Sytic

Absolutely fantastic these past few rounds, more than a capable leader and effective organizer of on-station events and handling issues as they come up, especially on extended rounds, which pertains incredibly well to their role on station and how they like to handle interpersonal crew conflict. +1, No Job.

Excellent, Security gave their purview over the situation, which I didn't even hear of, as unlike Samara, they didn't repeatedly bitch about the situation over communications. Due to them disabling the ID lock again fully knowing the consequences of potentially being arrested and losing their job, I think it's a more fair assessment to hit them harsher with something like this, due to violating the whole "reasonable characters" rule. Apologies for coming off as rude for being "not involved", but as Rosetango put it, I believed I would chime in to assist, as being simply referenced as one of the people to assist them over the radio, I thought it was good to provide clarity over the situation as Rosetango pointed it out as one of their defenses. At least, I thought I could add clarity to what these people knew about the situation, as Rosetango used it as one of their defenses, but apologies if it didn't come across that way. I also wanted to provide my viewpoint as someone who was referenced in this matter. Adding clarity behind a claim they had made I thought was useful, and used the knowledge Samara had gleefully provided over the radio while shouting, mostly in allcaps.

I was here this round and heard quite a lot of the situation (especially Samara ranting over comms), and the mention that "to have asked to be let in" is, frankly, ludicrous, given that over common they were egregiously asking for you to let them in. Yes, they were a shitheel. Yes, they were a dickhead. They improperly went about the situation, yet a permaban (which is also mind-boggling, how was that even come to a conclusion in the first place, that's like embedding a shoe through your nasal cavity levels of ridiculous) brought down to a week ban is incredibly odd. Samara was being a douchebag. I'm not going to contest this, but it's not exactly a reason to stop them from doing their job. I'd say it's incredibly goddamn rude of Samara, but regardless, their intent (which was fully declared) was well stated. Most members of Security thought the AI was being a little bit of a nutter while Samara would not shut up. Was it an emergency? Eh, debatable. Should the AI have let in Samara? Also questionable! We can't come to a firm resolution, as protecting the well-being of station staff and crew were incredibly important elements of this discussion, and it was never brought up by Cynosure that they had theories that Samara could bring the station to harm. (However, if this was brought up, I would secede to Cynosure immediately, as how Samara was acting was so rash and distressed that I could also come to the assumption they might be trying to push the station to more difficulty.) They were just "not of the correct access level". When they needed to perform this role, in an emergency. Tact was disregarded here. Samara was stopped several times, while attempting to break in, by the AI. They accepted the consequences of their IC actions, and an OOC action was put to them. Calling the AI "rogue" and "malfunctioning" was dumb as shit. But this felt like an IC issue, beyond that. They disagreed with Cynosure's interpretation of the law structure, and decided it was putting the station at risk. They used their skills to wholly get inside and do what they believe was expected of them in their given role- fix the issue, solve the problem. The most egregious error I see here outside of them just being stupid on comms and a firm angry stance against the AI, was declaring that it is rogue or malfunctioning, which is generally a no-no. Cynosure had their reasons, Samara had theirs. Both seem entirely fine. Rosetango stumbled here by declaring the AI as rogue or malf, which was very dumb and a big no-no, but outside of that, it was an IC issue. I've had difficulties with Rosetango's characters in the past. Does that make it okay, to after three months (as Garn said), of improvement and solid effort while playing the game, to declare this error (which was an AI IS MALF error over comms and being really annoying ICly with fucking with doors with a good reason) as "particularly egregious" and slap a permban? Or a week's ban? I don't particularly think so. (just to point out I don't think Cynosure did wrong, I just think they disagreed with Samara's intent and knew that they had no right to enter, and they viewed their laws in that light. I think it was also valid to view this as an emergency and open the door to ensure they solved the emergency, but this is simply a differing opinion.) Anyways, that's what I saw from this round. I backed them up over comms slightly and referenced the issue in a conversation. I don't even remember Security being sent after Samara, it was this much of a non-issue. I think it was an IC issue, but Rosetango should get a stern talking to about how they referenced the AI as malfunctioning and/or rogue when it was well within the laws' purview in regards to its own oversight of the situation. Even if Cynosure's interpretation over the situation isn't the one you liked, it's no less valid.

ITS SO GODDAMN CUTE! Plus, I don't see how this hurts anyone, and is a nice little flair for such a recurring character. +1!

And vice versa? Why do we have to go anywhere in your given proposal? It disregards reasoning for the sake of "Let's go play Oregon Trail and look at all the factions before doing it again!" It's obligatorily making sure every faction has a presence at all, to begin with, outside of the forum and wiki. We don't have to be there. We have factions come to the station not to make sure their presence is felt or known, but to provide interest and history to the Aurora, in the same way every faction has. We see events shaping up the galactic stage and that affects us, but notably we'll almost always be doing our job. The lore that affects us the most will be the lore brought on in Tau Ceti, and the lore of factions has ties to individual characters and how they respond to events and other characters as a whole. Is that a bad thing? Plus, I've "been there done that" with the "travelling ship with a thematic, canonized theme which is very much the straight and narrow approach to finding morsels of lore across the universe that overall takes far longer to actually 'witness' lore developments". It's not particularly my forte. I enjoy how Tau Ceti's political schema and actions are the most effective upon us as the Aurora community, but also how the further background lore allows us to expand characters and their personalities. Isn't that what background lore is all about?

The problematic occurrence with deciding to stick to a particular subset of lore to let it grow and evolve over you, is that we intend to play in an environment with clashing cultures. It's one big melting pot, and typically our goal is to survive with people, from different communities, religions, and places in an environment that for some reason, wants to murder us all. If we removed that, we'd have minor elements of people's culture become relevant every now and again. It's up to all of us to create believable characters that actually fit within this "melting pot" environment corporate democracy, as with culture clashes and the mix of identities, true player-to-player relations and even important, server-wide events can form. EDIT: Also, people come to the station because it's just a quick blip in Tau Ceti. It's like saying "why do we go places when we could just stay at (x)" with your given proposal.

Welcome back! It's been a great... Year, or so? Since the Psychology update. (EDIT: Sorry, it's been about a year or so since my last POST about the Psychology update.) And about two months since Fowl left. From last we left off, we discussed the magic space crystals, we discussed the variety of stupid elements about the Psychology rework, and we discussed on Discord and elsewhere a future fix done by Fowl. This would be a medicated system via a sleeper which would inject the patient with prescribed drugs which would fix the mental traumas, but only when the Psych actually knew what trauma it was. It would also add machine traumas at a later date. This update was referred to "Unapologetic Psych Buffs Part II: The Freudian Slip" and you can find the link here: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/4994 I actually really liked this idea, really liked how Fowl was picking it up again and excited. Then shit went down, it slipped under the radar, and it was quietly forgotten about on the 29th of January, before Fowl left a few months later due to reasons I do not quite know. I liked Fowl as a developer, yet the quiet way that this slipped away made a lot of people forget about it. Except me. Now, right here, going to lay this out on the table: I don't mind Traumas, except that I want IPC Traumas. That last part goes into the general vibe of an IPC player feeling comparatively stronger than most people and thinking it's unfair. But overall, Chemistry often deals with Traumas at the same rate of the Psychologist, and when a Psychologist is used they often are more of an IC role, dealing with problems as they come and scheduling visits. That's all well and good. But it is still a discredit to them that mental trauma can be "fixed" with a magic space Chakra crystal bed chair. All that I ask, is that something is done about this. This is a complete inconsistency from the actual lore we tend to value, where we can at least attempt to explain something, even on the more fantastical side, with real-world science applied to it (with the obvious exception of effects which don't persist round to round or are obviously designed particularly for the otherworldly spook factor, e.g. antagonists, spooky rock findings, artifacts). This is shoved under the rug and never raised, despite being relevant to an organ so goddamn complex it created the game we are playing. pls fix

Huh, neat.

+1. Excellent interactions OOCly, a distinct desire to improve and always aspiring to get involved with as much of the scenario as possible. Their responses are sound and interactions even better. Would be glad to see more of them ICly where I've had only passing abilities to see them, due to my typical profession as Sec being busy with so many antagonist shenanigans.

The unit left staff because he couldn't dedicate the amount of time he thought was necessary as a Head Admin, yet comes back because even with less amounts of time- that he could spend playing the game he enjoys- he decides to also use it to help out the admin staff and the server that he cares for. +1

Here's the deal with this complaint and/or suggestion: It makes absolutely no sense. Counterpoint A : The Butterfly Effect Say John Doe, Detective Man of Intergalactic Mystery, decides to go and do his job today and do some detective things. He finds a crime scene, in which someone has been done a big 'ol murdered on. So he chooses to investigate and chases this dastardly deed up the chain, going further and further to whomst did this action. Turns out, surprise, it's nukies! That's kinda bad. The HoS is a dumbass and decides "WE DON'T NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS". So they don't. Gunfights escalate, both sides of an encounter die. The nukies die, or most of them do anyway, because they are not attached to their character that was thought into existence about an hour ago. People's characters that they lost forever is kinda sad. But one of the nukies got away. This nukie ahelps, and is given the O.K. to Dr Strangelove the damn Aurora. So he does. Through miscommunications and failure of search parties, the Aurora is utterly exploded. Nuclear weapons decimate the Aurora. Canonically, this means NanoTrasen essentially kicks everything into high gear. Their defense teams get outfitted with heavy protection gear and with the looming threat over Biesel now being turned to the Syndicate, NanoTrasen uses it as an excuse to sink its claws deeper into Biesel. Biesel becomes almost like a corporate state due to the proliferation NanoTrasen gets as it arms its private military company to go to war with the smaller but secretive Syndicate. Special ops teams are sent out to track down Syndicate bases, before all-out battlefronts are engaged. As corporate entity grows in the Tau Ceti sector, SolGov gains more beef with them, and ATLAS begins to march down. Another Invasion occurs, this time backed by Sol government and parliamentary forces as Mars rebels utterly, See what I mean? If you make all antag rounds canon, it also makes shit like Wizards and Changelings and Vampires canon. So are we supposed to introduce them to canon, as well? As deaths caused by them are. Counterpoint B : The Revival Schema As several other people have mentioned, the fact that death would become permanent would increase the amount of cloning, even borging, and other methods of revival and make them more relevant. They would become increasingly popular. On top of this, it also is plausible that there would be revival methods outside of the cloning bays and the like on the Aurora, potentially even on the Odin or Icarus. Remember this, I'm coming back to this in time. Counterpoint C : The Powergame Melodrama It is no secret that at this current time, I think IPCs are overpowered. It is also no secret that they probably are. Most of the community seems to think so and there's a lot of reasons which agree with them. Making them the only species capable of ignoring permanent death would be increasing this gap hundredfold. It would be so incredibly insulting to literally every other species. As well, wouldn't this worsen the powergaming issues within our community? Players would play to win, knowing the stakes above all else. Reasonable action will be always taken. The buddy system, always used, manipulated. Antagonists would barely have a chance, and this is supposed to be O.K. because now people are taking it seriously? It's a goddamn video game and a living story that we're trying to create round-by-round. Shooting first and asking questions later as a sec team fearing death is somewhat reasonable, but boring as hell. Counterpoint D : The Antagonist Rush You are one guy that now also has the power to ignore permadeath for one round. Everyone you kill will be permanently killed from the server. You now have an immense amount of power equivalent to a soft ban to someone's character, which might reflect on a part of their own personality or playing style, ripping that to shreds in front of them just to flex. How is this good? How is this ever a good thing? Antagonists will be driven by power to seek out crew members (also giving metagrudgers fuel to kill targets) so they can just execute them and run away. That's not fun, that's an abuse of power. Plausible Conclusion : The Revival Rework If you want to make death more meaningful, remove all attempts of revival. Remove cloning. Remove IPC revival. Done and dusted. This increases the stakes on a per-round basis. There's merits and demerits for going with this option, but I'd have to say it'd remain somewhat interesting. I prefer revival, though.

A more than good CMO from what I've seen. Responsibly tackles challenges while not appearing to be overextending. Focuses on their matters, not any other departments, first. But still prefers to be in, and keep necessary elements in the loop. A high functioning Command staff member, a great Skrell whitelistee, and pretty damn good at their job. +1.

Oh hey, it's Nikit! He's one of my favorite guys to see around and has almost ALWAYS pulled through for everybody around them. Way more importantly, they're both personable AND very hard working in character across almost all their chars! what a lad +1

There's many reasons Traumas are bad, let's do a lightning round. If someone wants to get M O R E D I S C U S S I O N, I'll link the given bigthread that I constantly shittalked this update over below. Prefacing this with: Not all Psychiatrists who do this (once upon a time, RP heavy) job do bad roleplay. Except, ever since the inclusion of the Traumas update, there's two major problems. 1: We justify the inclusion of absolutely terrible mechanics that do not fit the role or the environment. There's been much debate on this, but honestly, Hypnosis is how you fix Narcolepsy? Just saying that sounds bullshit. 2: By being necessary to interact with this equipment, the job is seen less as an RP role, and more as a occasionally necessary member of the Medical staff. By disentangling the role with the job description, you create a lot of unnecessarily odd scenarios. For example, why would you ever consider to see a Psychiatrist unless you had some inanely contrived reason, because in the lore of the universe YOUR CHARACTER lives in, you can sit in a magic chair and get your mental traumas resolved? Or hypnosis? Or goddamn Isolation? Yet, the Psychiatrist is at least believed to be still held up to the same roleplay standards as it was before, despite these gamey mechanics being attached to trite in-universe solutions. "But Sytic, we need Traumas! If we don't have them, the state of the game in regards to Cloning will become unbalanced!" Good question, we'll look at why that's stupid too: 1: IPC mains walk all over Cloning and Traumas anyways. Seriously, fix this shit. 2: Traumas don't just affect Cloning: They affect brain damage, are thus tied to oxyloss, and take effect IMMEDIATELY. This means that, with the right amount of brain damage, you can just instantly fall asleep. Or get paralyzed with fear. Or have actually debilitating issues that cause you to be unable to move. That's not exactly fun. 3: Brain Damage still exists, and is still a threat- or could become one. If you want to introduce a rather "gamey" mechanic, how about one that already exists and is much more of a "progressively degenerating mental state" mechanic than Traumas? Brain Damage is still a problem. Unable to interface with machines, gibbering, smashing your head into doors, etcetera. This could be made worse to suit the needs of "Give cloning a drawback." 4: The previous way to fix them was to always have a Surgeon. This isn't actually that bad. When the Surgeon handled these (and still does in fringe medical cases) the Surgeon would perform neurosurgery and fix the trauma through snips in your braincase. This doesn't break RP expectations if it's only stretching a Surgeon's capacity a little bit. But what was the reason that Psychiatrists got handed all this? Why? I'm glad you asked! This is why. The Psychiatrist needed an ability to cure Traumas, which, are already stupid for previously mentioned reasons. Except, as previously also discussed, it takes a sledgehammer to the in-universe roleplay of the role by adding these particularly game-y mechanics to the role. And thus, you'll rarely see an actually behaviourally accurate Psychiatrist, nor would you have a reason to actually see a Psychiatrist to talk out your problems when they have a literal magic chair. I talk more about suggestions against this below, and other ways to introduce mechanics that could fit the role of being conductive to roleplay in the science fiction environment while retaining the game-y nature. It's here: But, ah, what do the people who made the PR involved think? Should we judge their opinion as well and make sure to check? I'm glad you asked! Here was a PR relating to the update: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/4888 Wow, it's almost like completely making a previously RP-heavy role necessary for the environment of sometimes low population stations due to now introduced hamfisted gamey mechanics that don't properly relate to the roleplay of the Science FIction environment causes problems! Who woulda thunked it. Another thing. I was quite passionate about complaining about this update for quite some time, until it was revealed that a PR was constructed to try and fix the update in question, which made me stop: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/4994 This, I love this, mostly because I was around for its initial inception into Fowl's insane mind of debauchery and h e l l . Also, because it's a hell of a lot better for the Sci-Fi environment than magic Chakra chair. I decided to reply to this thread however, because it's been some time since anything about this update was mentioned, but I hold a brief hope it'll still be done. Note: I don't think necessarily that Traumas are a bad concept. I just think they give more power to IPC meme robust men (like myself), have honestly piss-poor execution, were previously before this even easier to deal with, are much better dealt with using drugs, and finally are hamfisted in just such a way that they make no fucking sense whatsoever to a role that tries to provide some sense to a struggling mind. In any case, if you want to read MORE of my rantings and relevant ravings on the update of Psychology and Psychiatry, go check out the thread linked above. Traumas bad, Psych bad, do fix, thanks Fowl the blessed Lord, he giveth, he taketh away again.

ALSO, The safety features are OFF by DEFAULT. That's not what a safety is for. So if you've deleted your BYOND Cache, and go back into your game, you could accidentally shoot someone in the head through a series of unfortunate circumstances. I'm still sorry about that practice shell, by the way, Mr. Warden. If you remember me.

As I've mentioned on the Discord and in OOC, I feel like one of the reasons Security mains are complained about is, that they consistently improve with their ability, and more importantly, competence. One of the most obvious fields that they improve in is their ability to collaborate and potentially lead. This is one of the reasons Security can be so strong with limited resources. I don't think this will put a damper on Sec players occasionally curbstomping a bad antag and ruining the fun because "it's their job", but I think it'll help fix another problem: Other departments don't get as much fun as Security. If this change is implemented, each Departmental Officer will be encouraged to work with their department, and not each other. Each officer using their department's strengths and weaknesses, actually SECURING their fucking department, playing defence instead of running off to murk a guy in the maintenance tunnel 24/7. On top of that, when shit gets heavy, they'll turn to rely on the people around them- leading them, securing their department together. It'd give a lot more roleplay and fun to each department if we add this. Plus, Science Departmental Security would be the biggest meme lets be real Plus, the Detective's office will be public again, so that'd be awesome. +1.

Lethal rounds are a deterrent on both sides of the field. It's for self defence, or when situations absolutely demand it, similar to pulling out .45 lethals from the Armoury. I think it should stay.

Well, on a personal level, planning for when "things go wrong" and then allowing a certain gimmick is the best way to go. I've heard a lot about the "shutting down" of antags and I can see it often by Security- can we just also shove that "hey, that's not cool, ok?" in the rules somewhere? There's a line Security won't cross- Inspectors boarding with weapons, unauthorised personnel access to the Vault and/or Captain's Office, etc etc. But can we just try to be a little nicer? Plan for when things go wrong, don't assume things have already gone wrong upon first contact.

I would have originally said "Wait for the Trauma fix that Fowl's making!" But that's taken months. Personally I'm all for an entire rework by someone else more enthused with doing so, or deleting traumas. They have always sucked, and I demonstrated why many, many times before, and demonstrated how you could change or refluff items in Psychology to make it better. Maybe if Psychology wasn't filled with crazy weird pseudoscience, we would have more psychologists and this would be less of a hassle.

Love it. In terms of character, reason, and equipment, as well as OOC reasons.

Gotta agree with Burger here. As a sec main, it can be real frustrating to deal with other members of Security suddenly deciding to turn on their staff. But I also totally agree with his methods, too- Sec players often are antags too, so they'll often be antags as Sec. Bumping that chance down allows us to see other antags more and sec antags less, without removing the possibility entirely.

You're not already a spriter? I didn't even know that was a role and always assumed you sprited for the server all the time. Why are you not? +1, look at his fucking work already! Also you're missing ALL the head of security voidsuits.

Their documentation, their whatever. Records, I think. I'm tired as balls right now, Kaed. Identification via tag whether free or not seems smart to me, methinks.

Free IPCs have it on regulations- if they do not, they are AUTOMATICALLY owned by NT as a default. If they claim "But I'm free!" and their regs support it, it's Automacide, as they're a free entity in control of their own actions and would be treated as such (with some specism). Otherwise, it's automatically a lesser charge than automacide, as their regs do not support it and thus they are owned by NT.

Potentially this is more of a problem with IPC's being "the powergame race" as you described it, and less of a problem with the HoS' themselves or the people playing them. How would you suggest cutting out the problem at its root, removing the "powergame" from the IPCs as a whole?