Frances

Just gonna address that last point because I think it's very interesting. There's reasons why SS13 isn't fair. There's a lot of RNG. Effective combat (well, according to Duck) comes from being as prepared as possible to gank your unsuspecting opponent in some weird and unexpected way. There's a ton of unpredictable happenings that result in hilarious chaos. However, these all have one thing in common: they can happen to anyone. Anyone can get fucked by a random blob or virus. Anyone can get an instant disarm on the first tick of a fight. Anyone can get to play sec, and anyone can get to play syndie. Luck doesn't favor anyone. Claws are different. They're unfair because they're consistent. There's a lot of random mechanics in SS13 that end up balancing each other out (or creating such a mess balance becomes unnecessary), but claws just exist as a consistent damage buff for two races, that no one else has. It's definitely not the same kind of fair/unfairness.

To no one caring about it, I've seen a few discussions about balance. It's been brought up in the reddit thread I've linked, and I've seen people complain about it before (there were a few Tajarans before who got called out just because they seriously hurt people in fights due to claw damage, and recently there's been a negative reaction to the possibility that people might be OP with IPC mechanics - which are weird - and Unathi cuffbreaks - which doesn't really matter that much. As a whole, though, I'll concede that the claw issue hasn't been brought up before, but the fact that it's gone ignored to this day doesn't necessarily mean it's not a problem. From a pure balance perspective, it's poor design. If you want to create varied species mechanics, alien races should be sidegrades, not upgrades. For fighting, idk the exact numbers, but I believe claws are roughly twice as effective as fists, if not more (I'm too lazy to dig in the code but you're free to). This is no secret - five to six hits from claws can put you into crit while taking five or six punches would give you about 30 brute iirc. As for allegations of me trying to get things I don't like removed, I'm against claws because they're poor design. The IPC brute-mitigation also feels to me like a minor imbalance, though several arguments as to the possible counterplay (especially as an antagonist, as most antag types have easy access to EMPs) convinced me that it wasn't as pressing of an issue as "IPCs are destroying all antags". Removal of cloning was a suggestion to bring a /new/ aspect of gameplay (a genuine fear of death - which was semi proven/argued to be something that wouldn't realistically happen), not a suggestion to simply remove cloning because I disliked it. Though, like, if an aspect of the game sucks, and we're better off without it, what's wrong with wanting to have it removed?

That's kind of shitty (and subjective) to say. I believe I've done my part to explain my points. You don't really seem to display a good understanding of SS13 combat if in a single post you both say that "fights are click till you knock them down" but that a Tajaran "is not almost guaranteed a win" in this instance. I don't really have much else to say. I don't like being rude, but this has gone on for a few posts of back and forth, and, yeah, I'm just giving up. Also, if you're saying I'm trying to get "everything I don't like removed", then you've also failed at understanding why I've made the previous suggestion thread about cloning.

Okay, I thought I'd write a little about favoritism and regulars/"established" players on the server. Mostly because I dunno if the staff will talk about that. They can answer the other points you brought up better than I. I actually think there is some favoritism on Aurora. I also think it's fairly minor, and not something to really worry about. Let's look at the concept of a regular. What's a regular? It's just someone who's played for a while, and made a name for themselves. Right? We can agree on that? By that reasoning, you're a regular. At least, I consider you one. You've been with us for a while, I've seen you around a few times, heard about you from several people, and your name ranks among those most people could recognize from the server's Who list. Yet I believe if I asked you, you'd say you feel like you haven't been getting the same treatment as some other players. Why is that? Attitude might be an answer. Just recently, you created a BDSM cyborg to metagrudge against a player you disliked, got yourself synthbanned for all-around poor synthetic RP, and then decided to multikey to bypass the ban because you didn't like it, while flatly and copiously lying to the admins. And that might explain quite reasonably why your rep isn't, really... great, here. In comparison, none of the "well-established" players you refer to have engaged in such behavior. Yet their names do come up, don't they? This leads us to two possible scenarios, in which a regular is accused of having done something bad, but sees no action taken against them. Either: 1. The regular hasn't done anything bad after review, and the complaint against them is dropped by staff, or 2. The regular actually fucked up, and staff fucked up by dismissing the case. 2 is bad. 1 isn't. And I believe part of what's been happening is we've been seeing a lot of 1, and confusing it for 2. Like, by virtue of simply playing, especially with specific playstyles (antagging, playing in combat-heavy departments, not shying away from confrontation), users encounter an increasing risk of getting involved into disagreements of issues as their time spent on the server increases. This does not mean by default that they are troublemakers, or even doing anything bad. A careful review of a player's incident history is needed to understand their role on the server - you can't just glance at the length of the list and decide they're an unchecked baddie for that. Some prime examples of this are Sue catching flak simply for being into fights a lot (when she had reasons for it), or Nursie vivisecting/dissecting a lot of antags (when they were brought to her and she had proper clearance to do so). But what do you do when you think 2, not 1, is happening? Well, simple. You make a thread, like you did here, and people review all the issues using logic and reasonable observations. And yes, it's quite possible that admins could be garbage, but are they actually? Because one piece of advice I can give you is that you should never head into an argument with the sole objective of convincing your opponent - you must also remain open to the possibility that they may be right, and your point might be one you'll have to consider. Cause this isn't congress - we're just a bunch of people trying to get together to find a solution to a problem. tl;dr, I'm not trying to put you down by saying any of this, but there are two major things you need to consider while looking at the issue of favoritism: If you constantly pick fights, try to get on people's nerves on purpose, refuse to listen to others in favor of only doing things your way, break server rules, and so on, people won't be receptive to you, and you'll pretty much be treated the way you treat them. When other people get treated nicely, it's usually because they act nicely, too. Yes, even if you misbehave, good admins should treat you fairly. It's basically the "right to a fair trial". However, you're expected to use logic and remain open to the possibility that you might be the one in the wrong. Sometimes, people do actually get what they deserve, good and bad. And if not, well, make a new thread, expose everybody's lies, and start a revolution. But you need to make sure your arguments have substance to do that first.

You can't "not use your claws". Short of losing fights on purpose, there will be no fair fights between Taj/Unathi and others, and in my experience, when people fight, they fight to their best (short of the rare RP-fight). This leads to situations where an unbalanced and cheap outcome is unavoidable. You get me, right? For example, when a Tajaran and a human get ICly pissed at each other and decide to ham it up with their fists, the Tajaran is almost always guaranteed to win, instead of the players' robusting skills determining the outcome. Also, I didn't speak much about people "picking races on purpose to be robust" in my above post, but the fact is that's something that remains a lot harder to prove and curb than antagonists simply ganking.

@nanotoxin You're comparing people griefing/ganking to people winning fights as Taj/Unathi because... they've got mechanical bonuses and can't not win. Isn't that basically apples to oranges? One of them involves clearly breaking established rules with an intent that goes against the general mentality of roleplay, while the other involves people simply making uses of bonuses given to them that might be too strong. I don't think the two are really comparable. @skull The problem's not really terrible from my perspective. It's just something that I think needs to eventually be changed - which is exactly what you're proposing. There's a few people in this thread that seem to be screaming that this is a "terrible, terrible change" which might contribute to making the situation look like it's being pushed with more urgency than it deserves.

There's just a little problem with that. People will play to win. And sometimes, it'll be in ways that you can't stop, or curb, by asking them not to. Sometimes people will play to win because it's the most realistic or logical thing to do ICly (like when sniper rifles were really strong so they'd constantly get picked to own people in every fight). Sometimes people simply don't think about the importance of creating interesting roleplay scenarios, and sometimes they simply don't care. You can try your best to be virtuous but it's impossible to make everyone follow suit. Which is why I believe balance can become an actual problem, even on HRP. What do you think?

Okay, lots of replies, gonna try to address some of the main points here. Removing claws will make other species OP The only other species that has a combat advantage atm are IPCs, and they're offset by two major weaknesses - they can't heal themselves (meh) and they get BTFO by EMPs (probably more important). This is moooostly relevant in antag situations (while claws are mostly relevant in bar brawls, though they do come in with antagging sometimes), but this is literally one other specific issue. However, with the design philosophy I'm trying to suggest here, I'm not sure if IPCs would keep their 50% brute reduction in a fight either - the counterplay is there, but it's in a completely different module of fighting. But you can shoot Tajarans/Unathis in the face with a laser Yeah, you can do that to pretty much anyone. It's not really relevant in most antagging situations as if you let someone punch you as an antag you probably already fucked up. I'm more concerned about bar brawls and silly fistfights in engineering and the like, where it does become a real balance issue. Removing claws will make these species boring What I'm suggesting is getting rid of the "is straight-up better in a melee fight" trait from Unathis and Tajarans. There's not much that's really fun about that, as there's just no specific counterplay or weakness. I've played Tajarans and interacted with a lot of Unathis and I would believe that players managed to roleplay quite a lot of extremely major differences (in culture, physiology, species mentality, backstory, etc) that do not stem from "btw we're strong melee fighters so don't fight us in melee". If you absolutely think that species should fight differently, then at least make them fight differently. Right now these two species are literally just humans with a +1 to melee robustness. So basically all species would only have cosmetic differences? Not at all. There's a lot of fun traits that are already implemented in the game (or exist as projects) that provide healthy and interesting gameplay, even if some of them are minor advantages - Tajaran seeing in the dark, the lulzy Unathi cuff-breaking thing, the planned Skrell organ, IPCs not needing to breathe air, and so on. I am 100% for more of these mechanics being implemented (as well as related weaknesses, such as IPCs not healing damage), I just want combat to be balanced between species, or at least not be in a situation where you can apply for a super snowflake alien whitelist and get a more robust character as a result. If people are salty about losing fights to Unathi/Tajarans it just means the staff needs to deal with them Another thing that does not necessarily stand true. If people are salty it's usually a sign they're finding some problem with the game. And some concerns are outright stupid, or couldn't be addressed without some major downside (such as removing all antags, for example), but some, to the contrary, can actually be worth looking into. The other question with admin-intervention is always "can the saltiness be stopped?" Because if people keep complaining about imbalances between races in the combat system, the easiest way to stop them (and I haven't seen a ton of complaining, but I have seen some) is to fix said imbalances. But claws on these species is realistic They're made up species, so not really. I also already brought up the point that the 20-year old bodybuilder and the 70-year old grandpa get the exact same combat abilities in this game, so I don't see why there's a need for aliens to be different. Much like a weak character can roleplay sucking in a fight vs a strong one, people should be capable of roleplaying the effect of claws without them dealing twice as much damage as normal punches. And don't get me wrong, interesting changes are good and welcome (but I can't really see this as one.) But Frances, why are you even doing this? Balance. This isn't a realism issue at all as far as I'm concerned. When looking at the worth of a gameplay mechanic critically, there's a few things you consider. What does the mechanic set out to do? Has it been actually been successful at doing it? Are there any downsides to the mechanic's existence? Are the downsides greater than the downsides? In this case, I can only guess that Taj/Unathi melee bonuses were implemented to make the races feel different. And yeah, they sorta do. Humans are frail but crafty and resourceful, while these aliens are strong, agile, and basically less cultured/advanced and treated like scum as an offside. However, in practice, as much as I'd like to claim that Unathis and Tajarans can be mechanically stronger but have lore/roleplay disadvantages, this just isn't the case. Tajarans were originally supposed to be servile and cowardly, yet that didn't stop anybody from starting up fights as one. Space racism is pretty much something a vast majority of players have no interest in engaging in, and as a whole, you can't force aliens to be different from humans. Except through gameplay. As for the downside, anybody getting into a physical altercation with an Unathi or Tajaran (and where neither party is an antag or sec) will absolutely get rekt. And that's just, uh, not good. tl;dr: I don't think the mechanic is working as intended. What about all the tacticool stuff Skull is suggesting? Yes, I like that, and would actually be happy with that as a proposed suggestion - even if it takes time to implement. I'd really like Tajarans and Unathis to fight differently, if we could come up with a different mechanic for them to fight. What I don't want is species that are decidedly stronger than humans, because it creates the issue of "apply for whitelist, receive robustness". If species are much weaker then it creates a different problem (though a less important one as people should still mainly play aliens for RP), but aliens being weaker than default humans is a much more minor concern.

The counter-argument to more "stat" customization is that some people /will/ just use it to make robust characters. I'm not sure to which extent it has happened with aliens, as alien whitelists /are/ something you need to get first, but I'm wondering if the server would be better off doing away with all sorts of "robustness" imbalances. I like other variances between species. Tajaran being able to see in the dark, species having their own hardsuits, or really whatever. But combat is one of the things people tend to get salty about the most. I think we could benefit from trying to even the playing field.

The claws. This post on reddit got me to think a little about species balance. And the fact is Tajarans and Unathis get large melee bonuses for... little downside or counterplay. And I've been wondering - what exactly is the point of giving them strong melee attacks? Like, okay. Even though humans come in all shapes and sizes, there's no mechanical difference between any of them. You can play as a 90-year old grandma or as Captain Falcon for all anybody cares, and your punches will hit for the exact same amount of damage. Is there a roleplay benefit to Tajarans/Unathis being stronger melee combatants? Cause I can't see one aside from "they're strong fighters and people should be afraid of them", and that... sorta seems like a trait most people would consider as bad if the species were a new one being proposed. And sure, we can trust people not to abuse it, but any time someone creates a Tajaran or Unathi character with a confrontational personality, or gets into a fistfight and wins (and puts someone into crit in the process), there will be salt, and there will be people complaining. And honestly, after reflection, the whole concept kinda irks me - shouldn't everyone be given the same platform to fight on, and when asymmetrical mechanics are introduced, they see to be given some counterplay as to become something else than "they are like X except better"? tl;dr: Tajaran/Unathi claws don't do anything good. Maybe don't keep them, as they're not terribly important or useful? (And since they'll come up, maybe look at IPC brute reduction too, but that one kinda serves a purpose since healing damage as an IPC is kind of a pain.)

That's the OOC philosophy. I feel like people should be able to assign pretty much whatever flavor they want to that ICly (including some minor "thuggish/brawny" characters, as long as they add to the fun and don't abuse it). We do have some problems with certain members of sec being too confrontational, but them being of any specific race has nothing to do with it. I thought this thread was directed at Unathi game mechanics, anyway?

Brage, some of what you say is right, but some of it I don't fully agree with. Yes, breaking the rules, and specifically breaking them out of disregard for the administration really doesn't help your case, even if you believe you were in the right. (And most of the time, people who do that just end up looking like idiots, regardless of if they were right or not.) However, while bringing up your case with the admin/headmin/Skull/whatever can achieve certain effects, it's not guaranteed to be any more effective than simply outing it publicly. Sure, you'll have extra noise from third parties (both good and bad), but as a whole you'll get a much better guarantee /people/ (and specifically multiple staff) will hear of it and get involved. I've seen a few loose cases get swept under the rug in the absence of a headmin, simply because there tends to be poor communication among the staff sometimes (and a lack of specifically designated people to "deal with things").

Just to elaborate a little on that point, Unathis are seen as brutish. So them being hired muscle fits the description. They wouldn't be renowned problem solvers, but they'd be very good at defending assets, securing restricted areas, and breaking up your occasional bar brawl (all of which are things NT would use station sec for). Also some people seem to view Aurorasec as a semi-serious militia, so hiring "strong" aliens fits that mindset.

I don't think people make Unathis to powergame into sec. I think people make Unathis because they have fun, proud and confrontational personalities which make them good as "muscle" characters. And in the (limited) SS13 universe we have, these characters fit best into sec. IIRC Unathis have two mechanical advantages. They can break cuffs, and have bonus unarmed damage due to claws. Neither of those things should come into play as a security officer, seeing as 1. you should not be in cuffs if you're playing sec right and 2. sec already has weapons that are all-around better than claws.

Photorealistic study of some random things on my desk I was only planning on posting ss13-related stuff (since I do draw a lot) but people seem to be posting all sorts of various thing and I figured that kind of stuff would be cool to share.

Meh, those were also added for the sake of it back then (aside from Polly who used to hunt down antags, but I think that was done for kicks as well.) I rarely see most of the community band together behind an idea, and as long as nobody's being harmed and someone actually has the time to implement it, I don't really see a downside. Point is people want it, and it's an easy to implement change that carries no change on gameplay or even atmosphere. So why not?

The issues you quoted were actually answered fairly extensively throughout the thread. They're also very much related to the final ban, as Smiley claims he was punished for a case against him (the pAI) while he was actually punished solely for multikeying (with the case not even being considered at that point - it was a case against him so arguing that it should be examined more doesn't really do him any favors.) For the general accusations of hasty judgement calls from Baka, Baka went and explained her reasoning and general modus operandi for each case in this post, and she repeatedly mentions Doomberg being involved in complaint decisions whenever a judgement is submitted (I'm simply assuming she tends to post the final rulings more often than he.) So in this particular instance, I believe the user's points were considered and then dismissed, as he was found in breach of the rules in every incident mentioned. I get what you're trying to do but sometimes I feel like you don't fully read the threads you post in :/

Eh, time to give my take on this. I haven't got a clue what other people will say but perhaps it'll help to have the opinion of someone who isn't staff. You posted about three separate incidents. Let's look at them. 1. This complaint. Are you sure you understand the definition of metagrudging? Because what you did was to create a character with the specific intent of annoying another player/character, with you explicitly stating that you disliked that player/character personally and that this is what caused you to pose these actions. That's metagrudging. If you've got an OOC issue with someone/something, your best bet would've been to open a discussion thread on the forums like a mature individual, not create a BDSM bot to bug them IC. I fail to see any bad calls from Baka there. 2. This complaint. The logs you claim were ignored were actually posted by Hycinth there. Additionally, Baka stated that the complaint & logs were read through both by her & Doomberg (the other involved admin), so this isn't a case of anything being ignored, dismissed, or dealt with in an overly expedient manner. 3. This complaint. You weren't punished for anything that was actually reported in that complaint. You were banned for multikeying to avoid your previous synthban. We could discuss that incident for a while if you wanted, but I don't think that was what was up for review once staff found out two of your accounts shared the same IP. All in all, I don't think Baka did anything wrong.

That's got very little to do with whether the issue raised here is one worth considering or not. Let's look at the info presented here first, then deal with the multikeying as a separate issue.

IIRC Skull was against adding taser beams because of balance issues - it's not really a problem of tasers vs lethals, if I'm not wrong (seeing as lasers have a very low TTK anyway), but of tasers vs nothing. Do I recall any instances where I was able to get away from tasers because of windows? No. I don't really see the /purpose/ of bothering to add this either, for the same reason. Might just be me, though. Edit: and yeah Skull just posted lmao

Proper tuning/balance would prevent that from happening. Have most regular drinks give little/no halloss, with straight liquors giving more (enough that taking a few shots over a 5 minute period would carry little effect, but trying to down an entire bottle in one go would knock you on your butt). Screen effects would be nice. I doubt an alcohol rework is a priority, but it would be nice to have some visual hint that your character is drunk.

I've always felt like whitelists are just that... whitelists. If people abuse them, it should be easy to take them away. I'd rather have them be "easy to gain, easy to lose", than the opposite. Because then you have whitelists that no newbies can get, and that terrible (but regular) players can sit on for a long-ass time without getting stripped/jobbanned. Imo, as long as you can demonstrate you're not an idiot (through a comprehensive and well-worded app), you're deserving of a whitelist.

Fun factor. I thought it was a good idea from the "remove alcohol" thread, so I figured it deserved its own suggestion.

insert funny thing here

It's not necessary, but neither are most if not all of the suggestions we implement by default. The game is working okay as it is. Perhaps something that could be interesting to discuss would be possible fears/downsides concerning the idea?