Nikov

1. A crewmember who dies in a fire cannot sue directly, in the most brutal logic possible. More likely, however, the fire being caused by an accidental error of the crewmember means that any further injuries to the crew from that accident will increase Nanotrasen's liability and medical expenses. There are also less outright examples, such as crew transfer shuttles that are called with the departures bay vented to space. In these examples, APADC will resolutely make an ass of itself rather than permit civilians to enter into more dangerous areas, engineers aside. 2. It is frustrating for the player, but for APADC, it is an opportunity to assert that responsibility for the incident is on the arresting officer, etc, and then proceed to ignore the circumstances. If an authority figure wishes to wantonly violate safety protocols, then that authority figure can assume liability for the accident and be summarily dismissed by the corporation. If nothing else, APADC will file an incident report against persons willfully endangering others. This APADC unit is simply a serialized production model fresh out of the shipping crate with no backstory whatsoever; it will only know the Aurora, sleep on the Aurora, wake on the Aurora, and exist in a state of perpetual service to the Aurora. Quirks of a personality will have to develop, such as sleeping in a closet, or having no concept of clothes, or misunderstanding common expressions; APADC will not be wasting processing power on simulating a human personality, but develop one out of idle CPU time and burned-in positronic conditioning loops.

Withhold judgement for now, I'm still hashing something out with Cake. Basically, the whole "character backstory, and what are they like" bits are in my head and belong in my head. To everyone else, I want a black box. I'm not playing a person but a machine, and these records being public will both invite metagaming and ruin a lot of roleplay.

BYOND Key: Nikov Character Names: Manfred Hayden Species you are applying to play: IPC What color do you plan on making your first alien character (Dionaea & IPCs exempt): Caucasian. Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yes. Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph format. One paragraph minimum per question Why do you wish to play this specific race: I believe that I can make an interesting twist on shell IPCs by creating one that is an artificial creation intended to mimic another artificial creation, and so fall deep into the uncanny valley as a shell. My character will not follow normal human reasoning at all but will operate divorced from normal human morality, justifications or desires. They will, however, mimic them. An IPC may also, with sufficient motive, operate entirely without self-preservation. Conversely, it may operate with complete disregard for human life. It all depends on its utilion tables. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: An IPC is not the product of twenty or forty years of soft programming through parents, themselves the product of twenty or forty years of soft parenting, and thus an IPC does not carry a social memory of behaviors tracing back throughout humanity. Instead an IPC is an artificial creation of a team of engineers and designers, attempting to simulate that natural progress. Inevitably, they will overlook details or fail to account for errors, creating something either too perfect or within the uncanny valley of design. Character Name: A.P.A.D.C. Please provide a short backstory for this character, approximately 2 paragraphs Accident Prevention and Damage Control is a series of industrial framed IPCs created for their namesake. As legal non-entities operating for their corporation and strictly programmed to obey corporate regulations in any damage control situation, an A.P.A.D.C. unit always acts in the legal right of its owner versus the presumed "good" of crewmembers. Thus, while an engineer may open a firelock in an attempt to save someone in a fire, the APADC unit will instead operate to protect the company from legal liability, should that require sealing the room and venting it via remote controls, or otherwise operating to keep the fire restrained and Nanotrasen free of legal liability. APADC units spend their non-critical time enforcing safety regulations and reporting breaches to Space OSHA, or its regional equivalent. This APADC unit is simply a serialized production model fresh out of the shipping crate with no backstory whatsoever; it will only know the Aurora, sleep on the Aurora, wake on the Aurora, and exist in a state of perpetual service to the Aurora. Quirks of a personality will have to develop, such as sleeping in a closet, or having no concept of clothes, or misunderstanding common expressions; APADC will not be wasting processing power on simulating a human personality, but develop one out of idle CPU time and burned-in positronic conditioning loops. What do you like about this character? This character does not operate anything like my previous character, yet still remains in the same field. Rather than risk its life for others, APADC minimizes risk to the corporation in a soulless, emotionless manner. APADC also avoids any difficulty with AI laws and remains wholly loyal to the Nanotrasen corporation. How would you rate your role-playing ability? You love me or you hate me, so I'm hoping better than even. Notes:

I have long behaved as if Sol Common is the amalgamation of most all Indo-European languages, principally English (which is convenient for an English-speaking playerbase). English is currently the lingua franca of humanity due to its roots as a melting-pot of European languages through England's Roman, German, and French conquerors, Latin and Greek liturgy, global reach through colonization, and hell; we're speaking it now. Anyone who wishes to take a serious look at English can readily see a German, French or Latin root for nearly every word. I is Ich, it is es, is ist ist, am ist am, me ist mir, du ist you. My take has always been that if a character can understand Sol Common, they can watch an English-language movie with the same degree of difficulty you can watch Shakespeare's plays. It also strikes me that an understanding of Sol Common gives you an inroad to any specific Indo-European language you want your character to know, such as German or Spanish, which you can then speak in Sol Common. Other Sol-Common speakers can tell you're using one of the "dialects", and those who don't speak Sol Common are entirely out of the loop. And, between India, Europe, the Americas and Australia, there is no reason to think the entirely incompatible Mandarin will muscle in and overtake the Indo-European languages any time soon. However, by this thread, it sounds as if I was thinking more of Tradeband, the sophisticated language of the arts and the old guard. Now, as for what happened to Mandarin, I have no idea. Mandarin is, at its core, an artificial language of an empire. Each symbol means an idea. A pictograph of a house in Spain means the same as the same pictograph in Russia, and so Mandarin follows. Mass media has brought the Chinese people closer to a unified language, perhaps, but pronunciation is not dictated by the character as in English. That is also why English is such an incredible pain in the ass to learn. This sounds a hell of a lot like Sol Common, a forced language trying to spread across all humanity. Were there to be a shakeup, I recommend this; a Mandarin-style language is taken as the official Sol Alliance language to unite all of humanity, an Indo-European language of unified English remains the Latin spoken by the rich, the educated, or those born to a specific ethno-national colony (oh yeah, Banard's Star got settled by a bunch of French in 2230, thats why I have a French name and speak French and smoke cigarettes and complain about the government), and Freespeak is whatever godawful abomination a population could develop in four hundred years. Which means Manfred is going to start speaking Tradeband, although if aliens could speak future English... why make Ceti Basic?

The changes made since that screenshot were to de-optimize and make it a little more of a pain in the ass. What do you want from me?!?!?!? No, seriously now, the latest version is on git and has been made more generic with plain pumps and room to play is just south of this screen. And nobody asks engineering to build up all the supermatter's functionality at round start. My goal is to turn the bomb factory into a life support system by ommitting the needless and adding the wanting. You now operate atmospherics rather than bicker over it, but there is still plenty to upgrade if that's your thing. You can upgrade to the standard in this screenshot, for example.

. A few small changes were made since this screenshot, but this is an approximation for you.

I hate to butt in, but I'm seeing two people I respect fight. You are a bit of a bulldozer yourself, Delta. That is what I admired when you made some impassioned defenses when I had some incidents arise. You see bad judgement, and you push through it. Nanako is likewise trying to push through what they see as some bad judgement. I looked at a recent, innocent little PR for the codebase. Lets let mice, facehuggers, corical borers, and all nature of critters, cult constructs, space bears, xenos, etc go up and down vertical things like ladders and pipes. You would think Nanako had just overturned Roe v. Wade by the level of argument this brought up. All of this seemed tremendously moot; a mouse can climb an iron pipe and a bear, let alone a space bear, can climb a tree. Video documentation was even provided, this argument went so far into the weeds. But by some strange line of reasoning all of these climbing-capable things should be forced to use the large, brightly lit elevators to traverse Z-levels. What do you do if you are a xenomorph or some other odd mob in an event round and you need to go to the sublevel? Take the elevator, I guess. What if you are the last remaining cult construct and you want to be stealthy? Well, cult constructs aren't stealthy, we're told by fiat. If someone gets staff-of-changed in certain rooms they may as well ghost. Arguments abounded in the PR to a total of several hundred lines, including ladders being rare. Why are ladders rare? Because they are. I've expressed interest in mapping in ladders, like I expressed interest and then submitted an overhauled atmospherics department, but ladders are to be rare. Its fiat. There's no real reason why, and some levels can't be reached if the power goes out, and the elevator code is a bit touchy with regard to doors losing power, and people get splattered every round. But adding ladder access to each individual sub-level department simply shall not be, by fiat, just because. If Nanako is a bulldozer, it is because there are stone walls to push aside. The development subculture I've seen from my little window to it is keeping me from engaging more out of fear of wasting countless hours debating just to get a few hours of harmless changes in. I also do not feel Nanako's personal vice, having been shared in a personal expression of a human frailty they are working through and err from, is exactly fair game to pile on about. It does not do you credit, Delta, to go for low-hanging fruit bowed lower as a peace offering.

I have an idea how to improve rampant brand intelligence events. Turn it off.

I've got a better idea. Lets make everything suck for everybody. Wearing the CE's voidsuit sucks because you can't wear a backpack with it. I don't see a reason why any backpacks, toolbelts, pockets, webbings, holsters, etc should be anything less than a rage-inducing hassle while wearing a hardsuit, especially since 99% of your hardsuit usage is in a PvE setting where the only people dying from you taking half an hour to seal a breach are the people around you. #makeengineeringsuckagain

Rampant brand intelligence is a stupid, memey mini- event that should be removed entirely.

Welding fuel out of scrubber backpressure is a terrifying yet interesting idea. Also, at a certain temperature, floor tiles would burn. In addition, wood and carpet would burn at much lower temperatures and the white plastic tiles of medbay are also likely rather flammable. Are you sure you want to go down this road?

No. They aren't wearing 1960's pressure suits. If you notice in The Martian, space suits for the near future are going through a paradigm shift. The voidsuit and hardsuit are likely tailored mechanical counter-pressure suits that fit the user like a glove, and many characters could conceivably be accustomed to wearing their suits for long durations as a condition of their frontier environment. Damon's character was wearing his suit for week-long durations. This is an anti-powergaming rule without that much of a realistic basis beyond us saying-so that the suit is uncomfortable. After a few centuries there's no need for them to be like this anymore.

I continue to be amazed that we have instantaneous teleportation between planets, and that nobody has removed gateways. They are a cancer in the lore. Literally why do we have any ships or even this research station if we have gates. Just put a gate on the research outpost's door and another gate in a nice Biesel office. And why are there space ships? All you need are gateways on planets.

And this still pains me because while I like Hunn and CUBIE is clearly a character being roleplayed, its unfortunate that Cubie's emotions and decision making are warranting this. I see what CUBIE is supposed to be. Its just not what a station-bound cyborg is supposed to be. I really think CUBIE would be a better IPC character.

Last time I tried 'fear roleplay' and laid down on the floor when I saw a mercenary deathsquad, one walked over and shot me point blank in the chest.

Reporting Personnel: Johannes Wesreidau Rank of Reporting Personnel: Captain, NSS Exodus Game ID: bOh-aazj Personnel Involved: Clement Beach, Head of Security: Offender Joseph Birkin, Research Director: Offender Dylan Sutton, Security Officer: Witness - Time of Incident: 2230 5/1 Real time: 2300 5/1/2017 Location of Incident: NSS Exodus Nature of Incident: []Workplace Hazard []Accident/Injury []Destruction of Property []Neglect of Duty []Harassment []Assault []Misconduct [X]Other Mutiny Overview of the Incident: Mr. Beach, acting as the Head of Security before agents thereof, did willfully insult a superior officer, give orders to a superior officer, and act in an insubordinate and ungentlemanly manner. For this, Dylan Sutton, Security Officer, was a direct witness. Mr. Sutton, to his credit, did inform his superior that it is not his Captain's role to take orders from the Head of Security and did proceed to follow the correct chain of command. Mr. Beach, being wounded in the course of action against criminal elements, did issue a recommendation without his opinion being first asked to call the emergency shuttle before entering surgery. Mr. Beach did then rescind his command. Mr. Birkin, acting as the Research Director, upon learning of an engine fire which I myself did vent to space, did without the expressed consent of his superior officer call an emergency evacuation of the NSS Exodus. Mr. Birkin did then argue the point with his Captain, and did cite the Head of Security's recommendation, and did then declare an onset of space carp to be sufficient reason to abandon the vessel. Mr. Beach did, upon recovering from surgery, further his opinion the shuttle be evacuated. Seeking to avoid a crisis of command and a violent mutiny among the crew, the Captain did formally declare that any charges of mutiny will be lodged with Central Command. The evacuation, occurring in a disorderly and panicked fashion, did leave behind numerous crew members, occured without the protection of shields while set upon by space carp, did suffer multiple hull breaches, did suffer multiple depressurization casualties among both able and wounded personnel, and was most certainly responsible for a number of deaths among the evacuees. Mr. Birkin, acting in an unofficerly manner, sought to board the escape shuttle immediately while wearing a hardsuit and attempt to override the shuttle controls with the Head of Security. Mr. Beach, acting to detain a violent criminal, was disabled due to depressurization. The Captain removed his own hardsuit for another crewmember and authorized departure only after the last wounded had been brought aboard. [/hr] Did you report it to a Head of Department or IAA? If so, who?: Johannes Wesreidau, Captain, NSS Exodus Actions taken: Given the circumstances, the charge of mutiny can only be lodged with Central Command. Additional notes:

Reposting. One of the problems of cloning to me is that anyone can do it, since the machine's interface is pretty much a microwave oven of simplicity. I suggested this puzzle a long while back to make cloning a process that a skilled worker is required for, rather than something that runs on automatic. Easy little puzzle; DNA repair. DNA is a predictable pairing of amino acids. A-T / G-C. Give two strings of A-T-G-C random letters, omit a number of those letters as X's, and then replace the X's with the correct pairing. Sometimes you'd even get a pair that's both X, leaving it a blind guess. How many you get correct or incorrect determines how much genetic damage the clone suffers. How long the clone is dead determines how many pairings are X's for the cloning tech to try and figure out. Sally Snowflake can no longer walk up and clone people since it is clearly a more intensive process than before. "Scan" and "Print" do not require 8 years of college, this presumably does. For double-hard mode, A-T / G-C is only in humans. Other species have a different pairing scheme.

Should more than one APC be found in a bluescreen, all heads of staff are encouraged to report to cryo storage or engage in chair RP. Do not, under any circumstances, investigate a stealth-malf AI. Upon code delta, move calmly toward the airlocks. The quartermaster and cargo technicians exist to restock the Engineering department. The Engineering department is a supply depot for Robotics and civilian remodeling. Firelocks are suggestions, not rules. Synths, cyborgs, drones and AI's are machines. Engineers design and maintain machines for a specific task. If the machine gets uppity, it is malfunctioning and requires percussive maintenance. Toxins fires should be allowed to burn until the responsible party is reported as dead by the AI or medical staff. Only then should firefighting begin. In the event of a toxins fire, research personnel should remain in inside the reinforced steel box sealed off by blast doors capable of withstanding temperatures up to 5000 kelvin. Leaving this fire-proof box with while a fire is inside of it would be just silly. Blobs should be assailed by all crewmembers regardless of training or protective gear. Space vines should be ignored by all crew and dealt with by no more than one cyborg. The human lung contains a tamper-resistant seal that ruptures at 20kpa. Pressures below 20kpa void your lung's warranty and must be serviced by a licensed medical professional. To prevent further operational damage to your lung after it violates warranty, the diaphragm will periodically reboot.

I explained my decision-making during the round with an adminhelp that I volunteered when I noticed deadchat was full of Xor complaining about me. Schev noted receipt of that adminhelp, and I invite the administration to post it in lieu of my week-old recollection.

We have crushed a hipster's dreams. Today was a good day.

Machines feel "pain". Every machine that goes into the "redline" and begins exceeding performance limits, or losing tolerances, and detects itself as such, is in "pain". Your car's check engine light is "pain". Its just that the machine doesn't respond to pain the same way humans do.

It will be very difficult to find the primary core in maintenance if a blob runs the length of a tunnel. I understand a flanking position can be found to kill the main core, but how one will do that with the rock-enclosed windowless maintenance of the new map is beyond me. It will depend on the AI having a camera or someone locating it by eye. The idea to spread fuel instead of explode is predicated on adding a new hazard, fire, instead of simply compounding an existing hazard, breaches. The new map is clearly intended to cause less breaches, so adding fire risks is one way to keep an environmental hazard. Breaking through windows and airlocks to space will continue to breach areas and cause environment kills. It will simply be less common.

There almost certainly must be a reason to keep flesh. There might be feedback, and synthskin might have the best feedback, but to lose natural sensation is almost certainly a tremendous loss. I also question who the hell gets cloned and saws their arm back off or plucks their eyes back out. Ever.

Pipes currently lock up at pressures over 303kpa. Every atmos tech and plasma researcher hates this fact, because in order to keep atmospherics pipes easy to modify we have to cripple the pressure in them. It causes a lot of delays and frustration. Add a designated "Pipe Wrench" which allows a better grip and leverage on the pipes, enabling characters to detach pipes at any pressure. Possibly when held with two hands, if we want to also make this a doubly-robust backpack stored club. Drawback; it is already in the code that detaching pipes full of air will put that air into the room. Some mistakes will be made, I am sure. In addition, this wrench will have the following functionality. I had a chance to see a few miles of electrician's conduit, and realized its just straight piping being bent on site with a tool. In the far future, we can do the same. If you are holding a pipe fitting, then use the pipe wrench on that fitting, you can change the pipe fitting betweeeeen... Straight or 90-degree bend. Regular, Supply or Scrubber Normal or Reverse manual T-valves, filters and mixers. This allows an atmos tech to carry around a few spare pipes and bend / re-designate them them to fit most repair jobs, or scavenge pipes from scrubber lines to repair the critical distro lines. It does not allow him to print new pipes out of thin air, or create complicated devices such as pumps or even three-way junctions.

I gave this matter some thought and voiced my opinions over the Discord, but I think it bears repeating again. My proposal to de-robust blobs is to remove their ability to destroy walls and doors, change how they interact with fuel tanks and remove their maximum size. Remove wall and door destruction. The problem we have is that blobs will breach the hull of the station, spread this breach through several compartments, and players will be killed environmentally. By removing their ability to destroy walls and doors, blobs will be far less likely to vent their compartment to space, and other compartments will be less likely to be breached. It makes for less atmospherics kills. However it also makes the blob behave different. Blob growth will be confined to open tiles, and blobs almost never spawn in large open spaces. Blobs will now grow linearly down hallways and tunnels, "chasing" people. Doors will be handled differently, however. Some time ago, a change was made so that doors take melee damage until they break, and then can be wedged open if they weren't bolted shut. It would follow that the blob can break through doors in the same way, cracking them open the way tree roots crack sidewalks. With this change, blobs travel down maintenance tunnels, start battering down doors, break in, and smash up departments. An AI or a welder can lock the door off to the blob, however, which provides some counterplay. Change how they interact with fuel tanks. It doesn't make much sense that a blob will crack open a tank of welding fuel and it instantly explodes. It does make sense that roiling clouds of welding fuel "smoke" would spray out, smearing everything in the room with welding fuel from floor tiles to people. Then, as light bulbs are smashed, we may see a rather fierce fire in the middle of the blob itself, which given our reduced chances of a hull breach, will create a whole new problem for engineers to struggle with. Welding fuel fires are pretty mild compared to phoron fires and won't nearly match them for destruction, but people walking into welding fuel puddles with lit welders will be a new problem. Remove maximum size. To my understanding, blobs grow at a rate of one tile per so-many ticks so long as they are not at their maximum size or maximum blob tile count. A blob that stabilizes has hit these thresholds, and attacking it makes it "heal" damage. The maximum size is about a screen by a screen in both directions, so we get roughly a big square shaped blob by the end of it. By getting rid of the maximum size, a blob can spread down long tunnels and narrow passages very quickly. Given no maximum size, only a maximum tile count, you can never be certain how much farther you'll have to run in order to be safe. When you combine removing the maximum size with the other dynamics, we get a blob that is a long, snakelike monster in the maintenance tunnels causing fires and spilling into other rooms through back doors. So its not really less robust. Its just robust in a different way.