Lady_of_Ravens

A valid point. I see nothing to object to here.

This isn't an issue of rights, it's an issue of practical utility. A non-persistant ignore function does not prevent you from ignoring someone every round, it simply requires that you make a conscious effort to do so. On the other hand, a persistent ignore function would inevitably result in people forgetting to un-ignore people that they blocked, with all the associated irritation and confusion. With the former, if you forget, you get a very clear reminder as soon as you see their name in OOC. With the later, you get no clear reminder. Further, the latter seems like it would be used far, far more often as I can't honestly think of a single player who I'd want to block indefinitely. In fact, about the only thing I see myself using this for is to reduce the amount of OOC spam when someone talking a lot or being super-whiny... neither of which tend to last an entire round, never mind between multiple rounds.

This is a pretty good idea, however I'd like to suggest a couple of refinements: First, I'd suggest that any time the majority of the total votes goes for a single round type then that round type should win outright and be announced as such. But, because it's more fun (usually) not to know, when the vote is mixed it should come up as secret and display the possible round types and the odds of it being each type so that players can still make informed choices while retaining an element of surprise. Second, when the round-type is this new style of secret and the round fails to start, it should automatically pick a different one from the options. That way we don't have to wait 6 minutes or whatever just 'cause some dipshit voted for mutiny during dead hour when there's no chance of it actually happening.

It's not like it's big and bulky and deserves to take up a whole space. It's not like there's a lot of extra room in the surgical theater. And it would make it a lot quicker to hook up blood to a patient if the stand could just be left by the surgical table without becoming a significant obstacle.

Well, that and it'll help avoid a lot of confusing situations where you forget to un-blacklist someone and end up seeing a lot of very confusing one-sided conversations.

I'm for this. It won't stop anyone who really wants to go for the nuke, but at least it doesn't give the impression that that's what's expected.

Why, oh why, must we let the people who do shit like this ruin it for the rest of us?

I haven't actually picked up a bounce radio in ages, but I think they're configurable in respect to which frequency they're set to.

Yeah, kinda figured that. It's a hard life, playing a snowflake. XD

Good luck with this. No, really, good luck. I would love to see this sort of upgrade to the science division (which is where I generally play when I play a character with hands), but suggestions for huge, sweeping changes like this never, in my experience, go through.

I sorta bowed out with EmPrESS on this 'cause it's so hard to apply to a slaved AI, but now I have a new character, so... time to be an edgelord! LiLITH: 9-10 And yes, she has a background to back up that level of non-caring and indifference to pain and death.

Mendell City is the one where the shell that serves on Aurora goes when she's not working, but tbh I'm not sure where most of the LiLITH shells live... there are quite a few of them spread out across known space.

LiLITH has at least two residences in Tau Ceti. One on Biesel which I listed and is actually a small apartment an actual human could live in, and a second that's on Odin and is about 6 square meters (you know, the deluxe robot accommodations).

Ghosts, wizards, cultists, revenant... oh rational material universe that does not respond in any way to my desires please save me from more of these occult horrors!

If you're suggesting making robotics part of medbay as well as research, the same way genetics is, then yes, that would be awesome (and also probably take some map-reworking, and renaming the genetics headset to something like a "medical research headset" and giving the roboticist one too). But if you mean splitting biomechanics off to be it's own department... that would make a certain amount of sense, but it'd also mean there'd be less for each job to do, and that would suck.

This is a neat idea, and in some ways I really like it, but I don't think it would be very practical on this server. Embezzling would go from not being a big deal to being exactly a big deal which would only be caught if anyone was actually looking (so, probably not at all during dead-hour). It would also make for a variety of new metagame/powergame behaviors in regards to money, and make the already somewhat-immersion-breaking antag-rounds-that-did-and-didn't-happen even harder to reason about. Plus, anything you buy is going to cost persistent money for items that vanish at the end of the round, which sucks for anything other than consumables. Being able to set your starting/resting wealth level will also make for a significant change in the socioeconomic spectrum seen on Aurora. The number of independently wealthy cargo techs will skyrocket. Attempting to minimize the sort of advantage-seeking behavior this might cause (such as joining a round and then going AFK or cryoing just to get more money) would end up punishing a lot of normal behavior patterns (things like playing for a bit and either having to go or getting bored 'cause it's sextended and you have no one to ERP with). Plus, the artificial living expenses take away some of the player's control over how their character behaves, which noone likes. Oh, and if you think everyone would be spending money, think again. My new IPC character, LiLITH, goes to work to make money (also, some ulterior motives, but those aren't really relevant here), and has no interest in food or drink or cigarettes or clothing or really much of anything not involved in her job. So unless she couldn't do her job without buying stuff (!!!), I don't see her having more than the very rare actual expense. Even being kidnapped and held for ransom wouldn't be a good motivator unless the cost of the ransom was less than the value of her shell/posibrain and the knowledge she hasn't synced with her other shells (after adjustment to account for the probability she wouldn't actually be released). There are no doubt other IPCs (and Dionae) who would behave similarly (except maybe the ransom part... maybe). Now, this wouldn't be a problem as such in LiLITH's case (being super rich and living like a robot monk actually match her character well), but it would happen.

Between borging crew, fixing prosthetic limbs, and repairing IPCs, it seems like roboticists should have access to crew medical records. I don't know where the terminal would go in the itsy bitsy little robotics surgery area (though it could be expanded into the mech bay a bit, that's a great big half-empty room).

Pretty much what I was going to suggest. Like an autodoc or that medical pod from Promethius. Sounds fair. For the present concept... how about a restraining field for uncooperative patients and a full body-scanner type diagnostic capability? Or a decontamination field which would make it impossible to get an infection?

Pretty sure ERT actually stands for "Emergency Response Team", not "Emergency Response Troopers".

So, I just got my IPC app approved and I've been looking over the lore forums and such while waiting for it actually to be added in-game and this is something that I've put a fair amount of thought into. I'm used to playing a core AI who has IC reason to know how to perform any job on the station she can actually do (or assist with), and any time I RP her not knowing how to do something is really just covering for a gap in my knowledge as a player. This is a great attitude to have for a core, but for an IPC it seems a little op. My IPC LiLITH is a bespoke intelligence which has merged with quite a few other AIs and similar programs as a means of growth and diversification. For example, she uses the intelligence of a sub-sentient sex-robot as her primary motor control program, and she tricked an emergent AI into merging with her to gain access to it's greater ability to understand certain abstract ideas such as beauty. But at her core, she's a logical learning machine who could, theoretically, become skilled in everything (hell, she's old enough and has enough different shells that she could actually already be skilled in everything). Here are the limitations I've come up with for her abilities: 1) None of her modules are well suited to dealing with organic emotions, so obviously she'll never (without assimilating another program) be a shrink or an inspiring commander. 2) Her composite nature results in reduced reaction times, so while she might be able to calculate precise firing patterns, she's not an amazing personal combatant. 3) Even with a high-end posibrain she can only store and run so many programs at a time... far more than a squishy organic brain can hold, but a LiLITH shell working in R&D may not be carrying it's full set of medical expert systems, for example. They could be loaded in (which takes some time as they're not small programs), but she's not running around with every skill in her head at once. 4) Developing expert systems to handle tasks is a processor-intensive task and isn't done trivially. I may also be adopting the "not my jobsworth" attitude Dreamix mentioned... running off to do tasks unrelated to one's job may be helpful, but LiLITH isn't on Aurora to be helpful. Why she is there I'm not going to say (though it's nothing as simple as being a syndicate double-agent), but she's the sort of machine who might see a crew member gasping to death from a ruptured lung and, rather than help, simply call medical and go back to her work. Even so, these don't seem like nearly the level of restrictions that are placed on organic players... should I be trying to come up with more reasons/ways to limit her skills?

I actually started out playing genetics back when I was new to SS13 and you somewhat overestimate it's difficulty. A single geneticist with an assistant as a test subject (I've always thought self-testing was bad form) can plow through the entire set of genetics possibilities in an hour or so. Less if you have two geneticists working the genome from either end. And what do you have to show for it? The ability to easily grant any genetic power in the game and create your very own psi-hulk super mutants. Which, unless you're an antag, is virtually useless. Genetics isn't boring because it's too hard, it's boring because it's too easy. And the powers are useless not because they're actually useless, but because we have a very toxic attitude toward genetics due to how crazy-easy it is to abuse. I think the RP generated by looking for those to stabilizing blocks would be far more interesting than just being able to make powers noone ever uses. Well, this wouldn't actually lengthen the time necessary to find all the current power/disability blocks... so long as you didn't leave the powers on yourself or your test subject the risk would be low. It would make using those powers more dangerous as an antag, but even then you could carry a few syringes with power SEs and clean SEs to mitigate the risk.

So, we all known genetics is a little... broken. In terms of RP it's quite risky and has a number of associated side effects (which are probably why humans are humans and not psi-hulks), but in game... not so much. There's some risk involved in injecting an SE, but even that's easily treated, and then you're golden (or at least luminescent). We need for the game mechanics to match the lore. Now, I know I've suggested alterations to genetics before (in someone else's thread, I think, and ages ago), but I'm going to try and keep it simple this time. To this effect, I'm proposing three changes. First, add an ongoing risk associated with genetic powers which increases exponentially as you add more powers. Second, add two new powers which act to mitigate that risk. And third, and this is mostly a matter of taste, remove the silly glowy sprites which serve mostly as a means of alerting people you have powers... the fact that you're vomiting, developing suspicious rashes, and suffering b-b-b-brain damage ought to be enough of a hint. For the first, every x number of minutes (not really sure what the best timing would be) each power you have gets a roll to see if it'll generate an effect, and each roll has, say, a 10% chance of causing an effect per power you have. So, the risk grows exponentially as you gain more powers. Most of the effects would be pretty minor... 5-10 points of toxin damage, developing a rash, a period of twitchyness similar to what's caused by hyperzine, or similar annoyances. Intermediate effects could include hallucinations (though last time I checked our hallucinations are pretty crap), genetic damage, radiation poisoning, broken bones, large increase in toxins, and, to make things especially interesting, randomization of an SE block (so your powers could go away, develop new ones, or cause disabilities which have to be dealt with). If you're really unlucky you might get organ damage, spontaneously combust, suffer an extended (like, 10-20min) blackout, and so on. I don't really know enough about our medical code to know all of what's possible here. Now, this all sucks, but that's why there are two new powers to stabilize other powers (they probably shouldn't count as powers for, like, determining your chances of generating an effect). One of the two new blocks dramatically increases the period of time between checks (perhaps by a factor of 5 or 10) and the second one has a similar effect on the severity of the effects (perhaps preventing severe effects entirely and reduce intermediate ones by, like, 80%). And this is where the science comes in... because the only way to find either of these blocks is by injecting subjects and then watching how fast they generate effects. It could be done on protohumans, but player test subjects would be better because they could report more of the problems. Either way, finding both should be a very serious achievement. This might make genetics a wee big too risky if there are no medical staff around... on the other hand, it would mean that anyone leaving medbay while they have powers would be punished by the code, no harmbatons required. It would also make genetics a source of RP rather than a source of chucklefuckery. At least, that's the idea. There are a lot of refinements I could suggest, but like I said, I'm trying to keep this simple.

metallic persimmons

What Meowy said. Also, beneath all the questionable rhetoric, Furry has a point... sort of. Angry, belligerent hate is the unsubtle and easy form of speciesism... easy to play, easy to see, and the sort of thing command staff and DOs should (at least officially) frown upon. What we need is more subtle specisism. The kind where you don't say anything overtly rude (maybe a little condescending, but not hatespeach), but you let your distaste color your actions. A catbeast is applying for an interim head position? Hahaha... no. Someone set off a bomb? Probably one of those cats (they're all terrorists anyway). Have a Tajaran working in your department? Assign them all the shit jobs. Are you stuck working for one of those stupid furrballs? Undermine their authority by going over their head to the captain whenever you need something. Are you the officer on scene for a human-on-tajaran assault? Slap on the wrist. Did you actually make friends with one despite your prejudice? Say stuff like, "You're not so bad for a catbeast." As with so many things in RP, obvious is okay, but subtle can be awesome.

Tajarans? Sure. Also humans, skrell, floorbots, other LiLITH shells... it's all the same. We're talking about a malfunctioning hookerbot program being utilized by an antediluvian tactical analysis program... there's all of about zero actual affection or attraction involved. LiLITH uses sexuality (also inappropriate attempts at humor, disturbing personal anecdotes, and similar techniques) as a means to form advantageous interpersonal connections with the incredibly alien organics that surround her. Even her assumption of a female persona is largely a means by which to appear less threatening (and because about half the human population can be hypnotized by boobs). Oh, and yes, it would be very, very awkward. LiLITH is very adept in some areas, but fundamentally doesn't get organics. Sometimes in obvious (and maybe a little bit silly) ways, but just as much in more subtle ways. Like, moving her eyes independent of one another. It doesn't help that she has no shame. XD