Bauser

Giving random chances for failure will make it considerably more difficult for a player to learn the mechanics, and that just isn't fun. Nothing's more frustrating than spending two whole rounds doing the math and perfecting your process just for one or two randomised failures to make it seem like your method is completely incorrect. I'm also of the mindset that telescience needs to be made more robust before it is made more dangerous. I would love to see it used more often as a tool for medical and security.

This discussion might benefit from some supplementary explanation for non-engineer players like myself. Lance's post makes it sound like phoron is not actually necessary for making the engine work (but rather can make it work better somehow?) If this is the case, why should engineers automatically have access to the phoron needed to perform this upgrade? Is it unreasonable to say that an improvement over the baseline should require the support of an atmospheric technician? Plus, couldn't you just ask the AI for access in most cases? In total, it sounds like the current state of things is that you need to do a little extra work in order to get a little extra reward. Is that not the case? Because that would be perfectly reasonable.

My friend who recently started playing SS13 (on Aurora) is evil, and after playing chemist, he made an evil suggestion to me. If you grab someone (possibly requiring aggressive grab) and click on a chemical dispenser, you should be able to shove the person onto it so you can pour chemicals directly into them. Comparable to holding their head under the spout. His particular example involved acid, but the possibilities are generally quite colorful.

If you can't suspend your disbelief because it's too crazy to think that being near a rotting fucking corpse would make you sick, that speaks poorly of the player, not of the mechanic.

The purpose of enacting this would not be to approach realism. Contrary to popular belief, even severely rotting bodies don't pose a particular health risk or spread disease. The purpose of adding this would be to give mechanical substance to the idea that we, as characters, would naturally be disgusted and sickened by hanging around corpses. So it manufactures a believable (still fictional) hazard to discourage that behavior, WITH the side benefits of increasing the functionality of existing mechanics (biohazard suits, body bags, morgue trays, and virology). I understand opposing it on the grounds of realism (although I'm with Kaed in saying that realism should not be the first priority where gameplay mechanics are concerned), but to say it's just dumb and silly really doesn't do justice for the benefits it offers. EDIT: Plus, I mean, the miasma theory of medicine was the predominant school of thought regarding disease transmission for most of human history, so it should not be difficult for suspension of disbelief.

I like the concept you've presented, but I do worry about the relative difficulty of implementing it. I chose to just go with disease because the mechanical framework is completely already here and in-game. Adding a sensation of smell would have many obvious benefits for both gameplay and RP (imagine if you could actually find a body hidden somewhere because you smelled it when walking nearby!), but it does sound like it would require a lot more legwork.

If a dead body is left for some time (I don't know what's best for balance, maybe 10 minutes) without being inside a morgue or body bag (not for realism but rather for gameplay), then its (theoretical) rotting should start creating a risk of infection, similar to the miasma of an airborne disease. Personally, my only experience with virology is a quick read-through of its wiki page. That said, it seems to me like an appropriate suite of symptoms for exposure would be something like... Waiting syndrome (so it's not immediately apparent you've been exposed) -> headaches -> hyperacid syndrome -> toxification syndrome So you don't get instant feedback to know for sure if you're infected, and then once you get your warning (headaches), you have a little time before anything serious happens... And if you fail to act, it eventually turns into a serious (and palatably generic, thanks to toxins) threat to your health. I welcome alternative ideas to this progression. Benefits of this change: This would give me as a janitor a better reason than HRP to wear my biohazard suit to cleanup sites (not that a better reason than HRP is needed, but it's good to have game mechanics reinforce RP concepts), it would encourage medical personnel to have some sense of urgency for bagging bodies, it would make crewmembers less likely to hover around corpses like we paradoxically tend to, it might lead to the morgue being used more often, and it could give virology something more important to do every round (like maybe they can vaccinate against the disease if they isolate it). EDIT: I forgot to mention, one thing I think should be important about the implementation of this is that the resulting disease should NOT continue to be airborne from the person who catches the disease. In other words, for balance reasons (because we don't want outbreaks every round), you should only be able to get this disease from being around a corpse - NOT from being around someone else who was around the corpse, etc. So maybe make it only transmissible by fluids. The question I haven't been able to answer yet is: how do we make a disease that's airborne from the corpse but not airborne from the people who catch it? I worry the possibility doesn't exist in current code (maybe it does, I'm not a coder), but if it doesn't, I can imagine some hack solutions... Like just giving the corpse a small radius that has a tiny chance of inflicting the disease per every tick you're within range. All of this, of course, remains very open to suggestions.

You wish I would let you off that easy. If I make three paragraphs that are on-topic and three sentences that aren't, the net effect is probably fine - we can handle talking about multiple things at the same time. And I wouldn't bring it up if it weren't relevant. Since that Discord exchange happened within the hour following your response to my post... ... I'm pretty sure we can just skip the part of this conversation where you pretend it has nothing to do with your raging hard-on for me. Anyway. @Jackboot The "this is just a game" justification isn't observed for any other roleplay concerns on Aurora, so why does it suddenly apply here? I mean, if we want to make an arbitrary exception, I don't see why we shouldn't, I just think there's a need to acknowledge that it is an exception. Because the reasoning being "we need things to go like this because it's a game" can be really problematic if it's applied to other situations, like general antag motivations. And although there is surely SOME precedent in history for ideological violence erupting like that, it doesn't explain how it emerges from the context of this ostensibly docile research setting. You're not wrong, as evidenced by the fact that Revolution generally works as a gamemode, but you can see how the justifications are stretched thin. My point is, like Reyn says, Gang mode stretches the RP even thinner. If Revolution is a problem, then trying to solve it with Gang is a move in the wrong direction.

Abandoned crates are already useless to most people because no one can guess the code. If you made some of them mimics, miners would become completely disinterested in them at best (and ACTIVELY try to lure people into them for shits and giggles, at worst). This suggestion is more trouble than it's worth.

It is the VIOLENCE which escalated quickly. The actual philosophy that inspired it (you know, like the little "revolution" detail in the game mode Revolution) had been cultivated over the course of their entire lives. The out-of-character part isn't enacting the violence; it's so quickly adopting the mindset that violence needs to be carried out. That's just blatantly false. If your character is defined to behave in a certain way, and then you act in a way that is contrary to this, it is out-of-character. You can say you're just "redefining the character" or whatever you want, but the truth is that carrying out a revolution on an otherwise peaceful workday afternoon forces you to do some things that don't make sense for a sane person to do (and because having a sane person is a requirement of all characters, then it logically follows that uncharacteristic behavior is necessary). Yeah, a criminal network that just happens to be comprise like half the entire payroll of a cutting-edge research space station? Or even a tenth. Are we actually going to have to discuss the nonsense relationship this idea has with the concept of HRP. And you know me; I am not the guy who needs everything to be realistic and immersive. But saying that most the crew of this base "was actually thugs the whole time!!! Secretly!!!!!! They only got their jobs as highly-accredited scientists and engineers so they could play the long game and infiltrate it!!!!!" is so fucking garbage. And nothing but garbage. What astounds me most is that you would go to such lengths to try shitting on me when we agree on the subject matter. Like what is even the point? Trying to feel big?

Now that I've properly comprehended what you wrote, I can say that instead of a really, really shitty defense, it's just a passively uninspiring one... The point I'm attempting to make is that only rarely seeing a specific gamemode win the vote is evidence of the voting system discouraging it. And that's obvious considering it's like a massively split ticket. 9 times out of 10, if you vote for exactly the mode you want to play, all you're doing is 'throwing away' your vote since the top contenders are secret and extended every time. BECAUSE, given the vast disparity of options, the only thing you can reliably get the players to agree on for the vote is either "I do want antags" or "I don't want antags." So even when there is unspoken consensus about what specific mode is desired, the vote will not properly reflect it. It begs for like a staggered vote, where we vote once for "antags or extended" and a second time for "specific mode or secret" if antags win the first vote. I know that's not going to happen, but it would help the vote do what it's actually supposed to do: tell us what mode people actually want to play.

Revolutionaries are hesitant to become violent because this server is notorious for its chokehold on antagonistic actions. And I don't say that as a critique, but simply a fact: if the consequence of being too timid is a boring round and the consequence of being too bold is getting banned, people will choose to be too timid almost every time. A reality of HRP is that it imposes restrictions on play that naturally don't coincide with the way every gamemode is meant to be played. It doesn't make sense for people to go from relatively docile employees to violent revolutionaries within a two-hour span. It doesn't make sense for this serious, lore-altering kind of uprising to spring forth in the time and conditions we have for it. And that means, in order for Revolution rounds to play out with the sort of chaos we expect (and often desire) from them, people necessarily need to do some things that are out of character. So instead of replacing the Revolution mode with some wacky "hey guys, you're gangsters now! pull out the MAC10s and baseball bats hahaha" shit, why not just push revolutionaries in the direction of revolution with some OOC influence, like notes when someone attempts to convert them, or 'thoughts in their head' sort of messages, or something. Gang war, as a concept for a game mode, is so utterly incompatible with HRP that I would be disgusted to see it here. With revolution, it doesn't take much suspension of disbelief. This isn't a problem that needs to be fixed with a huge upheaval, just some little nudges in the right direction.

The fact that meme mode crossfire will occasionally win a vote on low pop rounds is a really, really shitty defense of the extant voting system, Sharp. In fact, that's better at proving the system is a failure than it is at proving the system is a success.

This makes even less sense in-character than a revolution. Everybody on the station knows as soon as their "gang" takes over the station, NT is going to call in the death squads. On Rev, the mutineers know this too - but they have the excuse that they're doing it for a moral reason rather than any concrete end-goal like just capturing the Aurora for the hell of it. It would be complete chaos. On Revolution, the revs and the loyalists at least have the plausible deniability of working together, they know they collectively comprise the same station. If you tell the two groups that they're just warring gangs, it's going to be stupid all-out chaos. Half the doctors would be gunning down the other half, half the engineers could be sabotaging the other half, and what does security do? Does half respond to the crimes against their gang? Can they even be gang members? Pitting antagonists against each other has the potential to be very meaningful story-wise and fun gameplay-wise, but this implementation is way too blunt and careless for it to work well.

I was Korom Bhararaya (janitor) that round, and I have to speak in Eab's defense at least on one significant point of contention: the claim that he didn't communicate well with the engineering team. I witnessed firsthand that Ayden DID attempt to rendezvous with the whole engineering department while they (a lot of us) were repairing the engineering wing post-SM delamination. I don't recall what he said, but I do remember he was attempting to act in the capacity of a Chief Engineer, meeting up with his team. However, I only saw that he was a visitor - so when he told me that the captain had appointed him as the CE, I was completely unconvinced (since I didn't know about the situation with the AI, and the SM emergency seemed to be taken care of). I manually closed the (unpowered) doors to the engineering wing between Ayden and myself (and the rest of his team) to suggest that we shouldn't allow him to assert his authority. And so he left. To me, it came down to the fact that I couldn't verify his claim, so it seemed negligent to take his word. But in retrospect, it's clear that the choice I made prevented Ayden from fulfilling the duties of the role he had honestly been appointed. Do I think dumping a bunch of metal garbage from the sky is a dumb and boring way to shut down a game? Yes. And that he should have attempted to follow the captain's orders instead of playing hero. But let the record show that he definitely attempted to play nice before it came to that.

Voting for specific gamemodes is busted because there are so many variants (A-type of antag, B-type of antag, C-type of antag, A+B antags, A+C antags, B+C antags, D-type of antag! B+D! A+D! D+C!) that it's impossible for any of them to win a vote even though people overwhelmingly want SOME antag presence rather than extended or even the possibility of extended (implied by the secret gamemode). Make the vote just be: 1) Extended 2) Threat (Random round type OTHER than extended) 3) Secret (Random round type INCLUDING extended)

I'm sorry, what was this problem about references

Well apparently, as of five months ago, it didn't go anywhere. Just consider it a refresher.

As an addendum, it would be interesting if gasping (specifically when you AREN'T completely cut off from air) obscured speech like the asterisks on a crumpled paper.

I'm only making this suggestion for posterity. So no one can say the theoretical framework doesn't exist. I made it years ago on Bay, and it's an idea that people don't like. As far as I've seen, people don't want to play it, people don't want to implement it, it's generally a massive change to a fundamental mechanic that defines how the game of Space Station 13 is conducted. But they just don't know what they're missing. It is The Deafening. And it's a damn good idea. The change at the core of this suggestion is that radio headsets and the common public frequency should be erased from the game. Or, at the very least, their presence minimized drastically. The inspiration/reason for this change, as I see it, is two-fold: 1) Enhance realism and immersion, as it would not make sense for an entire facility to be chatting on one party line 24/7 2) More importantly (to me), heighten the suspenseful and emergent aspects of SS13's gameplay by limiting (but NOT preventing) a player's access to critical knowledge I will discuss the implications of this change from mechanical and thematic standpoints, and I will discuss complementary changes that might be needed in order to make it work. Mechanically, the difference is clear as night and day. It gives antagonists a big buff by making it a little harder for everyone to signal distress. It isolates events by placing them in an information bubble, so the entire station doesn't get a front-row seat to any- and everything going on. This could have a profound impact on people's ability to roleplay, and in a best-case scenario, I believe the time and freedom it affords players (to carry out their designs, or to react to whatever's being done with them) could dramatically increase the quality of play that emerges. Suddenly, security isn't just a time-delayed wave that traitors have to stay in front of. And if the crew can't always count on security busting down the doors, suddenly every player needs to be a little more involved with their own safety, and every player gets a better chance to meaningfully interact with the antagonists. Suddenly, everyone has an excuse to physically move around the station, interacting with people they would otherwise never see because it's a good way to stay informed about what's going on. And this gives a sort of veil for antagonists to move through, persuasion becoming a much more powerful tool as they invent reasons to be in places they shouldn't - without the meta arousing suspicion. In total, it encourages creativity with the side-benefit of making it easier to identify player misconduct (more opportunity to roleplay = less excuses for validhunting, powergaming, etc). Thematically... I thought of this idea as a direct extension of the most fundamental aspects of SS13's gameplay. It's more fun when you have to be just a little bit paranoid, it's more fun when you have breathing room to enact your own plans, it's more fun when things can take you by surprise, it's more fun when you have to think on your feet. Like playing Mafia, it creates these layers of intrigue as everyone's singular experience or interpretation becomes a unique story - rather than having it all blend into a single narrative by keeping everyone on the same page. I understand that communication is vital to creating gameplay in SS13. People need to order supplies, doctors need to treat the wounded, engineers need to coordinate on repairs, security needs to act in unison to respond to problems... Talking really is the primary method by which the game is enacted, and the purpose of this suggestion is not to change or cripple that. I just know that there are other ways to implement it that are more conducive to engaging gameplay and roleplay. So when I suggest that we get rid of radio headsets, I know that something has to fill in the void. Fortunately, we already have all the tools we need to fix it back up. We have station-bounced radios that you can carry around, we have PDAs that you can use to text anyone, we have wall-mounted intercoms in any major area, we have messaging stations and newscasters, we have an AI watching at all times... Removing radio headsets does not remove a player's ability to contact the station or anyone on it in a quick and satisfying manner; all it does is impose real gameplay consequences on your decision to do so. Station-bounced radio takes up a slot (and I would like if it needed to be in-hand to use), wall-mounted intercoms keep you in place while you relay your message, PDA messages don't reach everyone unless you take the time to do that, and all these methods are more susceptible to interference. Handhelds can be stolen, the PDA server can be cut, and wall-mounted intercoms can be hacked and sabotaged. IF it turns out this imposes too great a limitation on the crew (and, with a little getting used to, it really shouldn't), we have tons of options for dialing it back. Security could keep their departmental headsets - that's realistic. Personally, I'd like to see PDAs get a call function so that you can speak to another PDA through it. Point being: there are lots of opportunities for fine-tuning this. This suggestion takes a core, omnipresent element of gameplay and elevates it to a sort of commodity that you need to keep in mind while you're playing. Another mechanic that needs to be taken into consideration like everything else - food, air, weapons... now, information. So when a doctor sees people dying on the suit sensors, mobilizing a paramedic becomes an active, tangible task. So when bullets start flying, notifying security is something you have to do instead of immediately fighting back. So the antagonists have a little more breathing room to carry out elaborate plans - these are the prescribed story-drivers of every round, but so far we expect them to drive that story with a noose around their neck. As a result, the roleplay is always what's done after the gameplay is carried out. The traditional system has prioritized the hectic hack-and-slash of SS13, while this new system could free people to place the roleplay first. And if there's any server that could possibly sympathize with that, it's Aurora.

What if you have one prosthetic leg and one regular leg? click tap click tap click tap click tap

Does it have to replace unbranded ones? Unbranded prostheses have the best appearance in my opinion. No need to get rid of them.

Being able to tell at a glance if a character has a rifle or shotgun is a pretty important feature

What if everything that can be pulled could also be pushed? I'm hoping this would work exactly like pushing a wheelchair currently works, where you're given direct control of the object you're pushing. So you can get it around corners and through doors with ease. This would be an extremely useful tool for tight spaces like maintenance so you could maneuver around without fear of the classic 'getting trapped behind your own crap' scenario. Plus, it makes sense.

Also, how do they breathe?