Scheveningen

Your lack of activity and the sudden out-of-the-blue application strikes a particular weight of concern with me. It is not a particularly unique situation as this has happened before with some applicants, and the general gist of it is that they promise more activity if they get approved, yet it's 50/50 if they follow up on that promise. If they get passed over in favor of other applicants or just denied outright, the person doesn't show up at all. None of the above concerns would apply if we were talking about someone who logged on occasionally and played on a somewhat irregular basis but enough to show they still show some investment in playing on the server. As opposed to, little to no investment whatsoever backed by the inactivity. Moderators are not particularly expected to make the big decisions but sometimes when it comes down to it, often they set precedents for cases just as much as the administrators do. The question in particular is, "Is it smart of us to accept an applicant who has not shown recent investment in participating in the community?" To avoid posing rhetoricals for nobody's benefit, I'm going to input my own opinion as a response to that question and say 'no', and for others to take under advisement that activity on the server is one of the largest things we look for when we ask around the community if they would be interested to apply for server staff. To the point where it alone may be a dealmaker or a dealbreaker.

Personal preference. Physiologically lock it so it isn't silly.

It's a failsafe in the event your jetpack isn't on, as well. It's helpful to have but if you have a filled oxygen tank it shouldn't be your major concern.

Why don't internals automatically turn on every time you equip them? Why do we have to wait 10 seconds for hardsuits to be fully put on or taken off? Why can't everything in the game just be easier for my sake? Why do we have to enable magboots to avoid being pushed over by pressure changes? Because remembering to turn the above on adds necessary depth to the game that requires people think and remember to enable the tools they intend to use. If they don't recall safety protocols before charging headlong into a potentially dangerous circumstance then they will suffer the consequence of it by getting hurt. They don't need changed or enabled by default because often more than not you don't need them on by default. The issue of falling is easily revised by the following: Not walking into an open space. If you want to walk into a hole while suffering zero damage then maybe you should remember to turn on your leg actuators before doing it. The game wouldn't be fun if people didn't die violently for making small mistakes.

25TC for a single syndie borg, more than usual than you would pay for 5 frag grenades in a box. Frags will be nerfed when dev merges to master.

Applicant interviewed. https://pastebin.com/bpfUyrF2

yeah it sounds like an o-k idea

Re: #4 & #5, we'll discuss those two points at length internally before we have a talk about what needs settled, between yourself, the admin-CCIA liason, and another CCIAA representative. I will see about including you into the discussions depending on when the discussions can be undertaken. Naturally, since people live in different places since this is the internet, scheduling a talk might be a difficult task but at most we'll try to get it settled before the end of next week. I'll try to be present to mediate and put discussions back on the right track if it gets a bit heated. Glad to hear you've got 1-3 settled.

agreed. raptor birbs are smart. stop acting like you're from paradise.

Ahah, yeah. Funny you should say that, we ban people who ERP. It's against our rules, if you've taken the time to read them.

You're right, it doesn't.

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/3484 tl;dr, tentatively reverts some of the nerfs Nanako dealt to laser guns. Because the across-the-board thing was dumb, followed by adding cult pylons and the cult juggernaut laser reflecting. Individually the changes aren't bad but done in the sequence they were introduced it was obviously intended to nerf security and buff cult, which is already dang strong considering the prospect of converting security officers, which is still an option for anyone who wants to try! Worthless exposition aside this still leaves the present balance problem of laser rifles. Now here's the thing. I have no idea what to do with laser rifles. They act like 20 shot laser DMRs that excel at all ranges with their high rate of fire, accuracy, high shot capacity and very reliable DPS. This is a 'DPS king' gun. This is not balanced whatsoever. 2 officers with each of these rifles generally outperforms every other weapon in the game. You ever play BF3? SKSes were fucking ridiculous, they were fun as hell to use but not fun to get sweeped by. They did require high skill to use, yes, but after mastering the need to track your enemies with good enough precision and also pull the trigger fast enough, you were rolling around with a literal laser gun destroying every other player in sight. And now, the laser rifle acts like a first person shooter's token highly versatile fast-shooting, spammable DMR that performs well at close and medium ranges, which is the only range that most players will get into during normal gameplay! Isn't that absurd? I think it is. So we're agreed it needs changes, but we can be more flexible than BF3 can with nerfing a gun that exists in real life. Laser rifles don't exist (well ok the LIZARDMEN have them). So we have justification to change 'em. But, like, how, dude? That's my question. Point me to another weapon that behaves in a fairly balanced manner and I'll consider tuning the laser rifle to that degree. In this PR I may end up resolving to nerf the laser rifle's max capacity to 15. Versatility can be alright but the laser rifle as it stands is much too versatile that even nerfing its max capacity may not be enough to stop it from being outright ridiculous in overturning normally disadvantageous situations.

Just wanna get a couple things out of the way, I hope my requests aren't too unreasonable, do note I do not speak for CCIA or the head admins. 1.) If you and anyone else wants to make this work, then please inform your other group organizers of the #1 they need to follow, and it's to respect boundaries. This is vaguespeak for pretty much, "Don't act like CCIAA, but act like a tight-knit network of heads of staff." Respect those boundaries and the same will be shown in turn. 2.) Be inclusive in your business as humanly possible. This is a broad way of saying, "Don't put group participants on a need-to-know basis unless it relates to drama." Don't shut your own group out, let them in on what your intentions or agendas are for the group as it gains traction. 3.) Your discord may not be officially endorsed by any of the staff groups, but generally speaking may be subject to the same server rules we're supposed to enforce. However, I do think we will allow you or anyone else to moderate the group internally regarding those things, provided you inform one of the staff regarding whoever you had to deal with. So basically if one of the participants in that group decide to tell people what's going on in a current round, we hope you'll contact us ahead of time before you do much else, because IC in OOC and transmitting meta-information are serious offenses. What you do to them after you inform us is 100% your business. 4.) Regarding buzzwords like "endorsement", this thread is already something I shot to the staff to be aware of, read over and give their opinions internally on how we should be handling this. Even though its past iterations may not have worked out, that was due to other unfortunate causes that could've been handled better by multiple involved parties, won't point fingers because it's pointless to blow dust from an old piece of history into another person's face. CCIAA will be made aware of this so they can discuss internally how they want to go about this, as well, and then hopefully a staff-CCIAA discussion will happen (though not necessary), and then we'll discuss this more openly. Alternatively closed-door bureaucracy can be skipped and we can make a discussion mess of the rest of the replies in this thread. Since that's a mess, I'd hope we just go for the whole closed-door discussions instead. Aaaand, 5.) The topic of staff liasons for this group, assuming it's become 'official', will also be discussed. Obviously, 'liasons' are a sketchy topic but enough bad blood was spilled in the past over it. Accountability and multiple avenues of communication are necessary to piece the whole thing together if everyone wants to make this into a well-oiled machine that just works. We'll cross this bridge when we get to it but it's something to be mindful of later on. I make absolutely zero promises at this time, but the above five points are generally the gist of what needs to get addressed as elephants in the room before we can do much about whatever else needs done. The ideal situation is that a compromise is made and everybody gets what they want, but this'll be discussed at length between the staff to see how this rolls.

Slightly off-topic commentary, I'm guessing Skull stepped in as an admin during a dead-hour time and applied this ban since no other staff were available? It's fine whether or not it was the case, just asking. And if it's alright with him, once an adequate response comes from the OP [mention]0mm0[/mention], I'll see about lifting the ban.

Up until the following statement I was almost about to tentatively support the unban. And now I'm particularly hesitant. Take a guess why someone would be hesitant after something like this would be said by you.

Or just do what I suggested and roll all of the game types into a single secret rotation so we don't have to worry about this. This rarely ever happens when the server votes for the regular secret rotation.

Xander mentioned this to me in the last round and that part should be amended. They should be 27 now, and the crap with the tesla snowflakery should be gone as well.

It would help to make it an uncommon color besides red, too. Since Red shows up with a lot of text alert. Maybe purple, like the cultist messages? Or green. Green would generally work, as the tone of a vampire dominate is to soothe, manipulate and hypnotize an easily malleable mortal to do the bidding of the wise voice inside their head.

Put it back in the textport but increase the text size to size 30 so nobody could possibly miss the command. The ol' Lohikar switcheroo.

I'll set the record straight for the most part: this is what I meant by "over-the-line shitposting." Minors play on this server and view these forums. Posting 'ironic' vore memes makes you no better than the people who actually enjoy that, and it's inappropriate of you to bring that to post here in this community. Furthermore, don't give those people attention either. They play on the other SS13 servers for a reason. So leave it be. While the rest of the thread would be tame enough without it, I don't think it's disingenuous to assume it was going anywhere else than to forum hell.

The power fields to the tesla are bugged as fuck right now and depower in seconds for absolutely no reason at all despite the room APC having enough power to power all of the devices in the room. It doesn't matter if you wait until the field generators are fully charged by emitters, even if you enable all of them in sequence, the field is gonna fail. I've tried close to six times in a row to get the fields to work right and they only fail the moment the tesla enables itself. It's obviously because the tesla turns the very field generators that are supposed to contain it, offline.

Nerfs are rarely the right way to go. If you undermine a playstyle you make people not want to play it due to its glaring flaws, it doesn't make for good gameplay because nothing is fun when everyone is weak, it just boils down to powergaming to scrape by rather than allowing for interesting up-front confrontations where traitors have an assortment of tools and gear to toy around with and use in pursuing their objectives. Buffing everyone else to be equally overpowered allows for interesting (and arguably amusing) situations that wouldn't normally happen without the buffs existing.

Okay, let's be honest. ERT and even security gets a ton of cool nifty stuff but traitors are forced to budget for their kit. Not even mercs get a lot of TC and that kinda sucks. So here's my suggestion: Traitor TC amount: 40 (Would allow for a wider range of equipment. You could grab maybe 2-3 lethal weapons and that's pretty much it. Could make ammunition more expensive just to balance this out better. I'm not saying they should face off against a fully armed ERT but they should stand a reasonable chance if they pack for it rather than getting gunned down stupidly for not being given enough anti-ERT options) Mercenary TC amount: 65 (They're highly funded operators. It's fair if they get a ton of cool nifty stuff on par with ERT, they should be the well-funded terror operators that the lore depicts them to be.) Ninja TC amount: 25 (They already have a slick spider suit but they can purchase other things on the go to fund their operation, since they're outsourced by the Spider Clan typically to perform SYNDIE DEEDS.) Heister TC amount: 20 (They're not-well-funded pirates that need to scavenge to survive. I think it's fair not giving a lot of them individually a lot of TC, but this means they have to band together to purchase bigger stuff. Syndie borgs should be disabled to heister-marked uplinks, for obvious reasons.) Why? Because ERT is honest to god overloaded with cool stuff and utility, but a dumb solution would be to nerf them to a traitor's level. Security is pretty stronk on its own too, and a revolver doesn't stand up well to a laser rifle. Instead of nerfing everything in sight, we should buff traitors to be able to purchase more equipment and make each traitor a potentially dangerous force to deal with if they know what they are doing and have packed for the occasion. Lings and vamps don't get this special treatment because they're already stronk in their own ways and require specific playstyles to play them effectively, since that's mostly the point of playing a niche antagonist.

Considering it. Hang on though.

It's not a bad idea. It just requires we go GURPS or we not touch the issue at all, because arbitrarily applying it to only one situation doesn't make for good gameplay balance.