Nikov

I feel like I already addressed CakeIsOssim's concerns.

People don't kill people. The cold, uncaring vacuum of space kills people. And as these are player-versus-environment kills, there is nothing wrong with making it a little easier to survive. Oxygen Candles A supplement to emergency oxygen tanks issued to mine workers and submarine crews, and used on both Mir and the Space Station. Oxygen candles are flare-like steel tubes of sodium chlorate which, at temperatures over 300 C, generate 600 liters of 101kpa oxygen for 1 liter of sodium chlorate. A 1-liter personal oxygen candle is enough to provide 20 kilopascals of oxygen to only three tiles, but may be enough to raise oxygen levels of only partially vented rooms to habitability. Multiple candles may be used. Candles have a long shelf life and are a low-cost means of storing emergency oxygen for years. Downside; ignition point for the duration of burn, useless in rooms with an open breach, oxygen produced is at 600 celcius but lets just forget that bit. Cheap enough to stick in the internals kit box, or to fit in an oxy-dep aid kit or a box of oxygen candles in oxygen lockers. Atmos Tech-scaled versions possible. Previously suggested here: http://aurorastation.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2241 Rescue Balls A low-budget replacement to soft-suits, capable of being carried in a backpack. Employees are encouraged to aquire folded balls from oxygen lockers in the event of a Code Blue / Code Red threat to station hull integrity, and are available to engineering, security, and EMT personnel for lifesaving operations. Operates similar to a cryobag. In the event a room is depressurized, the user pulls out the folded ball, unfolds it, opens it, puts themselves or their loved one into the ball, and zips it back up. Closing the zipper and locking it in place triggers an oxygen-generating pellet. The ball immediately inflates its internal volume of 200 liters with 21 kpa of pure oxygen, enough to provide breathable air and non-lethal pressure. The bag is colored rescue orange and white with reflective markings, and so "glows in the dark" with just enough light to illuminate the tile it is on to 90% darkness. Medical HUDs provide general health data of the occupant. The ball may then be grabbed, pushed, pulled, and rescued to pressure by personnel with proper EVA gear. The bag is also one-time use. If opened, it dumps its internal atmosphere to the tile. In the event of re-use, it will assume the atmosphere of the tile it is closed in, as the oxygen-generating pellet is expended. To manually open the bag from inside, type resist. To open from the outside, click with the help intent. Downsides; the ball may be ruptured. This vents the internal pressure and will begin causing vacuum damage. Fortunately the ball is insulated enough to prevent thermal damage, but the occupant must have internals set and will have a brief window to be recovered if the ball is damaged by carp, being pulled over glass shards, or hostile activity. The ball is not fireproof. The ball does not protect from high pressure. The ball does not permit movement. The ball does not permit vision.

One note is that a Captain's Adjutant is completely removed from the Chain of Command and will only handle the Captain's ID to hand it to the Head of Personnel or next highest ranking Head of Staff. In the event of an all-heads-dead, they will file a report to Central Command and await their instructions to relay to the crew. My only concern with your name suggestions is that a Senior Engineer doesn't get "Officer", and that "Officer" implies the whitelist. This should be a n NCO's position, not a commissioned officer, to use the military parlance. Senior Technical Officer if you want to be consistent, or... Chief Engineer's Mate Head Doctor Senior Security Officer (Or First Sergeant, or something) Senior Researcher Captain's Adjutant Personnel Clerk / Secretary Its something to garner input on.

We are approaching critical mass on these April Fools shitposts. Standby to jettison the core.

I agree with Nanako, and was considering this earlier. After absorbing a certain amount of blood/evolution, it should stop yielding results. Same with bloodbag vampires, if that's a thing. It seems there would come a point where the vampire or changeling gets tired of "fast food" and develops the sophisticate tastes of a sommelier regarding their blood intake. Lowest of all is cold blood and cold corpses. That's as gauche as serving red wine on ice. You might as well pair it with a McChicken while you're at it, you filthy plebeian.

I'm suggesting a "Senior Staff" position for non-whitelisted persons given the in-game nod by their Head of Staff. Such a person could serve the role of cadet trainer, or handle mundane HOS work while the HOS trained cadets with the freed-up time. Not to derail, but a thought.

This is not a suggestion for a new job slot on round start or to otherwise spawn into. For every head of staff there is usually one guy in the department that they trust more than the others. This is the guy they print guest passes for, send to the HOP to get access elevation, and give the nod to take over when they go to cryo. It is a genuinely good thing to have a clear successor when you can't be reached. It is also wonderful that the Head of Staff gets to nominate his own trusted co-worker into a position of nominal authority, and can let a character start proving themself as deserving of a white-listing to Head positions themselves. The only problem is Security will see a ? over their heads, the AI won't recognize their titles, people look at them funny for going into Atmospherics wearing an Engineering uniform, and we generally lack a consistent way to make these "supervisors" fit into the Chain of Command. The solution I am proposing is to enter a "Senior"-styled position to every department as a job title selectable by the Head of Personnel's ID computer. This will be synced to a job icon in Security HUDs and be consistent between rounds, so everyone will know what's going on when they see these people with elevated department access. This elevated access will not include the Bridge, head of staff office, AI turret controls, authorization keypads, etc. It gives a way for the ambitious and hard-working to elevate themselves during the round, makes getting along with your boss that much more desirable, and provides more tangible value to in-character trust. It will also provide a more useful chain of command for heads facing large department staffing and needing to delegate someone to handle things while they huddle with other officers in OfficerLand, sending faxes to CentComm and debating corporate regs with an IA. As one final perk, it can be considered Standard Op for simple verbal approval to promote a subordinate to this role, or a basic promotion form can be filled out and stamped. Streamlined paperwork! HOPs love that! Finally, I'm not settled on the names. I like Chief Engineer's Mate (sounds Navy) or Senior Fellow (sounds Academic) or even Captain's Adjutant (an assistant with a nice suit and the secure briefcase). That was fun, the one round. Good use of a Cadet.

It's funny, because if you ask me, its already "secret antags". They just forgot to write "antags", and someone rolled extended into it. I'm fine with that, Sierra, but if in three or four days the votes are split SecretAntag/Extended, as I really predict they will be, then I hope the point will be demonstrated and we can simply enact the original proposal.

Assign random hunger levels at round start. Colonial Marines has everyone spawn hungry, mob the vending machines, shovel down MRE's and put their boots on. Its wonderfully immersive in its own good-morning routine where everyone gets a minute or two to see people being people. I don't want everyone spawning hungry, but I would like if some random percentage "missed lunch" and a steady stream of customers went into the cafe over the next two hours as their hunger meters ticked up. A start of round burger rush or breakfast menu, followed by two hours of easy customers sounds like Engineer's engine-start routine, only now its the Chef's. No more Chef being useless for the first hour and a half. For those LONG rounds, I don't mind very high hunger reducing your MAXIMUM health down to 75% or even 50%, in the general way cloning damage does. It won't kill you, but you can't operate at full capacity and will be more fragile if you're starving yourself. Hungry patients would also need some cute nurses delivering steak dinners hospital trays, something every red-blooded hungry man individual will support.

CRAAAAAZY idea here guys. One slightly larger surgery room. Two surgery tables. ALA field hospitals. One left, one right of the door leading in. Maybe a glass screen between the two preventing "spray'. Patients get wheeled in and out down the center lane, stuck on the tables, tools are on the left and right edges of the room in two sets, surgeon slices and dices one after the other or you bring in a second surgeon and really get cooking. If there's a crush, you can do two operations at once. You can even prep your next patient while your one surgeon works on the first. Hectic? Yes. Cramped? Yes. Budget-saving? Yes. Space saving? Yes. Manpower saving? One orderly can attend two tables. Hygenic? Well you can just be cleaning up Table #1 while the surgeon puts on fresh gloves and goes to Table #2. Add two sets of surgical tools and we also nip "lost the cautery supply print me one stat" in the bud. Less-than-world-class workplace hospital facility that would befit an isolated space station built by cost-cutting bureaucratic committees? Absolutely. Hell, it even feels cheaper and more grimdark than only one good OR, because its two shitty ORs duct-taped together due to budget and space restrictions.

Frances is dead but giving out icky in ooky, banshee all minnits.

All I am saying is that if there's a chance for everyone to vote for an antagonist and get no antagonist, then there should be a chance to vote for no antagonist and get an antagonist. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Unless you wish to engage in special pleading, that is. Extended Secret is a bit counter-intuitive. Within an hour a genuinely good stealth antagonist will have everyone convinced it is secret extended, and within an hour secret extended will have bored players going to cryo. My argument actually is that we vote for secret because we want antags that round. This is not metagaming. This is voting our preference. Game mechanics permit us to change our characters after the vote result is announced. This is not metagaming. This is choosing our preference. If we sat down at a table for DnD, and the dungeon master announced we were doing a campaign in Elfland, then asked us to pick our characters, it isn't metagaming to pick your elf or your racist dwarf because the setting favors it. It isn't metagaming to decide on your healer instead of your warrior because there's already three melee characters. The DM is giving you the option, and the game hasn't started yet. Personally, I play one character in one department and ideally only one job. I find myself as the only Engineer at round start and have buddy-teams of overstaffed security knocking around Engineering asking what's taking so long on the power. I suffer from this too, but I am not about to tell other players they can't play the character they want in the game mode they want. If you look at my post history, you'll see I have made suggestions to completely remove Extended, roll it into a proportionate-take voting system, and make every single round secret to make metagaming based on vote outcomes that much harder. If it is desirable to remove players' ability to select characters based on pre-game knowledge of the round type, there are ways to do that. I've put them forward. I've been told people want to know its Extended so they can break out their heavy roleplayers. I am hearing people claim doing the opposite for Secret is metagaming. It is a little at-odds with itself. I don't think accusing individuals of being metagamers because they support a proposal to change the Secret rotation is much more than a non-sequitur, and those who advance it should find better one. It is basically a character attack. It is not arguing the merits of extended being in the secret rotation. It makes this argument personal. Furthermore I am hearing that the metagame paranoia of having extended be an option in Secret is what makes it so fun. Have it one way or the other, please. I am tempted to end this post with a emoticon of a kitten face out of my desire to not start an uncivil discussion. >>--(^x_x^);:--<> Eh, looks like I wasn't actually done yet. I've seen an ARMA community tear itself apart into warring factions between those who want co-op battles against an AI (extended) and player-versus-player battles between teams (antag). It doesn't end well if one side adopts personal attacks. We had a habit of taking a vote on which type to run next, and on occasion, the GM would ignore said vote and and play whatever they wanted next. This tended to kill the server, produce forum drama, so on and so forth. Here, we have an RNG randomly taking voting agency away from the player base and giving the minority what they wanted. By consenting to keep it, but not extending that chance to the other game mode, you become that GM. It favors one side, it annoys the other side, and if you're fine with the majority of the server not getting what they asked for, then I question why we vote rounds at all. I'll just tip my hand here to avoid the follow-up arguments, which amount to polite accusations of hypocrisy. My argument is to make the rhetorical point about how secret extended is fine, but extended secret is a bad idea. I don't actually advocate it as a solution (well, it might work). However, I hope the other side realize that with the shoe on the other foot, it wouldn't be agreeable to them. Fair is fair. If we want a chance for Extended to come into Secret, we should have a chance for Secret to come into Extended. I don't want players robbed of their voting agency, so in the short term we would remove Extended from the Secret rotation. In the long term, I still sincerely hope my proportionate-take voting proposal is implemented in some fashion, as it will break the two-party stranglehold on game mode voting, nullify this argument, and allows the complete removal of metagame character selection if so desired. I'm not posting another kitten at the end here, so you'll just have to take it on faith I'm not a raging salt fire.

DEFEATIST!!! *bang* Not one step backwards! Za Rodinu!

He said you, people. That's clearly a dog-whistle for white supremacist groups.

Then add a chance for Extended to be Autotraitor. Everyone gets "pleasant surprises". Fair is fair.

I agree it would be immersion-breaking to have the engine change every round. I agree the singularity is not viable given the change of scenery, and am glad to see the solution you've arrived at. Also. Zippo engines are now a thing. Hopefully these little stunt rounds generate some interest in the !!ENGINEERING!! to be had with the Supermatter's TEG mechanism.

Rampant Brand Intelligence is the cancer that is killing Aurora. Engineers always have better things to do than fix broken vending machines, including the crucial role of testing the station's oxygen content through controlled ignition of tobacco samples.

Engineering has always struck me as a guild or a union hall where everyone trusts the people they know with their lives but all new faces are treated as life-threateningly stupid until proven otherwise. There are a lot of ways to get your co-workers killed, so it makes a certain amount of sense. Once you prove yourself, however, that same group will spacewalk naked to recover your corpse.

Asimo disarmed and stole the crowbar from one of my characters attempting lifesaving rescue operations, making it impossible for her to get through the firelock and, in her understanding, killing the only person who'd been kind to her all shift. This began a raging torrent of salt as I tried to get the crowbar back, tried to get Asimo to stop hitting me, tried to get the paramedic to stop hitting me, tried to flee the scene, was chased by Asimo and the paramedic, wound up being trapped by more firelocks, wound up being pinned between the two people chasing me and Nandabun's cyborg trying its own lifesaving... It was enough salt to put Morton's out of business.

I find revolution to be one of the best game modes when it comes to broadening play to everyone. It also fits well with the corporate grimdark setting.

I have to strongly second this. Here's a thought. Make the engine modular, and use BYOND's tile replacement mechanic that we use for shuttles. Put all engines on another Z-level, with perhaps this new Tesla engine as default. Chief Engineers set their occupational preference sheet to include their engine preference. When they spawn in at round start, and round start only, that engine and all supporting infrastructure is then teleported into standard-sized rooms. He will always pick an engine he is interested in, and we won't have to do as much set-up as a flexible engine would require. I was genuinely unhappy when Miranda Transen told Manfred they were taking away his supermatter engine. An engine that catches lightning bolts or keeps a black hole inside a force field seems interesting in a science fantasy setting, but the supermatter is a nuclear reactor at its core operating principle. Beyond the supermatter undergoing radioactive decay when tickled by a laser (in which "supermatter" is science fantasy and the rest is science fact) everything is gas laws and specific heat. It runs on hard math and broken dreams. All of the engines need to be "set it and forget it", as baby-sitting an engine is dramatically less fun than it sounds. It also means the engine isn't constructed with a governor of any sort.

This is ridiculous. If people vote Extended, they want extended. If people vote Secret, they want an antagonist. Nobody votes Secret hoping to get Extended. If you want to roleplay normal people on a normal station, vote Extended. If you want to roleplay a character in a sci-fi action movie, vote Secret. This is not an attack on your favorite game mode, this is a protest that the server votes for an antagonist, and gets two hours of nothing.

I am unapologetically voting against this because I disagree with increasing the number of alien heads-of-staff as a general principle. -1

It is an IC joke. I'd be happy to train you.

I get less tickle out of Romanovium than the word knickers, and as an American, that puts it somewhere around Unathi-on-Skrell Deviant Art crayon porn.