Carver

Depends on how the spawn points are set up.

Seems reasonable enough.

I don't dislike the idea but I'll suppose that I should be the person to ask the obvious: "Why not just use flavour text?"

Logically speaking, would NT/SCC not simply have all of their handcuffs designed not to be easily shattered by a non-insignificant portion of the workforce instead? It was a cute mechanic for hulks (which are just mutate wizards and berserk vampires now) but having it for crew always struck me as odd. Instead of adding super-cuffs, just have the standardized cuffs function as intended for Unathi/G2s. Though for G2s I'd almost dare say take a cue from Star Wars and introduce restraining bolts for IPCs entirely, just because handcuffs on robots are weird.

I consider you such because you've meaningfully shaped it the longest, especially with key decisions such as the Bay fork in 2016 (and the head dev handover before then that ended an era of stagnation). The code is the foundation of the server, I'm not discounting what people built atop that foundation.

While it is concerning to see the architect leave after all this time, I can only wish you good fortune. Let us hope that this new era of NBT and your successor usher in times as wonderful as some of the past seven years.

Wait hold on what is this argument. Cloud City was a huge mining center for one of the most valued gases in the lore (Tibanna Gas - which the planet Bespin naturally produced an even more valued, highly compacted version of), which happened to be so scenic that Lando managed to make it into an even more profitable resort - all while retaining the pre-existing gas mining. This has nearly nothing in common with Cloud City besides 'oh it floats'.

Rats had near-0 RP expectations and could essentially soft-griff a chef by biting chunks out of every piece of food the chef makes. They were also a huge pain in the ass to get rid of due to their ability to both hide and respawn in random spots in maint.

Here's a question on this matter; if any owned IPCs need to be transferred to another corporation to retain the ability to play within a department, will they still be owned by NT albeit under contract for the other corporation - or will they be required to follow the weird specifics of that corporation such as the 'Z.I' naming nonsense?

This is more or less how it worked for years until the chart was added, so I have genuinely no idea why it was suddenly restricted. Medical needs new parts, they request them from Robotics (interdepartmental reliance!), Robotics has them delivered and the Surgeons proceed with their duties as per usual. As well as that as a roboticist I'd often have surgeons perform any brain removals for production of cyborgs. As it stands it feels like the Roboticist has so many qualifications that they're practically at the level of a Research Director, and would have at least 3 or 4 doctorates just for the 'needs' of their role. I really don't feel they should even have a surgery room, perhaps a table with a modified sprite and none of the typical functions (knockout/painkillers, health monitor) needed for true surgery, just something that allows for repairs on IPCs and damaged prosthetic limbs only.

I like it a lot. My only critique is, specifically within the section of Top of the World: The use of unfortunately here comes off as something of a writer's bias. The paragraph otherwise reads quite fine, but this strikes me as though the reader is supposed to see the introduction of the AIumvirate as a bad thing, which after reading though I didn't particularly see it that way at all.

I'd quite prefer if the installation was on the surgeon, given I don't want to be cutting into organics as a roboticist to install stuff that would essentially double the educational requirements of the role (realistically these fuckers should be minimum mid-30s with all they're expected to know). Interdepartmental reliance is at an all-time low for robotics.

Tall feels 'too much', what with the visually overtaking surrounding tiles. Infra, at least in the example image, looks to be very nice when done with a clean and quality aesthetic. Fits the 32x32 of Byond but doesn't break the proper 3/4 perspective.

I'd say Infra works best out of those walls, but it also requires some particular talent in regard to spriting.

I always knew Medical was oversized, but it never really occurred to me just how inefficiently spaced it is even within the confines of the only useful z-level (main deck).

Wouldn't be the first big thing axed from lore. Yet, it stands one of the cleanest for people to rewrite character-wise via other options such as a medical coma or amnesia. Sure, perhaps those two are a bit overdone in storytelling, but they generally serve a very similar place in a character's background as cloning often will.

Given Biesel is the crown jewel, and the history points to Biesel as the founding planet entirely responsible for there even being a Republic in the first place, I disagree heavily with renaming it. Doubly because Tau Ceti Republic just sounds like a generic, uninspired sci-fi name compared to sticking to the name of a cleanly fleshed out planet that has more written lore for it than nearly any other in the setting (perhaps barring Adhomai). When people read 'Republic of Biesel', they wonder "What's Biesel?" and will end up learning about it. This is a good thing. It is the perfect planet for any beginner to base a character from, and it's capital of Mendell has nice little ties to so many other species that invite players to delve deeper into the setting.

More sensible than cloning given it implies actual character consequence instead of 'copy+paste', but as I said, that's a subject for another time.

Much as I like that you paid mind to the balancing aspect of it, I really dislike cloning as a revival concept entirely. It's not the same person, it's a copy, and it's never made sense in lore or game why people are so open to the idea of having a copy of them - without their mind, soul or even thoughts - replacing them so readily. If a revival method of any sort is sought, I'd rather it be something that preserves the original brain in some form (encouraging people to take good care of the dead and not waste time), akin to cyborgification without the lobotomy. But that's a subject for another time.

It also escaped my mind until now that this would make (antag) Force Gloves absolutely absurd if they still have the instant-aggressive grab.

Having any sort of timer based on intent would be awful, as there are many valid reasons to fight with """help""" intent. Timer or not, ye olde 'meta' stun and grab. This is still effective, just marginally less so because aggressive grab is no longer a game over state. You see, I actually would say that the hypospray deserves a nerf. Simple point is that you, realistically, are not going to be getting a good grab on anyone who's not half-asleep. Balance-wise, you shouldn't either, and expecting a mechanic to not be abused is frankly silly given the server's history of nerfing abused mechanics (black k'ois, teleporting into the armoury/vault, ion rifles, and most pertinently for this thread, GRABS).

I prefer grabs being bad to grabs being good. The times when they were good, combat was thoroughly miserable and relied entirely on both the reaction time of players and the pure RNG of resists. In fact, I'm going to go in a step-by-step of why grabs being good would be the single worst change to combat imaginable, a very simple step-by-step that would take all of 1 round for someone to replicate if it were changed. Grab intent, click someone quickly enough. Advance to aggressive grab, since they can't move you can trivially force a pin as they HAVE TO win a resist dice roll, and if they win you can just repeat step 1. If pin succeeds, congratulations, you can effortlessly kill the person. There is nothing they can do at this point besides hoping they win an even lower odds dice roll before you slit their throat with the million odd sharp objects that exist on the station.

I'm not a terrible fan of the perspective swap at all, but the sprite quality is about on par so it's not a downgrade.

I can tell you from experience playing a good few of the contractor factions, they really don't change your playstyle at all if you don't want them to. They give you nice ground to play around with various gimmicks, sure, but you're nowhere required to behave any differently working for a specific corp than you'd be required to behave working for NanoTrasen.

There are already species with objectively superior mechanics for combat such as Unathi and IPCs, where the difference can't be ordered. I can't imagine someone having slightly better aim will make near as much of a difference as those two.