Scheveningen

I can attest for the historical hostility of Bauser and Dasfox. Less so for Butterrobber, as he is generally 'chill' in most circumstances and otherwise just a comedian. It's not unbelievable that he'd go too far though. If yet another complaint is what's required to handle the former two's horrible attitudes for good, then so be it.

It's a great solution to the problem, for sure. +1

..maybe next week.

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/5635 The implementation of modular protoguns, while initially cool, was largely limited by the presence of firing pins in guns, and the fact it's heavily reliant on R&D being competent and mining also bringing in enough materials to mass-print a bunch of guns. While the balance implications are obvious, I'm of the mind that it's okay to make slightly extreme changes and then dial it back if they end up too strong. Though to be fair, some protoguns were in a perpetual state of 'suck'. The bad kind. Slightly off-topic; something i considered was adding additional tiers of the basic components (not the modifiers) of a protogun. And rehashing the usefulness of some of the other modifiers. Out of scope for now, since I'd like to see if simply adding more modifier slots would be better. Please just stack surge protectors on your guns.

Yes plz to multi-Z brig where it actually matters. If the main part of the communal brig itself is on the sub-level where prisoners go up or down an elevator, that'd be fantastic. Set the armory down there too so that in a staged break-out situation, they can immediately rush to arm themselves some distance away if they got busted out with help. Add some maintenance tunnels to snake between the various departments as well, of course, especially to security. This would be very helpful for engineering revs or just traitors who wanna bust their buds out in general. As long as it's a balance of "strong, but vulnerable in some areas enough", that'd be fine.

I suppose? I tend to think suicide bombing, while it happens IRL and creates horrific stories to tell about for the survivors, tends to be very punishing for characters involved in it... especially if there aren't survivors of suicide bombings in-game. Am I on a watchlist for writing that? Jesus. It's an odd balance to strike for that reason. I would talk about the implications this has on combat as an, "I lose, but you do too" button but it honestly doesn't matter as much as the roleplay integrity concerns.

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/5629 To specify, certain spam messages such as the ever-appropriate 'Is your sexlife growing dull? Your late-night sessions growing short? Have you considered Unathi testicle transplants? Greater stamina, greater virility, greater fun' - are being removed and replaced with something actually befitting of the setting. Because one, Unathi do not have transplants for sexual contact to that degree, this is not a scalie server, it's obviously a scorpion one. Two, three, and four, if you like ERP you deserve to be heads-first thrown out the door. I'll make it a project to add more spam recipients to create larger pools of variation (and also make it so that the lore for the setting has some referential stuff for people to ask questions about and learn more about if interested) within the near future, but this is a 'higher priority' thing than that simply due to the nature of some of the content of certain spam messages being far and beyond the PG-13 filter that the server is supposed to be. While I don't mind the existence of badkitty.nt, Wetskrell and etc as references, the stuff regarding genital transplantation being referenced by in-game must go. Especially since unlike Wetskrell and the other fluff sites, some of the lewder spam are not appropriate for a server that possesses the above rules. It's also not even remotely funny/clever enough to warrant staying. Pussy wagon keys are ok, this is not.

I think Coalf failed to convey this properly, but the reason for your whitelist strip wasn't due to the actions of Marc Price alone. In fact, Marc Price the character was suspended by CCIA so as to give you, the player, a proper chance to reflect on exactly where your character's actions led them to that road. The reason the whitelist strip happened is due to the debacle with you playing Marc Price with a Y in order to seemingly spite the act of the character suspension, as apparently admitted in another thread. Basically, the administration and CCIA both saw it as you trying to 'bypass an IC ban', as it were. Might I ask why you did this? Was it really as a "screw you" to CCIA staff, or was it just a lapse of judgement due to frustration? I don't really care whether you did one or the other, just the intent behind it and how you plan on improving for the future.

As a note, the 7.62 damage model is pretty strong. While its 6 rounds short of the actual antagonist assault rifle, it's definitely not something to gloss over.

It's an actual application of force shown through a combat log, rather than a single click to totally disable someone from being able to escape handcuffs. It's for the same reasons stun batons do not in most situations instantly floor you, but instead stack up pain damage to floor you instead. It's the difference between a tenth of a second of reaction time and three seconds.

"Stop resisting" "Okay I warned you" *stun baton zap* It's not abuse. It's forcing compliance. It's in the law enforcement handbook throughout almost all nationalities to use force when diplomatic compliance hasn't worked. Especially if someone is trying their damndest to wrench themselves out of handcuffs.

It's not an argument, he's trolling. See, no, this is sort of the issue here that needs addressed. A lot of other games implement 'hard counters' in similar fashions like this but inevitably lead to the game being incredibly skewed against you if you don't pick something with such a blatantly overpowering advantage that nobody else gets to have. So unless you plan ahead and make a character explicitly designed for antagonism, i.e., male unathi, it leads to a very limited spectrum of gimmicks you can actually run as an antagonist. It's an unfair advantage Unathi have over every other species compared to what unique advantages they offer for playing. Being handcuffed and restrained is a round-ender for a player. The only thing that should be a round-ender to an antagonist is their death, not arbitrarily overloading handcuffing to have such the power to totally disable someone's ability to continue to antagonize while they're still alive. Telling someone that their only counterplay to being handcuffed is to suck it up and hope they re-roll antag next round as an Unathi on a roleplaying server simply for the mechanical advantages Unathi offer that nobody else gets to have is terrible design philosophy and goes against the very core of what makes this server interesting at all: antagonists and the experiences they create. Security should not have a guaranteed "I win" tool in the form of handcuffs. Handcuffing someone should not be a guarantee that you detain them, nor does it make sense that it should be an actual binary coinflip if your chances of escaping the handcuffs and security custody are based on the IQ amount of the officer detaining and processing the person handcuffed. handcuffs . Then it is useless, because it is not even applicable in 99% of the circumstances. How many times have you seen someone left in the hallway handcuffed? It almost never happens. A security officer has to be intentionally doing their job wrong, be mechanically terrible or inexperienced at security to enable someone else to be able to escape handcuffs as it stands. So how often do any of those apply? It is a very unlikely coinflip that any antagonist that gets detained by security will manage to be able to escape handcuffs. It takes two minutes, it is disrupted by movement or stuns which then forces you to reset. Resisting out of handcuffs may as well not exist for all anyone cares and it would have the same effect it does now. Let's count the amount of antagonists that can counter this. Ninja: Hardsuit blocks handcuffing attempts, otherwise a very healthy, balanced self-sustaining antagonist with on-demand mobility and powerful tools to outplay virtually anyone that stands against them. Wizard: Can't directly counter handcuffs but can teleport/jaunt/blink in order to relocate to an isolated area... only to have to be forced to wait two precious minutes in the round to remove themselves of handcuffs. If they get gagged and their clothes meta-removed, screwed. Traitor/Mercs: Freedom implant which costs precious amounts of TC, single-use only. Otherwise, they have no direct counterplay to handcuffs. Screwed in that situation. Changeling: Revive breaks handcuffs but is not very applicable in most situations. Lingspeak allows them to communicate with the other changelings who have no actual IC obligation to help their kin. Playing ling makes you screwed anyway due to how weak they are and how awful their ramp-up and dynamic of gaining power in the round is. Cultists: Screwed. Zero chance of immediately rescuing themselves with their mechanics. Revs/Loyalists: Screwed. Zero chance of immediately rescuing themselves with their mechanics. Vampires: Without vampire jaunt available; screwed. Raiders: Screwed if you aren't Vox. So no, the belief that current mechanics are sufficient to 'counter' handcuffs is not even applicable for 2/3rds of situations of the various antagonists. It's wrong to assert otherwise. Whoever has the restraints and pull on a nearby restrained character is able to have 100% control on what the other character can do in the round, and thus is holding not only the character hostage, but the player's time hostage as well. This is not something anyone should be capable of doing. It needs changed to something that actually gives people a fair chance to still come back into the round without killing themselves and respawning as a new character. I already suggested that resist spamming should lead to individuals having to suffer certain risks. Resisting out of handcuffs outside of help intent should consume stamina based on the severity of the attempt. If they don't have enough stamina, they can't resist again until they recharge that stamina, and that there will already be a five second cooldown between resist attempts before they can try again. This allows officers who are paying attention to respond to this and be ready for someone slipping out of handcuffs.

geeves is CUTE!!! CUTE!!! CUTE!!! but really he's undoubtedly one of the community pillars right around here and there's no question that he's a good roleplayer. i'd trust him with this.

That's ok, I feel like we don't get enough cases where security personnel don't mistreat people anyway

I suppose? I figure this would still work well within tandem with whatever ends up working with that. If leg cuffing was actually relevant that would be nice

Okay that sounded long-winded and confusing. What I mean is, wouldn't you rather have it so that resisting out of handcuffs is a coin flip instead of guaranteeing that your round is over just because a security officer is able to account for the mechanics of you escaping handcuffs and totally neutralize your chances of doing so? Fear not, I have a set of terrible ideas. Things we get rid of: Most arbitrary timers attached to weaseling out of handcuffs/cablecuffs/zipties. Things we keep: Mobs capable of cuffbreaking still retain their mechanics for breaking handcuffs. They will get a noise dependent on what restraints they break out of, but their mechanics are unchanged. Things we implement: Percentage chances of slipping out of restraints based on intent and restraining instrument quality. -- To explain further, as to what the consequences and nuances to some of these features will be: Help intent: Allows you to utilize a timer to slip out of handcuffs, but this process cannot be interrupted except by stuns. Even being moved will allow you to still continue. You'll slip out in one minute with cableties, 2 minutes with zipties, 3 minutes with handcuffs. As a catch, there is no emote process for this. But every 20 seconds, there's a small 5% chance that this process might be noticed and that the game will print out your tragic failure at being subtle. There is a sound effect for failure as well. Disarm intent: This is brute force but slightly stealthy, but not as stealthy as help intent. You have a 15/10/5% chance of instantly slipping out of restraints, based on the restraining model shown above. You always have a 20% chance to be exposed, with a sound effect to support it. The sound is not too loud though. Grab intent: This is the not so subtle way of slipping out of restraints. You have a 25/20/15% chance of slipping out of the restraints but a 45% chance to be exposed, with a pretty loud sound effect that you're trying to brute force the handcuffs. Harm intent: This is extremely loud, obvious, and probably stupid. You're wrenching around with plain obviousness, desperately attempting to remove the handcuffs with little regard for your personal safety. While you have a 60/45/30% chance of slipping out of the handcuffs, you also have a 50-50 coinflip to determine whether your hands take damage after removing them. If you do take damage trying to remove them, you automatically fail trying to remove the restraints. You have a 100% chance to have your efforts be exposed. Cooldown state: You can only use the other intent resists every 5 seconds to prevent spamming. You also lose a bit of stamina whether you succeed or fail. If you have no stamina, you cannot resist anymore until you regenerate your stamina reserves. Numbers provided in the original post do not actually determine a balanced model, as the mechanics themselves are the actual concept that needs proven to function for gameplay purposes. Numbers can be tweaked and thus don't matter in terms of being judged for a suggestion post, as they are subject to change throughout development anyway.

I don't think cuffing is worth changing at the moment.

I initially set about to go about fixing this issue some time ago but I never really had a solid, balanced idea that would've led to an enjoyable experience where there's reasonable counterplay without it still inevitably behaving like a hard counter. That's basically what the present issue with ions is right now. If an ion rifle is on the field that you didn't initially dispose of, if you're synthetic, you lose. And there's nothing you can do about it without being the aggressor for the next time. Ion rifles are generally much more extreme and their consequences are immediate, though. You can't beat the shit out of a guy with an ion rifle as a borg the way you can beat the shit out of a baton-toting officer with any tool or weapon at your belt. And yet synthetics are so absurdly strong on the flipside when ions are not in play. They are immune to poisoning, suffocating, vampires, changelings, blood magic (except when EMPs and conversion happen, and the presence of each only makes sense when you apply it from a game balance lens), vacuums as long as they have a suit cooler unit, and they have general damage resistance. In general, IPCs are very strong. Borgs are also very strong unless statchecked by a flash or ion rifle. In short, you cannot assassinate an IPC the same way you could a human, unathi, or Tajaran. In fact, you must resort to highly visible and dangerous methods in order to kill an IPC in particular. Stealth goes out the window as an antagonist, you literally must have loud violence in your path of antagonism if there's an IPC on the manifest. No doubt one will latejoin anyway. I went over a lot of things that could change with some synthetic players and less reputable """borg mains""" and the solutions provided often just created even more problems. It was quite demoralizing and demotivating to the point where the project to change them just stopped in its tracks. I'm not sure if a toggle function to ion rifles will immediately or even progressively alleviate some issues of stigma regarding the associated balance problems listed above.

Appreciate it

o-oh... got it, thanks. my bad.

Please not laser carbines. This only leaves them with 2 shotguns for non-lethal purposes as well as their pistols. Having them be energy carbines would be much better. I understand that laser rifles are strong now because of the accuracy changes (especially since it benefits them a lot given they behave like DMRs), but removing energy carbines and replacing them with lethal yet inflexible laser carbines might not be the best of ideas. Energy carbines provide the opposite, versatility with a low capacity. I would think that security is designed specifically to avoid unnecessary killings, yet laser carbines are not generally used for crowd control purposes. They are for killing, which is why their versatile energy carbine cousins were implemented in the armory instead.

Could you take a step further than this and remove all procedurally generated viruses from the mix, and brainstorm a bunch of standardized viruses that all have predictable symptoms, and simply make it that the only RNG that exists is what established disease gets rolled? In this way there's more interesting world-fluff involved that people can talk about in regards to the diseases that exist in the game world, i.e., Cannibal Fever. I can understand if "outside of the scope of the PR" is the response, though.

I'm assuming the encircled layer of walls are regular walls so that the wires can not only fit underneath the walls but be easier to replace, since setting a connection of wiring in front of the vault door is counter-intuitive. Makes sense, plus somebody has to input a bit of work to hack a command airlock since all the wire ordering is RNG'd for secure airlock electronics. I think this is a good idea. The vault is almost never a part of my plans as an antagonist due to the death-trap nature of it, and it'll be much more attractive for either side to empty the Vault's contents when the situation calls for it for some neat gear.

Counterplay exists. The limited amount of stuns and restraining in the game only punishes players with weak mechanics and a general lack of robustness. It is not so much a crutch as people tend to circlejerk as if it really is. A stun baton is powerful in the hands of the better player and almost useless against the better player, and the only thing handcuffs do is solidify a victory that was already won. When you are isolated and alone without backup, your round is likely to be over without tools to erase the mistake of being stunned. This is by design. I follow this loop of general rules to avoid getting stunned and my round ended and I never really have an issue with being handcuffed, because if it happens to me, it was my fault being in a position that it was allowed to happen. 1. Don't get stunned. Wear anti-stun measures such as armor or voidsuits to counteract getting stunned. Pop strong painkillers otherwise. 2. Be the aggressor, not the defender. If you think a confrontation is going to be spurned by someone who has the ability to restrain you, be the one to strike first and last instead. Never be on defense unless you can guarantee you can down someone if you get attacked. 3. 3-tile spacing rule for anyone with a melee weapon that stuns or knockdowns, stay outside of that range and kite. Be more cautious of anyone within that bubble than outside of it. This increases to 5 tiles if they have a gun. Security follows these exact same rules as part of their own strategy of the combat loop. This is conceptually not much different from how dogfights work for fighter planes, and you can beat the "loop" by utilizing this combat loop with faster and smarter escalation than your opponent. Be better than the opponent and you will come out on top when you're required to robust. Getting handcuffed is not in itself the issue. You can't reasonably be handcuffed unless you are stunned or boxed into a corner, as you can walk straight out of the attempt or push the person handcuffing you away. You have about three seconds to respond to a handcuffing attempt while standing up and unrestrained.

Merchant should not really be a round-start antagonist. Conversion is fine, not much else is, though. No. This is all a horrifically overcomplicated and bad idea.