Kaed

The concept of power creep is a series of buffs over time to a game or setting mechanic that eventually makes the result completely unrecognizable from the original source. Take most shonen animes for instance. The abilities of characters at the beginning of the series are generally small and paltry compared to how they are 100+ episodes in. Where once they struggled to perform basic ninja jutsu, they are now blasting away forest and whatever. In this case, the power creep takes the form of social status changes, one after the other, all positive with nothing to counterbalance them. Ergo, social power creep

I suggested something along these lines before, and it was shot down. I"m glad to see such positive feedback now. Please do this.

Hello I'm Kaed, and I'm here to complain about IPCs again. Today we're going to talk about a special kind of power creep that as far as I can tell only exists on this server, but I also don't play on other servers, so what do I know. Let's call it 'social creep'. When I first rejoined the server again over a year back after a several year hiatus from playing SS13, IPCs were one of the most mechanically strong races in the game. I think they still are. You can't stun them by normal means except flashes (which can be hard to aim in combat), they're immune to pain, and while some of them might be slow, those ones are very tough too. Usually people here interject that Ion rifles and emps are their weakness but those generally aren't available under standard circumstances, and only get brought out specifically to counter robots, and there is only one Ion rifle in normal play. However, they also were the most socially maligned race on the server. Skrell and unathi both generally hate robots, and there was in-lore incentive for others to treat them like objects. Laws didn't really protect them very much, and they were sharply limited from important roles. This is what I would consider a 'social' debuff, something that made playing an IPC harder in a way that wasn't strictly mechanical. Then our lore team started running antagonistic week-long events, which was good. It was good because it made something interesting happen, and offered tangible benefits for the playerbase, something that would upset the status quo. In particular, there was an event that as far as I remember (I might be off on this, it was a long time ago) allowed IPCs a choice between being allowed to have head positions and being considered people and thus it being murder to kill them. They chose to become heads, and that created an interesting new dynamic on the station as a result of the event to shake up the social meta. Except that it wasn't just something that upset the status quo, it BECAME the new status quo. It was never treated as a temporary social buff to IPC players, a political favor that could be tossed aside when it was no longer convenient, it was just how things are going to be now, and as time went on and people who play IPC heads got settled into their new characters, it became harder and harder to justify taking it away from them. And at some point, the concept of 'free IPCs' was also introduced, which just sort of tacked on the second alternative of the event rewards without anyone having to do anything that I'm aware of? Now, IPC's are basically humans as far as any social status goes. There's a special 'automacide' charge that is just murder for free IPCs, and while you can 'opt in' to being a non-free IPC if you want, there is zero oversight on it, there isn't even a mechanic that labels an IPC as free. It's just a thing that is tacked onto their records if they can remember to do that, and there is no way for a casual bystander to know if the robot they are looking at is free or not. The only thing that possibly makes things hard for them is the whole untagged shell pretending to be a human scenario, but that's so hard to pull about feasibly and so fiercely protected against metagame that it is sadly rare that it ever generates negative roleplay. This social creep is getting out of hand. As an unathi main, half of my racial tension is shitting on robots, and the direction of the server is slowly taking that away as it socially coddles them more and more. Robots walk up to unathi to have casual conversations now, unafraid of being roughed up or cursed at, and the unathi who does is subject to an IR or security response. If you can't bring yourself to take away some of these already present social buffs to IPCs, then I'm asking - BEGGING - the lore team to please do SOMETHING that shits on the IPCs a little. Something that encourages the playerbase to treat them as something different or lesser from humans with stronger metal parts. I remember there once being an event where unathi were forced to register loyalty oaths to Nanotrasen due to a war, and it made people briefly mistrustful of their unathi coworkers. It was a great temporary change in the status quo that drove roleplay in a new direction, but didn't stick around forever. That was how the IPC heads thing should have been, and there should have been some later on difficulty that caused it to be difficult for IPCs who there for the event to stay heads, and even harder for ones who weren't active at the time of the event to just appear and become heads.

Please. Even from looking at the last 4 pages of archived IPC applications, I can tell that the majority of IPC applications that are even are due to considerations outside of the application itself (they are a new player, or have a history of powergaming). There were only two I could find that even had the contents of the application as a major sticking point for the rejection. Either way, I still think a warden bot would be good.

I take it all back, this is a terrible idea and we shouldn't do it.

Why?

I really do like this idea of kind of an embassy on station, but there will only be one per round I assume? Also yeah there better be an unathi embassy that we can hide in :v Also no loyalty implant. It makes no sense for an external force to be loyalty implanted.

I would like to see something that takes the place of security borgs in a sort of assisting role, like Delta above showed... but probably not that goofy. I don't think it's strickly fair to take borgs out of security entirely, some people want to be cyborgs that are involved in antagonist activities, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to give them an option to help out in the security department in a non-officer fashion. So... more like a... warden bot whose job is to oversee the brig and ensure the safety/security of prisoners rather than hunt down and detain criminals. It would have some low-tier medical and light suppression capabilities, like a flash or maybe pepper spray, but definitely not tasers and batons, or handcuffs. The corporate regulations book attachment and the sec HUD overlay would be good too. Maybe some soap cause the brig can get messy. Because security borgs aren't the only problems with security right now. It's not always there, but there's a distinct set of security behaviors that make being a prisoner extremely unappealing for players. Generally speaking, the wardens, unless they are a good one, are neglectful and offer prisoners little in the way of interactions, and if it isn't warden neglect, it's the Hovering Officer Syndrome. You know what I'm talking about. The dangerous antagonist is thrown into solitary, and has an officer stand outside their cell with a laser rifle in their hand for the rest of the round, valid-eyes hungry for a reason to shoot them. Having the role of security borgs shifted to overseeing prisoners in their captivity would free up Wardens to do other things for part of their time without leaving the prisoners alone and bored and stop giving officers a reason to stop their normal duties to play pretend valids-warden. Also, cyborg players are almost universally friendlier than security players are, especially if you killed a few people, and they're still lawed to do what the prisoners want, within limits of reason (like not letting them out early just because they ordered it)

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/6727 Started.

Byond key: Kaedwuff Discord key: Menthe Character Name: Wolf Mini Item name: Wolf Mini Edition: Personal AI Companion Custom Chassis Overlay Item function(s): A custom pAI chassis skin Item description: A more dog-themed chassis for use with the Wolf Mini pAI personality. Item appearance: (These are just previews, full DMI file below. Thanks to smallgreenant for sprites!) Why is your character bringing this item to work? Tired of the same old cats, rats, and rabbits cluttering up the personal AI landscape? Bored of the generic maintenance-drone styled defaults? Wondering whatever happened to Man's Best Friend in these high-tech days of phoron and robots? Take a trip back to the wilder side, with the new Wolf Mini Custom Companion skin! Cynodine Industries is not legally responsible for increased levels of awoo in the local environment caused by customers selecting this companion model. How did your character obtain this item, and what value does this item have to your character? The first in an experimental line of synthetic operating system mods designed to go with the increasingly popular - and sometimes, controversial - Wolf AI personality skin. A versatile synthetic personality skin, the Wolf-style AI personality overlay is currently sold in three models, - Wolf, intended for high-security stationwide integrated personalities, Wolf Mobile, the more cost effective personality overlay suited for industrial robotics use, and Wolf Mini, the most simple and easy to obtain variant of the Wolf line, often installed on personal AI companions. Cynodine Electronics is pleased to finally release a chassis model to go with the increasingly popular Wolf Mini companion product! Made exclusively for pairing with the Wolf Mini personal AI personality, this custom chassis will make you the talk of your friends and coworkers. Available for purchase in personal consumer use or by for general company use by employees via contract, get your copy of this wildly popular new chassis skin today! Custom chassis product is reserved proprietary property of Cynodine Electronics. Use outside of pairing with the Wolf Mini personality skin is strictly prohibited by law. How will you use this to better interact with crew and/or stimulate RP? It's long been a disappointment to me that there is no appropriate pAI skin for use with my personal flavor of AI personality. So I want to add one! No longer will Wolf Mini be forced to be a mouse or drone. Sprites: WolfMini.dmi Additional Comments: I spoke to alberyk about pAI custom skins, and he said it would 'require some extra code, but it is not hard'. So, I made this application!

Disgusting. I'll do it.

Why did the cargo techs wear booger colored shirts

Once again, I don't care how funny or not they are, my only relevant qualifier for this requested change is that the titles actually be indicative of the PR's contents. My personal grouchiness is not relevant here to the discussion. For example, "Ian Comes Home" is a recent PR title about switching the corgi plush in the HoP with Ian. It's certainly not that funny to me but it definitely tells you about the thread. "Removes CCIA" however, is a PR about changing the recording devices CCIA use, and is a misleading title that's only being used because 'removes X' is currently a meme in the PR subculture, presumably since the "Removes Skrell" PR thread happened months back. "Removes Xenos", however, certainly is actually removing Xenos, so that seems fine to me!

Yep, that's definitely the subject of this thread and not a slippery slope argument alongside guilt by association. Thank you for taking the time to read my thread and responding, delta. I'm not asking for total seriousness, just titles that actually tell us what the PR is about instead of eye-catching irrelevant memes.

Funny titles are one thing, misleading titles are another entirely. You can make jokes without actually lying about what your PR is about to get attention.

I've noticed a trend lately where people put joke titles on PRs that are entirely misleading about the contents of the PR, like 'Removes X" when actually it's just a modification of said thing in some fashion. I'd like it it we injected a little bit more professionalism in PR documentation on out github, if that's not too much to ask, and have PRs actually labelled for what they do rather than the latest eye catching meme.

That's reasonable, and brings me back to my original point, then - a separate charge for cargo items which aren't appropriate in the workplace, but in this case also carries over to actual traitor items that aren't weapons. Split the charges into 'contraband' (which becomes a minor severity charge worth like 3-5 minutes or a fine plus confiscation) and "illegal armaments" or some other more appealing name for people carrying guns and stuff, which replaces the generic 15 minute 'contraband' charge as we have now. However, stacking 'theft' and 'contraband' on each other for having a smoke grenade is arbitrary and silly, we should also have a policy about only one charge per specific object/item of offense. You can't charge someone for stealing something that also is contraband because that's two charges on one illegal item, just pick the more severe one. But you can additionally charge them for breaking into cargo to get it, because that's a separate offense item. But I still don't think it makes sense for there to be an IC excuse that items aren't illegal when they are in the warehouse but outside of it, they are. The items should just NOT BE ILLEGAL but the illegality should be in using them to PERFORM illegal acts. You also can't treat guns in research as the same situation as cargo. The guns are part of their actual job, they are supposed to research things, which includes weapons. Cargo techs have no reason to acquire radio jammers or smoke grenades, if they are illegal items, but they're fun toys to be put in the game as random spawns, so it would be kind of unfun to remove them.

That's still not a logical reason why illegal items aren't illegal while in the storage room, and is largely irrelevant to the argument. "Weird shit" doesn't become legal because it's laying in a storage closet if it's normally illegal.

This is a mechanics and roleplay disconnect that is not acceptable to me. It exists as a stopgap to excuse the random spawns allowing 'illegal' items to spawn in the cargo bay. They can add amusing interactions to non-antagonist interactions, so I agree that them being in the spawn list is fine, but 'contraband' by definition indicates something smuggled into the station illegally. If it was smuggled illegally into the cargo storage room before the shift starts, why is it not illegal while it's in there? As you've said, the only reason the regulation exists is to stop big bad sec from beating up cargo techs and performing search and seizures of cargo to confiscate the fun stuff from it. But that's supposed to be their JOB, and they're being prevented from it by a flimsy, nonsensical regulation that exists solely for OOC reasons. There are no items that spawn in the cargo warehouse that are overtly dangerous (i.e. guns or weapons), but some of them can be used to FACILITATE dangerous behavior, so shouldn't necessarily be considered immediately illegal and worthy of confiscation. So, alternatively, you could rework the concept of 'contraband' to be a little more complicated than 'is on OOC antag item list unga bunga', and have officers take people in for questioning when they have items that clearly aren't acceptable to be using, because they are disruptive to the workplace. Example: Where did they get this radio jammer? From the cargo bay, they say? Well, that's theft. Are they a cargo team member? If no then that's also trespassing. Did they use it for an assault? That's also a charge. Can they not adequately explain where they got it, or has cargo denied that item was part of the stock they took earlier that shift? THAT'S contraband, and raises more questions about how they snuck it into the station.

*rolls eyes* I do not think that anything coming out of the warehouse should be considered 'contraband'. If we're going to let low level 'antagonistic' items (such as smoke grenades or radio jammers) spawn there, and somehow be immune to being considered illegal while they're in there, they should not magically become illegal the moment they exit the warehouse. If you steal an officer's baton from security, it is considered theft, not contraband (and officers who try and add theft and contraband together for this are common enough, but that's a separate issue). The same logic should exist here with the warehouse. Maybe we don't need a new charge for warehouse misappropriation, but we should at least institute some sort of policy revision that says taking a smoke grenade from the warehouse doesn't fall under the same punishment as being found with an illegal revolver on your person, and consider it theft of station property rather than contraband.

Staff members can follow people inside there if they need to.

Right now, cargo techs who take stuff out of cargo storage are generally slapped with a i212 Contraband charge. This charge was originally created for the purpose of people in possession of illegal or dangerous objects, and is mostly used for lack of a more relevant sentence. It carries a 15 minute sentence, or 20 if they pair it up with hooliganism (which they usually do) which is extremely excessive for someone who decided to, say, throw a smoke or metal foam grenade in the hallway. More importantly, regulations say that i2 charges cannot simply be fined, forcing them to serve brig time in excess of actual Assault (i208 is 15 minutes and almost never paired with hooliganism unlike cargo bay 'contraband') charges, which should be a far more serious. So I propose we create a special charge (i119?) that is just for people who are running around playing with toys from cargo, which carries a much shorter sentence and possibility of a simple fine.

Can you alter the sprites so people stop making these dumb jokes?

I'd rather not. It doesn't fit well with the monster theme.

I don't know, maybe for the other two and a half hours or more that they got to be command members? What exactly obligates them to have the privilege to delay the round end at the expense of everyone else?