Scheveningen

Hi. I was the head of security this round. At no point in time was I ever informed that crewmembers were armed with concealed weapons/combat gear that they shouldn't have even had. Yes, I did exploit the tactical vendor a bit for myself because I was very wary as to the intentions of the heisters, but myself and my security team were eventually able to negotiate, facilitate relations and avoid further bloodshed that I felt was otherwise unnecessary unless as a last resort measure to anything the heisters could've done to us or the rest of the crew. Gearing not only myself but the rest of my team for a possible shootout was the only sensible call I could make, and it is disappointing to hear that non-combatants chose to hoard some weapons for themselves. Even then, much as upholding regulations is important, my character felt it more important at the time to avoid escalating the situation to a bloodbath while still remaining prepared in the event it would happen, even if there was a concern about cargo technicians hoarding small guns in their bags. Assuming you came into the information that Willow/the rest of cargo were carrying weapons during the course of the situation via IC means, I would greatly appreciate if you chose to directly inform my character of such events the next time a similar issue such as this pops up. I myself can do nothing other than be suspicious of other characters and I cannot motivate my character to do much until they're given information in-character to utilize to do what needs to be done. My head of security takes characters armed with deadly weapons very seriously, especially if said characters are not combat roles or combat-trained. This could've just as easily been dealt with as an IC issue and the individual responsible potentially brigged. Assuming you were merely observing, then there's really nothing you or I could've done better in that situation. My character cannot act on information they do not know of with 70% certainty to begin with. Sorry, really.

I made this really big so that people don't ignore this. This statement is good. Temporary solution: Don't allow IPCs to use blood magic but they can be converted to the cult or use talismans provided to them by other cult members. Permanent solution: Make IPCs warp into something interesting and distinct from constructs, with different sprites and mechanics to support their corruption.

Well, I have an idea, but it requires code work, sprite work and other fluff tack-ons/what have you. So overall nothing can be done in the short term besides the compromise you provided in the OP.

hey I was the HOS It was pretty obvious to me that HRU-06 was making it their primary effort to slap a lot down on your character. I don't usually see officers who are so insistent on repeatedly screwing over the same character over and over as a security officer. It's a bit distasteful the way I see it. I don't have the full story in regards to that, but that's just how I saw it. I clearly don't have the full picture, personally. My argument for dealing with the first issue of the shift regarding your character was as follows: * Warden calls you out for pocketing force gloves he was trying to stow in secure contraband crate for the armory. * IPC officer also sees you walk away with the gloves in your hand. * Back and forth goes on, I tell you to submit to a search but you aren't seen for awhile. I conclude you left simply to dump the evidence. * You do submit to the search but only after arriving to where I am after a minute or two. * I have the suspicion that you dumped whatever you took, 2v1 testimony is much more potent to believe than 1v1. * IPC hounds you again, I never intended them to be so aggressive about it, I just insisted they follow you in case you went around to collect your stolen treasure. * You get searched and, well, uh, your character strips naked in front of my HOS about it and my character was understandably appalled. * I get you suspended for this and that's that. * AI later tells me the force gloves are down the crusher. They get recovered and I do forensics on them. Your fibers and prints. * All the notable stuff between me and you from there.

I imagine the problem at large is that some people who enter SS13 expect it to be silly, and when they hear "noir" and attribute it with "silly", they immediately think their character should be designed along the lines of Frank Drebin. They hear "detective" and think "YOU'RE A LOOSE CANNON, BOBROVSKY!" Aesthetic is very important, anyway. How someone looks and what options one has to look differently can and will immediately change pre-existing conceptions of how someone views another someone or something. Rather than removing certain aesthetic options to enforce a different impression of what the role will be, maybe the detective should have a wider wardrobe?

No, jackboot, clearly the outfit drives detectives to evil deeds and we must remove that means in which they will be tempted to evil acts. Chain smoking is a degenerate act and symbolic of the devil incarnate.

Yes, it is as simple as deleting 4 lines of code. Most inventory lists for lockers can be changed on the fly. I can add a mounted pulse rifle that the detective can't even use into their locker if I so wanted and it would still compile and be there every round. You don't need to be a coder to know this. It's people's choices to play subpar reference characters from anime games that are walking, breathing, boring stereotypes. It's not necessarily against the rules to play such characters but you are not really required to interact with them. They are so lacking in depth anyway that once people stop paying them attention, the individual making those characters will drop them just to make new ones.

Because the transmutation comparison is simply not the same? Life is fuel for Nar'sie in the alternate dimension that they exist in. Blood sacrifice and blood spilled in the name of Nar'sie is what gives Nar'sie incredible amounts of power to influence other realms and eventually invade them. IPCs are synthetic, and their fluids are not native to a cardiovascular system. They do not have a heart-beat, nor a form of subtle mental consciousness that can be affected by the darker presence of Nar'sie's magic. Even in the magical realm, energy is not created or destroyed, it is transferred or manipulated. These basic rules apply all over the spectrum of the genre of fantasy. If we're a server that prides itself on in-character and roleplay justification for actions undertaken for different associated reasons, the same standard should apply to anything magically related. It's an extremely inconsistent narrative to push that the presence of magic should be a completely overriding storytelling element.

It was not my intention for the aforementioned PR that got pushed through to master to have been merged straight to master. I think that was a slight mistake for it to be pushed through within the 4 day period. Anyway, sure, I'm okay with this provided they aren't capable of interacting with the runes in any way, but still retain their initial strengths. Let them use talismans too, as the talisman is already incanted through another person's self-sacrifice of blood.

Magic being a foil shouldn't be treated as the radical extreme that people are content to treat it as currently. It's magic but it's intended to be taken seriously at face value. It exists and seems pretty convincing, but there should be some room to call it illusionist tricks until it starts affecting people on the physical level. Magic isn't supposed to be goofy.

Wouldn't they still be on the station as soon as the department begins to fill up? It would be better if they were flavorized as 'hygiene vending machines' or something that sells fluff items. Paracetamol is a strong painkiller, btw, it's good enough to shrug off the pain of an embedded bullet. Tramadol is weaker.

[mention]ParadoxSpace[/mention] Was it really a joke? Your character and mine had a pretty long debate on comms on the subject of alchemy, and it was pretty clear-cut that your character was convinced that alchemy was real. I'm very unconvinced with the statement that it was "just a joke." If I didn't have outright sour experiences with certain characters in regards to how they displayed their mechanical knowledge of the secret chems existing in addition to being able to produce them, I would not even be writing this post to declare my negative opinion of the whole thing. For you, sure, all I've seen is certain scientists showboating and freely tipping people off that there is actually a legitimate way to turn things into gold. The very definition of alchemy. I wouldn't have an issue with this if the aforementioned scientist characters could keep it to themselves or within their own department. From my experience, they have not. It's not magical but it's been given a moniker of magical origin (Specifically, Azoth)? That hardly sounds remotely close to scientific taxonomy.

Only thing that matters is the balance you strike within the realm of plausible deniability. It's fine to have wizards. Fine to have cultists, etc, but the balance should be struck within a concept that it should still make a decent amount of sense in existing. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to have several characters who retain their knowledge of alchemy shift-to-shift. It is ridiculous that these characters can know recipes like Azoth or liquid light and reproduce them from memory. It is literal alchemy, even, why are the characters allowed to retain knowledge of a clearly magical-related field? I genuinely don't know if this is supposed to be an admin issue or a lore team issue, but my hunch says that the lore team can make a ruling to heavily restrict what knowledge that the characters themselves will retain. Granted, we all knew secret recipes would do this. The few people that cared got argued with to the ends of the earth. "It's magic, we ain't finna explain shit" only provides an inconsistent narrative to work in tandem with other elements that exist in the game community where character creation guidelines are heavily enforced within the area of plausibility. But, really, that matters little until you call the non-antagonist characters into equation that know that alchemy even exists to begin with. It doesn't make sense as to how the lore staff flip-flop on topics such as this. How is it acceptable that the lore team hasn't taken personal issue with characters that stylize themselves as alchemists of the Nicolas Flamel caliber (and thus NanoTrasen is absolutely okay with employing these people who act so brazenly and open about it, otherwise they wouldn't be there), but they pushed the CMO age requirement for CMO up to 35 and doctors up to 30? Jackboot's also lobbied for ages to get an economy update rolled out to better immerse people with their characters who exist within the universe to better manage their budget and earnings. For developmental reasons that's never really bore fruit on a complex scale, but JB himself has tried to make up for it to make a simplified chart to better exemplify who in what position earns how much, and so on. But his excuse here is that, "It's fun, chill out, stop whining about it", so color me a bit befuddled here because I have zero idea how to argue against someone who displays that they don't care as much about the subject as the initial person complaining does. Don't confuse me for trying to make this only about the lore team. It's the consistency issue and the direction in which they take in some scenarios yet will decide on taking the other end of the fork in the road other times for dubious reasons. Why are these roleplay standards being enforced so inconsistently? Isn't it important we balance how much each character knows about their fields and also to hammer down on the characters that go too far out of their field, even if it's the least bit related? In fact, forget all of those questions. Here's one: Should we even care about the concept of 'lore needs to justify mechanics', or should we just act like this is "just a game" and stop having concerns about any minutiae of detail that might be the slightest bit interesting to character design and overarching lore development? Like, you guys spend so much time writing those newscasts on a regular basis, so it's kind of a shock to see concerns about consistency in the lore being handwaved when you actively try to fill this world you're creating with roleplay fluff that people won't necessarily need to mechanically use in a round. It's weird that you don't care to give a serious, well-thought out answer when a gameplay element is subject to lore criticism and gameplay criticism at the same time. Edit: I'm not suggesting we need mechanical removal of secret chems. I'm not suggesting we remove alchemy. I'm suggesting that both the lore team and the administration figure something out on how to better moderate the in-between so that we don't have everyone and their mother in Research that's an 'alchemical expert'. It's kind of just stupid to have serious established characters with down-to-earth or professional ways of conducting themselves react sensibly to people who claim they're alchemists, and then as soon as they challenge the 'alchemists', said alchemists showboat and also display hard evidence that they can make these secret recipes. It's terrible to deal with.

Weeb get out

Robot wizards are excusable. The covenants and requirements to be wizardy are different from being a cultist, however. The premise that supports the latter is just plain crazy. I propose that a successful conversion of an IPC immediately transmutes them into a !free-of-charge! construct, so that IPCs are still actually worth capturing. They need to be removed from being able to be part of the roundstart list of selected cultists so that they don't inadvertently turn into Wraiths, juggernauts, or artificiers as they spawn in. That would throw off a powerful factor of the cult and that is their initial concealment.

Why can't IPCs be vampires?

Already does. Lying down makes you less likely to get hit even if you're being deliberately targeted, unless you are weakened in which everything hits you with 100% accuracy.

The cult of Nar'sie is an extremist, fanatical organization of worshipers to the Geometer of Blood. Its numbers are handpicked to serve the destructive interests of a Dark God that wishes to unravel reality, influence the feeble minds of biologicals and break down individual consciousness to serve a greater purpose: to bring Nar'sie into the realm of the living and devastate all of existence in the current dimension. And possibly make a new one with blackjack and extra-dimensional hookers. The cult uses life as fuel for their dark magics. Blood/vitae sacrifice is a major proponent of how their magic works. Despite not being like humans in any sense, though, Dionaea have bodily fluids that substitute for a cardiovascular system to use as a sacrifice. Despite not having... 1.) A humanoid psyche to bend in the slightest manner 2.) Any concept of a soul or raw emotional development that a humanoid does 3.) A biology with organic fluids, organs and a visage that will make you say, "Oh, hey, that's a living organism alright" IPCs are somehow able to manipulate the dark sacrificial blood magic of the Cult to Nar'sie. I have heard that one excuse is that their oil somehow provides a raw substitute for blood sacrifice. And another explanation, though I presume it was a joke, that "Nar'sie made malware." I am rather dubious to these answers and I will assume that any future arguments for how the system is currently will probably not hold a whole lot of water either. I am completely unwilling to make any concession for IPCs to be cultists or influenced in a way that makes them be on the same team as a bunch of cultists that require blood sacrifice to make their magic even work. I do not believe that IPCs as cultists make a damn lick of sense in the current context and I do not think they could ever make any sense in any future context either. There are other downsides to IPCs being in cult, and they are largely mechanical disadvantages that not only disadvantage the IPC themselves in the cult, but everyone that plays on the same team as the poor fool that thought it'd be a hilariously fun idea to roleplay as a robot with dark magical powers that require their own lack of blood or bodily fluids to even use. IPCs cannot self-repair. they require regular maintenance for minor limb damaged applied to their chassis, and if the damage goes too far, they require surgery not unlike humanoids if the latter gets bones broken. The mechanical surgery for IPCs is arguably much more time-consuming but it's less pressing for said time as an IPC is rarely ever in a state where they're slowly crawling towards the edge of death. Even the slightest amount of damage to an IPC's legs makes them potentially useless until they're repaired. Doubly so if they have massive damage for either or both legs. This is amplified even more due to the fact that interacting with blood runes or talismans in any way inflicts a small amount of damage to the user of the rune or the talisman. You're more than likely going to have huge delays and setbacks in your cult's plans if you have an IPC cultist whining every step of the way of the damage they inflicted to themselves due to a feature oversight that even allows them to do so. It is downright ridiculous that it is even possible to play an IPC as a cultist in terms of a mechanical limitation standpoint. The mechanics of cult heavily punish IPCs moreso than others due to the lack of self-regeneration embedded into their species mechanics. While I'm not sure if Vaurca are able to self-heal as I do recall that was a balance thing in their initial release, I'm not going to hazard applying the same standard to Vaurca because unlike robots, bugmen bleed blood. I only learned this factoid today, if you're colored shocked then you can join the club. I'm not a fan of "remove dis" suggestions, and I am generally an advocate against 90% of them that pop up. Consider me colored inconsistent, as I also hate the idea of IPCs being wizards too. But unlike for cult, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief because it's a SS13 tradition to never take a wizard round seriously, and a robot could just as easily be given a degree of magical materializing abilities by a highly amused deity figure. I'm also not exactly that sour that I hate robot wizards anyway... not as much as I hate robot blood cultists, as if that makes any sense. I'm not willing to suspend my disbelief in the case where the core concept of all dark magic sources from one's own living sacrifice. Want to summon an unholy blade spawned from the eldritch nethers of -- I won't finish that -- then cool, but give me a portion of your vitae and then we're set for a dark bargain. Said dark god will just as soon as laugh at a robot trying to offer their own, easily replaced oil as goods rendered in the most unholy of covenants in which greedy mortals try to barter for raw power. I've already made bets that there will be some that insist that the status quo is fine and that it isn't worth removing an entire species from being able to play an exclusive role. But I mean, we do this for heads of staff, but I imagine I'd hear the retort that the situation is different.

Gee, I guess I better let this murderer go since he killed a lot of people but due to the presence of cloning technology the act can be erased entirely. If stations can be repaired after bombs go off, did terrorism really happen?

I used the term 'bandaid fix' in this context as I am pretty much predicting that any ground-up rework would take a very long time (as opposed to tweaks/minor rebalances which take substantially less time then overhauling an entire antag system) and I'm unsure if it'd be at the top of the dev team's priorities. Granted, vamp was overhauled by skull alone in a few months time and it turned out great. While it (ling) could be the same way, I have no idea if it's something they want to do again, as touching any antagonist and hammering at the foundation of it to unravel it from the ground up is bound to be time-consuming and potentially difficult, especially since changeling needs to be distinct in and of itself. Especially considering how much time that can be spent on brainstorming and scrapping the bad ideas. Larger-scale reworks may also have the adverse effect of stripping away the original core identity of a concept in the first place. In this case, I'd rather a short-term fix (i.e., a bandaid) be applied until the very day that the dev team has a workable model that is superior to both the original and the bandaid-fixed original. It's a much safer bet and it still allows the game mode to be actively played to a workable capacity rather than leaving it broken and pointless for a very long time up until its rework.

Rad. Can't wait for the Joshua Graham impersonators.

https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=11127&p=99060#p99060 Here's my idea for ling.

Something I mentioned in discord after the recent announcement went live about the assorted antags and how the community felt about them, was basically employing the "Bioshock" method. In Bioshock 1 and 2, you can choose to do things in both games that ultimately changed the game's ending and some events of the in-between based on your choices employed throughout the plot of either game. I won't spoil the plot since that'd be pretty pointless. Anyway, in both of the games the following formula was employed: Get lot of power, but the consequences become very evident towards the end. Get little bits of power gradually, sacrifice little but play at a progression disadvantage for awhile. Ling as it stands is very one-dimensional. The only way you can gain progression as changeling is by killing people. Taking them out of the round irreversibly. And each kill is actually not that rewarding nor punishing at all. In fact, everyone is worth 2 genome points. It's almost worthless. It defeats the point of playing ling entirely. The only consequence involved is if you're unlucky enough to get caught draining someone while you're locked in place for 30 seconds doing it for a dead or alive person. Ergo, let's switch the dynamic up a bit. My idea is that lings can choose between two paths, or I guess a third: 1.) Loud but with more immediate consequences, both good and bad. 2.) Quiet, with very gradual, slower rate of progression but they maintain their discretion on station for much longer. 3.) Start quiet to gain the essentials and then ramp up to loud-style progression immediately. Which then have the respective consequences: 1.) By being loud and absorbing people dry of their genomes, they gain a large sum of genome points to spend but inch closer to being forced into Horror Form, an irreversible, fast-regenerating creature that reflects the true nature of the shapeshifting being. It's a blessing and a curse, but it allows people who are interested in serial killing to finish off the round in a staccato of blood, gore and agony. It carries the risk of getting hashtag#PWNED and hashtag#CREMATED early, however, so a round can be pretty brief for a loud ling if they don't have the immediate skill to pull it off. 2.) By being discrete and taking gradual samples of people (with a minute cooldown at the least, and each person when sampled takes a bit of genetic damage but not enough to really kill them), the ling can gain a bit of initial traction by playing it slow and safe. They can opt to go loud later or complete other objectives to maintain their guise. Staying this route is slow, steady and not as reliable as killing people, but it's good for players who do not want to attract attention/want to avoid showing their hand too early and risk getting cremated because they got caught.

This is kind of goofy and reminiscent of a /tg/station meme. I'm not sure if our brig should have this as an activity for detainees, as I'm sure there are better ideas to keep them engaged and useful to the company. Considering how staring at digitized stocks/bitcoin is hardly any fun in real life, I kind of doubt this would be any more engaging the way it's pitched here, either. I would've honestly been more onboard with a Virtual Reality z-level like goonstation has for detainees to be able to enter while in a brig cell, rather than a time-out chamber that has a bunch of prisoners corralled into a sweatshop-esque environment doing math problems for the rest of the round. Zzzz.