EvilBrage

Or only admins get to vote and your antag weight is hidden from you. Or just whitelisted players. Or some arbitrary system that allows only players we have confidence in as a community to make the determination. Or maybe just give players one "kudo" point to use per day to increase the chance of someone becoming an antag for X amount of time. Weighting antag selection is a solid idea, it's just a matter of finding out how to go about it.

Many thanks, and duly noted! PM's are an easier way to get a hold of me, but I'll pop my head back in here as often as I can.

Being a decent roleplayer is all well and good, but being a good sport OOC and understanding the spirit of the rules/structure we have (have fun) rather than the letter (followed all rules AND WON lol go complain about it scrub) is equally important. That said, I can gladly say that I've personally witnessed W3b demonstrating the latter; he graciously accepted my request for a time-out while I sorted out my computer troubles as an antagonist in the middle of a standoff. While his compatriots were total gits about it, W3bster really stuck out for a positive OOC attitude.

There's not. And if there were a chance to fail without any notification, no timer, and a two minute delay? Yikes. Anyways, it'd be easy to chuck it up there on the status bar along with the station time and all that other information.

Having to improvise new ways to deal with problems is a feature of the game - creating new solutions is a cheap cop-out, unless something is extremely broken. Fire extinguishers, welding tools, and lockers are widely available and deal with all of the problems you've described. No sense in having a chameleon projector if security has a chameleon finder. I know it's not what you're suggesting, but it's along the same vein.

An antagonist can't "powergame" by definition, as they're the conflict initiators and should be reasonably expected to plan for possible contingencies. Powergaming would be, for example, Jaylor changing the AI laws as a non-antagonist because he's got no clue how to do that. An antagonist Jaylor on the other hand is actually a trained special agent, sneaky shape-shifting alien, or cultist gifted with the arcane whispers of Nar'sie (take your pick). Or maybe he just decided today he hates everyone and he's going to go on a shooting spree. Or maybe he's recruiting for his gang and wants to overthrow the heads of staff to show his dominance - but you'll never see a non-antagonist Jaylor using a deconstructor in science, mixing chemicals, changing AI laws, or actually enforcing station laws in the very unfortunate event that a moron decides he'd make good security staff. I actually tend to make very sure that said choices are punished with even more chaos - within reasonable limits, of course. At the risk of sounding narcissistic, I'll ask this: why do people enjoy my wizard rounds, for the most part? A wizard is non-negotiably the most powerful antagonist out there, so when I have a little more wiggle-room to actually create something interesting for the players involved in the round, I'm able to do so with increased efficiency (and lower the odds that I'll suffer a random death at the hands of Rambo McShootFace.) If someone decides that it's do or die, I can stun them and reiterate that they have to complete some arbitrary task for me, continually hinting (or outright stating) that I will let them live if they help me. I believe we've lost realism in our characters - more specifically, the fear of death. For some godforsaken reason, apparently there are other things that are "more important" to the characters of Aurora like unathi honor or getting that last sarcastic quip in before you kick the bucket, or just fighting back for no damn reason at all despite the fact that you're clearly boned (those of you who continually hit the resist button when I've got you buckled in a chair and am clearly trying to talk to you - I'm looking right. At. You.) How do we get this back? Fuck if I know, else I'd be putting this in the suggestion forum. Permanent death is my favored solution for most games, but that's off the table for Aurora. So what, then - a dead character cannot be played again for X rounds? That would simultaneously make half of people even more ridiculous while the other half might just get the hint. For now, however, I have only advice: to antagonists, I would encourage you to seek out the seedier elements of Aurora. Don't ask for too much; rather than saying "can you grind up this deadly poison and put it into a syringe for me," instead try "hey, can I use your grinder real quick? Here's fifty creds, go take a smoke break." To all others, I would encourage you to act realistically in both IC and OOC terms - if Suspect McShifty is acting shifty on a code green and pulls the rules out on your security officer, is it really worth it to stick around and shout for a search warrant, or would a sensible person really just want to go along with their day? Is it really fun for other players involved to brig someone for fifteen minutes because they called you a dick? Is it worth your job to refuse to medically treat someone because they took your cheeseburger? I think that recognizing that we're all essentially here for the same reason is a big step towards solving all these problems without obtuse mechanical restrictions or additional rules.

I never understood why we needed DO's since apparently IAA's are supposed to fill that role (dealing with complaints and mediating conflict,) but uhh. Yeah. Sure.

I will edit this post when I find it, but increased damage capacity for robotic parts is already a thing. Advantage: Diseases aren't quite as slow as we'd like them to be. Advantage: EMP has a 30% chance to simply do 15 damage to a given robotic limb segment (arm, hand, leg, foot.) You do have a minute chance to simply take damage. Advantage: A destroyed IPC limb with damage left over does not pass to other limbs as with organics. Advantage: Wounds can't GET INFECTED GRRRFHG{UH#@!NGB)*IBG!#U{ Advantage: Cannot be stung by changelings. Advantage: Cannot be poisoned/debilitated with chemicals. Advantage: Cannot be killed by organ damage. Advantage: Beep boop random lore facts don't impact you in-game. Advantage: Being "immortal" shouldn't impact self-preservation - you can still be destroyed. Advantage: "Organic-Hater" fan club has high membership. Advantage: Cannot be tazed, bro. An IPC has a specific set of advantages offset by some disadvantages. The brute modifier was removed because it was too powerful an advantage, and I stand firmly by that observation given the other advantages stated above. Maybe add some sort of armor plates that can be welded onto an IPC that would slow it down to diona speed if you really want that armor, but gone are the days of such a high brute reduction rate. Maybe a 20% with the armor.

Let me throw this in there: would we accept a whitelist application for a tajaran who acts in the manner that Safiya has with genetically modified pink fur? My initial assumption is that we would not, nor should we. Just because a character/player is established does not mean our standards have changed. Genetics is terrible as it is, that's a given - but simply allowing the behavior to continue is not the answer.

But is this the fault of the race and lore, or the players? If we're unable to make skrell interesting without some obtuse mechanic, who's to say that a new race will be any different?

I, for one, think a mass exodus of other species would be a welcome change. Maybe Moghes wants to nuke humans instead of themselves this time and we can get rid of those damn lizards. Maybe we can even throw them into nuke/heist rounds or something, but get them off the station. In any case, the last time we tried to just take a section of Bay's code, a bunch of things broke and so I'm vehemently against the introduction of the copypasta method until we test absolutely everything to know it all does (or does not) work. Even then, I'd like it very much if it weren't a completely new race. Throw them in there with the vox and give the collective heist team a 50/50 chance to be either race and I'd like it, though - but beyond that, we have enough cuddly beast races to satisfy the furries, thanks.

This doesn't fix the problem of all of the other aliens being resprited humans, but if we had these instead of tajarans, I'd be fine with that. I'm a bit iffy about the thermal vision though, if only because they could hear individuals that they wouldn't technically be able to hear, such as someone in space when they're inside, or an individual who isn't moving (or alive.) Furthermore, they would actually be able to identify said people through those walls by sound alone, which seems like a bit of a stretch for me.

Could we stick to potential suggestions rather than shitposts just because someone doesn't agree with you? The rest of us got over that when we were twelve. Also like this. Not even ghetto earplugs, even - sometimes it's just necessary to drown out the noise of the station. Maybe throw in some machines that can cause ear damage if you use them without earplugs, and provide earplugs for those departments? So we don't have them lying around everywhere for no reason.

Semantics aside, I agree that communication with NanoTrasen should not be quite as infallible as it is, no matter how assholish those DO's are. And an aside - emergency communications really should be done through the communications console instead of faxes, if you ask me. Those can already be emagged anyways.

Let me specify yet again that we have alternative voting methods without leaving even more up to the RNG. It's literally called the alternate vote. Let's say we've got a vote as follows: We have eight people playing on the server, voting in the order in which they would prefer to play a given round type. Brage votes for secret, wizard, and extended. Delta votes for secret, then extended. Hive votes for secret, nuke, and rp-rev. Meowy votes for extended, then nuke. Voltage votes for extended and doesn't want to play any other game mode. Doomberg votes for nuke, wizard, and extended. Frances votes for wizard, changeling, and rp-rev. Alberyk votes for changeling, nuke, and extended. In the end, the tally for first-pick votes is as follows from highest to lowest: Secret - 3 Extended - 2 Nuke - 1 Wizard - 1 Changeling - 1 Under our current system, secret would win the vote and we'd be playing that round, even though a majority of the players (5/8) clearly have no interest in playing a secret round. But, because each person lists alternative votes under this system, we know where they would go if they'd decided to change their vote because their given game mode didn't win, which prevents their vote from simply not counting because they like a game mode that other people do not. So the lowest game modes voted in are nuke, changeling and wizard, so we look back at what the alternative votes for each person are - Doomberg lists nuke and wizard, but both are eliminated, so his vote goes to extended. Frances, on the other hand, is all over the place and voted for not one but three round types that no one wants to play, today. Sorry, Frances. Alberyk lists changeling and nuke, but has extended to fall back on, so his vote goes to extended as well. The end results are much different. Secret - 3 Extended - 4 By the end of the process, we come up with a scenario that more of the player base will be satisfied with (4/8 of the voters ended up having their votes count towards it, and even some of the secret players listed it as secondary.) We're now playing a game mode that a majority of players actually want to play, rather than allowing a minority of 37.5% dictate the round type for us.

I am very much against using the RNG (specifically, BYOND's RNG) as it's not exactly unbiased. Sure, it's a good idea we've got here, but it's not actually random - to the point where I can get 15 "heads" in a row on a coin flip. I'd much prefer the if we can actually script it in. In short, you can freely pick your favorite round type without worrying that the extended peasants will win just because you want to vote wizard, because you voted for nuke as your second pick and secret as your third.

The universal recipient is AB+, not O+ (just to clarify before spoopy code things happen.) In any case, I'm not convinced that medical being prepared for a lightning quick response to every emergency is a good thing. Throw in that vampires will drink it for unlimited power and everyone's blood type will inexplicably shift to AB+, and you can see my concern.

Holy shit you guys. 6 + 7 = 13?!?!?!?! Wait, did you see that earlier? Let's zoom in a little.

Honestly, I actually like to see cultists who don't do shit. If I'm not a starter cultist, I pretty much have my characters turn into gibbering buffoons because that's fun. Not "oh my god I'm a cultist" buffoon, but rather "THE VEIL HAS BEEN SUNDERED, LIFE AS WE KNOW IT IS DEAD, THE UNIVERSE IS DEAAAADDD!"

On the contrary, the majority of players seem to enjoy what I bring to the game - unlike what you do, but that's none of my business. In any case, the very reason I brought up this suggestion was that, no, sunglasses do not negate flashbang effects at any range (as in, the flashbang was a full seven tiles away when it detonated, and I was still stunned despite wearing sunglasses.) If the mechanics worked as you've described, that would be wonderful - but the unfortunate fact is that they don't. Don't get so defensive over being "pretty sure," because you're incorrect.

A good point - and in this wonderful world of automation, we should hopefully be able to find a solution. After some thought, I'm of the opinion that regulating department/station accounts in this way would be nigh on impossible, so perhaps any payoff of antagonists should come from those accounts instead? Far as antagonists go, I think we can allow them to safely spend as much as they want without any impact (positive or negative) to their accounts; if they run off with fifteen thousand credits as an antag, it shouldn't show up on a normal worker's account the next day.

That would be a bit more difficult; you'd have to classify characters by the skin tone number. You'd have to put a hard cutoff somewhere, so 199 would be hispanic and 200 would be black, despite looking virtually identical. But anyways! The Kocasslani were a race that was, in essence, allowed characters to get extremely mad "because the lore said so" and given the race's inexplicable propensity to being security officers, this often led to very bad things happening. I'd seen a few of them before they were removed, and they looked something like Ki-Adi-Mundi from Star Wars. I'm convinced that this was the inspiration for the sprites, because they looked like they'd tried to pack tons of detail into them, but they still look alright. I'm of the opinion that if we toss out the garbage that they tried to pass for "lore" on the race, we could reuse the sprites for another race. With the IPC's balanced out mechanically, I expect the number of whitelisted IPC players to inexplicably decrease (funny how that works.) Tajarans may overtake them as the most whitelisted race.

This isn't an "ease of access" problem, this is another "security isn't doing their jobs" problem. Specifically - I believe we have directives that state it's illegal to carry research materials (including protopistols) outside the lab without RD authorization. Those research directors who're allowing their staff to go hunt antagonists (and doing the same themselves) outside of the most dire "everyone is dead" scenario should have their whitelist stripped, but even that isn't the real issue. The crux of the issue is that security sees other individuals hunting antagonists as "friends" and in their little world, friends don't confiscate illegal weaponry from friends. With no repercussions to fear from security, what stops these scientists from doing exactly this? We've got a serious problem in that security believes that it's only beholden to its own department, and anyone who disagrees with their interpretation of the law (even the captain) will get brigged for seeking disciplinary action against them. This is as much a security problem as a science problem. Reporting them to a duty officer won't help, because then you have to canonize a response to an antagonist action. Lockboxes aren't exactly an elegant solution either. Either we fix our standards for security, or we make research much more difficult (which I'm not opposed to, frankly.)

Jaylor Rameau, the quartermaster who is inexplicably trusted, despite backstabbing people on the regular. What The Hell Is That Accent - I have no idea what influenced his accent, but since he's "not from around here" he needs a slightly difficult to read accent. Space Pirate - This one shouldn't really be much of a surprise to anyone. Opportunistic Bastard - Occasionally subverted when not the antagonist, but played straight otherwise. Asshole Victim - Pretty much any time something unfortunate happens to him. Friend In The Black Market - Because Jaylor has a talent for procuring more or less anything anyone would ever want on the station. Infraction Distraction - The reason Jaylor has a talent for procuring anything on the station. Grave Robbing - And even the poor sods that've bit the bullet aren't safe. Better Manhandle The Murder Weapon - An unfortunate habit of his. Undignified Death - It's rare that he actually dies during a shift, but when he does... Edit: I knew something was missing. Nominal Hero - If he saves you from something, there's probably a catch.