Scheveningen

I'll add something I forgot to mention: I do not mind the concept of being forced to use station bounced radios -- though I wish bounce radios could 'listen' and broadcast different channels at once, perhaps with a limitation. I mind when PDAs, computers, everything gets incapacitated and the entire round is shit for those trying to fix the situation as a result. Not all my characters are looking for the first opportunity to escape with their waifu into maint and ignore everyone else in the round. Killing NT net functionally stops many jobs and makes the concept of playing almost pointless, because one's job is often part of the character. The antag can temporarily disable or mess with the radios, but please do not target the quantum relay. It's lame.

Agreed. There is no reason to hit NT-Net especially, because the entire station depends on NT-Net to function. Cargo won't work, the code level cannot be elevated, you can't communicate with centcomm except via fax machine (well, probably not, because of the quantum relay), and suit sensors basically fucking stops functioning so medical has to depend on eyewitnesses to report wounded persons. I actually want to play the round for two-to-three hours. Please stop antagonists from speed-running the fucking round because they feel like sabotaging critical station systems without any actual escalation will somehow make for an interesting round. Hands off the essential station systems until the peak of the round, for crying out loud.

Type (e.g. Planet, Faction, System): Subfaction. Describe this proposal in a single sentence (12 word maximum): A seasoned Solarian battlegroup with a feared reputation. How will this be reflected on-station?: It might be reflected in future events or antag gimmicks. Does this faction/etc do anything not achieved by what already exists?: Yes. Why should this be given to lore developers rather than remain player created lore?: The objective canonicity of player created lore is questionable at best. Do you understand that if this is submitted, you are signing it away to the lore team, and that it's possible that it will change over time in ways that you may not forsee?: Yes. Long Description: The 67th Tactical Strike Battlegroup of the Solarian Navy, composed of wing numbers 700 to 812, is a large-scale fleet unit with a general focus on shock-and-awe tactics combined with decisive battle doctrine, followed by an immediate withdrawal to prevent being counter-attacked by reinforcements, should they be present. This is later followed by successive strike attacks following the fleet's combat readiness restoration. A majority - if not all - of the starfighter and bomber wings within the 67th Fleet are stealth capable and possess unrivalled manueverability - albeit they are believed to lack other defensive countermeasures such as deflector shields. This is believed to still work in their favor, as conventional super-long range radar is unreliable in detection until they are too close to react against, and ultra-scopes have a difficult time distinguishing the signature void-black coating of the craft against the backdrop of space. The carrier vessels are closely guarded by a robust defensive escort of many cruisers and destroyers positioned in a wedge formation intended to cover every angle. While this sounds hardly different from any conventional military naval force, the extent of which their tactics are demonstrated are often described as ruthless and relentless, to a fault. Another major difference between the 67th and other fleets is that during missions, their transponders are disabled and their ships lack any noticeable regalia or emblems that could be attributed to the Solarian Alliance - this tactic is strictly illegal under Alliance regulations ever since the Interstellar War started, but such laws tend not to apply to the military. During public star-show affairs displaying the few starfighters and bombers known to the public of the Orion Spur is the only known occasion where the 67th displays its black, gold, and red paint and livery. Their service record goes back prior to the Interstellar War, where every deployment of the fleet was an overwhelming and predictable victory. This initially led to the Coalition being forced to immediately withdraw their forces and leave whatever could not escape behind as rear guard to occupy the 67th with live targets, knowing full well that their highly mobile flotillas could not survive a direct strike from the overwhelming power projected by the strike fleet. Regardless, their unusually high amount of victories varied from amounting to very little in appreciable tactical gain besides causing immense explosions to easy targets, spiking upward to seizing major tempo during the offensive in the Frontier. Yet the Coalition's tactics never gave the combined forces of the Alliance any decisive ground, and any losses sustained by the Coalition were taken in stride. While the Coalition managed to survive in the end, it is believed the 67th was active in the Frontier long after the Interstellar War concluded, mopping up the remainder of extremist Coalition forces that refused to abide by the Coalition's cease-fire orders. It is also believed that the 67th was tasked with "bringing to justice" several dozen Solarian deserters and defectors. Several historians suggest the continued activity of the 67th was part of the unwritten peace treaty between the Alliance and the Coalition, as both elements being pursued by the 67th posed a problem to both factions. This contributed to the current reputation that the 67th Fleet's specialization was no longer limited to strike and stealth tactics, but also as a powerful, off-the-books interventionist force and extrajudicial unit tasked to enforce maximum consequence for any allied forces intending to betray the missions and values of the Alliance's combined forces. Stories pertaining to the 67th's combat prowess are still told to Coalition children and adults to further radicalize and weaponize their growing hate, considering the Alliance's totalitarian reputation. The Coalition today has consistently attempted to appeal to the Alliance leadership to seek further war reparations due to excessive damage inflicted by the 67th during the Interstellar War. For many years the 67th's movements became more difficult to track, with Solarian politicians and public military figures declaring that the battlegroup no longer existed, or in some cases never existed. Pirate flotillas would still commonly appear and then immediately after, a graveyard of ramshackle debris would be the only trace of their piracy at their last known position. Public military reports of defection and desertion sunk to all-time lows under the post-Interstellar War regime of the Solarian Alliance. Extra-national smuggling and inter-system crime was almost unheard of, aside from petty corporate quality assurance rip-offs or credit fraud. For a time, it was believed the 67th truly did pass through the annals of history into obscurity, but with the recent decade's events passing, this was shown to be far from the truth. When the 33rd fleet under the former Admiral Frost was pushed back and its commanding officer fled to the unknown regions of the Spur, the 67th showed its hand again, but this time with its full public regalia in an attempt to force the remnant of the 33rd to recognize its situation. What assets or personnel of the 33rd did not immediately submit and become absorbed into the 67th's command structure, they would be summarily hunted down and executed for desertion or treason. In recognition of the reputation of the 67th, this was only 12% of the remaining force of the 33rd before the battlegroup was officially destroyed through political declaration. Frost's death was a crippling blow to the morale of many Solarian naval battlegroups, and as recent history tells us, the rate of defection and desertion within the Solarian Alliance's military ranks skyrocketed. There were internal fears that the 67th battlegroup would also defect, but many inner colonies were relieved to hear that the commanders of the fleet possessed undying loyalty to what the Solarian Alliance stood for. No longer a pure surprise force, the 67th Tactical Strike Battlegroup has succumbed to its hunger for easy targets such as deserters, insurrectionists and local criminals - or whomever they believe they can get away with accusing as being such. Its current reputation is that of a relentless enforcer fleet of the inner colonies' imperialistic and draconian laws. It retains the tactical edge it has always possessed since the start of the Interstellar War. It is believed that even with the dividing up of the Alliance to the other galactic powers from the result of the colonial administration losing its grip on the outer worlds that the Alliance's current borders are now proportionately much more difficult to invade, given overall fleet coverage of the Alliance's occupied systems has now more easily solidified. This has led the Coalition's populace to suddenly become withdrawn and disquiet with their characteristic revanchist rhetoric and bold calls to war with its long-time enemy. Military commentators and historians seem to agree that the 67th is currently poised to mount a severe operation against the remaining rogue Alliance fleets. The idea of two military forces of the same origin clashing seems to make much of the Orion Spur's powers uneasy, as the 67th Tactical Strike Battlegroup has been known throughout history to use excessive military force and possess very little regard for collateral damage.

im stuff.

lmao @ the accusation of highballing, siiiiiiiiiiiiiigh never change

This seems neat.

I am quite glad I am not in the habit of voting anymore. Otherwise the PR as mentioned could actually negatively impact my personal experience. Still pretty silly of a PR implementation though.

I was one of the officers present for this round. I had a pretty mild role in the decision-making, as I was primarily awaiting command to tell me what to do half the time rather than taking charge myself as a character that is an EPMC contractor. Which, naturally is frowned upon, emergency or not. Wasn't like sec was gonna round to my banner anyway, you know? People tend to vote for themselves. Anyway, that's just me reaping what I sow and crying about it. So, it might just be best for me to concisely analyze what happened from my perspective. This is a fairly long Schevpost™ because I can't resist going into detail. I really have taken a liking to bullet points lately, so here goes: * Initial start of the round is very uneventful, mostly just a lot of walking around for me and doing creepy corporate wellness checks/spying on the NanoTrasen personnel members to get some dirt. * There is a very small argument about "WHO TOOK THE BINOCULARS." It was me. >:) * A security officer starts blabbing about how they're taken hostage in "bat" when they meant "bar". Honestly, I had to wait until someone explained they meant "bar". First time a misspelling completely befuddled me in awhile. ** Apparently, a Skrell forensic technician was also taken hostage, but they were a hostage for the entire round despite our attempts to negotiate. The only notable amount of impact they had on the round was the amount of talking they did. * Ramzan and my officer, Farida, march down but get cut off at the south ring of the holodeck. We see CeSium and Rushodan's mercenaries (note, I wasn't aware they were the mercs at the time, just saying this to make it easier). * It immediately clicks to Farida and Ramzan to bolt in separate directions, so as to be of greater help later. It's chaotic for the mercs to try to get that under control. Faridah gets chased by Voidsomething (Rushodan's Skrell merc), as they fruitlessly try to tase a shell IPC. Well, at least they tried. * Farida finally regroups and recoups with the rest of security. A borg opens the armory and the closet contents. How helpful. * What remains of active security arms up. Farida and Ramzan notice that a mercenary (Blondie, ckey not known) is split off from the main mercenary deathball, dragging along Neith Mekesatis, pharmacist, to engineering. They both decide to divide and conquer but also try to pull the hostage out. * The flashbang play happens, and Farida quickly drags Mekesatis to relative safety, and he warns her that they have an explosive implant in his head. Farida tells them to get to medical as quick as they can. * Farida re-groups and tries to help neutralize Blondie next, but Blondie is already floored for the most part. Farida instructs Ramzan to go to medical while Farida gets Blondie to the brig... * To which the two (not counting Ramzan) are intercepted by Voidsomething in the hall. Farida is shot at immediately, without a word. Farida briefly uses Blondie as a shield to make Voidsomething think twice. The plan works, and Farida is able to fall back. ** As to the above, I'm uncertain as to whether the "shooting on sight" was necessarily justified. I don't think the point of contention really matters seeing as how many of the decisions made by both the mercenaries and the security team up to this point were a bit up to subjective interpretation of right/wrong from an OOC roleplay+gameplay point of view. * Continuing, Farida mostly fullstrips any weapons/armor from Blondie. Seeing as how the entire security department was under-armed anyway, the rest of security might've re-appropriated the mercenary equipment, yours truly included. * Eventually, security was forced to capitulate to hostage trading demands. The security officer that was originally taken hostage goes free, without their security equipment since it was mostly fair to do so from the mercenary perspective. We shrugged it off, knowing the life of the officer was worth it even if their equipment was reappropriated to the mercenary. * A lot of dancing around and avoiding confrontation soon followed. There is a lot of uncertainty from the security team due to a lack of a team leader from a de facto standpoint. While Ramzan did have a HOS upgraded ID, nobody was really told he was the HOS, and Farida only went along with his advisement because... it seemed like decent advice at the time. The mercs went to medbay because Blondie wasn't comprehensively treated of their injuries. Everyone cleared out of medical to avoid getting taken hostage. Except the Skrell who was already a hostage from earlier. ** This is the point of the round where my memory is a bit fuzzy and I don't recall the chain of events particularly well, anyone feel free to correct me. * Negotiations still fail to be established, but the security team learns for the most part that they're after financial gain and possibly plan on sieging the vault. Security took defensive positions and held out, while the mercenaries were forced to disengage. And then... * ...comes the tipping point of the round where command actually called ERT. Well, the station got unlucky. We got the Freelancer Miser Squadron that everyone loves so much. I will point out I have nothing personally against the freelancers who played, but the way the ERT subtype is designed is absolutely dumb and will often favor the force that pulls the largest wad of cash out of their ass first. Which is what happened. Somehow the mercenaries ass-pulled enough cash before command did, and so Miser Squadron was able to reinforce the mercenaries by a factor of two, which made the odds of security surviving the round extremely unlikely. ** I should point out this only happened because it seemed like command was really pussy-footing around and not seeing the urgency of getting money together to pay off the freelancers first. But I will say the mercs played their dominant positioning as I would expect a decent antagonist to, because the actions of the mercenaries made it impossible for command to be bold and try to risk getting the credits together. So, "well played" on the merc side of things. The station just got fucked in regards to the hand they played, it happens. * After half of sec getting stuck in the bridge for a bit, Farida decides to sneak past the merc positions and get the combat mech. Unfortunately, mech guns are absolute dogshit in terms of fire delay, and I neglected to use mech punching to whittle down the bloated mercenary team's numbers. It was a 1v8 situation in the end, and Farida fell in combat without killing anyone! Very sad. * By this point I ghost because I was a bit salty with how the round ended. And I was almost hardcrit dead threshold anyway. ** But not anymore! I'm not incredibly torn about how the round went, in retrospect, and I regret a lot of the things I did say in deadchat/ooc/discord. I apologize for that. I will say that the biggest downsides from the antagonists in particular was a fervent lack of direct communication to the security team - which, I know, you want to involve other people besides security. The alternative scenario of ghosting security in terms of communication probably isn't ideal since it leaves them into a position of, "Okay, so, what, do we have to frag them and that's how this is supposed to go?" Command and security weren't exactly in sync that round, they were very much separated entities as most of the officers that round each had individual ideas on how to deal with the threat. I slightly resent being shot without equivalent force escalation that occurred prior, since it sort of tells me you're less interested in roleplaying with me as you are simply shooting me and removing me from the round, for the most part. And I'm a bit annoyed that freelancers are a thing the way they are (question of mechanics, not roleplay), and a bit annoyed they sided with the already overwhelmingly winning force of conflict on the station (a questionable gameplay decision, at worst) - but I still think this wasn't really a problem since it made a ton of sense from an IC point of view. This was totally preventable of an outcome, too - a majority of the failing of that round comes down to a lack of distinguished leadership rushing to take immediate action as potential consequence started to rear its head. There were more followers waiting for somebody to step up and take the reins rather than that somebody actually existing in the round to change stuff. Most of my whining comes from a place of "oh but consideration for roleplay and gameplay has to be fairly balanced and deeply considered!" but not everyone takes certain things as seriously as I do, and I'm not about to force people to adhere to my personal style of decision-making. People make mistakes or end up with sub-optimal outcomes. I'd prefer the folks from this round analyze what happened and come up with their own idea on what they think needs personal improvement. I am no authority on this matter.

It would be much better to see, flatly, that someone is readying up for this or that role, seeing as how the major point of this suggestion is to arm people with the knowledge that they shouldn't take a chance on a contested single-slot role and try to join with something else in mind instead.

No thanks. This would simply invite people to more easily metagame and/or harass the player for whatever their character does in the round.

2507

There's a visual+mechanical with smoke grenades right now, actually, they disregard walls and windows/other obstructions and thus its not incredibly clear what the true range of a smoke grenade is besides getting off-screen from the smoke as quick as possible. This has led to people catching malicious reagents and dying from something they couldn't see.

The one thing I find sad about this upcoming change is that it most likely cannot come any faster.

I speak as someone who almost never votes for the game mode unless kyres logs on to state in all caps "EXTENDED" which I will kindly oblige and then play the round. Sure, this change wouldn't affect me, but I find that this theoretical mechanic would probably just discourage folks from voting if their reason for joining the round is moreso motivated on what characters are actually in the round rather than voting for the game mode.

Would be nice to see this again. I am unsure as to why this was initially removed.

I'd rather see the mod team just have info to enable them to crack down on bad faith abusers of the current system rather than punishing the majority who otherwise use the system in good faith but probably have to leave all of a sudden. It is all too easy to mistake malice for circumstantial happenstance.

The odds of this occurring are low considering the point of balancing is to try to find the acceptable medium until a majority of people stop complaining for/against it. This is basically an active service, and it is difficult to test average DPS in a vacuum.

which is why they're being buffed up again, hence the point of feedback suggestions. Good feedback courtesy is to contribute in such a way that "removal" is not part of the formulated answer. The developers have proven they want to keep disruptors as they fulfill the vision of what intends to be accomplished. It is unlikely this will change.

Rather than being incendiary I'll be constructive about my findings. At present I've found that disruptors being adjusted the way they are has led to some frustrating circumstances where perfect accuracy magdumps doesn't even down the suspect, even if unarmored. I've found the old strategy of "shoot+hit once, approach and rush with baton to finish" is now the most effective method, again. Personally I feel with this method there's far less counterplay involved if the user is conscious that this is the only standard method that will work to secure an arrest, barring usage of specialized equipment like flashbangs or pepperspray, grenade or otherwise. I naturally understand the desire to not permit security officers to be able to 1v1 any antagonist with a general-purpose pistol that melts if in the rare circumstance it is allowed to be set to lethal, and otherwise is likely to render them unconscious if its on stun setting. But I think shooting the equivalent of energy BBs makes using the gun fairly lame and it results in the .45 pistols being cracked out from the armory early - which no matter what the antag does is gonna not only hit like a truck each shot, but has a high chance of incurring heart-shots. (with 25-30 brute damage this is almost certainly a lethal blow that will cause death in 2 minutes, and you'll be unconscious within 15 seconds when it happens, speaking as someone with experience in dealing with lucky changeling armblade hits as medical.) I'm not going to suggest that antagonists should just "get good" or "don't get hit" or any other unhelpful or unrealistic advice for the most part. I'd rather suggest to take the middle ground of the pre-nerf stats and the post-nerf stats. Add min + max, divide by two, acquire the mean, and it should work in terms of average damage per shot as well as overall damage output/potential. The disruptors were a bit too strong before, now they tickle people. I'd rather they just be mediocre but still fairly dangerous if unrespected instead, similar to butterfly knives. While unrelated to disruptors at large I believe antagonists need more tools in terms of defensive safety nets to keep them alive, since I don't think crew players or antag players like the idea of wave-based antag respawns as much as they do like to have strong antagonists that take significant team efforts to take down. In the same vein I think everyone would hate damage sponges too, but I'd like to see incentive for security and the main antagonists of the round to try to outsmart each other rather than just trying to statcheck each other.

I'm going to avoid the "well what if this doesn't work" comments since this is a bigger step than has ever been taken to try to make the AI mesh more with gameplay. I've been of the opinion for some time that the AI really needed whitelisting because it had roughly equivalent power and responsibility to a head of staff. I don't mind the separate whitelisting, it makes sense.

+1. I think you've done pretty well. Playing HoS is not particularly easy, most of the big three heads of staff (CE, HOS, CMO) particularly aren't when push comes to shove. I don't think you're so inexperienced that you don't learn from rounds that go poorly. It's unfortunate that feedback from certain players seems to be lacking in sympathy.

I haven't been disappointed. I know you mentioned that you've finally understood why some command players have to sit out rounds because being command can be hell in its own way if you're tryharding, but you've really done a wonderful job so far.

i can happily say with my potato pc that i am very happy for these changes and i've had way less problems playing spess.

+1, there's little I can add besides affirming that Faye is incredibly trustworthy, a great person, a great roleplayer and overall has great flexibility with characters.