Scheveningen

Not only has your spriting improved, but that looks fantastic. This is a relatively ok idea as well. More improv weapons would be nice.

Yes pls. Would rather everything in-character be moderated by mechanics nowadays than by administrators or mods too afraid to moderate grey area cases of powergaming.

Don't drones get camera alarms when you break a camera? Granted, I don't really like maintenance drones on high pop rounds for obvious reasons, but it's a fortuitous enough reason to immediately fix a camera being broken.

characters should have the right to defend themselves if security can't do it for them It's also a waste of time to dictate very specific circumstances where it is or isn't allowed because guidelines for definition can be stretched very easily dependent on the situation. I'm sure neither an admin or mod wants to make it their goal to speak to 10 different people to get 10 completely different subjective opinions on whether or not a militia forming was valid during the course of a round. That's almost as wasteful of one's time as learning Latin, a dead language that nobody (religious groups aside) even speaks anymore. If you want a round where nothing happens and thus nobody does anything interesting and/or unorthodox, why not vote extended?

Because pikes are hilarious and one of the many optimal ways to roleplay as a Stronghold Pikeman. Anyway. I don't see this policy suggestion really bringing anything groundbreaking or interesting to consider, in fact, it seems to only bring up complaints, and zero solutions? Very interesting approach. -1 on my end, if only now that I'm of the mind that threads that masquerade as policy suggestions but are actually complaint threads absolutely are of the most terrible caliber.

That's fine by me. I just can't create polls on the forums, that's why I made the strawpoll.

While I don't mind that ion equipment serves as an immediate check to energy weapons (I doubt anyone else does due to the typical nature of hitscan), the nature of ion rifles/EMP grenades is that they serve as immediate round-enders to station-bound silicons of all types, cyborgs, androids and robots alike. Since the past few updates, the goal of mine and some others has been to reduce the amount of game mechanics that exist in the game to be immediate round enders without significant drawback or risk to them. If they are to be a one-shot-drop, then they should be balanced such as how the anti-materiel rifle is, right? Well, if we balanced that ion rifle like that, it'd be good for one use only and then it stops being relevant before needing a recharge. So that's one option, and certainly the easiest way to handle it. EMP grenades would have to be acquired for more sustained combat or for clearing rooms. We can also consider that the way EMP_act or EMPulse works is extremely strong and we don't necessarily need to touch the ion rifle's capacity, just change how EMP acting affects silicons and how it also affects virtually everyone else. It can be nerfed simply to remove the instant stuns and take off some damage. Another idea is the one that requires the most effort, and that's a rework. An idea I had was changing EMP grenades into ECDs, or Electrostatic Charge Detonators. Rather than instantly applying an EMP, the ECDs will act similarly to how tesla arcs work. They'll shock every single device and tend to prioritize mechs, and then prioritize silicon/synthetic-based lifeforms due to their conductivity, and then prioritize anyone with an energy firearm, and then prioritize anyone with a hardsuit, and then towards other devices in the room. Everything of the above will be rooted in place for the duration of the shock, and damage will be calculated based on the amount of arc factors that exist in the room. The less there is, the more burn damage it will deal. ECDs will also immediately deplete charge in energy weapons and will gradually drain away the charge of mech/borg/hardsuit energy cells. The EMP spells from the cult and the wizard will also mimic a large ECD detonation. Cultists will be protected from the detonation and wizards will be as well. Edit: A Server Poll has been created.

While I love this idea, please cut out ranks in the qualified personnel 5 through 8. Modification of AI laws should require respective knowledge in information technology as well as Artificial Intelligence-intensive degrees. Yeah, exactly, because you should never have reason to change the AI laws except in actual crises or events that require it. Also, why not just use 'regardless', or 'irrespective', instead?

I can agree with the former, but I wouldn't see the point of the latter. The emergency lights are for immersion/in-game practicality reasons. It makes sense a station would have the emergency lights on during a power outage. If you want to kill a diona, just dart them with arithrazine, it kills them much quicker than being in the dark would.

For as long as this has existed, the development team of Aurora has never observed the combination of kelotane and dermaline as a bug or an exploit, or other chemical combinations such as tricordrazine/[insert healing chem here.] Furthermore, if this is supposedly a bug or an exploit, how is it over the course of a few years since the merge to Baycode, this supposed exploit has never been reported on the github as an exploit? Shouldn't it be the responsibility of the community to report bugs or exploits in the game, assuming we give any credit to the theory that it is an exploit at all? Medical has had a very long past of constant nerfing to its effectiveness. Be that due to nerfing mechanics or remapping medical to be inherently suboptimal, these repeated nerfs to the department will not improve the quality of roleplay. The nerfs will drive people away from wanting to play it and make use of its mechanics when it becomes so weak later down the line. It is not fun to have a department you enjoy playing targeted by contributors that dislike the players finding strategies to be good at their jobs and save other players+their characters in the round to put them back in. This is is also a very hamfisted nerf to antagonists that wish to use more effective means of sustaining themselves either through the midst of combat or for first aid to treat themselves after a near-lethal confrontation. I will always dislike survivability nerfs especially when they apply to everyone that isn't an IPC/diona. KeloDerm effectively heals 18 burn damage per unit provided the ratio of Kelotane and Dermaline mixed together is 1:1. This is an average of 9 healing per 5 ticks, as it takes 5 ticks to consume a unit. In previous arguments for why this should be, the PR author has stated they want to make KeloDerm heal even less than what Dermaline heals on its own (that means less than 12 healing per 5 ticks, which is not insignificant). The PR author just wants to make it so that you're forced to adapt to a new style of play, because he views this strategy as an exploit. It's not an exploit, it's an optimal strategy. It's not powergaming, it's just part of the game. But a more interesting way of going about it instead of removing the advantageous nature of it entirely is to still make it usable with consequence. Make it so that chemicals of the same damage healing type still add to an overdose threshold, because even in real life, you shouldn't be taking several different medications. If you really want to punish chemists or medical doctors for using chemistry to cure all solutions, make overdose limits lower and especially so for combination chemicals. This will still add an interesting consequence of likely having to dialyzes someone you tried to heal to full health so quickly. This will make it so that medical doctors need to be more careful who they speed-heal, and characters that use Kelo-Derm in combat won't get completely nerfed into the dirt for trying to sustain themselves in mid-combat. Instead of removing powerful features from the game, add consequence to that strength to balance it out. Easy! And if you want to nerf cryo/clonex combos, make 1:1 amounts synthesize into a new reagent instead, because speedcloning methods are actually a problem and should go. (Also, self-surgery is somehow only possible if you buckle yourself to a chair made over a table. But getting caught doing that gets you a ban, since it's so blatantly obvious in the abuse of mechanics that also nonsensically foregoes roleplay.)

The ultimate tip you can use and abuse yourself as long as you don't blast yourself with it is to grab an ion rifle for yourself. In this way you can directly counter IPCs, hitscan energy weapons as well as people goofy enough to have synthetic limbs. Just don't shoot an adjacent wall or anything. Ion rifles are quite strong in shutting down people's ability to engage you offensively with energy weapons.

While I was one of the few that provided a +1 to the Zoda suggestion, there is a particular point to be addressed about the initial PR. It wasn't once stated that the zoda was supposed to "get you high" in a way that makes it equivalent to stimulants. I don't think anyone aside from the individuals who looked into the code would recognize the possible effect that it would have. I do agree with Ornias that it was extremely problematic that it went through, and it was only caught because certain members of the community were being extremely unsubtle in their use of the new mechanic, but it was caught soon enough that some weeks down the line people are gonna forget this ever happened. But, frankly, it's too easy to assume malicious intent even though it's not fair to. It was more likely that the PR author [mention]ParadoxSpace[/mention] just didn't know how caffeine stacking works, nor did anyone know about it, for that matter. I didn't either, frankly, I wasn't aware that you could attain an average speed of 5 tiles per second while walking and around 10-12 while sprinting. I'm probably just gonna repeat or say whatever has been said above already, but here's my viewpoint on the whole thing: 1. It's a courtesy to test your proposed features and try to find ways to abuse them before proposing them in a PR for the sake of Quality Assurance, but not everyone has time for this. 2. It's a courtesy to catalogue everything you implemented, but sometimes things slip and a changelog doesn't adequately explain every single system that's changed. Not everyone has time to fill out exact infographics to assist people in understanding what their PR does. 3. Most of the changes proposed only affect certain percentages of the entire playerbase due to their playstyles. The average casual player who doesn't use the forums, don't use the github, doesn't use the discord and just plays on the server to chill out and have fun also doesn't give a damn about all these things pertaining to balance or whatever. They're just present to play a brutal spaceman simulator with the hopes that they'll die in some very entertaining way or potentially survive a clown fiesta of a round. Also worth noting that it's difficult to gauge what the community wants out of the game especially when the developer team and the individual contributors each have different goals in mind for what they plan to do in implementation. Especially what with the nature of the community and how opinions coming from each community member is generally considered to be in the minority for each individual. SS13 is generally kept continuously alive with hobbyist development and volunteer work. Aurora used to be super dead back when updates occurred once every three months because developer interest was so scarce when SoundScopes ran the show. Not solely because of him, but because Aurora was super unlucky and didn't have development interest at the time. Aurora stagnated for a very long time without a particular direction outside of simply existing. If there were easy solutions to these issues, the avenues would be seized hastily by the aforementioned development team. Wandering outside the already set procedures and tentative order that barely exists is just recipe for more chaos and walking in circles.

good idea

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/5265 When your only counterplay to something is "adminhelp it if they ganked you using it, not much else you can do", it's kind of obvious something is wrong with the mechanic.

The energy sword will remain just as strong at its base level. Force gloves just make melee weapons scale beyond what anyone else can square up with in the game, leading to very unfair encounters in close range.

IPCs have to seek suit cooler units in vacuum-like environments because their internal heat sink functions only work in a pressurized environment. Thus, in a vacuum, IPCs effectively catch a fever and their entire chassis melts down as a result. Lubricant is only useful for machines that commonly use friction to generate power. IPCs don't use friction to power themselves, they have internal capacitors to deal with. They hook up to an APC and recharge their batteries. They would have no use for lubricant, as they do not generate friction to power themselves. Changing it to 'coolant' would be the better, more appropriate option. You can use the same chemical that's used down in xenoarch to cool down the machines used to analyze artifacts. There's also less concern regarding virtually anyone having a convenient tank of space lubricant around that would inevitably be abused and weaponized without substantial effort. The rest of this feature is okay. I don't think giving space lubricant out to the public is going to end well.

...how easy it is to pop out of a locker and slash or run up to someone and slash them down in 1 hit... yeah, it's not fair. You're right, that's not fair. That's gank and against the rules. The solution is to ahelp it, not punish antags for actually preparing. The only time it'd be acceptable to do that is if the situation was already escalated and you were an active participant in the fight. At which case it's completely on you for getting within melee range of a guy with a sword, tbh. I'm not sure how to more adequately explain that oneshot mechanics are not okay to someone who so obviously thinks mechanics like these are healthy for the game state. The arguments presented are ones displayed against the mechanic being toxic and unfair, because even in a standard combat scenario, the advantage the wielder of antagonist force gloves gain is overwhelmingly more obvious than what their opposition might be. It is not subtle or interesting in terms of what advantages force gloves give an individual. It's an instant power buy what with how it grants massive reward to melee weapons. No other traitor item in the game does this. The revolver is a finite weapon and runs out of bullets eventually. An energy sword is always useful on its own but benefits heavily by having its damage multiplied by 2.5. You can literally one-hit kill someone with an energy sword aimed at their lower torso. This is not a detail that is nuanced. This has nothing to do with whether this is gank or not. Mechanics that permit you to instantly kill someone without substantial need for effort (buying an esword and force gloves is not effort) are horrible for any game. The conflict becomes decided with whoever clicks first through a guarantee. The game ends for whoever gets clicked first. This should not be so. Deferring to the rules and admins as if they have anything to do with how overpowered force gloves+melee weapons are is a ridiculous resolution to the issue. Admins have nothing to do with game balance alone.

I have been informed that energy swords with force gloves instantly bisect when targeting the lower body. this mechanic is gonna get destroyed.

Force gloves are presently quite strong and the way they are comboed with the strongest melee weapons in the game leads them to have an even larger kill threat and capability to remove another character from the round. I wouldn't mind if force gloves comboed well with martial arts to totally dunk nerds with, but an energy sword that benefits between 50% and 100% bonus damage just because you're wearing force gloves is not exactly the epitome of nuance. It's also not very interesting to have combat decided in 2 hits to your face because an energy sword got amplified to do so much damage.

The kitchen and bar cameras are missing from the camera networks.

the cars are fantastic. Love these ideas, they might just be fluff but they add unique characterization for the future.

People are moving at literal light speed when they get hopped up on the Vaurca-branded energy drinks that they literally sprint at speeds that make them blink across time and space.

What do you mean, exactly? Taking hand thresholds as an example: You can instantly cut off someone's unarmored hand with a chainsword or e-sword simply because the damage is equivalent to/exceeds the amount of damage necessary to destroy the limb. Are you saying an energy sword should have to take one hit more after a limb breaks in order for it to sever? Because I think that would be fine, balance-wise. I do think there needs to be higher effort investment to kill someone so that instantly being taken out of the round is not possible. I prefer if you'd just be able to crawl even without legs instead. It'd be really weird to see someone hobble around on one leg firing off a shotgun.

If you use it to brag and feel good about acting like a terrible person it's less a confession than anything.