K0NFL1QT

ITT: Literal who's complaining their gimmicks are sometimes shut down by evidence, reason and judgement. I get 'give the antag a chance', but likewise, you can't expect the security players to bend to your whim when reasonable evidence leads to a conviction. I send lings to science whenever there's appropriate crew. Same with Vampires. I will defend muself and the crew from hostiles. I cannot completely disregard protocols and let antags go, just because they're the special round mob. Your goal is to not get caught, or have a plan for when you do. Taken out of context, that does paint a bad light if you take it serious word for word. But consider, it's extended and people are bored, so they chat crap. And bored roboticists like to build mechs, sometimes. It was extended, even if the mech was made it was going to sit unused in the armory.

I'm asking this as I review old warnings, and god knows what my notes look like. I want to do better and open this up to everyone for to contribute to, and to learn from. When most people commit crimes, they will generally not want to be arrested for it; ergo, a general goal of antags is to do shit and not get caught. The main reason I do not antag is because I click to make spacemen go horizontal and inevitably get bwoinked because the player complains, in situations where I have learned to just accept fates as a consequence of the round. I am an opportunistic antag; if I see a chance to do something that I am allowed to as an antag that I cannot as regular crew, and I think I can get away with it, I will try and do it. It gets me in trouble, so I do not antag unless the roundtype forces me to. Do you owe every player a monologue and a chance to escape or report you to security, before you kill them? Is an hour and a half in a slowly escalating round of Malf, that everyone is in some way involved in, not enough of an RP environment to permit the occasional opportunist murder? Why do changelings have a silence sting and the capability to kill quickly and quietly if you have to give your victim chance to call security, fight back and escape? Why is it bad to efficiently kill a character as a traitor if it opens up roleplay opportunities for several other characters as a result? Where do you draw the line?

Basically this. Back off the Security witch-hunt; it's literally their job to keep crew safe from threats and ensure regulations are enforced. Within reason. And those players who pre-empt threats rather than react to them should be spoken to on an individual level. That said, I will agree that Science needs to stop being Research Militia every chance they get.

You just presented the same situation from two different perspectives. Security usually has a lot to deal with, especially with the constant Mixed Secret lately. As an officer, you need to be so careful with IC and OOC rules and regulations, and at any moment someone may try and kill you or interfere in your arrest by killing you brutally. Security Officers get zero mercy from antags; that in turn makes the players not want to be lenient when they will often get taken out of rounds when they give antag players a chance. A security officer who goes out of their way to chat to you when they should be arresting you will end up shot or strangled and hidden in maintenance. Until character skills are mechanically enforced, the difference between robust and pathetic characters will be the competance of the player and how they feel like playing. But I don't think that's going to change anytime soon. I do know that sometimes a robust player will intentionally not go as hard as they are capable of in order to open up opportunities for others to beat them, but you can't expect that to be the norm. Combat prowess just comes naturally over time. In short, get good, let go of the salt, and stop expecting that just because you're the antag you should be the best badass around. As a longtime and regular security player, I can tell you most security players don't care if they win or lose in combat. Most Sec players do enjoy fighting out a conflict, regardless of who wins or loses. But ask yourself; would you rather play the hero, or have your character hacked to pieces in maint and you as a player removed from the round? Officers are more often than not the second if they give an antag half an inch. As for 'playing the fat donut muncher', that's hardly an enjoyable longterm character gimmick, but there are players who do play less than competant security characters. Judging from the fact that a bunch of regular security players have organised themselves a discord to help each other improve, I can safely assume that regular security players enjoy playing as competant a security force as the rules allow, even if a Ninja is going to easily gank decap them down the line. I like the fact that openly incompetant characters are rare; such people realistically do not last long in corporate environments. The simple fact that Aurora staff have spent so long creating and revising security protocols, and a whole structure for dealing with IC and OOC complaints, just naturally encourages competance while weeding out the incompetant characters and players. It's not securitys job to bully or intimidate characters, and doing so risks getting your character getting ICly and OOCly investigated, risking character termination or player security bans. Nor is it securitys job to reform prisoners. Securitys job is to enforce regulations and imprison those who do not abide by them. They don't need to be happy, friendly chappies; they need to know and enforce corporate regulation, by force if necessary. You want Security to be a flabby, incompetant, bullying thug force who fuck up, can't fight or even do their jobs right, so that you as a new player can feel like a badass when you antag. You want several players to intentionally gimp themselves and get easily and regularly taken out of the round so you can have your fun. How about you try and play a crappy security character longterm first; fumble your baton, mess up arrest times, accidentally leave prisoners gear they can escape or kill you with, trip at crucial moments, ignore your superiors orders, needlessly harass inmates, etc. Play an officer who never uses a weapon because you're always talking to the antags instead and keep a note of how many antags don't kill you just because they can. Tell me how it goes.

Of course, but those comments were in response to Schev. You hadn't said anything for or against my idea and I didn't presume a moderator spoke for the dev team. I was just pointing out that, unless I'm mistaken, my proposed idea should be relatively simple. It was concieved with relative simplicity in mind. More complex than just removing already written code, yes, but far easier to implement than if you were trying to design the current genetics system from scratch. I didn't take it with hostility to begin with; I was remarking that it's a valid but trite response. I know full well that the best way to get a feature coded is to learn to do it yourself and go through the peer review process.

If misuse of Genetics is such a pressing issue to warrant it's immediate removal, it wouldn't be a stretch to then prioritise its replacement with something fun, sociable, thematicly appropriate, less grief prone but still useful without jumping organ recievers immediately to overpowered; but that hinges on any developer to take an interest in the project. I presented a system that shouldn't be too hard to implement for an already skilled coder, but would make a good replacement for the possibility of hulk rampages. However, if no current dev is interested, then so be it. But I thought it relevant to at least present the idea again. And, I get it, 'lrn2code' and do it yourself. I'll certainly dive back into Byond code and attempt a more thorough feasibility examination and see if it is as simple as I presume. And, if not, then why not.

I'm curious exactly how many instances of hulk fueled grief rampage there have been since fulltime new map, to warrant such a sweeping feature removal without even a discussion.

Disapointing indeed. However, let me take this opportunity to again reiterate a Genetic replacement that, unless I'm mistaken, any half decent coder familiar with Byond should be able to easily knock out.

Devs would just make suits cause increased heat and power drain on top of slowdown for IPCs. Personally, I don't see prolonged spacesuit wearing as a problem; this is something that should be down to character and player to decide. Suits don't need a mechanical hinderance beyond what they aleady do; these are futuristic space suits with centuries of adaptation and innovation, not the crappy suits of 1970s NASA. Some characters would feasibly be more skilled in the prolonged wear of EVA suits than others. Some characters would be more comfortable going EVA than others, who might be struck with a paralysing fear of the infinite space waiting to steal them away with just a single wrong step. The suit rule, and any mechanical effects that stem from it, only serve to minimise roleplay possibilities and restrict the amount of variance players can inject into their characters. That said, an IIA should have no real reason to be sat in their office wearing a full suit, but I also admit I mainly play engineering and there's always a way to find a decent excuse to be in a suit as an engineer. But if you do make prolonged suit use punished by mechanics, at least make it take into account the characters EVA skill from character setup to represent the characters accustomisation to wearing such suits.

Oh, and bring back defibs so there's actually a way to revive recently dead characters without going through the cloning process.

While I don't agree that anything needs to be done with cloning, I'm not on staff and will concede to the fact that you and others do want cloning to change. Just be aware that this will have a big effect on the flow of the game, and you should make a change that's both mechanically and thematically appropriate. Probably the best solution proposed from your list. It solves the unanswered question of 'are cloning procedures free for nanotrasen crew?', because some people just write off that they have 'full clone coverage in their medical insurance plans'. Which would cost a lost, by all accounts. So, expressly stating that no, those procedures aren't free or covered by off screen insurance is a good way to front load the cloning cost and make it far less appealing. But without a greater economic system, which I know is/was incoming, a fee on its own won't have any gravity to it. Pointlessly crippling. As was explained to me back when I was asking about the cloning process (here), the current technology basically reconstructs your body like a 3d bioprinter. Having that technology suddenly and inexplicably forget to print your organs defeats the whole point of cloning, because you die very quickly without organs. Any cloning technology that creates clones with a high probability of dying due to missing organs would not be supported for public medical use due to the waste of resources and the ethical ramifications of making clones that are physically incomplete and missing vital organs to the point that they just die again. This makes it nonviable technology. In the vein of diminishing cloning capability by increasing repercussions, this seems like an acceptable middle-ground. It's not having clones missing entire vital organs so much as replicating them with some imperfection. But this outcome is usually easily cured by a tiny dose of mutadone, so it doesn't really have the sort of lasting repercussions you seem to want. Maybe. This again seems counter to the point of cloning if the resultant clone isn't even capable of surviving without serious aftercare. Pointless arbitrary restrictions are bad. My suggestion; Firstly, make it absolutely clear that cloning is the Geneticists job; ID lock the cloning room, and restrict use of the cloning console to Geneticists and the CMO. This can easily be explained as a legal restriction due to the ramifications of creating fully sentient human life with the identity of a previously living person. Secondly and most importantly, given that the cloned body is composed of flesh, muscle and bone that's literally a few minutes old and hastily knitted together by a flesh-crafting machine, make clones incur a massively debilitating debuff that's incurable by genetics or chemistry and only resolved by aging the body in. You could reduce the move speed of clone bodies, reduce their unarmed damage, increase the damage they take from all sources, make bones break more easily and make them more susceptible to viruses and infections. This would represent the fact that these bodies are fresh and weak, but will harden up to a normal standard over time. This means that clones come out vulnerable, but fully capable of surviving without urgent surgical aftercare. The only cure for this post cloning condition is living in the body for a while, building up strength through regular resistance training, building up physical endurance through cardio, strengthening the immune system through exposure, etc. Making clones very vulnerable, but not in any immediate danger of death due to faulty technology should have the effect you want; Cloning gets treated as a procedure with serious ramifications. Those who get cloned will be encouraged to take less dangerous or physically intensive roles, like some pleasant and emotionally therapeutic botanical work, thus reducing the revolving door of clones for the security meat grinder. Of course, this post cloning debuff will not persist on the character beyond that round so it's down to the player how long they want to play their characters recovery period; but the point is that, at least during the shift in which they are cloned, there actually is a recovery period where you're not 100%. You could also do the following, in addition; Remove the mutadone chemical and give clone bodies a high chance of disability on top of the previous post clone debuff, ensuring that clones require aftercare from a skilled Geneticist and not just a 0.1 unit pill of mutadone and out the door. Charge for the procedure. While I like this idea, it would be awkward to implement. Firstly, it requires a larger economic system to add gravity to the fee, and the fee itself should be large enough to encourage avoiding it without rendering a clone backrupt from a single procedure. The best method for actually charging the fee would probably be having it process the bill automatically from the characters bank account when the clone process starts, as part of the coded process for creating the clone, and if you have insufficient funds to cover the cost then the clone process aborts before starting. This would lock poor employees out of endless clone cycles, but it could lead to interesting situations where people have to donate money into someones account to cover the fee and get the deceased person cloned. Or it could charge them straight into debt, but I don't like that idea so much.

/mute ChazNoodles

Random events could be doable, but I'd like the alt title and access as an engineer role either way. Alt title, or separate role similar to atmos tech. How is an Engineer supposed to go from no telecom knowledge, to being responsible for the entire comm network without any prior experience? There should be an intermediary between no knowledge and Chief Engineer, where you can play with the systems safely or be guided by another more experienced comm engineer. And it would free the CE/RD to better manage their departments if they have staff on site who are trusted to manage the comm system.

Cane has three medical degrees last I checked his records, but he's in security 90% of the time. He got out of schooling at 28, and spent the last 2 years as an Nanotrasen employee, yet the Head of Staff positions require at least ten years experience in each department. By your own records and admission, he's unqualified to be HoS, I don't think he'd make a good CMO either, but he's always in security anyway so it's not like I have a lot of medical experience to draw from. These issues, plus hi unstable temperament make it a no from me.

The fact that there are no answers is what annoys me about research. You can make up something ludicrous and there's no way to confirm or deny someones theories as truth or bullshit. One theory is as valid as the next, lacking in objective truth of which the discovery is the basis for actual science. Science isn't about infinite unsolved mysteries that change every day depending on what the scientist believes, it's about crystallizing knowledge towards objective truth from a point of ignorance, with countless theories along the way either proven or disproven. I support giving the miscellaneous creatures solid lore.

The inevitable return of the great white telecom suggestion.

Revisting Stellaris after Heinlein and Leviathans is a neat little addition, but today, let's talk mods. The following is a list of the mods I use and consider essential add-ons. Doomsday Weapons and Ships Adds a ton of late game tech expansions centered around even huger ship classes, with special modules, and adds various Doomsday Weapons that take effect during planetary bombardment. They cost a lot of influence to authorize though, so you generally turn them on and off as needed; you can't have doomsday weapons always in play. Increase Planet Size Edict Simple enough. Adds a planetary edict to give that planet +1 slots. It's a high influence cost, but it takes effect instantly and I don't think it requires a tech to learn. But it's a great feature that I found lacking having come to playing Stellaris from GalCiv3. Could be better integrated with a related tech, but it works as is. Stellar Energy This one drastically impacts balance, but I just find it silly to consider interplanetary civilizations to not be harvesting the energies of stars. Every star becomes an energy node on which you can build a mining station, and it's a significant energy boost per star, usually between 5 and 10 points. This applies to all stars, even AI stars, so it's a Galactic power boost. Quintuple Leaders and Planets Simple change; ups the base limit of leaders to 50 and planets to 25. The following aren't quite so essential, but I enjoy them nonetheless. Free New Worlds Protocol Just a personal thing. It annoys me having to research this and set back biolabs, when I start engineering and physics on their respective lab techs. Cloned Now cool stuff. Once you have cloning tech, you can clone new pops instead of just armies. They grow significantly faster than normal pops, but are otherwise essentially identical. I just wish we could clone specific leaders too. Repeatable Genetics Easy enough. Late game tech that gives +1 trait point every time you research it, gradually increasing the limit of genetic enhancements you can perform. Playable Robots (fixed) Does what it says on the tin. You get robot appearances, a new ship appearance and a new 'synthetic' trait that, when added, makes your populations act like robots. You build them instead of letting them grow, and they require energy but no food. The associated droid and synth upgrades give increases to specific robot trait bonuses such as habitability, mining and energy output. Make sure you get the (fixed) version, the original is out of date and had an issue where upgrading robots to droids and synths would spawn them as a new species instead of upgrading existing pops, so you'd end up with four different robot species and only the initial species has your chosen traits. Ringworld Start 1.2+ Another drastic imbalancer, but until I find a decent ringworld construction mod this will have to do. You can set your homesystem to include one of a few types of ringworld, from 4 slot, to damaged, to 12 slot 'Super Ringworld'. Each section counts as a 25 slot planet. Traits and Ethics + Another drastic imbalancer. Increases the empire generation limitations so you can select up to ten different traits of a value up to twenty points, and increases ethic points to four so you can get two fanatic ethics if you want. Be warned, the AI will spawn enemy races with the same rules I'm open to other recommendations, too. All the above are confirmed by me to work with the latest build, except 'Cloning' which probably doesn't work because all my pops are robotic. I'll get back to you on that one.

There are plenty of reasons for Humanity to have desired to spread through the stars that don't involve nuking itself. Chief among these is simply profit. Richard Branson already wants to trap passing asteroids and mine the fuck out of them. Elon Musk wants us to spread onto other planets just to mitigate the likelihood of human extinction by a chance happening. There's the simple economics of Earths finite resources and space being rapidly consumed by a multiplying organism known as the Human. If you don't want Earth to be a shining galactic jewel of prosperity and progress, I don't mind Earth being an over-populated, over-industrialized and polluted slum planet if you want to have Human space exploration more incentivized, just don't wave a hand and have the whole thing nuked. Again.

Beating them in medical was a little over the top as they'd already been shot into gooey paste by officers. They were dead when you were crowbarring them. But you were deaf at that point and incommunicable. The fact that you preemptively retaliated upon a person who'd already caused you severe and potentially deadly harm twice already seems entirely legit, especially when trapped in a confined area and being threatened by them directly. More so when it's an antag who has attempted to kill you. Fair game, I say. Jorven wasn't implanted so there was no specific compunction not to aggress. This seems like an entirely IC issue that mods had no business policing.

For as many people you cite as being disappointed, there were several who were supportive of my actions in LOOC, so we can stop the ad populum arguments. I'm sure Security were disappointed because you did nothing antagonistic until long after the first shuttle call and I got to diffuse their one chance to rush in and go shooty shooty. Your plan was bad and poorly executed. But that's okay, neither Connor Scott or Gerald Grant are hardened hostage taking assholes. You didn't search the CMO, you didn't watch him closely as he went among the hostages. It's okay to admit you messed up. As for Rambo, that wasn't the plan. As a doctor, I don't plan on going out and stopping antags when there's full Security present. But I had a chance and took it. I was there chiefly to attend the wounded, that was my key concern. Originally I was just there to stand ready and prep to clean up the bloody mess. I wasn't trying to get into the bolted hostage area, I was invited by an officer and then permitted by the hostage takers. If they had searched me or been vigilant and watched me, or kept a gun on me as I worked, I wouldn't have been able to make a move against them.

To clarify my position in this as the accused, the AI called medical to the bar and on arrival I witnessed the traitor detective unload tommygun rounds into the other detective. I also noticed that Gerald Grant was with him, and both I and my character know that Gerald is skilled at chemistry, and that he was previously preparing grenades. SO ICly I have a very good suspicion Gerald is packing explosives or more likely chem grenades in a crowded hostage situation. So, upon seeing a hostage shot, I returned to medbay to prepare chloral injectors in the event that I'd get a chance to diffuse the situation. 5units in an injector is not enough to cause harm, but it causes a near instant knockout. Now, as I return, it's been negotiated that someone be allowed to go in and treat the injured. I was offered the chance and accepted. Conner Scott was making demands such as 'enter naked with only a medkit', which he failed to enforce when my CMO actually entered. I wasn't searched. I went ahead and started attending to the two injured crew, stopping their bleeding and dosing a little bicaridine. After about a minute of pretending to examine the other hostages, I noticed both Gerald and Conner were looking away from me. Neither of them had armor that would prevent an auto-injector. I drew two of the prepared injectors and approached them from behind, where they would not have seen me coming without spessman 360 awareness, then administered the sedatives. My character was operating among hostages unsupervised and took an opportunity to press total advantage. There was no gun-play involved and no close combat of a sort that a doctor should not be engaging in. The sedative was precisely applied via injectors, rather than a gas grenade, to affect only the hostage takers. The dose was small enough as to cause no harm whatsoever to the injected and give them minimal time to violently respond. I don't imagine there is actually any issue with a doctor being comfortable with the use of sedatives, or applying them when called for. So, this leaves the only valid concern to be that I didn't purposely allow a dangerous situation to drag on and risk further harm to crew, which I find a weak premise for a formal complaint. There is, after all, an entire department dedicated to stopping antag shenanigans. You were playing an antag force, and that breeds conflict among characters, but your plan was hasty and ill thought out, and you weren't thorough enough in its execution. Grant would have been entirely justified in suspecting the CMO of plotting foul play, considering CMO's are often also knowledgeable in chemistry. I asked him about beakers over comms, and he would have heard the bubbling of chemistry mixing from the bar before I returned to the scene. I was fully prepared to be shot going into that situation, or taken as a hostage myself. You allowed a clever character to cleanly terminate your half baked scheme through your own ineptitude. You're not entitled to full player participation with whatever scheme or plot you try employ as an antag. Nobody has to let you get away with your evil deeds, and in fact, I prefer when station characters display a little competence now and then. You win some, you lose some. Get better.

I don't believe I would be negatively affected by this, except in the unlikely event of future name changes to existing characters. I tend to use 'new character' over reusing a slot, and it wouldn't be hard to incorporate a good delete/new habit for new characters and slots. My only concern is thus; tying up staff time and energy on trivial name changing for people, and the associated records. Further more, how does this apply retroactively? I may have reused a character slot once or twice, rather than delete/new. There aren't currently any systems in place that call on the hidden character number at the moment that would be referencing replaced characters?

Remove MMI suicide. There is no way a disembodied brain could kill itself. MMI suicide only engenders an 'i lost so suicide' mentality among defeated antags who earn cyborgification for their crimes.

We have had plastic since newcode, but there are only a couple worthwhile things that can be done with it; finishing a table and making a crossbow. Why is this wonderful material so woefully underused? I can think of at least two ideas that could utilise the plastic material. Prosthetics. Let's face it, a metal prosthetic shell would be extremely inefficient and far beyond what's expected in terms of durability for day to day tasks.. Think of the extra weight that's putting on your body, and then factor in that the internal motors have to work extra to counter its own weight. And it's not like having metal limbs even makes you punch harder in game, or more resilient to damage anyhow. So consider prosthetics that could be made of plastic; light enough as to add little weight compared to the same mass of an equal flesh limb. Durable enough to resist similar damage from physical impacts as bone before breaking. Far, far cheaper to fit and replace. Perhaps less vulnerable to EMP damage, but more vulnerable to heat. Armor. Likely from the protolathe, a plastic/metal hybrid suit of armor plating. Makes you look like Master Chief. Lightweight, durable, comes in glove, suit, boots and helmet flavor. Not space proof. Possibly a further tech that's re-enforced and pressure resistant? Guns are pretty much a no-go. A plastic ballistic gun couldn't withstand the explosive force of firing a bullet and, as already mentioned, wouldn't handle the heat of housing laser weapon components. What other things can we make out of plastic?

I can agree to us both letting go of our recent issues and letting this be settled.