Kintsugi

Oh and mechanical skills might help, but that's another extremely involved solution.

Aurora faces a problem - a mechanical problem, to be specific. An umbrella of mechanical problems: Combat is unsatisfying and heavily weighted in favor of the station, and against antagonists. Armor, as I mentioned in my thread about porting Bay's armor mechanics, plays a big part of this - but it is not all. Here are some issues: 1. Characters react too little to damage in the short term. Nobody goes down immediately in a fair fight - this means that fights can become mutually exhausting stalemates, because: 2. Characters without medical backing receive a long-term death sentence. In the mutually exhausting format of Aurora's combat, both sides of a fight will inevitably end up dying without medical attention, if the fight is a fair one. This is not a problem for the station: Security is able to easily obtain all-encompassing medical attention. Antagonists-- Especially lone antagonists-- cannot. Ballistics are especially bad for antagonists, as arterial damage, broken bones, and organ damage is nigh impossible for anybody but a well-coordinated (and not exhausted) merc team, changelings, or vampires to repair. 3. Our combat system, ironically, is counter-intuitive to roleplay: You might think, "Well, if combat is so devastating to both sides, perhaps that means people would be less willing to fight!", but that's wrong. Security knows that they will win almost all fights if they're properly working together, by virtue of having better access to medical attention. Antagonists are either reluctant to engage in open combat, which leads to rounds where most time is spent chasing antagonists, or rounds where the antagonists are wiped out or otherwise decimated in the first engagement. This means that antagonists either don't have the time to stop and RP, or they're all dead or in the brig - also not great for roleplay. tl;dr - Aurora's combat is about attrition. Outright victories are rare in a fair fight, and most battles are decided in the long-term, based off of access to medical attention. This skews the balance of power in favor of the station, to an extent where oftentimes fighting the crew as an antagonist is a death sentence. Fixing this, obviously, is not easy. The quickest bandaid is giving antagonists access to extremely powerful, side-effectless drugs. Things that heal arterial bleeds, rapidly regenerate blood, and repair bone fractures. Making combat more lethal and armor more protective, as I outline in my armor thread, would help - but this is a lot of work, and isn't exactly something that will be done out of pure goodwill on a coder's behalf. Other fixes, like nerfing security's armory - is untenable for different reasons. Security does need to be able to adequately respond to threats, and outright removing the worst offenders - the shotgun and the .45 pistol - would gimp security's ability to respond to certain threats. All in all, what do you guys think?

That was a bug and it was fixed.

It's a forum. Most discussion happens on the discord.

Revenants as a mode has a place on Aurora. That place is not the secret rotation. I view revenants in the same way one views tower defense - it is a gamemode that occurs when the playerbase has decided roleplay is not their immediate priority, and they just want some dumb fun. As it is, revenants is a RP-less experience that is essentially a TDM. Not something people want 95% of the time.

I have re-evaluated what I think in regards to this, and I am going to say I tentatively believe it to be better than the status-quo. Secret extended being removed is... Alright, I guess. To be frank, secret extended sometimes felt like the worst of both worlds - the paranoia of secret and the lack of action of extended. True extended is great - but part of why it is so great is the assurance that your round will not suddenly be derailed. Generally speaking, I do strongly feel that extended is the only gamemode where you can reliably, and consistently, develop your characters and their relationships with other people. Moving on to why I think this is a good change - because it gives the player more choice in regards to gamemodes. Previously, unpopular gamemodes could be quite common - why? The secret rotation arbitrarily chose gamemodes without regard for how the players actually voted. With this system, antagonists that are actually popular will more consistently be picked - and antagonists that generally are not popular will not. With that in mind, and with the assurance that there is no plan to remove extended or marginalize it, I think we're better off using this. In the long term, I do think we should focus on a stronger storytelling system, where the emphasis is placed on event roles and third party ships, and less on pure antagonists - this could be a good forbearer of that concept.

I didn't realize this would be that much work. So, uh-- I guess everyone else, keep that in mind

https://github.com/Baystation12/Baystation12/pull/27254 This essentially changes how armor works. Instead of making it so a percentage of the damage is subtracted, instead it is based off of armor vs. damage number - It's like a soft threshold system. If the damage is lower than the armor protection, a very significant portion of the damage is subtracted - if the damage is higher, barely any damage is subtracted at all. Consider the current system: bulletproof armor? It is not bulletproof. Riot gear? You can still punch someone in riot gear to death. It'll just take much longer. With this new system, combat while unarmored would be more lethal, as damage numbers would be adjusted - however, combat with armor will be less of a slogfest where everybody dies, without medical attention.

I suppose fundamentally I don’t care about whether or not this system is implemented. It isn’t better or worse than what we current have - what I do care about is extended and wizard. For one, doesn’t this mean secret extended is going out the window? Additionally, I hope this doesn’t impact the frequency of extended in any way. anyway, remove wizard while you’re at it.

This is what I wrote when Ati applied for Unathi, and it is still true. +1

That’s all well and good, but the real question is “when are we removing wizard?”

Australians aren't people, anyway

Danse? What the hell are you thinking? SS13 fanfiction? What a fool. Disgraceful. Why waste your time with such a thing? Idk thought it'd be fun. Check part 1 out HERE: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h3d2dix9JeMkpqmkmNHvdR7EeUpYevvEtRr-uqQrYSU/edit?usp=sharing

Seems reasonable. I'm sick of people voting for meme gamemodes and then sticking the rest of us with their mess. Borer voters, I'm looking at you

I would like to additionally point out that this thread was not made in regards to any specific event recently - it is not designed to throw shade at any administrator. In any case, I feel like it might be a better idea for me to retract this suggestion - there are a lot of toes to step on, and I don't really want to get further into this than I already have.

Allow me to just point out that I did not say anything like this, and that I never would tell somebody else in this community to play elsewhere for whatever reason. I made a statement regarding my own personal tastes, nothing more

Let me just point out that people who don't enjoy things don't often stick around to vote "I didn't like it". It's not a good metric for actually gauging how good an event was.

I'll make this brief: We have a problem with non-canon events. Now, there was a blissful period of time when practically none were being conducted: Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Within recent memory there's been a significant uptick in non-canon events, and as always it seems like there is no regard for actually generating interesting roleplay - for the most part, these end up being either what are essentially antagonist rounds but with staff backing for the bad guys, or non-sensical LRP rounds. While I respect the staff who run the events, as they just want to entertain the playerbase - I do not consider the events themselves as being a net benefit to the server. Part of the problem is that non-canon events are entirely detrimental to one of the goals of Aurora - to generate meaningful roleplay. They are inherently non-canon, and they engulf the entire round. Unlike antagonist rounds, where you can pick and choose things to keep canon - the non-canon events touch everything. Oftentimes the sillier events encourage people to break character - just recently during a non-canon event, I saw people breaking character to reference OOC memes. During a normal round, this would not fly - but because Santa Claus was granting wishes such as destroying the entire Solarian Alliance, people lose focus on what Aurora actually is. What I propose is that administrators who wish to run non-canon events need to be more specific as to what the event is going to be - a lot of the time I see votes that are just "add spice???". I also propose that administrators need to approach non-canon events with a serious tone in mind. The objective is not to run wild with your admin abilities - it is to create a situation that could not exist during a normal round, without compromising server atmosphere. I know I'm a total stick in the mud, but I play Aurorastation for the roleplay. If I wanted to goof off and abandon actual characterization, I'd be on /tg/ or goonstation right now - or still on Baystation, for that matter. Closing statement? Most non-canon events are dissonant with the tone of the server, and encourage behavior that is dissonant with the rules, all while encouraging staff to forego rule enforcement in order to support their events.

After a number of grammar fixes made with the help of AijoTonami, I'm willing to pronounce Visegrad essentially complete in its current form. Unless some pressing change needs to be made, I will not be further editing or otherwise touching the document. Big thanks to everybody who reviewed it along the way!

Making this on his behalf. Wiggles would like to replace the gaudy and strangely shaded IRU coat of the present with his recolored, more subdued version.

Respectfully, I can't say I'm a fan. The objective of this thread is to get rid of wizard - not quasi-justify it. The last thing we need is to encourage the proliferation of magic or quasi-magic within the context of our official server lore. Reworking the wizard federation is not necessary, as it is not real lore in the first place.

Bump. As I wish to outright remove it from the rotation, I unfortunately cannot do this myself. It is something that the head staff must do. Let's just drop it and be done with it, please

Pointless, as a ling could just absorb somebody to accomplish the same purpose at a greater benefit. Unless a morph is capturing live people themselves, which... I kinda doubt.

As of right now, the gore nest that morphs can create is useless. But what if it wasn't? What if gore nests could assimilate live people who get put into them, turning them into changelings or killing them? It'd provide an incentive for lings to create morphs (therefore keeping people in the round), reproduction for the lings (something a lot of people want), and a reason to capture people instead of killing and giving them the ol' proboscis treatment (therefore keeping people in the round). It's a net benefit in my mind, and adds a degree of body horror that changeling really stands to benefit from - additionally, I think the risk of snowballing is far less than currently exists for vampire - which is a ludicrously easy gamemode to snowball. You'd have to maintain highly visible targets (the morph and the gore nests) and also guard the live crew that you're assimilating - they're obviously going to be resisting the process. I tried to look into doing this myself, but I don't really think there exists a similar enough function in the code that I could just steal it and repurpose it.

One thing I think that could be worthwhile to pursue is to supplement antags with canon third party actors - using overmap (which was ported, though is not perhaps fully functional). I've discussed this a lot in discord, but I really think we'd get a lot of mileage out of implementing the concept. Here's how it'd work: The third party groups would spawn in via ghost-spawner, and would exist at round start (or maybe not) - they'd have their own, small, but overmap-capable shuttle that they can use to go anywhere. They'd be from a variety of factions - but for the most part, they would be able to decide how to act towards the station on an individual basis. They would not be antagonists in the traditional concept of the role, but they could antagonize. It is my understanding that this system is already planned to be thoroughly implemented on the NBT, but I feel like we could set the foundation now and begin prototyping with it early. This is one of the bullets in my list of "how to transition Aurora away from traditional antagonists", and probably the easiest to implement? In a way, it'd be similar to the random events of the KOTW arc - but more freeform. Best part about it is that other servers already use this system (Though in a far more limited and restrained fashion), so we know that it'd work, technically speaking. We just need to put the Aurora spin on it.