Skull132

But then you'd restrict exclaim to always mean exclaim. Which lacks flair. The random pick is there to add flair, flavour. Yes, it's random, but let's be frank, majority of the people aren't going to care about it, it's just there to make the chat look less painful at times.

Nanako literally uses my own tactics in forum conversations against me. It's awful, because the tactics are awful. ;-;

Well, that's kind of why I think my parser solution would make this as well obsolete. Because you can add emphasis by simply using the chat tokens, while also retaining effective control over which verbs are used. And okay, maybe they're nuanced. An exclamation is short and sweet, but I could go on for hours while shouting at you. Still, all of the other chat stuff works the same way, and I don't think there's a point to rewrite it massively. Plus, the lack of a good alternative solution makes this difficult.

All the logs for days: I cut it after I saw the first nymph log. Anyways, this pretty much shows conversation and attempted conversation during the kidnapping. Also, by cuffing someone and disarming them, that is pretty much how you would kidnap someone. Any further input on the matter?

The thing is, if you wanted to state it, you would have used a statement. The fact that an exclamation mark was at the end makes it loud, and thus, socially questionable depending on who you deal with. If I had a character who cares about folks being loud and obnoxious, I would use the presence of the exclamation mark to determine whether or not someone's being loud, not the verb.

My point is. Shouting and yelling are synonymous with exclaiming. Whether you exclaim, shout, or yell, is irrelevant. They are the same action, by definition. Literally.

Thinking. Here's point one. Each game, each community has stereotypes attached to it. Specially roleplaying games. For SS13, it's lesbay, and whatever else. Literally 99% of the time, the stereotypes are used as a joke. Granted, there are folks who get a bit more zealous with things like that (more on that shortly), but in general, I cannot, in good conscious, request that people stop using these terms because they might offend someone. Being offended is a 50/50 split between taking offence, and someone being offensive. As I said, 99% of the times, people use these stereotypes without the intent of being offensive. Specially considering that these stereotypes almost always refer to characters, and not the players behind them. (I'm still surprised that people get offended at lesbay, as opposed to the attached stereotype of all players of lesbian characters being neckbearded straight men? Which is very specifically a stereotype about the player, and not the character?) Beyond that. Some people could use an education in how to actually manage situations like this. Or take example from Zundy, Garbage, and Nikov. Because fighting fire with fire, or in this case, disgruntlement with shitposting specifically on the subject at hand, doesn't really help anyone ever. It only really serves to fan the flame and burn out all sides involved. As it was preached to me for roughly 3 years, and very justly so: respect is a two way road. On the one hand, a person cannot demand that a playerbase drop all the culture, shall we say, around the game they're playing. Let's be frank, the stigmas and stereotypes around certain characters (lesbay) and modes of play (greentexting, validhunting, chair-RP) are apart of SS13 culture, and will seep in one way or another. You should understand that they are very rarely used with actually hostile intent (in the case that they are, please contact a member of staff), and are more often than not used for other purposes. On the other hand, a person needs to know when to stop memeing and actually start speaking sense. Or, more specifically, know when to properly and eloquently explain their point of view and their side of the story. Describing your hatred for X stereotype, memetext or not, doesn't really help the other person in understanding the culture clash. Also. All communities are a mixed (duffel)bag (of dicks) because people are involved. No matter how professional they appear on the outside. If you're willing to listen, I can tell you amazing stories about the internal drama and powerstruggles over virtual MILSIM games where players with the average age of 30-something participated in.

The fact that we are, for some reason, discussing sexuality and all the related baggage is amazingly disappointing. What does lesbay even have to do with any of this? As far as I'm tracking, Nikov and Zundy are on point. The rest kinda went. What.

This. There's a time and place to be dumb, and there's a time and place to get quiet and get constructive. And Hive, the shitposts I removed by myself. I warned Bokaza beforehand, but he made his choice.

Note that mechatronic engineering is actually a real life profession. And it's not all about mechs, though mechs are the logical progression of it. Anyways. My little snowflake nation that I keep as a safe-haven from lore uses mechs in active service. Specifically, designs similar to the battletech universe (as they're the most feasible IMO). They're primarily meant for relatively open terrain, such as desert wastelands and large ruined cities. With infantry support backing them up. Mechs like that, without support, would be relatively vulnerable to smaller, more mobile weaponry. Specially in urban environments, where the enemy has more vertical space to hide, and the mechs don't have room to maneuver properly.

This is by far the easiest. Well, okay, Delta's is the easiest one to code. However, this is also relatively easy when you compare it to the pay-off.

Hi. I feel as if a part of this is directed at myself, and my posts here. So I shall explain myself a little further. Granted, none of this may or perhaps even should be considered as "justification" for how I phrase myself from time to time, but do consider this an alternate viewpoint. I know full well that I can be a condescending asshole as I want to be one, and usually revert to being one as opposed to flat out insulting people. First off, the suggestion itself is entirely nitpickey, and falls very much in line with a mode of thinking going something like this: "Everyone thinks like me." You can see me referencing this in one of my replies. This is sort of why I went for the dictionary references, as they were meant to objectively showcase the fact that it is completely valid to use "shouts" and "yells" as synonyms of "exclaim". Plus, when someone starts arguing technicalities with me, I have a nasty habit of responding in kind, and this usually includes throwing the book at people. In this case, quite literally. (It didn't help that she basically skipped over it v.v ) It is my belief that mechanics should be as thought-process neutral as possible. This is why they should be clear and easy to understand. Adding an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence, it makes sense to the vast majority of people that their character is shouting in one manner or another. Everything else is optional. And, so I went about enforcing my belief on the matter. Another thing is that the matter involves coding. I tend to tread lightly when a matter does not concern something I'm up to speed on. For example, lore. I'm not in touch with lore, and so I only ever involve myself if stuff goes completely and utterly nuts. However, the closer to my heart something goes, the aggressive in my pursuit of its proper conduct I get. Reference: teaching people, and coding. Specifically, Nanako has a habit of assuming things about what coders and code can do. I don't put it past her, a lot of people do this, but I start getting more and more restrictive in how I address such people as time progresses. I imagine this is what Soundscopes felt. Hmmmmm. The very simple fact is that Nanako and I appear to have personalities that generate a lot of aggressive looking arguments. (Maybe because we're both one or another form of self-righteous folk who believe they're right until absoloutely and utterly proven wrong.) In fact, we discussed this off-handedly recently on OOC. Someone commented that we seem to get into verbal spats quite regularly. She said that she doesn't mind, and I don't really mind either. I'm actually kinda curious as to what Nanako thinks of this. Note that there are only 2 people for whom I lack respect, for very specific reasons, and they aren't around. I simply tend to get aggressive if not overzealous in certain arguments. As necessary, I will police myself, and apologize for the mistake.

Hokay. So we have 3 topics on this subject, and actually, this is a topic I've been pondering for about a month now. Here's my general idea. Add a simple mark-up parser into the game, and apply it to OOC, LOOC, and IC chat. Now, wtf do I mean by, "a simple mark-up parser"? Quite simple: make it work like Discord or Skype. More specifically, Skype atm. You bind pairs of symbols into your input, and these, once properly closed, will modify your text. A lot of players already use, for example, forward-slashes to indicate emphasis. Some use asterisks, whatever. The purpose is the same: to mark a certain word off for added emphasis or increased perceived volume. How it would work is quite simple. There's a set of agreed upon symbols that have a desired effect on your input. These can be viewed through a help command. And then you just write them into your input, send the message, and the code does all the rest. Examples: "What on Earth are _you_ doing here?" would get transformed into: Erec Bellard asks, "What on Earth are you doing here?" "Get *out*." would get transformed into this: Talon Keir says, "Get out." "*Help! I'm getting robbed!*" would get transformed into this: Kimberly Riden exclaims, "Help! I'm getting robbed!" It would not affect the verbs that the character uses, and instead only modify the output styling. May also want to consider if there's a use for underlining something, though most of the time, italicized text carries the same meaning and looks less out of place. Why do I think this should be preferred out of all 3 possibilities? It's concise - You use only one command, instead of hacking your way around multiple commands. It's intuitive enough - The idea of sprinkling text with mark-up like this is already well engrained into the heads of most internet users, thanks to Skype, Discord, even Teamspeak. Total control - Instead of being restricted to all-bold or no-bold, you get to cherry-pick whatever content you want altered. It's clean - While I'm not too much of a prude when it comes to coding, I do nope away from completely awful hacks that don't make sense. This uses no such hack, and is very reliable. The other alternatives: Shift-enter to shout: http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6027 Bold sentences based on their end: http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6026 The latter may be considered for implementation along side this, as it's easy enough to do. The former is arse on the code front, as I've already explained there. Would this resolve the silly shenanigans?

There is no DM proc to recognize the pressing of shift enter as a variable upon the execute of a command. The only way to execute this smoothly and intuitively is to swap the entire input framework to be Javascript based. At which point, we may just be able to pull this off. The alternate hack for this is to implement a new command ingame, hide it, make it accessible only through the pressing of shift-enter. However, not only would this be unknown to new players, but it would be stupid as all fuck from a logic perspective. It may also conflict to high heaven with the normal usage of enter to execute any given command. Ergo, it is not intuitive. Parsers are the way to go, specifically since the system already relies on them. To add. My preference is for this: http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6026 Why? Because it doesn't require a hidden hack to add functionality which is already present and makes sense. Further, I've already been toying with the idea of including simple mark-up for OOC, LOOC, and IC. Meaning that something like this: "Hey, _you_," would get turned into, "Hey, you." Add in the use of asterisks for bolding, like so: "Hey, *you*!" = "Hey, you!" and voila. Full control of chat input allotted to the player, through the use of a concise and self-contained mechanic which is already implemented (the speech parser).

The reasonable middle ground is the status quo. As for emphasis. You fail to understand that one does not necessarily yell while emphasizing. I use slashes IC to indicate emphasis, and very rarely does my character actually yell while doing it. Stop putting your thoughts into other people's heads. I'm also glad that the association between the exclamation mark and the verbs that are used once one is detected flew over your head. The presence of the mark indicates that the character is exclaiming. It is not that hard to understand this. I'm also glad you know what you speak of when it comes to coding. There's a point why I referenced a parser: because using a parser is the most intuitive way to handle this. Not only is your proposed solution convoluted as heck to code (I think the only way to do that would be through a series of hacks involving Javascript), it would also add too much mechanical difficulty to a function which should just work. And also be intuitive.

How to deconstruct powercells 100% of the time: have robotics print them.

Did you read Hive's post detailing how he went about the capture? Please do so. While I do find the snip of, "Removing his powergamey items" snippy, Hive not only claims to have tried to communicate with the RD, but also that he removed the headset after the RD called for help over comms. Also, if the goal was to leave someone unable to escape, is that not what one would have to do in order to do it properly? I will fetch logs in the mean time to confirm these attempts.

"Only the Sith deal in absolutes." There's a middle-ground between encouraging and actively seeking to remove. A massive one. Seriously. As for it being a valid linguistic tool. Nope, speaking very technically, typing in all capitals is not a valid grammatical tool. You would use an exclamation mark to convey the same meaning you apply to typing in all-caps. Perhaps we should also look in the dictionary: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exclaim And again, let's look in the dictionary to find that all verbs used to describe the action of exclaiming, as indicated by the presence of an exclamation mark are listed as being synonymous with the verb: http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/exclaim?s=t As for why I don't want to see more all-caps in general say? Well, okay, perhaps I'm a bit of a prude on this count, but it looks awful. There's also the fact that 99% of the time, all caps is used in combination with the exclamation mark. Aaand also the fact that if you mistype one character as a non-all-caps word, the parser would recognize it as a standard say. And missing one letter is easier than missing an exclamation point. Oh, and encouraging proper chat endings is a positive thing. Proper punctuation is actually something players should worry about, as it offers a rhythm and pacing to their character's speech. It makes it readable, and enables development of more custom speech patterns down the line.

Complaint resolved and archived.

Okay, so, as far as I'm tracking. The station is in a state of general chaos, at the point where weapons building is permitted. Even if RnD was handing out the flame throwers in question, it literally means that shit's so fucked that improvised weapons are also a go. And if the character knows how to build them, and believes they may be valid for the scenario, then I see little to no reason to call foul on this. Specially if all cargo techs did this, with the same goal and intent. Second. Self-antagging. This is not explicitly mentioned by the rules (gonna get that fixed), but it's a byproduct of the rules requiring that you roleplay a believable character. (Note believable, as opposed to realistic.) The working definition of such a clause should be: do not partake in antagonistic action as a non-antagonist character unless you have believable IC justification for such action. To illustrate this with an example: a non-antagonist can murder another character, if there is legitimate reason and RP behind it. If the situation has escalated to such heights, basically. In our case, we're discussing action that's a good few notches below that. As far as I'm tracking, the intent was to go help those trapped. Which looks good. And it also looks like the other cargo techs were involved as well? Ergo, we can just go and ask them. Names, again, IC or OOC will be fine and I can run'em down. If other techs were involved, then there is nothing to really support any theory of Hive gunning straight for the RD. It was a a target of opportunity. And with the round's description posted, I'm inclined to believe the justification for it was valid enough. Regarding ganking. The gank rule does not only apply to deaths, take this for reference. However, it's not really applicable here. In order to turn this situation into gank, what Hive would have to have done is something like this: Go into Research with the express intent of fucking up the RD in one form or another Cuff him with no words Drag him somewhere and leave him there just like that However, since points one and three are not applicable, I would not consider this gank. Due to the nature of the game, 90% of arrests (legal or illegal) need to be conducted without warning. Otherwise, the other side is going to pull a flash and flash you. The fix for it would be to very heavily enforce confrontation rules, along the lines of, "Both sides must respond verbally in such a situation and, using emotes and speech, roleplay out the arrest." Which we don't enforce. If anyone can point out an incorrect conclusion or invalid information in my post, please, point it out. With that, complant unlocked. Let's resume the dialogue and get this fixed.

I don't think we should be encouraging all-caps shouting in IC. It's fine as is.

Making cameras higher level access is odd. Actually, nevermind, change the network it's on I guess, and make a private network. *shrugs* Also, regarding nuke and whether or not it's common knowledge for the time being: People would know it's there. Some would probably believe it's a dud, others might believe it to be live, whatever. No one but the captain should 100% know that it's active, and that the codes for its activation are kept on station. So basically: the trigger for its activation is unknown to the crew, same for the circumstances under which it's activated, if at all (maybe you think it's a dud). A potential cover story to dissuade further investigation by pesky employees could be that it's there as a tool with which to destroy the station if it suffers a xenobiological outbreak from research (though the NT rep would make clear that this is done after a successful evacuation of the crew by NT's finest). The nuke disk is, again, only known to the Captain. He knows what it is and what it's capable of doing. HoS may just know that the disk is super fucking important, and that its recovery is paramount, but he wouldn't know that it's used for amazing purposes. Everyone else would see it as a random disk. As for stealing the nuke: I mean, it's still an explosive device and could be amazingly valuable in terms of the materials it has in it. Such things would fly like hotcakes on the black market.

Alrighty. I've talked to both Jenna and Serv on this. Have yet to catch Raven, but I've got enough to make my call. As it stands, the chain of events that is objectively confirmed by ze logz: - Cult does conversion shit in the garden, a sec officer or two notice it and a fight ensues there; - All fighting is stopped by the time the cult reaches the shuttle; - The cult boards an empty, unoccupied shuttle, without resistance or conflict; - Serveris doesn't see the cultists early enough, gets wedged between them and fighting ensues from there with Jenna joining in later; - Death and murder in the name of glorious Nar'sie happens. - Fin. Okay, so the question is whether or not the Cult should have been stopped from boarding the shuttle in the first place. The conflict that happened in escape happened pretty much organically, as both parties were in the clear to commence an attack. Because the situation is so odd, at the worst, I'd have added a note to see if anyone makes a habit out of seizing the shuttle like this in the future. (Similar to how CoolBc made a habit of doing the same antag spiel every time by "conquering" the station. It was eventually escalated to an OOC issue.) ------------ Regarding the management of the issue. It was dumb. As it stands, our staff SOP does not forbid members of staff managing the issues they are themselves involved in. We simply expect them to know how to manage an issue that they're involved in, or to defer complete judgement. What happened here was some odd level of in-between that is not acceptable. Either get your name on the ban, or don't get involved, should be the mentality. And I'll place a staff rule to effectively keep around as a reminder for the future. This won't happen again.

Ban lifted.

Or as a player guide. Because, your approach probably is not the ultimate one.