Nantei

I think people already handle things like, "Does my character have the toughie feet?" fairly well.

No need because you are already punished by stepping on lego blocks. Also the slowdown is pretty significant, I'm not sure how you wouldn't have noticed it by now. Also Chada as someone who used to practice barefoot running, and would run around a data center on patrol with only socks on, you can build a tolerance for it fairly easily. Especially with socks on.

Being against the rules does not mean it never happens. I can tell you it happens quite a bit judging just from my short stint as mod. People breaking gank rules is fairly common.

I don't really have an issue with the current parapen. I am just stating that it's difficult to do much about it if you do. There's not much room for compromise with how our chemistry system works. Replacing it with an anesthetic is arguably worse because you can't even talk then. Paralysis is the only chemistry effect that does what the parapen needs to, and very few chemicals grant it without horrible side effects. What I will contest, though, is that the parapen is an excellent ganking tool, there's no real denying it. It is the most surefire way to kill someone quietly, as there is almost no room for error.

I didn't forget that, but it is the primary advantage of the item for sure. There's not a lot I think a stationbound would have use for an emag for.

But they can fight carps and such. Also as a note this means maintenance drones can't touch rats either. I also don't figure drones are particularly expensive considering they are extremely simplistic in thinking, and can be detonated with little foresight and minimal access requirements. Stationbounds are way more expensive, but they are totally fine to do all of these things as well, and the drones are honestly better at fighting the hivebots as is due to their mobility. The spirit of the law very clearly to me is: Don't interact with people or stationbounds. Basically so that drones don't just become MEGA PAI's.

Problem is that anything like this is also going to be good for killing people quickly. It's actually better at killing a single person than the revolver is, and we all know how nasty the revolver is. To give you an example as to why: The Parapen is regularly used on Baystation explicitly to kill people. I am just glad it hasn't caught on here, hopefully due to our ganking rules discouraging it.

The parapen can be used either as a great tool to facilitate interesting things or as a horrible gank/Win button. I'm thankful that a lot of the... Less savory antagonists don't seem to know how overpowered it is. It's very feast or famine, and knowing what I do about the chems, I don't think there may be a good fix here that makes everyone happy. At first I thought, "Okay so the major benefit of this tool is it's a stealthy and instant kidnapping tool." And then it occurred to me that this is the problem. It's a kidnapping tool. Kidnapping tools are naturally going to be like this due to the nature of how it works. I thought we could replace it with soporific or something and give it charges, but it will still be an amazing ganking tool then. There isn't going to be a good compromise here, so this is going to boil down to: Can we trust the playerbase with this tool? And that's going to be almost entirely down to personal experiences. With any tool that is easily abused we can always say, "Administration will deal with it." But the problem with that is it doesn't undo the damage it caused. Yes, if you get ganked the person will probably be warned at the least, but this doesn't stop others from doing it again, or fix that you just had an awful experience. My personal experience has been generally positive with the pen. I've used it to enable gimmicks I wouldn't have been able to otherwise. Like the time I penned Astor, put a death alarm implant in him, and told him and Fernando that it was an explosive implant in order to hold him hostage while forcing Fernando to make grenades my client wanted (Using his exploitable information). The parapen guaranteed my first part succeeded, but I probably could have achieved the same effect with a gun.

Even if it's an awkward sentence I still think that's preferable to an unclear law. Tons of people barely know the difference between sentience and sapience (If they even know sapience is a thing), so I feel it's best to just be explicit with our intent here. PS: This isn't me putting down people who don't know that. I'm just saying we should keep the layman in mind here.

Ironically, Hivebots are arguably sentient. They are a hivemind. So sentient does not work. What I think would improve it is removing the period and replacing it with a comma. "Interact with no humanoid or synthetic being that is not a fellow maintenance drone, excluding Hivebots."

The syndicate borg module is barely functioning. The SMG often does not fire any actual projectile, or doesn't reload. The grenade launcher fires frags, which are good, but not nearly as good as they used to be, the syndie borg is still sodomized by EMP of course, the net-gun has literally never worked in my experience. So... really their usable kit is: Grenade Launcher, E-sword, Emag, Thermals. On an already pretty limited and weak antagonist. Also an E-mag for a borg is pretty damn useless for hopefully obvious reasons.

That's extremely easy to add by just upping the values. It shouldn't be as low as it is anyways. And if you mention it to Geeves I am sure he will add it to the PR.

As the title says. The ghost spawner is a great tool, sometimes people who get hit by a souls hard don't want to be an artificer, juggernaut, etc, and then the cultist is left feeling a bit robbed. My proposed change is to open up a ghost role for it, with the body/soul owner getting first dibs similar to how we have changed Skeletons for Wizards. That way people who get Artificer, Juggernaut, etc, actually want to be there and can have fun, and people who don't want it aren't forced into the role. Golems as is can be really hit or miss, adding them to the ghost spawner makes sense in my opinion. Interested ghosts can still get in on this first by standing on top of the rune.

Uh no. No it is not. Current rune code just applies the stun rune to the talisman. The talisman applies a strength 25 weaken and a strength 25 stun. This reduces the weaken, removes the stun from the talisman. I even checked the current pull just to be certain. Regarding the other things. There are plentiful ways to get a stun, not many ways to get a mute. This gives you a mute and a lengthy blind. A stun prod can be made by literally an assistant with relative ease. Everything you need is in maintenance or tool storage. The stun talisman is unhealthily strong, and you still have access to the stun rune if you for some reason still find yourself needing it. And to clear up a misconception, the stun rune has AOE. You do not need to stand on it.

I feel like those moments are more rare than not. I think it makes a lot more sense to remove the word since the only 'good' usage of it is purely thematic, and in my experience not a common usage of said word as is. It's often used as a borderline ganking tool for anyone that has the misfortune of coming near the mob. Like, don't get me wrong, that's cool, but I don't think most people use it that way unfortunately.

Sacrifice isn't necessary for this, though. If you have three people and you want to shove someone into a juggernaut, I think you can lynch them just fine.

You mean they will have to make an effort to convert people? Good. Exactly how it should be. Stun convert ganks are extremely common, it's way too powerful, and regularly abused. The stun rune still works the same, but unlike the paper it isn't a mobile moving mega flashbang that bypasses every single resistance in the game. It requires planning, thought. If the cult has to make stun prods, which I will note are extremely easy to make, then that's a good change in my book.

I seem to be on a cult kick lately. The recent player complaint had me thinking on what the sacrifice rune actually does, and a cursory look through the code has seemed to give me the answer of: Literally nothing. It just kills the person. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMm1RLF32ig Is really all I can say. I don't think I need to make a particularly strong case for why a TG holdover that seems to be only tied to objective code, and only exists to gib people shouldn't be a thing. Also it seems to confuse the crap out of cult players too, so that's not great.

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/7347 Bumping with a relevant PR. This removes the stun, slightly reduced the weaken, keeps the silence and blind. Only affects the talisman, so if you can lure people into a stun rune it still works as normal.

But they are not. They are not nearly as beholden or loyal to NT. Mercenaries can: Disobey orders they disagree with, shake the station down for money, be generally more antagonistic than any other ERT. Mercenaries generally should not: Be stomping on an already failing station. If the mercenaries are consistently siding with antags, I think that is a problem, and it will absolutely lead to people just not calling ERT. Why would I call something that has a 1/3rd chance of making things worse? In my opinion, ERT should be generally positive for the station. Not always positive, but generally positive. Also I will note this has been, as far as I have been told, not a particularly rare occurrence. There isn't enough distinction between ERT mercs and regular mercs. Hell, if they are both on the station, a lot of people can't even distinguish between which ones are 'the good guys' and which are 'the bad guys'. This will lead to lopsided support of the ERT mercs joining what is arguably already one of our stronger antags. Not as big an issue on highpop, crippling on low and med.

Thank you. It's appreciated. I've noted this happening quite a lot, this was just the only one I personally witnessed.

I never said it was. The issue is they are invincible, because they are reinforced by the other mercenaries. All the beacon did was serve to stomp on the station harder. Not very fun IMO. And I think a lot of people in that round would agree. Fun rounds involve a power struggle between the antagonists and the station. ERT showing up and slamming their boot down on the station is not a struggle.

Let me paint you a picture, and I will show you exactly why I was very nervous about introducing a neutral party to the ERT pool. It's evening PST, server is at about medium pop, getting ready for dead hour. We have about five total sec members, no warden, and a Captain. The roundtype is Mercenary, and there are four mercs. Four mercs vs five sec is already a pretty tall order unless security gets the drop on them. So things are pretty dire. Mercenaries take security eventually as tensions rise, making reaching the armory a non-factor. Our chances of protecting the station are pretty null, even with Cargo ordering us a slight amount of gear. So we do the rational thing, we run the fuck away, and call ERT. Guess what happens? That's right. Two Mercenaries come. And they backstab the Captain despite the Captain offering them a pretty handsome sum of cash. The antagonistsare wnning though, so of course they have more money overall to offer since they essentially own the station now, and it's way less risky. The ERT of course makes the safe choice to side with the antagonists. Guaranteed payday, safer overall for them. On top of this, we cannot even end the round because we can't call for evac with the beacon. I have no idea why that is, and why it isn't just a simple delay, but that's how it is. Eventually staff has to actually force the shuttle to come, because the only other way around this is to go down to blue and call a transfer, which is incredibly cheesy. This is thankfully a bug. Thank you for the quick reply, Wildkins. So we have a round where the antagonists have full control over the station, and the ERT showed up essentially to do nothing but stomp on our twitching corpses. This is exactly what I was afraid would happen. Because the antagonists were essentially granted reinforcements to further sodomize us with, about eight total people die, and the antagonists are essentially invincible. In other words: It's a pretty terrible round. So what should change? ERT should almost never be siding against the station. This should be reflected in their spawn flavortext, this should be reflected administratively. If a valid beacon is being called, the mercenaries should be helping NT.

Yes. Please. I have been saying it for awhile now. Antagonist stationbound is the weakest antagonist par none. Even the changeling laughs at it. The modules they get aren't even remotely equivalent to what a standard traitor gets.