Scheveningen

Is chemistry really in need of updating? I assumed it was up to scratch right now.

I forgive you, then. No harm done on your end.

BYOND Key: Scheveningen Game ID: bPA-aICp(?) Player Byond Key: JimmyTombstone, BRAINOS Staff involved: N/A Reason for complaint: An image was posted on reddit earlier this morning. . The presence of this image was spoken about in staffchat but evidently it was never adminhelped. Reprehensible as it looks, I've little interest in turning this into a personal crusade just because it hurts my moral and ethical sensibilities to see this, even when it is plastered on reddit where it poorly represents our community in a bad light. I'll put this objectively and simply: IC sexual harassment to this crude of a scale does not make for good roleplay, nor is it remotely appropriate on our server. We have a rule outright banning ERP due to the presence of minors that play this game, and the fact that allowing such things creates issues that no one is either ready to deal with on a regular basis nor wants to be ready to deal with on a regular basis. This is not about safety of the community, or whatever, this is about ensuring the server remains fun without having edge cases where people let loose their potty mouth to be crude and intentionally offensive in-character. I am aware these two characters were arrested for it, but this sort of conduct in IC is seriously disgusting and toxic. Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? No, but apparently an issue like this was neither caught out by a staff member nor reported despite it toeing way too far over the line. Approximate Date/Time: Early morning 22-Jul-2017, most likely.

I was wondering what the hell was wrong with the set-up. It's too well optimized and it's set-up by default for the engine waste to be potentially linked into atmospherics for the waste to go straight into filtering, unlike on the Exodus where you had to do this manually. Though I'm split on whether this mandates changes or not.

Title. Some people have it tagged in their medical records for their Post-Mortem handling that they want their cadavers burnt to cinders. Urns should be able to gather the ashes of those burnt in the crematorium and tagged according to their flagged DNA so as to categorize whose ashes belong in which urn. These urns can then be stored somewhere safe so it can be passed off to next of kin. More fluff than anything but it can also add a bit of accountability for people who get cremated. And I guess if you're a sick fuck culturally enlightened you can eat ashes out of a jar, why not.

Do pylons really add anything for the sake of roleplay? Pylons seemed to have been a rather hasty and contrived solution to a problem that already had more than a few present solutions. That problem being: Defending a cult base, apparently that is what Nanako justified it as? You have force walls that can be turned absolutely invisible to the naked eye. You have blood boil. If you're smart and your two other cult buddies are also smart you can literally instantly kill anybody who walks into a room. You can then drag their corpse to a revive cultist rune to not only revive a corpse that isn't a cultist but instantly convert them with no prompt if they are in their body. Not just anyone, but any non-cultist in range takes terrible, terrible damage. You also get pocket stuns in the manner of talismans, either for EMP's sake or for stuns. I pack both as part of my cultist repertoire, because they are such a staple in cult robusting that using anything else is redundant. Add to the other multitude of fun things you can use for weaponization or self-defense as a cultist that is potent enough. Why do we need Tower Defense in the game, again? They don't really add anything special from a roleplay standpoint nor do they generate anything that's tangible for the sake of roleplay. They're just cultist auto-turrets that are apparently way more useful than actual auto-turrets.

This is getting nowhere near productive. It would probably be best to lock this until staff can figure this out.

If this confrontation had stayed in the Lifeweb community (Where it probably belongs, considering this server has very low tolerance for shitflinging) I wouldn't have cared, nor should have anyone cared. What they do or say off-server is really none of my particular concern, but LilSh4 makes a worse case for themselves deciding to be insulting to staff members and being quite adamant on attempting to bait Hive, right on these forums. [mention]LilSh4[/mention] and [mention]hivefleetchicken[/mention] should know better than to conduct themselves in such a way, I believe. Little tip, [mention]LilSh4[/mention]. Seeking confrontation either for the sake of it or in seeking to cast other community members low in the eyes of others (especially in the sloppy and aggressive way you've done it) will not end well for you. Own up to your failings in communication, drop your grudge-matches and just stop. Nobody enjoys the drama. You had the option to leave, so you had done so for awhile, but now you are here again, for what? The fact you come back, pick a fight with hive, claim "I don't even play here" so as to recuse yourself from responsibility is just really immature of you to be doing. Read your entire post back to yourself. Pretend, for a moment, that entire post that you wrote is aimed at yourself, and you are the person that has to read and process that. See through the eyes of another for a moment and take into consideration the attitudes that clash here, their reasoning for clashing, and the morals and values they hold. Place yourself into the shoes of another and really think on what you've said. You. Must. Conduct yourself. Properly. On this server. We expect this of everyone, staff or not. Be fair to other people. That is all we ask, and when you defy that, do not be surprised when others become angry in return. [mention]hivefleetchicken[/mention] may also learn a similar lesson here. I understand you do not have much tolerance for the "kind of person" Lilsh4 is, whether your anger towards them is justifiable or not is really none of my concern, but; there is always a right way to do things. There are ways to go about interacting with people in a fashion where currents push naturally to ensure events and their consequences fall into place. Understand this, because it's a lesson I learned: Heavy-handedness and cruel words only work for as long as people are willing to suffer them. Anger, frustration and hatefulness only complicates the process to ensure those who do wrong are held accountable, and those who stand accused are offered enough benefit of the doubt so that the seeking of justice does not become corrupted and create a victim of circumstance.

As one of the individuals who reviewed the first report by hive, before the rest of this evidence came up, the original position the staff held was that in spite of how utterly disgusting it is for a player to admit that they'd literally jump at the opportunity to molest someone that goes to their school, we (at the time) initially could not do much because the policy on handling players that conduct themselves differently on other servers when not representing any cause but their own is one that avoids proactively banning people from the server based on opinions or things said by them. If they are a moderator or administrator and go about griefing and flaunting their title about, "I am staff on another server" as an excuse when breaking the rules or something, then action will and shall be taken, goes the same for players who try to "raid". But unless they occupy those groups, the policy is no-interference, we (at the time) did not know the player was going to conduct themselves in such way and thus cannot be responsible for them, ultimately, it is not staff's business to make out-of-server issues their business. That mistake was made once with the apartment server way back, and wisdom says to avoid making the same mistake twice. We (at the time) told Hive that we could not do much unless the player came back and escalated. And then it escalated. So there is an implication on what would be done here, and I do not think it would be prudent to merely hand out a warning to someone who, after they return to the server and attempt to bait and pester Hivefleetchicken, would also repeat the same sexual-predator-esque rhetoric as outlined to us initially in the first report that had to be dismissed by itself because it was an off-server issue. Now it is not that, which I think makes this easier. While I don't think we should make it a point to remove people we (as a community) fundamentally and morally disagree with, I would consider this case an exception. Hive did not necessarily do anything wrong, it is not wrong to be angry about someone who literally admits to want to molest underage teens. I don't care how old he is, this kind of language of gross admission is unbecoming for a player if not just a human being with any sense of a personal filter. It is wrong to say these things, especially when attempting to bait someone. Ironically saying abhorrent things is never a good excuse, it is still abhorrent to say and they should be held responsible. A joke is only funny when it is good enough taste for people to laugh at. Shocking that unfunny and offensive jokes offend people and make them want to take action against the people who act so morally and socially insensitive. It is lacking in moral character and absolutely disgusting to voice such awful things, I am not mincing words here because someone having said this in real life at school or in the workplace would receive an equally tough or worse response. The staff should escalate accordingly. I don't think attaching a mere warning would be sufficient for this kind of conduct, this goes beyond the usual familiar MO of dealing with other cases that don't deal with personal issues or players lacking the moral character to conduct themselves properly. A line needs to be drawn here between acceptable and what is not acceptable.

Doesn't seem like there's a point to keeping such minor facets of an already unfinished system. Either keep all of it or keep none of it. An in-between seems unreasonable to pose for this particular situation.

Heeeeere's the problem. Shadowling is arguably one of no, the toughest antagonist types to play in the entirety of SS13. You ever play as a vampire? You know what would be nice? It'd be if each vampire had a walking target placed on their sprite that upon examining says, "This is an antag, kill he" as soon as they used an ability and doesn't go away. That's shadowling in a nutshell. Shadowlings are next to worthless until hatched, and by that time they become extraterrestrial abominations with a slew of defensive and disruptive abilities that are not too well-suited for offensive combat. To know how to play shadowling is to effectively know how to pick your engagements and also how to run. Most SS13 players have a inflated opinion of themselves, as well as an over-exaggerated sense of honor, they get into fistfights without any regard for their own safety or the safety of others, they pretty much do not care one bit. You are not meant to play shadowling fair, you are meant to run away from conflict and powergame your way into gathering 15 useful idiots who need to be alive in order for you to completely shift your purpose as an antagonist type and go from Defensive-Disruptive to Endgame-Killdeath-Disruptive. Ascendants don't need to use their defensive abilities once they ascend, they become invulnerable to anything short of a singularity or a well-placed and well-timed bomb. Good luck doing the latter, as Ascendants can look at you and make you explode if they even think you're a threat. I mean that literally. You explode. . Violently. Now you're thinking, wow this is cool! I get to make people explode at end-game! It's really not that simple, nor is it that great as it is cut out. I've won a couple shadowling games and this game mode is the most tedious I've ever played. I enjoy ling more than shadowling because at least you still maintain a stealth aspect for as long as you can. Enthralling folks to do your bidding is like herding cats. Cats with Aspergers. Cats with Aspergers don't think like you do, and they also don't listen well. Especially not on heavy roleplay servers. You need FIFTEEN people alive for it. Fifteen. Count that. If you stuck 15 people in the brig lobby, how much space do you expect them to take up? It's quite a bit, but given you become completely invulnerable just for the end-game gib powers and other bonus stuff, it is a fair trade-off. No more, no less, it is fine at the number it is, but, I cannot guarantee to anyone who's never played it that it is fun to have to grind 15 thralls to not only stay alive but also not give away they're a shadow-thrall to the crew. Shadowlings are valid as fuck (regardless of our anti-metagaming rules, it is an extra-terrestrial shadow demon you are looking at, not a silly wiznerd LARPing), have little to no stealth capabilities as soon as you hatch into a full shadowling, and they're actually really easy to kill with our medical system versus TG's. If you die as a shadowling, you don't come back like a changeling does. You don't get to cheat death, and light freakin' murders you. You need the situational awareness of a CS:GO MGE+, luckiness and the hope that the crew is completely mentally crippled that they cannot hope to even do their own jobs let alone deal with one of the most vulnerable antagonist types in SS13. Shadowling is badly designed because there is little stealth element to it, therefore meaning there is no element to surprise when it comes to Shadowling, and it is not fun to have to gather 6 more people than what you require to summon nar'sie just to reach your endgame state. Servers that have shadowling get away with it because you don't need to talk once as an antagonist to achieve your objectives. Just run around stunning people 1 on 1 and don't get caught by a greytide ganksquad + the entire crew. I don't really care if it fits on an RP server, I'm sure it can, but the design of the entire game mode as it stands is inherently flawed in many critical aspects that it does not adequately reward the antagonist with a return on fun factor to make this game mode worth porting. Being an ascendant is not actually as fun as people think it is with the whole exploding thing. It's really damn boring to fight people when you're completely invincible and they stand no chance against you in a fair or unfair fight. You don't die as an ascendant from anything short of something you could prevent by yourself. You should never have to grind to have fun.

I understand there's a concern about power creep, but with heads of staff, those folks are whitelisted to begin with. Heads of staff are trusted to not only stay in their lane and just do their assigned duties, but also to not abuse their access for ulterior reasons. I would prefer if head of staff access was put on the same level as the other heads (barring cappy, who overrides this concern entirely), but in the sense that they should be enabled a bit of default access for convenience sake. A CMO should be able to enter the basic levels of every single department in a pinch, as it's their job and their department's job to help out when necessary. The RD could do this as well, given the propensity of the RPED existing and being able to upgrade just about any machine lickity-split. The Chief Engineer needs this access to do station modifications, maintenance or repairs. Better yet, they can all easily (including the HoP, sometimes there is an absence of one however) use this access to simply enable other people to enter general access areas to do their job so they can focus their efforts elsewhere while their goons clean house for them. No, I don't think head of staff access should be stripped down so it equalizes their power. Changes should be made for the sake of quality of life, and not necessarily adding more difficulty to being a head of staff that is not the HoP or captain, either of them are not always going to be there. But yes, I do think head of staff access should be equalized, or rather, buff all of the head jobs to the relative same extent, all-access to their own department, general access to everywhere else. Otherwise we'd have to nerf janitor access as well. Doesn't really make sense that a low priority job compared to other heads of staff gets more general access to each department than some of the heads of staff.

I can't say if I was the first (or even the last) to spout the "new map NEVER" meme and I probably shouldn't even be posting because of that, but for a time I fervently believed in it because the idea of a new map was a curse that lasted for three years. And I'm so glad I was proven wrong. There are some things I don't necessarily like about the new map but it still has its strengths and by no means is it completely untouchable in terms of its core aspects. Just like the Exodus map, it has its strengths and its weaknesses, most importantly, we can finally call it "ours." I think that makes it more special than anything else, and I extend a thank you and also an apology for being a memer shit to the dev team. It's good to see that we can also finally push changes and bugfixes out faster too since we aren't sitting on the dev branch for a weekend then switching back to vanilla with the old bugs and issues. Here's to another three years of new map memes.

Post of the year.

I would probably disagree with that, Bygone, if it's gotten to the point where they've been spoken to about playing like shitcurity, and this still happens to be an issue, that's kind of a problem. It honestly has little to do with how they affect antagonists. If you go into a role with absolutely no intent on upholding and following the regulations you're supposed to enforce on the crew, that's not a problem of the character, that is a problem with the player. Like how we have expectations to prevent folks from self-antagonizing as normal crewmembers, I think that also extends to the point where security officers or detectives should never abuse their power to a very unsubtle extent (rather, the players should not be taking those actions as their character, because it's kind of a thing where no security officer wants to lose their job, so the player should not be making those decisions for their character if it actively endangers their employment). Security corruption can be roleplayed to some extent, but the character still needs to be competent and understand how to follow their own regulations before they can begin to stretch them.

The testing I did with Kaedwuff resulted in messages being squelched whenever the attacker was in darkness; ignoring the victim's vision flags, dark sight value, or eyewear (NVG). Blindness also will squelch the messages, but through a different mechanism. I can't say for sure that it's tied to the lighting engine's brightness, but it seems likely from what limited testing we did. The reasons for why you can't see certain emotes tend to be one, the other, or both applying at the same time (relating to darksight, physical blindness, or both). It makes sense if you cannot see who is choking you in the dark, in terms of being able to see an aggressor, I suppose. Moreso if your eyes are crippled or atrophied. It's probably not worth touching darksight or whatever. A simple "You're being choked!" notifier to the victim is good enough. And maybe the person doing the choking should have red text messages pop up periodically that they are throttling a person by the throat (provided they can be seen, in the dark or not), since choking someone to death is not exactly subtle.

I believe you may have misconstrued what Lohikar said, because I don't think he would've made that conclusion. Blindness completely disables your ability to get any feedback in the textport from actions, emotes or anything that isn't a sound that your character would normally view, provided you aren't also deafened. Meaning if you cannot see at all due to an in-game disability, you strangely enough cannot see who is hitting you, who is emoting, or whatever else. Being in pitch black however, at a good enough distance and not including those with actual darksight or night vision capabilities, has the adverse effect of making them out of your line of sight.

I would probably consider it apt for either subforum. Considering that while ban requests are normally for grief, I believe I've reported this kind of behavior regarding the OP's security play before. I don't quite recall if they were warned or job-banned as of recent for metagaming an antagonist's presence and failing to follow security procedure in the arrest of said antagonist. It was dealt with but I doubt Spider actually learned anything from it. If anything the OP's said is of any indication it's kind of clear that his conduct has not changed. Because I can most certainly attest that he's validhunted very recently. He was punished for it in some capacity. And here's a report (or multiple, if we count the other posters as well) of Spider validhunting super hard to the point where it's metagaming. Which kind of just says he didn't learn his lesson.

Can't IPCs enter cyborg rechargers?

Breaking the terms of my hiatus just for a brief moment. This needs to be said, Brightdawn. If you want to bring an issue to me to light, don't lie about it. There is nothing more that I detest than both a liar and a hypocrite, and I'll be the first to chew you out personally before I even begin to self-reflect. I have zero obligation to answer to someone who outright lied in a complaint and broke the rule on only posting when involved in the situation. It has never been part of my personal policy to pretend that people lying is something that is okay, and it is absolutely insulting when I have to endure false evidence being hurled at me in a complaint by someone with a reputation for ban-baiting and you instigate conflicts on purpose in order to get an excuse to open complaints on other people that you have negative interactions with. You pretended to be a girl to get Rusty permanently banned from the server in the past, and that is a ethical failure I will never forget, because you deceived me as well as I was one of the players that lobbied for his permanent ban. And that is something I regret, because you abused my judgement to push your own agenda. You show up months later claiming to have changed, you admit all of the lies you told in the past and you get your one chance to start anew, and here you are, being true to your character being deceptive and baiting people into conflicts for your own purposes. I have quite literally zero obligation to listen to someone about morals when you've made worse judgement calls than I have. I admit I made mistakes in handling the UM complaint. I will not admit I was wrong in calling you out as a liar. You are wrong to try and question me about morals. You are the last person I will ever speak to when seeking advice. I do not regret anything I said about you. You act horrible and you pretend to be surprised when I call you out for it? No, I will not apologize to you, it is not me that needs to apologize for anything. If you cannot take the punches from me, do not throw them in the first place. Don't reply, I don't plan on being around until the next two weeks to get shit settled IRL. Especially you, Brightdawn, I quite literally do not want to speak to you ever again.

Yes, but a sign that says, "Avoid trespassing, trespassers may be shot" is probably not a good line to be toeing, especially considering the accuracy and trigger-happiness of private security on protected property nowadays. The difference between names like Adolf Hammerstein, Raymond Hawkins, etc., is that they are obscure names, not even close references to pop culture at large. Adolf Hitler is not a good name because it is only picked to be offensive, for instance, and Adolf Hitler is a prominent dictator figure. Thus, not really a good RP name, at all, in the case of Adolf Hitler. Roy Earle, however, is a memorable corrupt cop from an arguably memorable video game. It's not really so much whether you agree with the admin about this, the major thing is merely understanding *why* an admin might make a ruling like this in terms of the context of the rule. I'm not saying your detective *shouldn't* be named Roy Earle. It is a pretty plain name, but there's a ton of coincidence with Roy Earle, NanoTrasen detective, also sharing a name with Roy Earle, Los Angeles Police Department Detective, Vice Desk. It's honestly up to incog if he wants to change his mind and decide to allow it. It is a pretty plain name, I agree. The MO we're used to in reference to the naming rule is that, we notice someone has a name reference to a video game character, we key up our macros to yell at trials to get shit done, they don't get shit done, so someone else has to take it, and then business goes as usual.

Do you see the difference between these people and Roy Earle, perhaps?

That's ironic, considering you've blocked me over discord because of some petty bullshit (again, what a damn surprise) and made up crap without any evidence in a staff complaint pointing that I was some other reddit user who was just shitposting about stutterfuck nurses, the lowest common denominator when it comes to heavy roleplay.

Roy Earle is a secondary antagonist in the crime thriller video game L.A. Noire. He is a detective who works the Vice desk and is a corrupt cop. He is the protagonist's partner during his time at the Vice desk until Earle leaks that Cole Phelps is cheating on his wife due to the fact that Phelps was generally incorruptible. L.A. Noire was a AAA video game title. Sorry, we don't allow reference names to mainstream mediums like that. Anyone who says L.A. Noire is a bad game has bad taste tho in my opinion.

Sorry shit didn't work out, I guess? We usually lift appeals immediately if it's been a long time and I don't think the attitude was even necessary, just saying. You had a really bipolar reaction to it and it gave everyone mixed feelings when you complained about it, it just seemed petty to immediately judge the entire server when you remember you got antagbanned for some reason.