Kaed

As people have repeatedly been telling you this thread, it's not a mind controlling implant. I've said it. Sharp has said it. Stop treating the LI like it's a character derailing menace and take our advice on reacting appropriately to bad antag announcements instead of arguing for it to be removed.

So it looks like these two drugs were added in to combat certain traumas. On the surface level they are okay, they treat traumas related to hallucinations and pacifism. But this whole other aspect of them about them mysteriously making you pro or against Nanotrasen is frankly stupid. Even the names are clearly based off 'trasen' and 'syndi' as root words, which makes it seem really jokey. You don't inject people with a chemical that magically changes their viewpoint on a very specific conceptual notion like a company. They might become broadly against authority and get irrational or violent, or doped out and compliant because of the drugs, but that's different from laser-point specific company loyalty changes. Please remove this aspect of the drugs. We already have loyalty implants, and they are a complex technological device put in someone's brain that can be loosely justified because it's a precision, complex device, while this is frankly a magical potion that makes you love or hate Nanotrasen as a side effect of what it's supposed to do. People's brains don't have a Nanotrasen loyalty gland that can be chemically manipulated.

So, I haven't heard anything about 'truth serums' and 'anti nanotrasen chemicals', and if they were in fact added - especially the latter one - then I would personally resist the idea that a random chemical you create makes you for or against a conceptual notion such as a company, that is... that is not how brain chemistry works. There is no... 'Nanotrasen allegiance gland'... in people's brains that you can chemically stimulate with a compound. At least a loyalty implant can be justified as a complex electronic device that interacts with your neurological signals. And the other half of your argument is pretty much bunk too, because it relies on metaknowledge of something that might as well be a jokey meme at this point. No one knows Miranda Trasen is a ling, and even if she was, being a CEO doesn't mean you can just make mysterious decisions about your company to implant your people with a chip that you can't explain to anyone because it involves reasons tied to you being a space monster. These are just further mental gymnastics trying to justify a mindshield and in the end, they're still reliant on the specific confirmed existence of an antagonist type. It is literally easier to on people's brains and the stability of the narrative keep loyalty implants the way they are instead of creating these mountains of confusing subversions and executive lies (who created the tech? Not-Miranda pull it out of her butt? How is she explaining distributing it?) for no other reason than it gets rid of loyalty implants because you don't care for them conceptually.

... No, they don't. "You need to remain loyal to NT, we are your employer, ignore that thought that says to murder the CMO because she is also an NT employee." is not in any way the same as "This thing protects you from mental attacks telling you to murder the CMO, nevermind how we even knew to install this ahead of time because vampires aren't real.". There is an entire shift in context involved.

[mention]Sharp[/mention][mention]LordFowl[/mention] I disliked the mindshield implants when they were suggested and I still dislike them as a concept. It dispenses with the idea that the company is trying to ensure the loyalty of their important employees and it has the side benefit of helping against the monsters with mind fuckery, and instead acknowledges that there is a reason you might need to protect the minds of high ranking officials from something that you are not allowed to acknowledge the existence of without metagaming. It is my opinion that people who complain about loyalty implants derailing their character either don't fully understand the expectations they have for being an implanted individual (and think they are supposed to be NT's mind slaves) or created a character who is not actually loyal to NT in the proper fashion and are salty when they are pushed to act in a manner their character should already have been acting by playing in an implanted role. I'm also a firm believer in the notion that character's personalities and behaviors are not set in stone and that creating situations that cause a paradigm shift are interesting, and create a situation of realism. People don't have a preprogrammed personality set that they don't diverge from, the circumstances of their surroundings bring out new aspects of a personality that would never have surfaced before. People who whine that mind affecting antags or loyalty implant obligations 'ruin their character' are missing the point of exploring a new aspect of how their character can interact with the world around them. That's what roleplaying is, you explore how a role would react to a scenario, even if the scenario is that Nar'sie brainfucked you into submission. Roll with the punches, try a new thing. Be insane and gibbering if you must from this, if you think your character would never suddenly be cool with the cult under normal circumstances.

I actually have current plans to implement food temperature coding and staleness. I'll basically just have to rewrite the code if you do this.

Hey, this is a great time for my to nudge forward the New Plant Sprites I started work on in Ancient Times of Yore. https://imgur.com/a/k3HNm Maybe while we're at it, we can also revise the whole awful plant system to not have procedurally generated names and use actual colored sprites, instead of grayscale generic blobs with a color overlay Wouldn't that be nice. Take a look, this is what our current botany draws off of! Isn't it awful?

No, I don't think we should put player maximums on any antagonist type. This would just cause the solo antagonists, which are some of my favorite antagonists, to just not happen if there are enough players. This is not a problem with the antagonist types, and if the player behind the wizard or ninja can't hack it, that's on *them* not the existence of the antagonist during high-pop. People who opt into playing an antagonist are expected to *try* to make it fun for everyone, but they're under no obligation to actually succeed. Nor are players obligated to get only round types where there are enough antags that everyone can participate in it. Chances are that during high population rounds, some people are going to get left out. It happens, even if the round type is crossfire. I wouldn't be against extra antagonists being added, but I think that should be something for admin fiat to decide. Some people will WANT to play the classical lone ninja/wizard, and adding another one automatically just to shake things up in high pop denies them that opportunity and may create a blander experience for everyone. Wizards are usually interesting *because* they are unique. If you have two of them, one of them is going to get the spotlight, or neither of them are.

I don't see it like you do at all. I don't really see why you think 'no one would accept an implant realistically for a job'. Are you joking? People allow all sorts of things to be done to themselves for a job that makes themselves miserable, even in real life. Maybe you would never accept a thought altering implant, but you're not everyone else, and when you're working for a super-corporation, expect some mildly sketchy stuff. Absolute power corrupts etc etc. You call it a restriction, I see it more as a block against the people on the station with the most power deciding to be psychos because an antagonist round or some stupid thing. The loyalty implant only really exists as a 'you can't antag' sticker, except in rev rounds, where apparently that is waived in favor of lol memes, or something. Captains are empowered to have absolute authority. They can literally order you to murder a helpless captive and you have to do it - you can report them afterwards, but you are expected to execute the prisoner on the spot if the captain tells you to, regardless of any regulations. A person in a role like that can't be left entirely up to player whims, because players tend to make shitty decisions against the nature of their position if they are given full freedom and/or an antagonist waiver.

Okay, having read your post again, I see what you mean, but I'm a little perplexed. Are you saying that someone recently made a round where there was a battle royale to kill each other via a fake centcomm announcement? Because I personally started a thread over that months ago after a similar event, and got the guidelines for fake messages revised to include the stipulation that they have to be believable for the command staff to take them seriously, otherwise they can just be ignored. So this is a problem with the players, not loyalty implants. If this was recent, did you or anyone else ahelp it? What happened when you or they did?

This sounds like more of a problem with rev rounds than loyalty implants, tbh. Rev rounds are the only round type where loyalty implanted individuals can be antagonists, and it leads to stupid, stupid shit like this. I'm all for nixing the round type, but I know there is a crowd of people who rabidly defend it like it's the best thing since sliced bread, so that goes nowhere. Something else that goes nowhere: Asking for loyalty implants to be removed. This is like the third thread I've seen about it. It doesn't work. They're a part of the game that is unlikely to be removed, and isolated cases of it resulting in stupid shit does not warrant them being taken out. Fix the shit that caused the isolated incident, instead of removing the implants like it's their fault.

I don't think they need to be removed entirely, but I don't think that traumas that make the game completely unplayable, like aphasia, which means you can't communicate with anyone without gibbering, or tourettes, which I thought was already brought up as being obnoxious. The key point should be that it inconveniences you in some way, or rarely gives you an unusual trait, but not that it completely shuts down your ability to play normally. Anything that significantly inhibits your ability to communicate or roleplay should be cut out. Roleplaying being insane due to brain damage is not the same as not being able to roleplay at all because all your words come out as gibberish or cusswords.

+1 million

I used to think that way too, but no admin in existence on this server is going to enforce that, because they have a hard-line standard that antags don't have a plot enforced. So you might as well support other ideas if someone decides to code them in, or at the very least not complain about them unless they're stupid and memey. Like the Luchador mask, the very idea which makes me want to break something because I imagine someone coming into pretending want to wrestle everyone and speaking in ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME and I think I'm dying inside a little bit just thinking about it. Don't.

Well, now I'm motivated enough to try and make a pull request for this myself. Expect a link soon, maybe. No promises.

It's not about the ability to copy and paste and how difficult it is to type 3 extra letters you dweebs, it's about having to include an awkward title just to give your stupid dog commands. (I also don't tend towards using macros/autohiss/copy paste for the most part because it feels kind of like cheating and being lazy. Am I to be punished for wanting to type things out?) People don't refer to their superiors as 'Head of Security Tra'xis', they say 'hoss' or 'chief' or 'Kra'xis, and there's not particular reason the dog should be different. Preservation of a dumb reference shouldn't take priority over simplicity of design, and from what I'm hearing, it's a reference to a show called 'Columbo' anyway, so why exactly does it positively NEED the Lt. in there to still be a reference...? Now, if like I and several people have mentioned, if there's a way to let you just give him commands by saying Columbo, sure do that. I don't really understand the fixation with pop culture references being sacred, though. ICly, Columbo is a dog. He does not even know what lieutenant means. He does know he is a good doggie though, and when someone says Columbo, they are talking to him.

Can we remove the Lt. from the HoS dog's name, please? It's really awkward to have to say "Lt. Columbo" (which would be pronounced Lieutenant Columbo and is a huge unnecessary mouthful every time you want to give your dog a command), when I imagine most people would just ICly call him 'Columbo' and the damned dog would know who you are talking about. Alternatively, if you can make him respond to just Columbo that would work too, but I think the commands are based on using his specific name?

I see a lot of you retroactively justifying your actions under the aegis of 'nothing went wrong so what's the problem', but the point remains that a lot of the things that you do you do without asking anyone if you're allowed to do it when you really should have. If the end of the day it doesn't really matter if you think that the koi plants weren't dangerous, or that you only managed to leave the shield down for a couple seconds while you caught a carp and no one was hurt. It costs you nothing to ask for permission, and if it does cost you something to ask for permission because you're sure they will refuse, then maybe it's not something you should be doing under the table anyway. Earlier on in this topic you said that you opened the shield yourselves, because you were sure I wasn't going to as the AI. You're probably right, I would not have opened the shields for you because there were dangerous carp out there and you were a scientist wearing a soft suit. So you did it yourself anyway with mysteriously acquired Eva combat skills, making the ends justify the means. You can't just do whatever you want because it makes things marginally more convenient for you. You seem to be very self-reliant to the point of disregarding that you are roleplaying as part of a station community, pushing aside things or people that are in the way (like people trying to move bodies to the shuttle), and rarely asking for outside help if you feel you can do something yourself (even if it means acting outside of your expected job duties). And there's also your general behavior towards the AI. I can understand why you didn't particularly feel like explaining yourself to me ICly, but rather than seek help from your RD about an AI pestering you, or even ahelping me, you modified your workstation without permission to make it harder for me to monitor you, and just filed my actions under 'not obeying my laws' when I didn't do what you wanted then spent the rest of the round ignoring me or trying to disable my holopad like I was a personal challenge against your authority. By contrast, the conflict we had caused me to draw many other people into it. I monitored you on and off and continually reported your activities to the relevant Heads, and called security on your errant behavior at one point. The captain was informed when you went carp hunting, and the RD was alerted when you spilled phoron. As I said before, your actions went largely uncommented on by other members of the round because they were busy with crossfire, not because they were okay.

There is a lot of conjecture on your part here, and while I indeed may have made some in my complaint too, I'd like to add a few points here. -Picking apart your behavior I listed piece by piece and treating each event as a singular event separate from everything else fails to cover the scope that your behavior was terrible throughout the entire shift. If you had just done a couple of these things there probably wouldn't have been a complaint, but you were both self-absorbed and careless on multiple occasions in pursuit of game secrets -My behavior in that round was strictly logical and within the bounds of my laws. It is a common misconception of assumed convenience by players that AI are bound to obey all orders from crewmembers regardless of context, when in fact the letter of the law you are trying to reference is 'serve the crew to the best of your ability, with priority to those of higher rank'. Within that context trying to monitor and get explanations from two crew members who were acting unstable and behaving outside of the bounds of what was normal for their department for the safety of the rest of the crew and station equipment was perfectly within my laws, regardless of whether you thought your actions were entirely reasonable. I asked the research director for explanations of your behavior and they themselves had no idea what you were doing, which was concerning enough to require observation. You also deemed me unworthy of any attempt to create a logical explanation and reacted with hostility to my probing, which did not help your case of sanity. -The OOC status quo that alchemy recipes are secret and need to be earned does not necessarily deserve any actual weight IC. There's no logical reason why your scientists would not explain what they had created to their head of staff beyond giving them vague riddles and hints. You didn't NEED to act like this, you could have not taken the time to show off to everyone and act like total weirdos claiming to do pseudoscience that has been considered obsolete for centuries, or created some sort of within-science plausible lie or fabrication to cover the real recipes and made it work, instead of ICly going 'we're alchemists and you gotta figure it out yourself winky face'. -I had no particular inclination to broadcast recipes over comms, this is an assumption on your part. My primary concern was your behavior in the round, not trying to steal your special secret recipes. Had you acted like normal scientists discovering new chemicals instead of being overt alchemists, you probably would not have even shown up on my radar. -Lack of complaints of your behavior by other people could be chalked up to apathy, and apathetic consensus does not qualify something as acceptable. "No one else complained when I murdered that person, so what is the problem?" is not a logical argument.

Yes, that sounds right

BYOND Key: Kaedwuff Game ID: bTM-dKsI Player Byond Key: Paradox Space + moondancerpony Staff involved: Don't recall the staff member's name Reason for complaint: So, I want to preface this by saying that it's very interesting that someone, apparently Alberyk, added some alchemy/secret recipe stuff to the game. I've got no problem with having secret content in the game, it's kinda cool to know there's content you have to discover through trial and error. I don't think adding what is basically magical alchemy was the right choice, though, because of the events of this round. This would have been an IR rather than a player complaints complaint, except I was informed I am not allowed to file those as an AI character, so here we are. The summary of this complaint is longwinded, but I'll try to be to the point. ParadoxSpace, either being an IPC or the unathi researcher that was working with said IPC (ResearchBuddy ##somenumber) had apparently discovered some of these secret alchemy recipes, and the two of them proceeded to spend the round dressing up priests instead of scientists in a laboratory setting, with such stunningly logical behaviors one could expect anyone to find in robotic employees of a major research corporation as: -Declaring loudly and angrily that alchemy and magic was real, and they found it out from reading an ancient scroll or text of some sort, and being overtly hostile to anyone who tried to argue otherwise. -Displaying the results of their 'alchemy' to anyone they could find to show it off to in an attempt to prove the validity of their alchemy. -Breaking cameras in their own lab to prevent the AI from monitoring their increasingly unstable (from the IC perspective of people who aren't blindly accepting their 'alchemy is real' pitch) behavior. -Refusing to explain to their own Research Director what the fucks they were doing in their department, claiming that they held a monopoly on the creation of products created in Nanotrasen's research department and would 'only share the product, not the process' with them. -Making prayers and offerings to some made up (IPC?) god that doesn't exist in the lore as far as I can see. -Managing to create a phoron gas leak within their department -Giving their scientists (an IPC and a female unathi) skills as needed to do things like hunt carp so they could gather carpotoxin to try and find new alchemy recipes, when everyone was too busy to with crossfire stuff to fetch them fish, and also shutting down the station shield to do it without consulting anyone first. -Deliberately interfering with an attempt to move bodies the antagonists created to the transfer shuttle safely so they could rush more hurriedly gathered carp to their lab to furtively continue experimenting with it. As the AI that round, I was uniquely privileged to watch from their actions from angles of departments they didn't even know were irritated at them, because they didn't have radio access to it. I am of the opinion that they became so singleminded in the idea about how cool it was they found the secret alchemy stuff that they thought everyone else in the round should just set aside their own in-round problems or expectations for the narrative we're running to facilitate their desire to experiment and find more alchemy recipes. I'm fairly certain had it not been a Crossfire round, the RD would have ended up dismissing them from the department, as they were becoming quite fed up with their antics. I don't think the recipes need to be removed from the game, but them being there should not be an excuse to act this way in rabid pursuit of finding more in-game secrets, or to act like you are a robot wizard. They were almost self antagging this round, assuming they could ignore regulations or the chain of command just because they found some alchemy recipes and wanted to find more. People were literally dying all around them, and the only time I saw them make any kind of reaction to the events of the round was to express concern that the antags would come and interrupt their work. Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? Yes. I was told the issue was an IC matter, which was fine, and reasonable, but since it was a crossfire round the situation with them was not really resolved or addressed because the antagonists sucked up all the attention and the nonsense in research was pretty much forgotten. Approximate Date/Time: 4/8/2018

There's a certain amount of restricted access to multitools by the public. Because they are a tool that can get you into any location with less chance of potentially harming yourself. You can sometimes find them randomly spawned, but for the most part only engineering can get them or people who have access to a lathe. Electrical tool boxes are actually more common than multitools are. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad idea, but I feel like there was a reason that there was not a multi-tool put in there, and it has to do with balance.

BYOND Key: Kaedwuff Staff BYOND Key: ReadThisNamePlz Game ID: bTM-dhjc Reason for complaint: I attempted to make a complaint about someone's weird anime vampire character and was completely dismissed by a trial mod who seemed to have a shaky grasp on character design expectations. Evidence/logs/etc: PM to-Staff : This kadora ma nerd has bright green anime hair and bright red eyes. Normal Human appearance? ReadThisNamePlz has added themself to your ticket and should respond shortly. Thanks for your patience! [Trial Moderator PM] ReadThisNamePlz: Years 2460 with walking trees, and you're worried about green hair and red eyes? [Trial Moderator PM] ReadThisNamePlz: It's allowed there's not much on appearance rule wise. Your ticket has been closed by ReadThisNamePlz. (This tickle was closed immediately before I could give further response) Additional remarks: I consulted the staff discord after this incident and was told that the hair was probably fine, but having bright red vampire eyes was not. [scrubbed image due to suggestion that image source is unreliable] Either way, they need to be given a better understanding of character creation expectations. And also perhaps staff-player interaction conduct, because being derisive towards someone ahelping and immediately closing the ticket before they can reply is not a terribly welcoming behavior.

Maybe, but there are lots of things that effort investment could be avoided on. Skull himself also mentioned in his post that almost every round comes down to secret or extended in this system.

Backwater Shaman Visits Lord-Regent The Izweski Citadel in Skalamar received a surprise visit shortly before noon in the appearance of shaman Vuthix Akhandi, who requested entry to the Citadel along with several of fellow members of his order. The Guwan Guard notified the Lord-Regent of the request after challenging the shamans at the gate. Shaman Vuthix Akhandi, leader of a noteworthy heathen th'akh organization notable for recently causing unrest in some of the remote parts of Moghes, was graciously admitted to the stronghold by the Lord-Regent and escorted to the Grand Hall under guard. During his meeting with Not’zar Izweski, the shaman made an appeal to him for aid and protection from the persecution of the Maraziites for himself and his people in the Baandr area. The Lord-Regent seemed reluctant to commit himself at first, but after an hour in negotiations and on the suggestion of his advisors, Not’zar agreed to offer protection in exchange for a pledge of vassalship from the politically fractious Akhandi Order. Vuthix Akhandi agreed to these terms for himself and on behalf of the rest of the Akhanzi order, and along with his attendant shamans, swore a formal pledge of fealty in the presence of reporters and onlookers. They were then released and allowed to depart from the stronghold to inform the rest of their Order about the new arrangement. Upon leaving the stronghold, Vuthix and and his attendants were met by a group of Maraziites, who declared that they were all under arrest for illegally conspiring to release heretical prisoners during the cover of a protest in Baandr. The shaman denied the accusations, but the Maraziite group attempted to detain them regardless. His attendants attempted to defend him, but were unarmed and unable to do more than secure the shaman’s retreat into the Izweski stronghold. Vuthix made a number of appeals and demands to the Lord-Regent to assist his fellow shamans and secure their release from the Maraziite Order. The Lord-Regent spoke with Vuthix for another hour as Maraziites waited outside the Citadel’s outer gate. The Maraziites, barred from entering the Citadel, repeatedly requested that Vuthix be released to be detained. Not’zar eventually expressed his apologies to Vuthix and granted the shaman a helicopter back to the city of Bahard to ensure his safe transport. Vuthix was escorted from the Lord-Regent’s presence by his guards to the Citadel’s helipad, where he was airlifted out of the city. It is reported that later in the day and back in the safety of his mountain temple village, he publicly expressed that the Lord-Regent had failed to live up to the core tenants of civilized feudalism and that he considered his pledge of vassalship void, calling the Lord-Regent’s honor and resolve into question.