Frances

Not a mod, but knowing Thundy fairly well, here are three questions I think her answering could help her app along: -How do you think you would react if you got into a dispute with another staffmember? How would you try to settle it? (And what if you believed the other person was being unreasonable?) -What would you do if a player you were about to punish pleaded for leniency? (I'm being really vague here, so feel free to come up with examples where you'd give out leniency and where you wouldn't.) What is your general opinion on people being critical of others' actions and characters? -

The main advantage of changelings (on paper) is that they can replace people without being suspected. If changelings were made common canon knowledge, you would have to expect a lot more metagaming.

Whoops, I missed the voluntary part! That's a pretty cool idea, then, though it'd mostly be science's job to request test subjects I guess.

I base my posts primarily from firsthand information. When I don't, it's mostly because I make observations off things that have been primarily said on the forums. When I can't confirm things for sure, I make a point to actually say so. It's important to avoid hasty judgments u_u

Yeah, but if a person actually decides to go all out and fight, when should we punish them, and when should we not?

I think you're being a little too harsh. The conversation really wasn't bad, somebody used ad-hominem once (which the mods should be able to moderate), but besides that it was really one of the most reasonable conversations I've seen OOC have about fantasy racism Anyway, my main issue is that using caps and asjsfdjh is generally a pretty bad move, no matter what you're out to do (unless your purpose is specifically derailment lol). It puts people on the defensive and makes them feel like others are angry at them and they should have to defend themselves. It doesn't put in their mind that you're a rational individual trying to get a point considered, it makes it look like an attack. Also, do you want mods to mute all OOC discussions that are taking too long? Why? (I think the argument "so we can keep having the short OOC discussions" is recursive.) All the relevant info is in the OP. Honest question, though: should we care about who brings the arguments, or should we care about what the arguments are?

Well, maybe rather than mechanics, I'd like to start by focusing on which direction we want to take, first. Because I've seen all sorts of things, from "anybody can fight anybody and the most robust person/antag with the actual gun will win" to "if you're not on sec and you try to fight antags to be a hero you will be banned".

BYOND Key: Isuckatroleplaying Staff BYOND Key: Aqy, ChrisCa Reason for complaint: -Overly aggressive stance and attitude in trying to defuse a situation -Intervening in a non-problematic solution Evidence/logs/etc: Full logs: The important bits: Some additional things I noted from Chris after the mute, explaining his reaction: Additional remarks: -I think both members of staff were overly aggressive in pushing their agenda. The use of capitals and angry-toned messages was the primary reason why the conversation derailed. -Aqy intervened in telling two people to knock off actual insults/attacks. I believe his tone was inappropriate for doing so, though, given the circumstances. -Chris isn't a mod, so the part of the complaint against him could be considered a player complaint, though he does represent the server -I'm not mad at Tablespoon for muting OOC. It did stop the staff and users from arguing, by muting the users :T

But a stat system set around jobs doesn't help realism either Wasn't the main attraction of a stat system the ability to set stats that actually reflected your character's abilities? So you wouldn't have to be afraid of admins for going all out against trained soldiers and being "robust", if your character felt it was his/her duty to do so without being particularly capable? And I think the main argument brought against that is that even if we tried to enforce a honesty system, too many people would play John Cena on the station simply to win fights. All I can say is that "regular antags get hardcoded bonuses" seems like a risky design decision. Save for powerantag roundtypes (vampires, lings and wizards, which have only 1-3 antagonists), the entire antag-vs-crew system is balanced around items, that you can lose, gain, steal, make, etc.

Hm. In my opinion, the problem with actual stats is that they take all the fun out of being robust. Rather than being rewarded for coming up with obscure combat strategies and being on point with your mechanics, you can simply make a superbuffed character which guarantees you a win without effort The counterpoint to that is that a player with decent combat skills can absolutely wreck face on anything. (But do we want to punish for that? And what situations should enable feasts of robustness, and which should forbid them?

Time for the discussion thread of the week, woo! There's an interesting duality we've been dealing with since the inception of the server. While we are a roleplaying community, a lot the mechanics we're playing with are still videogame-combat-based. And, among other things, they don't have any stats. This creates two interesting and opposed situations: -Every character is equal through gameplay -Not every character is equal through roleplay Let me give a very simple example. You have Joe McJohn, 42, lifelong mechanic. One day, Joe's station is attacked by Nick McRaider, a dangerous syndicate criminal. There are various events that can stem from this conflict situation. Joe might surrender to Nick McRaider, or cower in fear in his presence while trying to hide in an unused locker. After all, Nick McRaider presents a threat for inexperienced Joe, and survival instinct dictates that Joe should try to preserve his life. There is, however, a chain of events that may ensue, which could possibly result in controversy. Let's say that, after carefully evaluating his options, Joe determine that the course of action most likely to result in his survival is for him to hide in a locker with a trusty combination wrench, and ambush Nick McRaider by giving him a swift whack on the noggin. After all, if a raider is attacking his space station, chances are pretty high he'll be killed if he does nothing, and the ensuing ERT-Syndicate firefights aren't the best at minimizing civilian casualties. And it's just one raider - not like he's doing something idiotic, right? Let's see how the duality comes in practice: -As all characters are equal through gameplay, Joe is given a fair chance to have a go at Nick McRaider. All he has going in his favor are his wits, and whatever equipment he may scrounge up in his workplace. By opposition, Nick McRaider is equipped with potentially deadly weapons (and a suit of armor) cementing his status as a dangerous criminal. -As all characters are not equal through roleplay, though, Joe might not be the most apt at delivering effective CQC strikes and overpowering an armed and armored opponent. Who knows, though, maybe Nick McRaider's no trained commando, either. So, the question is, situations like these, bad or not? Should all players be allowed to dish it out with equal lack of restraint using the combat engine? If not, why, and what countermeasures do we wish to enforce?

Techno was banned for being an asshole. This isn't a widely debated fact. I'm a bit disappointed that it wasn't discussed more. It's something I was hoping we'd eventually get to, rather than "powergame this" or "powergame that", especially when his behavior caused other people to give him very little credit for his actions. In the end, nobody wins.

Do you want my thoughts? -Maintenance duty sounds great. Force vandals to fix their own mess. If the station's dirty and there's no janitor, grab a prisoner and put them on janitorial duty (like the janitor role was originally intended for!) -Forced test subjects doesn't sound in line with the serious lore we have. It's pretty unethical. -You don't really punish people for suicide attempts, you get them help (suicidal individuals should be placed under observation in medbay until they've been cleared.) -Voluntary borgings don't really fit within the lore, but I'd love to see them back somehow. (We could just say "what the hell" and do them tbh, roboticists borg random volunteers often enough.)

Well, Scopes still has a server with a custom Tekkit pack set up. I used to play on it and still would, but I was the only person to do so, so I won't bug Scopes to maintain it constantly for my sake (it goes down and needs to be restarted from time to time). If more people were willing to embark on a minecraft adventure, though, it'd be great fun (I personally know 1-2 people who'd play, but not enough to get a full thing going.)

What are the odds of these situations arising? And again, consider the situations where people get brigged for long periods of time. If a person gets brigged for 20-30 minutes, it's usually for a reason that gives you incentive not to trust them with important tasks. Anyway, I'd argue that this is already enabled, to a degree. I've seen wardens/heads release arrested or demoted sec officers (when they weren't so bad) to let them help catch dangerous antags.

Punishments shouldn't "seem enjoyable" ICly. Which might be part of why improving brigging is difficult from an OOC perspective (I personally like to think the sentences are fine as they are, but I usually multitask when brigged.) There's compromises we have to make for the sake of gameplay, though. The suspension of disbelief around five/ten-minute brig sentences is a necessary one, because day-brigging (followed by your character being fired) would cut short the plans of most antags. Let's face it, a good 95% of people who end up in the brig would instantly lose their job if we had to be realistic about this.

No use reinventing the wheel, though http://aurorastation.org/wiki/index.php?title=Server_Rules#Guidelines The guide Aurora is using for antag metaplay is Bay's, it's always worked and I've yet to see a reason to change it.

The guide we're using says that xenobiologists, and by association some RDs, could have minimal knowledge of exotic alien species. Only lings are mentioned, but I believe it could very reasonably be extended to aliums. This gives leeway to xenobios (and RDs) to choose how to introduce xenos and lings, and hopefully make things a little more interesting (and scary), if they so wish.

that's some intensive roleplay then

That'd be cool as a deadhour event, though. Gives an extended round a backdrop other than "normal work day".

I'm afraid some of these simply wouldn't work right off the bat. Community service takes a while to set up. If you're serving a 5-minute sentence, it'll be over by the time security sets you up with a temp ID and moves you to the kitchen. If you're serving a long sentence, you probably did some pretty bad stuff in which case security would be wary to leave you unsupervised out of a brig cell. If you really want to give prisoners more stuff to do, I think the communal brig should be the start of it. It's already there, and it's convenient of access.

but why would i vote for wizard i hate wizard

Well, there's a big difference between extended being a total clusterfuck, and a few people starting trouble in extended. Issues such as balds greytiding and punching people for lols stem mostly from single players, usually new to the server (otherwise they'd probably be banned at some point), and it's simply a matter of talking to them and telling them not to do that. By chance, there can be some highly chaotic extended rounds, but I don't think that necessarily reflects on all extended rounds in general, seeing as most people do act decently. There's a difference between pure griefers/greytiders and troublemakers, though. I honestly don't mind troublemakers as long as they bring something enjoyable and funny. Without them, security would have literally nothing to do during an extended round! Can you imagine how boring that would be? (Yet some people do seem to want that. Huh. Go figure.)

I hope these pretty grim news don't prevent people from being able to relax and spend their free time here - playing in the community can be really good for people who are looking for a change of mind. I don't think anybody should feel guilty for enjoying the kind of roleplay we have here - it's perfectly possible to dissociate fiction from reality, while still remaining respectful and keeping a good understanding of real world happenings. Those that struggle with dissociating our play from those events shouldn't be forced to stay here, obviously, and I guess it really is a sensitive topic. Nothing wrong with wanting to take a break. I'm sure a lot of people will be affected by today's attacks