Frances

You... can just walk away from a Diona, though. Like, everybody can do that. Unless you've got no legs, in which case what are you doing with your life.

Well, yes, the riot gear is super strong. But it's twice as strong on IPCs. The reason why I'm making that suggestion is because I don't believe they should have that kind of bonus. Three people with cultblades weren't able to bruteforce their way through a single IPC. Whereas they would've eventually succeeded with a human. As Sue pointed out to me in a chat, IPCs have no bones and can't get IB. Aside from their lack of natural healing, they have some crazy good advantages in a fight, probably better than any single race deserves to have.

Don't be a dick doesn't apply to IC actions. However, we must not forget the reason why characters choose to act like dicks ICly: because it leads to interesting roleplay. Yes, sometimes characters are dicks and others don't like it OOCly, but some of these situations (like your coworker being asocial, or upset at you over something you did) are things players will have to live with, because they're extensions of characters' personalities, and the game should be made so these people are manageable (you have semi-competent IAAs and heads, as well as IC Character Complaitns and Duty Officers.) However, being needlessly cruel to another player in a way that's completely unengaging for them without bringing anything else to the table does delve into the "being an OOC dick" rule. Especially as TechnoKat's character already seems to have another complaint against her for similar chucklefucky behavior, and his little LOOC quip ("rekt m8") leads me to believe this was not exactly motivated by the intent of creating the most engaging RP environment there could be. tl;dr: The PAI was wiped, redownloaded, given a dumb law and abandoned on the spot as its player was mocked in LOOC. It's not like the PAI could've defended itself or created any roleplay out of this, and this interaction was utter bullshit and in no conceivable way something that could have been enjoyable the person playing the PAI.

A 85% chance to mitigate 100% of the damage still results in an effective mitigation of 85%. This, combined with 50% of the damage going through being ignored, brings us to a total damage mitigation of 92.5%.

It's not just for cult, though. Any situation with an angry mob could currently be defused by essentially a single IPC, unless the opposing group prepared EMPs beforehand. It's sorta, like, having to go against a tank. And you have to get a rocket launcher. But most people don't think of packing a rocket launcher, because you don't expect tanks, and some people don't even know tanks exist.

While I do not think going in a punch-out against a robot is an extraordinarily smart idea, a particular cult round tonight had me learn that IPCs currently benefit from a 50% reduction to brute damage. This, combined with other equipment, can lead to horribly silly situations. Case in point: in this particular round, a single IPC officer armed with riot armor (85% melee damage reduction) and a riot shield (dunno the specifics but I believe it blocks all attacks from the direction you're facing) went against three cultists equipped with full cult gear and blades. The combined force of cultists managed to spam upwards of 50-100 clicks on the (mostly immobile) IPC. The IPC nevertheless won the fight. With half of its health left. (Which took some time - I assume the cultists simply gave up after a certain point). The 85% melee reduction combined with the 50% brute reduction makes riot IPCs ridiculously strong. In simpler terms, if the damage reduction is calculated multiplicatively (which I assume it is), this means a single IPC in riot gear has as much effective health as thirteen regular unarmored spessmen. Yes, there's other ways to disable IPCs, but not all of these ways are readily accessible to all, especially to the unprepared. And maybe trying to melee an IPC should be a risky decision and more often than not prone to failure, but it shouldn't result in an immediately guaranteed defeat as you head against what could literally be a walking tank. Before anyone asks, I wasn't part of the round I mentioned above, and this thread isn't the result of an upset. Simply consider me a concerned citizen. Also Duck, I know you're not around, but if you come back and see this thread, please forgive me.

I don't know much about publishers vs developers specific to videogames, but I believe what we want to be looking for as far as the next Fallout is a developer. Dishonored wasn't "made" by Bethesda, but ZeniMax (Bethesda's parent company) bought the studio that made it then published it under Bethesda's name. (Like, I'm explaining this terribly, but Bethesda has two separate entities, one that develops games (that made TESIII-V and Fallout 3) and one that just publishes games - the later published Dishonored but Bethesda itself did not make the game.) The general idea (I think) is that Fallout 4 is being made by BGS (the developers). It would make sense for it to be in the works (though idk wtf BGS has been doing for the past three years, Skyrim DLC aside), but there's nothing technically stopping Bethesda (the publishers) from announcing a whole bunch of games at once. Dishonored 2 being in the works doesn't mean that Fallout 4 isn't being worked on (though Fallout 4 being worked on would likely mean the next TES game is farther away since these two are being made by the same people.) I'd like to be hopeful and say that the abnormally long silence among BGS (in comparison to their previous release schedule) means that they're likely bringing some big changes to the next game they'll release (instead of every BGS game + FNV being a rehash of the previous one with a slightly updated engine), but it's very possible the next fallout will just be "Oh, we made Skyrim with guns, and slightly better." And then people will buy it anyway because it's still decent entertainment and everybody gave up on wishing for a better RPG at this point.

I'd prefer to keep the sleepers/scanners in the exact configuration they're in now. They have free spaces all around them, which eliminates traffic jams, and they don't look like crap.

One solution would be to switch the scanners to the right side, and rework the tables/consoles on the other side so there can be a door in the middle. I figured the big table would be used to put people's gear, or random med supplies but gear only ever gets dropped when someone goes into cryo, and people manage to keep all their medical junk on themselves most of the time.

I personally don't really care, but if that's the case, why does the brig have its own morgue trays?

Going to need some context of what happened before that. That is probably going to be the main proof of why your demotion was justified or not. Do you have logs of what you said beforehand?

I thought this was a given, knowing how much Bethesda loves sequels (and seeing as Fallout and TES are their two main franchises.) What perplexes me is that there was a 3-year delay between the release of Morrowind and Oblivion, 2-year delay between the release of Oblivion and Fallout 3, and 3-year delay between the release of Fallout 3 and Skyrim. It's been three years and a half since Skyrim's release, and aside from the customary expansion packs, we haven't really heard anything from BGS themselves. It might partially be due to the release of TES online, but a quick search reveals that even that was developed by Zenimax, not Bethesda themselves. I've been a huge fangirl of Morrowind ever since its release, and while I haven't really been happy with Bethesda games as of late, they've tried to address a lot of criticism in Skyrim, which leaves me with some decent hopes for their next release.

As much as there can be a multitude of ways to exploit them (all of which apply to the rest of the crew as well), you can't deny that by nature, blueshields are an extra obstacle for antags - an armed and paranoid one. And that's especially bad for solo traitors. Oh, one suggestion, if the proposition actually goes live for trial: Only give them lethal weaponry. Yes, at this point, you might be going "Frances, wtf", but the reason for that suggestion is very simple; it's the same precept, in fact, that exists behind the detective's equipment. See, one thing I often hear of conceal carry owners irl is that if you conceal carry, you must adopt the mentality that you will willingly lose every fight you risk getting involved in. You won't step in other people's business, you'll let assholes be assholes to you, and you'll always back off when people start to push you around. The reason for that is that you want to avoid fights, because by default every fight with a conceal carry owner is a fight with a gun in it. And if you have a gun, you can't risk someone taking it from you and doing something even more dangerous - thus you want to refrain from getting involved in confrontations as much as possible, as the chances that you'll have to use your gun are quite high. Following me so far? This can extend to blueshields, especially seeing as they should be whitelisted (and thus generally reasonable). If if we want to make sure they're not there to act as a badass personal security force, but as an actual protective detail, it's best not to give them the tools to get involved in common squabbles. Make it clear they're there for heavy-duty protection, and nothing else.

This is what bugs me. It's hard enough to antag as it is, and one mark of a good antag (imo) has always been one's ability not to alarm the station until necessary in order to minimize direct confrontation and bloodshed. This is a position that exists by default to validhunt. You're not there to assist the crew. You're there to evaluate possible threats and protect command from them. People are on edge enough as it is already, having a person whose sole job is to be suspicious simply seems like it would make antags' job a living hell.

I sadly do not see many situations where a player would get the chance to build and customize a full-auto ballistic firearm. Like, outside of maybe ERT. And ERT don't have time to think about naming their weapons cause they're meant to equip themselves quickly and rush into action (And they take enough time to get ready as it already is.) Much like the previous thread that suggested we expend our arsenal with more (real-life) weapons, this seems like a lot of work for little payoff.

Unathi are easy to subdue. If they keep escaping, you put them in a welded locker or a straightjacket. Then they can't even escape anymore, and look twice as ridiculous as any other prisoner.

Are we certain about that? In my experience the brig is more often undercrowded than overcrowded. I can see it being a problem during nuke where you have 5 officers + 2 blueshields, but during 40+ people rounds, it can be very hard to keep even 2-3 officers around after the one hour mark with all five slots taken.

I haven't really seen heads of staff go rambo (besides the HoS acting like a hero to save other heads, which makes 100% sense imo as they do security duties, while interacting with command a lot. They're the closest thing to a blueshield we should have.) Isn't this a position that would incite its players (the blueshield players) to rambo? Because there's a lot less check and balance available. As a sec officer, you need to look out for the entire crew while being a small part of a larger force and trying to maintain order. Blueshields pretty much have the right (and the equipment) to go apeshit to protect command staff.

Every story I've heard regarding blueshields involved them being complete fucking tools. I might be coming in with a bias, but I'm going to need some convincing on this one. What purpose do blueshields serve, IC and OOC-wise, besides wearing sunglasses and tacgear, carrying around revolvers at all times, and looking 20% cooler than the rest of security? Because that calls very much to a specific kind of player. And this is a kind of player I believe most of us would rather not see in such a position.

I believe the position of the ship was given out publicly by the operatives as they announced their arrival. Again, if you know it's nuke, there's a difference between roleplaying "having a bad feeling about these newcomers" and sending someone to actively seek out and investigate their ship, because we know how the latter ends.

I never realized before, but the one thing geneticists are severely lacking in is direction. It is obvious it is a rather advanced field, and it currently doesn't make more sense for them to be on a plasma research station. This seems exactly like the kind of change we need for people to obtain a very promising avenue in which to develop serious geneticist characters.

Except these are both positions that one can take over when the other isn't around. MDs and surgeons even have the same access as they're title variants of the same job. Err, anyway. The thing about MDs doing surgery and Captains doing the HoP's work actually got me thinking that the rest of these departments tend to have no issues with people filling in for various jobs until the personnel for these jobs becomes available. I've also rarely seen the detective fuck off with the CSI kit (unless they were in the process of using it, in which case it makes perfect sense), but IANAFT (I Am Not A Forensics Tech), so I can't really speak for how much of an annoyance this actually is or not.

I do think the detective should be able to access the CSI's equipment if needed. I don't think they should be able to grab it without informing anyone then simply disappear. Removing their access would ensure that they'd have to get the assistance of the HoS, AI, or an engineer to get the kit, one of which should hopefully be around to give it to them should the situation call for it.

Hm, I haven't heard about this. What was the discussion?

Someone suggested IPCs should act drunk after ion storms. That would probably be easier to code (and handle ICly) than a whole bunch of viruses, no?