TrainTN

On a note semi-related to the one above, since Kelotane is accessible in the sleepers, and Bicaridine is now the brute equivalent of Kelotane, would it be too much to put Bicaridine in sleepers as well? Then the sleepers would have all the basic healing chems, allowing doctors to treat patients a little more easily without a pharmacist available, while still not being the most efficient possible way. Sleepers are rather underutilized most of the time anyway, I've observed.

On a similar note to the above, I'd like it if the lightswitch for the Security Offices was moved somewhere else. It's right next to an APC which makes it harder to see and click. Also, in the surface level Security Checkpoint, I'd switch the places of the two consoles and the tables they're next to, so officers could watch the cameras on the consoles without turning their back to the checkpoint windows. Just looks a little weird having to face the opposite direction from the desks.

I think being kidnapped and placed on the conversion rune should be a "join or die" scenario, so the rune should be very capable of fulfilling the "die" option. Either join the Nar'Sie Fun Club or be smote to death.

I remember some server trying to add other kinds of cult to play as. Blood cult, fire cult, star cult, etc. etc. But that would be a lot of work that I doubt anyone would want to do. Personally I've always wished Cult mode should be more about discretion and subterfuge; the organization existing in the shadows, its beliefs spreading through the crew like a virus, silently vanishing those who resist, corrupting the station into a cursed and unnatural place (more than usual that is), all working together towards some dark goal bestowed upon them by a horrific abomination from beyond the stars. Not "let's put on robes and bumrush Security with swords." It's hard to RP though because you can't preach your crazy blood cult. You can't convince the average crewmember to join up and doodle shapes on the floor in blood with you. You have to force them to be as crazy as you. Some people take issue with that. I personally don't, because hey, it's not your character's fault they're crazy now, they were made crazy! You have the perfect excuse to act out-of-character and don't need to justify it! But some people resent that, and so they resent Cult (and other conversion modes too, usually).

Strongly agreed. As someone who does not play combat roles often, the test-merge has done nothing for my game experience other than make it harder for me to see and interact with other players. I don't understand the supposed appeal in that.

That's a good amount, though there could be a lot more minor events and moderate events. Burned out wires, buggy lighting, glitchy thermostats, radio interference as a lesser version of the radio blackout, the supply shuttle gets temporarily disabled for maintenance, consoles suddenly demand updates be installed or become corrupted. More purely-neutral and positive events would be good too. Maybe the Odin sends announcements about whatever is going on over there, maybe an aurora forms near the Aurora and space starts changing colors for a while, maybe some random plants/fungi start growing on the asteroid's exterior and the xenobotanists can go poke at them, maybe mining gets an announcement that certain minerals are worth more points, maybe RnD gets a free random tech level. Maybe a random dog or cat or whatever spawns somewhere on the station.

I second this, I have played Security and Medical rounds where nothing that took longer than 5 minutes to handle occurred, and I could do nothing but sit in chairs either in awkward silence or having shallow conversation. Two hours (or more) of that gets mind-numbing, I don't consider that engaging roleplay, I'd rather be doing anything else to keep my mind on the round. In Security and Medical, professionalism is demanded due to the seriousness of their work, so there's not much tolerance for goofing off when they're expected to be on-call at all times. I would support reworks though because yeah, some events are just bad. I hate rampant brand intelligence. The first time the soda machine shoots a can of cola at your head, it's funny, but the joke wears thin very quickly. Most people just ignore getting beaned with a bag of chips. It'd be better if it had a variety of effects: dispensing incorrect orders, drastically inflated prices, destroying some or all of their stock (snack/drink machines only) or if they outright disabled themselves and needed repairs (and hopefully broken vending machines means more people hanging out with the chef and bartender, too). You could even throw in the effect of some machines having their secret hacked goods unlocked so there could be a minor upside. An increased variety of events would help too. Even if it was just adding in a lot of minor things so that the more dangerous/time-consuming ones don't happen as often and are more evenly distributed across multiple rounds so people don't experience as much burn-out.

Although that is a commonly depiction of them in the modern day, private investigators do all sorts of different work, and in many countries they do require licenses that do require qualifications, depending on region, and they are commonly ex-law enforcement or ex-security professionals. And in the past, they had much wider uses, such as the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and its many (in)famous exploits as what was essentially an agency of cops for hire with minimal oversight. They got powerful enough that the US government had to outlaw itself hiring private investigators due to rampant abuse. Nothing really stops PIs from investigating real crimes, other than laws and law enforcement impeding them. And this is, again, centuries in the future where corporations running paramilitary organizations is totally normal. I see no reason that private detectives can't broaden their services, especially in the vast and remote expanses of the space frontier. It could very well lead to revival of organizations like the Pinkertons, except in the employ of megacorporations as well as governments. I wouldn't be surprised if the Eridani Federation had an FBI equivalent that is essentially a powerful and well-funded private detective agency for hire. But to put it plainly, they're investigators that work in the private sector. They're private investigators. Simple as.

Would being contracted to a corporation like Nanotrasen to investigate crimes on their properties not count as "private" investigation? I figured it could apply in the same way as "private military contractors," which is arguably applicable to Nanotrasen's ISD. It may be a small stretch of the definition, but I think 400 years in the future can permit it, so long as it's understandable.

Yes, Adventurer Mode is a main feature of the game. It is treated as equally important as Fort Mode, if not more important nowadays. And while SS13 has darkness as a mechanic, it is not an omnipresent and overbearing factor of the game, because all the areas that need good lighting have good lighting the majority of the time. If the station had no lights and players were forced to walk around with flashlights everywhere, that wouldn't be fun at all, except maybe on Halloween. SS13 is not a horror game and should not emulate the deliberate gameplay restrictions of the genre, this game is clumsy enough already, it doesn't need to be made worse. Sure, vision codes may enhance some moments when it comes to combat or stealth, but that only applies to a small fraction of the server in any given round. I do not agree that a mechanic that improves 10% of the gameplay for 10% of the server's players is not worth forcing a burdensome mechanic upon the remaining 90% of the server for the remaining 90% of the time. And I think that's an optimistic estimate, at that. This station is covered in doors that make loud noises on being opened, and you have to go through dozens of them to get anywhere. Attacking anything makes a loud noise. Doing most things makes noise. Most players cluster together in their departments, only being alone if their department is low-pop or their work requires it. The rest of the time they're either wandering around in public halls or sitting together and chatting. If you're not outright invisible like a ninja or cleverly disguised or a great actor or have x-ray vision or you're just plain lucky, sneaking around is next to impossible and it's for a lot of reasons outside of 360-degree player vision. The opportunities for stealthy antags to seriously take advantage of vision cones seems very limited to me, outside of running up behind someone and wordlessly stabbing them in the head, and you don't really need a blind-spot to do that. "The paranoia of not always knowing what is behind you" isn't going to last forever. Sooner or later it's going to turn into "the frustration of not always knowing what's behind you." Good for those servers. I've never heard of them, I've never played on them, and if they have vision cones then I would prefer to never play on them, no matter how they implement it. This mechanic is not suitable for me.

I support this change. I think allowing two people on equal standing to sort their work out among themselves according to their own preferences and expectations is a better idea than mechanically enforcing it through two similar-but-segregated roles. Especially when one of them is a forensic scientist and the other is typically a guy in a trenchcoat and fedora straight out of the 1930s. I have been thinking about what you should call them. I suggest calling them "Private Investigators" since that's literally what they would be, and you could easily shorten the title to just "PI." And you could keep "Crime Scene Investigator" as an alt title, so you can paint a character as more forensics-oriented if you wanted to. Then you can have a PI and a CSI and maintain the same dynamics as before but without role restrictions getting in the way.

I like the changes proposed here. More nuance to medicines, more risks, more judgment calls to make, it sounds like it'd make Medical more engaging and exciting to play. I always thought it was a little silly that the same drug could be used for everything from papercuts to dismemberment, and there was never reason to use Kelotane and Dexalin when Dermaline and Dexalin Plus exist. Side-effects are also interesting, potent medicines having stronger side-effects as drawbacks sounds fair, and I also appreciate giving new uses to pre-existing medicines in treating those side-effects. Overall I think this is a great rework that adds more mechanics to test Medical's problem-solving skills without making medicine arbitrarily harder to use. I also approve of making it easier to poison people to death with dangerous chemicals, I'd love to see antags utilize poison as a weapon more. Changing soy sauce's recipe to something sane is also appreciated. My only concern is that if/when these changes are implemented, the relevant guides on the wiki are updated in a timely fashion.

I do not think vision cones are a good fit for a 2D isometric multiplayer video game. I've played other games with this viewpoint that really loved their realism, like Cataclysm and Dwarf Fortress, and they don't use vision cones because what do you really gain from it? What's the point of giving the player a top-down view then slicing away a huge chunk of it that flips around everywhere just by walking around? Limiting the player's vision to this degree just feels more aggravating than engaging. Darkwood is a top-down game that does it but that's a horror game, and horror games are all about taking comforts away from the player to keep them on edge. SS13 isn't a horror game. Playing with a filter covering 1/4 of my screen that disappears everyone behind me doesn't feel like it adds to my experience. It doesn't create any immersion for me, and it doesn't make the game feel more realistic because the idea of not being able to tell someone is standing behind me breathing on my neck is silly. As others in the thread have said, we a lot of senses that do a lot of subtle work to tell us about our surroundings all the time, I don't actually see much realism in being completely blind to what's behind me just because one of my senses isn't focused on it. Having to constantly click my character around just to look at things and follow sequences of actions is not enjoyable, especially in a square grid-based game that only allows four angles to look in, as opposed to other games (like Darkwood) that give you precise full-360 turning. This feels like pursuing realism (and not very realistic "realism") at the expense of understanding and interacting with the complex, janky, and fast-paced environment of SS13 as well as the dozens of players within it; and I don't think it's worth it at all. It makes me not want to play the game because it makes me feel uncomfortable at best, and disoriented and frustrated at worst. I dislike the concept itself, I see it as nothing but unnecessary, and I think the drawbacks significantly outweigh the benefits.