Frances

This is actually a good point to some extent. People care a lot more when incidents happen to people they personally know. People generally do not when it happens to random strangers, as there are far too many dying strangers in this game for us to pretend to care about all of them. Do people already care about others dying when they want to? Yes. Would people have more opportunities, or chances to care about death if cloning was removed, yes. Would they seize these opportunities? That remains to be determined. I've added this concern to my list as it is something I had completely overlooked.

I believe the general consensus among people who spoke against cloning is that it could remain in the lore, but simply off-station, and would generally be an uncommon or unpopular practice. I can't speak for the rest, but the deadliness of collapsed lungs is currently a bug. I've seen it used as an argument in various suggestions/changes, and we should keep in mind they will be far less lethal as soon as that particular issue gets sorted out. As for the rest, wouldn't it be better to let people who actually make frequent use of cloning to speak for themselves, rather than try to speak on their behalf? Wouldn't every death being more impactful be a more welcome addition to the RP environment of the server than the occasional cloning freakout? As for the part about people learning from their mistakes, it's not like these people aren't able to play again the next round (and if you made a mistake big enough to cause your death, wellllll.) What really needs to be considered is simply the fact that they'd have to wait out until the next round to play their character again, plain and simple.

Rather than reply to all of these examples individually, I'd like to ask you what your personal experiences with dying have been like. Have you gotten cloned a lot due to events like these, or are they only things you have witnessed upon others? (I'll also add that any scenario resulting in large-scale dying - bombs, bloodthirsty syndies, russians, viruses that kill everyone - will rarely result in cloning.)

This would be really helpful. I don't really care what the icons look like, anything would be better than client tabs and system boxes. The icons can be resprited later if anyone wants to bother.

ICly, cloning has a chance of failure (from ghosts not coming back to their bodies or refusing to be cloned). Yet that already seems to have little impact on how people perceive death - due to this reason, I find it hard to believe making the cloning process harder would achieve much besides annoying people who want to be cloned. Not really, because people never get borged on death. It's not something people think of, borgings only tend to happen on valid participants or antags (never seen an antag being borged on Aurora though), and being turned into a borg changes the personality of the character entirely in most cases, thus making it difficult to compare to cloning. In the particular bit you quoted there, I was simply expressing disappointment at K0NFL1QT providing no explanation whatsoever for his opposition to the idea.

Just to make sure we're on the same page, are you saying deaths won't be more meaningful for the characters risking death themselves, or for the other characters witnessing someone's death?

Except it's hard to design anything "difficult" to do in SS13. Either it's difficult until you learn how to do it and after that it's an absolute breeze, or it's difficult enough (low success chance, materials are hard to get) that it would still exist ICly/OOCly to make death feel "cheap", while having little to no gameplay impact (people don't even get to benefit from it). :/

I am not proposing a replacement. I am proposing a removal of cloning altogether. Do people find the dying rate of patients in medbay too high to justify this? I don't see people die in medbay a lot (unless they get killed by the bugged collapsed lungs).

People are dying in droves, yes. But even from a HRP standpoint, how many of those people do get cloned, and are glad they got cloned simply because their death was stupid and they would've liked to keep playing in the round? I won't say it ever happens (because it does), but outside of the times where you die as collateral to antags (in which case your chances of being cloned are relatively lower than usual due to antag shenanigans), you shouldn't die randomly a lot. Like, yes, a random virus kills you, or it's your first time playing in engineering and you release all the plasma/walk into the singulo. But after a year of playing, I can count on one hand the number of times I've died to [utter bullshit]. In general, if you play in a manner that requires daily cloning for you to be able to simply enjoy HRP, you're probably doing something wrong. This sounds more like a lore/new mechanic suggestion than anything else. Allowing characters to continue their round after dying in other ways (short of borging) does not address the problem this suggestion seeks to corner.

okay i actually want to be added now

Alright. Big gameplay change, with little effort required to implement (just remove cloning machines from the map and make it so you can't build them) - and since this is something that has been discussed several times over the past year, it would be nice to reach some sort of consensus, and proceed with implementation if people are receptive to the suggestion. Anyway, yes. Cloning. Its main purpose is to bring people back into the round once they've died. Like most other SS13 features, it was brought on as a fun gimmick in the original game (I actually don't know the full history), and was eventually adapted to Heavy-RP. However, here is my (and what used to be several others') issue with cloning on HRP: it removes almost entirely the climax surrounding the death of a character. A person dies? They get cloned. You die? You get cloned. Even murderous antagonists have to go to extra lengths to ensure their targets can't get cloned, and when they succeed at destroying someone's body, the reaction isn't "oh, god, that person is dead" but "that person is dead and we can't even clone them!" Sometimes, it feels like the game doesn't feature "dying", it features "being cloned". People are good at roleplaying a fear of death in living characters, but all the drama and delicious roleplay surrounding death itself is quasi-nonexistent. You do get some cool stuff such as the occasional CMD-reveal or clone angst, but as a whole, death is no big deal - you'll basically be back to work within 30 minutes. What sort of pros and cons would we get from removing cloning? Let's look at them: Pros -Saving someone from death acquires more meaning for others - there is an even bigger meaning and sense of urgency in saving critical patients, getting people to safety when they are wounded, and so on. Cause if you fail, you fail for good. -Death-heavy rounds are more dramatic - while when people currently die in droves most already don't get cloned, there would no longer be a notion that these people can be cloned or recovered later. They're just, gone, forever. -Deaths are more impactful. As an antag, killing the HoS would really send a message to the station that you are an unstoppable force hell-bent on destruction. -It opens up a lot of opportunities for death/grieving RP. Hold funerals and memorial services! Most of the emotions would be focused on the person having actually died, rather than "well, we should see if we can clone them." -It spares us from the awkward roleplay of "my coworker just got killed brutally and returned to work within 30 minutes and now I gotta act like nothing happened." -It's more about getting rid of the "idea" cloning brings than getting rid of cloning alone. Even if most people that die in a round don't get cloned, death doesn't feel final. It'd be a lot cooler if it did. -Did I already mention people fucking die? Yesssssss. How cool is that? Cons -Dying for any reason would prevent you from playing your character again during that round. -Characters' deaths could no longer be kept canon without being final. -Cloning-related RP would no longer be possible on station (cloning could be kept in the lore as something more expensive/uncommon to preserve backstories involving clones). -Geneticists would lose a (small) part of their jobs. -People might simply not care about deaths anyway should they choose not to, as they already ignore other of the frequent-but-grisly SS13 happenings. Overall, the biggest caveat that can't be circumvented is that if your character dies, they'd no longer be able to reintegrate the round. I personally feel like that's a small price to pay for the added realism of "permanent" (non-canon!) death, but I dislike being cloned as a whole and generally avoid it. What I'd like to know is what people who regularly get cloned and reintegrate the round think of all this. Is this something you'd be willing to sacrifice for the roleplaying advantages the removal of cloning would offer?

While the server has always given a relatively high amount of freedom to players in how they choose to roleplay their characters (and synthetics are among the characters with the widest variations in personalities), I sort of feel like as a whole, this incident shows an example of behavior we would not like to see from synthetics. Like... a BDSM cyborg? That tries to annoy people by playing with its rules to serve its personal interest? I've got nothing against people making all sorts of creepy, or annoying, or vaguely sexual robots, but putting all of it in the same package might be pushing the limit a little.

there is no way this could ever end badly

Wow, I guess Sue wasn't kidding. Someone really forgot to add a HoP spawn spot back into the map 9_9

There is nothing wrong with a 5% instagib chance, given how rarely the rune is used. It adds a small factor of randomness and can result in some funny or unexpected events (yes, people dying unexpectedly all the time is terrible. People dying unexpectedly once is hilarious.)

It depends on the reasons. The only deaf/mute retcons I've seen (that I can get behind, as well) are the ones where a deaf/mute character holding the title they were holding (sec officer, doctor/surgeon, etc) made little to no effective sense ICly. Also adding that I fully agree with Cargo Bob's post and that he's saying some good things. Integration will take some time, no matter what (that's natural), and it would be nice to see more perspectives of newer or less active players on the issue of the "closed community", because they're the ones facing the brunt of the issue here. Although I'm by no means a newcomer, I can say pretty comfortably that I /do/ struggle with integrating new characters, and I /don't/ feel like this is due to meta, but simply because of the natural process of making acquaintances being complicated. A few factors to consider are -Chances to meet the same characters *as* the same character in consecutive shifts are pretty low -Shifts are fairly short compared to IRL -There's often a ton of action, antag events, and non-canon round cutting RP short -Many characters tend to have a relatively short lifespan All in all, the opportunities between two people to socialize are much lower than in real life, where you'll be working with the same people all day, every day, hopefully without too many people trying to kill you. This is slightly offset by the inherent desire people have to roleplay and socialize (and by the ridiculous amount of downtime some departments get when the station isn't going to shit), but I can understand why many might encounter some difficulties without it being attributable to cliques or closed groups.

This is more a thread for quick bug reports, though. Maybe we should start another thread for general feedback/criticism?

Not to nitpick, but, wat? Basic-only on comms/when working makes sense - it's a reasonable rule OOCly, and makes sense ICly as tons of workplaces have language restrictions (for the same reasons, to facilitate communication and integration). But OOCly encouraging people not to play deaf/mutes would be like asking them not to play introverted/antisocial characters because they're harder for others to approach. Doesn't that fall into excessive character policing?

Well, to which extent do we want to force characters to be "ICly friendly"? There are some ideas I agree with, such as the bar being a recognized hub for meeting new people, but keep in mind cliques are to an extent part of regular office life. Trying to get people of another culture/species to stop speaking their language in public over an OOC concern might be a bit excessive.

Legitimate question: what exactly is Enkas trying to win, though? I was under the impression rules against cases of extreme ramboing were generally put in place to prevent about 90% of people playing hero when it's totally not called for, and frankly idiotic and/or detrimental to roleplay (case in point: nuke ops decide to take hostages among the science team - the science team all reacts by rushing the ops and trying to disarm them.) In this case, would you say the actions of Enkas' character created good roleplay, or not? And I'm mostly asking Shadowhunter, but this question goes out to everyone here.

I still maintain that the floor tiles should be a darker blue and not command-cyan. A quick mockup, for example. How it currently is: How I would envision it:

Why must the armory be directly connected to space? Like, I get what it does, but is there a reason why it must be an absolute requirement? In my first post about the armory I stated some reasons why it might be interesting to change it.

Okay, but why?

Right. I feel like I have a ton of things to say about the brig in general, so I'll try to organize my list a little. First are complaints/issues, in decreasing order of importance, then some big suggestions (that would require a rework of at least most of the rooms' placement. Then I'll close with some general remarks about our new brig. Complaints/Issues -Processing Is gone. Whudafuq? We sorta need processing. For things. Such as searching and questioning new prisoners without putting them in interrogation. -Warden's office The Warden's office isn't in a bad placement, but it's not well-planned. It should have a 2-tile window on the south wall, in front of the computers, so the warden can idle there, where they can see any prisoners coming in right away. Right now your view is kind of sub-optimal, because you don't see the lobby. (And give them a window onto the lobby desk? It shouldn't look terribly silly, and allow people manning the desk to communicate with the warden directly. Another thing is that the warden used to have two desks because one of them gave on the main hallway (accessible to everybody in sec), and one gave on the equipment room (only accessible to officers). So you could drop armory equipment there if you didn't want any random detective or IAA to grab them. Since both desks now give onto the same hallway (and are right next to each other), one of them is pretty useless. It'd be nice to reshuffle the gear and windows along the rightside wall so that the warden has a door they can use to get to the prisoners or the people in the lobby without losing sight of them (yes, it's just a few more steps, but the fact that there's a period of time where you can't see them/they can't see you is kinda awkward). The warden losing direct armory proximity isn't such a tragedy, imo. -The lockers room/equipment storage Feels really naked. Maybe move the lockers to either side, or simply reshuffle the way gear is arranged somehow? There's a big empty space on the top part that feels really awkward - and since it's not a very trafficked area, there /could/ be something in the middle there. -Interrogation Has moved to a 4x3, 2x3 layout (instead of 3x3, 3x3). I don't really understand the reason for this change (though maybe someone can explain it?) Both doors should be on the north side, both for the sake of uniformity (so you can move from one to the other quickly, if needed) and so people that want to move in/out of interrogation don't have to walk into a chair (that somebody may be sitting on). -Morgue trays in evidence lockup That's kinda creepy? And doesn't really make much logic (there's a morgue next door!) The station morgue is already a secure area, and forcing security to work with medbay is bound to have better results than having sec detain corpses in fuckoffville only to forget about them. Plus sec doesn't have an autopsy table anyway, so the lockup morgue is really redundant to the other one. -Permabrig The two air scrubbers are now /in/ perma. Place behind vending machines serving as makeshift "doors" that prevent them from being accessed by anyone without a wrench. I'm not sure if that was the system you guys came up with intentionally, but if so it has to be the most macgyverish solution to a mapping problem I've ever seen. -Derp, it's always been like that. -Insanity ward Is gone? Idk why. It was nice that it had its own set of straightjackets, muzzles/blindfolds, sleeptox, etc. That way if someone really insists on roleplaying an insane character you /can/ give them a bit of RP. -Shooting range Is also gone. It was a nice place to test weapons from science (or strap someone to the target stake to execute them by firing squad during a rev round). I don't really see why it couldn't be readded. Suggestions -Armory I'd actually like to see a brig design where the armory isn't open to space. There is pretty much one instance where the armory gets blasted from the outside, ever, and that's on nuke (and when antags try to replicate nuke, but I've never seen someone do something that clever here.) What it does is remove security from combat instantly (not bad), and brings the nuke ops a whole extra load of trouble as everyone starts ordering guns from cargo or make them from science (probably bad for the ops). Making the armory harder to access would actually force ops to storm the brig, which, you know, could be pretty cool. (Or end rounds terribly quickly. I'm not sure.) -Communal Brig This is something Bay (and a few other places) have, and it's pretty neat. Would require some major reorganization as well, but basically, all cells lead to a "main" area, a bit like perma, that all prisoners can access during their sentence. You get prisoner roleplay, prisoner fights (so you actually have a reason to put someone in isolation, or back in their cells!), and people can totally get caught intentionally committing crimes so they can get inside and shank their target who pissed off the syndicate. General Thoughts You guys aren't working with space as efficiently as you could, imo. Unless this was based off another layout (and some things were plainly forgotten), there's a lot of things that have been either squished down or are plainly missing (shooting range, processing, detective's office having direct access outside of the brig.) Some of these are minor (the detective thing), but some aren't (entire missing rooms). Some things feel like they were cut and pasted from another map without too much thought to form or function (armory access has two doors, one of them leads to the briefing room, but the other leads to a small hallway right next to it that is only connected to perma - the warden's office having two desks leading on the same hallway, and so on.) and some of the other rooms feel like they've simply been put in wherever they'd fit (well, only the HoS's office. But it used to look great, and now the cool round shape with all the windows is gone.) There's pretty much infinite space to extend northwards (and you can move the solars to the east, gaining a good 5 tiles), so you shouldn't be afraid to make the brig bigger. It'd really work fine.

-Kitchen counter shutters need to have their sprite rotated to be vertical --Fixed -Side Bar shutters face the same problem --Fixed -The Arrivals Security Checkpoint has red floor tiles rather than blue ones --Fixed -Brig briefing room binders should be blue, not red --Fixed -The green Central Hallway tiles around Medbay follow the layout of the old medbay (look at the map I sent for the newer layout) -Half of the Medbay's hallway has green tiling while the other half doesn't, plus some of it is placed weirdly --Done stuff, I'm not good at making things look good -Each Recovery Room bed should have a small lightbulb by the locker, as the tinted windows make them quite dark. --Fixed -Put the masks/gloves boxes in Chemistry inside of the chemistry wardrobe, and the boxes of pill bottles on the small individual table in medicine storage. The chemists' desks are already cluttered enough. --Swapped -Odin Sec tiles should be changed to blue while we're at it, to match airlocks. -Ian is missing from the HoP's office. --Fixed