Oh hai our two shifts were brought up! The snaptrap and the Dragoon shift
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- Of course yall had to title them off of Bite's characters. smh I was there too!
So being as one of the two pirates in both scenarios, perhaps I can let you on a little insight where things went wrong on BOTH of them and why the dragoon one came across as a terrible idea.
Starting from the beginning, both had similar goals, both involved the use of vore being our main tool. The first in the most basic form was; Get [number] of valid crew IDs. High valued IDs, as in command were the most lucrative.
The second was simply; target HoS/CD, use them or impersonate them to steal
something. (I am leaving that a mystery in case it wasn't said yet.)
Both of these goals had us targeting heads, both required some levels of finesse, and both involved vore in the plans to accomplish these goals. Where both went wrong was when certain things lined up where certain players used their positions to power game or went to the straight use of mechanics. I didnt hear a word from the AI before they started to lock me inside maint tunnels, watching my every move. I was tempted to just call it off right there. Had they confronted me, offered me a chance to roleplay an interaction with them, things would have gone very differently, but because they used mechanics, it forced the use of mechanics in return. Something I had to commend Resh for was his attempt in salvaging this with an RP interaction with Dragoon. Eventually, with another Mech brought in by crew, the mechanics came back into play and all chance of vore was gone at that point and with no chance to salvage it, escape was the goal. Now had this been another server about antaging, our goals would still need completing, but vore was gone, effectively ending and ruining the shenanigans, leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth as there was no one inside of our mouths!
Or the other way around if we were successfully caught. Now with the snaptrap, we ran into the same issue as stated, the difference was that we weren't able to react with the same force like we had with Dragoon and the mechanics weren't brought in until we had accomplished most of our goals with vore, but the threat was handled the same way, tossing people at it with mechanics and since there was no large two-ton machine, this made this route actually effective with minimal consequences compared to Dragoon. We didn't even have a chance to vore with Dragoon as we were outed the second the event started. Had there been sufficient interaction from start to finish, I am sure the dragoon event would have been just as enjoyable for those involved like they did wtih snaptrap.
Although in new wave of pirates I see a big problem that wasn't there in original: AIs. We didn't have anyone really playing AI at the time, so it wasn't as prominent, but lately I noted that AI players now focus their boredom from being an AI on Virgo not towards trying to come up with entertaining crew interactions, but towards the metagamey pirate paranoia. So far, specifically AIs have been biggest offenders in power/meta gaming during new pirate wave, and their actions should be either better monitored by admins, or limited by event rules.
I couldn't agree with this more.
My suggestion to those that wish for a better environment for High roleplay
with antags showing up here and there is to take a step back, understand that you will gain nothing from winning mechanically unless that was the intention of the game at the start, but here, aside from certain fighting events, the winning goal is RP. If you stumble upon some pirate shenanigans, roleplay it! Don't just scream your exact location and their names to security! Roleplay an interaction, at the end of it if calling security is the route that is taken, then great, there was RP! If you still want to come out on top, most of the pirates are switches for a reason, confront them and eat em! If you are a prey, you already know what to do you belly filler. For those that have preferences that don't match up with the pirates, there is still RP value even if there is no one getting ate.