Boggle08

It's a net nerf to the crew as well, in my view. This makes a matchup between antag vs crew more skewed, which becomes exacerbated when you introduce conditions such as population size or a lack of command/security to act as a buffer. The survival rate of hostages will certainly plummet.

This is going to do weird things to medical, if implemented as is, in the long run. Medical does have enough of a groove now to keep most of their patients stable, even under intense pressure/gaps in specialized staff, but making everything flatly more lethal is just going to raise the skill floor and the expectations from medical over time. Knowing how medical behaves, there'll be a period where more people are declared dead in the sensors console, then the meta will adapt to meet the demands of the additional lethality. On the whole though, I'm very wary of anything that dramatically bumps up the lethality or TTK of combat, because it starts to resemble stun combat that skips over the stun part and just kills you. I'm also not a fan of anything that makes the disparity between regular crew VS. security/antagonists wider. I don't care how true to life it is, no one likes playing as a GTA Bystander NPC. I still think the test is a great idea, though. I disagree with the current implementation as a final product, but something like it could introduce more variation into round outcomes.

Although I've become comfortable being able to do everything, I think differentiation is ultimately the way to go. Implementing the small changes listed by the OP could set the precedent for a new design outline for both roles. I think I'll add onto it by saying that atmospheric technicians should be given more tools to remotely manipulate and analyze the subsystems they preside over, more efficient equipment at regulating the quality of the air, and better tools at combating fires. On the old station, we actually had consoles that could keep tabs on the state of distribution and disposals, and I think we'd also benefit from consoles that can remotely manipulate electronic valves in the place of the manual valves affixed to the phoron supply. Myazaki mapped in atmospheric substations a while ago, I think we can refine the concept further in the long run by remapping these so that there's one on each sublevel, and they feed that particular level they're on. Atmospheric technicians can get their own RCON substation program for these life support reserves, in order to offset cases where high volumes of damage control are depleting distro to critical levels.

I've seen other captains get slapped for putting red up right close to the end. A command whitelist has a lot of OOC expectations that kind of box people into playing a particular way, beyond what could be ICly plausible or acceptable. Knowing how things are, it might be best to include a bolded note on the ship procedures page about it. It'll prevent people from incriminating themselves.

Hey, I'll take that. Fixes half the problem, doesn't have the logistical complications, and it actually got to polling. I feel like any kind of vote or polling about medical's features in the future needs like, a 60% majority or more from the no camp in order to slap it down, because look how productive these threads are.

There isn't any clever or intentional design motivating this behavior. The problem is that people are storming past their crew members in favor of antags regardless of context. It happens too often and too quickly to the point where command can't catch it(often because they're too busy dying to enforce anything). It could be a code red, no-holds-barred situation that concludes in a messy mercenary shootout at 2:30, and the medical team will still play irrational favorites. There's nothing IC or lore friendly about this, it's people who aren't being aware reverting back to their programming. Look at canon events, people don't do this shit because it kills people from sheer negligence. If they play games, their friends get PKed and they might even get hit with an IR. Both OOC incentives and IC policy incentives right there. We could use some of that. Having some kind of policy outline for people to be aware of, and be subject to in egregious cases, is enough to autonomously regulate this behavior. Because no one is calling each other out, or applying the social pressure necessary to keep it to reasonable levels.

Hey, sorry for the delay. Just a few questions: 1. Could you expand further on the gestalt's origins? Who grew them, how, and why? 2. Being in Biesel, the eternal would've confronted them at some point. What do they think about them?

We have these threads every five weeks or so now. Nothing ever comes of them, we just debate in circles and then do it again another time. At this point, there's no way to make a proposition without severely compromising the play-styles of at least several people. We need to start trying shit. Playtesting, test merges. Even if it turns out to be a bad idea it puts us closer to finding the right idea. If half the bay can self supply, it wouldn't be unprecedented to have the fridge stocked roundstart with a small reserve of the tedious medicines that need to be made in bulk(mortaphentyl, saline, dermaline, etc) If medical bay is well staffed and functional, the physician isn't even supposed to be touching the OR. This makes them better suited to their home environment: The GTR.

I should also add, it makes it more straightforward to design features/challenges between the two roles. Rather than having to think about medical as a quasi-political balance of power, it becomes a binary between chemical/GTR problems, and Surgery/OR problems. It will make it easy to conceive of design for the department going forward.

A pharmacist that finishes their 30 minutes of work + surplus can just cryo, wait, and respawn as something that is supposed to be using their chems. A physician without chems is just a shittier surgeon. The wall lockers we added several months ago are a bandaid for a role that can't do much except scan people and pass them into the OR if they can't medicate. Current medical is a big, sloppy, inefficient compromise. It proliferates its existence because everyone is just comfortable with it. I think we feel good about it right now because medical is consistently staffed, but the next time we get hit with a pharmacist populations drought, we're gonna be right back in another thread asking for more chems to be put in the walls. In my view, the best way to merge and streamline these roles properly, is to knock out the pharmacist as a dedicated linecook role, and essentially turn the physician into a pharmacist with GTR responsibilities. With NO SURGERY. The surgeon becomes our dedicated meat technician. No charts. No bullshit. Clear division between responsibilities without redundant intermediaries. With this division, it makes a stronger case for the maintainers to allow alt titles again. No chart bullshit, no finagling over responsibilities, you either pick scalpel, or hypo. Having played a shit ton of solo pharm in the past. It's doable. More than doable. Outside of a handful of important fixes, there are many, many workarounds to problems using chems. And when there is a problem you can't fix yourself, or if it's quicker to do surgery, having one is all the more valuable and appreciated. It doesn't feel arbitrary. Pharmacy work is boring, and there is usually only ever one pharmacist at a time, because late joining as a second usually makes you honorary off-duty. With a more populated, merged role, you get more people to consistently staff both sides of the chem lab, and that leads to divvying up the tedium into something more manageable, and fast. Since physicians will now be able to self supply, they don't even need to make bulk orders like what the pharmacy has to put up with. On lowpop, they can use a mix of wallmeds and a few bottles here and there wherever they see fit.

Oh, just yesterday I saw a fellow meddoid chase after two traitor crew guys trying to heal them when they attempted to pass through medical. Even while security was in pursuit of them, and they were storming out of medical, he was right there between everybody chasing after them with his hypo Months earlier(which has to be my personal favorite for this behavior), The HoS got teleported into port maintenance, endured a torture session with a traitor, and ended up killing the guy at the expense of getting fucked up. I was with security as engineering, and we brought a responder with us. While the HoS was standing in place, shaking violently from the adrenaline, we nudged the EMT to stop staring and help, whereupon they hyperfocused on storing the body, ignoring the twitching bleeding HoS in front of us. I think the reason for this behavior is because more injuries = more gameplay. Because antagonists usually come out more fucked up than the crew does, the triage priority in their brains is biased towards antags. I think policy is the best solution, and it needs to be reinforced with central command announcements to imprint it into medical's brain.

After conferring with others, we've decided that we can accept you, but only on the condition you either rework the tourettes analog to have a more subtle tic, or design a different cognitive obstacle. We believe you did your research on both fronts, but a dionae that haphazardly tosses out profanity is not how we want to see the species represented. You can let us know what you rework it to in this thread.

We're close to a positive verdict. In retrospect, I have concerns about this part here. Could you go further about how this would look like ingame?

I see this as more of a springboard into raising the activity ceiling of engineering. If it is assumed RCON can be consistently turned on, we can consider features or obstacles designed around the subsystem in the future. I don't think concentrating all our effort on setup procedures is a long term plan, because they'll all get done before the first hour's up, and then engineering has not much to do except react. When we design events, we don't often have to think about how to design for medical or security. We just present a problem, and those two and command just do their thing. Mechanics inform the bulk of their involvement. Science has no gameplay to it, and not only is it consistently dead/uninvolved, but we kind of have to force them into our design. There are few problems that make sense from a mechanical perspective to defer to science, and if we were to put them front and center of an event, it would pretty much be the science team pretending to do sciencey things. Completely gutting the videogame of it's videogameness makes it a bad videogame.

This essentially is the primary basis for me making this thread. While I personally believe that safety is an arbitrary concern(outside of niche cases where someone is shocking doors), The use cases and niche versatility of the distributed substation network never get taken advantage of because of the tedium. I am one of those people that stopped setting RCON because of this, and this suggestion, in my mind, is what will get me to start doing it again during peak operation. Setting up the shield network is far more substantial than RCON, but it can be done in seconds compared to the latter. The time and effort spent on a subsystem needs to be proportional to its utility. TL;DR, these changes will make the RCON network more accessible to players interested in the technical aspects of engineering, while trivializing it for those that simply need to check off a box.

Why not merge the pharmacist into this new GTR intermediary role, then? You can achieve a lot of GTR work with just chems, and this new intermediary role will be completely useless without them. It'll also fix the pharmacist's issue of being fucking useless after completing the bay's spread.

I see RCON being done less every time I play, even during peak engineer population. The only utility RCON really has going for it is that ability to have a more flexible and resilient powergrid. Anything to streamline the process of configuring this subsystem, because the juice is not worth the tedious squeeze any more. I’ve had issues with brownouts during peak operations trying to max out the substations like that. I guess it doesn’t matter if you keep the bypasses on and let the substations dump their output directly back into master, but kind of defeats the point in a way. The point of my initial suggestion is to reduce the number of button presses, and therefore time spent on this subsystem. What other case is there to not have preset values in the system? If it’s as pointless as people are insisting, then it’s inconsequential if it gets done.

They’re going to change the RCON values either way, the point is that we agree upon values that won’t cause power issues during peak operation(outside of people trying to charge like, a bunch of fucking guns or hypercells). Having preset values means I can run up and down the list only having to worry about turning everything on. RCON has niche applications that don’t get taken advantage of because of the cancerous setup procedures, and it’s been my experience no one cares about it until a problem that could’ve been fixed by it comes up. Then people loudly bitch.

Does anyone actually like doing this? I don't think we stand to lose much if someone were to give RCON optimal roundstart values. This shit is about as enjoyable as organizing a 60 member crew roster alphabetically based on their ID's DNA hash.

Lanterns are too big to fit in pocket sized slots, and both them and flashlights need batteries in order to run. I wouldn't say this is an improvement on the overall experience, especially given that voidsuit and hardhat helmet lights are right there, being the superior option. The lantern change is especially painful, because that fucks with my miner's loadout economy.

It might be better, having the core be positioned as you have it. There isn't much incentive to interact with the AI normally. If the core is unrecoverable, or if the AI is in active danger of getting struck by other environmental hazards such as ordinance or meteors, it can throw open the doors and get someone to unbolt and move it.

Bless you and Read for those telecommunications changes. I was initially eager to see the devices spaced out, then I noticed it was all parked right next to engineering. Out of curiosity, what's under the AI core? We don't have to worry about people cheesing it by dropping rods from another sublevel, but I could probably take it out by detonating a single-tank halfcap directly underneath the core. Which might be too jank.

Competent and motivated are two extremely powerful things for a project like Aurora. I've seen both from you, even outside of this application, and that makes you very attractive as a candidate. Your ability to work with others is what concerns me: Even at the staff/developmental level, there are a lot of checks on how you can contribute. Both top down, bottom up, and sometimes even horizontally. Plenty of proposed projects have died in community feedback threads. Even in lore, our proposals will frequently get rejected internally; It's important to maintain a level of personal distance with your projects and move on or compromise when your ideas don't work out. How well you work with others is a big weigh on the decision, and your co-workers will not appreciate a long drawn out rhetorical slugging match over every feature you wish to propose/contest. No matter how well you defend your position compared to them. No matter what design paradigm you're using, you're gonna have to work with others, and be told no a lot. How do you plan to navigate that environment?

You were racing a Coeus. Dionae these days moved at a fixed movement speed, though sometimes less depending on the pain they intake. As for the battery thing, you can mitigate drain by staggering out your sprints and fingerbanging the APC's as you run past them. This was a tactic way back when, but it's way more sustainable now that your battery doesn't zero after running half the length of the holodeck going vertically. On the matter of heat, the threshold where you start to get temperature warnings/take damage is somewhere around 850 Kelvin. G2's do not overheat like shells. You can easily have human-tier endurance so long as you pace yourself and throttle your movement when you need to. I know this, because I have done this. As for the broader G2/Dionae comparison, honestly, their problems are different from what I think I see with G2's. The problem for G2's is that the game gives very little feedback/mechanical incentives for you to break off and fearRP with your wounds. Every species in the game can take a high threshold of punishment, it's just that they're going to be standing dead if they push it to the absolute limit. If their body will even allow them to. Dionae actually use a lite version of brainmed, and the fact they can't run away from situations they start, or that they slough off parts of themselves when they take too much damage is well enough to encourage people not to play foolhardy. I don't think adjusting statsticks around is a long term solution, if anything G2's can stay just as durable. They just need more debuffs when they take damage, an equivalent for the need to be stabilized, and more feedback via logs when they're horribly damaged.

This suggestion thread is asking if we should hold command-whitelistees to the same standard as event volunteers. I don't think just instituting another whitelist strip is going to cut it, because command don't know what we plan for events, and they have to make calls in the moment. I think the only way to achieve the level of simulated competency that this thread seems to be asking for is if we were to physically block in the command members to play these events like volunteers, and let them in on what will or might happen. This is a problem. One, because we really don't need anything whitelisted to be more exclusive than it already is. The second reason, and much more important in my view, is that it is going to strip a lot of agency from our player base during events. Going back to the whitelist strip, it won't change anything. An old out of touch command whitelistee is probably about as capable as a guy who just got his recently, and is still getting the hang of it. You're gonna have to tell that guy to sit on the bench if you want ultra competent people in command during event shit; it will be impolite to be new.