NerdyVampire

Vershal seems concerned with his department and his employees. I have yet to see how he handles a situation that requires his command authority over other departments, but hopefully his skills will transfer. He seems communicative on the command channel as well, and interested in non-medical matters. Seems a reasonable command member

The reasoning are those long extended rounds where we got the pop, but not the antags, and where the belief is that a restart will "kill" the pop, which is something that does happen. My argument is the case that people already invested in a long round, would rather spice the round and wait, than risk a full restart where people might fall off.

I cannot find any proper policy on the use/creation of weaponized exosuits (it used to be under the umbrella policy of scientific experimentation I think), and given the nature of weaponized exosuits, I believe it is due time we cement when/where we should see them in-round. The following is my first draft for a policy, which I feel is both reasonable and within what we ought to expect for heavy armaments like these. Weaponized Exosuits Exosuits may only be outfitted with ranged weaponry (firearms, harmful grenades, etc.) after obtaining written authorization from a departmental head, outlining the limits of its use. This includes exosuits that are intended for expeditions and away missions. Weaponized exosuits may not be piloted for combat aboard the SCCV Horizon during less than code red situations, unless with captain-level authorisation. Piloting a weaponized exosuit without proper authorisation aboard the SCCV Horizon constitutes as gross negligence. Reasoning: If a combat mech is required to fight antagonists, then the situation ought to warrant a red alert, and the mech should be custom ordered for the situation. Combat mechs should not be freely constructed without any involvement of department heads, as they should not be warranted without established expectations of heavy combat, such as orders from central command warning of piracy or already established presence of a dangerous individuals aboard. Feel free to argue for or against, and come with alternatives if you feel it can be worded differently.

I think it was just an oddity that it was found four shifts in a row. It happens with randomization sometimes, and I didn't find it that frequently before or after, speaking as the xenoarch responsible for several of those rounds. I also can't agree it's a bad thing, even when it was brought to the Horizon. Observing it seemed like several departments engaged with the issue, and even the ones that died to it didn't come off as bitter to me. Machinists had fun taking out Mecha, security had fun making tactical plans and med and engineering had something to do on a slow round. What I do agree with is that it needs some tuning. Infinity spawning is too hard to deal with, I'd recommend giving it a hard limit to how many it can spawn, or incorporate the entire mechanic into a proper anomaly, instead of an artifact as present.

Bumping once, in case people thought this was a goof suggestion, it is not.

Great that you are doing this I think it could be cool if wall fungi samples could be put into glass spheres or jars, and grow in size over a set amount of time. Just to add a little mechanic, if the glass jar is dropped or shattered, the fungi could potentially release its chemicals in a small cloud. And if dealt with properly, maybe it is possibly to harvest a few samples from a grown jar for chemical processing?

A therapy pod for patient recovery. It is more horizontal than the cryo pods, doesn't remove your senses but dampens them. Has some psychotherapeutic purpose?

A commercial plays on your television... "Do you want to change the round into something more exciting, but don't actually want to risk killing the pop? Well here is the solution for you - a third vote option: Spice the Round!" "What will it do?" you ask, suspicious of course "Haha well it's quite simple really! If a vote to spice the round passes, the round doesn't end! Instead, a random selection of approved antag roles are automatically opened for ghostroles, or assigned to crewmembers who have those prefs active. Maybe the xenoarcheologist you have been trusting these last two hours, is suddenly getting tired of absolutely no one admiring his work. Maybe the machinist has been building a mech for sec, but really wanted to go on a rampage themselves. More likely though, the "Spice" (trademark) will come from outside the Horizon, where your friendly ghosts can inhabit the bodies of pirates, jockeys, cultists or other mischievous folk, only to make your life more miserable exciting!" So the short of it is, we add a new endvote option, as an alternative to "Continue the round" and "End the round". This is mostly intended for those rounds where we got a high pop, but we want to add some excitement, without risking the pop. This is still a democratic process, so if people still want to continue 'as-is' with extended or such, they can just vote to continue the round. But if it passes, then a small number of antag roles get activated, and the lobby-round-type switches to 'Spiced'. This might include a minimum round-extension time of 1 hour, just to give the new antags some time to work their magic. Let me know what you think? Is it viable? Would it be fun? Would there be drawbacks I didn't anticipate? If everyone votes for what they want in this, will anyone get mad at this?

I like the the new changes a lot! Its about time the AI got a less central location in favor of something better, and it is certainly better as it is now. I think science equipment storage should come with some random spawned science equipment if possible. Maybe only 3 items, which can be a minor artifact, a blue space beaker, a prototype gun, a single strange node packet, artificial blue space crystal or such things. Just to make it worth breaking into for antags or to occasionally delight the scientist who can actually use it.

All the best Read! We will all look forward to you suddenly popping up in ooc after summer :))

I can see the issues that Carver lays out. The off-ship cultists shouldn't "steal the show" from real antagonists, neither should it bring supernatural activity into an extended round (without admin approval). That being said, seeing the cultists these recent rounds, the roleplay that is made around and by them, escalations and danger, it has really spiced up the rounds in a good way for me. I really like having off-ship roles that can actually do something dangerous. I think the right choice here is a compromise. In (voted) extended rounds, they do not get any cult powers as the recent PR is doing. I don't mind them getting those powers in all other rounds, even secret extended, but bring them into the AOOC so they can communicate with the other antagonists - I don't know if they are automatically right now. I entirely agree with Given the choice, I'd choose to preserve the conflict before the realism, at least when it comes to rounds where extended wasn't explicitly voted.

Awesome Fluffy, looking very much forward to trying it out

And you're my favorite RD. Would love to throw papers in Sez' head with potential portal locations and bother him to be Victor's remote handler on the Horizon as I explore with a lab assistant meat shield... I mean eh.. yeah you know

Engineering is better than operations for machinists. Science is better than engineering for machinists. I prefer they return to science where they came from. Everything about them scream innovation, high-tech devices, synthetic programming and research. Engineering does not have responsibilities in these area. Make them part of research, allow them to set up tech servers and let's see the reunion we need. But if not research, then engineering yes. Just for newness' sake.

1. Just can't agree with you on these. The equipment room has a clear purpose and it makes sense to monitor it, even if mechanically the items aren't worth much. Do we really need to remove it, if we remove the break room camera? Patient recovery seems like a reasonable place to monitor from an IC standpoint, even if we OOC'ly know it isn't used much. Ideally a future medical remap will make better use of the space. An alternative is to remove the window in the medical office on deck 2, so it can actually be used for scummy activity. (Personally I would put psychiatry on deck 3 and some recovery rooms on deck 2 instead) 2. It's a meeting room just like security, medical and research have meeting rooms. It just doubles as a break room and I can't agree that it isn't used enough to warrant a camera. But we can remove the Indra reactor office, that plus your other suggestions should further give enough options to antag engineering players. 3. Its purpose is to store experimental weaponry, circuitry and other non-anomaly material. It makes sense for there to be a camera, even if it isn't used IC'ly. 4. I can agree with the backroom, but janitor is the one I see the least reason for giving help as said. They have access to many places and multiple departments after all. In general I agree with many of your suggestions, but I don't want to advocate more removal than is necessary for each department to have just enough antag-wiggleroom to make sense.

Like everyone else here, there are some I agree with and some I don't. Speaking as an AI main I actually don't mind exchanging some oversight, if it helps antagonists a bit - and maybe leads to more antagonist players. I'll quickly go over my list of objections. Medical: Equipment and recovery are areas that make sense to monitor, due to the value of the equipment and the patients inside. Engineering: The break room is very large and I don't see why it shouldn't be monitored. Engineers can easily access hiding places across the ship, they do not need their break room unmonitored. In general I do prefer meeting rooms, like this, to also be monitored so the AI can holocall into it to join meetings or conduct briefings - rare though that is. Drone Fabrication -> There is a niche mechanic that allows the AI (and others) to use the drone console to request a drone to an area. I actually use it when I see active drones, I would like to continue being able to do that. But we could move the console to the AI core instead. Science: Research storage -> is meant to house valuable items, so I believe it is well justified in having a camera installed. Service: Custodial closet deck 1 -> janitors have easy access to many hiding places including other departments. As it is an "active" workplace, I do feel it is warranted as well. I might suggest removing the window into the bar backroom instead. Why do crew need to look into that anyway? All the other suggestions you put forward, I don't have any big issue with. In the same remapping, I would appreciate a few cameras added to command though, in the conference room (as AI is often involved in the conferences here) and XO's office (it's just an annoying black spot).

That is true, but as it is currently possible to open portals back to the Horizon from other sites (since it only checks the Z levels), it turns out that the parameters are easy to deal with. If you can aim at a relative set of coordinates from your telepad, you hit the same coordinates on the other Z-level. This really shouldn't be complicated further though, as it is advanced enough for most with all the rest. Totally agree. It isn't my intention that this should turn the telescience lab into a cargo hub, it's meant to be a different avenue of scientific exploration imo, which aims to offer the option to command staff for special situations and otherwise do it's own experimental stuff.

Good point and yes that is ideal. What would be awesome though would be to allow more artificial bluespace crystals to be inserted to increase the distance it would work at on the overmap. Right now the console holds 4 crystals by default, and only 1 more can be slotted in to provide map-wide range for the portal. The interface however suggests that more crystals could fit. Maybe after the fifth crystal, each additional crystal extends the range by one overmap grid, allowing for a pretty cool build-up project. The check function would probably be something like this If Z-level less than 4, accept :: ie horizon Else if overmap_distance_to_site(Z-level) < (slotted_crystals - 2), accept :: so by default any adjacent site Else reject Sorry for the ugly pseudocode, I'm on my phone and can't bother to write actual code.

That's a good point. We need a minimum amount of active on-board crew for this to make sense.

Thanks Fluffy. Are you willing to take charge on it, as developer that is? I think it only requires a few changes where it checks for Z-levels, so it instead checks that a certain Z level isn't 'secret', like the Odin. And if the integrated cameras don't work off-ship for research, to make them work so we can make drones (instead of teleporting poor lab assistants into rocks without a way to retrieve them) - I can't recall if they do work off-ship or not atm and can't check yet.

I don't feel like an AI should have access to an accent if the people using that accent wouldn't be fabricating or using AIs in their culture.

Interesting, but for this particular solution I do not consider exclusive telescience sites to be a must, as I imagine it requires quite a bit of dedication to create from developers. For this I just want some of the Z level restrictions laxed, that would be enough to implement this and maybe the integrated circuit cameras looked at

I used to play Victor Jenkins, who's a telescientist some may know, but I stopped playing him around the time that it became ooc'ly wrong for him to use the Intrepid on his own. It became so I only really had fun with working telescience if I was an antagonist. So here is my suggestion: unlock Z-levels that can be accessed by general crew, so it becomes part of the telescience loop to probe these levels to find a safe point for opening a portal, recording that specific configuration, and exploring through the portal if possible. To do this, we should also ensure that integrated circuit cameras work across Z levels, as they don't (?) do now. This way, telescientist get a direct and very powerful usecase, that can yield a buttload of interesting roleplay scenarios, departmental cooperation and save a field I love. I'd like us to do this as an experiment and see if there are any issues with this mechanically, and I'd love to bank a good number of rounds to test it out and establish some parameters for how it can work best IC'ly.

I think Reads ideas are all pretty good. I do want science to have more of a purpose, at this time no one really 'needs' science for anything. When is the last time you had a problem or opportunity, where science staff was the solution? Fauna, anomalies and flora data are things that could be found on away sites, it just needs to be made into something that can be collected, and something that yields some sort of reward, like a mining point vendor.

I'm not proposing new medicine actually, I just know there is a lot that is meant to counteract mental issues, so maybe it could work here? But if it doesn't, then yeah maybe something that dampens psionic influence.