jackfractal

The tricky thing with science is that any kind of 'improvement' doesn't work very well with the rest of SS13's design. In SS13, items typically act as keys. You can either do this thing, or you can't, and if you can do it at all, you can usually do it in one click. There's no way to make, say, a better crowbar unless you make the default crowbar worse. The way that you differentiate between levels of items is by either granting greater permission to act, or by enhancing an ability that already exists. Enhancement isn't possible without gradations of ability, and a greater ability to act is only worthwhile if you're actually allowed to use it, which on high-rp servers you usually aren't. Low-rp servers still see people play toxins because toxins gives you bombs, and bombs are fun to do things like try to bomb the singularity when it gets out, or to drop on top of wizards using the teleporter. Nobody here plays toxins because using bombs, save in the rarest of circumstances, is grounds for a ban. Not many people play xenobiology because it's an isolated job that requires no interaction, and doing anything with the stuff you make is either pointless, or grounds for a ban. R&D is a liiiitle more useful, but not by much, and again, because there's no real need for anything on the station, a department whose job is making things isn't very interesting. So, your choices are either: a. Make the rest of the station need science. b. Let science use their shiny toys (which doesn't really match the mode of play on this server) c. Make science it's own game entirely which is interesting enough to play without engaging with the rest of SS13's mechanics. d. Remove science, make the Aurora not a research station. e. Leave science alone, because any plan aside from d is an enormous amount of work that will make a large number of people angry.

Hey! Glad you feel comfortable enough with this community to tell us. That required a lot of bravery.

Here's a link to the communal brig on Baystation. Their's seems like a good model for this kind of thing. Lots of windows. Three separate ways of breaking in from non-secure areas ( the maintenance tunnels, the main hallway, and space ) and a cryo chamber for perma'd prisoners.

They've always been used for cells because in previous maps, all cells have had some kind of exterior access. In this brig, the cells do not. They exit into the communal brig area, other cells, or security hallways. In addition, it's going to be tricky for security to keep track of what's going on in that brig without windows. I recommend going heavy on the electrified glass windows, and light on the rwalls. It'll be better for both prisoners and security.

Hmm... I like this one too. I do see a few issues with it though: The infirmary is quite large, and it's literally right across the hall from medical. I'm not sure I see the point. The communal / permabrig is cool, but if it's composed of rwalls then it loses a lot of it's appeal. Placed like that, its effectively impossible to break out of, as any exterior access will be through either another rwall or a sec-door. The three and four unit thick rwalls defending the isolation and insanity cells are probably excessive, as is that enormous 4x7 chunk of rwalls between the range and the armory. That area could be repurposed somehow by dropping the wall thickness to one on the interior and shifting everything to port by one unit. The detective's office could use maintenance access. I'm sure you're already on this, but without at least a few sets of airlocks, that connected central hallway will be a death-trap if anyone breaches anything, and will take forever to refill.

That's in my changelist. The hard-points in this instance just refer to the existing module slots on the cyborg, but they display like that when you look at them. I have plans on expanding on that idea, but for right now it's just visual feedback on what already exists.

Soooo... what's the plan here?

Ahhh merci. And implemented into the pull:

There's a world of difference between easy and impossible, but 'eh I think we should try it. Worst thing that can happen is that it doesn't work out.

Nope! Go ahead. Sorry, I was explicitly waiting for everyone else in the shuttle to leave, so I've just been watching.

The fact that their job is impossible? There's only one of them and up to five heads. How we dealin' with that?

So, wait. The forensics crate purposefully does not have the things needed to do forensics, because people who need to do forensics might order them? And in the event that the CSI kit is stolen, lost, blown up, or disappears into the lands of SSD, it's better to be unable to replace it, then for people who are not the forensic tech to be able to order more? That's... an interesting choice.

The only place I've seen these guys is on Paradise, and there they're locked behind a 45 point Karma wall. That's a sizable amount of karma on Paradise. You have to play for about a month to get that much. So on that server, playing Blueshield is mostly treated as a reward. You get your own office. You're sorta part of sec, but you don't answer to them. You have a gun and armor. You get to walk around, act tough, and look cool. But you're not effective. The simple problem is, there's only one of you and as many as six people you're supposed to be protecting. Those people all work on opposite sides of the station. There is no way for you to be close enough to guard all those bodies unless you've locked them in a closet somewhere. You end up red-tiding to calls for help just like the rest of sec, because while you're guarding the Head of Personnel, a changeling is scarfing down on the Research Director, or newcops are kicking down the Captain's door. The most useful thing I've seen Blueshields do is simply to make sure that each Head of Staff has a death-alarm implant, so when they fail, at least everyone knows about it and starts looking for the bodies. I think the right way to handle the need for bodyguards is for security to assign some officers to a special detail if there's a credible threat to one of the heads of staff.

Why not just give sec some bright blue (purple?) arm-bands? If a head or heads request a bodyguard, security command can order one of their members to second themselves to that head and wear the arm band, thus clearly marking them as a bodyguard. I don't know why this would have to be a separate job.

More stuff! I added the currently selected modules to the examination of cyborgs: Cyborgs also now get feedback when switching modules and people nearby will be able to see them doing it. This is a lot like putting things into backpacks, if you're right next to the cyborg you can see the tool they're switching, if you're further away you only notice that they've changed their tools somehow.

Could someone tell me whats' missing from the cargo crate? I can add it really easy.

Why not just make the crate contain all the relevant supplies? Isn't that just an oversight?

Ah, sorry no. I didn't touch any of that.

Ooohkay, so I added a bit more to this while fixing the issue with the backpack module select screen not refreshing when you stored items. I did a pass over the hotkeys! Hurray! All right. Lets do this: Key X Previously, this hotkey wouldn't start cycling if your first inventory slot wasn't filled. So if you had slots 2 and 3 full, but 1 empty, clicking X would do nothing. Now it works how you'd expect. It cycles if you have something selected, and if you have nothing selected, it selects the first item. Key C This deselects everything, leaving you able to interact with computers and distant AI objects. Previously, to do this you had to click on an empty area of your selected module. It was very awkward. Key V This stores your currently selected item. Key Q Previously this would just tell you that you weren't allowed to drop items as a robot. Now it toggles your inventory open or closed. Key 1,2,3 Previously hitting 1 would activate Help intent, and 4 would activate Harm intent. Robots have only two intent types, making the toggle key F more useful. These now select their respective modules. I also revised how clicking on items in the backpack works. Now, clicking on an item in the module storage, with a tool selected, will hot-swap the item into your current module. Taken together, these changes reduce an enormous amount of unnecessary and awkward clicking. EDIT: Personally, I liked the backpack inventory and stuff, but really it was just a moderate improvement. This stuff with the hotkeys is significantly better. It's going to make playing robots way less fiddly.

While I get where you're going with this, by that metric, none of SS13's technology makes a lick of sense. We have single purpose computers, the size of vending machines, with less functionality then a modern calculator. In many ways, SS13's technology, aesthetics, and society are a lot closer to that of the 1960's (with a handy helping of magic to make the stuff like the gravity generator and teleporters work) then what technology in 2457 might actually look like. My personal opinion on the subject of cloning is that it should stay, but the system should be made more interesting. It's both simple and boring right now, both for the clone-er and the clone-ee. Regardless of if it gets redesigned, I'm of the opinion that clone memory disorder is a really silly idea, that doctors being forced to lie to their patients is a worse idea, and that amputating perfectly functional limbs to replace them with artificial copies of the clone's previous artificial limbs is butchery at best and something closer to a war-crime at worst.

That is terrifying, and also great.

I think that any discussion of lore regarding synthetics, both the existing ones and the ones that are being proposed here, needs to acknowledge that SS13 is, in no way, realistic. It’s wildly inconsistent, and has had no real organization or oversight in it’s almost decade long development. For example, are AI’s digital or biological? When they were originally created, they were, without a doubt, biological. They were a human brain in an MMI in an AI frame. If you wanted to shut them down, you smashed them, or you deconstructed them and removed the brain. Then, at some point later, someone created IntelliCards, a device you can use to steal or deactivate the AI. The AI remains conscious once ‘carded’, and sentient, but now it’s in a flat piece of card, not a brain. That implies they’re strictly digital. But what about the brain? The brain is still there! Did the person who created IntelliCard’s bother to reconcile this? Did anyone else? Nope! This is because SS13 has no centralized organizational scheme, no goal, and no oversight. They just added it, despite it not making any sense, because it’s useful. This happens everywhere, in practically every system. SS13 is not so much a game as it is a tottering pile of pet projects barely held together by badly antiquated netcode. Things start making even less sense when we look at cyborgs. Cyborgs are, to use the Ghost in the Shell terminology, heavy cyborgs. Their only biological component is their brains. They choose a module and from that they are given various tools to do their job. Initially, you could only pick your module once, and it was supposed to be an OOC decision, not an IC decision. If you were built as a Service Cyborg, then a Service Cyborg you would remain. But then someone added module reset boards. Plug these things into a cyborg and they can choose a new module. That’s cool, and I like it, but nobody ever bothered to work out how or why a small circuit-board can grant cyborgs the ability to spontaneously transform stun batons into surgical tools. Nor do they explain why that technology is not used elsewhere. That’s magical enough, but they’re also magical in other ways. For example, if their module has the ability to hold a resource, like metal, glass, cable, or beer, they can generate infinite amounts of that substance while recharging with no explanation of any kind. That’s in addition to Engineering and Construction cyborgs spawning with more materials than they take to build. These modules were never balanced of course. Engineering cyborgs can (somewhat shakily) substitute for two multi-person departments, while medical cyborgs are incapable of even assisting with any injuries more severe than mild bruises, and the “Standard” cyborg module can do practically nothing of any value. Then there’s the thing with the hands. Cyborg’s don’t have hands, they have tools. This almost sort of made sense at first. The ‘robot arms’ you were building in robotics were only ever used on cyborgs and the little single-purpose bot-things like Beepsky. While it didn’t make sense that you built two of them during the construction of a cyborg, while cyborgs have three module slots, it did kinda make sense, in a weird way. Cyborgs didn’t have hands because, in universe, you couldn’t build a robot hand that worked like a hand. Not very likely, in terms of the other technology available to 2D spacemen, but at least it was consistent. Then, later, someone added robotic limbs for humans, using the same objects as you use to construct cyborgs, and these robotic limbs for humans worked exactly like regular human hands. Suddenly we have proof that the people of SS13 can build robot hands that work perfectly fine, but for some reason decided not to install them on their built-for-efficiency industrial robots. This means that you’re building a cyborg out of limbs with functional fingers and then somehow (probably magic again) the cyborg loses all of it’s fingers and replaces them with tools that appear from nowhere. The argument now is that you have to keep cyborgs handless because otherwise it doesn’t make sense to have any other crew. Why would you hire squishy humans and khajiit if you could have your perfectly obedient robotic slaves, that neither eat, sleep, or breathe, do all the work instead. Which is, you know, a very good point. It doesn’t make sense. Any real company would do that in a heartbeat. We have an enormous number of examples of that kind of thing from the real world. The history of the 20th century has been, in a large way, the history of people getting replaced by robots. Does anyone really believe that there will be janitors in thirty years? Taxi drivers? Farmers? No, of course not. We already have robots that do these things. Now that’s silly enough, but things get even sillier when IPC’s show up. Here are fully functional robot hands, ON ROBOTS. So Erik, I get that you want this to happen, and that you’re really enthusiastic about the whole post-cyberpunk Eclipse Phase stuff, but arguing “Why wouldn’t people be able to get prosthetic bodies?” while logical given the apparent technology, doesn’t take into account all of the rest of the incredibly illogical nonsense that exists in the robotics department alone. And robotics isn’t the worst. Not by far. Don’t get me started on R&D. You’re argument is passionate, and I admire that, but it’s not really a good argument given the state of the game. Nothing in SS13 makes sense. Not a bit of it. A good argument would explain why Shells would notably add to the game (not the universe, the game), while not detracting from the game in any significant way.

I understand your reluctance though these wouldn't be that big. You're talking about three items to be commented out (clonepod, clonepod circuit, clonepod circuit design) and two items left over to be removed from the map (the extraneous computer and scanner). It's pretty light, as far as removals go. Putting it back is just as easy, you just need to replace the clonepod circuit in tech storage, and the cloning setup in genetics which is all of three items.

It looks like opinions on this are pretty evenly split. My suggestion would be to run a test. My proposed test would be: 1. Put in a code change that logs every time someone gets cloned (this isn't logged why?). 2. Run the server for a week. 3. Check the total number of people cloned during that week, compare it to the total number of organic deaths. 4. What percentage of people who die are cloned? 5. Comment out cloning. Remove it from the map. Put up a sign where it used to be: 'Resurrection temporarily out of service'. 6. Run the server for a week without cloning. 7. Revert the cloning removal. This is important. We don't want to just change the status quo. This is a test, not a stealth modification. 8. Create a new thread. Discuss the pros and cons of having or not having cloning, now with actual data. 9. Implement ongoing changes, whatever they may be. 10. Party hats for everyone.

You're not proposing a replacement, I was speaking for people who were (like me). It's important to consider time spent inactive. Being a ghost is better then being asleep on a table.