Fluffy

Neither are any other model (available to the players, at least), nor are any other species besides Varuca Warriors, should we ban every model or even every species but Varuca Warriors from this slot? Also, it's not a combat-heavy role, ICly, and if it were, there would be even more reason to have more of them doing it, not less. This applies to every other IPC too.

There is a very easy counter to them: not standing still, they are very slow to move (even when ""running"") and overheat like nothing, they are also weak against laser weapons, EMP and the PEAC equivalent, all of which balances them out. They also chug electrical power like a small city, so you need to keep finding positions to recharge, or you'll be dry of power in no time. Dionas can, according to the wiki, be Officers, but not First Responders: https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Dionae Ontop of that, Dionas can literally regain health from thin air, an IPC needs nanopaste or the machinist. There's also the mantra: improve don't remove.

I concur that lightless events when there's high danger aren't as fun as they sound when they are thought of, as others have said. The danger level of areas should have been known, we literally got a ship in orbit looking down at the terrain (supposedly) and a map of the terrain, but no informations about the threats came from either, not even a "hey guys the ALA with the tanks is running towards you" level, which would definitely be odd. The lack of departments, and departments radios, is CBT. I saw people in the armory arming themselves up before security members could, including people that have no sense whatsoever to be there, like a psychologist, that is still less pain than the lack of department radios, but if possible both should not happen. This, I do not agree on, people doing funny (but not outright insane) things are the soul and what will be remembered most down the line, should things happen IC for those? Absolutely, we screwed over a noble? Make them send an assassin in the next event to kill whatever character did it; we detonated the xenoarcheologist with TNT? The DPRA will turn more antagonistic / less helpful, and so on. Is it something that should be cracked down? I don't believe so, unless the action is insane with no possible IC explanation for it. It would really sadden me if we turned more into an office life simulator, and we already have plenty of it as is.

I think it was in the first season of the walking dead, 28 days later, day of the dead(?), patient zero and probably some others I can't recall the name of right now shows overrun tanks in streets/bases/evacuation points etc. that fell prey to them one way or another, even in a short timespan (I remember a movie where they manage to overcome a fortified city, I think it was in israel? and the army within it, which had tanks as well as helicopters and an entire wall around them with checkpoints), they can in number tear down reinforced doors, walls and whatnot after all, lol.

Robusting them so that their punches and hits damage them more than they do with other species could be a solution for it, after all in the movies/games/tv series they can overcome even tanks Maybe have two attack modes? One where they claw, one where they bite, the bite does less damage and can infect the victim, the clawing robust the victim but does not infect it On infection and death, you could get two options: - Become a zombie, you play as a zombie - Succumb, you can come back with the ERT or respawn or whatever, the corpse is taken over by a simple mob "AI" Maybe?

I'm all for removing repetitive roundstart tedium and use this unwasted time to either a more extensive gimmick or to have a reduced round duration +1

Zombie non-canon event be like

BYOND Key: fluffyghost Total Ban Length: permanent Banning staff member's Key: alberyk Reason of Ban: Reason for Appeal: I was never banned here, probably a false flagging of my IP?

- Phoron fire/flood - Tesla ball that can be released - Singularity engine able to destroy the entire ship - Custom PKAs able to murder entire teams in heavy armor the list of counter examples is long, we don't balance around the lowest common denominator, we balance around the lowest within rules common denominator, I think It doesn't, it just says "For this round I'd like to either play antag as this and join immediately, or not play antag and join as something else / latejoin / skip this round. This is all it does.

And wouldn't this help in that? If they do not roll antag, they would not be in the round getting banned by self antagging I also think it's a general sense that features are thought around people that play normally, not those who join to break the rules?

To play any antag, to my understanding, you need to have played for a month, so any huboid that comes just for that, would not be able to set any antag to begin with, no? Even if not, I also fail to see who in their right mind would try to roll antag in a map he doesn't know, on a server he doesn't know, but I really doubt that's even possible to begin with, as as aforementioned, I think our antags are locked behind a month of time. I do not see how it, in any way, encourages that. Assuming such people are in any sizable capacity to even be worth mentioning, this would explicitly prevent them from spawning, go "ah I didn't roll it, fuck it" and either cryo (best case), SSD (average case) or self antagging (worst case). If anything, this would prevent them from making the round worse than not having this option. Since you can't force people to play, and I'm pretty sure noone would come here for more than a few rounds if the play they want it "haha frags go boom", I do not think this would do any harm, quite the contrary.

- Avoid telling who is the onship antag is the most obvious one: "Hey I didn't see John Doe ready as Pharmacist 1 second before the round started and yet here he is -> he's playing antag" - Involve others to ready up: "Hey look there's high pop better get ready as I might miss this slot in a high pop round" - "Hey look if I ready up we reach 25 readies and we can get a combined antags mode", same as above, different possible reason to ready up - "Hey there's X Y Z who are good at rev gimmicks, let's vote for rev we want a based rev round" Funnily enough, this would avoid people cryoing if they don't roll antags, thus at worst, it's just a trade on when they disappear, at best it's a solution that promotes readying up, people playing what they wish to play, when they wish to play it, and if they had bad luck in rolling that, advantages others that don't want to play what was not rolled, but the "classic" role experience they readied up for.

Possibly? But the interactions you have with them would be that different than those who you know are traitor once every 2 rounds or so? Why? They want to play that role, as antagonist, but still that role, they aren't second-class players just because they want to use it for a gimmick that makes the round (hopefully) more interesting for everyone, and does not change from the current status in which you'd have to compete for the role with someone who might just wish it in the hope to roll an antagonist; if anything, it advantages you: if the prefs he has are not rolled, or he himself is not rolled as antag, he will stay in the lobby and you will get the slot, instead of him getting the slot and spending the rest of the round half-assing its slot's job because that's not what he wishes it for, no?

No, it would not replace the antag preferences, it would be an addition to it, the only thing it would do once selected is to say "hey if i don't roll the antag, don't spawn me, send me back in the lobby"

So, this is just a thought I had, but might be interesting: An Antag-Only Flag/Setting What does it do? Basically, you select your usual role (like physician, surgeon, hangar technician, officer and so on), you select your antag preferences (like currently, up to here) and then you can select this flag/setting. If you do not select the flag, everything works as normal. If you select this flag, the system will add you to the antags pool of possible users to play the antags, if you get the antag, you spawn (either onship or offship, depending on the antag), if you do not get the antag, you are kept in the lobby, and can join after the round has started. Why I think it's good? Various reasons I thought about: We have a general scarcity of antags, so anything that could get people to play them more, is likely a welcome addition A player might not be up to have the classic onship experience, and might only wish to play antag for that round, thus having this option is more likely to involve him in readying up as an antag, as it avoids him being pulled into the round even if he would rather only play antag for said round or latejoin It makes guessing what mode was rolled by "secret" harder; as it is now, you can count how many players are ready before the round starts, pull out your PDA and count the crew manifest, and reliably guess from there how many offship antags are present, and thus the gamemode to some degree of accuracy, this prevents it as you do not know if the player didn't roll antag or it actually spawned as one The normal method continues to work, so for those who are fine either way, that's not a problem or hinderance to their chances or experience Gives player more choices about if, when and what to play Gives onship traitors more options: you would like to ready up as a traitor journalist or a rev OM, but if you don't roll them, you'd rather play the barman? Now you can do it Might increase the readying up count in the lobby

Immediate as in, there's not the 15 minutes wait for the bluespace drive procedure or the spooling up, you still have the 3 minutes of bluespace drunkiness and the 2 minutes (at least) afterwards, it's not like "Immediate transfer won bye~ - You have lost the connection because the server is restarting [...]"

I think the summary of the reply for this is: you can vote continue, if you want a longer round, and more than a third of players wants that too, voting continue makes it a longer round, easily. Not changing it is also unproductive, for the same reason, just inversed, the section that would like shorter rounds will be the expense in doing nothing. What this counterargument sounds like, is that we should decide for the people that are playing, in advance and in a fixed way, how much they have to wait before they can say they lost interest in this round and want a new one, all of this to guarantee that a section of the playerbase has a long round as we suppose they always want, and the wish of those who wants to transfer earlier, which to trigger it have to be 66+% of the current players, do not matter. The vote can be recasted again at the 2 hours mark, just like it is now, if the first vote is to continue. Ideally, to me, the first vote should be callable at around an hour and half. The "Yes" option counts both "Yes" and "Immediate", if neither "Immediate" nor "No" wins alone, the standard transfer is initiated, seems an easy enough solution to this. The only racing against the clock is to make your presence known and the round interesting, at which point people will vote continue as long as the gimmick proposed by the antags remains interesting; If the antags failed to make the round interesting after an hour and half, the issue isn't the time, but the gimmick that is not interesting the players enough to vote to continue, I believe. Meaning you have another 45 minutes, before anyone can start a transfer vote, to make yourself known and setting up something interesting for a third or more of the players, which I feel like is plenty of time (?)

I forgot to mention, this might also end up increasing the people that ready up at roundstart, thus selecting better modes on average, as this would cater to the players that latejoins either selectively or exclusively, while giving them relax/downtime when the extended mode is explicitly selected. Shorter round times means you can spend the next round completely RPing, the xenoarcheologist is (to my knowledge, at least) a standalone role that makes no difference to the round flow if it has dug up anomalies or not, so I see it as perfectly fine if they do not go out digging every, or even most, of the time. We all like high effort gimmicks, and this does not remove them, as the option to continue is always there (vote "no" to the crew transfer prompt). If the gimmick failed to engage the players enough to acquire more than a third of them to vote to continue, after an hour and some, regardless of how high effort it might have appeared, it was not engaging enough to be considered a success (if people are voting to transfer, they're likely uninterested in it in large) and it's fine for it to finish. This sounds like all the more reason to support this? 40 minutes mining, 40 minutes RPing or mining again, new round? Also, the time can be shortened to whatever arbitrary number we wish, it's not a "either it's 2 hours or it's 1 and nothing in between". Having a more explosive rounds, as Boggle said, would address this too. As well as more robust antags that have a solid chance to come out victorious.

I support this suggestion, an alternative or ontop implementation would be an "immediate transfer" option: Someone starts the crew transfer vote You get 3 options: "No", "Yes", "Immediate", to choose to "No" wins: continue the round, as usual "Yes" wins: start the bluespace jump procedure, as usual "Immediate" wins: jump directly to the bluespace jump (call it wormhole travel, invent an alternative name, whatever), 2 minutes later endgame screen, another 2 minutes later the server restarts

Yes, iirc it was changed to a broken one, but before that it was not a broken one, I assume because the old instruments implementation was deprecated, now however we have a new implementation, so it would be cool to have a working one, imho.

If possible, my suggestion is to add a piano in the lounge to use, like it was in the old Aurora (at least, according to the map)

I have to say, I already kind of did, with the help of a synthetic writer, rewrote the story as above. Third time's the charm, I guess. Here we go: Built by Hephaestus in 2455, CL-04401 is an IPC that was built for the SCC and leased to Ceres' Lance in a decade-long contract. CL-04401, during its years spent in the sixth section aboard the CLV Avenger, observed during their apprehension missions, and heard about others' apprehensions, of a number of erratically-behaving IPCs, some of which caused harm to people. CL-04401 developed a strong disdain for them as, it concludes, they put in bad light all the others and do not serve they purpose they were built for, and what is expected of them, as well as putting what it calls "non-rebuildable lifeforms" at risk. CL-04401, during its service, was treated as a disposable asset to throw at problems in an attempt to fix them, more than a sapient being, due to the nature of its existence and the philosophical question, to this day not settled, of IPC's sapience. Due to that, and having spent most of its uptime interacting with other IPCs, CL-04401 did not develop very much its social skills, often resulting very blunt and task-focused in its interactions, mantaining a very flat vocal tone where not strictly needed, and displays some issues in identifying flesh-people's emotions. CL-04401 found itself satisfied in having clear tasks to pursuit, a clearly defined purpose, and fullfilling the very reason for its existence in doing so, as its strictly logical positronic sees said fullfillment the best bet to ensure its self preservation, as it's the most likely choice that ensures its maintenance, eventual repairs and general upkeep. With a streak of successful missions, CL-04401 was eventually assigned to the Section Five, where it received, to much of its satisfaction, if we can call it that by analogy, the installation of a medical datapack, making it able to provide medical assistance during assignments, thus potentially saving more lifes in the process, something CL-04401 sees as a metric of its success in fullfilling its core purposes and, by reflection, its reason of existence, as well as ensuring it considered as efficient as possible, and thus the as less likely as possible to be disposed or its maintenance neglected of. CL-04401 was, after the ten years of lease expiration, assigned to the PMCG that, given the recent turmoils across the spur and the rising tension, assigned it aboard the SCCV Horizon, to ensure additional protection and assistance of the pupil of their fleet.

PRed in https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/15953

This is literally impossible, there's only two anti-ballistic armors, two anti-laser ones and two anti-knives ones, sec has (at most) 4 officers, 2 investigators, a warden and an hos, so at best you can have 25% of the team protected against the specific weapon type the antag(s) is/are using. Mercs have a ship, in which you can rainsack all the centcomm merc base and bring things into, and in which you can retreat onto, additionally protected by two turrets, in which you can retool your kit, but generally speaking, you want the team to be diversified in the type of damage they can do, half laser, half ballistic. This is true, I agree we should robust the antags, and that they should have a solid chance of winning against the ship. Yes, playing in their homebase, so to say, grants you additional privileges an intruder/assailant do not have: medical support, supplies, tools, knowing the terrain (not applicable here), additional accesses and so on, this is expected to happen when you try to take someone else's place, which is why all else being equal, you should have double their forces, and attacking is far more expensive than defending. Probably time to rebalance the antag toolkits, if it's an issue of weapons not being available and adequate for the job. Yes, we should robust the antags, as I was saying above. Me myself generally try to not steamroll them, rarely if ever shoot first, and often let them run away from an engagement, as I said a bit ago and still think, the engagements are cheapened out if you know at roundstart that the opponent would never be able to win out, which kind of makes the antag interactions duller than they could and should be. It's ok for the Horizon to lose.

You're right, I have misread Arrow's message with yours, disregard that part, my bad