Scheveningen

They don't, Danse. It's a separate, and arguably subjective issue. Ultimately this is a game, however, and the way Aut'akh were implemented, they were quite bad for the game state, and things are better off now in my opinion that they are removed. I do not think that they at the time really had a justification for continued existence considering their actual importance to the rest of Unathi lore. As a separate subspecies, their existence made little if no sense. It would've made much more sense if Aut'akh was simply a concept in which a minority of Unathi would self-modify with synthetic prosthetics and such. What we got was instead an extremely radical group of mecha lizards that blow raspberries from inside the Wasteland at the Hegemon. It doesn't surprise me that an overwhelming amount of staff wanted it removed considering how much of a mistake it was in the first place.

I personally have few arguments regarding the lore side apart from my misgivings about how Aut'akh are the most glaring subversion of everything Unathi lore stood for initially. It's... notably less relevant, in any case, compared to some actual concerns that need to be levied over lore content. Before I touch on that, I don't have an issue with Unathi having augmentations or partial prosthetic reconstruction, for various reasons I think that is better than bringing back the extreme of "Unathi FBPs" outright. To be perfectly honest, I'd prefer if the concept of "Aut'akh" were reserved to it being a concept of varying degrees of modification instead of a subspecies of its own. On the mechanics side... where to begin? Aut'akh from the balance side of things was a goddamn nightmare. They essentially had the upsides of organics and IPCs bundled into one, with very few of the glaring downsides of either. Aut'akh could self-repair with nanopaste and that was really just absurd because Aut'akh antagonists would apply nanopaste to themselves and fix most external issues straight away. While they certainly had an ion vulnerability similar to IPCs, it didn't mean terribly much due to their ridiculous sustainability as antagonists. Compared to humans, they were much more oppressive to deal with as antagonists because they could cheat away damage while antagonists of more mortal qualities had to deal with bone breaks and more serious cases of bleeding. Not to mention all those free goodies they got as combitools and built-in augments. That was not a fun time. Due to the nature of Aut'akh being FBPs essentially, I recall a few occurrences where any chest/head damage dealt to an Aut'akh was uncharacteristically healed away anyway. Further, Aut'akh don't need to be limited to just nanopaste, but welding tool and wires to fix themselves on the fly was also mechanically possible. IPCs can't exactly do that. There were a lot of unaddressed issues with Aut'akh from the balance side of things before it was subsequently removed. The question of adding them back would also bring back the question of addressing everything I mentioned in terms of their design as well as anything I didn't mention, because I most likely did not cover everything there is that Aut'akh had raw strengths in. Speaking of how awful they were in-game to deal with either as an antagonist myself or when they were the antagonist and I had to deal with them, well. I think Alb probably did the best possible thing in throwing Aut'akh temporarily into the trash bin. Another thing with the question of bringing Aut'akh back. As far as I can reckon, I don't think there seems to be any real lore maintainer interest in continuing to develop Aut'akh, for reasons that might end up being somewhat self-evident. With sub-species shenanigans (especially to the scale of prosthetically hyper-modified Unathi people, as opposed to "I'm a cat except I'm white") comes the implication that they're a minor faction of Unathi that has to be relevant in the scheme of things and must have active development in terms of lore to justify their continued existence, because quite literally everything they stand for is in absolute opposition to Unathi general views on body modification and their rather cold outlook on synthetics. If they're to be brought back, I would want to see actual development from them on the lore side, and not just pushed away as some side thing, because that's how bloat happens. To actually add to the conversation though: if Aut'akh are to come back, they shouldn't be a subspecies. Just, no. None of that snowflake stuff again, please. If this is to come back, it should be integrated into Unathi for the most part, and individual Aut'nathi can essentially decide for themselves how to stylize themselves on a scale of "My pinky is made of aluminum" to "YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS TO COMPLY" (which, while I don't think FBPs fit this server, I'll deal with it if it becomes an actual possibilty). And I honestly hope we do not get those weird Aut'akh internal organs which served very little function besides fluff.

casting couch moment

Assuming my post is still relevant to this to even necrobump (tbf this was posted in discord chat just now): I'm supportive of any change that helps fix the continuity. It's a little silly that Miranda was effectively conceived around the time Xavier was 114. Impressive as that may be, of course, this is Moses-tier continuity.

come back and finish the job, biggu bossu...~

When has that happened in the former case? Same question with the latter, as staff have upheld a zero-tolerance policy on peanut posting. Complaints rarely get out of hand anymore.

Thank you for calling attention to my thread. Re: reporting powergaming, my personal opinion is that I am tolerant of degrees of powergaming (i.e., a diona photocopying apparitions) from a player behavior standpoint as I believe that being vindictive against "powergaming" [which is in many situations a subjective determination] can be problematic and toxic, but I'm less tolerant of game mechanics being able to support such cheese. Since this is a multiplayer game, there should be as less cheese as possible, since there's no computer opponent involved that needs fat stats to be competitive with the player. I generally don't feel strongly about someone owning me in a video game with a specific cheese method, though with some exceptions of cheese, the fact that it was even possible to do in the first place can annoy me enough to campaign in attempting to get such a feature removed if it truly is that cheesy. My personal belief is that most people are playing diona just fine, but it is tiresome how absurdly overpowering diona are in terms of their stats, immunities, etc, and they become very tedious antagonists to have to be in conflict with. It's a mechanics issue and not really a roleplay issue. The roleplay is just fine, and anyone who says otherwise has personal bias involved.

Construct spam isn't the issue here. Constructs require a dead body to convert into a killing machine. It requires some measure of effort to kill, soul-stone them, and then put them into a construct frame. Risen ghosts require a single click and then they're off to do shit. Further, the only way to sensibly nerf diona is to remove their ability to ignore consequences as a cultist by removing their ability to use cult magic, which requires blood. The same deal applies for golems and IPCs, but it is an inverse case because an IPC cultist is literally the worst antagonist experience in the entire game. A suggestion that was already posted was to make cult converted IPCs/diona still allied to the cult, which is fine. Snowflake stuff that makes them cultified requires more effort and time, but would also not only fix the issue but give back what was initially taken, as well as adding more to the game. Ultimately, diona cultists being able to photocopy risen ghosts with no consequence is not a status quo that should be allowed to stay.

You can't, you lose blood and die if you try to do what dionaea and golems can do in terms of raising manifested ghosts. Dionaea suffer zero consequence for doing this.

Outside of scope, I only view dionaea and golems as problematic during cult as they generate numbers out of thin air and it is bullshit. I have no issue with them one on one.

You can code a quick snowflake item that allow lesser related borg modules to just pop one down and that's all they get.

Dionaea and golems -- plus IPCs by extension, mutate the cult game mode into something really ugly. In the case of dionaea and golems, they are practically given absurd amounts of staying power as cultists given their absurd existing immunities to pain and various other circumstances. This last round I played as of this post, a diona cultist spawned 4 manifested ghosts (apparitions) without any real cost to themselves. Seeing as how they do not really need to stand on a rune for this to work, and it costs them nothing to do this, they can effectively spawn 4-5 of them and rush security down with no-pain feeling mannequins that have cult armor, which is heavily resistant against security's baseline arsenal. It takes an inordinate amount of time to kill them as well. To contrast, a human being can't do this without losing all their blood immediately. Same principle applies for golems which also do not feel pain or have blood, so presumably they can do this too. Xenobio cultist is pretty unfair as well. Golems are enslaved to the person that summons them anyway, ain't that enough? As to the matter of IPCs their situation is radically different. Instead, IPCs are massively disadvantaged due to not having automatic self-healing mechanics and all it takes is a damaged leg to be stunlocked. Instead this is a matter of principle and reason, if the dionaea and golems cannot be cultists for one IC reason or another, if it applies also for the IPCs they should have it removed too, otherwise it makes no consistent sense. In the case of IPCs I propose that instead that we add back the feature that turns them into constructs instead for conversion.

I'm of the opinion AI simultaneously needs balance changes and a requirement of a command whitelist. The AI has as much power over the station as the captain, but they function at the near bottom of the chain of command, which is the reverse of the captain. This sort of role requires an understanding of the general pecking order and the AI does not really have many safety nets for newer players to avoid doing poorly. The AI is not a noob-friendly role, and in my opinion should be put into the command whitelist in addition to other balance changes. We sort of need people who we can trust to do well to start with playing as -- and especially roleplaying as -- AI. Borgs can, and already do, serve as a step-stool to understanding how synthetics interact with the station and with other remote control devices at sight range. Balance should come first before the whitelisting, but I view it pretty much imperative that high-power, high-responsibility, high-roleplay requirement roles require a whitelist of some sort. The fact the AI has not been included in this for so long is merely a long-standing oversight.

I think charging the lore team with the effort of removing some of the offensive/low-quality books from the database would be a worthy venture. There is a ton of library bloat right now.

As far as I know, exsanguination doesn't show up as a specific cause of death on a forensic scanner. A corpse that is body scanned through the advanced scanner, or the medical analyzer, will indicate something is up by pointing out horribly low blood oxygenation of someone drained of blood, not necessarily that it points to a specific cause of death, though. I don't think vampire bites should leave DNA, just a mark on that character. It'd be spooky, weird, for the most part. When played reasonably well, nobody will know there's a vampire onboard (or is not allowed to let people know) with the current system. Lings drop bodies, vampires do not, that is the difference.

cute

I'd support this, I suppose.

No chance for a short-term change?

The fulton recovery system is a real-life device. It does actually work, MGS5 just greatly exaggerates how frequently it is used.

I know kyres did a lot of lovely work on the cargo shuttle, but I'll be real: I think the cargo shuttle is a bit of a problem at the moment. Logistically it is a mess since it only returns to CentComm when manually sent back, and this is bad for various logistical reasons. A cargo shuttle is quite expensive to dispatch to an auxiliary station and back. This is also a pain in the ass for gameplay reasons as already mentioned. Therefore, I have looked to another video game to see how it handles its admittedly rather weird on-site logistics: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. This game is admittedly not even close to being realistic, but the Fulton Recovery System as implemented is incredibly interesting due to how it interacts with kidnapping everything you find on sight via repurposed weather balloon, and likewise should you need equipment in the field, the game gives you an opportunity to drop in new equipment on site by parachute dropping a cardboard crate into the field, either to resupply your existing stuff or giving you new equipment. Therefore, I suggest the following concept for incoming equipment: 1. Remove the cargo shuttle, and the unnecessary interface surrounding the dispatch of the cargo shuttle. What remains of the interface not related to the cargo shuttle can stay. 2. Remap the cargo shuttle landing area, and then some additional space, to include a Delivery Pad. The vicinity of the delivery pad is not dependent on the pad itself, but rather a glowing device in the center as a "Logistics Beacon". 3. The aforementioned Logistics Beacon can be moved, disassembled, rebuilt (such as through purchasing the logistics beacon circuitboard, or making one through RnD) at any time, as well as designated as a delivery site through cargo. Beacons of this nature cannot be deployed in areas that have a roof above it, as that would be impossible to reasonably ship crates. Having VueUI support for a drop-menu that can select any existing Logistics Beacon on the Aurora map would be amazeballs. 4. Cargo ordering should be made to work similarly as it used to, except instead of delivering a shipment via one cargo shuttle, the crate is loaded with the assorted goods in the ETA downtime, and then is sent to transit by an out-of-game delivery drone to ICly explain away how a crate appears and slams down on the surface of the station. The delivery drone's presence is announced over the common radio, and warns to get clear of the vicinity. 5. The crate is then dropped into the landing zone, with some random variance to where it lands, though it should always land within cargo's roundstart Delivery Pad zone. Cargo staff have to go EVA to fetch it. Good excuse to give cargo technicians external airlock access. For outgoing shipments meant for CC to further preserve the supply line thematic of cargo: 1. Cargo starts with a few of, and can order Fulton Bluespace Recovery Devices. Totally not a rip-off of the wormhole Fulton, this is an expensive device meant to be attached to a packaged crate, which then is activated after a second and bluespess'd (hopefully with a neat animation?) straight to Central Command, based on whatever the crate can hold. BDRDs cannot be attached to containers with living, or dead beings inside them, as a safety precaution. Because they are limited, single-use per item, Cargo should make a point to keep buying them so they do not run out. 2. Depending on what was sent to Centcomm, bounties will be fulfilled and the cargo account should automatically be granted the normal cash amounts within one minute. One other tidbit, as my suggestion: 1. Traitors should be able to emag cargo to send a parachute'd crate without the delivery drone message alerting the station of the shipment.

There is doublethink going on. You're projecting your own distrust of staff to justify that there should more policy, more rules, more regulations for staff to work with. That makes no sense. That's giving them more power. What makes you think even head staff are immune to this, hypothetically speaking? Hell, instances of toxic environments have been well documented and often go all the way to the top in terms of responsibility. Read this article and tell me if you think giving more oversight powers to the board of directors/HR at Riot is a good response to that situation: https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483 Or don't, I'm not your dad. This isn't to draw comparisons as if the head staff here are remotely comparable to the above article, though, but rather to highlight what a real worst-case scenario looks like. Aurora is, thankfully, nowhere close, and the current staff line-up is doing a damn good job at preventing that uncertain future. I don't think you get to determine whose arguments are rational when you've essentially suggested to create a staff program that bypasses the oversight of the majority of the existing volunteerforce, as well as essentially encouraging people to inform on their neighbors to bypass an existing system that is honestly as transparent as it'll get. Just because you're comfortable with the concept doesn't mean this is a good idea. Radical change to a system to positively improve it cannot be done top-down, it must be done from the bottom-up, as many progressive businesses and work environments are already catching on to. And as you already mentioned and as most long-time community members already know, staff exist to be reached out to regarding any concern of behavior regarding specific community members. This doesn't have to per se have to be about a bully, it can be about someone who seems notably depressed and could be at risk of hurting themselves in the real world. I would even come forward and outright say I've been helped numerous times by staff just as a player in the regard of just feeling less shitty about myself. Those staff members didn't have to step up to try and improve my day but they did anyway. And it's a bit upsetting to me to see threads like this, because either people haven't experienced that kind of outreach of kindness yet due to not knowing about someone having a problem, or people are just taking for granted how much staff do for this place, for free, literally. It legitimately baffles me that you've been here for so long, and your response is "staff did bad before, they could do bad again, so let's set up an official inform-on-your-neighbor channel to deter this happening again!" because I absolutely assure you that given enough time, that official channel would evolve into something genuinely ugly based on how the community would end up using it. Humans are not inherently bad people, but they're highly adaptive. They'll retaliate when attacked, which leads to more retaliation and petty fighting, self-defense is human nature. We don't need more reason to fight each other, just please no. I've seen enough 10+ page forum drama threads that I've had my fill of SpaceDrama intrigue forever.