BRAINOS

"nat hit ephemer while he was down, so he was merely doing the same to her" wrong, remember how ephemer broke someone's chest and skull? that's not "merely the same." "ephemer never pulls punches" very edgy, nice. should probably disclose that kind of thing prior to fights and call it as soon as you hear people cracking open also, again, that's fucky. as a supposed retired pro wrestler, not a boxer or brawler, as a pro wrestler, ephemer should know restraint better than anyone else considering his job literally depended on not cracking his opponent's skull open "something something erp" we're mad about it because your character nearly caused canonical brain damage or death as a non-antag for literally no reason other than "he doesn't pull punches."

YES edit: THOSE SHOES ?

i'm kinda thinkin along the lines of some kinda blue. the 2nd one here contrasts well with the purple. maybe figure out where to add gold, commandy accents to that and it should be really nice

for the top, the less brown makes it tan, which makes it look like a really fancy, sci-fi mining jumpsuit. any kind of cargo color + purple is just... always gonna be mining, for me.

full support on this god please

even as a QM main, i'm very, very iffy on making it a command role. would everyone who's been playing QM for four years suddenly need to apply for a command whitelist? while this would fix a huge issue with QM's that spawn in just to loot the warehouse and then cryo, a better fix would simply be to message the HoP. the real shitty part of QM is having 3 bad techs who run off to raid maint for the full shift after looting the warehouse and only coming back to Cargonia Rise Up at the first whiff of antaggery. on any normal shift, it falls to me, as QM, to try fulfilling every single order, and i can't bitch to the HoP about it because they're busy being a hostage somewhere. making QM a command role wouldn't make these powergamers any more likely to listen. i already have the authority i need, my word is just about all the HoP needs to fire someone. it just never happens because everything has to be just right: there must be a shitty tech that is really round-ruining, there must be an HoP present, the HoP must be available, and there can't be an ongoing crisis anywhere on the station that the HoP must be attending to instead. nobody cares enough about bad cargo techs to drop their entire round arguing with one, trying to get their ID to demote them. giving QM's authority to fire someone won't fix it, because then I'll get fired for calling one out when i join 40 minutes in and the warehouse still isn't sorted. most of my issues however, with unruly techs, come down to me being unwilling to pull rank IC, except in the worst of cases. saying the QM role is non-essential is also bonkers. QM's are vital to teaching cargo to people and peeling miner's guts off then asteroid when it takes medical an hour just to suit up because "oh god, not eva, goddamnit" the QM is the person most people PDA for requests because you know none of the techs are linking their PDA to the requests console. i'm not saying the QM is needed to function every single day, but it is a role i'd miss, and it is a role that if you were to take away, you'd turn Supply into a free-for-all of "sort the fucking warehouse," "you're not my boss," etc. ultimately, the shitty part of cargo is not an IC policy issue. it's because a cargo tech is basically assistant with maint access, and is used as such 4 times out of 5.

i don't like that brown for the RD one bit. it looks like it should be supply or, specifically, mining. i know you're trying to kill color schemes but this doesn't track for me.

huge agree, what access janitors have is irrelevant to the fact it's impossible to justify, IC, that EMT's don't have access to departments main areas when, again, the issues they face are literal matters of life and death. over the 10 or so years i have played this game, I have not even ONCE seen a lone EMT stop a nuke ops, ling or even a single traitor on the account of "they could open the door." even the argument that limited access promotes interaction is bonkers. what interaction? "OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR YOUR GUY IS DYING IN THERE," and a guy opens the door. the emt rushes in without even time for a thank you and grabs the injured. that's... hardly interaction. seriously. i am all for driving meaningful RP interaction, but this ain't it, chief emt's having limited access kills low pop playability. emt's having limited access can kill characters canonically. i repeat, this can kill characters canonically all because the EMT couldn't open a door for a guy with a DNC in time after some kind of dumb accident, or a space carp, or a scrubbers event. that's fucked and hardly helps drive a story with a death like that. it's hard to justify emt's limited access OOC and impossible to justify it IC. fix it.

oscar is disciplined to a fault and has a thick, nearly impenetrable shell he's constantly hiding behind - but he's not stand-offish. there are subtleties to him that make you sit back and ask, ''where did this character come from? what made them this way?" that is excellent character writing and RP performance to pull that off. he's not another sec robot and he's got hobbies and life outside of work that flesh him out as a believable character. it's all of these things that made me so persistent in trying to interact with him and see what the hell is going with that guy. it's an incredible feat to stand out - especially as a sec main, where you have to be uniform. it's a step beyond incredible to stand out for all the right reasons. oscar isn't some rowdy punk, and in passing, you just might look over him. but with a few shifts of interaction, the quirks slowly build up to make you wonder what's up. i love oscar. even when they're the 'bad guy,' they're a believable bad guy and i'd see myself siding with them if preston weren't so stupid. another part of oscar that really had me impressed: he's the whole reason i actually started to care about dominia as a place. i was so curious, i had to know what kind of background he must have had, so i actually read dominia's lore and found it really enlightening. connecting the dots between an actual character like easter and the background lore was great fun. this is good lore incorporation. i'm with zundy, that i don't just wanna wank on your page here, but i've got no critique to offer. he's been a consistent pleasure to interact with from the day i met him.

i love things like this that help show where a character is from and allows you to have a conversation about it. it's a great way to get people talking about lore - and the scarab fleet is one of those places i want to see more people exploring with their characters. full support on this.

i love rowan!! so much. she's a great dreg that actually prompted me to read lore on eridani. a good character background incorporating lore is something where you meet a character who shows distinct traits, but isn't just a stereotype. someone who is just strange enough to make you wonder, "where are they from?" and read about it. it's not, "oh, martians are just like that" and move along. rowan is good character background: she prompted me to read up on eridani lore when i didn't even know it existed. a neat interaction when i was playing an EPMC named goose occured: someone called me a dreg, and i told them as pompously as i could that i live on the second floor of my apartment. that kind of quip wouldn't be funny without lore to back it up, and i thank rowe for that. background aside, she's a pleasure to have in cargo: always doing what needs to get done, and getting into just enough trouble for me to stress out as a QM. and i don't mean typical cargo tech powergaming; rowe does things that are mischievous, and importantly: believable. there were a few rounds where i played Gonzalez's mom, and she was paid off by Fernando to keep me busy. she sat with me in the bar, scammed me real good and ran off laughing. it was the best i've ever seen someone present their shady background skills. all in all rowe is a solid 10/10. she's great and i love her.

BYOND Key: BRAINOS Game ID: b3B-bJ2n Player Byond Key/Character name: Unknown/Ephemer Mephistopheles Staff involved: No ahelps on my part. Reason for complaint: Self-antaggy behavior, being a relentless troll IC. Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? No. I tried to keep it mostly IC and drafted up an IR regarding it. Approximate Date/Time: 20191007, around 0500. https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/12915-incident-report-10072461/?tab=comments#comment-122699 <- Here's the IR I made regarding the issue. [/url] It's tough to know exactly where to start with this, so I'll start from the beginning. Mephistopheles called for challengers to come to the holodeck to spar; this is AOK in my book, whatever. Nat's character, Nat, had recently bulked up to an extremely significant degree, so honing her coordination IC and getting some experience with the click-until-horizontal mechanics OOC seemed like a fun thing to do when Supply was finished up with orders and things were starting to slow down. We got to the holodeck and agreed "whoever said uncle" is to be declared loser of the sparring match. Cool! Cool and good. Now, it's been consistent in my experience that you use the pull-punches verb in sparring matches or you wear gloves. This came across as common sense, and Nat was sure to pull-punches before the match, too. Mephistopheles, however, a character whose entire gimmick seems to revolve around being a professional wrestler at some point in their past, was punching with full force. Nicholas Ramirez was watching with me toward the end of the fight when things started to get nasty - we didn't notice the punches weren't pulled until Nat's face became a mangled mess and she started actually going into paincrit - and Mephistopheles kept going. He broke her skull and ribs and she needed to be dragged off to medical right away or she would have likely died. On extended. During the fight, Nat tried twice to throw the guy off of her and say "hold on," but he was relentless and eventually used the throwing as an excuse for "self defense." Nick and I had to bumrush him and physically pin him to the ground to get him to stop. After the CMO glued her skull back together, I asked the guy LOOC, "do you know about pull-punches?" I don't know how many of you actually follow pro wrestling or whatever, but pro wrestlers pull-punches verb IRL. It's literally what their entire job is built on. It's a performance, not a real competitive sport. It's in poor character to not only throw full-force punches as a wrestler gimmick, and it's in extremely poor character to keep going when you crack your opponent's skull. Obviously, we got Sec involved with this and demanded the guy gets arrested, but he lies throughout the entire investigation, throwing everything off track and letting him get off nearly scot-free. He repeatedly said two things: 1, that Nat was unharmed and she was never in any danger (despite having her chest and head broken) and 2, that whatever injuries Nat sustained, he sustained as well. He just about got off with nothing but a warning to stop doing sparring matches for the remainder of the shift. This pissed off the entire Supply department, and we wound up arguing with Sec in their lobby. Eventually, the guy was charged with Gross Negligence, which is about on par with Assault. Okay, I can deal with that. That's a'ight. But. In this same round, on extended, after this guy was warned not to spar any longer - and set up an unsanctioned fighting ring in maintenance, lured a miner into there (Cooper, I believe), and stabbed him in the eyes with a screwdriver. This is not the end of it. After he did that, he vandalized his own chapel while we were venting to the HoP and drafting up an IR on the guy. He vandalized his own chapel and then called Security on us, trying to blame us for the chapel's broken windows and such. It was pretty clear around now he was doing everything he could to bait Cargo into attacking him. He repeatedly entered the Cargo lobby and attempted to order boxing gloves when Nat was at the front desk. On crew transfer, he repeatedly bump-spammed Nat, followed her around, and called her a cunt when she tried to get some space from him. Basically, in summary: Mephistopheles nearly murdered someone and gave them life-threatening injuries by refusing to pull punches during a spar. Mephistopheles completely fucked a fair investigation by lying repeatedly and exhausting Sec until they could barely deal with Nat's testimony against him. Mephistopheles vandalized his own chapel and tried to blame it on us. Mephistopheles continued to harass Nat for the remainder of the round. On Extended, as a non-antag. This would have been a neat gimmick for a traitor! It would have been neat to see the guy cheat through fights and give people life-threatening injuries the way he did. But this was again, as a non-antag. This guy is literally named after Satan and behaves like him, too. After talking with some of the people involved, it was clear we were all pretty fired up by the guy, and Lance advised on my IR to make this into a Player Complaint. Normally I really hate taking IC issues into OOC, but this... was pretty rough for everyone else. I hate filing a formal complaint over general shitlordy behavior, but this was a few notches past "too far," and really made a 3 hour round into a shitshow of arguing with Sec, trying to resist the urge to end our character's careers by doing something stupid.

Reporting Personnel: Preston Prestoff Job Title of Reporting Personnel: Quartermaster Game ID: b3B-bJ2n Personnel Involved: - Ephemer Mephistopheles, Chaplain (Offender) - Natalie Duponte, Cargo Technician (Victim) - Gavin Glover, CMO (Witness) - Nicholas Ramirez, Visitor (Witness) - Khaled Al-Bastaki, Head of Security (Witness) Time of Incident: Around 16:07 Stationtime Real Time: Around 05:45AM MT 2019/10/07 Location of Incident: Holodeck Nature of Incident: [x] - Workplace Hazard [x] - Accident/Injury [ ] - Destruction of Property [ ] - Neglect of Duty [x] - Harassment [x] - Assault [x] - Misconduct [ ] - Other _____ (Place an x in the box that applies. If other, replace line and specify.) Today, Mephistopheles was challenging people to the ring for sparring matches. Natalie Duponte, having recently bulked up an incredible degree, would benefit from learning how to use her new muscles. Naturally, I asked her to give the sparring a shot. In sparring, even holodeck sparring, it's common sense to use gloves or at least pull punches. A man of Mephistopheles's claimed background would know this, stating that he was a professional wrestler some time ago. Nat, of course, was pulling her punches and being safe about the match. This man, however, was not pulling his punches at all. He was delivering blow after blow full force. First, he broke Nat's nose, and she started bleeding. Of course, we assume it's part of the simulation, since it's minor and Nat had enough adrenaline in her to not distinguish the simulated pain from the real pain. The fight keeps going. Nat knocked the man down at least four or five times, until she started to get dizzy and looked like she was about to pass out. Mephistopheles, likely frustrated that Natalie was winning the sparring match, was delivering his blows with full force and clear malicious intent. Natalie repeatedly attempted to throw the man off of her and end the fight, but he was relentless. This is around the time Ramirez and I saw something was wrong - and then Nat fell over. Mephistopheles kept punching and kicking. We literally heard her skull crack open, we rushed in there to get her out. Natalie Duponte's skull cracked open - it was the most sickening sound I've ever heard in my career. Any sane person would have stopped. This man did not stop. We rushed her to medical and the doctor who operated on her, Gavin Glover, the Chief Medical Officer, can testify: her skull was broken, she suffered multiple broken ribs and she would likely have died had the fight gone on. A lengthy, delicate and potentially dangerous surgery was required and Natalie was fortunate to make a recovery. Mephistopheles knowingly beat Natalie within an inch of her life. To make matters far worse than they already were, he then claimed that Natalie was perfectly fine, and being overdramatic about her injuries. He claimed that Natalie did the exact same to him. Unless Mephistopheles is capable of gluing his own skull together, I doubt these claims of his. Mephistopheles's dishonesty severely interfered with the investigation and nearly allowed him to get away, were it not for the Head of Personnel investigating our accounts of the situation more thoroughly and inquiring with Security. Khaled Al-Bastaki, the Head of Security, can verify the man was charged with Gross Negligence. Upon release, Mephistopheles continued to harass my department and my workers, coming to order boxing gloves, make snide remarks to Natalie Duponte and generally do everything he could to actively bait us into losing our temper. Mephistopheles even went as far as to deface and vandalize his own chapel, and then blame it on the Cargo crew while we were busy drafting up this very incident report, discussing everything with the Head of Personnel. This wasted the Head of Security's time, requiring him to come down to Cargo, call for a meeting, and tell us not to deface a chapel he knows we didn't touch. Mephistopheles is either mentally unfit to work here or knowingly, intentionally, and unremorsefully made an attempt on Natalie Duponte's life. Did you report it to a Head of Department or IAA? If so, who?: Yes, to Pish'Kin Dolv'Qotav Actions taken: Begged with security to charge the man to no avail until talking to the HoP, who inquired into the situation. It wasn't until the HoP's inquiries the man charged with Gross Negligence and no else. Additional Notes: None. This is thorough. OOC Comments: Boy howdy. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go for an IR or a PC. I'd like to keep this nice and IC, because I like my immersion, but... phew. For one, I have the guy saying he never uses the pull-punches verb. And at the end of the shift, on the Odin, even, he repeatedly bump-spammed Nat and called her a cunt. Aaaand in this same round, on extended, this guy was warned not to spar any longer - and set up an unsanctioned fighting ring in maintenance, lured a miner into there (Cooper, I believe), and stabbed him in the eyes with a screwdriver. Dude legit was a troll the entire round and ruined what could have been a fun 3 hours in a chill extended round by effectively self-antagging. He consistently harassed the Cargo crew, lied to Sec, and got off nearly scot-free for attempted murder on an extended round. It's tough to know whether or not, as a group (because so many of us were involved), we wanted to go for an IR or PC, but I'd like to try out an IR and see if this guy is invested enough in the server and HRP setting to go along with the legal and bureaucratic ramifications that come with caving someone's skull in and stabbing someone's eyes out. If this guy actually goes along with the whole IR business, that'll at least salvage some entertainment from the situation.

the fact it takes more than one shot at all, to the head (especially point blank) is fucked. i get that people don't want to die in this game, but surviving a bullet to the head of ANY caliber is an extremely rare thing to happen. .38's are NOT pea shooters, but in-game suddenly they're a whatever kinda deal. guns are lethal as hell and our characters should fear them and we should fear what they can do to our characters. any bullet wound should have a high chance to cause internal and external bleeding and getting shot in the head should immediately drop you - even if you survive, you'd be lucky to crawl. i also think we should add a chance for bullets hitting walls to ricochet because projectile weapons on a space station are a bad fucking idea. i get it. nobody wants to die in this game but we shouldn't nerf guns to the point they are right now. we need to collectively get over it and accept death as a part of the game, especially in the case of being shot. it's frustrating to die but nothing frustrastes me more than having my immersion broken by surviving impossible things because i know a hundred people have broken their F1 key over getting shot before.

goofs aside, @AmoryBlaine, i tried out yellow+tan to reflect your cargo resprite somewhat with some black accents per the discussion last night, and it's lookin p good:

i pasted in thew new version of that RIG. the muted colors on my new one fit a little better with the rest of the resprite.

update with new voidsuit sprites. added some tan and purple accents - the tan here is a little smoother in texture, as if simply another layer of flexible suit material on top of the black stretchy bits. the purple is added just because our current mining color scheme is brown, tan (or yellow) and purple.

has a nice little carrying handle!

lol do ipc's even wear RIG's? cus i legit have no idea but it'd be tight if it looked a lot like this like dis? i took a look at the OG mining voidsuits and they're not bad but they suffer from way too many colors without really a clear idea of wtf it's supposed to look like i don't like mine in comparison for the simple fact they look kinda bland

this. being dead is boring, but being unsure you'll actually escape with your life in a given situation - and trying to do everything you can to survive a dangerous situation is fun. i'm not going to pull my whole department together and barricade over boarders who run around, twirling their mustache, but don't go after any of the crew. they're basically just visitors, then. what we've got now encourages peace-antagging. i've had a couple cool rounds where i sat in the bar with a ninja, but those will never compare to rounds where a ninja has been haunting our crew all shift and throws the bloody corpse of our miner at the elevator door as we're hammering on the lift button, desperate to get away. i want to get hurt and die in a round because of antags. fighting or running and in general being terrified of antags who outgun you and will kill you if you fuck up is a surefire way to drive intense conflict and force you to move and do things and band together with survivors. i'll never support ganking, but the box for fair play seems to shrink when nearly every single death is met with an ahelp or a forum complaint. i'll take being dead for 20 minutes tops over 2 hours with a wizard that uses their immeasurable power to do card tricks in the holodeck.

species-specific sprites! i've got (clockwise) human, tajaran, unathi, skrell.

i was shot five times in the head point blank and stood there screaming, and didn't paincrit til i was shot once in the groin. it's pretty bad that nothing seems to be a real threat. it completely fucks with my immersion. also, can we as a community chill tf out about dying in general? the bwoinks and ahelps surrounding antags doing things is an issue i can't ignore. i want bullets to hurt, and i want antags to not be so scared to use them. it's immersion breaking to get shot in the chest and be practically fine - and it's even worse that it took me over an hour and a half to get an armed assassin to actually attack me. it sucks to die in this game, yeah, but it's mostly non-canon and the most at stake is an hour of our time. i want to be scared i might die in a round. i want to not be 100% sure i'll get through every situation. most antags don't scare me because i know they're too busy twirling their mustache, terrified i will ahelp at any moment. i want to piss my pants when i'm cornered by armed mercenaries in mining. these mechanics and an attitude shift re: antags would significantly add to immersion and even out the IC and OOC stakes.

New shoulder pads!

our current mining rig: new mining voidsuits: new mining rig: okay so: i don't know what the fuck is going on with our current industrial rig. i seriously don't know. i don't understand the head/helmet thing. it's unspeakably hideous. it's to the point where even OOCly i'm reluctant to touch it. i literally don't want that thing to be seen in a 10 tile radius around my character, no matter what the mechanical buffs and benefits may be. i don't even know what it's supposed to look like. but brainos, i don't like your resprite that's okay. that's perfectly okay but if you still prefer the old one for the love of all things holy please tell me why. even if you don't like my resprite much, i'm just hoping it's preferable compared to the old one what the fuck is the helmet supposed to be? is that what the original sprite is going for? why for fuck? we don't need freaky lookin pointy aero helmets for miners and from practical or aesthetic points i cannot see why this was a great idea. miners don't even have atmos to worry about most of the time???? and when they do they're not moving fast???? so why is the helmet pointy??????? in my resprite, i went for uh... a more practical look. it's a chunky hard lookin helmet. like it should be. but miners shouldn't have nice things i'm sorry i just want things in our server to look nice okay so tell me what yours is supposed to look like, brainboy so i was going for an industrial look for sure, with exposed hydraulics here and there, especially in key lift point areas like the legs and back, to really sell the idea this thing moves heavy shit. the shoulders are heavily padded and fit way over the arms to keep the load on the back's hydraulic lifters - to prevent fatigue. the helmet's got sort of an iron man thing going with the two eyes, but has a pretty aggressive brow ridge to keep falling debris away from the optics. i literally have no fucking clue what the old sprite is trying to convey other than enormous slopey shoulders and a weird fucking pointy head. i don't understand it. it makes me angry because i feel like i'm having a stroke every time i look at it; none of the shapes make sense or convey anything i've ever witnessed in this reality. i don't get it. i'm convinced an extradimensional alien with no understanding of the function or human form sprited this. i do not understand it. about the new voidsuits: there's really not much wrong with the current voidsuits! but respriting them to match the style of the RIG helps cohesion. looks nice. totally optional on these, but i do like them a lot.

this has all of my yes