Carver

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.

A shame. I'd hope at least hats might open up.

How will this handle uniforms/loadout, will Command characters be able to don some respective accessories/headwear/etc. from their previous factions?

Is this not also covered by the disparity in numbers? Antags that have the best equipment, have the fewest numbers. Security with it's middling equipment, has numbers in the middle of the road. The crew without science or cargo has low-grade improvised equipment, but vastly outnumbers both antags and security. The only roles to break this are the mass-recruitment antag roles, who traditionally are fairly underequipped compared to solo/small group roles. I never really understood having balance concerns about characters on an HRP server, where the primary focus has been storytelling for several years. Will some people powergame hard, sure, but those who do are almost immediately obvious as they're usually IPCs. If someone is good at wiring doors or the like, then they're already sacrificing time and precious inventory space by often having to interact and requisition gloves and tools from Engineering. They're also cutting away from their own abilities elsewhere.

I disagree, not a single one of my characters even within the exact same role have the same skillset. A number of factors like background, hobbies and the like mean they're all very well different. Plus, if the following is to be believed, those rules will be far less important given mechanics can cover for excessive oversight: In addition, it's nice to have characters that play differently not only in personality but mechanical gameplay as well. If such variance wasn't so important, then every species would function exactly the same.

I do love this, particularly character-based skills, but I'd also hope that antags get some basic boost - even as simple as 'buying anything from the uplink's ranged weapon category gives you intermediate firearms skills'. Integration with those face/species changing machines used by off-station antags would also be handy.

This sounds about as enthralling as thralling. That is, not at all. I'm fine with the current e-mag mechanics of disabling safeties on mechanical parts to make them have more critical effects when heavily damaged.

Be well.

If anything I dare say it would be more interesting to make the current HUDshades a toggle as well. There needs to be a little less thoughtless flash protection around.

I disagree. Sometimes you want the aesthetic of the coloured HUD lenses, sometimes you want the aesthetic of sunglass lenses. Aviators are entirely about form over function.

Just for this alone I support this suggestion. It's annoying to walk off-screen for five seconds, they start to resist and you really have no idea about it even if you're watching them like a hawk upon your return. Rewarding good perception is a fantastic thing.

Make it bright red so it's especially visible too.

I'll just leave an opinion: I like when a story has a pre-determined end, it almost guarantees it will be far better written, but the means to that end should be somewhat engaging as it has to involve the station in some reasonably understandable means. Being on a station presently is what often makes these feel odd, given it's a very remote setting that needs a strong excuse to be involved in anything. I also hold the opinion that people should see far harsher consequences for any remotely stupid actions during events. Let people be more involved, but let them also far more readily lose characters for their acts of 'heroism' and idiocy (and this is including out-of-round means; such as arrests and blackbagging).

While I dig more transhumanist stuff, I question anyone going to their work to get a new augment or limb installed. Going to agree anyways since it'll make more sense by the time NBT rolls around (even then your character would probably be better off visiting a nearby planet to see a better-supplied, proper aug-doc who actually knows how to perform surgery on people). I will say though, I'm concerned about pushing roboticists more toward being surgeons unless the stupidity that is the 'surgery chart' were removed from existence.

Is it too late to suggest it for the NBT holodeck then?

The more eye augments suggested, the more I ponder if it'd break balance to have none of them locked but all of them mutually exclusive with permanent blindness if you get ion'd. Anyone and everyone can bring a specific niche utility of their choice if they're willing to accept eating shit from EMPs.

To explain why I brought up Heph exclusivity for the GPS - it's almost solely to block out potential Research (read: telescience) shenanigans with it. Too much PTSD from that kind of shenanigans being common and quite powerful. It's really the only case where coords can have an impact beyond pathfinding. Medical antag stuff comes with it's own delivery, but the most valuable thing to an antag is efficient inventory management. The more of your kit you can essentially shove up your ass, the more of other utilities and more commonly armaments you can carry. This is also stuff that can't really be taken away from you if captured without intense surgery, which is especially where stuff like welding goggles comes into play as being a real bother. T-Rays are so unimpactful and near-useless that I suggested 2 purely on the basis of 'well it does something so it can't just be 1'. As for NV, I more just dislike giving out more free NV to Security on the basis of hurting stealth even more than it already is hurt. You can presently hide pretty well from human and synthetic Sec, being able to quietly move out of the way of their flashlight radius, that would change fast with freebie night vision. I like your thoughts on the facial aug, a buyable limited/single-use plastic surgeon that doesn't copy the appearance of someone sounds like it has good disguise potential within very sensible bounds. Pretty fair points all-around.