Skull132

Done. Imagine my surprise to people actually using the sidebar.

First, regarding general perms usage: Don't influence the round in favour of one side or another without a valid RP reason (Specifically antags v crew) Don't give yourself an advantage you would not reasonably extend to another player Don't disrupt the course of the round in a major way without a vote If at all possible, for stuff that affects you in the round, see about getting the actions you want to undertake reviewed by another admin first From what Garn just said in his reply, the last rule was broken, as Serveris was around. Though how active, I do not know at the time. While the rule can be ignored if no other administrators are active, it should not be ignored in any other case. It's not a formality, it's procedure. Secondly, the, "Make a construct and render the body uncloneable," spiel just sounds like a dick move on all fronts. And admins are kinda suppose to be the example of, "Hey, these guys aren't awful dicks." Granted, ghosting to deny a soul stone might be considered a dick move as well, however, since the situation originated out of combat (and was a bonus), it's not that bad in my opinion. Were it a well roleplayed out conversion, or something else of that line, then yeah, Garn would have been in the right. But this seems sketch to me as well.

Bygone literally has a point, though. As does Bedshaped. And you failed to understand my own stance of, "I literally don't care how badly you want to gut each other on Skype, your conduct on the forums, with Jackboot involved or otherwise, is awful and needs to stop." As I said in my first post here: block each other to high heaven on the discord, if you cannot deal with each other's world views. (Which is the case. The failure of both sides to back off as needed over the instant messaging services.) This, though. This shit is in a league of its own. And it is not a league that I ever want to see here. Consider yourself forum banned for two weeks. Take that time to think, cool off, and collect your damned thoughts. As necessary, you can reach me via Discord or Skype or BYOND. Complaint resolved and archived.

Actually, I lied about memory. It can be done relatively neatly, provided the SQL space it's going to take up isn't super massive.

What's probably unfortunate is the fact that you just destroyed any chance of this being ironical. Further more. If you have to go "digging" for shit, then I will bet you relatively large sum of money that most of what you post will not be relevant anymore, for one reason or another. Fucking disgraceful. I literally have no other words left.

So you, and no one else is caught by surprise: bad judgement, coupled with failure to improve, as a head of staff will end in the removal of a command whitelist. And has done so in the past. Take critique of leadership ability seriously, if offered by moderators or administrators.

http://puu.sh/pVcrv/38b4585ff8.png Did I mess up my phrasing somewhere, or is this not a textbook (slim version) on how to handle these situations by enlarge? I already issued my mods and admins instructions to enforce this guide as the standard to meet. From that post, it's very simple to form the following expectations: Attempt communication. Attempt any solution other than an assault. If no other viable solution exists, RIP.

For reference, in that development, your involvement was null. I say this, because hey, I just now finished reading the logs of the entire round. All you did was assert your dominance, and didn't even make a single solid attempt to communicate with the suspect who had now barricaded himself. While there are situations where the suspect is indeed uncooperative, and indeed cannot be talked down, this is not how a head of staff should handle any such situation. But hey, let's move away from singular incidents, there are staff complaints if you wish to pursue my ruling on that situation. I will maintain: if you are presented with a situation where the hostage taker is confirmed as completely uncooperative, then yeah, sure. A planned assault is the only reasonable approach in such a case. But do not confuse the possibility of a situation devolving to a planned assault as giving you a green slip to forego any and all attempts at other resolutions. You have to attempt to communicate with the suspect, and assess the situation correctly. If you do not, then, well. The two legitimate points I want to address in what you said: This is true. And be prepared to actually be judged on this. Remember this: in order for an assault plan to be initiated, you need to be 100% certain that any other solution is unfeasible or too costly. Reluctance to work these situations is not acceptable. Bullheadedness and tunnel vision in pursuit of an assault is not acceptable. Deeply flawed thinking, coming from an individual who should have some degree of tactical sense. (Or roleplay sense.) Learn what situational control means, looks like, and feels like. It does not mean that you have your taser in the enemy's back and the situation resolved. Oh no, it means that you can effectively end the situation by saying a single word over comms, and call it a day. As long as you are in control of the situation, you can attempt alternate solutions. This means that the situation is stable. As long as the situation remains stable, and you have the capability to launch an assault at a whim, you should be looking to negotiate with the hostage taker to, at the very least, ease their mind and get their finger off the trigger. Though your end goal should be trying to talk them down. During a stable situation, you should be doing everything in your power to further minimize the risk involved. Security can fail in epic proportion even when the hostage situation is "technically" resolved. If a more peaceful alternative would have existed, and the security team remained ignorant of that solution, then that is failure by bad judgement. If the security team pushed an assault which resulted in the death of any personnel involved, hostage taker included, (and the situation wasn't literally FUBAR,) then security failed in the execution of tactics. The list of classes of failures is long. And the thing about hasty situations is, they should be the easiest to resolve via words and the threat of violence. If you read further into my source article, you'll see that even unintentional barricades can take anywhere from 0 to 2 hours to resolve. And I can bet you that a good majority end with simple arrests because the dude is ultimately convinced that he will be better off alive and in cuffs, than dead. You do have to talk to the hostage taker first, though.

The psychology is: If you make some ways of antagonist play acceptable, by not having sec shoot them, then you'll start coaching the antagonists towards that mode of play. If they get shot regardless of the situation (right now), then they won't really care at all.

http://rsc.skullnet.me/workspace/nimeGeneraator/output.txt 10 000 names, here you are. Go nuts.

^ Literally the reason why I haven't done anything with my chars. Yettt.

I like the idea of hiding small items, details, etcetera. However, memory is a bitch to code. Or rather, it's very simple, but the amount of storage space it'll take is amazing. My suggestion is, if someone is wearing something that'll obscure the face properly (not sunglasses, but an actual mask, etcetera), then you need to take the time to look at an ID for a name. Otherwise, I think, the game would be very awkward to play.

This has been something I've wanted to address for a few months now. So, might as well. First up, let's establish what we're talking about. A barricaded suspect is an individual who a barricaded suspect is: Credit and source. Second, why am I even discussing it? Quite bluntly, because I've gotten tired of sec assaults for days. A hasty assault should not be the default solution to a barricaded suspect! And heads of staff/security officers should not be against trying to resolve a situation with words! These things happen way too often, and it kinda forces antagonists to forcefully escalate situations, which results in sec not being bothered anymore, and yadda. You get the dead circle imagery, right? Right. So, picking at sec's side here, the following is how a barricaded suspect situation should be resolved. The responsibility for executing the actions described below falls on the shoulders of the heads of staff and security. And note that I do intend, fully, on having my staff enforce these standards. How should security and station command be conducting themselves when handling a barricaded suspect? First, let's identify what the standard priorities for NT are: Profit Equipment Personnel An ideal solution to a barricaded situation will be the one that promises to resolve the situation with minimal damage to equipment and personnel. To that end, keep in mind the following: Training replacement personnel takes time, as such, loss of life is a very expensive thing. The psychological treatment required for clones is expensive. As such, "We can clone'em!" is never a valid excuse. Medical treatment of any kind is also expensive. Further, a hostage situation handled subpar may reflect badly on your performance review as an employee. Now, does this mean that we should just cave in and offer a hostage taker whatever he wants? No, because then the company will lose: Money, in form of the ransom, which may outweigh the time invested in the employee that was traded. The hostage themselves. The hostage taker, who may, at times, be an employee of the station and the company. (He most likely won't be coming back to serve with NT anymore.) A barricaded hostage situation is a balancing act. As security and command staff, it is your job to bring about the most profitable and most balanced resolution feasible. And note that your justification for pursuing any of these solutions cannot be post act. You need to be able to say, in the present, "This will be the most fitting resolution to this problem." If your only excuse for picking a solution is post act, and can be summarized as, "Well, no one got hurt, so's all good, aye?" then you've pretty much failed to do your job. What are some possible outcomes to such situations, then? And where do they fit on the scale? Hasty assault - Practiced a majority of the time, involves rushing in and shooting people. More often than not, puts at high risk both equipment and personnel. Simply from a "profit v damages" standpoint, this is the most riskiest resolution, and should not be the default mode of action. Planned assault - The security team spent time to acquire a tactical advantage over the barricaded suspect. This is the ideal brute-force resolution, and should always be kept in motion as plan Z. Ideally, risk to equipment and personnel is lower than in the case of a hasty assault. If no other solutions work, then this should be the way to go. However, even this cannot always be executed at a whim. A planned assault is an assault with every care taken to ensure in the fact that potential damages are kept to a minimum. From gearing up officers, to investigating methods of separating the hostage taker from the hostage (even if by a few metres), to whatever other advantage you can gain at the time. Of course, there are times where none of this is possible, and sometimes the only difference between a hasty and a planned assault is equipment and mental preparedness on the officers' side. Subject surrenders - The barricaded suspect surrenders peaceful. The ideal solution. Can be attained through a myriad of means, depending on the situational specifics. Anything from simply talking down the suspect, to calming them, to whatever. Not everyone is (or should be, cough) looking to remain solid to what they wanted to achieve. If the situation permits it, always attempt to reach this goal. Suspects gets away, you get the hostage - A rare, in-between type a deal. If an attempted ruse goes bad, or the hostage gets free. The most neutral solution you can get. These are roughly the three and a half ways a situation with a barricaded suspect can end. Now, how do we actually manage a situation? First, identify the situation as a barricaded situation, and evaluate the situation. Initial actions: Prepare security by moving them into proximity of the suspect. Make sure that you don't get too close, for fear of escalating the situation without need, but also make sure you've got your officers placed in positions where you can assault with speed and aggression. Attempt to raise communication with the hostage, and try to get eyes on the situation (via cameras, sniper, etcetera). Conduct an immediate assessment ASAP: Is the situation stable, or is it escalating? Is the suspect acting erratically? Is he showing signs of mental instability? Is he communicating with the station crew? Are you able to get eyes on the situation and monitor it? This is the first junction you'll come across. Your options at this moment are a hasty assault, or initiating interaction with the suspect. If the situation is escalating without your control, then you are forced to push a hasty assault. Much the same, if the suspect is unstable, you will most likely have to push for a hasty assault (specially if you cannot get comms working or you cannot get eyes on the situation to ensure in the safety of the hostage). The rest may lead into a planned assault: if you can get eyes but no comms, then plan an assault for as long as you can visibly see the hostage being safe, for example. [*]If you are able to get comms with the suspect, and the situation is stable (or deescalating), then a hasty assault is no longer the preferred solution. You should now be working the suspect via comms in an attempt to bring about a peaceful solution, while having security prepare a plan B, in the form of a planned assault. (Note that as security is preparing, they should still be able to roll at a moment's notice.) [*]Discern the suspect's motives, their demands, etcetera. Basically: negotiate. This will pretty much lead into the final outcome: If you are able to talk the suspect down, then great! Make sure you can safely swarm the area with sec, arrest everyone, and job done! If the suspect's demands are ridiculous and they are not budging, then see if there's any ruse you can use to make a planned assault even more effective. For example, if they want the station nuke: present the nuke to them, drawn them out, and snipe them or swarm them. Obviously you're not going to actually give them the nuke, but you have to make it believable. Sell it to them, as if you were a buttersmooth salesman. If the suspect's demands are reasonable (or you can talk them down from being unreasonable), consider an exchange with a surprise. Or some other solution akin to that. And remember, if for whatever reason the situation escalates to the point where you risk losing control over it, you push the assault button. Is this complex? Yes. But such complexity is what makes good roleplay. And the lowest common denominator is not something you should be holding yourself to.

Tablespork brought a gift with him: Soo, the staff commandeered it.

That's why the dev's don't want to build it themselves as it'd be a massive time sink when they could do other things for quick, immediate gains. However, if some one were to go ahead and do it I'm sure everyone would be fine with it. Half wrong, half right, my friends, both of you. The easiest way to implement a system like this is to physically find every single object that would require a skillcheck to use, and add that in. Couple this with a stats system, and voila. No massive dunking rewrites required, but, it's still a dumb amount of work and needs to be execute without a fault. Also it'll be 3 months of crying about how some stats are better than others. But all of this has to come after: The androids from Polaris, the new map, the diona, the economy. Oh, and after a public vote. If it gets greenlit then, then I don't mind going paperwork behind it. It's also my personal opinion that such a system goes against the spirit of SS13. But I can stow that as is necessary.

Staff Meeting Administration & Moderation Staff 03JUL2016 Preface: If you have any questions about the contents of this thread, please leave a reply or send an attending member a PM via the forums, discord, or what have you. Attendance All staff recorded below attended at least half of the meeting: Skull132 Head Administrator Garnascus Administrator Serveris6 Administrator TishinaStalker Administrator IncognitoJesus Administrator Tablespoon Administrator Alberyk Moderator NursieKitty Moderator Hunnewle Moderator Killerhurtz Moderator Natwhite Moderator DatBerry Moderator Loow Moderator All staff recorded below reported themselves as unable to attend the meeting for various reasons: Jennalele Administrator SoapyCup Moderator Purpose of the Meeting Establish a general set of goals for the next 3 months. Analyze the status quo, review and discuss potential issues, figure out solutions and establish a plan of action as necessary. Discuss issues which will become relevant in the near future. (See next paragraph for further details.) Present Situation/Opening Word Skull has about 2 months of consistent and confirmed activity left. What comes after that is a little unknown. As such, a few plans need to be established and a few things done. A second Head Administrator will be picked at the end of this month. The selection process will be primarily conducted by the Administrators themselves, as it always has been. Unlike last year, however, Skull will be ticking around as much as he still can, and not simply dropping a new Head Admin into the waters for a witch’s trial. Things will go smoother this time around. Tangentially related to this shift is a funding related discussion. At the present, Skull is the individual responsible for all of that. However, he no longer wishes to carry the sole burden and wants to give everyone who wants to contribute a chance to do so. Our present server hosting company (NFO) offers a method of setting up a PayPal donations link directly to them. We will be utilizing this system: none of the donated money will go to any member of staff, and will instead go to the hosting company under our name. With both Head Admins at minimum having access to the account in question, the chance of the donations being misused is as low as is humanly possible. Current details about the server funding are as follows: The server costs ~300 USD per year to rent Server’s billing is done in two cycles of 6 months Fundraiser is planned for once a year, with a goal of gathering enough funds for the entire next 12 months (in order to make this shit as less stressful for everyone involved as possible) Exact details will be discussed mid-September, as the first fundraiser should be started at the end of that month. And note that we are almost certainly not looking to offer “benefits” for donors, so no special ingame chats, magical items, or what have you. Rewards and notification will be discussed at a later date. Important Resolutions Funding and shift of management resolved as discussed above. Large issues (such as RP quality and the perception thereof) still need specifics to be hunted down in any measure. Moderators and Administrators also need to note more things. Note all the things. New ruleset awaiting new Head Administrator in order to be picked into the public review stage. No minutes or publicity about these meetings was posted, as this stage was meant to be a stand-in for those. Events and such (driven by Administrators) will not be making a return in force until enough Administrators are promoted. Currently, on average, only one Administrator is on the server at any one time. This number needs to be a relatively cool 2, with perhaps deadhour excluded, in order for such things to not strain the Administrators. However, some of the workload for this can and will be off-loaded to the Duty Officers (CCIA). Namely, they can be encouraged to do things, like issue round specific directives, work with the lore team for VIP visits, what have you, in order to assist in that manner. To further elaborate on the last paragraph, new Administrators cannot be promoted at the time as the majority of the Moderators who should be looking at a promotion are not around anymore, primarily due to the unfortunate mismanagement of the transition between myself, Doomberg, and then back to myself. While Moderator and Administrator retention is high, recruitment is a steady low, which makes hard hits to staff count hard to recover from. The rest of the meeting is detailed in the minutes below. Minutes Opening briefing Donations/server funding Fundraiser once per year, target goal of ~300 USD per year. Funds go directly to the hosting company, no one from staff will get to touch them. [*]New Head Admin [*]Events Offload some work to the DOs and have them help out with providing crew objectives and goals for the round. Not touching event schedules or things like that until we get more admins, which will take a bit of time. Otherwise, this would get straining for them. [*]Roleplay quality? EOR Grief - Need to have justification for actions. Can’t just, no actions into mass murder on the shuttle. Species roleplay standard - Report people who break species lore to their species managers. [*]Recruitment Talk to people more about moderator applications, find applicants and get invested in them and their application process. Try to tidy up the apps subforum. [*]New rule for AI/borgs: Do not rules-lawyer your laws as an AI (to a dumb degree). It’s a form of validhunting/powergaming. [*]Bring back admin minutes - people complaining about transparency. Regarding minutes: you’re reading them Regarding transparency: minus the rules meetings, there have not been any major meetings since the January time that would require minutes be recorded. The minutes for the rules meeting will be posted whenever the new rules will be discussed. [*]More admin communication with team leaders? (Particularly DOs and the lore team.) Mod and Admin meetings very rarely concern DOs, and focus very concretely on issues which fall under the purview of the mods and admins (and not of the two other teams). If any issue concerns either team, then their leaders are contacted as necessary. Trickledown info is in full effect. [*]Rules change - Waiting new Head Admin. Because I really cannot manage that at the moment. [*]IPC Shells / Mechanics? End of the month, Polaris port. [*]New-Map-Status? Waiting on code now. (And, hey, we have coders now!) [*]Possibly giving the default Synth Laws a do-over? Get Hunnewle for a proper proposal. Note that fact that when TG tried to tackle synth laws, the removed the AI role temporarily because people kept being people. [*]Server direction. Also, the clash between the HRP standard and what the players might want/seem to apply sometimes. Three pillars: remain IC, remain believable (vs realistic), antagonists. [*]Also what we want the server experience to go towards See above. Maintain heading, expand possibilities. [*]Admins are a good question - establishing a promotion protocol? Protocol is present. Very few eligible recruits, however. [*]Shitters on OOC Target mute people. (As opposed to global mutes.) Leave notes, escalate to warnings, then talks and then bans if absoloutely necessary. [*]Would anyone object to certain people (Loow) trying a hand at events? There’s some demand for more. Should these events be “fun”, “canon”, or “both”? Find an admin, talk to an admin, plan with that admin. Respect the fact that we don’t have a lot of admins at this moment, though this will change with time. Alibis None recorded.

And note that even if you want to "RP", security listening to a single hostage taker wit ha single hostage is unlikely. In such a situation, you very rarely have the ability to back up your claims, and prying the hostage out from within your hands is stupid simple. Remember the following: Two guards per one hostage minimum Have an escape route or an amazing plan B Have a way to know if security is advancing on you, and have a way to counter it

Those. Aren't events. At least not by the old definition. What. Okay. A third of these can all be accomplished without any administrative involvement. So this kinda brings me to a question. Why not do some of this stuff of your own initiative? What is stopping you? As the CE one round, I want to rip the engine apart and completely rework it. It'll probably take up two hours allotted, will most likely keep every engineer busy, and maybe give the antags a chance to do something similar. And I can execute that plan as a player, and have done so in the past (back when I was a wee pubbie). A long ass time ago. 2 years, by now, I imagine. An old Head Admin and myself had a conversation about a similar topic. And we came to the understanding that, having the playerbase simply sit there and expect stuff to happen is not where we want to be. I will speak to the admins and will try to ensure that they are there to help you, yes. But if only one side is being driving force, then that side is going to end up burnt out and ejected in an amount of time faster than you can imagine. What's a neat compromise, do you think? EDIT: the topkek comes from the fact that I can accomplish almost every task you presented in that list through coded solutions v.v At which point, why also not review the possibility of having a random event system which picks players and assigns them special roles. If your pool of events is large enough, and your selection randomized enough, then it should operate just fine.

Gamemodes, GMs, admins, and events. Regarding new staff teams. I am very much against that idea. The amount of people already overseeing the round in one capacity or another (admins, mods, and DOs) requires more organization than I am capable of mustering. Having yet another team would require iron discipline. And I do not have the will for that, never have had with Aurora. There's also my personal belief that a light staff model is best for SS13. The more you concentrate control to a small group of individuals, the easier it is to keep that group in check and in line. The more pawns you have in play, the more of your attention is needed to make sure all of their moves are valid. And I've operated on the light staff principle since the getgo for myself and YeahChris. And I'd much rather make do with not enough nice things, instead of having to call to order a bunch of chipmunks who I haven't personally vetted, had a chat with, and who somehow broke enough shit for complaints to overflow from their line leader onto myself. Next. Admins and Loresters. To be blunt and 100% self-critical, the admin staff hasn't had its shit together for the past half year. And the reason for that is ultimately simple: the people that should be making admin right about now are no longer here. This leaves the admin staff strained (no, I do not trust lore team members to run events without a supervising administrator present), and the mod staff rebuilding. It takes time to rebuild a core team; it took a very long time to build the core team of Prims, who lifted every other mod and admin up during my stay as Head Developer, and we're having to repeat this process. While Jackboot did suggest to me that I speed up the process, it literally goes against my conscience to do so and causes warning lights at every single step of the way. Of course, it's not all over forever and ever. My present plan is to find a second Head Admin over the next two months. With that, the administrators will hopefully be gaining momentum and will be less reliant on me when undertaking initiatives. (Which this falls under.) By that time, we should have new admins as well, and hopefully new mods too. There are also a few fun plans to be executed in that time span that resemble new game modes. Though, I'll leave the unveiling of that to Kekboot, if he wants to yet or not. Do what you can, with the resources that you have, hooyah? Hooyah. Also, did I mention that I am a very liberal person when it comes to canon? Meaning, you can literally make your antag antics canon, as long as you keep them reasonable afterwards. So no super soldiers, please. But a syndicate operative who quietly recruits people, steals shit, and whatever else without getting spotted and with good roleplay involved is great.

Complant, resume. Tbh, not counting the shit on Discord (because really, discord is an optional mode of communication and both Delta and or Jackboot are free to block each other to high heaven there), Jackboot has a point. Delta's posts rather regularly out of opinionated bile that very rarely actually contribute to the discussion, as opposed to well reasoned opinions on the issue presented. It may not break the the rules per say, because, "Hey, I'm not attacking you, I'm attacking your character!" But let's be frank. The posts illustrate a mode of conduct that can be easily referred to as, "hounding". You go full blast, and you literally don't stop going until the other side no longer wants to deal with your shit. Literally compare these two posts: A reasoned display of opinion that is on topic and furthers the discussion by, at the very least, adding an alternate viewpoint - http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6322#p62941 A post which contains no constructive proposition, opinion, or even comments on the issue, and instead goes after specific circumstances and attempts to undermine the original post - http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6322#p62918 You obviously know the difference, Delta. So, what gives?

I don't think too many people would care for the trees that don't take up any space, and aren't hostile. They literally build their own planets and require nothing but light. Only conflicts would most likely be unfortunate first contact events, that won't escalate into wars, because the Diona don't give a rat's arse. Please don't force them into the same mold as every other sentient species.

Must resist urge to call complete bullshit. Okay I can't. A developing human will die on a vegan or vegetarian diet. We are omnivores 100%. Tangent aside. Bite intent is dumb. A snowflake intent for a singular purpose (combat) is stupid. The most I could see if making it a move in hand-to-hand combat. Because, in order to actually bite someone and do damage, you need to have them already in an aggressive grab and fixed. Otherwise, there's absoloutely nothing stopping them from dodging and then punching you in your muzzle.

Some modules (powersink) should be RnD driven. Others, more menial and standard ones, should be robotics/lathe driven.

I kind of, sometimes, wish for this as well. But not from the perspective of races. Instead, from the perspective of the station itself. I want to do something stupid, something interesting, and something niche. But I am given a relatively standard station instead. O'well, there's always a way to make shit work, hooyah?

As a note, I'm not even willing to do anything more than this until after we've waited a month. (Will be porting jammers myself, as they are originally my code.) It is dumb to consider removal of a controversial one week (barely even that) into them. We'll see how it goes. If it has a tangible effect on gameplay that we do not want, then we can talk about removing it or restricting it further.