ERT Overhaul PRs

Development PR Reviews
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1

The series of PRs listed above majorly overhauls the equipment and balancing of ERT. This is a pretty large change, and I’d like to get admin and maintainer opinion as to what ERT is on upstream and what they should have. This doesn’t really apply to the average player, as ERT is admin-only and admin-driven.

Discussions as to whether ERT should be automated and part of roundflow shouldn’t really be discussed in this review, as this is out of scope of the PR and should probably be discussed in a preliminary design document as part of our new and improved DDOC review procedure.

The PRs don’t explain exactly what the balancing changes are made, moreso a general overview, and the loadouts PR is still being made pending the previous PRs. So I encourage you to review the diffs and formulate your opinions.

Decision on the PR?
  • Merge
  • Merge with changes (state changes)
  • Close
0 voters
Game Admins, do you approve of the changes/overhaul?
  • Yes
  • Yes with changes (state changes)
  • No
0 voters
2

There really isnt a need for this, if anything the best solution would just be being able to build your own loadout and then copy and pasting that onto a bunch of other urists/ERT members

3

From a Maintainer perspective I don’t mind the changes. Giving ERT more interesting options certainly is welcome.

4

PR 2 is interesting to me simply because it adds some more prototypes to spawnable beakers that would be generally convenient.

I have no strong opinion on PR 1 or 3 though.

5

Pr 1
Just sprites so i have no issues. Theyre making the ERT palate more blue, but weh. I leave that in the hands of the fartists.

Pr 2
These are just prototypes that arent used anywhere until the last PR. Ideally we eventually get generated solution fill prototypes so we stop making new prototypes by hand for every reagent, but weh. Im more concerned that the reagents added seem to be top tier med chems, which if used on ERT could go wrong real easily due to ODs / skissues. ERT doesnt have requirements really, and also the roles are rare so hard to use items are suspect.

I feel similarly about the frag hydra. Just seems like a foot gun in multiple ways. Kills the rest of ERT team, kills self, can be mistaken for cleanades easily…

I feel sorta similar about the “flame thrower” backpack, but also I cant think of a good use case for it. Zombies dont really warrant it since CBURN already stomps them just because they have guns and good suits.

I dont know how to feel about the contraband changes. It seems odd because 95% of the time its irrelevant information and in the case of deathsquad I think is missing the joke. I get this is also a limitation of the contraband system though.

Pr 3
I think this one is still in the works, but in general, I dont like actors being chock full of things I may not want them to have on every spawn. It is exceedingly more trouble to remove things from ghost role inventories than it is to add them to the surrounding area for players to pick up.

See my critiques from the second pr, but now theyre “real” and not just theorycrafting the spawnpanel.

It also adds different sub-roles of ert, which I dunno if are warranted given the rarity of playing one. In general players kinda freeze up for a bit when they interact with new stuff, and ERT tends to be something we want straight forward since theres also going to be instructions and some sort of ad-hoc objective.

The last set of balance we did was attempting to create parity with nukies. I think this was a good goal because thats the most likely place they will be used, and the other use cases are more RP focused anyway.

TL;DR
Pr1 – sure why not, as long as art approved.
Pr2 – I guess? Maybe Ill find a gaf for these things. The contraband seems a lil odd.
Pr3 – i have doubts about making the things from Pr2 default, and I also am sus of subroles.

6

I am not an admin/maintainer but I still want to share my opinion.

I feel as ERT is already good as it is, I don’t think we need “sub” ERT roles. I also think it’s out of place to add a flamethrower backpack and the Hydra. I feel that in the current state, ERT works exactly as intended, Disaster management
I really don’t think we need these changes, but I’m not against most things in PR 1.

7

These PRs look fine to me (can’t vote cause Trail apparently), but I do also agree with Djungelskog. While this is a nice stop gap, the best solution is that we can make a preset and clone them on the fly. This is somewhat doable with spawn commands, but wauw it gets annoying really fast!