and use of lethals is mostly a guarantee when trying to bring a dept. head to justice. A system where other command staff (with captain approval as the final say) can just announce a head to no longer be a head and have their authority stripped remotely can be a solution, as the first thing a techie thinks to himself when two secoffs are prepping QM for a night in perma for mass murder is that he needs to defend the QM from the fake/corrupt/shit security. |
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Actually scratch that - the psychology of demotion in the game hinges on the idea of "what if the person im replacing him with is a traitor", which discourages demotions. Making heads being able to roll tot with a small chance (1%) would throw that idea out entirely IMO. Remote demotion would only work when the damage a head does exceeds that of a traitor. |
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If heads get traitor then that would be interesting, but at the same time if head is a traitor then a way to balance it could be greatly lowering the number of traitors that round. |
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iirc there were game issues when heads could be traitors, the ones that could weren't treated like heads and there were potential issues in terms of training new people. That might be mitigated if the chance is really low and with the senior roles able to do training. Enabling traitor for heads while disabling it for senior roles might further mitigate the issue if it could be done in some way that kept senior roles focused on training and didn't cause people to just treat senior roles as the new heads |
I think this was solved at least partly by #20963 . Engineers now have at least three times as much time to detect and tune down an overloaded AME, which vastly increases the chance that sabotage will be detected. |
Thank you, I'm not sure if it fully resolves the issue or not, but I've added the PR under that item |
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#20880 Made camping grilles a lot less viable. They often don't do that much damage anymore, and I'm not sure what conditions exist to make them one shot, if it is even possible anymore. |
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#21777 made arrivals sabotage more difficult, the terminal can’t be spaced anymore |
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ty, updated the OP with both |
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#22705 made it harder to break open secure crates @Chief-Engineer |
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Is that above PR actually verified? Someone in discord said there was a weapons change that still makes it possible. Should be ripley or explosive only IMO. Some bad takes in the OP post. Most of it is fine and good but the mass sabotage stuff and general sabotage stuff is part of life. Agree we can mechanically make some of that stuff more difficult but outright making it impossible for 30 minutes for example is not good. The crew should be allowed to fail and adapt and changing how the game plays because of a select few who break the rules sounds like too far in the wrong direction. Point being there will be other ways to mitigate these sabotage methods without nerfing gameplay. Make Engi need to generate the power first to fire the PA for example so that gives you a time buffer, then have other mitigation methods for starting singularity like CE access to unlock PA so it's only operated by trusted staff (realistically starting an engine is CE level stuff) and ways of combating singuloose. |
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Should Revolutionaries be able to deconvert themselves by injecting a mindshield implanter? Or should we prevent them with a message like "You cannot bring yourself to betray the revolution!" I cannot come up with any in-character justification for it and it seems like something that would be unanimously ahelpable. This doesn't prevent players from soft-deconverting aka. screwing off to do their own thing, however, it does stop players from giving themselves a permit to switch teams and actively thwart the ongoing revolution. If this should be prevented, the change should be small and I would like to handle it as an introductory PR. |
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idk if they should be hard locked out of it, but I definitely can't think of a reason why there couldn't be a popup saying "Are you sure?" and reminding them that they shouldn't do it without a good IC reason. I've never personally had to deal with willful deconversion, so I don't know how significant the impact would be |
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atmos bombs have been nerfed by fire changes a while ago, and also the max radius change |
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maxcapping a tank shouldnt delete entire sections of a station, a tank takes up a 2x2 space in your inventory and can only hold a handful of moles so i'd say that the explosive force is overtuned and is more representative of a maxcapped canister. i wouldn't mind a severe nerf to maxcapped tanks if it meant later on canisters could be exploded in a similar manner (imagine a maxcapped tank right now except it takes significantly more time and resources to set up) |
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Had a bit of an idea for "Allow access to be required to place certain cargo orders (guns)" - maybe having some sort of machine that utilises stamps? Like a stamp reader. So if you wanna order guns, you gotta scan the stamp and then you get access to buy said crates. Means there's a legit reason to use stamps + antags will also have a reason to want them. Though maybe captains stamp would be too op. |
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I think this needs to be looked at again real quick, now that AI has been added. |
Allow the number of rules to be reduced though mechanics, or a decrease to the adminning load by mitigating common causes of violations.
Rule: Early mass station sabotage
Rule: Use realistic names (mitigation)
Rule: Arrivals sabotage (mitigation?)
Rule: Murderbone
Rule: Minor antagonist griefing
Rule: Powergaming (mitigation)
Rule: Suiciding out of roles
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