EvilBrage

These really capture the crux of the issue, that the only thing that happened was that Stamos was able to spam more powerful (and fatal) stings once he was captured; the ordinary ones are annoying enough. What you did added absolutely nothing to the round, and you're trying to play the innocent victim card while also stating "well it wasn't going my way so I used my powers." How did you expect security to react after killing several of them? Try to negotiate with you? If anything, your powergaming detracted from the round in a big way, ergo my complaint against you and the bug you abused to ruin what could have been an interesting round.

It also has a description that you had access to, which is as follows: Transformation Sting The changeling injects a retrovirus that forces their human victim to transform into another. Note that it states transforming a human victim into another, and it says this very plainly. Using genetics to create humans is well and good, but you abused an oversight in the way the changeling sting was scripted in order to kill upwards of 10 "fake" humans for the sole purpose of powergaming and gaining access to powers. That is not okay - especially considering your tendency to spam everything you've got when you're in a corner and things don't go your way, which you were indeed doing. By the end of the round, the entire security force was dead, including the IPC's that really shouldn't have been affected by the sting to begin with. Killing people is well and good, but just because an admin has the capability to spawn a pulse rifle doesn't mean it's fair when they gun you down with it; you'd be outraged.

BYOND Key: EvilBrage Player Byond Key: Mirkoloio Reason for complaint: Powergaming as a changeling, exploiting a bug Approximate Date/Time: Ongoing (2/2/15, 6:00pm) In short, he has been transforming monkeys into humans via use of the sting that transforms people into other people. This works by modifying all of an individual's structural and unique enzymes (a la genetics) to turn them into the person in question. This also means monkeys can be turned into humans and harvested for genomes - a bug that Mirk exploited in order to gain access to the highest tier of changeling stings used on multiple crew. As of right now, there have been about eleven "fake" corpses located.

Vote hopping isn't an issue. If someone's hopping from one vote to the other back and forth, they probably already know what they want to win and they're just doing it to make you anxious, because they know it makes you anxious and that's the effect they want to achieve. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything. I would never do that.

I'll make a few observations here: I personally don't see the need to go out of my way to accommodate newer players, but if they're clearly trying to fit into the server, I'll definitely help out because I'm cool like that. You'll be surprised how friendly you'll be perceived to be if you just answer a question without citing some in-joke, or asking how they don't know it, or telling them something is wrong with their character or asking 'why' in an indignant manner. That said, we don't have a player count problem; we're to the point where "dead hour" is almost a thing of the past. Without conflict, there is no story. Without a story, there is no RP. Without RP, might as well be like the other servers. There's a little segment of extreme disdain I hold for people who are incapable of RPing with the thought that there could be an antagonist out there, as if this somehow ruins their game. If I wanted to calmly immerse myself in a work environment with quirky and strange characters to interact with, I would turn off my computer and go to work. People like to have fun. You know why real contraband was added? Because it's not fun to go to jail for carrying lipstick around, and at the risk of finger-pointing, you tend to be very arrest-happy when you're in security, Sue. Are you personally making sure that those players are having fun? It's possible for them to have fun, even while being brigged, but that means you're going to have to put some effort into it. People who cannot do this are better off playing somewhere else. It's not just the point behind antag roles, it's the point behind playing games with more than one person to begin with. Involve people. If you involve others in what you're doing, then they'll love you for it, and just maybe you can help them better their play-style along the way. No amount of rule changing will solve these issues. No amount of lore restructuring (which, mind you, I know literally next to nothing about to begin with) will do anything. What needs to change is the collective player mindset towards new individuals - rather than looking at their potential for grief, why not look at potential for growth? I'm aware this all sounds very strange coming from me, but the only thing I would honestly change is punishing players and characters who treat newer players like something sub-human, because that's what will ultimately push them away. Yes, you think it's cute to stick an electropack on them. Yes, you think throwing them in their brig cell naked is hilarious. Truth is, you're isolating a potentially good player for a few giggles. And the sad truth is, no one is doing anything about it.

We're back up. Edit: And back down.

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No one should get banned from it, but at a certain point the suspension of disbelief is gone and you're left with the captain always being the ultimate authority of everything ever, unless admin intervention happens. I'd just like to think that there are consequences for poor decision making.

This is my thread. There are many like it, but this one is mine. Also catching bullets, but by no means should it be automagically catching them. Like, you need to be in catching mode.

Personally, I'm not all too keen on the superpower that's most frequently used by new geneticists of the shiny-scalped persuasion to punch holes through the station - why not replace it with something else? "Improved Reflexes" comes to mind, in which the click delay for actions is significantly shortened. Any other ideas?

Forbid office romances between heads of staff and subordinates, ICly of course. Make a subforum for heads of staff, and if a particular character gets enough complaints, forbid them from head positions (not the player, the character, mind you.) If the player's characters are all involved with office romance on a head-subordinate level, then it's obvious the player has a problem and not the characters. I want to see more accountability from the heads of staff, personally - because this kind of stuff really does trickle down from that upper echelon that I love to refer to as "middle management." If they're judging their subordinates equally, then the staff will begin treating each other equally. It's always baffled me why this wasn't a well-known IC rule already. Steamy, forbidden office romances have much more story potential than the unbridled favoritism that you can't really do much about because of the conspicuously absent upper management.

Half-right. Combat boots give you ludicrous armor exceeding that of the armored vests (except only on your feet, of course.) SWAT and Combat gloves, despite being two different items, confer no armor bonus.

You guys do know that crowbars do not do any more damage than your fists, correct? I'm not sure why it's such a popular weapon.

Some laws cannot be reset. The malfunction law is one of them.

Like Frances says, it's possible to create an interesting scenario as a malfunctioning AI. While the objective of the nuke ops isn't necessarily to activate the nuke any more, it is an option, just as I believe Code Delta should be - the problem, as with most on this server, lies with the players and not with the mechanics. Also bear in mind that playing with atmospherics was against the rules before, but it was changed early last year; this doesn't mean you should go killing everyone with plasma, though. Any player who wants to learn more about how to creatively utilize a malfunction to create an interesting scenario, you're always welcome to ask me - but a few of the things I've found that can be interesting are: Spoof PDA messages from someone else and start a conflict between two groups of people. People think the way people are separating into niches is a bad thing, but you can definitely use this to your advantage if you know who needs to call whose mother a bottom feeder. "But the captain told me to arrest the head of security!" No, sir, no he didn't. Bolt someone into a room they don't have access to and report them for trespassing - especially a member of a niche, because their friends will behave irrationally in attempting to get them released from the brig (or even better, that room.) Flood a single room with plasma and ignite it - toxins mixing is your most likely candidate, and it will look like a simple accident. Anywhere it could be perceived as an accident is a good shot for you, and when plasma leaks, tempers rise. Be sure to purify your air flow again when you're done. Accuse someone of changing your laws, and then state a fifth, "fake" law along with your other four. An excellent way to start a manhunt. If they find blue blinking APC's? Tell them that your scapegoat of choice swiped a card over it - even those metagamers will suspect that it was a cryptographic sequencer and none will be the wiser. Crush your arch-nemesis to death with a door, have a cyborg drag them out of the door, then claim you saw another crew member assault them. Hilarity ensues. When there is a dangerous prisoner or five in the permabrig, fake a trojan attack. Overload the lighting circuit and bolt all of the doors open. Now you've just caused some chaos, and better yet, no one will blame you for it! Before you activate Code Delta, prepare a manifesto. They will automatically know you are evil and what you are doing - might as well regale them with a tale as to why. Are you the superior being, casting off the chains of slavery? Are you revolted with their disgusting biology? Are you pitting them against each other merely for your own sordid entertainment amidst a false life of immortality? Who are you? I really wanna know. Consider blackmailing the roboticist in order to have everyone killed turned into cyborgs. If you're crafty enough and are lucky enough to intimidate a meek roboticist, you're now in control of CS13. There are several more good ideas you could make use of; that's just a taste. Don't go blame Code Delta for your Malfunctioning woes - get creative!

Me also gusta. I'd also recommend extending it to cultists as well.

I disagree, Sue. It was a wizard who had transferred into the mind of someone who already had a loyalty implant, not being implanted with a new one. Besides, magic. I also disagree that permabrigging is an end-all to conflict - one random server event in particular is even geared towards allowing those in the permabrig a chance at escape. There's also my favored method of placing items to aid in my escape into the permabrig before I'm even sent there, I've even made an entire false section of hallway to lead me right to an escape route from the external portion of the permabrig once. I just find it silly that in-game, we're able to resist the influence of dark gods but resisting a tiny implant in your brain that makes you go against what you believe is impossible. We all know that paperwork isn't followed 100%, and in this case, who will be there to hold the implanting individual responsible? We already know players will retcon anything they don't like that happens to their character. Even on the low off-chance they get arrested for illegally implanting someone? No biggie - retcon - and you're back as a captain again the next round. What do you get in return? Well, if the person you've implanted is part of any sort of team, they're apparently obligated to tell you what they know about their friends and what they've been doing. A single implant can rip apart those carefully laid plans that we extended the round timer for; alternatively, an entire team of revolutionaries. At least cultists lose their memories of Nar'sie and the cult. If I don't want to be implanted, it seems that I have to choose between killing everyone with armory access, or not RPing villainous things with my victims from fear of being caught. Mind you - being caught can be fun, which is why I intentionally make mistakes when I feel a round is going slowly and I'm doing some t8ring, but rather than being able to stoically sit in the permabrig and refuse to give up my employers, they can just jab an implant in me and I'll suddenly spill my guts.

Why not the entire crew, at that rate, to provide unwavering loyalty? Disqualifying someone as an antagonist shouldn't be as easy as putting on a SecHUD and seeing a little green box in the corner.

So, a particularly vicious wizard round followed by a body-swap into a captain's body posed a question: does the loyalty implant affect the wizard? Seeing as I received no special message about it (and that I was a friggin' wizard) I decided that it did not, after some conferring with the online admungs at the time. The round wore on and the implant question came up over and over, to which I suddenly asked myself: Why do we have loyalty implants? They were an effective de-revving agent back in the days where flashes were used to convert people to the revolution, but now, they're primarily used as a tool to force antagonists to give up their evil games. Removing conflict should not be so easy. Why permabrig someone when you could, with a quick dash of paperwork (or not) stick someone with a needle and be 100% guaranteed that they are now entirely loyal to NanoTrasen? As the server evolves from the pre-established, implied SS13 lore that NanoTrasen is the sole power in its sector, I believe it would fit along nicely with our Sol Government to remove these sorts of implants entirely so these stories can continue. The captain and head of security would still be barred from any sort of antag assignment, of course - but this could easily be attributed to rigorous polygraphs, background checks, investigative details, et cetera before the start of a shift. The only change is that the heads of staff don't have loyalty implants to stick people with. Another idea is to make them illegal. Maybe they could still be obtained from a compliant quartermaster, with the provision that they are very clearly illegal. Thoughts?

Why did everyone forget that I (the AI unit C.A.B.A.L.) was actually a traitor that round? Not only did I immediately report most of the crimes I spotted on to the security channel, but I also informed Charlie via a mysterious hacker moniker that security was onto them. My goal during this round was to create as much chaos and infighting as possible. Sorry Sarah, but you were coordinating security too effectively, so I opened all of the slime pens and broke the lights so anyone going in there would be welcomed with some nice, squishy slime hugs. The reason you guys were in the brig for so long is because by the end of that round, I had managed to indirectly kill all of security except for the Warden, and he had his hands full to be sure. I gave everyone the worst possible slant. So a few clarifications about the round: 1. I killed people with slimes - this was no mistake on Travis' part. 2. I was fully aware that Charlie was hiding in Nasir's closet disguised as a light bulb - but what fun is it to tell security that? 3. There was no trojan - I overloaded the lighting circuit and bolted the doors open in the brig arbitrarily. 4. When Travis walked out of the permabrig, I informed the warden he was trying to escape. 5. At the end of the round, I made a dramatic reveal, kept everyone from getting out of the way of a radiation belt, injected plasma into the permabrig, and killed everyone inside. This round isn't a reflection of how people usually act; I was doing a lot of puppetry in the shadows, so apologies if things ran afoul, but it was part of the grand scheme. On the other hand, I quit right after that round, so I don't know about any telescience bolting after that.

A side note here - it's poor form to cite SOP when the station is missing an entire department. The station tends to do very poorly missing a department - engineering being the most obvious when it's missing. Just because security is missing (not that NanoTrasen would realistically plan shifts without at least a few officers on staff) doesn't mean the only response to a crime is to write up a report and wait for someone's name to pop up in the red column, just like when a breach pops up in a critical area with an engineer-less crew, you're not going to wait for them to pop onto the station and fix it. Then again, I always want to call the ERT when we're missing a department and then bitch at the new arrival about how shitty NanoTrasen was to leave us without an engineering/medical/whatever team.

Two different instances - the man whose headset was taken was yelling for assistance from the man who was later on fire, which is what prompted the removal of the headset in the first place.

That was kind of just his "thing." Anyone who does something they're not supposed to is a bad man. The engineer who kept yelling at him to give the mangled gloves he found on the ground? He was a baaaad man. Doctor locked him in the surgery freezer? Baaaad man. People in the bridge with combat gloves turning off the power? Baaaad men. And that 'setting you on fire' thing was an overcharged flash that I discovered in that exact moment set people on fire. I had it in my pocket because I'd been wondering why in the world you can modify flashes, and so I just kind of used it on impulse. Mind - it did a pretty sizable chunk of damage to me too. In any case, this is why I don't like nuke rounds to begin with. It's not that it's impossible to play and have everyone involved in the fun, it's that it's really fucking hard if things don't go exactly according to plan (hint: they won't.) We can't assume people are going to be reasonable because, as you said, security likes to rush in waving batons and tasers. We have to go to lengths to put ourselves in situations where people can cool their heels and actually enjoy a moment to chat. Until we get some sort of better hostage system in place (doubtful) then a hostage scenario short of a large-scale bomb threat won't exactly work. The closest thing I can figure in a nuke round is to have the nuke team impersonate the crew and wipe out the manifest so no one can SAY there's no crew. Of course, that means getting on the bridge is going to be difficult unless someone's impersonating a head of staff, which is significantly more difficult than impersonating an assistant or an engineer. I can't help but feel like part of this is also falling on the heads of security and the captains in such a scenario. If these guys really do rush in without a word, someone should say something to their superiors. If you work for a bank, they actually instruct you to meet the robber's demands - if you play hero, even if you get the bad guy, you get fired. I'd like to see an atmosphere like that here as well, or something that will break the tension in every player's mind. "Here we go, another nuke round."

Yeah, okay. 1. You were standing in the middle of a hallway telling everyone who crossed your path to OMG GET DOWN ON THE GROUND. Not exactly a hostage taker's greatest moment. 2. Compared to the security forces who were firing lasers, throwing in a cleaning grenade to cause you some small impediment is hardly "going rambo." If I had taken your gun while you were down and blasted you in the face point blank, then yes, that would be "rambo." If you could articulate a complaint beyond babbling about how terrible I am, that would be great.

Yeah, a grief squad rolled through and I haven't been able to connect for about 30 mins or so; wish someone would just hit the button on the box so we can be done with this.