Nikov

The distinction is not so cut and dry elsewhere. Many people, particularly those being profiled against, consider it racism. Nanotrasen does not consider canidates for certain jobs based soley on their race. In my country, this would get you sued into bankruptcy. Nanotrasen can get away with it, hell, most characters may consider it due prudence, fully justified, and serving the interests of all. But they can't say refusing a job canidate based on race isn't racism. Nanotrasen itself is racist by classical definitions. If the loyalty implant prevents official acts of racism by Nanotrasen as a corporate entity, but corporate regulations include racial discrimination, and orders from Command can themselves be racist, then we have a serious conflict in the head of every implanted character to which there is no answer.

What if its in the best interest of Nanotrasen to be racist, ie, searching random Unathi after a terrorist bombing by Unathi? Not allowing Vauraca to become a head of staff because NT's own employment policies are racist? Damn exceptions, stop confusing the rules.

So far I see 11/15 as "mixed" or worse, suggesting there are problems to address. I also see 10/15 saying they're somewhat good, suggesting outright removal isn't the solution to those problems. I agree, being able to trust the HoS or Captain is great; is the rest of the implant's effects needed for this? It seems to be like painting the room in blood because you like the color red; there are other ways to get that result. I am against the implants as they are, however, and would like them gone. Barring that, I do want to see their effect clearly defined. A rule or two in the IC Notes window would be a good method in my own view. The scenario Garnasus describes where actions are weighed against an unwritten and undefined rule in which a player's reputation hangs in the balance of which staff member makes the most persuasive argument in a fact-free setting? That's really my nightmare with these implants not having a clear, simple explanation of their effect. "It makes you do the best thing for Nanotrasen" is a horribly subjective statement. Say your character was convinced to do something Central disagreed with. Who's the authority on Nanotrasen's best interest? Your own loyalty-implanted head, or that two-bit schlub with a fax machine on the Odin? Can you do what appears to not be in Nanotrasen's best interest, because Nanotrasen told you what it wanted? I mean, I serve my wife's best interest, but that doesn't mean everything she tells me to do is a good idea.

First, with forty votes we're rolling a 1d40. I think you know that but I want to be clear. Furthermore the odds are always 1/40, sure. But that's theory, not practice. Yes, each individual instance has the same odds. But we aren't discussing individual instances, but the long-term result of a change to the system. Keep rolling the dice, and on average it will happen once every forty rolls. After a month the one-vote wonder round might happen a half dozen times. The odds of your second paragraph actually happening is one in forty. You posit it will happen the one time you log on in a day. But in reality that's not likely, since, on average, a single vote will win 1/Vth of the time, where V is the total number of votes cast. This number will be 20-40 or whatever player population is. Speaking of voting, more people will participate if their vote is certain to count in the weighted odds. We won't see one guy throwing his vote away. Everyone will know their vote has a chance, and many will cluster those chances where they want the best odds. Lastly, is it such a terrible thing that a one-vote round mode blindsides the metagame round-predictors and genre-savvy detectives? Is it a given that the one-vote mode will be completely unappealing to all others? Or will the surprise twist reveal that the "malfunctioning AI" was subverted by a crafty Ninja? I actually look forward to odd-duck rounds screwing with metagamer's heads.

HEY. WHAT DO YOU CALL A THREE HUMPED CAMEL.

To me it seems the loyalty implant only exists to ramrod behaviors and provide a reason for OOC punishments. It concerns me that the implant's influence is not clear, that its only directive is nebulous, and that enormous amounts of interpretation exist. A captain might feel his loyalty implant would drive him to violate space law, but a moderator could punish him because they interpret it differently. It seems needless. Furthermore, we have the whitelist and plenty of IC meta-mechanisms to straighten out rogue heads of staff. In a perfect world, a loyalty implant would only exist for code Delta, ERT, and de-antag emergencies, possibly as an IA guardrail. Less implants mean more high-ranking persons could be compromised, bent, bribed, or pursuaded. More flexibility mean more roleplay. As it stands, we can't argue the Captain to disobey Central Command orders to commit some criminal act, or otherwise persuade him to act against Nanotrasen. The Captain and the HoS both have their character's hands tied. I had speculated on defined laws. While I'd prefer the implant removed, here's more food for thought. 1. Serve the best interest of Nanotrasen. 2. If the best interest of Nanotrasen is unclear, serve the Chain of Command. 3. In the absence of higher directives, obey Space Law. If you think those laws are flawed, open to personal interpretation, or contain loopholes; you're right. Remarkably, defining the loyalty implant can free characters to broader action as you learn where the guardrails actually are. Ultimately, though... what are they for? There aren't brainwashing microchips in the nuclear missile silo operators. Why should the Captain of this space station, someone groomed for the job for twenty years, need a loyalty implant? Its kind of insulting and degrading for a commanding officer to get something you'd otherwise reserve for a convicted felon.

Buying Human stock for the dividend and hopes of a future stock split.

So they exist to de-antag people? Is that all?

Probably the chemical reaction bubble sound, since that's what's going on in there anyhow.

Goofus Antag is a play-to-win murderboning death machine who evades all attempts to detain him and leaves splattered brains in his wake. He gets to enjoy a full round of freedom, suspense, action and carnage, so long as he doesn't break an OOC rule. Gallant Antag is a play-to-roleplay antagonist who pulls his punches and leaves clues to create an interesting mystery for the other roleplayers, but then gets caught. He gets to enjoy the inside of the brig for two hours. Gotta punish those criminals! Hardcore RP! There's a bit of dissonance here as desired behavior is punished. The antagonist who avoids capture and plays to win has fun, but the antagonist who plays for the benefit of others gets punished. Now, when you do the crime you do the time, but should an antagonist be arrested why not let them bow out, exit stage left, and return as another character? Adding a cryogenic storage pod to the communal brig, or holding-cell cold-storage, would let players give up their characters without resorting to suicide or SSD disconnections. Furthermore, an antagonist can be granted an immediate respawn time, following a petition to the powers that be, so he can return as a non-antagonist and resume roleplaying. We want to reward good sportsmanship, and this certainly encourages it. For that matter, any player in the brig who is willing to sit out for thirty minutes can just climb into the pods and come back as another character. This is almost always more punishment than a sentence, so it is far from a loophole to avoid consequences.

Zundy, that isn't how probability works. If one out of forty players votes Mutiny, we will play one game of Mutiny every forty rounds. At two hours a round, I think the server can suffer through a round of Mutiny once every three days.

I want to get a conversation going about this, but will refrain from any specifics in this post for the sake of a "scientific" poll. I have seen some talk, however, and would like to see where whitelisted players fall.

To be clear, the proposal being discussed is... 66% forces a game mode. With no super-majority game mode, a mode is selected by a weighted-odds table based on the voting. If the winner is Extended or chosen by super-majority, the game mode is declared. Otherwise the declared mode is Secret. I am willing to compromise on game mode declaration if it gets the weighted-odds table in. Ultimately, that is my desired end state; moving away from the winner-take-all system which presently wastes all votes that aren't for the top two of the Secret, Extended or Nuclear Triad. This will add more variety to the rounds we get throughout the day, but the most popular round types will remain the most common. I don't see who loses.

Crunching numbers, assistants earn 56,000 USD a year. That seems really, really high for someone not trusted to operate anything more sophisticated than a light switch. I think the bottom needs to drop on this pay scale. Officer pay scale seems correct however.

Manfred told a Vauraca sec officer who requested a high-cap emergency oxygen bottle that they were "antisocial" and "greedy" to request more oxygen than their colleges. When they protested that they were vacuum-proof, I merely insisted they should give up their oxygen to their more vulnerable co-workers and learn some manners. Let the hatred flow...

Ah. Well then, was your first hint that you were not dead yet?

Sensible limitations on a race's occupation pool? All for it. I don't like non-humans as Security. Skrell, perhaps. IPCs, maybe. But those Unathi, have you even seen what they do to people? And every Tajaran has lethal weapons on their hands. Arrests could be problematic. Did I mention a Tajaran shot me the other day? Its a human company in human space, humans should enforce the laws. And for that matter, Skrell in food service. Seriously guys, they're all slimey. Do you want your food with extra sauce? I don't. And Tajarans need hair nets.

Was your first hint it was a hallucination the fact you were winning?

I have to admit Katana made me stop playing for a few weeks. She can be infuriating to no end.

After some reflection I'd rather have some semblance of this system with announced Extended or whatever caveat the coders request than keep the current past-the-post system. We had another classic "majority want an antag but a plurality wanted extended" vote. Also, one thing to note is that this system will render Secret as a voting option redundant, as any antag round would display as secret. We're just voting to weigh which type of secret we get. That said I suppose I don't understand the dislike of secret-extended, since I prefer having the suspicion of a standard antag round rather than the complete autopilot of announce extended play. But its not something I'd hang up the whole proposal over.

Tell me how awesome I am. You may also comment about John Morgan.

Spread filthy and lewd rumors about me in front of foreign dignitaries.

Rather than individual coffee servings, my thought with these pills was a communal coffee pot making three servings, enough to share but requiring frequent refilling. The packs also need to be mechanically pills; this ensures cross-compatibility with regular pills and the coffee machine for all that tatorific goodness. Thus, the machine itself needs to be the snowflake item, sort of a reverse pill-making machine. So far as real estate is concerned, there are plenty of free tiles in department halls, some of which contain drink machines. My proposed machine could replace the hot drinks machine entirely within many departments, leaving the pay machines for the assistants and low-rent plebs who's department doesn't have a coffee budget.

The coffee machine would have a little hopper you put things in. Normally you would put in a coffee, chocolate or tea filter pack, which cargo can order or hydro could make. "Filter packs" are pills of "coffee grounds" "tea leaves" or "cocoa mix", each five units of a chemical which reacts 1+30 water to create 30 units of the beverage. Press the brew button. Water comes through the magical water pipes to add 150 units of water to the chemical pill in the hopper to create 150 units of the beverage. Presto, instant coffee/chocolate/tea. HOWEVER. You can also put other pills in the hopper, alongside or without a filter pack. When brewed, the chemicals in the pill go into the water (or beverage). This produces a camouflaged means of medicating or poisoning your co-workers. In addition, liquids can be added to the carafe directly as any other container. The carafe is 200 units large, so it can absorb some extra substance. The coffee maker should have a little pop-up window. Empty Hopper Brew The carafe is in position. Remove Carafe Emptying the hopper dumps the contents onto the tile, brewing combines the hopper with 150 water in the carafe, and removing the carafe puts it in your hand. Putting a pill in the hopper spares you getting fingerprints on the carafe. The coffee maker will not tell you what's in the hopper, so people may wind up surprised if they don't check. In theory you could load a hopper with all the ingredients for [REDACTED], just in dry pill form. When someone hits brew the machine adds water, the pills are liquified, chemicals react and a poor co-worker suffers. Some limit to hopper size is needed to keep this from being carried away, perhaps 50 units total of pills.

These are the wrong answers to the questions. Nothing here suggests you will create a strong Tajaran character, only a slightly different but still generic human.