Game Modes

Current Game Modes

Secret

Generally the default mode. The game will randomly choose from the available game modes to keep you on your toes!

Nuclear Emergency

Generally known as nuke. A team of operatives, whose number is based on the server population, are spawned on a small shuttle with a nuclear bomb inside of it. Their objective is to get the bomb onto the station and activate it in a specific area, then defend it until the countdown reaches zero.

Default antagonists: Nuclear Operative

Game-ending conditions:

• All operatives are dead (and the nuclear bomb isn't armed).
• The bomb is destroyed.
• The bomb obliterates the station.

Traitor

A number of random crew members, based on current server population, will defect from Nanotrasen and become traitors with varying objectives! They each get access to a bunch of cool and deadly gear.

Default antagonists:

• Starting: Traitor, occasionally Wraiths
• Late-joining: Traitor
• Random event: See Random Events

Changeling

A horrible organism (that is most certainly not a copy of The Thing) has escaped from some private research facility and is preying on the crew members! Prepare for acid-spitting, DNA-sucking creatures who can disguise themselves as any crew member they have stolen the DNA from! Trust no one!

Default antagonists:

• Starting: Changeling
• Late-joining: Changeling
• Random event: See Random Events

Wizard

Hark! A technophobe wizard with a mighty beard hath appeared on the station, and he's out for blood! Beware his fireballs, golems, missiles and horrible cluwne curses!

Default antagonists:

• Starting: Wizard
• Late-joining: Changeling, Vampire
• Random event: See Random Events

Blob

The blob is a jelly-like organism that rapidly spreads across the station, destroying obstacles such as walls, windows, and crew members. At the start of the round, one or several player-controlled blobs will deploy somewhere on the station and immediately begin spreading outwards from that point. It has a strong vulnerability to fire - welders, flamethrowers and actual fire will damage and destroy the blob, a tile at a time. The AI must help the crew in fighting the blob.

Default antagonists: Blob

Game-ending conditions:

• All blobs complete their objectives.
• All blobs are destroyed.

Mixed

In this mode, instead of there being one or two fixed antagonist types, there is a mix of various types all at once.

Default antagonists:

• Starting: Traitor, Changeling, Wizard, Vampire, Wraith, Blob, Grinch
• Late-joining: Traitor, Changeling, Vampire
• Random event: See Random Events

Other Game Modes

Gang

The station is caught in the middle of a war between groups of people with silly names! Will TUNNEL SNAKES be victorious over BADMIN BUSTAS? Play as a gang leader, a gang member, or some random guy who is not in a gang!

Default antagonists: Gang

Construction

Build your very own space station from scratch! Except for the survey shuttle and a couple of asteroids, the main z-level starts out completely empty. Basic supplies and a couple of pods for exploration are provided, and everyone also spawns (among other starting gear) with a space suit, jetpack, full tool belt, special blueprint markers for designing and building new rooms, and a large-capacity RCD. The idea is for the crew to cooperate, mine ore and grow their own produce once hydroponics is operational, and trade those goods for whatever is required to expand the station at the time. The server restarts every 12 hours and while antagonists don't appear in this game mode, random events occur periodically to keep the players on their toes.

Default antagonists: None

Extended

Extended is a round where there are no antagonists selected, giving players the ability to experiment with station systems for as long as they want. On the standard servers, extended is occasionally used for gimmick rounds where the admins intend to manually create traitors or organize an event.

Default antagonists: None

Discontinued Gamemodes

Most of these game modes are broken or have been removed from the code entirely.

Sandbox

Sandbox is a mode where all players can spawn more or less anything in the game through the sandbox panel. In theory this is the mode you go to to figure out how stuff works and practice various systems, such as starting the engine or building complex pipe constructs. In practice this is the mode where everyone spawns cloaks and revolvers and gives themselves all the wizard spells.

Meteor

In this mode, the station was bombarded by wave upon wave of meteors. After about 30 mins or so, the shuttle would be auto called. It was quite a fun mode, but due to the awfulness of BYOND, it became horribly laggy and basically unplayable past the 20 minute mark. The goals of this gamemode are quite simple, escape on the shuttle, and you win the round.

Meteors now appear as a random event.

Disaster

Basically admin-shenanigans: the gamemode. It is also known as meteor's big brother. the objective for everyone in this mode is simply to survive. This is complicated by the fact that minutes into the round quantum portals will begin to open at random and shit will get unbelievably chaotic. The portals can explode with electrical energy, a burst of stunning light, or just plain explode.

Portals may also summon a variety of unhelpful robots that can stun or injure you. This inevitably leads to the AI being destroyed or corrupted, pretty much every area of the ship being exposed to vacuum and everyone on the station going deaf. After a set amount of time, the shuttle can be called. If you escape on it, congratulations, you survived! This game mode is not in the regular list but admins occasionally bring it up.

Revolution

3 revolutionaries are given the power to recruit any non-security member to their cause, with their objective being to kill all the heads of staff. The shuttle would refuse to arrive in this game mode, meaning it could only end if one side or the other was successful. Removed due to being worse balanced than the station budget. Revolution was in theory a really great gamemode, but it never quite turned out as well as you would hope: the rounds always turned out to be super chaotic, and more often than not, ended up with a battlefield, and dead assistants and security officers everywhere. Since at the time 60+ player rounds were not uncommon, the revs usually converted most of the crew and quickly killed all of the heads by swarming them. The only real defence was to hide, which made the round drag forever.

Game-ending conditions:

• If all of the command staff die, the revolution wins.
• If all the leaders of the revolution die, the crew wins.
• Leaving the station z-level, not being logged in and brigged all count as "abandoned the station / abandoned the cause", in which they are treated as dead.

Spy

This game mode was designed to overcome the shortcomings of revolution. The game randomly assigned several players as spy masters with the objective to kill all the other spy masters and be the only one to escape. Unlike traitors, spies didn't know the identity of their targets and had to do some sleuthing - that was the intent anyway. In practice, it was little more than team deathmatch, as every spy ring would scramble to load up on laser guns and then order their mindslaves to gun down everything that moves.

Deathmatch

Space Station 13: Black Ops 2. One of the few gamemodes that included every person on the server. Everyone would spawn as a death-commando. Last man standing wins. Removed due to how horrible robust SS13's combat system is.

Monkey

Came in two flavours: Monkey, and Monkey Survival:

• In monkey mode, random player(s) where chosen to carry a virus that turned other players into a monkey when bitten.
• In monkey survival, the crew where pitched against super fast, super robust NPC monkeys.

AI Malfunction

Basically, the AI is messed up and the crew has to fix whatever's ailing it. In theory, this is a game mode, but in actuality, this happens every round, so it's more or less redundant.

Restructuring

A horribly drawn-out team death match mode. A player would be randomly chosen every 5 mins. All other players were tasked with killing this player. If he died or survived for 5 mins, another player was chosen. This continued till 1 player was left.

Alien

Aliens was a game mode where player controlled aliens attempted to turn the station into a hive while infecting or killing the crew. The crew would need to work together to slay the aliens and stop them from breeding. Aliens were split into four different job classes: Queen, engineer, soldier and larvae with each having their own unique strengths and weaknesses. This was discontinued because the aliens would get themselves killed within seconds, while the crew would know exactly how to fight them. This game mode has since been removed from goon-station code.

Waldo

Wally Waldo, who may or may not be a little bit magical, has a very clear defined objective to hide while everyone else must find him. Another person plays Odlaw, and must assist Waldo in achieving his life long dream of not being found.