Skull132

Sorry my dude, got busy and this slipped my mind. I lifted the mirrors, you should be good to connect. If you're still unable to, please reply (and either @Skull132 me or quote me, I'll spot it faster then).

A thought I had while sitting on the toilet and having glanced this topic prior to my sitting session. Why not take the current research system, and instead of requiring deconstruction, we make it all time based. BUT, we make it so that deconstructing items of appropriate level will speed up said timer.

Dark mode was PR-d to TG. You're free to have at it: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/43072 The general point of this is. If you look at the code. It's a wee bit of an ass to code. Just a wee bit.

I am so going to frame this on my wall of irony. Personal micro-aggressions aside, tho. Yes this is an issue. Both the player base and the lore team have proven to be supremely incapable of handling long-term restrictions on choice. "Social creep" is a neat term for this, one which I will add to my collection, alongside "Bloat". It is ultimately a fact that the player base will enjoy a positive outlook on matters, simply because it is far easier to play a game where you are fed positive emotions over negative ones. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the development and lore teams to make sure this sort of power creep doesn't happen. We have failed, though over the past 6 months, as I've started to take a more closer look at the lore team, I have started to become wary of this issue more and more. In the future, for long developments, such as new species or large setting specific matters, I plan to have a harsher hand on matters like this. However, as has been stated, reverts are an ass and not easily doable unless we rejigg a bit more than we currently can with the asteroid station. Perhaps we will be given an opportunity to in the future. Further, none of this is a policy that's enforceable so this is gonna get binned.

Both head admins have spoken on this. Can we have @Alberyk or @Garnascus just issue an admin advisory and call it a day?

Edge case, not prone to repeats. Existing rules already require you to remain on-topic. The linking of tangential PRs is fine, because they do still touch the matter under review. +1 dismissal.

More regulation for the regulation gods! That should sum up how I feel about this. It's generally pointless. Usually a warning is issued within a month of a forum report. Which, IMO, is fair game. This opinion stems from the fact that I interpret the forum warning system slightly differently from you. The goal of it isn't as much to "Train people to improve", as it is to escalate action against members of the community in a consistent manner. While true, people can improve, we are not here to train them: we are here to moderate our community members. While I agree that retroactive punishment is a butt, it does have valid uses. In-game, punishment can be retroactively escalated if it is found out that a person has broken specific rules before (this has happened). This should also be the case on the forums. We shouldn't have to "Wait for the next offence" to remove someone from the community who's already got enough warnings on their log to get close enough to tripping one of the counters.

The exact specific point you struct is a nuance hidden away on the lore pages yes, but note that this nuance is directly tied with one of the, if not the core theme of the Unathi culture: traditionalism and the views offered by traditionalism. The character you describe is the exact thing that I want to encourage: the taking of a core theme of a species (in this case), and giving it a solid spin or a perspective. Or, well, to use more specific language, the exploration of said core theme through this specific character. Suppose the word theme has a varying definition. You seem to fear that I very concretely look at them as some specific model. A theme can be horribly large: science fiction is a theme in writing. All the works that fit within that category are explorations upon that theme. Much the same, Unathi have a theme or few, and all characters should be an exploration of those core themes. It doesn't mean that all Unathi characters have to be traditionalists, it moreso means that most Unathi characters should somehow deal with the concept of traditionalism. Much like most Tajarans should somehow deal with the concept of the civil war that is raging on their planet. Or Eridani folk should somehow deal with the concept suits and dregs. Etcetera. Etcetera. It doesn't mean they all have to play the same tune, oh no: all of the concepts I've listed have had multiple sides presented in lore, and players are free to personalize as they want. But they still have to somehow address it. Otherwise your character is literally from that place just by name, and the lore behind that name is worthless. Ergo, why even have lore. Well, first, it doesn't necessarily have to be one theme per entity. Though I suppose I didn't clarify. I just want them to be clear and clearly presented. Second, again, themes can be complex. Is being a suit from Eridani a theme, or is the theme the economic divided between the suits and the dregs, or is the theme for Eridani to be hyper-cyberpunk within our universe? I will grant you that we have to be careful with how we present this, but the same already applies to how we should work on the wiki and so on. Ultimately, I would like the in-game information to give you enough to get a solid visual image of what you're about to check, and to link the wiki for further diving for those who are interested. Obviously the latter group would find out more interesting nuances to explore, but the boon here is that the former group isn't completely left clueless: they can now fit in more easily, gain some level of understanding of the lore they're about to be dealing with, and maybe get more people interested in reading deeper. Worst case, I guess you swap out the generic Space Marine from a planet no one knows about for a Space Marine from Sol or the TCFL. No net loss to be had.

Yes, as I stated clearly in my previous paragraphs (the ones which didn't include my personal tone in them): I think I was pretty clear on that fact. ---- Yes, of course it could! The pursuit of any principle past its purpose ends with disaster. But our universe is vast enough to serve as a playing field for most character concepts you could draw up. Yes, you may have to place them a bit more considerately, specifically to make sure that your concept generally meshes with the chosen area/background, but that's the norm for most role playing games that I have touched. The argument could be made that the entire point of lore is to present a play field, and the mechanics in question here would simply help make this play field visible and tangible. There is a balance to be struct between representing enough lore in-game while giving enough freedom to the players to execute as many character concepts as possible. There's enough overlap and vagueness in our setting for most character concepts to be viable and you have multiple avenues to attack them with, IMO.

The backstory to this really started really, a year or more ago. When I was dreaming up ways to create a new character setup menu. Well, school happened and that plan hit the hay until the contractor spiel was started by the lore team, and picked up by myself in code. I forget my exact reasons behind the PR, but it probably grew out of agitation about lore not being relevant:tm:. SO LET'S TALK ABOUT THAT. First, allow me to outline the two main goals I see for the process of character creation: Player expression. This is simple enough. We have a character centric role playing game on our hands, so the character is the main tool the player uses to interact with the world and its lore. This means that the character creation process must allow the player to fulfill a certain range of ideas. It must be open enough to permit the player base to create unique characters from a variety of templates. Lore expression. Unlike other SS13 servers (well, the LRP ones), we have decided that we want lore to be relevant. Much like the character of a player being a prime tool for the player to express themselves, it is also the most important tool for the lore to be able to express itself. Or rather, because of this, it is. Affecting characters is the most involved way of having lore interact with the player -- for the lore to be relevant and in the forefront. This means that the character creation process must also create and project an image of the setting we are in. If you think a bit about these two maxims, you will quickly realize that the extreme of the first is ultimate freedom: permit the player to do anything and express himself however he wants; and that the extreme of the second maxim is control over character creation process. Obviously, to follow any mentality to absolution is to be an idiot, so we should be interested in striking some level of balance between these two ideas. To phrase the status quo, in my opinion, we have been hard nailed on the first side for a very long time. The restrictions placed on character creation have been minimal. You could basically create whatever character you wanted, until it broke the rules an admins needed to have a chat with you. While undoubtedly great for some, it brings with it immense issues, specially when we take into consideration the wish for lore to be relevant. These issues are that the lore is not visible to the majority (and I do mean the vast majority) of the player base. I have stats to back this up: out of all human characters played over the last 6 months, a fleeting amount set their character background items to anything other than the default. And out of those that did modify these settings, it is clear that the decision was not an informed one: the most often selected citizenship was the Sol Alliance, not the Republic of Biesel, as our lore would suggest. I suspect this to be the result of Sol being a familiar name to most. Biesel lagged behind with a number one magnitude smaller. Any third options followed a logarithmic curve. The conclusion is that the vast majority of the player base doesn't really know about our background lore. The choices aren't presented anywhere, they aren't immediately elaborated upon. Further, once you do get ingame, there are no clear tells outside of species. Is every neon haired person an Eridani Dreg, or is it just the one? Are all Unathi traditionalist, or are half of them from Oureou and thus not all-that-different from humans? What does it mean to be from Elyria and where do I find out? The answers to these are not even remotely uniform, very much hidden behind a link on the top right of the game panel, and ultimately irrelevant to gameplay for the average player. So, how do we fix it? There are. Many ways to approach this. Some I have already demonstrated with my approach to contractors. Stereotype harder. Stereotypes are not all bad things, specially in our case. Stereotypes are extremely helpful in communicating core ideas to players in a very efficient and succinct manner. All options in character creation, in my opinion, should have a clear stereotype associated with them. This does not mean that all characters should be said stereotype, but rather, that all characters should be a play around or on that stereotype. If you want an easier word to swallow, then consider it to be a solid and concrete theme. All races should have a theme, all citizenship options should have a theme, etcetera. The themes should be well placed enough to allow for expressive freedom, but also clear enough to be able to tell apart. An example of enforcing this was the removal of sub-contractors from the contractor factions during my implementation of the mechanics. We had a lot of fluff about each megacorp having sub-contractors for various ancillary functions that we ended up either removing or rolling into the primary contractor. Thus we could pick a core idea for each contractor and roll from there. Zeng-Hu does medical, Heph does engines and dirty work, etcetera. Though obviously limiting, it communicates a certain idea behind each company well enough. (Also, regarding contractors, tho a ham fisted for the current state of Aurora, I assure you, they will be better placed for the current major project underway. ?) This also means restrictions upon character creation. Sometimes, anyways. It would be counter-productive to let a player choose to make a character that is completely contradictory to the themes in question. While yes, one or two might be nice, there is no way to practically limit this to one or two. So hard restrictions on certain aspects are a go. Though consider that every single role playing game has restrictions, even PnP ones, where the restrictions are the ones placed by the game master. Present more. More lore in the menus! With links to the wikis. And more lore in-game! The first point is clear enough, and is slowly being worked on. Eventually I'd like to rework the entire character creation window, but that's a bit off. But you have myself and Alb working on improving the current one in the mean time. The second one is again, a bit touchy. In my opinion, certain tells should be tied to certain themes, should be tied to certain entities in lore. This can mean restriction, but it can also mean addition. Have character creation options create a baseline upon which the player can add things. An example of the last point would be home system/origin. Where the choice would, for example, give the player a specific language their character already knows and the player cannot deselect. But he can also choose 1 additional language. This would further engrave the idea that X language is tied primarily with a specific home system/origin. While allowing the player to build ontop of the foundation and integrate whatever backstory he wants on (within reason). One more note about this is from a purely technical angle. As we wish to add importance to these elements and bring more fluff into the game, the ability to have an "Other" option becomes dubious. The more intertwined a certain feature becomes, the less possible it is for us to allow the player to simply slap out a custom name into a field and call it a day. Which is largely the reason why we've slowly been purging the "Other" options from character creation. Much to the dismay of some. To balance this, our lore does provide a lot of freedom in backstory and selection, and we'll most likely try to add some choices which are a bit more open. The Sol Alliance, for example, has a lot of places from different setups, and there's also the Frontier Alliance (unless we killed it, i forgetti). A balance to be struck, but hopefully a sufficient one. There's probably more, but these are the two key points, IMO. The ideas in question have received some backlash, specially since they're interpreted as "limiting" the player expression. And to be fair, as outlined above, to some degree they do. But, the ultimate intent is to make said limitations reasonable and have them provide a benefit: making lore more relevant, more interesting, and allowing us to make it more engaging. And to remind you all, we're a server with a very large player base that is not immediately visible on Discord or even on the forums. So thinking about the average player has to be within our interests. Anyways. Thots, questions, feedback welcome.

Was yesterday the first time you tried to connect to the server?

Would rather the home system be put back instead of. Whatever this is. Further, you could raise the same concern with home system: home system is not necessarily interpreted as the system you were born in, but could well be interpreted as the system your character is living in now. Adding this would make the character creation a bit complex and ask you to fill out more and more weird backstory nuances. Nuances which the majority of characters probably do not have. Under the present system, the locking of skin tone and the rest would be handled via citizenship. It would remove a few options but eh, acceptable in the face of adding redundancies for everything (dual citizenship, multiple homes, whatever). Alternatively, rename citizenship to something more vague, like "Origin", and completely remove the point from play as a legal item. Though that would decouple it from lore a bit more, perhaps, which might also not be a good thing.

To add, Kyres' stuff isn't shot down, and in fact, it'd be very neat to have. It just takes time. Tools like this, to differing degrees, should be available to everyone. And the antag whitelist in question is known as getting banned from being antag.

See here for how to bypass BYOND being kill on our server: https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Byond_Died And ye, it's a recent thing. It'll probably stop in a month, if not earlier.

I kinda want to say that this mode of using single pane windows isn't common, unless for windoors or such.

Re: @Scheveningen Wtf im actually agreeing with Delta. Anyways, to cut to the chase. Your first point will be heavily dependent on how you rework armour and the health. And even still, I think it's better to start with a scaled back setup. Something along the lines of having a few strong ballistic weapons, and a few light ones. Even though what you propose in the later points does give more room to play around with their balancing, how far it'll extend said turf is questionable. 2 is unclear and can mean anything from brain med to doing nothing at all. "As believable as possible" would put us leaning towards lifeweb, where guns mirk you after a few bullets. Which, as explained in my opening post, is not a good idea. Tho making it have more leeway is a good idea. 4. I heavily encourage you to remove existing ammunition types at will. Make large categories that are easy to distinguish and balance. Instead of a million ones that vary incrementally from one another. Specially when our damage model can't even support these incremental differences. 5. yes i want to see this happen and how it works ingame do it. 7. People will ghost instead. Tho perhaps we should remove this ability. ? eh another crusade for another time. 8. Be careful with this. Or make it dependent on a timer or something. Idek. Also, +1 for the idea to tie disarming to grabbing, I had the same idea.

Aurora has an external authentication system, which relies on the forums. This means that you can join the server even if BYOND itself is down for whatever reason. It requires that you set your account up before an outage, however! A guide detailing all the things can be found on the wiki.

It might well be interesting to implement a role or two that have you spawn on an away mission. And then give them a way to communicate with the station, thus pushing the station into action.

So lately the B A L A N C E of combat has been a major talking point among the developers. Probably a natural evolution from the previous discussions of antag-v-sec gameplay balance. In general, there are quite a few issues with combat balance. We have too many guns that differ only by a slight margin. We have plentiful access to good weapons but combat itself is a very short lived and boolean experience (either you survive or you die, the gray area inbetween is minimal, specially when dealing with ballistics). Armor is absolutely worthless as well. There are roughly two directions to head in when it comes to balancing combat. Either making earnest engagements more lethal, ala Lifeweb; or by making earnest engagements last longer and have more room for being taken out of the battle but not killed. Since our attitude towards guns and relatively high powered weapons in general is that they must be plentiful, we cannot really pursue a situation similar to lifeweb. It just doesn't work without massive rejiggering and crying about weapons being removed. So perhaps the latter is better for us, where there's more room to get injured and leave a fight, as opposed to getting nuked. It would also be a natural evolution from the fight against instastun. To that end, a few changes are relatively easy to do: Nerf shrapnel to not be the killer that it is now. The current idea is to shift it to causing HALLOSS instead of bruteloss and internal bleeding while moving. Rebalance health so that being knocked out doesn't immediately correspond with your character aggressively dying. Remove 80% of the ranged weapons that differ from each other by like 5 damage points and streamline selection and ranged weapon balance from there. Watch the world burn down around me. But there are a few major issues here. One is melee combat. Disarm spam specially. A potential solution would be to remove the ability to spam it and make it timer based, and also require that you have a weapon grab on someone. That way it'd work on stunned, concussed, or otherwise really fucking dumb opponents. But would be worthless against an armed opponent. (Which it arguably should be! Weapons should always be superior to unarmed combat.) Another issue is synthetics. Synths currently share the space of two hells. First, they are prone to the magic counter bullshit. For those unaware, the magic counter bullshit zone is a zone where you have a very limited set of tools for dealing with a relatively widespread issue. IPCs less so, since you can reasonably damage them with conventional means (read: they don't tank brute like a motherfucker), but borgs are not the same story. The second, because they reside is the magic counter bullshit zone, the magic counters tend to be horribly powerful against them (EMPs for both and flashes for borgs). Which also isn't too good for gameplay. All in all. Opinions? ?

IMO there exist far too many items of this nature already for antags to deal with. AI, normal security, etcetera. Unfortunately the list of effective weapons against borgs is scant, unless you want to start making an obscene amount of noise (grenades). Also, this unit will still be used as a response force. Pepper spray and flash are enough to deal with most on station antags, specially if you give them to a borg that can close within a normal antag with impunity.

Core issues with sec borg as I see it: you have a fearless, all access juggernaut there to assist security. They do not have to adhere to fearRP in 99% of the cases, and are relatively difficult to bring down, unless you have The Magic Weapon:tm:. Magic weapons are bad, FYI. I don't think that this iteration, nor Drago's, address these issues. Drago's creates new issues and yours just removes cuffs and the baton in favour of other tools that can still be used to fuck antags. I am also highly uncertain about the feasibility of "Defence" in SS13 combat. The only way to achieve that is for one side to be too frail to push a direct confrontation, but borgs are not frail. The only type of antag this borg cannot directly assault with a high degree of success are the ones outfitted with RIGs. Also, @Chada1, dilution of borg objectives/specializations is generally not a good idea.

Clickbait article. Followed by, With the summary being, Literally garbage.

I did. This is amazing. Absolutely the best thing I've seen ingame in months. The problem is that I might need to read through 1413 instances of something being called to fix it.

This is amazing.