Scheveningen

Yeah there's a pretty strange bit of doublethink going on here, how does someone simultaneously think Aurora staff is abusive/filled with bullies and power abusers, and then think that more policy changes, more procedure, and more regulation on the staff side would somehow fix this? Doesn't it stand to reason that would only make this worse for everyone who is not in the "staff bully" category? Because the reality is that if there were abusive staff members at the current moment, they'd probably be skirting by because they don't break the rules, they obey them but with a maliciously compliant twist. It's relatively easy to get away with it since they're obeying the rules. Which is why "more rules" doesn't often help, and in fact harms the capability of the benign and actually caring staff members to be aware of problems and do their job without red tape in the way. Leaning towards agreeing with Prate in this instance, the very premise of this suggestion seems to misunderstand the role of the Shadow Council, the majority of the logistics bulk is carried by the combined efforts of the lower ranked staff, and higher staff proportionately deal with only strategic/tactical/operational problems of higher importance. "This person is harassing me" and "this person who is staff is harassing me" exist in the same category, but only one is more serious than the other. I think it should fall to the respective team leader to decide at the end of the day, and public reports do the job well. They allow the accuser and the accused to discuss the problem and argue their case for the broader community, also giving examples of how to respond or how not to respond, respectively. Staff gets the opportunity to judge the situation with the evidence they're armed with, and sift context from content. I cannot see "confidential reports" as an official system being particularly fair and beneficial for the community in the long-run, especially in the instances where accusations of harassment are from a subjective viewpoint and not an objective one. Here's the thing: a human's judgement cannot always be right. I see far more abuse from an Stasi-like system where people are encouraged to inform on other players or staff to the shadow council every little out-of-context incriminating detail (that fucks with the Shadow Council's purpose anyway, and would flood them with a shit-ton of information that is often not objective or substantiated with impartial context), and the person being informed upon gets no chance to defend themselves, and I just view that as far more insidious than what we have currently. It would murder any trust between players, staff (who are also players) and any contributors for this game, in its bed. We'd be so much worse off with this. The current system has flaws but it's better than anything else right now.

I'd prefer fang marks be left on victims, provided the individual isn't wearing a full face cover. That isn't terribly spoiling.

Having evidence that something is afoot and antag presence is around is rather important imo. Stealthing the entire round without being noticed or leaving notable impact is a very boring way to play, and an equally boring thing to deal with.

Hello, I am interested. Also, what is the anime name of the girl in your profile picture?

What would be the point of employing staff, then? You don't think moderators or admins should get a say in how to deal with abusive community members, including staff among themselves? Further, this brings up an incredibly important question: Who watches the watchmen who watch the watchmen?

>no chance of survival >only species that can be revived post-brainmed I too get upset when I get sniped from across the map in a shooter game because I was standing still and not considering whether or not my character model was sitting in the crosshairs of someone else. Well no, that's a bit of a fib, because I know exactly what the cost is of playing a video game and standing still expecting not to be owned, and I don't get particularly upset anymore when someone goons me in a video game. I likewise recognize how fruitless it is to complain about a game mechanic that is meant to be strong at a specific task, in the case of a sniper rifle it's meant to excel at long-range engagements and reward you with an instant kill if you manage to get a headshot which is a very hard entity to hit if its moving, and medium difficulty to hit if it is not moving. Conversely, I don't see the point of complaining about the ion rifle/EMPs being effective against synthetics and IPCs. That is their function. You know what also oneshots in this game against organics? A shotgun loaded with buckshot will likely instant crit anyone at point blank-to-close range if they do not have any notable armor, if not instantly kill them in a single shot. There should be consequence to playing IPCurity after all since a majority of threats human sec officers face in their line of work literally do not exist when applied to the contextual circumstances of IPCurity. They don't breathe, they don't feel pain, G2s have ridiculous grab stats and damage reduction. I do not like the thought of being close range to a G2. Given the opportunity they'd just as well attempt to quickly pacify me ASAP given the chance. Since people in this thread greatly underestimate how quickly various lethal methods can neutralize organic threats, let me give some excellent examples of weapons with absurdly high damage output that people just sleep on. .45 caliber guns, either the pistol or submachinegun. When applied to the arms or hands they easily cripple the combat capability of anyone without necessarily killing them. Shotguns do what .45s do even better by massive bursts of damage that liably end fights in an instant. Slugs are really not as good anymore except against absurd amounts of armor, buckshot's generally more cost effective. Laser rifles perform excellently as both assault weapons and personal defense weapons. Carbines are flexible for dealing lethal and non-lethal damage for whatever the situation mandates, but they don't have as good staying power as the above weapons do. The traitor revolver is loud but neutralizes people quite fast. I prefer to declaw my opponents rather than outright killing them, but aim for the head if you really want to ruin someone's day. Baseball bats are absurdly overpowered, like Jesus Christ they're ridiculous. The other improvised weapons like plasteel butterfly knives and such are also absolutely insane at dealing damage. And let's not sleep on how versatile and unexpected the security maglite can be in bashing a dude's face in. And then there's exactly one ion rifle on the station-side which incidentally can ruin one IPC's day in particular. I think it's very unfortunate to have your round shut down when your preferred IPC subspecies is incredibly resistant to everything but the ion rifle but I'm really not empathizing.

IPCs do not have direct counterplay without the existence of EMPs.

IPCs cannot internally bleed and getting hit with two 20 damage bullets in the same limb at full damage is a guaranteed occurrence of internal bleeding. While the meta is "whoever stuns first wins", IPCs cannot suffer from damage-over-time effects caused by ballistic or brute damage, they can only die through bursts of said damage or being left out in a vacuum/plasma fire.

Not a good idea. Having free rule enforcement agency for the admins/mods is rather important so that they don't become physically unable to do their job because of a pointless bureaucracy requirement. This rule isn't a very important one compared to other things, and permabans are generally not handed out for this issue. Can't speak as to whether there's staff turmoil or major disagreement because a staff member points out that something is a reference name. I highly doubt it, though. One of my character's last name is Bolivar, but they're not even remotely related to the historical liberator of Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama from a few hundred years past as someone once weirdly pointed out in IC. As you already pointed out with the Donald Trump reference this is already a self-defeating point. So no, neither should be allowed. It's really not that hard to come up with an original character name, just go to a character name generator based on ethnic groups. Bastardize the name if you're playing a xeno according to what xeno names normally would sound like, etc. A name like "Iroquois Pliskin" very much sticks out considering it is an unusual, Coolguy McName. But even a proper name like Russell Bell is a no-go either, because that's directly referencing a character to The Wire. https://thewire.fandom.com/wiki/Russell_Bell "Rule ambiguity" in this case is really not that ambiguous, it's pretty simple to avoid character names that are direct references to pop culture characters or real people. The rule is broad as is so it can be interpreted to however drastic a situation can get.

It's stupid that Aut'akh got cybernetic augmentations first but let us all not pretend like retconning everything in favor of humans will help here. Apart from Aut'akh, anyway, but I digress as that's not the subject matter. What we have now certainly isn't great but I'd have to say people are imagining stuff when they make mention of humans being underpowered or etc-- like, you're playing a human. Did we conveniently forget humans populate the galaxy the most? There are several human nations with their own power projection and agendas. The Unathi got one relevant faction and that's the Hegemony. The Tajaran people are embroiled in a never-ending cold war with each other, the Vaurcae are the only species close to being a superpower comparable to all of humanity combined but none of the hives can reproduce any of their Golden Age technology anymore. It's like people take social advantages for granted until they don't have them.

I like using The Elder Scrolls as a good example of how I view species balance on Aurora. Each of the races in TES has their own distinguishing traits, most of them based on their resistances to their natural climate and thus resistance to most natural hazards. Humans are essentially Imperials and vice versa. They're milquetoast for the most part, and their strengths comes twofold: versatility and being socially well established. They have no notable strengths and no notable weaknesses either, they're a good starting point to make a character and they're not very complex to play -- which often means it's much easier to make an Imperial character that is well-defined and effective. You can still play as a human/Imperial and experience the game essentially the same way. Tajaran/Khajiit have some similar details as well, they're both fast and agile. Fast-er and more agile than humans/imperials. Speed is certainly important with certain playstyle focuses, but because Tajara/Khajiit only have notable strengths in that category and weaknesses in almost every other, it limits their strategy and ability to survive certain situations. Any strength can become a weakness in any case if an individual's strength is deliberately turned against them, for example. Breaking the legs of the Tajaran makes them go zoomy zoom zoom no more (sure, this also works for some others), and they're far more vulnerable to ballistic gunfire than anyone else, really. Especially if you play M'sai and get a cluster of buckshot to the legs. The Unathi have burst-sprints and mild brute resistance as their strength, allowing them to mildly resist gunfire and melee weapons. However, they get wrecked by freeze rays (seriously, I've killed someone in an Unathi breacher this way), other types of gassing, acid, and lasers. Skrell have limited psionics but are expected to have the greatest psionic development in those types of rounds. They've a better headstart than most, but it doesn't count for very much. IPCs are IPCs. They cannot bleed out, they feel no pain, have some of the best up-front resistances, have absurd grappling values but get wrecked by EMPs pretty much instantly. So what do humans have? None of those weird attributes. And they shouldn't. Presumably, humans are meant to outsmart and get the jump on their opponent. This isn't too different from when SS13 had no xeno races. Humans are generally flexible and have no notable weaknesses so that they can implement virtually any robust strategy and keep a tool of every kind in their pocket for any situation. Humans are much hardier than Tajarans but not as hardy as IPCs, so getting hit is undesirable but not round ending like for a Tajaran. Human sprint speed is not great but at least it's not like the Unathi who can only run 10 tiles in a couple seconds before wearing out. Humans flat out play better as survivalists, using cleverness and their knowledge of the situation to their own advantage. They're physically and socially capable at every situation but must use appropriate tactics for each. If it sounds difficult: good. Nothing worthwhile to play should be easy and boring.

Yeah this is less relevant considering the improved state of the community by now, this can be closed.

Sorry, what? A laser gun is not difficult to obtain, in fact the lasercrank icelancer rifles from cargo are dirt cheap and essentially have 3 shot capacity and infinite ammo cranks that can be cranked on the move. Not to mention that dexalin plus gas grenades are actually piss easy to make and kill Vaurcae with. Okay, I see the point here. You're attempting to convey the concept that humans should be mechanically more powerful than everyone else.

I agree with this post, I think it would be nice if we had virtual combatants to spar against too.