Frances

I can confirm Glasgow has been around for a while and was a fun person to play with.

I can respect the reasoning, but I don't think it would work so well in practice. Antag rounds have enough variety that it's difficult enough to anticipate exactly what could happen (is it nuke ops? Lings? The cult? Traitors that could do pretty much anything?) Adding a 5-10% chance of "nothing" won't really do much to curb players' expectations in comparison, because it's still a very slight chance of nothing happening and would likely get glanced over.

Irrational, from... which perspective, though? Characters ICly don't know about roundtypes, and OOCly, voting for secret only to find out the surprise was nothing at all is most often simply a disappointment.

oh wait yes i remember you you asked me to never reply to your posts after i made fun of you for comparing paperwork to rape Aaaaaaaaaanyway we should probably let bygones be bygones and engage in the actual, intellectually stimulating conversation this thread should hopefully be slated to provide. (Honest.) I've had a particular interest in SS13's alien races for nearly two years (which is shameful. Nobody should spend that long nurturing an obscure interest on roleplaying aliens from a specific, little-known videogame.) Over my time on Aurora, I've seen people roleplay aliens in a lot of ways. Some of them were good, some of them were shit. Contrary to what you're suggesting, I'd like to bring up that very little of what I've seen concerning the lore was objectively bad. If anything, people ignore the lore a lot. Tajarans are supposed to be a race of conservative, somewhat repressed pre-wwii socialists, yet we've seen a lot of them act like sexually liberated hippie-revolutionists, trying to provoke furpiles and think they're the hottest thing for getting into a fight into security/whomever upon being called "cat". That's a stereotype of the Tajaran player. A character who falls completely flat by following the lore to a tee while ignoring proper characterization... isn't. I have literally not seen one character fall flat because they weren't venturing far enough from the lore. Now, characters who rely too much on popular tropes or Mary Sue-ish characteristics are pretty common. That's the biggest issue of immersion with aliens we've encountered (and species caretakers do their best to ensure this issue is curbed). But that's people that are ignoring the lore completely, not being constricted by it. What would be some examples of "lore regurgitation" that you have seen? What are solutions to this problem you would propose, other than limiting the number of players for each race? (Because that doesn't make the races better, it just hides the bad.)

Got sidetracked, ported all the job guides from Bay instead of doing what I was supposed to do. You'll notice that a quick summary of job qualifications for every job can be found in their headers. We also have a brand new Forensics Guide! It is partially based off some of the stuff written here.

Sounds to me like you might be upset with the design of the races themselves, and in this case it would be better to look at how we can rework these designs, rather than limit their impact on the game. The mechanical balance stuff should probably get its own thread for every species (with Tajaran and Unathi claws being the only obvious problem I can think of atm - I've never seen someone call Dionaeas OP before, but I guess I've seen everything now). As for species lore detracting from RP, though, what do you mean?

Antag lore is canon but optional. It's there to prevent people from taking a dump on fantastical antag types under the guise of "but they're fantasy!/they're not even real!!!", but you're still very much free to come up with your own antag backgrounds seeing as most antag rounds aren't canon.

Anyway. I won't open the whole debate again because then we'd be slated for five more pages of it, and we don't really want that. What bugs me is that you chose to respond with acerbic wit when faced with criticism - no matter how valid or stupid you thought the other person's opinion to be. In general, members of staff should display open-mindedness when communicating with others - sometimes you might just be wrong about the opinion you so quickly made up your mind on, and as a whole, it tends to pay off to be nice. I'm not saying you don't deserve a shot but I'm trying to rephrase the concerns of other people here.

You did argue pretty aggressively with people for a while in that thread.

For the sake of discussion, here's an example of a lore page we found was representative of the old design vs new design approach: Old page New page Both pages accomplish the same purpose, which is to detail the bodies orbiting the Tau Ceti system, yet the way they go about for doing this is different.

Skrell wiki page has been streamlined to put emphasis on more important info while deferring fluff to its own pages. I don't know how I feel about writing a bunch of fluff myself, but others are welcome to try if they're interested. Just send me a PM Added a bunch of new pictures to the Sol system page, will be working on making the article a bit more interesting soon!

It is essentially an inconsistency between vamp and cult, though. One arbitrary form of magic can convert implanted individuals, whereas another cannot. It's counter-intuitive because you essentially have to memorize instances where loyalty implants are effective or not rather than having any sort of general rule of thumb to go by. Loyalty implants can be great for putting captured antags back into the round but I don't think they deserve a place on head roles anymore. That's probably a conversation for another thread, though. Strawman. We're not looking at an issue of realism here, both conversions are done through magic.

Explain to me how this is consistent. I'm pretty sure it's an inconsistency within the code, but the rules drawn from it would be consistent. Basically: you get a message saying the implant makes you resist: you resist. You don't get anything/you get a regular conversion message: the implant has been subverted. I obviously hope nobody gets punished for this (it seems like a honest misunderstanding), but it would probably be easier to follow the actual code functions in the future rather than rely on unwritten conventions (and if needed for consistency, fix the code so implants always work?)

The reason why the rule for self-testing was originally highlighted/enforced wasn't for realism purposes. It was to stop geneticists from constantly giving themselves ridiculous powers (i.e. hulk) while producing mediocre, immersion-shattering RP, and to prevent people with powers from becoming common deus-ex devices. The former has improved to a degree - chucklefucking in genetics is rare, and the few geneticists we have are a bit more serious and respected. The latter is still an occasional problem (antags in maintenance being revealed by random x-ray vision geneticists), and I think the best fix for it would be to make powers harder or more punishing to use (which would make them good for short experiments or antagging, but unviable as a round-long type of deal.) In my opinion realism arguments are kinda moot for this.

Alright, I got some more. I'll animate all of those, zip them, and send them to Skull sometime soon.

Depends on the model. The one I did is a more classic R2/R4 model, they have both a 2-leg and 3-leg configuration.

Just made this one, will have more later today!

Hey, I didn't want to post because I knew whoever pointed it out would be called a faggot. But then people started posting seriously, and, well, yeah.

There is no IPC loremaster at the moment. However, aren't there very big differences between androids (artificial intelligences) and cyborgs (brains in jars)? The former could be considered as a non-person/nonsentient, while the latter would obviously still be a person. This brings up some pretty weird and funny questions, though. For example, how can NT use brains to power lawed cyborgs, and are these beings sentient or not? (And if so, isn't that basically slavery?)

Am I wrong to assume that some of these are player-caused rather than NT-endorsed? I doubt that NanoTrasen would be like "yeah, standard directives include torturing any aggressors you might find, engaging on biological experiments on prisoners, denying your detainees basic decency, etc." Yet it's things that happen because players are playing a videogame, and we care a little bit less about these things than we would in real life. But I most definitely assumed most of these actions were non-canon, because if word of things like torture got out it could completely ruin the company. I mean, not to be a buzzkill, but since everyone is taking this conversation seriously might as well.

I'm going to clean this up, as the OP hasn't been active for over a month. If you wish to apply again, feel free to resubmit this application as-is, while taking into account the changes I mentioned in the post above and applying any small modifications which would be necessary. (Don't worry, Aliose still exists!)

Oh, my. I would certainly like to see more Skrell heads. Sorry if the Skrell lore is a bit lacking for backstories. I've had my mind somewhere else regarding the lore but I should definitely get to expanding Skrell fluff this week. Speaking of which, if you're interested in writing your own fluff articles for the Skrell (maybe you have an idea for a cool new planet or faction your character could originate from?), you are very much welcome to submit a suggestion or send me a PM. I'm inviting pretty much everyone to write as there's a lot of ways people can get very creative with a technology-oriented race. But even if you don't, well... I'd feel bad not approving this. So have fun with the race, and feel free to drop by the lore forums if you want to discuss the Skrell anytime!

For Skrell. IQ analyses various capacities of human intelligence. I do not necessarily wish for Skrell to be outright superior to humans, but rather differently-abled. Skrells would perform better than humans on an IQ test (assuming the human median stays at 100 IQ), but surprisingly not that high. The superiority of Skrell technology can be attributed in part to their longer lifespan, ability to amass greater knowledge over their lifetime, and to the high organization of Skrellian government which allows them to put a lot more energy into scientific progress as fewer of their efforts are drained through social issues. They also have a headstart over other species but it is hinted that humans would eventually be capable of surpassing them within a few decades to centuries of development. Skrells are better than humans at analytical thinking, but humans have a greater drive and ambition, while the Skrell are very conservative in their mindsets. If you absolutely wanted a hard number, you could place the median of Skrell IQ at around 140 (which would make the average Skrell be considered intellectually gifted by human standards, and above roughly 98-98% of the human population .) This does not necessarily makes them superior to humans in all aspects, as quantitative intelligence is just part of what makes a particular species prevail... or not. For biology, Skrells (I think, or at least hope) evolved from amphibians. I believe the only reasonable justification why they'd develop in an anthropomorphic fashion (other than through divine intervention) would be because they faced the same evolutionary challenges as humans. This means things such as upward posture to maximize field of vision, reliance on tools leading to the development of better fine-motor skill but partial loss of brute physical prowess, and so on. Maybe some of those things don't make as much sense in the context of frogs evolving, but we're trying to justify the existence of big anthropomorphic frogs, so bear with us.

Can confirm. In my two years here I've seen a lot of people completely drop the ball, come back, and do perfectly fine with improving. No shame in that.

Context is important. I saw people lock a friend in a medbay locker while they were SSD once (they were friends both ICly and OOCly so nothing wrong there really). These kind of pranks aren't kidnapping, much like calling your friend a bitch for beating you at the arcade probably isn't defamation or slander.