Kaed

One more thing I want to add: While I don't think necessarily that the ERT should be under captain command, I think the captain should have authority over the treatment or prosecution of his crew. What I mean by this is it's all well and good for the ERT to cart off some wizards or mercenary/raiders, because they are intruders and don't belong there, but I've been seeing the ERT getting kind of uppity and assuming that all the antagonists crew in the game just belong to them and can be carted off to the ERT shuttle and everyone else can go fuck themselves if they disagree - this is literally what I have been told by ERT members before, when asking for them to hold on so I could speak with someone who normally should have just been put into HuT. To fuck off. When I followed them up to the command floor later, I found out that this was apparently so they could strap said antag to a chair in their shuttle for the rest of the round and baton them every time they resisted, while not roleplaying and just talking to each other in LOOC.

I don't know how often it happens, but I do know that just last night I wandered by the captain and HoP in a cult round, and asked them for something, and were told that they had been relieved of duty by the ERT 'the moment they arrived'. They seemed like perfectly sane individuals who were not in need of arrest or therapy and were just enjoying coffees in the bridge lounge in the middle of a crisis. That scenario is what prompted me to make this thread. The Captain (and really the whole command staff, but this could really fall under a 'the captain can veto them relieving his command staff' clause.) should not, barring some very specific reasons, be able to be relieved of duty on the whim of the ERT.

This argument is going in circles. Fine, whatever. If it gets implemented and I don't like how it works after a month I'll just make a code push myself to give people in round ninja choices if you won't.

It's bugged me for a while that a bunch of generally salty ex-crew ghosts with no whitelist requirements are picked for this role, given a bunch of weapons and armor, and given supreme authority over the station, including doing things like relieving the captain of duty on a whim. They aren't even loyalty implanted anymore, if they ever were. It's not a hard policy change. The captain of the station.is still the captain of the station. He should have higher authority than a bunch of random gun toting powerboner mercenaries his company sent in to save his ship. He should be trusted to understand what is needed for his company and the station more than armed, non-implanted mercenaries who just arrived minutes ago.

I don't like kilts, and I also think that security should not have a bunch of variants to their very specific uniforms. Sorry, but I'm pretty sure we vetoed security skirts. Why would we allow security manskirts?

That's entirely speculatory balance assumptions, because none of this is playtested in live, and the same problem you mention in the first post of this thread applies to the entire game mode you have created: If one of the ninjas is bad or shitty, then they basically stop being in the round and it's extended. You've admittedly added two extra ninjas as a failsafe, and tried to curtail their powers by giving them specific strengths... but your argument falls apart if you consider what happens to the round's 'balance' if there are one or more of these 'shit ninjas'? Then you are basically going to be missing one of the clan's anyway. It's going to happen. So let people pick their clans in-round. Create interesting dynamics where more than one of a particular clan can be in the game. Learn what combos create horrible imbalances, and correct them with patches.

Wouldn't it be much less cluttered if you just let people pick their clan in game, instead of adding preferences for clan out of character, and insisting there be one of each per round? =/ I don't know what is with your steadfast insistence in static antag variant setup. Singular antag types (and ninjas remain a singular antagonist type, despite adding two more, because they are an outside individual with a plethora of powers you can choose from, rather than a regular crew member/external team with special tools and some form of loose shared goal) should not be set up to be so unmalleable for antagonist generation. What if everyone who has readied up and has any ninja settings enabled only picked spider clan? Would the game start with only one ninja now, and how has that changed anything from how it was before? Would the game mode fail to start because insufficient players have the right antagonist settings? Imagine if we created a 3 wizard round type, but there was always one spacial, one battle, and one cleric wizard. No one could be anything else, that was just what you got at round start, if you wanted something else or changed your mind, or forgot to edit your antagonist setting to a different wizard type, too bad.

This was already addressed in lots of detail here https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=8947 I think you should probably focus on that rather than making a bunch of new threads.

That's nice, but I'm not you, and this cultist in question was handcuffed to a chair, with no weapon or book. The situation was completely different.

It's a robot. They feel no pain and can continue to get up and attempt to terminate you basically until you kill them. And they were doing that, it sounds like. Why would dislocating their limbs even work? They don't have bones to dislocate. If they do, someone did some dumb coding. I don't see the issue. Robots aren't even people. Legally, and possibly morally speaking, in this setting. It's not murder to disable them. You just patch them up and they start walking around again. You know, like people don't. You can't play an IPC and exploit their immunity to pain to murderbone and expect people to treat you like a person.

I don't know if I'd call that a buff, really. There aren't so many diona that them not having identity without a name tag would allow them to blend in

Fine, that single part of my argument can be conceded, but the rest still stands, including the second half of that sentence..

Being spiritual does not mean you accept all religions as valid. There is no current lore about unathi religion that involves waving obsidian knives over people, and even if there was, I'm not obligated to act like a human religious practice is a valid method of exorcism. Did you chaplain even know anything about Sk'akh or Th'akh faith? Do you? Nor did I hear anything that indicated this was a spiritual matter, other than your chaplain saying so. The officer was behaving like an entirely sensible and rational individual, not like an insane cultist or demon-possessed monster. He was even apologetic about his behavior, which, I want to point out, wasn't even related to attempted murder or cultist behavior, but rather, attempting to incapacitate a cadet. Definitely illegal, but not grounds to assume he was 'possessed'. By contrast, you vehemently insisted he was possessed, based on what felt like very shaky grounds to me, that was largely built upon the foundation of 'I know it's a cult round, and I want to deconvert this cultist.' I did not even really see anything that indicated you even have a religion - you were strictly focused on the mechanical aspects of your role as chaplain, and did nothing but spam your obsidian athame on the prisoner wordlessly, then grouse at me for stopping you. You are also a civilian, regardless of what duties you might have. If the head of security tells you back away from someone, you don't just keep doing what you were doing, you back away. That is why I separated you. You could have given me some sort of rational, even religious argument about what you were doing and why it was needed, and it might have worked. Instead, you became irate at me blocking what you felt was activity you were obligated to be allowed to do based on the round type and your job, and just tried to push through my authority, before rage-quitting when that didn't work.

Hi, so. I'm the HoS in question. ICly, I'm not required to give a damn about your 'duties' as a chaplain. The prisoner you were waving your athame over and occasionally beating him with - random failure chance has no bearing on what people perceive your actions as IC. If you don't like the random attack chance that happens with, make a suggestion to have it removed. But I'm not going to look the other way and shrug when I see you beating a prisoner - had no interest in your religion, and I have no reason to believe that your religion is anything more than complete hokey. What you are essentially asking me to to is table how my character behaves ICly because you want to use the cult deconversion tactics in peace. This effectively the opposite end of the no-metagame card, where we are not allowed to automatically understand antagonist abilities and their nature even though OOC we know what they are. Should I also start arresting wizards who used a nonlethal spell like turning a patch of ground into grass, because 'it's my duty as security to take down antags?' As for not being interested in non-lethal options, I was basically the the first person actually advocating for non wholesale slaughter of the antags that entire round, and only loaded up a shotgun because they were using EMPs on everything. My disappointment was more in not being able to try out my new weapon than not getting any valids, especially since I went to a lot of effort to order special slugs from the cargo department. If I'm interested in taking out a screaming cultist rushing me with a sword - because that had already happened once, and I nearly died - does that somehow make me bloodthirsty?

I would much rather prefer that you can pick the clan you belong to at the start, as opposed to it being assigned. There is no other antag in the game that starts out with a fixed number of powers and no access to the ability to pick which set they want. I frankly would like to see around where there are more than one spider clan for instance. Don't pigeonhole people into specific roles by assigning them a purpose.

That's not how things work. https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Bluespace Bluespace drives, which is what you are referencing here in the shuttles that transit back and forth between the station and the Odin, are very expensive, and usually only found on rich people and military vessels. The reason why it is so trivial to shuttle people to the station is largely because Nanotrasen is very rich, having a near monopoly on phoron production. A bluespace drive is not something you would attach to a police ship so they can warp across the solar system willy nilly, responding to distant calls and burning expensive bluespace crystals and phoron every time. Is that what taxpayer money is going to? I strongly doubt it. Even if police shuttles have bluespace drives, there is also the problem of getting landing clearance and information on where to go, because you have to warp to a bluespace beacon or risk ending up somewhere bad, like inside a wall or another ship. Yes, there is probably several in the Aurora they could use, but if you think that police officers are allowed to drop in at will on a private research station because someone called them on the bluespace telly-phone (also, who's paying for the bluespace crystals in these phones so you can make personal/emergency calls as a non-command member?), I don't think you're really grasping what logistics means. Certain antagonist types arrive without asking, but they're criminals, they don't care about following legal procedures about trespassing on private property. In all likelihood, they'd contact Nanotrasen, and be told to go away, we'll handle it internally. It would be more likely to see a response from, say, a private military unit hired by the company who owns the Aurora, equipped with powerful weapons on company dime and sent to resolve the problem. Oh, wait... we already have that! I guess a group of under-equipped police officers would just be redundant and unnecessary, like sending in a second security team. Because we already have one of those. At best, I can see this being an alternative to sending an ERT that happens once and a while. The bad ERT, where instead of receiving a bunch of armed ex military, you get a disappointing mass of coppers who are quickly slaughtered by the antagonist(s) who caused the ERT call in the first place.

This is going to be a little blunt, so forgive me for this but I'm going to get this out here. I believe the point that they're trying to convey that you are missing, is that they don't want police in their game, you do. I have seen precious little support from anyone in this thread, and a whole lot of you trying to jam what your vision of the game is down everyone else's throats. I understand where you're coming from, believe me. I frequently have standards that I'd like to be put in the game that don't match the standards of the majority of the rest of the community about what they want in their game. And I'm telling you, I don't think that the game would be improved by adding police call boxes to the station. It creates redundancy for the sake of itself. It is coding bloat, to introduce the idea of calling up a crippled ERT with less gear and authority and the added downside that any chucklefuck can call them by picking up a phone. It undermines the round progression and the command structure by giving the power to call reinforcements to every member of the crew. Its sacrifices a lot of what already makes rounds exciting, by trivializing its impact and making it accessible to everyone. And that's only looking at it from a gameplay perspective. From a lore perspective, I still hate the idea of police having an active presence on a private research station way out on the fringes of space. The analogies that you're drawing, apply to the country that you currently live in. Not here. This is more like living on one of Saturn's moons and trying to call the the Earth police to come over and arrest someone. You're being unreasonable and ignoring the logistics involved.

If it was under direct Biesel jurisdiction we would have people come to the station to arrest and carry away people who committed murder, not put them in holding cells until the end of shift to be transported to the proper authorities. You would also be obligated to turn over said criminals to the proper authorities, not question them internally on the station and press charges of corporate regulations breach. The way things are set up gives a sense of isolation from anything but Nanotrasen authority, and you can't just expect the official authorities to be a phone call away to every civilian.

Urist McDoctor says: "Why am I tied up? What are you doing?!" Urist McTator says: "Kill him." MurderMeows mrowls, "Yes sir." *slowly claws restrained prisoner to death* I have reservations about giving pAI damage, particularly to only one model of the pAI, which is essentially just a sprite change. Why can't mousepAI bite you, or monkeypAI punch you? It opens up a window for them to become like nymphs, going around and clawing at people because they were ordered to.

Game design and balance reasons aside, I always got the sense that there is no general public off-station communication because the station is on an isolated asteroid, and, magical bluespace communications are needed to get hold of anyone in a reasonable amount of time. This makes long distance communication expensive, which leaves it reserved for higher ups. You don't make long distances calls to your girlfriend or family when you're on company dime. That's not how it works. I also really don't like the idea of phone booths, or bringing it 'beisel police' into the equation. This is an isolated asteroid run by Nanotrasen, it may actually be well outside of general police jurisdiction areas. Yes, it's still under human law, but it's more like being on an oil rig out at sea - you don't call the police because some terrorists invaded the oil rig, they're not going to get on a boat and come over just to tell the bad terrorists they're under arrest. No, you call your company and they decide how to resolve the problem.

It has always bugged me that they click on the floor, yes.

Pens aren't electric, this cannot be canon! Let me write you a five page essay about why this is a bad idea. Just give me a few minutes to write it up and edit it into this post. Just keep checking, it'll show up eventually. Until then, I tenuously support this idea, since it seems fairly harmless, but I'm concerned about noise spamming, because it already happens a lot.

I don't really see the point of doing this race. For a race to be a regular part of the game (i.e. not just a one off event mob), I feel like there are some basic criteria they have to meet: -Able to communicate with the rest of the players (mole people are forced to awkwardly mime, since they don't have the ability to speak people language). If there isn't a viable way to communicate with them, then why would we want to be around them? Mimes existed before, but they were a silly gimmick that was removed, and they could still TALK if they wanted to. -The ability to have a connection with the crew. This one is similar to the first, but is a bit more subtle. What purpose to the mole people have for existing? Antagonists exist to create conflict, merchants exists to provide the crew with access to goods they could not procure on station. What do mole people have that make people want to be around them? They mine rocks and eat them. Are they going to trade us for rocks we are already capable of mining out with much greater efficiency with tools than they can do with claws? What incentive do we have to interact with them? -Having a defined purpose in the lore. What you've made here is a bunch of primitive asteroid mole people. Politically speaking, they are barely above monkeys or dolphins. They contribute almost nothing to the story other than being there to look at at and go, 'huh, neat'. The way they are written, they don't even sound like they're considered to be people Nanotrasen, the authority on station. What is to stop a captain tired of their shenanigans one round from ordering them all hunted down and killed like animals? That prevents this from happening literally any round, or even in the greater lore? This is in human space, and humans can be fucking assholes, and are capable of exterminating the species for fun if they wanted to. Why wouldn't some of them be driving around in space space bikes, shooting at the mole men with their shotguns and lasers while they're drunk? Are some whiny xenoenvironmentalists going to cry and hold up holo picket signs in front of Nanotrasen's corporate headquarters? I'm sure they'd super care about that. The problem with this idea is it's not something that feels like a player race that belongs. In a futuristic space game, what incentive do we have to play as space cavemen, beyond 'let's try something else for a change'? If you want to try something with such a vastly different tech level, why not... play a different game, that caters more to that aspect of society? Or just have an event about it?

Wasn't there a standing semi-official policy by the staff team about not adding more races? And who is going to sprite and code all this?

Alright, then I guess it's not a problem. I sort of assumed it wasn't enforced, so my bad. :V