I’ve taken a few Rat King ghost roles over the last few days (specifically on Salamander, so your mileage may vary) and I wanted to collect my thoughts in one place concerning the recent change to bestow them the status of full antagonist. I think the idea of an antagonist Rat King has some merit, but there are three major issues that I’ve sensed.
The first issue is a lack of mechanical balance. This shortcoming mirrors the Paradox Clone somewhat; the role starts off with too little power and too much profile to station security. The clone has the ability to minimize this by being stealthy, but the only way for a Rat King to be stealthy is to restrict themselves to maintenance. The Rat King’s mechanical gimmick is that they must raise an army to be any kind of threat whatsoever, and this requires food which leads into the second weakness the role has: scarcity of resources vs time pressure.
Time pressure is delivered by the inevitability of detection by the station AI, crew, and security. Security more often than not executes a rat king on sight, so this is the worst case scenario for a RK player. The AI has the ability to electrify doors which makes traversal difficult for the RK, and crew act as a wild card with some helping and some not. Scarcity of resources is delivered by the necessity of the RK entering high profile areas to acquire food, which decreases the average time of detection, making this a twofold problem. There are hilariously few sources of food in maints outside of disposals, and raiding the kitchen or botany is sure to get the Rat King detected almost instantly.
The third major weakness is specific to how the role is described: intention. The RK’s only stated intention is to acquire food, which isn’t antagonistic in itself but can motivate conflict. By making the Rat King a full antag, a different intention is called for. Take over the station? Eat a specific crewmember? Those are both antagonistic goals, but the Rat King is only really fit to scrounge for food and avoid conflict in the beginning.
The solution, I think, is to completely overhaul the Rat King mechanically. Give them sources of food in maintenance, give them a boon when they start off similar to the Paradox Clone’s toolbox. Maybe the Rat King can use station vents to get around (I know this is very much WYCI.)
I like the role, but it doesn’t fit very well with full Antag status, and doubly so doesn’t work very well on MRP where you would expect more non-hostile interaction before chaos inevitably interrupts.
yeah.. this change to full antag seems to me to be a responce to Sercuity just Kosing RK’s on sight rather than roleplaying with them when they was FA.. It kinda saddens me that they was changed like this. some of my best RK memorys have been with chill RK’s who just vibed with me in botany having some fresh fruit but not going too crazy. then sec would always bust in and be the agressors which made me sad.. and this seems to just be premoting that.. they will always be FA in my heart.
I remember someone saying that the RK’s ability to go through doors was a substitute for the not-yet-implemented vent crawling.
There’s two problems, IMO, with rat king. First is that they are too dependent on crew to feed them, since they can’t operate vending machines or even rummage through people’s belongings to get their MREs. I’m not sure if they can even gib people and eat their organs for food.
Second is that a RK with a lot of rats is a major threat, since they can down people very quickly, but a RK with only a few rats is a sitting duck. I feel like it can snowball a little too hard, but the antag change incentivizes sec to just murder the RK before it reaches that point.
I have not seen this be the case.
If you go and attack crew, you are going to get all of sec on your ass instantly, specially if there are no other antags. If sec has anything remotely better to do, they are not going to be all looking for you in maints.
If you get spotted you can just run away from where you where spotted. If you are found, you can just sneak under a door to get away.
And yes, you SHOULD stick to maints, that is where you are at your strongest. If you want the best loot (kitchen) you are going to have to risk it big.
Ofc, like ALL other mid round antags, you are at a big disadvantage. This kind of balance is intended for mid round antags, you are not likely to survive too long, and it is not supposed to be common to do so either. There is a reason they are mid-round and not starter antags, they are just a side thing.
Not saying it could not use some tweaks to numbers (like health of its servants). But other than that RK is pretty welld designed for its purpose.
This is my biggest issue with antag RK: ideally you lurk in maints, but RK has no night vision to make navigating maints bearable. It is so, so frustrating to be stumbling in the dark without any light source.
I respect that mid round antags aren’t supposed to be major threats, but from what I’ve seen Rat Kings are underequipped to do their job as an antagonist in general. Antags are supposed to drive the round forward by increasing the overall chaos level on the station. Rat Kings with less than ten servants don’t drive the round forward, they’re just mobile target practice that the captain has to chase through maints and hit a couple times with their antique laser. In sharp contrast are roles like Space Ninja and Space Dragon. Those both start off with a relatively large amount of power compared to your average crewmember or secoff, and typically the various departments have to band together to take down either of them.
Rat Kings are pushovers because they’re still designed to be on par with a normal person in terms of power level, just like their free agent sibling the Skeleton (which I really hope is kept FA and never made an antag.)
What did drive the round forward in interesting ways is having Rat Kings that would cooperate with the crew. No crew, no food. Seeing a Rat King fight alongside crewmembers against vent critters and the like creates interesting gameplay and interesting roleplay. Treating the Rat King like an underfit maintenance slasher does neither of those, in my opinion.
Edit: One further thought. Midround antags aren’t supposed to be round-ending threats and playing to win is bad, but nobody wants to play a role that has basically no chance to complete their objectives. Keep the Rat King as it is, I think, will just keep experienced players from taking the role. It’ll only be new players that pick Rat King, and they’ll get driven away from taking mid round antags at all because of the impression they get.
tbh, rakki just needs hands, maybe even just hand. it makes sense aswell, if they can grab shit out of disposal chutes, which even humans cant do, they should be able to use both their hands to act like 1 usable hand. we see it in actual rats IRL, they will use 2 hands to pick up or do things you usually need opposable thumbs for. keep dragging off, let them pick stuff up, problem solved. and for the problem of rakki with gun; 1: thats fucking hilarious tho 2: just give them clumsy trait, they can go under tables anyways.
Vent critters are like this too, and they’re pretty fun to play still. The difference with Rat King is that they have progression mechanics and an objective beyond just ‘kill’ so you sort of expect the role to have more influence on the round.
Some perspective from me as a security player regarding rat king on LRP:
It’s a player controlled creature that only interacts with the environment by attacking and consuming food to create more NPCs that only exist to attack. Yes the rat king player can choose to talk, but under current implementation they are a ticking bomb that only grows in strength the more it’s ignored.
I like that there are clear hostile opponents to security where guns can be utilized. It’s a fun part of security to participate in combat and such roles enable it. It’s the same reason I really like dragon event, it presents a clear hostile that results in combat.
Roleplay where antagonists use words instead of their provided abilities is not interesting for me at all, I’d like for rat king to have more abilities and objectives that I can engage as security.
Some ideas I would welcome:
Rat nests similar to dragon portals that create more rats over time, rat holes that allow the rat king to move around the station, encouraging rat king to be hostile to crew instead of a food beggar (getting nutrition from corpses, make it harder to communicate with crew).
I will forever miss my King to Captain negotiations. RIP in Peace, Free Agent Rat King.
Yea, they’re kinda under-equipped to be the thing they are. They had the same problem when they were free agents on account of basically being unable to benefit the crew, which leads to the time-bomb problem mentioned here.
Another thing, all free agents kinda have a Betrayal Problem.
Getting shot dead in the streets after committing only to help the crew, because your cooperation made you too much of a threat, is un-fun. Getting obliterated by a free agent who you helped after they agreed to cooperate, because they got the power-boost they wanted, is un-fun. It’s kinda like the prisoner’s dilemma - whoever doesn’t shoot first loses. The more ability to betray you get the more it’s forced as an option - because the same train of thought is happening in Crew’s head about you.
Honestly, I think we need to go and DDOC all of the free agents in the game, frankly.
I always assumed RK’s free agent status was a stop-gap solution to night vision not being implemented as of time of writing
The problem with that was that RK would not “drive the round” as they say because it would either get sucker shot when security waited for it to start typing
OR it would get the OK and essentially be station security and kill antags that don’t threaten the RK in any way like average syndies
I’ve experienced both of those sides of RK and this change HAS solved a lot of that.
I now use my words to mug people for MREs or more when i come across them, I try to stay out of sight and get cheese from dispos in backrooms
BUT the post title is still kinda valid, I have no reason to leave maints into the open, I’m too fragile particularly to a smart AI who can solo me on sight basically.
Even syndie antags still just KoS me when I pop in to try and cooperate with THEM for food…
So ultimately RK is kinda boring, especially since many current map’s maints are kind of few and far inbetween.
I can’t even drag corpses with my tail to contribute to an ammonia lair either, so there truly isn’t a purpose in pursuing conflict with the crew.
I haven’t gotten an opportunity to play rat-king personally. Is there any sort of diminishing returns, like is going spawning your 20th rat any harder than spawning your first? If not, making the cost scale with the number of still-living servants you have could make it easier to get started and harder to build an unstoppable snowball.
In any case, I support giving RKs a single hand with which to drag objects, or even pick them up as long as there’s a way to let them hold things without being able to operate them or use them as weapons.
My experience is the swarm nowadays is actually harder to build up on MOST maps, it’s super dependent on cheese gambling from dispos.
I exhaust my local resources pretty fast and it forces me to get spotted/confronted much earlier than the legendary 20-30 ratpack. I’ve only ever gotten like a dozenish from like a couple meals or so max before having the final confrontation.
And so yeah it’s usually like one or two people get crit and sent to medbay for a few minutes, most minor of the antags atm really