Frances

I actually don't mind snowflake things as long as they're done well, and away from the eyes of the general population. You could pretend to roleplay a character who's secretly a demon or the reincarnation of Santa Claus for all I care, as long as this is not blatantly forced upon other players. Which is why I don't mind characters that are perma-syndie, as long as they abide by server rules, and don't meta/act out unless they're antags. The syndicate is a pretty cool part of our universe, and I don't see why we should restrict players from creating narratives exploring it if it doesn't harm anybody else. That said, I think dark, convoluted narrative should be done well, because otherwise they turn to cheesy and cliché real quick. And since the point of this thread (and general forum section) was to provide criticism, a few things: -Rose is a random ex-orphan/drug pusher turned security guard on a remote research station. Why does the Syndicate go through all the trouble of kidnapping her? She obviously seems like a problem person, is an unlikely candidate for advancement due to her past, and doesn't hold much power. -I would largely develop Rose's motivations for acting out. Whatever pushed her to turn her entire life around is something that should be central to her character. Whether that be because of feelings of abandonment, a desire for redemption, or a foolish and delusional quest for adventure and escapism that turned wrong, you should provide us with something. This is supposed to be the crux of your character, yet you say nothing about it other than "it happened". -Evading police & defending Hawk like an overprotective mom while acting like a total psycho and badass is definitely snowflakey. Having her be this successful at it does not make her a character that can hold an audience's interest. -So the syndicate kidnaps her and implants her, then NT saves her and rehires her (at that point, that's sorta like if you disappeared for months with ISIS, then got hired to work security for the FBI after escaping), and then she asks to work for the syndicate again and they say yes? The syndicate isn't idiotic, even if it were full of mad men looking to run a gambit, they probably wouldn't want the help of somebody that has such a convoluted history, or at least risk giving them anything of importance. I'd say to retcon the entire part about having her being kidnapped beforehand, have her gain knowledge of the syndicate through some other means, and provoke her earlier stress through some other event. -Have Rose and Hawk meet, or interact somehow. Even if you have to write stories, since it's not something you can really RP. Right now you have a sister protecting a brother who she never met, who thinks she is a crazy psycho and wants nothing to do with her. It feels like these two characters would inevitably drift apart, because nothing holds them to each other. Have them create some sort of dynamic. That's all I have.

I have played Planetside. I have seen this trailer. Amusingly enough, I just realized the two were related. See, this piece of video doesn't really do the game justice. Every game likes to show overhyped war footage in their trailers. The cool thing about Planetside is that it actually does more than 16v16 or 32v32 battle arenas. You have a continent. 8km x 8km. This is the game map. It is divided in territories, with three factions fighting on it. Factions have roughly a few hundred players fighting on each at any given time. You have infantry, ground vehicles, and air vehicles. That's pretty much it. The rest is for you to figure out what's the most efficient way to take the other two factions' territory, whether that be by grouping up in huge armies, strike teams, tank rushes, whatever. Oh, and there's actually four continents like that. This is where Planetside succeeds, in a way no other game has. The huge rushes of 50 soldiers with a column of 20 tanks, against an opposing force of an equal size? They're all player-controlled. There's a fuckton of missiles and explosions going on all around you, way more than in any other game - yep, all the chaos actually comes from players firing at something with intent. Hear the distant flak of an AA gun somewhere far away? You can be sure that's an actual player, firing at other player piloting actual airplanes. And all of these are not just common, or even daily occurrences. They're just the way the game is played. Planetside gives you a completely unparalleled sense of being part of something bigger. And yeah, it's pretty fun. Edit:

Welcome back.

The main reason why anybody but Skrell are allowed to be heads is because people in charge of lore want to be special snowflakes and have head aliens. Aliens are really not represented by our playerbase for what they are. Even with changes to Tajaran lore, there are too many Tajarans in positions of trust (medical, science, even security) and too few in low-importance jobs. Should people be allowed to do whatever they want? I don't know. Because that does mean 8-feet tall she-monsters with glowing eyes and pink anime cats. Super-special aliens are sort of a less terrible extension of that.

They have no business carrying these items in the first place - a fact which is clear, and I doubt giving them a belt would exactly encourage such behavior. Anyone can also carry most unauthorized items in their bag.

Instead of providing a bunch of (inconvenient) alternatives, can we explain why it's bad for the detective to have a security belt?

I don't really care about the "is scientifically accurate" bit. That's for you and lorepeople to figure out. (Though I have to say I am seeing some heaaaavy nitpicking regarding whether the squirrel would be radioactive or not. I'm issuing a reminder we've got races of anthro cats and lizards, and no one is raising any objections about how realistic/possible that is.) But as far as gameplay/immersion goes, I can say I've got no issue with it. Science is by definition full of wacky things, and for once this is one that isn't about to kill anyone, and doesn't try way too hard to look ridiculously badass. Totally fits in our universe, really. Scientists should have more of their own custom, wacky contraptions.

Okay, it seems there's an even deeper issue here we're missing. So allow me to refocus. Firstly, the IC reasons for this do not matter. We don't care about them. IC can be changed, rewritten, whatever. IC comes after gameplay. We also don't care about who has been doing what for how long. Good? Good. Now, moving on. Difficulty. What not giving each department all of their gear in one place does is create difficulty. Complexity. Think of a situation, in a film or a game. Our hero is on a spaceship, and there's a breach. They have to go retrieve a spacesuit - but - spacesuit storage is allll the way across the ship, forcing the hero to go through an entire trek of dangers and hazards. Alternatively: our hero happens to have a spacesuit on hand. They immediately proceed to save the day. Now, which one of these situations is the most interesting, from a narrative, /and/ gameplay perspective? The one where you actually spend time getting shit done, or the one where everything's done for you, you press a button, and then that's it? And I really hate this term, but this is what I'm going to call "forced" difficulty. And not the bad kind, like enemies having bigger health bars or your attacks doing less damage. This is the narrative, being constructed in a certain arbitrary way, that serves as an obstacle for our hero to overcome. Another example of this would be the armory. Why not give everyone the best guns right away? You can make up a bunch of IC excuses, such as safety reasons, that they could get lost (how often do you actually see a sec officer misplacing their taser?), or whatever else you can come up with. The fact is these reasons do not matter. What matters is that if you gave everyone the best guns right off the bat, all fights would be over right quick and it wouldn't give the antags a chance to spur conflict. (Oh, that guy has a lethal firearm? No need to retreat, let me shoot right back at them with my equally lethal firearm I was wise enough to equip for such a situation). These limits, again, are arbitrary. It's up to us, designers of the game (because I think the community as a whole has a say in how our game is designed), to decide where we want to add difficulty and where we don't. And so, I propose we turn this discussion into one about that. From a gameplay perspective, do we want to enforce a limit on hardsuit usage? As far as IC reasons, for now, let's go with the idea that EVA storage is hardsuit-armory. They're kept there for accountability, maintenance, and easy centralized access.

2, the unreachable z-axis centcom and all special areas are on.

We frankly don't care about that. ICly, not only is CentCom manned 24/7, but there would very likely be an emergency team ready to care for any critical wounded that get announced on a transfer/emergency shuttle. (And yeah, once you see your favorite bald assistant is dying from having been stabbed 37 times with a pen, you don't wait for them to present their space-passport, you get them the fuck through the checkpoint and to the hospital). Gameplay-wise, the rounds end after one minute so it doesn't really matter. And whenever they get extended, there would be somebody manning that checkpoint, so all of your wounded would get taken care of. Otherwise, having an infirmary in the docking arm makes as much sense as having a hospital connected to an airport terminal. When there's another hospital in the airport. At the end of the terminal. To hold RP-trials. Which only happened once ever, in my knowledge, but it was damn fun. So I wouldn't mind seeing another one sometime. (Plus, it'd be a good excuse to have a CentCom round, which is what the last trial was).

Oh, fantasy racism. How I love and hate it at the same time. Fantasy racism can actually be a good way to discuss actual race issues maturely, without having to directly bring discussions that are often heated and sensitive. Now, I'm not an expert on these issues, so I won't go into details other than by saying that fantasy racism can serve as a ground for dialogue, debate, and topic exploration (as well as serving as a tool to construct a greater narrative). What I hate in it is its seeming propensity for stagnancy - it often gets thrown in as part of a gameworld, and then goes completely ignored. For example, so many high fantasy settings have humans be racist against elves, or dwarves, or halflings or whatever - and then nothing gets done with it. It's just a tidbit of fluff that exists - maybe you're gonna see an elf being called names at some point, but it's rarely going to have any impact on the story. Which isn't terrible either. If your main complaint is that people aren't interested in seeing issues of race in fiction, then having them go underdeveloped and barely present doesn't leave much of an issue to be had. But I believe if there is potential for them to be explored maturely and intelligently, then they should be left in. We're not a hugbox. Our SS13 lore, without being overly edgy or grimdark, does present an average, everyday narrative which covers both good and bad. Yes, some people come here as a form of escapism. Does that mean we need to completely suppress racism because it might make some people feel uneasy? No. This is the one platform where these things can be discussed through an intermediate, and if we start to censor ourselves to shelter our users from the harsh realities of the real world, I believe we'll just be less-prepared to actually face them. Getting rid of all displays of racism does create a "friendlier" atmosphere for our game. But it doesn't get rid of actual race issues. In fact, the only thing it accomplishes is preventing people from familiarizing themselves with them in a safer and more forgiving context. And there's already a ton of games which feature no race issues whatsoever, because they're afraid of touching the race stick (or it's just not relevant to them). I'd rather have us keep being what we are - an environment open for all forms of mature discourse - than start policing ourselves and become yet another of these sugar bubbly games. I am totally for that. Not sure if anybody is in charge of IPC lore atm - though I suppose it'd be as easy as players banding together to create IPC rights movements, or something similar.

http://i.imgur.com/i4QlUi9.jpg Why? Because I could. No, but seriously. There's a few things I don't like about our current CentCom. It has its cool stuff, but one thing that always disappointed me is that the Odin is supposed to be this epically huge space station where shuttles from all over NT's Tau Ceti stations come to dock, yet it looks more like a dentist's office. Seriously, it's smaller than the Aurora. Now, we don't want to create a map that's actually bigger than the Aurora, that nobody will ever get to see. But I made a few basic additions to CentCom, and tried to rework it to give a sense of scale. A bigger, roomier design, which might not take up a lot more space, but evokes it. There's plazas. Wider hallways. Reception rooms. And elevator halls, because while you can't actually ride an elevator to another Z-level, you should damn well have the right to pretend to. Also, as Skull pointed out, having to walk through a restaurant to get from a shuttle to another was pretty silly. So we now have one docking terminal, clearly separated from the rest of the station by the processing checkpoint.

http://aurorastation.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=623 This thread has most of the relevant information. A future round is basically a round which happens an arbitrary amount of time in the future of the server's timeline (in our case, 20 years ahead). This allows people to experience how their characters (and others') have aged up, as well as play as their children, coming to take up their mantle on the station.

Wrong. There are people who powergame regardless of roundtype, for example by keeping a superpowered weapon on their person at all times, even during extended (there's always griefers or people you don't agree with to shoot). My point is, powergame isn't necessarily targeted at antags, but simply at being super-prepared for whatever crazy ss13 happenings will inevitably befall the station, regardless of what the initial situation is. So here's the big problem. This isn't an isolated issue - there's a lot of things people can do to essentially "take the initiative", that we could disallow or not (by making them against SOP or whatever). Building mechs, for example. There's nothing that prevents robotics from coordinating with a productive miner to create a Gygax for security - after all, resources are plentiful, and it'd be good for security to be "prepared", should the HoS allow it. However, the moment the same roboticist starts doing this every round, you end up with a security force that's equipped with a Gygax, every round. And that's, sort of not fun. (And don't tell me that this particular example requires a lot of conditions meeting that won't meet every round - that's not the point. The point is that other, similar examples can very well happen in practice.) So, the question is. All of these big things that bolster a department's effectiveness dramatically in a situation of crisis. Do we let them happen? Or do we forbid them outright? Because I can see them making sense from an IC standpoint, but they don't really generate any fun OOCly. It takes just one well-prepared and consistent person to remove most possibilities of conflict in a department. Give everyone in sec the most powerful weapons research can make, or distribute the contents of the armory "just in case". Make combat mechs for sec every round, create superpowered healing pills and stuff everyone in cryo - because we can make more clonexadone. Set up shield generators to protect the singularity, bolt the AI's core or vent it, put the captain's spare and every piece of dangerous equipment under lock and key until they're needed. These are all actions that make sense ICly, and increase the efficiency of a department. However, a lot of them are already against the rules, or prevented by SOP somehow. Do we know why they are? Where do we want to draw the line? Is moving med hardsuits from EVA to medbay different from all of that?

You're cherry-picking parts of my argument while ignoring the bigger point they support. It is powergaming. The gameplay state concerning hardsuits is that they should be left in EVA or their respective storage areas until needed. Here is a list of reasons why. 1. So people know where they are, and don't have to learn of their location every round depending on which CMO is on. CMO goes SSD or is unavailable during an emergency, and everyone is looking for the missing hardsuit? Bad. 2. So antags know where they are. EVA is by definition more open to the rest of the station than the storage room of medbay. If somebody wants to steal a hardsuit, or make hardsuits inaccessible (by raiding or disabling EVA), they won't be able to achieve their plans, or have a much greater difficulty doing so because medbay decided to be special. 3. Because keeping a hardsuit in medical makes you a special snowflake. There is a clear advantage to doing it (unless you're telling me there isn't, in which case please stop doing it for no reason and creating a non-issue), and having all the departments move their hardsuits to their own little corners of the station removes the purpose of EVA storage, which is centralization of a service and cross-department interaction. 4. Because it actually looks dumb, ICly. Hardsuits on a large, all-purpose station that have a lot of staff coming and going should be regulated, and not stuffed somewhere in a medbay locker (mostly for reason 1, but also because hardsuits are valuable, critical, and need to be easily accounted for). It's basically a breach of procedure, and not one command would easily overlook. You're not just here with your five buddies in an interstellar cargo ship that gets inspected once every 6 months - somebody will take notice and you will get in trouble for it. This is all obviously secondary to the real, gameplay-dependent reasons, but it does form an issue too. So no, it's actually not in the SOP at the moment. But that's more an oversight from the SOP than anything else - EVA storage is a secure area, and it should be obvious that you should not take things out of secure areas whose very purpose is to secure said things without good reason. Lastly, I have a question for you, in response to something you said. Why exactly is that powergaming, in your opinion?

There's two things here. 1. The hardsuits shouldn't be taken out of their regular storage unless they actually need to be used. There can be a ton of reasons for this ICly, such as safety reasons, actually knowing where they are (so you don't have to run after half of the CMOs that steal them and stuff them somewhere else), or that they need to be kept in the EVA environment so they can get cleaned or maintained. Doesn't really matter. What does matter is that from an OOC sense, taking them away from EVA to move them to your department /is/ powergaming. From a gameplay perspective, EVA exists for a reason - so that when a department other than engineering needs hardsuits, they go to EVA to get equipped. Having the hardsuit in medical does confer you an advantage, because whenever shit goes down, you've immediately got all your gear, and that's just unfair for other departments and antags, and doesn't create any interesting roleplay because there's no danger of going through the station to reach EVA, there's no possibility of being cut off through vented hallways. Medbay is already loaded and locked and ready to roll, look at these robust spacemen. 2. "If I did it only during a nuke round it would be powergaming, so I'm going to do it every round." No. There's two parts to powergaming. It's immersion-breaking and it's unfair. Trying to find a way to justify it ICly does not make it less unfair. And neither does claiming there's whatever disadvantages to your situation such as atmos fucking over the medbay storage room more often than EVA. Because in most situations there will be a clear advantage in having a hardsuit already prepped in med storage. Besides, I can't even understand it from an IC standpoint. If we wanted medbay to keep hardsuits in their department, we would've given them storage for it. There's probably no actual room for it in the storage room - do you really want to leave an expensive piece of equipment that could kill you at the slightest failure outside of its designated storage, and laying around haphazardly on a small counter piled up with other medical equipment?

omg, the christmas odysseus is there and that's sorta wonderful

I will be running future rounds during the evening of the 31st of December to the 1st of January, with a possible encore on the evening of the 1st. Happy New Year to all!

For me, somebody who plays a personifiable, yet average character. Samantha Mason and Imraj Brar come to mind as immediate examples (though there's many more I can think of, apologies for only naming these two). But the reason why I really like these characters is that they're average, yet recognizable. Unique, but not for something stupid, like being a super robust army man or a crazy scientist. Instead, they've got their own sets of strengths and flaws, minor details which, while unremarkable on their own, come together to create a believable complexity representative of life. There's two kinds of characters we see a the most. "Extreme" space dudes who are good at everything and super badass, and everyman characters who are so bland nobody remembers them. (The two people I've seen play everyman characters well are Rebel and Drew, these guys are champs at giving anything average a "local" flavor.) But people need to take more liberties in giving their characters "unique" traits that are believable. And that might mean stepping out of your comfort zone, because perhaps your perfect character isn't black or indian, or part of some religion you don't really know about, or 20 years older than you are. But if you can find a trait that'll add flavor to your character, and find a good groove to play with (an issue I see fairly often is a lot of people stick to younger characters because older characters have a limited dating pool, or just present foreign experiences to them), you'll end up with a /lot/ of roleplay opportunities, because people will appreciate your character and enjoy roleplaying with you. And your "perfect" character won't be remembered. But your "flawed" one will. Besides creating diversified characters, I always appreciate people who have a good sense of humor, and a general appreciation of the game. Good players don't need to be sociable (in fact, a lot of our good players have barely said anything in OOC), but they should be able to take things lightly, and recognize when something is an issue and when something is simply part of the round's flow. Basically, when you complain, you better make sure you know what you're complaining about. I don't mean to scare people away from complaining if they believe they have a reason for it (we exist to receive feedback and address it), but constantly hearing "wahhh the antag ruined my chair-rp" gets annoying after a while.

The problem is none of the current jobs in science provide enough gameplay to work as a standalone. Xenobiology is complex enough to warrant its own special category, but a telescientist would become bored incredibly quickly (have we even seen a telescience-specialized character?), and I think it's better to leave science open to most scientists than to demand a specific job access for each area (because few people will want to focus on a single, limited aspect of science). What does this do? Because a ton of confusing custom titles might not work best (scientist already works well as a catch-all), and I would rather trust people to police themselves in limiting their skills (and having the extra access if needed) than to enforce a restriction.

Not hostile. Maybe rightfully disgruntled, but complaint boards still mainly exist to fix things first and foremost, not just vent (yes, vent, but be clear about the issue). Anyway, no harm done.

That is being done (mutiny, that is). However, saying "people can't rp, so let's remove the rp from our rounds" is not a constructive suggestion.

I have to back up 1138 on this. Vague, nondescript complaints such as will be ignored. Frankly, they don't bring anything constructive to the thread, as they don't tell us anything about either what the issue is, or how you'd like to fix it.

Generally, if your character is getting criticized (and that criticism isn't coming from Sue), it means you're doing a good thing. People seem to be opposing Houssam Jawdat and Isilithai Oekaki(whatever) some, with the point of "they're assholes/not nice to people/evil space hitlers". Which, like, is nice. I get that characters who are kind to everyone get well-received (and not batshit insane, as a lot of chars end up falling in the latter category, being selectively nice to a few regulars and absolutely stupid towards anyone else), but characters who are mean, or tough, or questionable, are /not/ a bad thing. In fact, they're excellent. I don't know Covert and Jackboot that well, but I can say for a fact that these respective characters are vastly different from their own personalities - much more so than any other character I've seen them play before (but I might've missed a few). They both stepped out of a comfort zone set by familiarity to create something unique and different. And they did a good job. These characters are interesting, believable, and dynamic. I enjoy seeing them around (Giurifiglio is another, though he's also the closest we'll probably get to seeing a space nazi) and they bring something new to the rounds they're in.

Oh, yeah. Thread moved to off-topic as it is not SS13-related.