Replacing Oasis with Kebab has frankly been awful for the server

[Cartlord]

Kebabtown is a weird shithole, seemingly by design, but I feel like that's a bad thing here, especially since so many other factions already let you be a weird motherfucker.
The Kebab Merchant doesn't get to do much that the Eastwood merchant couldn't, the Rustwalkers don't actually get to do much of anything (a problem common to Engineers in Space Station 13), and frankly, the Church dudes are huge assholes who're always chomping at the bit to kill or maim someone - to the point that they're insufferable to be around.
We already have Khans if you want to play a mean [meth dealer/medicine man], we already have the classic Legion & New Calis if you want to go to war, and we already have the Brotherhood for tech fuckery. Oasis and Eastwood offered a uniquely chill experience due to relatively lax rules while still being generally civilized, and now that they're gone, the only faction where you can just hang out without someone fucking you up or your superior making a terrible decision is Khans of all people.

[Cartlord]

For the record, this isn't meant to be a duplicate of #158 - that's about issues with Kebab-town that can be fixed with simple map changes, or problems with its execution, while this one's about me not liking the IDEA of replacing Oasis or Eastwood with Kebab-town.

[companoo]

i agree but i think kebab is an improvement, way to fix may be to add a citizen type role that is aligned to one of the three factions

[Cartlord]

How would that fix anything? Adding "Citizens" affiliated with Merchant would just be adding Apprentices, adding "Citizens" affiliated with Rustwalkers would just be Rustwalkers, and "Citizens" that work for the church would just be neophytes - and all of them would still be subject to the town's madness.
I get that Kebab-town IS meant to be chaotic, I just think that not having ANY chill faction is a bad thing - I'd be more okay with Kebab-town existing if it hadn't replaced the towns we already had, or if there was another faction people COULD be chill in, but that's not the case, and Kebab-town might not be able to exist alongside another town just because then nobody would ever visit Kebab-town since it's unpleasant by design.

[Cartlord]

My thoughts on factions as played are like
N.C.R. and Legion were for team deathmatch, with the former being more for military roleplayers and the latter for dudes who like its power dynamic
Khans are for people who want to be lawless nutters and maybe do some fighting
B.O.S. is for bunker babies, power-trippers, and people who want to roleplay with a guarantee of absolute safety
Wastelander roles are for folks who like the challenge
And Town roles were for people who wanted to be chill, but still take an actual role in the round, as opposed to just staying in their base for two hours

...But now, because of Kebab-town coming in, that Town dynamic is gone, since now you have a Merchant who's effectively not affected by the change, a bunch of Rustwalkers who face the common Engineer problem of having nothing worth doing once power's set up, and a church that has a primitive farm & loose rules that let them assault & execute people at very little provocation - so the closest you have to "faction that does stuff and talks to people but doesn't usually get raided" is now the Great Khans, either them or the Merchant (but only if they get lucky and people actually feel like trading whatever shit they have).
I ask you: what is Kebab-town FOR? The roles played by its Merchant and Barkeep were already available, and the latter was rarely (if ever) played anyway. The Church is just a place that charges for healing, and I think we had that in the Followers - which clearly failed, because I haven't seen the Followers as a real faction in two servers. The Rustwalkers can just set up power and fuck off, so unless someone really angers them, they don't really contribute to the round since that power's all-but-guaranteed to stay on.
From my limited experience, the factions don't seem to interact with each other at all, with them just ignoring each other even when one's doing some crazy shit like behead a man in the town center for being mean... and the result is that you have what amount to three shitty factions that either do nothing or do whatever they want without the other two caring.

[Cartlord]

To sum up one of my main points:
You seem so fixated on the dynamic between the three factions of Kebab-town that you don't consider the individual factions. I ask you: why would I play Rustwalker? Why would I play Merchant? Why would I play Church?

[questionable-masquarade]

I agree with this, mostly the Rustwalker problem. I am an advocate FOR keeping rustwalkers, but not how they currently are. Rustwalkers have been abandoned by the developers, given zero attention, zero fleshing out, zero implemented lore. They have nothing to do, so whenever you play you have to make your own fun. What developers need is to pay attention to them, maybe give them a reworked base, either in the same place or a different place, and reworked gameplay loop.

The Rustwalkers have the potential to be great but are currently being choked out by developers who aren't willing to give them the time they need.

[questionable-masquarade]

I think the Rustwalkers should be improved and essentially turn into the force of order protecting and controlling Kebabtown. This would allow players to RP in it without going back to the shitty Oasis power dynamics.

[Cartlord]

i'd like to point out that this is seemingly a largely held opinion, considering that we've dropped from average 50 players with a high of 70 to average 30 and high 50 (currently at 14)

[xTrainx]

i'd like to point out that this is seemingly a largely held opinion, considering that we've dropped from average 50 players with a high of 70 to average 30 and high 50 (currently at 14)

Counterpoint:

[Cartlord]

How does that tie in? Every Fallout13 server has shit griefers, but most of them don't have their pop COMPLETELY OBLITERATED by them. It seems only Big-Iron and Nukapop had pop drop so drasticly, and those servers are the two with Kebabtown.

[CaputCapital]

Kebabtown isn't that bad as you make it out to be.

Now granted it's true that the Rustwalkers don't have much of a purpose in Kebab because based on their design and placing, they're supposed be the faction which gives Kebab electricity and power. This doesn't work out because the power layout isn't configured right with the main map and it gives Kebab infinite electricity and power. As a result it doesn't matter whether the reactor dies or not because Kebab will always have power. Even if power is set up, what's stropping the Rustwalkers from making deals with the merchant and the church? Technology is their focus and so is scrapping.

The Church is not supposed to be your typical medbay or "Followers of the Apocalypse" it's supposed to be a religious group who possesses the knowledge to heal the sick, repair the wounded, and bring back the dead for certain prices. The Church usually doesn't mess with you unless you do something to them. They usually won't sacrifice you unless you do something extreme, against their church. Selling medicine is also their gimmick but selling weapons, ammo, explosives, and other commodities is meant to be in the merchant's field. So you have this sort of relationship between The Merchants and The Church from what I've observed and played through can either benefit one another with a partnership or end up in shambles by killing one another. Khans can do whatever they want and it's just a loose gang with more freedom and less responsibilities.

Kebab can either be a melting pot or a contentious mess depending on how you view it. But there has to be at least two factions with enough characters in them to give this sense of contention or partnership. Each faction inside of Kebab plays a part. The Merchant sells weapons, materials, and ammo. The Church sells medicine and provides medical services for fees. The Radio Host provides news updates not just for Kebab but for happenings throughout the wasteland. The Rustwalkers are meant to maintain the power to Kebab but this is an issue because power isn't set up properly for Kebab. Originally on Nukapop, the pitrats took the place of the Rustwalkers. I don't know much about the pitrats.

Adding "citizen type rolls" to align with one of the three factions will only cause more role bloat and it's unnecessary. This is why the scab role exists. Church is stocked with numerous neophyte robes, all of which have never been expended in a round.

The reason behind the drop in pop is not because of Kebabtown, it was due to a number of reasons: The less-than-ideal estimations to when rebase would happen, Ron's hiatus (he's busy with work and that's why, nothing wrong with that,) the inability for PRs to be merged (part of it,) and the uncertainties in the player base and the future this FO13 has.

[YosemiteYam]

I agree with OP, kebabtown is literally only here because of some "merge" with nukapop devs, basically forced on the players even though the majority of players either prefer oasis or feel meh about kebabtown. I haven't felt a single unique interaction or pull towards kebab as there is literally no semblance of a "town" or faction feeling at all, it just feels like randoms from un fleshed out houses living next to a nameless merchant, like it literally only acts as a store instead of a roleplay creating/inducing region anymore. If the nukapop devs are so adamant on keeping kebabtown's flavor factions they should bring back oasis and just make rustwalkers and church into CITIZEN loadouts. Otherwise the roleplay is fucking dead in town, and the pop is suffering for it.