Sparky_hotdog

A Death Domain was definitely on a list of potentials that I didn't suggest here. My ideal situation would be that the Domains system would be modular enough for anyone in future to add other Domains with future PRs. Depending on how long the bulk of this takes, it may be easier to release any more Domains in future, after the core concept is up and running. I wasn't actually aware of Deity, and I agree it shares similar ideas. The main reason for going down Domains rather than just porting that imho would be to allow more lore-based gimmicks. With the final summoning concepts you mentioned, I think the idea behind most of these (minus Nar'sie) is basically what I would aim for with the "late-game" I mentioned; The sort of thing that would be likely to need an evacuation or ERT, but isn't necessarily a game-over. As for the stealthier cults making more occult stuff happen the more they get up to, this is definitely a really good idea that I can get behind. I may not have made this entirely clear in my original post, but this was something I was personally planning and offering to code, and putting up a suggestion because, as you've pointed out, this is a pretty big project and I wanted to make sure any ideas or criticisms were heard sooner rather than later. Related to my above reply: I'd be willing! And as someone of questionable spriting ability (I'm terrible at it), help on that front would be appreciated, if you're offering.

So this is an idea I've had fermenting in my brain for half a year now, and with me having lots of free time in the summer, I thought I'd take a stab at it. However, its a pretty preliminary and abstract idea right now, so any ideas/feedback/criticism would be helpful in making it more concrete. Introduction: Goals: Domain Ideas:

So I also really like holopads, and kind of wish there was more reason to holocall someone instead of just PDAing them or calling them over the radio. I'm with Carver in that needing a wrench feels unnecessary. Maybe even make it a handheld thing (Yes, I'm thinking like in star wars), though that might be too different to the actual holopads.

Given that two shields already exist in game (that I know of) this seems reasonable to me. Having different sizes with protection vs mobility or hand(s) free could be cool too, and anything that makes the combat system more versatile rather than adding more guns, guns, guns is good in my book.

The TCLF one looks great, though something about the blue highlights and the white strip at the top of the helmet seems to meld together. It's not massive, and it might not be the reason I've come up with, but the white strip is way to hard for my brain to pick out from the blue helmet. The EVA suit is great. It's yellow, it's industrious, it has a cool visor. I look at that and immediately think "There guys are here to do some engineering" The Hazard suit shape wise I love. The yellow strips on the helmet are cool, the three-part control module is something that looks unique and entirely believable, the chunky looking leg pads are great too, and did I say the EVA suit had a cool visor? Because the Hazard one's on a new level. Only critique would be the colour; It looks fine against the pink background, but against the grey floor it does look more muted/maroon than I'd expect. The CE rig follows a similar path to the Hazard suit for me. The design is great, and as Cybs said, the hardhat look both makes sense and is awesome. But the colour feels both too bright, and too close to the EVA suit. As Redshirt said, it doesn't seem like it would stand out from other engineers at a quick glance. If you were intent on keeping the gold/yellow aesthetic, maybe a coloured patch on a shoulder or something just to make it distinguishable would be nice. All in all though, great sprites that I can't wait to see in game.

I'm going to preface all of this with the fact that I have all my antag preferences off, and have had such for a good few months now, so be aware the angle I'm coming at this from. With that in mind, this highlights a very large portion of why I disabled my preferences in the first place. Being the bad guys was less of a concern, for me at least, but as someone who played sec for a month, and mostly enjoyed the RP side of it, I have never felt particularly 'robust' or able to go up against others in a fight, which for a large number of antag rounds (Traitor, Ling, Vamp etc) is the most likely scenario; You alone against a team of 2+ security members. As for carrying the round, this I remember being a concern too. While most rounds are either group antags now, or at least have more than one solo, it can still be tricky to work out something that is a) Achievable and b) Engaging in the relatively little time you have to prepare a gimmick. Especially given that most big and engaging gimmicks I can think of require some prep work in round which will take more time. The other big reason I turned off my preferences was the lack of other antags. Due to the fact that at any one time, there's a relatively small number of people right now with any antags enabled, it was leading to me being picked more frequently than I'd like, which also makes it harder to come up with gimmicks when you've played Wizard three times in the last two days. I don't mind being the bad guy, but I do also like to play the good guy from time to time too. Most of my other complaints with antags in general have been addressed above: A combination of a reluctance to slightly meta-game for the sake of the round when a vampire tries to get you alone and a continual focus from both security and antags alike on combat over dialogue have lead to countless gimmicks I've witnessed and thought "Oh, this is new and cool" being shut down too early for anything interesting to happen. This I have to disagree with. The number of guns is anything makes the weapons system less interesting imho, as most are nigh inspiration-less with slightly different statistics to another. During the recent weapon sprite thread, I realised just how many guns we have that I have no idea what makes them unique. I'd much rather we had say twenty guns total, but they were all distinct. To give an example, the icelance is a gun I remember because of it's crank-to-charge mechanic which made it feel different. Poisons feel like they are approximately useless, as medbay is never that far away, and they're never interesting or tricky to counter. Wouldn't it be better if a traitor could blackmail someone into doing something for the antidote to a poison they've been given, rather than just having someone go "I ate some food, and now I feel funny, better go get myself checked out". In short, the number of mechanics feel un-inspiring, rather than creative-inducing. That's my piece on the matter at least.

I'd be down for this. As is changeling is mile better than it was say, six months ago imho, but that still doesn't mean its perfect. These options all seem cool, and simply by virtue of creating more options for what exactly a changeling is you increase the variety of the rounds, and reduce the weirdly repetitive nature of ling at times (Ling dies, medbay autopsy, ling revives, repeat).

I can see the problem with the current system: As is, I tend to OOCly cap what I set the transfer rate for roller IVs to 10u, simply to avoid the potential "game-y" thing. However, I can see an issue with allowing the exact same transfer rates as a full IV. Currently, medicines with more precise transfer rates (0.2 Alkysine for example) can only be done with IV stands, which maintains their use while allowing the roller to be used for things like blood which don't require the same level of precision. My worry would be that by allowing roller IVs to have the same range would make IV stands redundant for 75% of cases, with their only use left being for having multiple drips set up at once. A way around that might be to make the roller IVs have a less precise, but slightly larger range; Something like 2u-10u maybe?

TL;DR: For the sake of Low-pop, don't remove it. Either rework it to be more dynamic with pop-size, or get a new *cough* technomancer *cough* gamemode to fill it's place.

I feel like given that malf was removed as a stand alone mode from secret, it makes sense to remove it from combined secret modes. If ninjas or traitors or whatever want a malfunctioning AI on their side, they can do that as a gimmick. ninjas especially shouldn't struggle all that much with subverting the AI. However, I also agree with Carver in that, hopefully sooner rather than later, Dynamic will come and hopefully fix this all together.

Dominate was yeah... not fun. I've thankfully only seen it used a handful of times, but it was never fun, interesting and/or good for roleplay. Skipping past thralls for now, the hulk issue could probably be solved by linking it to brainmed. Something like having it rapidly eat through your tissue as fuel could make it a last desperate attempt to feed, but not a twenty minute slog-fest. I would also be down for some more vamp-themed changes to their hulk mode, as I'd agree it feels a tad out of place with nigh every vampire story I can think of. Now, thralls. Personally, I don't think giving them a way to get out once they've been converted is a good idea. Make extra ways of resisting sure, but giving a way out (short of maybe something chaplains can do, but the chance of getting vamp and a chaplain are pretty low) is a hard no from me. I get that people dislike forced antag conversions (The issue is also brought up in Cult) but at the end of the day it's pretty hard for a vampire to just enthrall you out of nowhere (if this does happen and I've never seen it, maybe raise the time it takes to convert?). They likely either kidnap/stunned/captured you in some sense, which is reasonable effort on their part imo, or they RPed their way into you trusting them, which again is reasonable effort. And if an antag has put that much effort into gaining an ally, I feel like they deserve it. As a counter suggestion, why not make being a Thrall more fun and interesting for the player, so people don't mind being made one? Instead of giving more ways to avoid and/or escape it, maybe give Thralls a way to claw their way into becoming an enthralled vampire, and then eventually to their own freedom? Give them something else to do other than 'Follow your vampire's every command'.

Going to start with the good, that being that the new ion looks sick. It manages to capture the "this is a powerful, complex weapon" the old sprite had going for it, while adding the white aesthetic. I'm with Danse here. Considering the rifle, ion and disruptors are all a pretty stark white (which I like, feels very sleek) the slightly off-white is strange. I get that people might argue (and have above) that not all the guns need to have the same colour scheme, as they could come from different suppliers, but I think the simplicity of them matching is better. It's not like we've ever said this is the Zavodski pump-action Mk4 (You can tell I totally know how guns are named) because that would likely just confuse people more than was necessary. The rifle to me still looks like it would be more inline with the carbines than the rifle; It's shorter than I'd expect from a rifle. I originally thought this was to do with the stock, but on a better look it would say the barrel could be longer, but also bare in mind the rifle is supposed to be dual-wielded, and that doesn't look ergonomically designed to be gripped with two hands to me. The disruptors still all look like they're a size down from what they are to me, but that's my only complaint. I really like how there is more that changes between stun and lethal than just the light colour. The blasters are still pretty good, though the revolver cylinder looks a little high I want to say? If you're not going to have it take up the whole part of the gun like the old one (which I like) then I feel like it should be more in line with the rest of the barrel.

I like the style of the disruptors, with the black grips and the bigger charge indicators being the best parts of the changes. However it feels like they're all one size too small, with the middle looking more like the far left on the originals (I don't know the terms for the different ones, apologies), the far right looking like the original middle, etc. The rifle both looks a bit short and a bit tall, and I'm not sure how I feel about the white aesthetic. The disruptors have a bright colour scheme at the minute, so I didn't mind it there, but I do quite like the full black rifles we have right now. The shotgun I like. It feels like it fits the setting much more than a 20th century style one for anyone other than maybe raiders. On top of that I feel like the shading has been done the best here of all the sprites as far as the white sections go The ion is just... sorry, but it looks like a hand canon, not an ion rifle. It's dumpy and tall, and the white feels very blinding. I will say that the charge indicator having that 3D aesthetic is something I like however. The blasters I don't have much of an opinion on. Most of them look better, even if they aren't drastically different. The only one I'm uncertain on is the revolver, and in particular the way it's barrel kind of juts out. Feels out of place to me.

I have to agree here. How many times have we seen people pick up the same five or so items in slightly different combinations. Admittedly most people tend to come up with a half-decent gimmick and the tools just become a means to an ends, but I would appreciate it if security stripped a traitor, found a bunch of Einstein themed gear and just went "Well, I wonder who sent this guy." On top of this, it would make that moment where you get chosen for traitor and really cannot think of any ideas (or it's 1:55) much easier. Just pick up a random kit, and you're good to go. I know other servers have/had things like this, and while they tended to be themed after IRL things (Think there was a Vader one, that sort of idea) I imagine adapting some of those would be pretty simple.

I'm going to preface this with the fact that I started playing xenoarch in late July 2020, and very quickly found myself burned out of the role, to the point where I'm now pretty certain I'm retiring that character from play. The reason behind this burnout was pretty simple too: I'd spend anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour on the rock, before coming inside, spending another hour RPing my findings, only for the shuttle to be called at two hours and for me to realise I was only half done, having never spoken to another character that whole round. Rinse and Repeat. It was frustrating, and the main reason being how long it takes to find an anomaly (which is realistically the best way of finding artefacts too). So yes, I'd agree xenoarchs need a better and faster way of finding anything. If what Dronz said is correct (which given that I vaguely remember materials being a thing before, it probably is) then that's likely not an option. I don't really have any better ideas unfortunately, but xenoarchaeology definitely need to be able to cut down on their EVA time imho.

I'm going to compare Medical to Security for a minute. I'm going to skip most of my comparisons, and just get to the part I feel is important. The Chemist & First Responder / Investigations. I'm not going to try and say which compares more to which, but as it stands, Chemists make chems, and First Responders exist to stabilise and retrieve patients. Both of these jobs can be managed without (75% of cases are just easier with medicines, not impossible without, and any member of medbay can do response in the absence of a FR), and both can do a small amount when on their own. Now let's look at Investigations. As is, Security can manage without an investigations team just fine, but they clearly make their life easier, and equally Investigations can manage (albeit to a lesser extent, as you'd expect) without any other security personnel. Yet you don't see anyone complaining that Detectives and CSIs should be super-cops, capable of investigating and working on the front lines. As an additional point on this, FRs can give someone a splint, which is often forgot about due to the fact >60% of medical can perform bone repair. And I feel like this ultimately highlights the major issue with this change for me: Sure it sucks to have a broken leg, but a splint can be turned into a cool RP thing. And the same can be said for a whole bunch of less than perfect treatments. If the entire medbay staff were able to do everything, medbay would pretty much just become a mechanics grinder: People would come in, get the best treatment, and leave. Do you know where else you see that kind of thing? Lower-RP servers, where medical doesn't exist to roleplay consequences.

So this is sort of a compilation of tweaks and changes suggested for roller beds on the suggestion forums that I've taken on. Below is what I have currently completed, however if there's anything new/that I've missed that folk would like to see, suggestions would be appreciated. Roller Bed Resprite: Brought up here. The concept being to make the beds easier to see and click. Currently this is what I have (criticism appreciated, spriting is not exactly my strongest skill): Move Bed IV: This was also brought up in the above thread, as well as every time anyone with a medhud has tried to check a bed IV. Moved the IV to the left of the bed now. Buckle Body Bags: Brought up here. The concept being that body bags aren't dragged around on the floor IRL and, with the new slow down, are currently a hassle to move around. Edit: Added a few more images. Edit 2: Smaller Beds: Suggested below, makes the collapsed item normal sized, allowing them to be put in bags. I was initially worried about the balance of this, but having seen that other servers also have this, it is now in. QoL - It will budge: QoL I realised when testing. Basically if you try to pull the patient rather than the roller, you will now try to pull the roller rather than being told no. Pull Request here.

So the gun I have no thoughts on. As someone who, on the occasion I turn traitor on, tends to avoid using guns as much as I can, I don't really have any idea if there's an issue or not, and if this would rectify it. The surgery-bot, as Butterrobber said, has been brought up on a few threads now, and while I'm an advocate for it, it probably best to leave the discussion surrounding that to the other thread(s). The holo-decoy I love. I was thinking about something like this a few weeks ago, and any way to get more lore into the game is great, particularly seeing as Elyran lore items in the uplink seem pretty scarce right now. I also like the idea of having more ways for traitors to escape a fight than: Win or "Run and Hope". The grenades I find equally interesting. I will say that when I read the plasma grenade being non-aerodynamic and then say "spike" in the name of the next, I was expecting something that was essentially the inverse of plasma. But hey, maybe that's another idea too. As for the fakeout, I think this could be neat, especially if combined with a real vicerator grenade :).

My worry is that this wouldn't be the case. With the roles as is, if someone needs an appendix removed or something else which my character, as a trainee physician, cannot perform, then I don't feel as bad about being all "Sorry, but I can't treat this." But if suddenly all medical staff were (supposedly) able to do all surgeries, then a whole load of the play-to-win players that you mentioned really wouldn't take no as an answer. Not to mention that while those of us in medbay now might know and see it as acceptable to RP your super-doctor as a less-than-super-doctor, but what about when someone new looks to join? If you read the wiki page on medical for the first time and see that all the roles can do everything, you probably wouldn't ever think to do so. And if you're going to say on the wiki "Feel free to not be good at everything." then why don't you just stick with different roles like we have now? All in all, I can't see this doing anything other than feeding certain parts of the community reasons to get annoyed when they can't get medical treatment.

Your reason for wanting all of medical to be able to do all of medical seems to be rooted in being unable to be treated. But there are general ways of treating most basic stuff with only two or so medical members. No Responder? People can run, and a fair number of doctors (plus a bunch of other departments) are EVA trained for recovery. No Chemist? This... does suck sometimes. If you have a surgeon and are fast you can sort of get away with it, but honestly, one of my most enjoyable moments in medical was managing to keep three severe burn patients alive on my own, with nothing but cryo, sleepers and the meds from the nanomed. It wasn't pretty, fast or ideal, but it worked. No Physician? Honestly, this is a small thing. I say this as a Physician to be: We're not essential. Most surgeons can fill in for a physician if there is none. No surgeon? Well, conversely to the chemist, most surgeon unique surgeries can be fixed with chemicals. No Psych? These guys pretty much only do RP things, so... No CMO? As Faye said earlier, CMOs aren't super doctors, they're just good doctors who are also good at leading, and in there absence medical is the same as any other department without a head. If you end up in a situation where any medical staff short of a Psych or Intern can't fix you on there own because their character doesn't have the skills, you've seriously injured yourself and that's a consequence that exists, which is fine by me. You made a reference earlier to having someone refuse to fix a broken bone because they're only a physician. Firstly, that's wrong. Physicians are supposed (if I'm reading the wiki correctly) to be able to perform bone repair. And if there was just a responder on, that's what splints are for. Which I think highlights the core of my point: By making everyone able to do the absolute best solution, all of the half solutions feel unnecessary, even though imperfect medical treatment often brings about better roleplay. (Apologies, this is very long, but I think it expresses all my thoughts.)

This feels... wrong? Idk, but my view on this kind of goes as follows: Merging the two pharmacist titles (that is pharmacist and chemist) into one seems fine. I don't think there's any IC distinction, and most respond to either title so that'd be fine I think. I'm not sure how I feel about FRs being able to do everything. I get that it's a pain if no Doctors are around, but I feel this should be dealt with more ICly with a radio announcement of "Be careful today, I can't patch you up perfectly if you get hurt." I know antags can cause even the most cautious player to end up heavily injured, but that makes low-medstaff rounds scary. As for merging Physician and Surgeon, hard no. As a relatively new medical player, I still see surgeons commonly pushing physicians aside to treat patients, even with the distinction. If these were the same role. some (and I know some would be respectful about this) of the more experienced surgeon mains of the moment would likely end up becoming the only people treating patients. It would also mean that Physician mains would have to learn all the surgeries, and while I don't think any of the advanced surgeries are mechanically much harder, it feels odd to say that NT only hires people capable of brain surgery. Overall, this feels like it would remove the sort of stratified nature of medical I like. Someone gets picked up by a FR, passed to a physician who then, if necessary, passes them onto a surgeon who then, again if needed, passes them back to a physician. Edit: Completely forgot about Psychologists/Psychiatrists. Given that these roles basically only see use in RP, the people who play them don't want to get roped into doing surgery for the round or whatever. So making them part of Physician is also not great imho.

I don't work shifts, but (perhaps this is just my limited experience) most people work at a fairly consistent time.

Personally, I struggle to see the issue with people having characters only work at one time of day. I can see that you would be saying "If you live in Chicago (Because I think that's the time zone we use) and only play in the evenings, all your characters can only work in the evening." and that would suck if you wanted to make a character for a different time of day. But as it stands, the shift times are just wrong imho. Humans are creatures of habit and routine, so it makes very little sense for my character to work a shift from 4-6am then another at 6-9pm that day, followed by one at 11am-1pm the next day.

I'm going to start out by saying that tomkiel hit the nail on the head for me. For a long time now, I've viewed Cult as a good gimmick for an entirely different game mode, that was given its own game mode. And for that time, I've always attributed this lack fo creativity and freedom (and the resulting repetitive slog that are Cult rounds.) to the very nature of Cult being a cult... Then Zundy said this, and I have to say, it got me thinking. What if we made cult into this hypothetical mode I previously mentioned. Personally I think forcing people to use the lore religions might put us in a situation where people get annoyed about someone "ruining" the lore they like, so what about making it more creative. I'm thinking give the cult the option to choose a Domain (obvious inspiration from DnD), which would essentially work a bit like a Wizard's spellbook. It's then up to the players to decide which god they want to follow, so if you had a bunch of taj fanatics who wanted to do Bloodmoon 2 because they're all nutjobs they can, but equally some less lore-savy players (or others) could make up their own god.

An question I raised after being made aware of the night lighting issue is this: Is night lighting good? This might be better put in a different thread, but as it was raised as a consequence of this, I'll leave it here for now. Personally I've never found it to be a particularly fun or interesting feature, which doesn't even make much sense. I can't think of many real world examples, but the obvious one is planes. But this is a safety feature, intended to mean that if the plane crashes in the dark, your eyes are adjusted, not something to do with natural sleep cycles or whatever the IC blurb is. And speaking of ICly, this STILL doesn't make sense. NT hires Dionae, a species which require light to live. Turing off the lights at their workplace sounds harmful and an unnecessary risk. Maybe I'm missing something?