LordFowl

Why remove the strategy in voting? I find it to be the most enjoyable part of ss13.

Personally, blood drives are the most superior option above cargo and this machine. If we could make blood drives work more often, I'd prefer it over cargo packs, and I'd prefer cargo packs over this blood machine.

Where are you getting two meters from? I'm pretty sure from the specifics of air-code the game considers each tile to be one square meter.

I personally agree with the inter-departmental requirement. I don't know whether you find such degrading opinions about other departments to be attractive because it simulates some sort of bourgeois attitude towards the lower classes (I mean seriously, you make Cargonia and Botany sound like demonized Mexican immigrants), however I maintain the theory that if we perhaps made these departments more necessary and put more attention towards their actual mechanics we might decrease their alleged 'chucklefuckery' to the levels of perhaps science or lesbay. All in all, forced interdepartmental interaction seems like the only way to spur this process and remove the ridiculous prejudice that the elite upper class of roleplayers is developing towards what they perceive to be the ungifted untouchables who are in actuality their own equals.

Mainly because this thread addresses the issue (lack of blood) and adding blood pack orders to cargo addresses the same issue (lack of blood), and I don't really think creating an excess of forum threads concerning the same issue (lack of blood) is really necessary. If we were to implement such a machine, I would inveigh against capability of using it to produce the blood necessary for a certain patient while that patient is in medical care. The machine should be designed for stocking, and a medbay's failure to stock should have repercussion on the poor bullet riddled security officer who's currently bleeding out because they expected the machine (which may or may not be magical) to quickly produce the necessary amount of blood. Whether this is result is induced by a complex creation process, a demanding resource input, or a buffering time (or some combination of the three), the machine should solve the issue of there being lack of means to achieve blood stock currently, but should not act as just a simple blood dispensary.

People who want to see Cargo become a more useful department, thus removing the element of 'chucklefuck' that you declare (Induced largely because everyone who plays it is forced to die of boredom because we prefer to have magical machines that handle all of our supply and demand when we have a whole department dedicated to supply for some reason?)

Again, you're ordering blood /as/ your patient is dying? Either way it takes time for the blood to be produced - either the time of a machine magically producing it, or the time for the cargo shuttle because you forgot to stock your medical bay for the purpose of argument. The cargo shuttle however represents a realistic method that complies with the suggestion of making cargo more necessary while simultaneously not embiggening the sprawling complex that is medical by adding a new room for this wonder machine.

You immediately counter your quip about cargo in literally your next point. Why would you be ordering the blood bags as demand requires them, and not stocking them for eventual disaster? Personally, I favour allowing cargo to order blood bags for a few reasons, the first being that it means we don't have to make another machine that is essentially magic (Although I will admit that its a lot less magic than the chem dispenser), and the second being that it coincides nicely with the suggestions that indicate that cargo is under-used anyways.

Twitter and Aurora are ultimately very different, but their differences does not prevent a blacklist from being possible for Aurora. It all comes down to the basic question of whether we would prefer a situation where everyone can be individually entertained by their experience on Aurora based on the mechanics we implement, or if we would prefer a situation where the selection of mechanics develops a community and a community would then develop happiness. Twitter is not a community in the same sense that Aurora could be. Twitter is a hub, a network. If we implement an OoC Blacklist we take steps to attempting to ensure individual happiness. If we forbid a blacklist we would do so in an attempt to develop community. Which is then more important?

I personally think admins should be more liberal with handing out OoC mutes (Its a thing that can be done) to individual trouble-makers.

The wiki itself is already tied to a timezone, and displays the canon date, so I'd use whatever it does.

I don't think the Head of Security should have direct access whatsoever to what research can and cannot print. I definitely do not think the Warden should either. Let the exact and mechanical power of each department lay within each department and under the authority of the Captain and if security wishes to mandate what can and cannot be done through each department they will have to go through the department head, the captain, or get the spare ID. I think a blacklist is ultimately better than a whitelist because it is easier to implement and removes a few issues tied with the individual - metabuddies, elitism, etc.

Well, I'm speaking out of what little understanding of mapping I have when I say this, but from what I understand from my forays into the art. . . The holodeck and shuttles work of the same mechanic - region based teleportation. The holodeck switches the /turf and /obj filepaths in one region with another region, and the shuttles do much the same. The issue is that the nuke ship is ALREADY a shuttle. This idea would work great on a static region (See the holodeck), but I'm not sure how it would work for a shuttle region. The most obvious work-around is creating a nuke shuttle with every possible permutation of rooms, and since we'd probably redesign the nuke shuttle to be a lot bigger so there would be more customization options this presents a significant chunk of map being dedicate to nuke op permutations.

And if said command staff doesn't exist? What then? Pinning responsibility on phantom positions (as in, roles not currently filled in) is not going to solve the problem of players/characters CONSTANTLY producing lethal weaponry for keks and giggles. No amount of IC rules or such is gonna stop the average player from mass producing guns anyway, emergency or not. Chances are, people aren't going to read them anyway, so what then? Do we just drop into a fetal position and try very hard not to cry about it? The in-game mechanics need to be adjusted to prevent this sort of behavior. That is the only way one can ostensibly stop the Science Gun-Run operation, and that's by limiting who gets access to those guns in the first place. Having weapons research outright banned from the beginning of the round and having to have someone conscientiously disable the blacklist is in my opinion to extreme; the theory is that the rounds where there are available Heads of Staff or particularly autocratic AIs who disable weapons research specifically would leave the impression of caution by themself. Either way, I ultimately think a 'blacklist monitor' is better than the lockboxes for a variety of reasons: Firstly, it removes the 'ridiculous' lockboxes, which I think are more ridiculous because they need the individual attention of a Head of Staff for each individual lockbox. Secondly, it provides more control for the Head of Staff over what science can print - theoretically they could blacklist whatever they wanted for whatever reason, not just weapons.

Alternatively, a far more economic and sensible solution can be employed. I don't see what sort of roleplay this mechanic infringes on (Unless you call validhunting with your laser cannon roleplay, which is of course your prerogative.)

A rose by any other name smells just as sweet. I fail to see how a simple rename will fix all the inherent issues with the gamemode.

I think that shuffles around more of the station than is necessary. Changes to the civilian cube are not really pertinent to this discussion, nor changes to the security department.

Something has changed in the meanwhile; there has been a noticeable increase of scientists with hidden proto-pistols or even worse for seemingly no reason other than to validhunt. While lockboxes aren't perhaps the best way to go about it (because apparently that idea is 'silly') there definitely should be a way to mechanically control weapons research. A potential idea is allowing the RD and Captain to blacklist certain item or item categories (Preferably by a remote terminal), which means there will be no unauthorized production without the RD's approval. What this means is that without an RD/Captain there is still unlimited production (Which I still disagree with, but I've not got a good solution for that), but with an RD/Captain there can be limits imposed, and a system of control can be established. Whether the Head of Security should have any say over this beyond strongly advising the RD or Captain to take action is debatable. An ostensible solution is for cases where RD or Captain are not available, but a security breach is to be avoided, the Head of Security could order the AI to impose these limits.

Long term employees may see greater benefits. My one suggestion is that, while Extended rounds surely could have full effect on permanent departmental record, I think its a bit unfair that non-canon antagonist rounds should affect the budget of the next round. Perhaps there should be a reduction for certain antagonist rounds and complete annulment for other antagonist rounds, or completely ignore antagonist rounds when determining the department budget. So for example, Extended Round 1 would affect the budget for Nuke Op Round 2, but Nuke Op Round 2 would not affect the budget for Changeling Round 3. This means that security and medical (and I suppose engineering and any department) are not crippled because they had to 'deal' (because they didn't actually deal with it canonically) with some mass destruction antagonist.

Make it homicidal if you call it Spot.

In what world is a killer crate a scientifically reasonable - scratch that - REASONABLE at ALL? It makes absolutely no sense, and even if it did why would NanoTrasen put an 'animal' that specifically hungers solely for death and destruction? Do you know how many suits that would bring? This idea is absolutely retarded. It has my full support. Bring back Cratey.

Also, for clarification purposes: I was the AI player this round, and I observed pretty much all of your actions on the mining outpost, and corresponded them to the command staff. So it would not not have been metagame to assume that you were not just a normal human, and were in fact directly responsible for replacing crew with alien lifeforms.

In my mind, the term AI has always been a slight misnomer. AIs are intelligent to the point where they can do things almost completely autonomously. I've never subscribed to the idea of AIs developing the ability to rationalize, or god forbid develop any sort of personality or imposed trend of action. I've always been of the opinion that if you programmed an AI to think everyone is a duck, then everyone is a duck. I've always been of the opinion that, while yes laws are the most external and replaceable bit of programming they are still vital to an AI's thought pattern. An AI for me does not follow their laws but begrudge it or harbor ill thoughts about the crew or what it was ordered to do. AIs are not humans, and AIs are not as good at thinking as humans are even though they technically think bigger than humans. Unfortunately, since AIs are controlled by players who are human and rationalize without even thinking about it - because that's what humans do - I've always been lenient concerning the AI role, although I myself try my very best to be emotionless and literal. And then we come to the idea that on this server you must always have your roleplay be influenced by the OoC notion of making it fun for everyone, which further complicates the issue. As to the contentious issues listed here:

This is said thread, I believe: http://aurorastation.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3568

Since I've become ever so slightly more familiar with Dream Maker, I've polished the room up to the point where its also actually functional too.