Space Station 13 - A case study in emergent gameplay and system-heavy design - Polidicks

I wish a replica or better version could be made, but what many developers of those "new ss13" projects don't realize is that SS13 wasn't made by one small team over the course of a year or two. It was developed, maintained, updated, and patched by hundreds of people over the course of over a decade now. That's why I don't think we'll see anything that will replicate SS13s charm the way SS13 does it in the near future. That's also why I'm skeptical of ION unfortunately

[QUOTE=WitheredGryphon;49127217]I wish a replica or better version could be made, but what many developers of those "new ss13" projects don't realize is that SS13 wasn't made by one small team over the course of a year or two. It was developed, maintained, updated, and patched by hundreds of people over the course of over a decade now. That's why I don't think we'll see anything that will replicate SS13s charm the way SS13 does it in the near future. That's also why I'm skeptical of ION unfortunately[/QUOTE] ION is for consoles. That already confirms enough.

It's a great game. Not SUPER hard to get into, but definitely SUPER hard to master. I became the testicle grabbing clown I am today by much jail time and lots of being robusted.

[QUOTE=MendozaMan;49127280]ION is for consoles. That already confirms enough.[/QUOTE] Imagine playing SS13 with an Xbox controller. It just ain't right, you need to hear the furious mouse clicking.

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L-CYkXmJzw[/media] This is the only thing I know about SS13

[QUOTE=Lawligagger;49127626]Imagine playing SS13 with an Xbox controller. It just ain't right, you need to hear the furious mouse clicking.[/QUOTE] I can't even imagine SS13 without grid-based movement. It's so crucial for the complex combat mechanics.

It's one of those amazing game experiences that can only truly happen when you've seen a clown force flood monkeys down the disposals.

Literally nothing better than injecting the fucking captain with vodka, and feeding him to your changeling overlord. Played xenobiologist and made a bunch of EMPs for him too fucking hilarious

[QUOTE=ghghop;49128261]Literally nothing better than injecting the fucking captain with vodka, and feeding him to your changeling overlord. Played xenobiologist and made a bunch of EMPs for him too fucking hilarious[/QUOTE] The best thing about SS13 is when you fuck shit up as a traitor and manage to frame others for it. Geneticist is great for this.

[QUOTE=MisterSjeiks;49128899]The best thing about SS13 is when you fuck shit up as a traitor and manage to frame others for it. Geneticist is great for this.[/QUOTE] That round was 5 hours long. It felt like 1 and I would do it over again if I could. I love this game

I remember the round where I was nuke ops and I had been practicing how to use assault mechs on a private server. So I was like "Hey guys, can we buy an assault mech?" and they were like "lol sure why not" The team proceeded to hug my ass while we assaulted the brig, with me punching a shooting everything. For reference, you can take down someone with like 2 punches in a mech and it sends them flying across the room. Hunt down the captain for the nuke disk, he runs in a loop around the brig but I eventually catch up to him with my overdrive function, short-range teleport and flashbangs. Pummel him a dozen time for good measure. Teammates come and get his disk. Escape shuttle is called. Teammates are taking forever to arm the nuke so I tell them I'll go create chaos as distraction. Go on a rampage across the station. Oh, my mech also has a machinegun that sets people on fire. They finally arm the nuke and get back on the syndicate shuttle. I'm too damaged to make it back so I board the escape shuttle and just start killing everything. My mech is so damaged it's set on fire, I hop out and shoot with my handheld gun. I get taken down by the still-living half of the escape shuttle survivors. While the escape shuttle is in transit the nuke detonates, destroying the station for a Syndicate major victory. Best round I've had ever.

[QUOTE=Jackald;49131781]My favorite role is always Mime. The added challenge of not being able to speak makes it so much harder (though not actually impossible) to talk your way out of situations. You just have to use a lot of gestures and trickery. [/QUOTE] Mime i find infuriating sometimes, i was made ill with a horribly infectious disease by a traitor virologist and every chum in medbay comes up to me checking what is wrong with me. shit. shit everywhere, people exploding. Never trust a Virologist, ever. or a geneticist. Horrible things will happen to you. My favorite job was always Roboticist because making mechs is the shit and you have access to so many cool toys too.

Only thing a Roboticist should do is making buttbots.

[QUOTE=ghghop;49129043]That round was 5 hours long. It felt like 1 and I would do it over again if I could. I love this game[/QUOTE] It's even worse than civilization 5 for me. "I'll just play one more round" is so dangerous, when one round might have a wizard jaunt outside of his shuttle into space, ending the round in 20 seconds, while another might be a multiple hour long, drawn out vampire game. [QUOTE=Limed00d;49132687]Only thing a Roboticist should do is making buttbots.[/QUOTE] And AIs made from random people, put inside of mechs, or just left in very public places, if you happen to not be on goon. [sp]don't let security find out what you did with their durand order. Even though the AI in the mech technically should be obedient because of default laws, they get very mad.[/sp]

[QUOTE=Jackald;49131781] Much like Batman, my singular rule was not to kill, so I could get away with this shit on more lenient servers like /tg/ and NoX.[/QUOTE] I miss Nox. While it was sort of trashy it was imo the most fun server due to lenient rules and there was actually a time where allegedly (witnessed no bans during this time so assuming they weren't lying) the admins were banning no one ,but told no one about the anarchy which led to some very chaotic and fun rounds. Gave the true experience of the gritty hell known as Space Station 13.

Space Station 13 is fun, but most rounds are generally stymied by the people whose per-round routine generally boils down to "grab a toolbelt and insulated gloves, mug a Security Officer or Engineer for everything they own, and dismantle any property I can get my hands on" instead of trying anything new. Those wonderful days of fight clubs, tribes, games of D&D, and checkpoints are few and far between on most servers.

SS13 is something special to me. I have played it for over four years (sometimes off and on). I have tried to get multiple friends into it (Each horribly turned away due to some facet, be it graphics, the text vs gui setup, or even just the complexity). But I have never found a more rewarding, complex, or even mentally infuriating game. Sometimes I swear I'll never go back, but a couple days- maybe even a couple months later and I'm back at it. I still don't know everything and the variety of servers always keeps it fresh. I don't think 3d sspessmen is a good idea, as much as it sounds like one. Too many would flock to and demand change to suit their thin-skinned player needs. SS13 is as rich as it is brutal. And that's how it should stay.

[QUOTE=HoodedSniper;49122299]So is SS13 like a MP Dwarf Fortress? As in basically anything can really happen, and theirs absurd amounts of mechanics, but looks and runs like ass?[/QUOTE] literally exactly yes I'm a mentor on hippiestation. I love this game to death. So complex and rich, and I've even dabbled in coding. Horrible as the engine is, anybody can pick up the coding in a day or two and make a new weapon or piece of clothing. The atmos system and a lot of the core code is actually very complex and impressive, and a lot of it is horribly cobbled together shit, the glorious result of hundreds of people contributing to a single codebase over many years. It's so modular, anything can be added. The possibilities really are endless, and that's what makes it fun. And as much as I love the chaotic style of hippie, a good amount of roleplay is what really makes this game fun. Sure, I could wordlessly, silently kill the entire security force with a banana peel if I wanted to (Actually this is a requirement for being a mentor) but I don't, because it's much more fun to abduct one person and rip out their teeth, implant a voice-activated bomb that would go off on either my command or if they say "help" and send them back to the general population. Sometimes it's fun to be a quirky, living-skeleton bartender named Sans who makes skeleton-based puns. (Pina Skulladas, anyone?) Of course, the game isn't meant to be a heavy roleplay experience, but it's not meant to be a no-roleplay experience either. If anybody ever played the old shadowling event rounds before they became an actual thing, the atmosphere of paranoia and fear is truly immersive. It's actually already drawn in some famous youtubers, but not to stream or make videos off of. If anybody of you has heard of Cryaotic, or Russ Money who he streams with, I know for sure Russ plays on hippiestation, our server owner Hippie has been a guest on Cry's stream before, and cry has used our lobby theme song in some of his videos before, so they know about the game for sure. Also, some servers have a panic-button if the game ever gets, say, streamed by somebody like Lirik who has 20k viewers ready to follow him onto a server that redirects anybody who joins past the population cap to a vore fetish themed server.