Fluffy

The PR has been merged and therefore this suggestion is considered implemented. Locking and archiving.

The PR has been merged, the dance floor is gone, and therefore this suggestion is considered implemented. Locking and archiving.

A mouse cursor icon has been added to make it more obvious when the throw mode is active, therefore this suggestion is considered as implemented. Locking and archiving.

This suggestion has been rejected by maintainers in its current form, though feel free to open a new suggestion thread to discuss a more nuanced approach to balancing damages/pain from weapons. Locking and archiving.

This suggestion was evaluated and dismissed by maintainers after another PR was merged to alter changeling abilities, and is therefore considered rejected by maintainers. Locking and archiving.

The associated PR was merged and this suggestion is therefore considered implemented. In case more tweaks will be wanted, feel free to post a new thread in suggestions and ideas; this thread will be archived as completed in the meantime. Locking and archiving.

As of https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/17704 the civilian station no longer exist, I take this suggestion about it is good to be archived/implemented?

The PR has been merged and this suggestion is therefore considered implemented. Locking and archiving.

Absolutely a fun player to play either with or against, +1 for the trial from me

PR at https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/17711

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/17683 this (should) fix the announcements apostrophes for antags, and you can also have newlines too now; also should fix the PDA STT messages (assuming acceptance by maintainers, Arrow will check that all the necessary escaping works as intended)

I guess the server is running with minimal access configured then, because in the non-minimal access configuration they should be able to: I am mostly indifferent for either option, though I do believe that if they have the means to, there should be some form of regulation that doesn't allow them to do engineering stuffs (and for engineers to do atmos tech stuff) if there's someone playing the specific role and is not requesting help to do something For a different approach, would giving them access to a single set of gloves be a viable option? And if so, via the access to the tech storage being added?

The technical storage room has three pairs of insulated gloves (one per specie), and atmospheric technicians should have access to said room, can anyone confirm?

I do not think this is a good addressing of the point, and the reason is that the point of this discussion, I believe, is to make antagonists more enjoyable to play both as and against That can include changes in philosophy, change in code and change in rules Indicating the philosophy and the rules as a reason for why a suggestion would not be possible does not progress the discussion, the point of a suggestion is to change something, that can also include them in the list of options Assume there is a rule that forbid janitors for cleaning, someone makes a thread about how it sucks to play janitor because there's nothing to do, and suggest that maybe they should clean, and a lot of people agree to that; saying "the rules doesn't allow janitors to clean" wouldn't really be helpful, because the retort would simply be one of the many variations of "ok, let's change that, if that is part of the problem, that's the point of the suggestion/discussion" There is also a distinction between what the code allows you to do, and what you should do: The code can, right now, allow a mercenary team to wordlessly enter the first turf of the horizon, set down a nuke and blow it up in 5 minutes since roundstart, that doesn't mean you can or should do it, but the code is completely indifferent to that part, it's up to the humans that inhabit and make this 20+ years old game run, to make it run and make it fun Same way would go with balancing, we can make it so the antagonists can gigastomp the whole security team 1v5, that doesn't mean you have to enter Hopper mode as soon as you walk into the ship and mow down everything you see; you narrate a story, but when the ship turns out to be hostile to you and tries to stop you, now you can show your prowess and gigastomp the unprepared foes that are coming to shoot you; That means you can proceed to try and archive your objectives, that means some more challenging, thoughtful and fun things to do for both sides beside "alright guys antag #46541651 of the week here is a rifle click until horizontal", that means crew can have a conflict with them when/if sec gets wiped, that means science's nice toys have a sense to be built and used, weapons ordered, mechs built, crew militia, medbay having their flow of patients, engineers trying to keep the ship together, atmos techs refilling the breached areas, command having to coordinate and evaluate the approaches to the demands knowing that "no you won't" will mean they can very well lose the ship, especially if unprepared, it means more believable reactions can be allowed, and so on and so forth You still drive a story, a narrative, and you also have fun when the inevitable conflict will come out of it, for both sides

Sure, but the point isn't to give them some way to definitively "win", that doesn't add anything to the round The point is to give them roughly equal chances to win (except some loner antags that would not make sense to win alone, like a single antagonist, or the vampire etc. you get the gist) We have exactly this problem, right now, only that it's not the antags but the ship to have the way to definitively "win" The point isn't to flip it the other way around: You would have the same issue in reverse, the point is to balance the chances, as if they are too much swayed on either side, it rarely adds anything to the round

After consideration, I will not proceed with this project, increasing movement speed across the board does not seem ideal and the effort to have this only for running is disproportionate to its utility. Closing and archiving.

I do not personally see myself wanting to wordlessy battle NPC mobs (no matter how smart they are) like we're invading Gremorian Prime every other round, most of the time the hivebots/gremorians/space carps/whathaveyou are an annoyance to deal with more than something people want to engage with, as seen by the urge to immediately emitter and gigashatter them and the limited wish to visit planets or away sites for a large part of the players, and I do not believe them being smarter would solve it Though, I do agree we should play more into the ship combat and boarding part, and challenging events when there's not much going on, but it's more of an addition between antag rounds (either on ship or off ship), not a substitute to it

I think a test is permissible, but having people die around the ship for the reason of "well you didn't told Medbay where you were" and being on the floor unconscious and bleeding out for that sole reason doesn't strike me as something that generates anything but frustration, and robs Medbay of many of the most interesting cases: The ones where the person is on the brink of death If the issue is antagonists not getting jammers, perhaps we can just spawn them in with a jammer by default? Then they just have to configure it if they want to stealth murder someone, without the need to go out of their way to build one, or maybe give them the ability to buy a fake announcement/event like the ion storm, that distrupts comms and suit sensors for a period of time, that they can trigger with bluecrystals like the fake radiation storm? For the forcing to stare at numbers, we can maybe make it an alert so that if someone flatlines (aka it's actively dying), something rings or it sends a message in the medical radio channel like a death implant? That would also be good because, if you're not looking for people being hurt before approaching the brink of death, you get notified when you have the more interesting (and challenging to cure) patients, so maybe it is a two birds with one stone type of deal (?) Just throwing some ideas out there

It really does sucks ass If this suggestion is for meme value, my hat tip to you Otherwise, and also considering it is a copyrighted song, voting for dismissal

Our antagonists suffer, in my opinion, from a list of issues that needs multi-faceted approaches to tackle, which I will try to condense (this could take literally pages upon pages of expansions and subtopics) only two of the points as follows: 1) They are under an insane, undue and unfair scrutiny Since they have the spotlight and they do unordinary things, they are bound to be the big victims of any John Doe that decides to ahelp or player complain them over trivialities This is not helped, at all, by the fact that you have to reconstruct the significance and interpretations of the rules based on what happens to others, instead of reading it and have a pretty solid understanding of what you can and cannot do That there are unstated expectations people can be punished for should not be a thing in general, but this disadvantages and unfairly punish antagonists in particular, due to their position The aforementioned is compounded by the fact that a punitive approach is employed instead of a corrective one, making any mistake someone could make a permanent mark in their record that can be used literally years down the line to justify punishing more harshly the next mistake; it seems to me there is a cultural problem where people are very unwilling to forgive mistakes, this is particularly visible in the famous phrase often employed in appeals/complains of "intentions doesn't matter", a reductionist view that only seems to account for effects (which are of questionable relevancy in the big scheme of things themselves) A sizable number of people wants them to deliver an amazing, interesting, engaging story, while at the same time not doing nearly everything that would make it possible: Does not want to be converted, assassinated, thralled, held as hostage, killed, sent in medical for a long time, inconvenienced by an atmospheric sabotage, or an SM sabotage, made into a cultist, attacked when they're not 100% ready to beat them, and so on Some also expects extremely sophisticated, non-repeated stories on the regular, that are essentially impossible to archieve (there's only so many things you can narrate about), and even less so the more things you bar them from playing into Even when someone manages to create a unique and engaging story there's a tendency for people in dchat / looc / OOC / discord to go into full peanut gallery mode and pick apart every detail they didn't like or issue they had with it, it isn't even sufficient to mark everything and more, you can and will find people that can do it better, faultlessy, HRPerly, you name it, someone will be there to tell about how they would have done it better in one way or another on the regular; if in some miracle sense you manage to avoid that, you will find a John Doe eager to tell you how he didn't enjoy the gimmick because you interrupted the stream of sips x500 at the Bar while the chat was being used to write a novel that would have made Dostoevskij weep seeing its length, or whatever other reason. Even if the vast majority of people enjoyed it, you will still have to be subjected to the salt of those who didn't (either as a whole or in part), and you will always find someone that didn't like something about it, eager to tell you 2) They are toothless We do not give them enough tools and liberty to engage in meaningful stories, which cheapens out the interaction with the ship, and thus the fun of it There is no engagement in a story where you know who will win already, and it's practically written on the walls that The Horizon Always Wins™ (or at least, doesn't lose in any meaningful way); while this is a sad but excusable condition for canon things, it should not be towards/with antagonists This comes from their toolkit, that is underpower to face an entire ship worth of people with entire backup departments, and from the player culture that shoehorn them in playing to lose (or risk more complains / administrative actions coming their way) This also means that we rob half of the ship of fun: If Security is nearly always equipped enough to easily deal with them, people in other departments don't get to have the fun conflict with the antagonists; If we have an easily on tap Crew Armory fully equipped, Operations doesn't get to bring in shit and Science doesn't get to make things to fight back the antagonists with If you have to instill fear of being bwonked to people because otherwise they would do something that a normal, sane person would do in said situation (see: Machinist making mechs if the Lii'dra were to reappear and is trying to take over your ship, or SRF marines are spotted), you are doing something terribly wrong with the balance If there are essentially no stakes of dying/losing, it's boring for both sides, and if the antagonists are basically expected to lose from the get go in nearly every situation, it would suck even more for them The aforementioned expectation also morphs the perception of the threat on an IC level, which usually railroad the gimmicks to go in the famous loop we're used to seeing In regards to them, it is infeasible and a shot to our foot to remove them, the only server-specific data available (thanks to a pool that @La Villa Strangiato made and posted around) has currently the following statistics: Antagonists seems to be liked (at least as a concept, and over the alternative), there is a clear wish for them to remain (54.69% of the respondents to the pool have indicated that they would either play less or not play if they were not present, with a whooping 20.31% of them for the second case), it is also visible ingame when extended gets voted (or secret extended rolls) repeatedly that the popcount crashes; in the servers browser, there is a correlation between higher pop and the presence of antagonist (excluding NSFW servers, but I suppose people play in those for fundamentally different reasons) Yes, I am aware that they are not HRP servers, there are other confounding factors and so on, if you have better data I am all ears for it I would also like to point out that there are memorable and engaging antagonist experiences: the time the Horizon got sold to Dominia, the Solarian Clone Corps, when the Biesel emperor came visit in an alternate timeline scenario are three that comes right to my mind, all done by antagonists (without admin support as far as I am aware), and they all happened in the past few months Lastly, I want to note that expecting antagonists to be memorable on the daily seems like an issue of unfair expectations, we should not expect antagonists to be consistently memorable just like we should not expect every character or character interaction to be, and we engage with way more characters than antagonists in general too, so they are far more likely to be in the selection of memorability (small trivia: this is formally known as base rate fallacy/bias)

This would not solve the posited issues, it would just trade a procedure with different one (stuck someone in the cryocell instead of a borg) This would also remove the choice to keep playing as a borg (and maybe get emagged by another antagonist and pulled back into the loop), essentially forcing the player to do something he already has the option to do: ghost I think this would become either very boring or very dissonant, very quickly I think that it would be that pretty much nothing fun ever happens, or the Horizon gets canonically boarded/shelled/terrorist attacked/whatnot multiple times a day, every day, that even the most hardened 40k battle brother Sol Marine "I LOVE MISS MIRANDA I LOVE PHORON SIR YES SIR OORAH" would have to question what he's doing on such a ship, why it's so poorly defended and armed, not to mention all the issues that lore would have to deal with, etc.

I did not say that the crew can't escalate, that is part of the fun; I said that the escalation level is global and that they don't need to escalate independently: If you shoot them, level 70/100 in the example, they can shoot you back, because it's appropriate for that level to do so, they don't need to justify independently a response via another escalation on their part, they can employ appropriate measures to face a 70/100 situation Generally, they cannot on their own jump from a 20/100 to a 100/100 unilaterally. If you are running around the ship naked, they can't pull out rifles and shoot you down. They can ask you to stop, you say no, level 30/100, they try to grab you to bring you in custody, you escape it, 40/100 - they try to tase you, you punch them down and hide in maintenance, 50/100 - they find you in maintenance, you pull out a gun and shoot at them, 70/100, take out rifles and try to stop you - you pull out a machinegun and mow down the Captain and some bystanders, 80/100 shoot on sight - you reveal to be an SRF survivor that is going to kill everyone, make some wall explode, phoron flood some areas or whatnot, 100/100 all hands grab a weapon and kill on sight As you can notice, they can escalate but only if the antagonist follows up the escalation, and in small part by themselves; it would to me be totally unexpected if you threatened the Captain to punch him and he were to unleast security in full gear with a kill on sight order. I would expect such a thing to be bwoinkable. This is my understanding of the gist, at least. Administration is free to correct it if I got it wrong. Another thing I would like to point out: Generally, noone wants to keep the antagonist in a cell. That is why by and large Wardens/Officers "forget" to take away / fail to find weapons, uplinks, tools etc. They want you to break out, they want the fun to continue This, I fear, is mostly misunderstood: If you committed a 50/100 level of escalation, the crew can deploy a 50/100 response to that, indifferently if you got captured, the escalation level doesn't go backward. They can of course choose not to use all the tools available to them for that level, but you being captured doesn't ameliorate that those tools are on the table now, otherwise they should by the same logic let the antagonist walk out of the brig if he promises to be nice. As much as the antagonists have to agree with the escalation, the crew have to agree to a deescalation. In regards to "Would you consider it proper escalation for an antag who captures and cuffs a sec officer... to just, after a minute or two walk over and kill them.", this is what the rules say about it: So, it would be really hard for me to address that point without knowing the context. If an antag captures and cuff a sec officer, orders him to stop resisting, and the officer keeps spamming the resist to break out of the cuffs, by rules, the antagonist can shoot him dead, indifferently if it's a minute of two of talk. I agree, that is why we have code green/blue/red, the crew armory is locked behind severe situations, and security does not roam in heavy armor and rifles with the order to kill everyone who doesn't comply. That is the OOC steps. Could borging benefit from having more steps? Possibly, sure Is it a reason to remove that option? No Problem is: I don't think it would What I suspect it would happen is, we remove borging, months or perhaps even years go by, people get acclimated to the new balance, the fundamental problem is not solved, and a new thread will pop up on the lines of "Remove marooning as a punishment", rinse and repeat over and over on whatever is the most evident symptom of the issue We keep losing fun and potentially engaging option and things, both in mechanic and lore, due to a problem that manages to remain unaddressed not only in spite of, but enabled and thanks to, measures like this that masks the illness for a while, without ever curing it How to solve it definitely, I would love to know too but I do not, I think it would require a wider conversation, trial and errors, etc. etc.

The crew respond to the escalation, the escalation in a round is global: If an antagonist is shooting people up for example, the crew does not need to perform any escalation to shoot him, the antagonist escalated the level of conflict to the "shooting" bar, so to say It doesn't need the crew to also go through the escalation, because each side contribute to a global escalation level, they aren't each bound to a dedicated escalation level, if the antagonist bring the escalation to, let's say, 70/100 (imaginary scale), the crew is well within their right to employ reasonable measures for the 70/100 scenario, they don't need to go through another escalation to reach 70/100 themselves This proposal is about removing borging as an option, I would agree with you that it would be more interesting and fun if said thing was announced and given time for people to form a protest etc., but that's a different proposal than removing the option It isn't. It's part of a larger issue, but it's separated from borging as an option. That isn't to say that they aren't connected, but they aren't equivalent. You have no OOC obligation to follow every order no matter what, you have an obligation to perform your job to a satisfactory standard, but nothing prevents you from resigning or refusing to perform a procedure if it makes sense for your character to not do it. It is a very different thing than doing eg. surgeries and botchering them without purpose. That comes down to your narrative; yes if you shoot them they will not come to help you out of becoming a borg, if your narrative is more agreeable it's more likely characters will also want to side with you We had a rev round not long ago where the Horizon was sold to Dominia for example, characters fought against command and sided with the revs Why this interesting things happen rarely is, I believe, due to various reasons that are mostly unrelated to borging That is indeed part of the larger issue I was indicating, removing borging would not address it, it would just become marooning next, being left stuck in communal, and so on and so forth You would not solve the issue with removing borging, you would just move the symptom that people notice to something else, and lose something that would work well if not for the issue being present To make a figure of speech, it would be like trying to avoid a carpet from develop mold with an antimold treatment, then with a bucket, then change the carpet with another carpet, while the rooftop is dripping water down; it would never solve the problem, only move what you see it manifest as; the solution is to fix the rooftop

Coming out of nowhere to gank people is very different from marooning or borging someone after 2 hours of escalation, with a crime being committed and all the bolts and crannies that justify a marooning or borging. There is no such OOC rule, we had a canon mutiny a year or so ago, you would of course be against the IC regulations, but this being spurred by antagonist actions (quite literally) would make it non-canon, so it would be limited to the current round only Picture this: The person is indicated as being innocent on comms, the unreasonable Captain wants to borg it anyways, the Dominia consular plead against it, the Captain refuses to listen, various Dominians line up around the Machinist workshop in protest, the Machinist resign in protest, the Captain gets an off-duty Machinist to perform it, various people join the protest and start banging on the windows, the Captain deploy Security with batoons and shields to disperse the protest, yada yada it blows up into a full scale protest, the Captain tries to get reign of the situation, the anti-borging side lead by the Dominian consular starts to put forth demands, the Captain refuses to cede, molotovs starts being thrown [...] You get the gist Would this be more interesting? Yes, IMHO it would, more interesting than an interrogation or brigRP Is borging what prevents this from happening? No, in fact the existence of borging enables this situation from happening, other things get in the way of this interesting and fun situations to develop