Scheveningen

It wasn't too much when we asked for more loadout points to add more stuff. It wasn't too much when a PR got setup for peacoats and all of the 200 of custom items that exist right now. It wasn't too much when most of the clothing items that exist right now have modular coloring options to dye in any shade or hue. According to the head devs, cloaks that blend incredibly well with standard uniforms became far too much, apparently. So anyway, this is a stupid PR. It will get passed through anyway seeing as how two of the head developers already unanimously agree with the same sentiment that they should remove cloaks from the loadout for reasons that are vague and unclear as per staff protocol, but let's break this down anyway; Totally irrelevant, as the indoor workplace has a stable temperature of 30C. That's 86 degrees for Americans, and considering the absence of humidity, it leads to a very cool workplace. Here's a better question, why do women wear high heels and peacoats in the summer? Clearly putting on another layer during the summer is unreasonable by the standards of a couple turbonerds on the internet, so why do women do it anyway? Oh right, AESTHETIC. Because they choose to, and they think they LOOK GOOD in it. In this case: It's neat, it's eye-catching, it makes the game have a bit of color and each character also possess that invariable amount of diversity that makes interacting with one another just a tad more interesting. Is the corporation arbitrarily going to ban certain stylistic liberties being taken with the uniform without breaking regulations? On higher alert levels than code green you can be damn sure that engineer wearing a cloak, cowboy hat and their standard issue jumpsuit is going to shed the unnecessary decals and don a proper voidsuit when it's needed. The same applies to virtually everyone else that is affected by uniform regulation. We have heads of staff to enforce uniform regulation. Maybe consult with CCIA regarding the supposed """problematic nature""" (I put that many quotation marks because I am genuinely laughing that this is one of the issues is dev team is choosing to target as of late) of cloaks? Lemme break this down for ya. "Rather than resolving this the proper way in ensuring there's smaller, stacking consequences of piling on additional cosmetic items onto your character's person, we decided to remove 1 out of 200 custom loadout options because we can't be arsed to develop a system right now." :clap: Clap emoji. It's way easier to remove stuff that bugs you rather than attempting to resolve the real problems, if character styles can be considered problematic all of a sudden, especially considering that cloaks basically blend really well with standard uniforms anyway. Nevermind that adding such a cool system would be legitimately immersive and realistic, let's skip doing that and just remove !fun! post-haste, as is the responsibility of server staff under the wise purview of Skull132.

This, pretty much. +1 endorsement on my end.

Ditto as above. It's the standardized galactic currency. You can force certain services to require credits for usage (i.e., add some nanomeds outside medical and make them cost dosh) and I would be fine with that. Not onboard with totally replacing the present currency with 10 different snowflake variations of monies.

This'll have almost no effect when the server isn't struggling to chug on and function, and will have an effect if the server is struggling. IDK about you but I'd probably be more likely to vote for transfer when the server's lagging to shit.

Feel free to come back anytime, we'll be here. Always appreciated you being here, you memester.

Project completed and merged. Be sure to ping me for any outstanding issues/balance problems with certain firearms.

I'm endorsing this for a few reasons: 1. Moon's definitely improved since the last time they applied, in terms of their mental and just generally how they've behaved as a member of this community 2. Moon's got a lot of experience contributing for this server as a dev and a regular contributor 3. Moon possesses a very wide knowledge of the game and understands the game state pretty well. 4. Moon has very invested interest in the subject of robotics/synth stuff, which I've discussed with them more than a couple times regarding some nuances with real-life implications regarding synthetics. Definitive +1 on my end.

There's plenty wrong with playing selfishly and utilizing powergamey tactics that doesn't even lead to making the round fun for anybody but yourself. It's absolutely boring, and I can think of at least five other people who commonly play antagonist that will make the round fun just by their sheer presence and known competence with the game mechanics and simply being able to execute a good story to talk about. Yeah, I guess it's too much to ask for you to roleplay better. You recognize how you instantly sound like the bad guy when the only advice you can give is for other people to leave if they don't like how you play? You... do. That's the exact issue here.

I've reported more than a few in-game occasions through adminhelps where Kaedwuff chooses to 'stealth' as an antagonist for the majority of the round and then go all out at the 2 hour mark with little indication of escalation of conflict as they show themselves. If it's still an issue where Kaed isn't escalating in an interesting way to give people a fair chance to actually roleplay while they are the antagonist then clearly it should be up to the staff to figure out a way to hammer that problem out.

I don't usually scrutinize applications unless at least one of the three factors are at play here: 1. the application is really bad 2. the application is ripe for potential drama 3. the application actually has some promise outside of generic mcwhitelist and is worth reviewing on its own Congratulations, VT, you're the first to hit all 3-- just kidding, it's only #3 here. RE: What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame?: I think it is actually pretty good that you drop terms like 'micro', but something I should try to clear up is that a head of staff in standard and nonstandard situations should understand how to lead from the front and from the back simultaneously. Leading from the front is great at times because it allows their subordinates to have very obvious standards to mimic and represent later down the line if those subordinates wish to become part of that leadership position at some point. There are some things that leading from the front can't replicate, however, and that's having flexibility as a concern compared to that of having concentrated effort as its own individual force that is hard to outright resist but easy to evade as an antagonist. In the cases of spreading your team out, you risk each of your individual measures getting caught out but you also increase the amount of risk that an opposing obstacle gets utterly flanked and clamped down upon, and sorted out decisively. The way that it does that is much more subtle and added up over time, rather than being resolved in a single situation. This is something that antagonists have to respect as well. SS13 has some RTS strategy elements to it, the concepts of "micro" and "macro" are very clear in any multiplayer game but it's not to the exact effect like how games such as Starcraft execute it. Even in those games it's not painfully obvious to describe, though. In such a way, though, keep in mind that a balance of micro and macro are important based on what you intend on accomplishing in-game. Doubly so important when you play a head of staff, because you have more control over the micro/macro elements to move certain assets or characters around where they're supposed to be needed. You can play a "lead from the front" head of staff 24/7, but keep in mind the macro implications of doing that, and the fact you'll only gain success if the opposing force is so intensely overestimating themselves that they think they can tackle you + your department by themselves. That aside, hopefully that's something that's easy to understand. I could've gone for a "the foundation is rotten" analogy but that doesn't make sense in this context. Anyway, the way I usually judge applications is that compared to judging the intent of the applicant and how they view the head of staff sphere of roles and responsibilities, lore/background is just meaningless fluff, and fluff by itself does not really indicate whether one is ready for leadership on a roleplay server that is supposed to take itself seriously. I'd say +1, largely because while their characters are relatively sane and enjoyable to roleplay with (they make more sense once you recognize the reasons why they behave the way they do, shocker!!!), there's also the part where VT has taught me a substantial amount of integrated circuitry stuff and even helped me build some really neat and useful stuff as a result. Teachers of game mechanics are a very rare commodity around here.

Alternatively, just raise autotraitor a significant percentage so that the same effect is still accomplished. Tuning 1 thing only is how the dev team prefers to track issues and gather data on certain game modes, after all. Small tune-ups to volatile things like these are preferred overall, anyway.

Not really a fan of this. I very much prefer having my undivided attention onto my character's job for at least an hour and a half of the round so that my characters can actually accomplish something during that time. Also, I've found that chefs are only reliable 10% of the time in making enough food to actually feed the station. They make a small amount of food, either goof off, get killed by antagonists, or just cryo when the round starts immediately. The actual 'chef mains' are nowhere to be found during primetime rounds, so what's the point of making the entire station reliable on a role with only 2 slots and barely any reason that makes them interesting and sustainable throughout the round for the playerbase to actually enjoy? I see more xenoarchs as of late than I do see chefs that actually last the entire round. It's easier to ask cargo to order pizza, tbh

#RESIST. DOWN, with this sort of thing.

Slander by itself needs to be more clarified as it actually being disparaging the character of X person wherein whatever is being said is not being constructive in the slightest, and is only aimed for the purposes of an insult.

The VOX announcements are incredibly loud, have a very obvious feedback echo that also happens to have a volume that is louder than virtually any other sound in the game. Presently there is no opt-out option to disable these sound effects which makes events incredibly grating on the ears even when adjusted to quiet volumes. The event announcements are disproportionately loud, echo-y and quite grating the 100th time you've heard every variation of each with all of the above factors. Please add an opt-out option so that clients will just hear the same "beep" sound effect that comes after station-based announcements written by command staff.

RCDs and jetpacks exist. I'm not sure if this change is all that necessary, considering there is more than adequate counterplay that exists in the game already.

gay

There's a thing the stetchkin pistol can do which is a pretty small feature yet still very neat on its own, which is permit you to tactically reload the magazine by taking a magazine in hand and loading it into the pistol while popping the other magazine out. Some ballistics do not actually instantly eject their magazines (the c-20r is an auto-eject), so if anything this is a QOL suggestion for magazine-loaded ballistic weapons. It'd take the hassle out of inventory management to immediately get right back into the thick of it. Anything that doesn't have a magazine would obviously not benefit from the change. Thoughts?

Traitor AI does not even compare to a regular traitor nor an EI NATH'ing wizard. They do not get special abilities besides the fact of being able to ignore their core laws which is not very impressive by itself. What a traitor AI can do is absolutely outshone by the amount of mechanics loaded into a malfunctioning AI's kit to be able to influence the round in far more numerous ways than a traitor AI can. Traitor AIs cannot defend themselves without cyborgs. Malfunctioning AIs have the ability to research force fields to throw up at any given time that serve as obstacles and bullet sponges for the worst that could possibly happen. And that's not all they can do. It doesn't matter what a traitor AI can do, it's just given antagonist status but no special abilities beyond that to sustain itself against the crew when it goes loud. The malf AI will always do it better. Can't tell you the amount of times where I was a traitor AI and I wished I was malf instead because of the various circumstances that can happen ingame. It's more like comparing a dull butter knife to a claymore.

Wizards are not realistic. Blood-magical death cultists are not realistic. Most of the alien species being heavily similar to that of Terran-based animals is not realistic. There's so much glaringly wrong with the game and the state of roleplay consistency to this server, but only if and when you attempt to apply it through the lens of realism. The only way anything as apart of this server makes any sense is when you understand the Aurora universe operates by its own (albeit not remotely ideal) continuity where everything is made up and the points don't matter. This, in a way, ends up extending the field of whether an antagonist being able to escalate by any small rationale to extreme lengths of force, is at all valid. This is the flaw of Aurora, ultimately, we try too hard for a balance to be struck to preserve immersion and roleplay quality while also upholding vague preconceived notions of what 'fun' is despite that, for the sake of example, only furries enjoy roleplaying with furry OC characters, rage-cages are better suited to lower RP servers because no fathomable character has in-character motivation to participate in a death-match on a higher RP one, and there's a surprising lack of corporate discrimination against the lesser species that are only just industrialized, but have to contend with societal internal problems that should normally make them underneath the notice of the space-age races. And because we try too hard for a balance for all of this to fit like trying to wedge a triangle block in a circle-slot, it is impossible to apply any proper precedent because there is no consistent one that exists to make this a better niche server that it is supposed to be. The rules are more in this encompassing context, meaning the rules are ultimately only as much of a standard to be enforced that the administration at-large wishes to enforce them as. In an hypothetical world where I overthrew Abo and Garn and became the head admin, hypothetically, I'd hypothetically agree with the notion that the rules are actually principles meant to be applied fairly but firmly to everyone, not just based on a "I feel like it" or social power-exertion basis, Hypothetically. Also hypothetically, I'd lobby for changes throughout the server culture to more heavily enforce development targeted in a direction that facilitates the idea of roleplay and the conflicts pertaining to the roleplay environment ICly, so that everything that happens is at least, hypothetically, simulated to such a degree that anyone who tries hard enough to be invested in the roleplay environment could hypothetically feel the changes in the environment as time goes on. Hypothetically. Alas, I blew it. This is a lot of text to emphasize how apathy rules over everything and that it is often easier to do nothing than risk doing something and getting bad consequences for it, but yeah, that's how you do it.

Agree with this. I don't think the administration needs to step in to tell players what happens when you strategize poorly.

I think the fact the gimmick failed and got little attention by itself is punishment enough, really. It just doesn't need to be encouraged to repeat, since only on LRP servers do people really outright seek fantastical ways to die.

Or lackthereof, considering how much of a wet noodle a traitor AI is compared to that of a malf AI. Play a traitor AI as opposed to a malf one sometime and you'll see how only not having laws doesn't actually expand gameplay opportunities whatsoever. It's like comparing a guppy to a large trout, the large trout tends to contribute in more meaningful ways to its ecosystem than the ill-equipped guppy does. Consistency in antagonist power dynamics is very important for an experience that seems to be so heavily reliant on antagonists to 'make things happen'. Malfunctioning AI types happen to 'make things happen' in the round to a far more interesting and impactful degree than a traitor AI does. A traitor AI is far more dependent on its borgs than what a malfunctioning AI is capable of doing by its lonesome. I welcome this change, honestly, regardless of the standard canned counter-arguments I've seen against this change already.

Proooooooobably better for gameplay reasons, I suppose. I'd rather we have relatively experienced AI mains influence the round. Only if they're roundstart picked. I don't think even an AI main wants to be malf an hour into the round when they latejoined. It's a lot of catchup they need to do in order to be threatening to everyone else.

While I'm personally keen on staff being professional when it's needed, I'm also pretty keen on certain members of the community getting their just desserts when they say something to a deliberately ignorant degree and don't apologize for their posturing when they clearly know very little on the subject they're talking about. It doesn't matter if it comes from a staff member or just a player, when someone acts that way they should be called on it in a point-by-point fashion. It's important members of the community have an entry-level education regarding issues they want to talk about before they attempt to engage someone with far more expertise on the matter.