Bygonehero

Jesse Armstrong is definitely aggressive, but I agree it should be a CCIA report and not a Ban Request, You shouldn't punish someone for playing their character, and nothing I have seen from Jesse as a character seems to break the rules. They are just aggressive. Consider how silly the reverse is. Punishing people for aggressiveness promotes carebear RP cliques, where antagonists and aggressive activity of any sort are punished. Which leads to punish anything that breaks someone out of their safe space echo-chamber. Remember, if someone breaks the rules, report it to admins. If they are not breaking the rules, and are not an an antag, a CCIA or character complaint, depending on context are available.

Five-Fold Cap- Splits wizard into five different apprentice wizards, each controlled by a different ghost Would be pretty cool item, and allow nice gimmicks without being too op

((Still finishing muh other story but I'm wanting to finish a bit more before posting. In the meantime, here's a speed write of the beginning of my interpretation of how The Cult of Narsie came to be!)) ((67 minutes)) Chapter 1- Message in a Bottle (76 minutes) Chapter 2- Underneath the Veil

Really good!

This will be a fairly long post, so as to get it out of the way immediately, This post is not criticizing any one particular character. This post is about the state of the server culture, in that creates the situations where powergaming attitudes become normal play. There is a no hard and fast delineation from medium RP to high RP servers, but if I were to propose, The difference between the two is whether character progression trumps static job assignments or visa versa. Let me clarify what I mean by this. In a high RP setting, a new player decides to create an assistant with medical knowledge, and develop that character. This character progression continues until they land in the medical department as a medical intern. They continue their character progression, and over the course of a month, have learned chemistry. Continue this further and the character progresses to also have learnt standard doctoring, which continues onto cloning, which continues ad nauseam until all departments in medical are learnt ICly from their character. They may further reinforce this knowledge with character information such as advanced surgical/chemistry/virology training/degrees/certifications. Keep in mind that by now, a year has past and this character is well known and well liked by many people. They have always had perfectly justifiable reasons for their knowledge, and it is believable icly. They have become a staple of the medical department. At some point in the above example, by our rules as they are written, the player would begin to power game, even though it is icly acceptable that they have this knowledge. If they were to join as a doctor for a month, after having progressed as much as they have as a chemist, then players would expect them to know chemistry, players would expect them to fill a job outside of their job placement. This is powergaming. Static job roles indicate that you cannot have skills outside of the scope of your profession, regardless of history. Because so many players have progressed to this point, it has colored the server culture to where new players see a medical doctor perform surgery/cloning/virology/chemistry. They see this, and they learn what is expected from normal play in the servers community. It becomes normal. Power gaming becomes normal gaming. And it's not just medical. The station engineer has almost completely supplanted the atmospheric tech in every way, again because of a server culture based on character progression, that then teaches other players to act as progressed characters do. Security officers performing detective work, etc. Now I know what you are thinking. This is a high RP server, we need character progression to facilitate this, and you are right, we do. But when does character progression lend itself to be power gaming? Power gaming rules when viewed in such a way are rarely enforced. You rarely see someone ahelp a medical doctor making chemicals when no chemist is available. You rarely see a roboticist being ahelped for breaking into RnD to perform research. You rarely see a Station engineer ahelped because they broke into atmospherics to optimize it. You rarely see a Security officer ahelped for breaking into the detective's office to perform forensic work. This is because of character progression, and its effecting the servers culture towards such activities to where they are no longer considered power gaming, they are considered normal.

As someone who has had more than a few bouts with Delta, I disagree with this complaint against them. I'm reiterating what skull said here, but effectively admins do this stuff for free. Attempting to nitpick at virtues someone may or may not have is stupid. They aren't becoming a priest after all. It is understandable for someone to have any number of failings especially when you regularly deal with people lying to you, yelling, etc. I have many failings myself. In particular, this case it is only when these failings affect their job as an administrator that it becomes an issue.

The AI display is directly tied to the AI health stat. If the AI is EMPed it will show confusion, if it is fully healed or undamaged it will have neutral. If it is dead it will have a BOSD. If no AI exists then it will be blank. Everything else is flavor. Some people know this, and I have used it to fake my own death or pretend to not be there many times.

But you are trying to change the game balance, I don't really see how having a monitor helps in immersion when a fully bodied hologram is available. Making it easier for traitors to identify if they are being observed in public areas full of people with potential victims is definitely changing the balance of the game. Furthermore, AI code is a mess as it is, it's going to be reworked eventually, but the features added/removed from it will probably be set in stone well in advance. When I say a feature that affects only 20% of the station, I meant in relation to all other features. Compared to bugfixes and z-level integration this feature isn't important, and is a waste of time for now. It would be much simpler to have a traitor item that tells you if the AI is watching you.

Well, hang on. I'm not really advocating for glowing cameras. That would make it impossible for the AI to do anything without being known. I would prefer something more subtle that would still allow the AI to snoop around. Cameras just outright starting to glow wouldn't do that; People would see the Camera was glowing and stop doing anything, even when they're not breaking regulations or committing a crime. The original suggestion was not for Camera changes, it was just a minor change to how the AI Display monitors work to reflect when the AI was in the area or not, it's really not that huge of a balance flux and it wouldn't even effect every area. I'd think these monitors would only be in extremely public areas like Escape, Arrivals, and one or two strewn across hallways. They wouldn't be everywhere and definitely not in secure areas... It would just be a neat little functionality change (If it weren't too snowflake to code) that would add a lot of immersion to the monitors, and make the set images actually make sense, seeing as the images are all stuff like smiley faces and observing eyes. This isn't a very wide reaching 'nerf', it's just an alteration at best, but it's completely sensical, this almost seems like what those monitors were meant to imply with these images to begin with, but it just seems like noone thought to do it this way. It's just an idea and not really a demand for AI nerfs, and it's not really much of a nerf to begin with, if people know the AI eye is observing them in Escape. Alternatively, this sorta thing could just be incorporated into the 'AI Display' if it's done at all, which, I may have gotten confused with the Status Display. Honestly, if this were implemented it would be better utilised as a new function of the AI Display. Literally all i've wanted with this suggestion is for the AI Display to be off when the AI is not looking, and for it to be on when it is. It's a very immersive and sensical detail. As it stands, it just replays the same face/eye/image over and over again to no end. What is the point? Are they just there to use up Station power? They don't even do anything. This would change that. Implementing a feature that only affects 20% of the station seems like a waste of time. Also I can think of two ways with current mechanics to counter this. You don't need mechanics to fix this issue, you need the right administrators and server culture. Almost every round in the first 10 or 20 minutes I can identify antagonists, but too often people forget that the AI's job isn't to find antagonists, but to serve the crew. It is expected that the AI give some leeway to traitors, the benefit of the doubt in other words, unless they were told to look and stop antagonists in the first place. Just a few days ago, a Research Director was implanting bombs into the chests of several crewmembers. I had photographic, audio and visual evidence that they were doing this as AI, but I still gave them the benefit of the doubt and questioned them on their activities. They claimed to be attempting to remove the bomb, which is something I couldn't prove. AI's should always assume that the crew are telling it the truth in my opinion and should only act in the interests of security without orders if they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt someone is up to no good.

Then at the very least separate broods from the naming scheme. I just saw your new changes. Broods work now, Its most important that the wiki is clear, and concise about naming, and you have made it very clear. Indeed! I particularly liked reading about that and to me, it is interesting reading about the Ra and Kza body types. I see Ra Unbound being effectively pages for older, wiser Unbound and Ra probably being the first job a new Unbound is given when it is brought into existence in the Virtual. Though I would say that Cephalon's are the single largest part of the Virtual neural-net. I see the entire map being something like... Cephalons are the processing centers of a biomechanical neural net, hemispheres of the brain if you will, Ra are carrier cells, meant to send information between Cephalons in this biomechanical neural net. and Kza are routing centers in this biomechanical neural net, sending information where its suppose to go. You very neatly described a neural net and now the Hive-net and Virtual feels like a brain, which is exactly what you were going for! I think now this thinking should be applied to the rest of the body, Since a large portion of the hive is made up of bound drones I think they would be the muscles or hands of the hive-body. As for Unbound, I feel that they should be extremely pragmatic when it comes to the preservation of the hive-body. The loss of a single Cephalon would be akin to a nuclear holocaust after all. Your writing also highlights the Vaurcan mastery of genetics. The actual amount of binary data a human body holds encoded from DNA is around 150 Zettabytes. It makes complete sense that Vaurca would not seek mechanization when they hold much more efficient avenues of computing power. Nothing short of quantum computing comes close, so it makes sense that they were advanced to the point of building such large vessels and ships in the past and why recapturing the old glories from ancient Vaurca is a focus for them now. I imagine Vaurca romanticizing their history even more so than humans do because of this, which leads to the warrior-poet mindsets and philosophies. The biggest difference between Vaurcan philosophy and human philosophy I feel would be the importance of truth and morality. Human philosophy attempts to define truth within the context of a morality, Vaurcan philosophy attempts to define truth in relation to the similarity of those who came before.

What I am saying is that broods are very confusing.KISS is important in writing, Lesser Queens are a simpler solution. Broods don't need to exist for the hive to have disagreements. They are infinitely more complex than lesser queens and mix up the naming system that's already hardwired to identify hive in server culture. Pretty soon we are going to have K'lax broods, and I don't much enjoy having to reference a wiki every time I need to know whichever brood a Vaurca is.

I don't think Vaurca in different sectors of the hive would consider themselves a higher cast. They are simply a part of the hive-body, just as everyone else and I don't believe Vaurca in different sections of the hive-body wouldn't have ambitions, I just think that different unbound would gravitate towards parts of the hive-body that they are best at. Perhaps age and knowledge of a Unbound is important, but Ego isn't. I suppose personal achievement towards the hive body might. There is no 'higher caste'. The mind is listened to simply because that is where all the smart unbounds are. Clearly parts of the mind that are most familiar with combat would have the most voice in a situation where the hive-body must combat something, etc. And consider this. The broods make actually playing a character harder. I have no idea what brood my characters would be, so I've ignored using them. I've not seen any Vaurca player except you use them. They are really making it confusing as to who is what, and I believe they have no place in the current lore. It doesn't make sense to fracture the hive into different sections. Yes, those sections can exist, but they can exist without being listed. Its extremely confusing to write about Vaurca, because of all these changes. EDIT: You should also look at the newest whitelist applicants for Vaurca, none of them are using the naming scheme that Vaurca use because it's no longer immediately obvious that they should.

Of all the changes, I dislike broods the most. They make the system overly complicated. While I am sure such divisions in hive exist, I don't think they need to be listed. It's better left to the imagination of writers or players. As for the rest, I continue to believe that the measured approach to redefining the species is to perceive each hive as a giant organism, with Unbound serving as nerve cells in this superorganism and Bound as everything else. This body approach neatly bridges the gaps between the old and new lore. The Mind contemplates the orders of the rest of the hive, weighing and debating their answers with each other. Each other organ of the hive does this in microcosm. The immune system of the hive would debate amongst itself just like the Mind would, but they are less concerned for why it should be done, but more concerned with how it should be done. This view covers everything from efficiency driven space bugs to philosophizing space bugs. This is because the Vaurca aren't a hive mind, they never were. Each person was their own person, but each person was born with a duty to their hive. This plays into each Vaurca being extremely specialized, as well. Your vision of VR could easily be the nerve system of the hive, where unbound communicate with each other. I see lesser queens being the de facto leaders of these micro-communities and the ones who receive and send information to the Mind of the hive. You have to remember, that your body will do many things to preserve itself even at the expense of other parts of the body, and this is the heart of the Vaurcan mindset, the preservation of the Hive-Body. Everything that a Vaurca does should lead back to this single, simple and easy to understand premise. Exploring the depths of such a premise is easy, and it can be taken in many different directions. I see Vaurcae perhaps taking up human hobbies as distractions to their misery and lack of VR, to find avenues of escape for being cut off in such a way from their very being. I believe this approach is the best of both worlds, It keeps the servers culture's interpretation of Vaurca, while as expanding on them, and giving them new pathways for further growth.

Chapter-1 The Talking Corpse The first part of the first chapter. Still working on finishing it.

<3 I'm jealous really, Never been to New Orleans before.

New atmospherics is too good and stifles any creative design decisions that could be made by an atmospheric technician. It's small, and optimized to the point that it passively denies anyone from experimenting in atmosia, the city of pipes for their own vision of what it should look like. I understand that one of the players designed it. Did they ever stop to consider that they had fun doing that? Did they ever consider that maybe other players would have fun doing that? Already the atmospheric technician is a job plagued by other people supplanting it. This is just a final nail in the coffin. The addition of manual valves to mix also prohibit station AI's from performing antagging stuff and I believe they were placed there for solely OOC reasons. ICly in this age of automation, NT would likely try to automate as much of its station systems as possible. Setting a manual valve for important systems is the same as someone choosing a car that won't drive itself instead of a car that can. NT is a company, and beyond synthetic access, there's no safety difference between a manual valve and a digital one. The difference is in efficiency.

This application is taking a long time to process? Also +1 Adolph is pretty good. When I first met them they were very power gamey, but he's improved extremely to the point where I believe he's the best warden to play with OOCly. He knows mechanics, yet he's fair about giving antags a chance. He sticks to regulations, this list goes on people. While I trudging up dark pasts can be a thing, I believe he's shown a marked increase in not only his ability to roleplay, but in his ability to make rounds enjoyable for everyone.

Damn good borg, Servitor. Their good borgs Brent +1

I would like to be added

I liked your performance during the xeno round, definitely one of the more believable officers I've interacted with.+1

((posting the intro first, gonna be kinda long but I'm aiming for a neo-noir detective story involving my character, the Vaurca Nyx)) Prologue- Arrival Chapter-1 The Talking Corpse

It used to be that you get slipped the number of squares that contain the slippy stuff, lube was just more effective at doing that. I think a happy medium would be revert back to old slipping, decrease the amount of time lube actually stays on the floor, and instead of the binary choice between running/not running for water, I think you should slip on water if your walking speed is > a certain amount.

This, a million times this

Yes, please revert slipping to its past form. Gone are the days of lubing up the escape hall and making a slip'n'slide all the way to the shuttle. Together we can make slipping great again! by asking our coders super nicely!

It sounds pretty awesome, indeed much of the lovecraftian side of things is lost with cult how it is.