Kaed

I'm having a hard time really grasping how this is supposed to work, do you sacrifice one person to make the orb similar to the sacrifice or raise dead runes? That confusion aside, this is sorely needed - cultists, aside from changeling, which is designed right now to be inherently non-aggressive, are the only antagonist that has no long range capabilities. The times I have seen security effortlessly kite their constructs while lasering them down, taken down by a single flashbang because they have nothing to fight back with, or fail to take someone down because the person won't obligingly hold still so you can smack them with a magical piece of paper...

I'm seeing a lot of people saying that adding more steps or content to medbay would cause even worse delays, and while that might be true, there's a reason why medbay is often full of quasi-erp and idle/afkers - it's not engaging. The typical round in medical (unless you are a chemist, who has a marginally better deal in terms of engagement with the game) involves sitting around waiting for people to be injured and bleating at the rest of the crew to turn on their sensors (and being largely ignored). I see doctors doing pointless things like wandering off to rearrange the surgery tools, counting and sorting medkits, and forgetting to turn on the cryo tubes. Adding more content for them would make it more exciting for them than silently scanning everyone who arrives and dragging them to the scanner before shoving them in the magical cure-all cryo tube. Doctors sometimes fight over who gets to do surgery just because it brings some brief excitement to their miserable, dull lives. I fully support anything that would make people feel more immersed and interested in being in the medical department, and some of the ideas, like the big MRI type scanners, sound pretty fun.

Yes, but currently only constructs have them.

Moving back to the subject of wizard golems before this thread derails off topic further, I'm of the opinion that we might have a reworking of the soul stones entirely. Perhaps they will be purple or blue in theme instead of red, and the golems themselves will primarily be bright colors similarly, rather than black, or simply something like iron. I think since they are supposed to be DIFFERENT from cult, soul stones should perhaps have an option for people to voluntarily have their soul pulled out, rather than needing to murderer them first. That's not to say that forcible de-souling shouldn't be a thing anymore, but I see people who are FAR more willing to join the wizard's golem army than people willing to sell their soul to Nar'sie's cultists. What do you all think? I also think some form of apprenticeship mechanic would be interesting... perhaps, even, during wizard rounds, a small number of random people are assigned a 'magic sensitive' trait, which does not make them wizards, but gives the wizard themselves the ability to notice said magic sensitivity, and potentially start trying to whisk them off to learn. And another thing... I think wizards should be able to leave the station. Much in the same way that raiders and mercs and 'return home' ending the round as antagonists. Specifically, them removing themselves from the station proper and not returning, potentially taking their apprentice with them. Obviously, there would need to be some kind of restriction on this, perhaps requiring them to wait until say, a couple hours into the round, so they don't just grab an apprentice and run off to do solo (e)rp with them for the rest of the round in their wizard lair.

I typically agree with that rule, but I don't understand how it's being used in defense of Kaed's position. In fact, I would argue that it could be used against his position - that IPCs CAN be wizards merits explanation, not restriction. ... You're making an argument against me restricting player freedom focused on the basis that mechanics should prevail over everything? The mechanics given to many antagonists in the base code are TERRIBLE, and saying that anything allowed by code 'should be valid because mechanics support it' is a really shortsighted viewpoint. Shall we ignore that changelings can take 'DNA' from IPCs, and say that it's okay because the mechanics allow it? We should come up with a reason to justify it, rather that looking at it, saying that's stupid, and fixing it? I view that in the same fashion that I view IPCs wizards getting access to an ability that will cause them instantly kill themselves with a button click. The very fact that they CAN get that, to me, far more justified that neither they nor Vaurca should be allowed to be wizards than an oversight in the code that allows people who start as an IPC to be one. Just saying 'don't take Disable technology if you're mechanical' is not explaining ANYTHING, it's just indulging people who want to spin their own story without really paying attention to the tone of their antagonist. You should NEVER attribute all design in something to be given intent, especially in an open source thing like SS13 and baystation. There is a lot of different code cobbled together to make a working game, and some of it is very old. Wizards were created far before IPCs and vaurca were ever implemented. The fact that IPCs can become wizards is due to no one bothering to code in an exception, not because they should be inherently permitted to be.

I'm sorry, but 'magic as an alternative form of power/technology' means that it would not coexist with robots (IPC) or heavily mechanical creatures (vaurca). They are locked out of it for a very valid reason. We've already started to establish lore for vampires within the setting, in that their powers come from the void. There is absolutely nothing wrong with providing a structural framework for an antagonists lore, and that is inherently going to involve placing logical restrictions in what they can be. I don't think antagonists should be some sort of special exception to the rules of following lore - they're just antagonists, not a collection of mary sues from another universe where the laws of common sense don't apply. IPCs are presumably locked out of being vampires, and if they are not, they NEED TO BE. It is completely nonsensical for a machine with a screen for a face to be 'biting people with their fangs'. The same principle of logic follows to wizards, who have the ability to destroy all technology around them. Simply saying 'well, the ability to not use Disable Technology is a tradeoff for getting to be a robot wizard' isn't logical, it's simply handwaving the issue in an attempt to not hurt people's feels by telling them they shouldn't be doing it.

Ugh. It's not going to stay like that, though, and that's what I'm working on fixing. Up until I was assigned to give them one, wizards were just WACKY SPACE MAGES, and currently they only barely fit in fit into a high roleplay server anymore. It's is going to be an alternative form of power separate from electronics and 'technology'. It is possible to have sense of the mystical in a setting without going batshit crazy and placing no limitations on it. The 'it's magic, I don't have to explain shit' excuse is horrible and lazy from a narrative standpoint, and I refuse to embrace it for the same of convenience. Things shouldn't stay the same as they are now just because we are familiar with it, when it could be so greatly improved. Such as... This is the most constructive and thought out comment I have seen on this thread so far. The sole exception is your mention of changing people into clowns, which I unilaterally reject. The age of 'honk!' being a thing has passed and it needs to remain buried in the lowrp nonsense mass grave. Other than that bit, most of this looks pretty great! It would definitely give more of a reason for artificer wizards to exist, and I like the firebolt/fireball idea

It kind of.. doesn't, really, though. Most of the time what happens is people go 'ugh wtf is this, why am I black skrell with no head tentacles', then they either cryo in disgust or just try to ignore it and go back to killing the wizard. Much like your comment about horse head curses, it loses it charm after half the crew is turned into random nonsense, and just becomes frustrating. The fact that a small packet of potential fun exists in a giant sea of stupid, frustrating bullshit is NOT a reason, in my opinion, why it's a viable option to keep around. People don't know what a shadow(ling) is - it doesn't exist anywhere in the game lore, and never shows up outside of being changed into one. It essentially looks like a black human, and I am willing to venture a guess that that is all that it is, because it's an improperly coded mess like the rest of the staff. Wizards aren't going to hold your life in their hands if they turn you into a vox, they're going to run off and leave you to die before you shoot them to death for being a fucking annoying mong for picking the staff of change. I'm not saying it's not fixable, but until it IS fixed, it needs to be taken away and thrown into a dark corner where it can't bother anyone. It's just too chaotic to actually be fun for anyone but the wizard or a small selection of people like you who thinks chaos for chaos's sake is great. I personally am fond of the characters I create and being irreversibly turned into a slime or golem kills my mood to even participate in the round anymore, far from providing 'fresh new roleplay opportunities'. At the very least, the staff should have a few very clear settings rather than this completely random nonsense. Settings such as -Devolve (turns people into lesser forms, like monkies, stok, etc) -Change species (changes someone into another random species from the base species list, while preserving their color data and such.) -Monsters (This causes things like vox, xenos, slimes, golems) -Restore (Reverses changes caused by the staff) It should stop affecting machines the same way: Borg, pAI, IPCs, Wizards are not supposed to have control over technology (and, in fact, I added a note in the original post about vaurca and IPC wizards being removed from the whitelist). At the most, they can destroy or disable it. The staff of change should potentially damage machines, but not turn them into tajarans or whatever. You're kind of missing the point. It's not about the inability to wear magboots (though magic magboots is a good idea). It's about wizards being dependent on FOOTWEAR of all things to cast their spells. They already have two items, their hat and robes, that sufficiently restrict their ability to cast spells without them. Why do we need a THIRD, arbitrary one that has no magical significance and is attached to a body part that is ridiculously easy to have blown off?

Fireball isn't really not SUPPOSED to be epic magic, though. First of all, it's a robeless spell, wizards can cast it regardless of whatever they are wearing. Second, it's their only real DAMAGE spell (magic missile does a tiny amount of damage, but it's largely irrelevant next to the stun effect), and it doesn't even deal that much damage. The reason that people die to singular fireballs is not because they are massive trauma so much as they tend to suffocate helplessly in the resulting breaches. At the very least, it should have two settings, one to just harm crew and another to blow holes in the station. As for the staff of change... i'm sorry, but being able to see 'rarely used content' like shadows and xenomorphs isn't a tradeoff for how shitty it is. You can't control what anyone turns into, their tails are often some horrible mangled color, it changes their languages half the time, some things will begin to suffocate to death upon transformation (vox). Most of the time, people lose their names in the process of the transformation, becoming 'unknown' or simply having no name at all and being a buggy blank. If there was a way to in some fashion control what people turned into, it might be workable, but there isn't. And I see wizards running around turning people into slimes and xenos for laughs more than making any kind of story out of it, and the resulting slimes and xenos tend towards going on a rampage because they feel they are antags now. And it's not reversible, the way it's coded. Even if you get turned back into a human or unathi, I'm pretty sure it jumbles up all your variables and you'll be some completely different person, probably named 'UNKNOWN'. Face it nanako, it's even trollier and stupid than the horse head curse, which at least has the decency to be a removable status effect rather than complete derailment of your character.

There are quite a few issues with the wizard mode, some of them in theme, others simply due to bugginess. These are a few things that I think could be fixed and improved on. -Fix the mutate spell (admins are already aware of this though, and it's apparently on the list) -Replace Subjugation with Suggestion. This spell already causes so much confusion for new players, because the name of the smell and it's description, suggest it is some sort of mental influence. But in reality, all it does is cause stuttering and inability to walk straight. This is, in all, a very tepid ability. The idea I had involved changing it so the person you cast it on gets a message along the lines of 'You feel compelled to comply with 's next request." This would make it similar to the vampire dominate ability, urging someone to perform a single action. -The fireball spell should stop venting the station unless you're really unlucky or blast a spot repeatedly. This ability is simply too destructive for its own good, and causes breaches into space more often than it doesn't. -Remove the sandals requirement. This one has always been an irritating and rather obnoxious requirement for wizards. Not only are you using an item that is completely non-magical (literally any sandals will do) to cast spells, but feet are notoriously difficult to lose within mob code. Lose one foot, and you can no longer wear sandals, rendering you helpless, despite your perfectly good wizard hat and robes, which are what should be the important parts of your magic. -Remove the staff of change. This item is horrible, full of bugs, both graphical and variable-related in nature. It affects things that it honestly shouldn't, like pAI and borg, and is for the most part impossible to reverse even by the wizard due to the entirely uncontrollable nature of how it works. Reworking it to be less terrible would be a massive endeavor, I think, and until someone can be bothered to, it needs to be clipped out. -Staffs in general need to be unusable by non-wizards (along with scrying orbs). These items are enforced to not be usable by roleplay standards, just making them mechanically unusable would save a lot of trouble and need to explain to people that they're not allowed to mental focus the wizard to death after disarm spamming them. -Make a magical armor cycler, allowing the wizard hardsuit to be used by other species and not look horrible. This would require new sprites, I guess. But still! -Alter the wizard's soul stone setup to be more appropriate to their theme. Currently the constructs they make are unable to communicate with anyone but other constructs, and can only do culty things like build cult walls and make cult barriers and floors. -Ban IPCs and Vaurca from being wizards. -Maybe some new spells would be cool, but I'm open to this coming up after the fixes mentioned previously.

Trusting people not to meta is like leaving a $100 bill unattended on a table in a crowded store. Maybe 49 out of 50 people won't take it and pocket it, but all it takes is that one, and your benjamin is gone. This is why I recommended an alternative that does not advertise the BSOD effect until shit is really going down.

Currently the only thing eating does or unathi is put the mob inside your body. Like, treats your body as a container for the mob, which is impossible to get out. No nutriment, just a bunch of mice you ate appearing whenever you try to use the give command.

That's the problem though. People DO associate BSOD apcs with malf instantly, even after the first one. Some of them are courteous enough to not scream AI IS ROGUE, sure, but they will inevitably start pointing them out, and more and more will show up. And then some head will start making up nonsense about 'checking the AI for corruption' when there is no evidence in any way that the AI is involved. It happens, I've seen it. I've been that stealthy malf.

Bump

I'm not entirely sure this should be a staff complaint, rather than a player complaint, but either way. As I said at the time, and as recorded in the extensive logs you have there, specifically these parts: I behaved in a fashion indicating I had no intention to harm anyone, and, further, at the time I blew a hole in the wall, I could still see flashing emergency shutters around me (meaning they were still powered) - I was trapped in maintenance, with no view of how things were outside. I certainly went into the act of blowing a whole in the wall with the (incorrect) knowledge that the shutters would all deploy. When an officer refused to crowbar me out I assumed, at the time, that he was being overly cautious, and did not take his comment that I would vent the entire station very seriously. I fully admit this is my mistake. But, I don't know everything that goes on. Perhaps I could have inquired further about the state of things outside, but people were dying to mercenary attacks, and I wanted to get out to help, rather than sitting trapped in a tunnel for the rest of the round, because I did not happen to have a crowbar. It was a desperation move that went horribly wrong, not an attempt to grief the station. However, I acknowledge that it caused a lot of problems for everyone, and I am sorry about that.

And, as I said in response, basing an idea's merit on its abuse potential is a poor way to judge the benefits of a mechanics. The admins exist to monitor things like that, and can deal with it if people start 'standing at an angle so people can't see the gun you renamed'. Such behavior is very strange and attracts attention, and people will report it if it happens. On the other hand, it will allow many legitimate things, such as the stated food renaming, and being able to label closets as Urist's Closet, rather than the much more clumsy "personal closet (Urist)", or chair's as "CMO's Chair rather than cyan chair (CMO)" Additionally, there is already a mechanic in game that lets detectives rename their guns, and I have never once seen a detective relabel their gun as 'Piece of Paper' in an attempt to cheat the system. People are much more likely to use it to add flavor to their interactions.

I think it would be better if the hand labeler simply renamed the item entirely, rather than affixing a tag in parenthesis to it. Further, it would be great if it also let you edit the description of the item through some other setting. This would solve a lot of problems that currently exist with adding fluff to to items. This would: 1) Allow you to make your own simple custom items for the purposes of the individual round itself rather than needing to request what amounts to a normal, renamed item that you spawn in with, reserving spawn-in custom items for things that are actually unique and have a recolor/new sprite. 2) Allow a chef to rename and redescribe foods, bringing a bit more life to the position 3) Cut down on whining to admins to change the names of objects to fit with a player's roleplaying situation (I do this a lot, and get mixed results) 4) Be a lot easier to CODE Now, the downside I'm sure you can see for this is that someone could go around renaming everything to 'Hitler" or something. But, I ask you, is it any different from how it is now, when they can already add around five (hitler) tags to nearly anything they want by relabeling it over and over? This way, it's simpler, easy to fix abuse IN GAME, without resorting to pleading to admins, and looks a lot less clumsy.

Further to this https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/issues/349 bug report I made earlier, there are a few things I wanted to add that are not bugs, but rather would be enhancements on diona nymphs. 1) There used to be a mechanic diona had that let them nip a blood sample from people. I think it did several things, like give you their language, and used to be tied to becoming a full diona, rather than the timer based method we have now. Either way, it does not exist right now. The only interaction diona can have with people is to bite them. 2) The diona 'HUD' such as it is is blatantly ripped from the xeno icon set. It looks horrible and out of place, There should be a proper diona nymph themed health bar, walk/run, etc. I can work on getting it made, if need be.

I don't know much about your roleplay standards. I recognize a couple of characters, but there are not ones I directly interacted with. So I will judge this application based on the contents of it, rather than through a filter of previous experience with you. And I don't care for it. This character is a series of out of place archetypical tropes combined together into a patchwork backstory that probably sounded deep and meaningful to you, but fills me with frustration. You appear to have taken an outsider view of generic unathi stereotypes that you dislike and deliberately done your best to defy them to their fullest extent. While I recognize that unathi social standards would be deviated from somewhat in an environment where alien races are permitted to tutor young unathi, and Ourere sort of exists as a place for nontraditional unathi to come from, an orphaned unathi girl with her baby brother who grows up to be a strong independent woman who don't need no man? Really? Two of the strongest mentalities the unathi possess is a sense of family and clan, and a perception of the honor of combat. An orphan female without a clan, especially since that clan was defeated in battle, would be essentially trash to any other unathi community - I don't care how much influence you think skrell and human culture have on Ourere, a people don't abandon their core principles in less than a half century of colony life. How did she survive with no support? Her father was a weaponsmith, sure. Why did he teach his daughter how to fight, though? Female unathi are not treated like males. They do not become warriors. I could buy that she got in a lucky strike and killed Kladax in a terrified panic, but not that she conveniently had more combat skill than him. And this Guwandi they meet. You don't seem to grasp the principles of that, either, which makes me think all you did was skim the wiki. Unathi who accept Guwandi status are willingly exiling themselves. They abandon their clan and name, and basically wander off to die. He would not have introduced himself by his former clan name, Ax’klaka, and explained that he is Guwandi. And why did he help her? Guwandi do this because they are filled with a deep shame about something. They want to die, or redeem themselves. Does he have a reason for helping a clanless female, or did you misappropriate the concept to add a Friendly Wanderer archetype to the story? And let's get to how she found Nanotrasen. These unexplained missionaries, what were they representing? Nanotrasen? Is Nanotrasenism a religion now? Why did Nanotrasen have more extensive logs of her clan than the unathi themselves? Why did her sole remaining blood relative send her away to live with aliens rather than try to pull her back and reintegrate her to unathi society? She lost her entire clan, and so did he. The logical response to learning of each other would be to try and establish a closer connection and attempt to rekindle the clan, not leave it broken. Again, she's an unmarried, clanless female. Under no train of unathi logic would she be considered worthy of wandering off on her own.

No, not really. And neither cult nor rev are forced. They haven't been forced conversion for a long time.

Revolution is a terrible, prolonged game mode that heavily favors one side (loyalists) and inevitably devolves into an all out murderbrawl, with a twenty minute shuttle timer for basically no logical reason and many recalls. I unilaterally reject this idea. Keep rev vote-only so I can leave if it comes up before wasting time thinking it might be an actually good round type. Further, let me point out something you seem to be missing through your nostalgia glasses. While it is possible to have a good experience in any round type, that is not actually indicative that the round type is conductive to good roleplay. Those are individual experiences, not collective ones. In revolution, any and all members of the crew can become antagonists. The more antagonists you have in a given round, the higher the chance is that you will have someone who turns it into a murderbrawl because they like it that way. And there are always going to be people who just follow a mob mentality and join in when the fighting starts. The round type simply encourages too much potential murderbone, and as neither side is given any kinds of tools or advantages, the one who grabs security (usually loyalist) already has a massive advantage over the other side that is nearly impossible to overcome without cargo or science cooperating by ordering/printing you weapons. And once you start doing that, murderbrawl happens.

I like this idea, and think the bar area only exists at this point by sheer tradition inertia. And yet.. there's all this neat code for drinks. It seems a shame to throw it all away for the sake of some 'realism' Edit: Perhaps a compromise would be putting some regulations on how much alcohol employees can drink?

Uhm. I don't think that's how it works. The sparkles show up on only some tiles, but the actual effect covers the entire area, and you don't 'walk into' them, the effect is immediate and the animation of the sparkles just takes a second to expire.

I am honestly of the mind that IPCs struggle enough to stay alive in this code without being hit with an instant-kill, wide range weapon that goes through walls and most of the time kills them entirely by accident. I can think of two situations where IPC raiders were destroyed by a newbie accidentally setting off a grenade in the skipjack. I have also been bwoinked on another server because I used an EMP rune as a cultist and two IPCs were talking on the other side of a wall, unseen by me. They were killed instantly and very upset. EMP grenades are just too massively destructive against most synthetics. Even an AI, which should be all rights probably have EMP shielding, is absolutely demolished by them, because they knock out all their power and they robo-suffocate to death, unable to fight back because grenades and wizard EMPs hit their core when people hug the side walls and set them off, or send them in by telescience. There is just no equivalent object to use against organic life on server, and for good reason. If there was a bomb or grenade you could set off that would kill every non-synthetic player on the screen, even the ones you can't see because they're on the other side of a wall, that would be nerfed. My knowledge of mob code affecting IPCs is that the problem is EMP attacks damage every single one of their body sections, which causes a massive amount of damage total, resulting in instant death. I've been on a server where they curtailed this, and most IPCs would die after TWO EMP blasts, which is moderately more reasonable and easier to escape and heal from. I think grenade EMPs also need to be cut down a lot. The explosion is just too big. Half the size, or something.

Frankly, I suppose Security Commander, Station Administrator, and Human Resources Director, more than Head of Security, Captain, and Head of Personnel. The security team is essentially a small private army thinly disguised as a 'security force', given their access to military class gear like tactical armor and laser carbines, tendency towards being ex military, and penchant for suicidically heroically leaping to the defense of the station at the expense of the lives of themselves and nearby civilians.