Rabid Animal

RE: the whole animals thing, I recall there were plans at some point to make 'modular' aliens so different planets could have randomized fauna and be unique very much in a similar way to xenobotany While that's very cool and I would love to see it, in the meantime having some predefined stuff would do no harm and be much easier to implement. I am an artist and I enjoy sprite work so if you're doing the coding please get in contact with me because I will 100% make some dudes. I would actually really like more "prop" stuff that's not just, earth plants? Like for example the ice exo planet can have pine trees, which always felt a little lazy to me. Sure, tree like is cool, but we can go so much deeper..... LAST THING idk if this is a pain, but applied to aforementioned prop plants and xenofauna in general, but extended descriptions with some science fluff might be cool. (Last last thing, more biomes. Give me swamps and marshes and dense forests and--)

I don't really agree with this assessment, I'm extremely frustrated with how this has gone, and I think it speaks towards an unwillingness to allow people to make characters against the grain. I've played Kaiser for over a year and his language has never been 'the' issue people have with him, it's clownish, it's over the top, and it's one way I communicate with people that this is a character - don't take him seriously. In trying to make that as clear as possible it's been decided that he doesn't fit into command, something I've personally put a lot of thought into - but this isn't really the place to start arguing my case. Toning the character down strips a lot of the soul I've poured into it, which has brought far more enjoyment than it has ruined. I'm obviously sorry to anyone who has been affected by my play OOCly regardless. But I do not want to tone him down, I've thought about it all week, I took a few days off just moping about it, and I said it then and I'll say it now: I'm not going to lobotomize a character for a small minority of people who take his actions personally. I played one round right after the complaint and was absolutely miserable in worry that everything I did would offend someone (this includes the screenshot you posted with the chef) and that I would rather retire the character than deal with that constantly. Edit: I posted this too soon. I had just woken up and it was the first thing I saw, so I apologies if this comes across as idk rude or anything, Yonni. I've talked to a lot of people the last few hours over this and I'll try to take what you said to heart. I still don't think vulgarity is the issue, (and I really do stand by what I said above) but it's definitely something that stems from the overall aggression, which I think I can tone down a bit. I don't want to loose the characters identity in doing so, and so it may take me a few rounds to actually figure that balance out. idk Cheers.

Honestly rollerbeds in life are designed to be able to go up and down stairs, in an emergency you don't know if you're going to need go up someone's stairs in their home. I see no reason the rollerbeds do not work this way on the horizon, genuinely. At worst I'd suggest a slowdown, but otherwise they really ought not to be affected by stairs, esp the smaller ones. Remapping the horizon to have less stairs removes a lot of the dimensionality that stairs added in the first place. I think the ramps look bad and I'd rather see rooms flattened than have ramps.

There are cages, the medium trap works! I thought they were all broken but it seems like it's just the large one. I want stuff for the bio lab man, let me look at cells under a microscope or something

I just wanna say you could totally have the glucose monitor read hunger levels or something if you wanted it to do something mechanical I also have no problem with adding mechanical weight, I don't think it should do anything other than show in fluff or on those scales, it would be very neat tho.

You explicitly said that this had no OOC bearing with: "I fully believe that this is not me getting caught up in my characters feelings, taking in-character behavior personally at an OOC level" This is specifically what I refer to when I say there is OOC motivation behind this. This is you taking it personally, Samga was called incompetent once and now any slight hint of the idea has led to an outburst. Do you think I'm in a different boat? It's exhausting having the same conversation 18 times in a row, I really barely talk to Samga unless its needed for the research staff - and every single time I do it's just: "Don't tell me what to do," in any number of ways. I'm trying to express some amount of frustration that the nuclear response was the first step taken when I have, for some time now, attempted to be friendly with you in DMs - either to be ignored entirely or shrugged off. That's okay, man, we don't need to be friendly. But when you start throwing out comments like "This is poor RP" just because it didn't cater to your specific desires, yeah. That feels like bias. This is why I think there is some OOC frustration here, its not an attack against you; it's fine to have some degree of OOC frustration over things - I don't know why you would deny that. I'm not accusing you of lying or making this complaint in bad faith either, I just wish you would reciprocate a little bit so this kind of thing didn't happen in the first place. Beyond all that; I want to point out the round with the FR really only had two major arguments, one at the very beginning when Corndog showed up, and one after it had all cooled down. Sasha did not, in fact, sit there and berate him the entire hour and a half they were working. I'm sorry if it became stressful for you regardless @YourDaddy117, I know HoS is really hard. I know that round was absolute chaos. I have nothing against you or your playstyle. These kinds of crazy outbursts really only occur during antag rounds when stuff has gone extremely awry - but Sasha has a temper, and there's plenty of things around to set him off.

Courier, we are in contact over discord. I'm a little hurt you saw fit to make a complaint instead of just talking to me. I'm going to preface this entire post with this: It is extremely difficult to play an abrasive character because of how people begin to take it as an OOC offense. I've been contacted by no shortage of people who feel Sasha is unfun or too much, and I will specifically try to do better by them. All that said; you're trying to tell me this isn't OOC motivated but I genuinely don't believe you. Nothing you've said has not had an IC justification, and you're accusing me of poor RP with complete bias. You are phrasing this as if Sasha has never made any attempt to reconcile things, but it gets to a point where its genuinely not worth his time. I can pinpoint the exact moment this went wrong, a round wherein we had three BCs, two of which were 'problem children' and Sasha was genuinely leaning on Samga to do something after a week or so of arguing with the other two. You know what happened? Samga lied to his face because she didn't want to go scouting. She proved herself untrustworthy and has been treated that way ever since. You know what this is limited to? Barring any talk back, it's "BC's, fax me the scans." He reminds her, every shift, to do her job; because in his mind, she needs the reminder. Not once has he rushed her, not once has he bitched her out for taking too long. No. He just asks for the scans. He's laid off, he's tried talking it out, but it turns into an argument. He's tried meeting with her, but she doesn't respond. She has personally and intentionally antagonized him. You cannot, in your right mind, think that after a month of this that he's going to give her the time of day because she 'asked?' Sasha is her boss, maybe not her direct superior, but a superior none the less. He doesn't need to ask please and thank you, he wants Samga to do her job. That's it. If you don't like doing that job on an ooc level I genuinely don't know why you are playing the BC role to begin with. I think its a very bad faith argument to assume I'm sending you on a scouting trip for no reason, with no intention of organizing anything. Sasha does away missions all the time. Beyond that, I have personally relaxed a LOT on the scouting missions, to the point it really only happens if we have multiple bridge crew or if there's really jack all in range. You know what Sasha has you do instead? Move the Horizon. All of this is an IC issue. To address your specific points: >Sasha will demand sensor scans within the first 5 minutes[...]this takes time, but he won't listen. Sasha has his morning meeting with his scientists, after everyone is settled in and tasked for the day, he asks for the scans and moves to his office. He doesn't say "now" or "hurry up," I don't know how this could be misconstrued into malice. From your perspective, it's a voice on the radio asking you to do something. I get that, so do that thing. What's the issue here? Yes; he will bitch you out if you argue with him. I'm not denying that. >My characters plee for you to just back off please and let me have the chance to do anything was shut down[...] He asks for the scans, they argue, the CE shuts it down. Nothing of note. We move the horizon, he asks for the planetary scan. Relative silence, then a wall of text accusing him of rushing her, demanding he say please, and her threatening to quit. This was genuinely funny. I'm not even sorry because what did you expect to happen? Him to say sorry and concede to every demand? You know the character by now. You had your chance to reconcile when he asked weeks prior. That's not to say its impossible, but sitting there and patronizing the guy isn't going far. >I tried to engage further, but it was ignored. This is not good RP. Samga was ignored because Sasha was trying to get an away mission started, one that should have lifted off 30 minutes earlier but was met with delays unrelated. He doesn't have the time to sit here and argue, again, with this BC who has not once proven to him that they're worth his time of day. You asked, and I quote, "Are you okay?" to an impersonal man with a focus on work. He is not going to respond to that. Telling me this is bad RP is wild. >Your character said some fucking awful things[...] Yeah he did. After standing on a landmine for around 20 minutes, tensions were high. Brother nearly had his life literally blown away, and the FR sat on comms bitching him out for not helping immediately with chems before outright refusing to stage in the event the landmine actually did go off. He wanted them charged. The commander outright refused. What do you think is realistic here? For him to go pout in a corner or to I don't know, vocalize his frustration? Just because Kaiser is mean does not mean he is wrong. I could type paragraphs explaining this round in detail to you, I really could. Don't assume he's just sitting there saying vile shit for no reason. >I can't imagine how the head of security player feels Frankly they shouldn't feel anything. They joined late in a chaotic round, and chaos ensued. This is IC. No one has ever had anything against them OOC, and if that line is being blurred people need to take a step back and breathe.

Please....a couple tank transfer valves in equipment storage... For guns not bombs....

Yeah this is resolved

This sense of over preparedness seen throughout every department in every role for every situation has made the game very boring. Security is the worst because they directly change how a round will go. It's like people forgot teamwork and interaction are part of the gameplay loop. Fluffy makes a good argument above; and I don't think a single post around has really disproved all I've been rambling on about either. I can't really articulate more than what I've said without just repeating myself, so I'll leave it at that.

I actually love that, greimorans (either the eggs in a room or the larva all over the ship) would benefit from this as well, maybe fold it under level 7 biohazard, or even make a new biohazard announcement like level 5 or something (and add a few other triggers so people don't know it's grems)

I think a point that's been missed is the reoccurring mention of solo antags. There are other modes than Merc, you could also argue that traitor has it good, and to be fair they do pretty well. What about everything else? Every mode without an uplink? Don't you think there's a reason Merc wins out more often than other modes? Could it possibly be because it's fun? Because the game is balanced around it? 1. Power creep makes combat too deadly for people without access to the meta tools of the game. 2. This is a mechanical issue. It's like designing a shooter and getting mad when people shoot each other. Yeah, the gameplay will inform how people roleplay, the sheer access to items that encourage violence, will result in violence. I don't think getting one tapped is fun, death can be fun, but I want a narrative experience out of it. This happens far more when security is absent and the antag is one without an uplink. Scarcity breeds creativity. Nerf security. Nerf the uplink. Encourage creative solutions.

As an aside to this whole thing, because it is somewhat off topic, antags don't need to be violent. I see a lot of 'peaceful' gimmicks turn to violence as a result of what I see as poor sec play, which is just enabled by having the tools available to just frag people. This really doesn't drive a narrative, and for a server that has such a focus on wanting to drive a narrative, so many rounds just turn into a firefight. Power creep is real. Aurora station saw a lot more of the peaceful gimmicks because it wasn't outright punishing to try and do them. The Horizon is just a death trap for antags, that should change. I like violent rounds, I like peaceful rounds, it's good to have both.

Ballistics create shrapnel which is much harder to recover from, on top of the active bleeding opposed to just some degree of blood boil. Don't get me wrong, lasers do too much damage as well, but that doesn't mean they're less powerful than ballistics in most scenarios. The issue I see with this is that these weapons will often not be used in favor of jumping straight to the lethals, security already has non-leathal weaponry at its disposal. Flashes, flashbangs, stun guns, etc that barely see use. If the suggestion here was to remove the hard hitting stuff in exchange for rubbers and etc then yeah, I'd be down for it; but thats not it. Security has so much at their disposal that it is almost pointless to involve outside departments, this was a major point I was trying to make above, giving them anything more just detracts from that even more. The horizon feels more and more like a larp vessel as we go on, if I wanted milrp I would play torch or CM. The only reason aurora had any draw for me, and I assume others, was because it still had a civilian feel to things, this has been chipped away by the current state of security and how events are handled. Once again; see this in action by how the populations of every dept out of security just dwindles more and more as time goes on. The SCC needs to decide what its special snowflake ship is actually for and commit one way or another, and my vote is to debuff sec and let the solo antags actually be fun again.

There's been a balancing war going on for sometime. Antags get buffed with better equipment, security gets stomped, and then security gets buffed as well. Rinse repeat for many years. Unfortunately this has made solo or ship antags remarkably unfun as the arms race excludes them entirely and the game becomes comically deadly for everyone. The solution here is a debuff, the game was more fun when security didn't get ballistics because guess what? They didn't get to just erase antags with essentially no effort. Strategy and planning was involved, antags of all kinds actually had a chance. Consider that security has a ton of support from an entire station, that the antag is often 1-5 against 20+. As long as medical exists, security has an extreme advantage not only in arms but in survivability. This lowers interaction with the whole crew because the ISD monopolizes the antag in that if the antag tries anything else they're fucked. This is why security is the most played department, people crave interaction. This is also why every new mode added in the last few years have been a team mode(something I'd actually vote to remove many of or consolidate into mercs, but that's another topic), solo just cannot work with the current balancing. So yeah, in my opinion both armouries shouldn't have ballistics period. It was balanced this way in the very beginning to offset the disadvantage antags had with medical support, and it makes some degree of sense to not casually equip a civilian ship with tons of ballistics because guess what? We're in space? As much fun as accidentally blowing a hole in the hull or having a bullet ricochet 600 times into some assistant, it's much safer to use laser weaponry - which is effective in its own ways. (If for some reason you need a RP justification, though I think the balance argument is more than enough) I also think ballistics should do less damage overall, return us to an older era where combat wasn't as deadly. Where there was more of a chance to get up and walk away to plan a different angle of attack. To involve more crew. In debuffing security you open avenues for other departments to shine. Engineering can set up an elaborate barricade. Science can hand out tools not normally available or even seen 99% of the time. Cargo can order that specialized weaponry we just happen to have already. Bring players back to the other departments, the ones that have become stagnant and boring after so many years of being excluded from this arms race.

Power blackout The ships power network has a malfunction and blacks out for some period of time. It resolves on its own but engineering can intervene to fix it faster. Good for antags to abuse, generally not too impactful otherwise. Supermatter Energy Surge A bit more dangerous, idk the fluff for this but maybe a fault in the crystal or some bluespace BS causes it to heat up temporarily. Not enough to blow up, but enough for some runaway reactions to occur if coolant isn't injected or if the setup was poorly done.

The fact that this doesn't happen on a server that is primarily gameplay focused should be some indication that this isn't a policy issue.

I noticed that as well, for the hardsuit modules it seemed silly but I could excuse it for the same reason I excuse the long bow shells; it's heavy. Tbf I don't think having slowdown applied to things in your hand beyond munitions is really all that great - as much as I like moving at a snails pace with the hardsuit modules + duffel bag it makes me more inclined to grab a void suit because the speed debuff is so bad.

Pretty much as the title says; Dufflebags have more storage space in exchange for either slowing you down while it's on your back or taking up a hand slot when you're holding it. Or at least; that used to be the case. Currently they inflict a slowdown no matter what, it's a little excessive and makes the negatives of having them a little too much imo. Keep the slowdown when they're on your back, just remove it when it's in your hand please ty.

I'm generally in favor of gameplay over RP, the game needs to be enjoyable to play for RP to happen in the first place. The game is literally less fun than it was years ago because of all the little debuffs made in the name of 'RP', so in that way I wholly disagree with the autolathe idea. That said; I'd love more events in general and I'd like to see current events be more impactful. Blobs should be harder to kill, and spawn on low pop, for example. There were a few events that got removed from the old map I'd like to see readded, like random stray munitions hitting the station. They cause minor damage usually to minor areas, and just give you something to do. I also think round events in general are really good for antags and general engagement - and I'd like to see a lot more added, beyond even just stuff for engineering.

This is an issue that stems from players wanting things to do, and not having things to do. If destruction was more encouraged as something antags /do/ engineering would likely be less prone to jump on every little thing - you can only sit around the engineering lobby rping about nothing or working some weird niche project that gets stonewalled by code blue so many times before you crave literally any kind of gameplay. You can see how destruction is discouraged by the fact you can't repair the outer hull, and nearly all welding tanks or any other way to make a bomb were removed from the map. Engineering doesn't even /have/ the tools to do their job appropriately. Now I'm not saying the ship should blow up every round, I'm just saying having more to do would make the down time feel better. While I do play engineering and therefore understand where the issue lies there, I don't play med or sec; from what I understand as an outsider looking in is that its not as bad but people definitely have their preferences. I actually think its an opposite issue where they only ever have gameplay and if they stop to rp they can impact the round negatively, which creates this tension of 'always needing to be good or else.' You can see this in effect when you try to rp with medical over minor issues or projects and get shuffled out to make room for the possibility of an actual emergency. Or when security refuses to follow procedure on someone they know is an antag because if they escape there is meta knowledge they'll cause trouble. See: every vampire who acts kind of weird and gets locked in isolation or interrogation for an hour. I suffered this exact issue playing engineering on the old map, so its not a new issue but it 100% is much worse than it used to be. There is a reason I started playing departments with strictly RP focused gameplay - service, science, etc. I've thought about this on and off for a long time and it almost always is a major contributor to whenever I take a break from the server. I don't know the exact cause, and all my solutions tend to be nuclear in flavor. I remember playing on bay eons ago and these issues didn't crop up; they had almost no lore and never ran cannon events but I don't think that's the issue. I think their laid back approach to antagonism helped a lot, people were less thirsty for action because there was /always/ action, it was a nice break when there was less going on, it made the laid back RP feel more meaningful. As it stands now, people loose their mind over sextended as if extended has ever been a bad thing. My advice? play the game as if every round is extended, yeah your shit might get interrupted but thats okay - at least you're not twiddling your thumbs while antags get set up. I also think think there might be some issues with how aurora approaches gameplay, in the RP should inform gameplay, not the other way around. Game design is hard and I wont claim to be any good at it, but I consistently see development decisions that seem somewhat backwards to me that are made in the name of 'RP' not 'gameplay.' So, as the gameplay becomes more and more stagnant, people look for more and more ways to have 'fun' by actually playing the game. There's a balance to be had somewhere, but idk if my input would even be particularly valuable. Regardless of all that; I understand your frustration. Be the change you want to see, ignore other people being shitters. I see groups of people pop up who really can change a department for the better by choosing to do these things and inspiring other people to do the same. Server culture doesn't change overnight.

I see lots of people roll in playing lab assistant like they're doing an understudy and I love it! but also, some people really just wanna be a lab rat and thats okay too, differentiating between them would be great.

Just gonna address this since I brought it up; I don't think anyone is saying that extended should be feature poor or have nothing happen during it. Away missions take time to set up. Science experiments take time to set up. Big projects take time to set up. These ALL get derailed during antag rounds, extended is the perfect opportunity to explore ideas that you normally can't commit to for one reason or another - so having extended become cult or w/e else ruins that, it makes the gamemode pointless. You can have overworld stuff to explore during extended that isn't an outright antag mode tacked on for the hell of it. The game is full of features, full of great RP potential, you don't need antags to make fun happen.

There was a brief discussion the other day around just all out preventing 'antag bases' from spawning on extended (or only spawning on extended though I disagree with that) as a compromise for being very round impacting. That seems like a better solution to me than removing their teeth, though taking away their shuttle is also a viable solution; they can easily steal the shuttle of someone who stumbles on their base so.

That's the cost for having no pain and suffering damage that is relatively meaningless? Anyways I'm not here to debate anything, that was just my suggestion, it's not worth arguing over.