EvilBrage

Apparently "ruptured" has a very strange definition on Aurora. As a wizard once, I teleported from an area with air to one without and, in that split second that I didn't have my internals on yet had a spacesuit and everything else, I ruptured a lung. Two minutes later, I was dead (and so was the entire crew, if I recall) which meant the round was essentially "over." That was silly.

Ridiculous is not being able to filch items out of someone else's bag, sir. That's pickpocketry 101.

BYOND Key: EvilBrage Player Byond Key: DeezyJ Reason for complaint: During a traitor round, I attempted to rescue a fellow traitor captured by the security force in the escape wing, before the shuttle arrived. Deezy's head of personnel - who was dragging the prisoner along at that point - wouldn't be much of a problem to whisk around and snatch the prisoner from with the help of a smoke grenade, or so I thought. What happened in reality was that I popped the smoke grenade on top of myself and put on my thermals so I could both conceal myself and see where everyone was, but Deezy elected to charge off in the other direction, prisoner in tow. Okay. I decide to play it off like I don't know what happened. I run away from the smoke and say "gee whiz" and start typing other things to give everyone reason to doubt I was the culprit of the smoke bomb, strange as that may be - and I didn't really expect anyone to believe it. But what does Deezy do? Fires a barrage of lethal lasers at my motionless mob - and continues to do so even when I move out of the way. Security decides to join in the hunt and fire their tasers, then pacify my husked corpse in death with handcuffs (specifically, Victor Kaipov), then throw me into the shuttle brig like it was all in a day's work. What the fuck? Since when did a nonlethal action warrant a lethal response without any form of hesitation over killing another person who hadn't even brandished a weapon? Since when did the head of personnel take over the traitor-killing business that originally belonged to security? And why did security arrest a lifeless corpse? I didn't expect my harebrained scheme to work, but god damn I didn't expect to get killed within two seconds of popping the smoke grenade. Approximate Date/Time: Approx. 5am EST 2-20-15

A player's own awareness would be the biggest defense against it - and the size of the item you take. Naturally, it's harder to filch (say) a stun baton than a hand teleporter, and I think this is reflected nicely in the game mechanics of messages sent out when you place things into your bag. Of course, if someone makes the mistake of letting the stun baton dangle from their armor, someone could easily snag it, put it on their belt, and then wander off - or keep holding it until they're far enough away to stow it in their bag without being seen. Maybe even impact the threshold at which items give messages for being tucked away?

You can call them whatever you like - reflex gloves, quiet gloves, whatever - but the gist of it is that when you're removing an item from an individual, they don't receive a message that you're doing so, potentially allowing you to swipe up the item and pocket it. Alternatively, (and this would require several more telecrystals, I'd think,) allow the item to be transported into your active hand instead.

The blurb above summarizes my concerns with Mirk's behavior - the mechanics themselves are easy enough to fix (even easier than I'd initially thought) and even since this complaint I know of at least one instance in which he's made the exact same rush to deathsting. In my opinion, the unnamed "moderator" who "cleared" this behavior prior to the use of this technique was either not given a full explanation of the behavior in question, or they do not deserve to be a moderator. I remember an earlier case in which moving a medical hardsuit to the medical bay was deemed powergaming - for that to be so and this instance to be acceptable behavior is impossible. I'm not trying to make a case that Mirk should git b& or whatever, but rather trying to firmly establish that yes, this was powergaming. If anyone deserves punishment, it's the moderator.

Pretty self-explanatory. I'm not sure why anyone would show up to work in a black tophat anyways, except to carry a cane and act like an asshole.

At first, I found myself muttering, "well you could just wait instead of just hitting the stasis button immediately after you die so it's even spoopier when they see you later," but by the end there I found myself saying, "this is the creepiest fucking idea ever and I love it." We wouldn't really have to throw in or change Greater Form, just make the ability work like stasis does (that is, even after death, allow them to detach their head.) The downfall of many a changeling is that they don't exploit the fact that everyone thinks they are dead. Where do dead people go? The morgue. Typically with all of their things intact, so you could either break out or ambush the poor doctor who comes in next. However, with spooky headcrab antics, I could see many, many more interesting things happen.

I agree.

And despite the overwhelming consensus we see here, in-game results tend to swing the opposite way, so perhaps it's time to give everyone a little RP blurb when they're transformed to help them along with the transformation, namely by informing them that they should not be acting like crewmen for very long. I can buy that their memories would fade slowly, or they would think themselves a monster and run away for a while, but my "start an alien invasion" plot has been ruined many a time by individuals who, instead of taking advantage of the fact that they were an alien, decided instead to charge headlong at me and attempt to murder me.

So something's really been getting under my skin lately - crew that've been transformed into slimes, aliens, robots, etc. acting exactly like their original persona. Not only does this happen, but the rest of the crew actually believes the big purple alien when it says it's actually the scientist. If you ask me, this is something that shouldn't be happening, so can some admin or mod chime in here on this topic? It's getting to the point where the Staff of Change only gives the crew a new method to kill you.

Just a tidbit to help the coders: it would be easier to code the sting sent to the target to include all blocks but the 27th structural enzyme - or better yet, just the unique identifiers. That way, the sting couldn't be used to turn monkeys into humans at all and you don't have to fumble around with CD keys. Additionally, if we want to cut genetics protohumans out of the loop, you could instead remove the addition of evolutionary points if you absorb someone with the catatonic flag/variable (like the genetics protohumans and those created with the changeling sting.)

You have to RP with your victim; any game mode can be made fun if you know how to properly approach it. Kidnapping them and taunting them with the voice of their loved ones? That's fun, and best of all, it doesn't require the powergaming of racking up as many evolution points as you can. If changelings were supposed to evolve by doing that, they wouldn't even need to target a space station, they would just corner the monkey cube market.

I would definitely like to see more in the computer hacking realm (and a use for a character being a programmer other than 'durrhurr reprogram AI.') How would we achieve this? I have no clue.

So in other words, we removed objectives from antags, and now we want to add them back. Surely you can think of a better nuke op objective than a bounty - this is a step backwards. Just kidnap a scientist or what have you for their knowledge of NanoTrasen's research projects or something. Clear out all the station accounts onto untraceable charge cards and haul them back to the Syndie base. Do a raid and rally up some crewmen for human trafficking. It doesn't have to be bounties. From what I recall, those bounties are entirely modifiable by simply PMing Incognito; don't make yourself a target and then complain that you're a target.

We obviously haven't met. I can think of about five ways to robust an officer with a baton using common items - off the top of my head, at that. That being said, the likelihood of touching a baton and keeping your hand on it long enough for the actual full force of the shock to be delivered to you is so small it's not even worth coding. It's fine as-is.

I remember a particular round in which I killed all 28 members of the crew. There was not one complaint. Why? I did it in a manner that was fun - that, and I turned the crew into mindless automatons so they could still play. If you make it fun, you'd be surprised at the number of people who will accept dying - but to use a cheap method to obtain the most powerful sting, or to kill people for the sole purpose of watching those points rack up, is not fun. It's comparable to fulfilling antag objectives just to see green text.

No offense, but that's probably the least interesting idea I've ever heard - the second a demand is made, this is followed by "STATE YOUR LAWS" followed shortly by either the aforementioned mentality of must-kill, or boisterous laughter and dismissal of that cooky AI personality. There's no gravity to that kind of situation - gravity, conflict, and tension all build up into those fun situations. As the singular entity on the station incapable of movement, antagonistic AI's are almost wholly dependent on sabotage to put their plans into motion. If I were rushing to kill everyone, I'd have flooded the central hallway with plasma and lit it all on fire - instead, I chose the high road here to put a highlight on how ridiculous these two were acting.

Short of saying "bzzt, I am malfunctioning," how would you recommend I approach the situation? I involved the crew in unorthodox ways - blowing up the communications console was a method to stop the escape shuttle from being called; your positioning had very little to do with it. I tried to hack APC's in very obvious areas, but the power was going out, so no one was really paying any attention to that. Eleven APCs flashing blue and not one person stopped to ask why; the crew was, in general, headed towards killing themselves from a lack of competence, and there's precious little I can do if someone doesn't want to play along.

To be frank, the location of the AI on the map is atrociously easy to break into - an AI has very few options to fend off anyone trying to breach the core area from the wall opposite Cargo. Simply moving back and forth also prevents the turrets from being able to eject and fire upon intruders quickly enough, and I've seen them dispatched by an individual with a fire axe moving up, taking a hit, then moving back to force them under the turret covers due to a lack of target. My suggestion is a rework of the way the AI is positioned. Instead of being two reinforced walls away from destruction, we could restructure the zone to make the entire thing a bit more reminiscent of the way the AI core was set up before: - Return the AI to the position it was in before (that is, sitting at the top-center of the area designated for AI equipment.) - Remove the "command hallway" and situate the door at the bottom of the entry to the AI equipment area. Alternatively, place the bridge-access doors around the entrance to that hallway. A huge flaw of the current design is that instead of the AI having the rear portion of its core facing a high-security area (such as the bridge,) it is now facing a public hallway, and the map balance has suffered as a result.

Probably because you weren't playing during that round, no offense. When Scopes and others who were observing chime in, maybe they'll be able to fill in those details I seem to be missing. I also wasn't aware that non-command staff had access to an AI and intricate knowledge of its core - if it had been the chief engineer and the research director, that would be an entirely different scenario (though no less ganky) but the lack of knowledge that these characters would have on the subject in particular is just icing on the proverbial shit cake. It would have been far easier to go off to their respective outposts rather than take advantage of a design flaw in the mapping and a bug that prevented me from stopping the break-in before it started, but from what I saw, they just wanted to kill themselves an AI and found the perfect excuse to do so. It's a known bug that the EMP button does nothing.

To take down a wall at the exact point of weakness at the very back of the AI core? They knew the AI core inside and out without any logical reason for knowing the layout of the core - for all they knew, they were drilling into a random reinforced wall. Never mind why in the world their bloodlust would lead them to do that, charge into an AI core full of turrets and bash the AI core to death with all the fury of Khorne's Berserkers, shrugging off the whir of the turrets and the blaze of laser fire and the borg spewing polytrinic acid that melted the remains of the very walls they had to dig through.. We obviously have very different opinions of what's sensible and what's not.

BYOND Key: EvilBrage Player Byond Key: Alberyk, OneOneThreeEight Reason for complaint: Instant rambo on code delta. Approximate Date/Time: 2/6/15, approx 6:30pm EST The moment Code Delta was called and my Hack Intercept module failed to work, Aaron Hawkins (played by Alberyk) almost instantly used a RIPLEY (that could not be EMP'd) to begin drilling right into the back of the core from the public hallway. In addition, Talia Verick (played by OneOneThreeEight) began to assist him after his mech had been destroyed, throwing EMP grenades obtained from the derelict and pulling him away when the turrets had begun to kill him. By the time I had stopped typing to the rest of the crew, it was way too late to stop them - the RIPLEY had gone through the wall and an EMP grenade took my turrets and cyborg out of commission. I'm not sure how a shaft miner and a plasma researcher put together knowledge to break into the back of the core and start hammering away at me - but seeing as I didn't want to create an atmos issue by filling the place with plasma, I just let it happen. I think I've established a fair record of involving the crew in my dastardly antagonistic schemes, but things like this really drain my enthusiasm for the role - I'm hoping we don't just let this slide, because it's indicative of a larger, "win mentality" based problem.

There wasn't even an attempt at negotiating, but it seemed like a prerequisite instead - just something to get out of the way before the killing starts. I remember the demands being rather absurd (namely, no implants, being released, etc) to the point where they'd definitely not be met. I'm much more concerned about the abuse of monkeys being used to bump up changeling evolution points, and we really should prevent that 27th block from being modified by the changeling's sting.

You should try reading the rest of the thread, Starfish. This thread isn't about fighting changelings, it's about using monkeys to jack up your evolution points to the highest number possible. I was Samuel Avalon in that scenario, and I probably deserved to get stung (mostly because I hadn't physically seen prior stings, so there was still a thin veil of disbelief,) and I was dragging him to the incinerator not because it's an incinerator, but it was the only place I could think of at the time that had an outwards-facing disposals chute, since the idea of spacing him had surfaced multiple times. I personally thought it'd be interesting to see him survive space, but apparently that didn't work out.