Carver

I don't have to cater my personal round entirely around any other antag. I can leave the round, fuck off from the scene, or do a number of things my character would ICly and realistically do to get away from the problem. This is, from the very get-go, having your round hijacked by a non-whitelisted stranger who goes "You wanted to play a round and do something on your own? Nah, eat a fucking slimey slug dong and spend a full 2 hours and fifteen minutes with me in control that you can't cryo or ghost from unless you get yourself killed". If it were opt-in? Fine. If I could choose the person who shares my brain? Fine. If I could freely cryo upon realizing I otherwise have to spend two hours roped to some random? Fine. To use a video game reference, as it stands this is the equivalent of readying up for quick match in Heroes of the Storm as your favourite hero and matchmaking instead forces you to play Cho (Bonus points: Your Gall has never played before and argues with you over everything you do).

In the simplest answer, I don't intend to ready up and dedicate my next two hours from the get-go to some absolute stranger who I have no experience with or understanding of. Whilst being told, per the ruling mentioned in the discussion and reinforced by Garnascus in this very thread, that you're expected to break character to cater around this random person to the detriment of your own round and enjoyment. With being culted, you can fuck off and do your own thing instead of being glued by chance to someone entirely random and likely unvetted.

Yet for those one or two rounds he negatively impacts the experience of others, and in the case of the topic at-hand, can ruin the entire round of a single individual. If it's a bad round of any other antag type, you're free to cryo at any point. Yet this precise mode demands a reversal of multiple prior and recent rulings in regard to that? This mode demands the very first case of a player's agency in regard to all roundstart opt-ins to be disregarded? Every other roundstart (for clarification to avoid the cult comparison) role can be opted out of, job or antagonist. There is an option to return to the lobby if you don't get the job. As others and myself have said: By forcing players into such a role you negatively impact their experience in such a way that you'll end up with sour individuals who will undoubtedly act against the mode, passively or otherwise (and you can't do much about passive resistance as it's near impossible to discern).

And unless antagonist whitelists were implemented, I do not trust the quality of the random shitheel selected as antag who'll inevitably try to spam taking over the body and cause brain damage as a result. If one is stuck with a brain pAI it should either be opt-in, or they choose whom it is, or even better- they don't start in a fucking host.

Then it should not be forbidden to cryo and opt out of it. It's equivalent to having a Medical character start in Cargo and be expected to pretend that everything is fine and they were a cargo character all along. If you wish to go this route, consider dropping the 'Heavy' from this:

Forcing people to endure it may also result in the most egregious failing of all. By demanding people comply with the borer, you may in fact be forcing them to break character for the sake of a round type. By that in itself, the round type is flawed and does not belong on an RP server.

I mean, by multiple prior rulings both old and very recent, I can also just cryo if I start with a borer.

I'm always down for raising the minimum age, especially for a position demanding experienced and mature personnel.

In a statement that will inevitably offend some group of people or another, a great deal of the overall creepy behaviour can likely be derived from several factors. The two I believe firmly are the biggest at fault: The server culture over the years has not done anything to discourage these people. In fact, it often encouraged these people, initially in a seemingly playful, satirical and downright joking manner. It's clear that over time this has changed as it's gone beyond being a running gag. Due to the above factor, we've unfortunately gained some amount of community overlap with places such as Citadel. On it's own, that wouldn't be bad if not for that some people don't seem to know that different servers have different cultures, and sexual behaviour is very much unwelcome here. Along with other factors drawing 'undesirables' here, such as lore being far less strict due to the introduction of numerous sub-factions that defy the standard character requirements of the base lore (Aut'akh, Dominia), as well as a near-unregulated amount of freedom granted to whitelist holders in regard to character design that would allow for aforementioned undesirables to come closer and closer to their self-insert fursonas in RP (Most common amongst two things I've noted: Unathi and Shells - Tajara have slightly avoided this due to a firmer oversight on their behaviour, and Vaurcae, whilst suffering from some pretty bad characters, are not as bad as the aforementioned two). There are several ways to solve this, the ideal one being somewhat difficult for people to willingly accept: Ideally: Cut down on 'lore bloat' and offending sub-factions. Cull what causes growth of the problem. This would be a rather long-term objective, possibly requiring a cycling of lore staff as a result. Which is why I noted that this would be difficult for people to accept. Alternatively: Crack down on sexual behaviour and deviancy on the server and related platforms (Official Discord, Forums). Keep the OOC far more PG, and for IC, ban things such as flavour texts/FT-images that could be considered inappropriate (I've seen server staff with such). A puritanical standpoint is required if one wishes to cleanse the server's culture.

@geeves How many implants come with the aggression bundle? I feel that a reduction to 5 points may be advisable as they are, in effect, a purely RP-based implant that can very well backfire on the user. It may result in them being somewhat spammable (unless a purchase limit, let's say 2-3 bundles per head rev, were implemented) but it's not exactly easy to implant people as it is, so I don't see an issue with it.

Consider the following; It's malf, the AI is about to go loud: What should the AI do beforehand? A) Fortify it's weak points using it's stationbounds, encouraging teamwork amongst the malfunctioning synthetics and giving it a reason to take it's time? B) Just fukken go at it. Then realize that it didn't prepare for the engagement, preparation being advisable and near-required by every other role in the game before combat, and suffer as a result. The issue isn't the back of the core being weak, in fact; I think it's perfect because it opens up the AI to be attacked/stolen by antagonists, whilst giving a reason for antagonist and subverted AIs to use the resources available to them to fortify and prepare. It encourages forethought and preparation, punishing those who disregard either.

I vastly prefer a slow, agonizing death. The time to kill is perfect, there's just some jank with the aforementioned necrotic organs coming on hilariously fast. Tweak the organs to be a little more robust against specifically that problem, and the rest of the system is perfect as is. I'll take paincrit and 20-40 minutes in medical any day, especially when the new system lends so well to recovery RP. Slow death is good, things are lethal without being immediate and I find it far more enjoyable. Near-all examples mentioned above would cause mortal wounds regardless that kill anyone who doesn't get saved in short order, and will put them out of action for just enough time to do whatever you need to do (whether that's antag shit or recovering and preparing as crew). Mortal wounds > murderboning.

In 8 years of SS13, and particularly my 6 1/2 years of RP servers, I can tell you it's not 'a handful'. It is and has consistently been the most unenjoyably shitty roundtype for most involved, with none of the attempted reworks having fixed it in the slightest. It is without fault a predictable game mode that always goes one of a few routes: Captured, spams stings in the brig (previously this was transformation sting, now it's usually something more lethal), gets killed repeatedly as a result. Captured, chats with the Detective for an hour (usually revealing the other lings). Gets moved to xenobiology, either kills the xenobiologist (and gets killed repeatedly as a result) or sits there until transfer. Goes on a gank spree, gets killed repeatedly as a result. Ends up becoming extended but a fifth of the crew has to wait an hour to play again. Goes on a gank spree and tries to stealth away. No one realizes what happened to it and the majority of the round is spent on Code Red with nothing happening for 95% of the crew. A fifth of the crew has to wait an hour to play again. Does nearly nothing all round. May as well have been a traitor with a voice changer considering the passive aggressive comments it made over radio trying to poorly mimic crew. Does absolutely nothing all round. Probably didn't realize they rolled changeling. Here's the key difference between this antag and other antag types: No matter what route it goes with, you often have to kill it many times, all the meanwhile it's encouraged to murderbone. It lacks the options for clever acts of corporate espionage and framing as traitors, with it's only espionage-based powers being voice mimicry and faking fingerprints. This would be relevant if these weren't solely 'cleaning up the trail' tools, instead of tools of direct action like a Cryptographic Sequencer or a false announcement. By their very nature they are as subtle as the average Alberyk-hosted Christmas event. Suited for violence, death and frivolity with no room for anything else. A species that supposedly 'acts from the shadows' and would never do anything foolish to reveal their existence, and yet these ones decide to go and kill off a dozen people or more if they can with no regard for whatever the changeling equivalent of the Masquerade is. In short, removing their game mode is the only good route, and if the administration wishes to use them for events (with carefully selected volunteers instead of random draw-of-the-hat antag selection) then I imagine they'll have a purpose in said events. Do they have a purpose in their current state? No.

Counter point. Ling shouldn't be assmad if I kill him in his attempt to kill me. Lings are, quite commonly, very assmad when they get killed, captured or anything else of the sort.

A sensible change of terminology. +1

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'm quite fond of the bomb suits, hazmats, radsuits and in particular the softsuits. There's no such thing as an 'out of date' sprite if the visuals have kept up, which they have, especially in 32x32 pixel format.

Another solution for miners, one of the days of old: Magboots let you walk over holes so long as you're along a wall. Station walls are metal, a majority of windows have metal, the asteroid is full of minerals. ez.

I would expect the cells, brig area of Security, Vault/Armoury/Teleporter/Secure Tech Storage would all have reinforced floors acting as ceilings in this case.

Calibre-based damage would make sense, yes.

Having it power the entire level opens up a very, very interesting form of sabotage against the AI on the other hand. Something that a traitor/malf AI could circumvent by having a stationbound rewire if they personally saw it as a risk.

Disregarding critique gets one nowhere. This is unnecessary when there's a verb to show/hide the belt, and as shown with the middle vest it's still quite visible when worn and 'hidden'. As it goes, a good belt works on-top of a vest, rather than shaping the vest around a frankly oversized belt that looks more akin to a girdle for a geriatric old man (The pixel-height of the belt shown matches that of the mob's face, for reference).

Theatre wigs make sense. Having them be antag-only is very odd, because visitors and characters who aren't NT personnel (excluding contractors in positions requiring proper maintenance of the hair, like anything that isn't civilian) don't really have any reason to be excluded from them. I say this as someone who despises those hair styles, too. If they're to be kept, rather than be antag-only, have them be civilian/visitor/non-Corporate only. Otherwise just keep them gone because the only wizards and antags I saw with them were spastics acting like children (Amusingly, the same crowd that had them on-station).

The crowd's usually fairly similar, it's just they don't want chucklefucks taking away from their own RP time (via processing and arrest procedures).

Not in the slightest, I've given my feedback on why multiple times over.

Trust me when I say it's generally #3. Processing people can be a massive pain in the ass, especially since the introduction of the 'automated' system via those wall consoles, and particularly if they're putting up a fuss or they have friends (in which case it can feel like rev on extended if it goes very annoyingly). You also tend to get people bitching after the round about 'shitcurity' because you arrested them for whatever crime they assumed they could get away with because another Officer let them do so (without giving them a warning) in a previous round. As such, it's usually easier to give warnings for people who haven't done anything genuinely malicious. It generally isn't #1 outside of very, very bored members of Security; as dealing with antagonists can be just as much of a pain in the ass, the difference is you essentially have to at least pretend to care about antagonistic shit or you're failing at your role enough that you might get jobbanned for doing nothing (unless you're a cowardly Officer, in which case you can usually get away with it via proper RP). The hesitation to arrest in this regard is usually when, for lack of damning evidence, Officers/Security will feel inclined to let you go to avoid having to deal with IRs/Player Complaints from potential improper briggings. (And also because babysitting people through processing/brigging, as per earlier, can be a pain in the ass)