Veneke

Well, hang on a minute. If Sue isn't working on something similar then that has a distinct affect on the landscape. But Soundscopes has said earlier that Not that the issue of balance goes away whether she is or isn't mind you, but we should all at least be clear as to what's what.

I'm not sure I'm following what you think the aliens are in your example. To my mind CM aliens are the roboticist, and that sort of behaviour is precisely the concern to have regarding aliens. Your proposed solution (drop RP to outrobust the people taking advantage of the mechanics) is as bad as admin hand-holding. Why run this risk at all when there's a project in the works, based on the CM aliens code, to alter the CM aliens to a point where they'll make sense in a HRP context?

It's an unreasonable expectation to hold that the playerbase will react to this new balance of power with more RP, when by ditching RP and going more for robustness they can swing things back in their favour. It's also unreasonable to suggest that alien players with the new code won't be anxious to take advantage of their newfound powers. So unless you want admins hand-holding everybody during the event porting them over directly looks pretty clearly to be a non-starter. Arguably you could include them as-is, but only if you also buffed the station and/or ERT to more properly equipped to handle them to keep the balance... but then you're still left with the 'oooh, new shiny buttons I want to press!' issue. That'll effectively turn Aurora into CM: Lite edition for a round every time aliens pop up, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but isn't something to be stepped into lightly either. I don't think anyone is suggesting that we shouldn't have better aliens. But lifting aliens specifically designed for a server dominated by military RP and action strikes me as a strange choice for a server with a focus on HRP. They should be tweaked before implementation to better provide for RP, which is what Sue seems to be doing already. It doesn't matter if the playerbase is wrong or not, if a change is likely to lead to a worse RP then it's not a good change for a HRP server.

So is that an event problem or a playerbase problem? Does it really matter how you categorize the problem? It seems to me to be fairly straight-forward: if the aliens are so powerful that players act in a more power-gamey fashion than they might otherwise act during a normal round then these stronger better aliens will lead to worse RP. Whether the playerbase don't like being so outclassed or the event is too powerful doesn't really matter all that much for the purposes of including Colonial Marines' aliens. Adjustments would have to be made one side or the other to rectify that problem, and in that case you may as well look at the problem and how to fix it before you actually implement the code. Presumably that's the logic that lead to Sue's project - use aliens from Colonial Marines as a base, and adjust for Aurora's needs. It would be nice to get a rough idea of what Sue is planning on doing though.

Perma's grilles aren't electrified already? On a general note, it's very difficult to balance the requirements of perma and make it look reasonable. Personally, I agree with you - perma is a dumping ground for people who need to be removed from the round ICly - but it doesn't make sense to design it like that. So it has to look reasonable, while also being possible to escape, but neither to the extent that people want to go there or Security doesn't want to use it. It's a tough thing to balance. The good news is that we can take this into consideration while designing the new map. Indeed, I've made a note in our design documents based on this. So, if there are windows in perma (there almost certainly will be) they'll be rather less vulnerable than the current ones. However, it's still going to be possible to breach the area. Short of a panic button that collapses blast doors all around perma that's always going to be an issue.