JKJudgeX

Umm. I'd say 50% of the time I play geneticist the CMO is absolutely unavailable to process forms/the forms aren't around... if you want to play it so that no CMO = automatically assumed signed forms, I'm okay with that. Otherwise, what I said stands. Genetics is the job of poking at a computer continually, and getting LITERALLY NOTHING that you can functionally use as a result, which makes it a uniquely worthless job. And yeah, science doesn't generally fill out forms for protolathe/autolathe requests. I know this because I work science pretty much daily on the aurora, and I don't bother with paperwork, and neither do most other scientists... for anything... because as much as anyone insists upon it, paperwork isn't fun for most people, and we just won't bother with 5 minutes of shitplay to avoid a stern talking to about how we should have used paperwork. Also, RD is only available 50% of the time at best. Permission over science comms? Sure, sometimes, when it seems like a bad idea (assistant is requesting protopistols, Y/N?). Security Officer is requesting stun revolver? Sure. I'm sort of realizing that the command whitelist really undercuts the paperwork thing by making those positions rarely filled, yet the need for that paperwork remains consistent. I don't think you can really have both, realistically. Either when i need the paperwork I can ascend to the position because no one else has, or I don't need the paperwork, or as is current: nobody cares about paperwork.

Umm. I'd say 50% of the time I play geneticist the CMO is absolutely unavailable to process forms/the forms aren't around... if you want to play it so that no CMO = automatically assumed signed forms, I'm okay with that. Otherwise, what I said stands. Genetics is the job of poking at a computer continually, and getting LITERALLY NOTHING that you can functionally use as a result, which makes it a uniquely worthless job. And yeah, science doesn't generally fill out forms for protolathe/autolathe requests. I know this because I work science pretty much daily on the aurora, and I don't bother with paperwork, and neither do most other scientists... for anything... because as much as anyone insists upon it, paperwork isn't fun for most people, and we just won't bother with 5 minutes of shitplay to avoid a stern talking to about how we should have used paperwork. Also, RD is only available 50% of the time at best. Permission over science comms? Sure, sometimes, when it seems like a bad idea (assistant is requesting protopistols, Y/N?). Security Officer is requesting stun revolver? Sure. I'm sort of realizing that the command whitelist really undercuts the paperwork thing by making those positions rarely filled, yet the need for that paperwork remains consistent. I don't think you can really have both, realistically. Either when i need the paperwork I can ascend to the position because no one else has, or I don't need the paperwork, or as is current: nobody cares about paperwork.

I would like to suggest running one extended round per day at a planned, potentially staggered interval, while removing extended from the vote options and from secret. Rationale: Extended rounds run long. They run long, and they run really slow for a lot of roles. The complaints of the slowness start trickling in at an hour, and reach fever-pitch by 3 hours. The only universally enjoyed extended rounds are event rounds that are clearly marked as event rounds, in my view. So, why not satiate the players who really like extended by making sure there's at least one extended round per day, let's say at 5 or 6 PM EST on weekdays, and at noon on Saturday and Sunday.... (just as an example, I'd poll for better time slots, and move them from time to time just so everyone can have a fair chance). The only other time extended should happen should be when it is specifically an event. Extended rounds tend to reduce the server population for the following round, and really do mean a lot of people leave during hour 2. It's Heavy RP, but it's also Space Station 13. Let Space Station 13 happen, too. Extended is more of like a training round. People jokingly call it job sim. I understand that people want to work on "character development"... but antags of any sort on Aurora seem to take 45 minutes at a minimum to really get set up and going. That should be plenty of time for you to do character development before taking a quick 20 minute break and then getting back to it.

I would like to suggest running one extended round per day at a planned, potentially staggered interval, while removing extended from the vote options and from secret. Rationale: Extended rounds run long. They run long, and they run really slow for a lot of roles. The complaints of the slowness start trickling in at an hour, and reach fever-pitch by 3 hours. The only universally enjoyed extended rounds are event rounds that are clearly marked as event rounds, in my view. So, why not satiate the players who really like extended by making sure there's at least one extended round per day, let's say at 5 or 6 PM EST on weekdays, and at noon on Saturday and Sunday.... (just as an example, I'd poll for better time slots, and move them from time to time just so everyone can have a fair chance). The only other time extended should happen should be when it is specifically an event. Extended rounds tend to reduce the server population for the following round, and really do mean a lot of people leave during hour 2. It's Heavy RP, but it's also Space Station 13. Let Space Station 13 happen, too. Extended is more of like a training round. People jokingly call it job sim. I understand that people want to work on "character development"... but antags of any sort on Aurora seem to take 45 minutes at a minimum to really get set up and going. That should be plenty of time for you to do character development before taking a quick 20 minute break and then getting back to it.

I would like to see the genetics "self-testing gets you arrested if you leave genetics" thing dropped. Reasoning: I play Geneticist from time to time. It is actually the least fun job on the station because of that requirement. Think about it for a second: You spend about an hour discovering and upgrading parts of the genome by clicking a couple of buttons, shining a flashlight in eyes, and repeating the process... it's tedious even when you've mastered it. Then, you finally have these powers isolated down to blocks, and can make them. Cool. So, now that that's done... that's cool. Log out. Why just log out? Well, because on Aurora, the geneticist is apparently despised and his work not valued. It seems extremely sensible to me that if I had x-ray vision granting powers that I would offer it to the detective or the HoS so that they can track down criminals more easily (some servers give the HoS and/or detective goggles for this). Both of the times I've asked permission from the CMO or HoS to distribute this power, I've been told "No" without any reasoning. Engineers and atmospheric techs? I'd like to offer you heat resist. You are in bad conditions frequently, and that power could actually be useful to you. But no. Don't give that out either... By comparison, the scientist is over there making weapons for security, building people new computers, upgrading machines, has access to chemistry, telescience, toxins, etc... but no, not you, geneticist. Stay in your hole. You have telekinesis and we'll allow invincible IPC dudes to run around all day, but not you, guy who can move a screwdriver with his mind... oh no... not you. I'm not asking for unfettered access to just give out powers... I'm just saying i should be able to walk around with all powers but hulk without anyone batting an eye if I am the geneticist. If a roboticist or a miner can walk a Ripley down the hall, why can't I have a glowing body, head, and eyes as a geneticist, since it's my work? Why can't I empower the crew in responsible and reasonable ways so that we are all safer and more secure? If you're saying I can't use my injectors on myself and leave genetics, AND I can't hand out the injectors to help others, then what is the point of the DNA machine? You guys know there's no CMO a lot, right? If you are playing in a no CMO or a CMO who defaults to "no" situation, or hell, even just have a very busy CMO, WHY even play geneticist? It equates to: "Play with numbers on a screen for an hour and then remain in one room that nobody visits for the remainder of the round." I can't think of a worse job, and it's one of my favorites, but not the way it's played on Aurora.

I would like to see the genetics "self-testing gets you arrested if you leave genetics" thing dropped. Reasoning: I play Geneticist from time to time. It is actually the least fun job on the station because of that requirement. Think about it for a second: You spend about an hour discovering and upgrading parts of the genome by clicking a couple of buttons, shining a flashlight in eyes, and repeating the process... it's tedious even when you've mastered it. Then, you finally have these powers isolated down to blocks, and can make them. Cool. So, now that that's done... that's cool. Log out. Why just log out? Well, because on Aurora, the geneticist is apparently despised and his work not valued. It seems extremely sensible to me that if I had x-ray vision granting powers that I would offer it to the detective or the HoS so that they can track down criminals more easily (some servers give the HoS and/or detective goggles for this). Both of the times I've asked permission from the CMO or HoS to distribute this power, I've been told "No" without any reasoning. Engineers and atmospheric techs? I'd like to offer you heat resist. You are in bad conditions frequently, and that power could actually be useful to you. But no. Don't give that out either... By comparison, the scientist is over there making weapons for security, building people new computers, upgrading machines, has access to chemistry, telescience, toxins, etc... but no, not you, geneticist. Stay in your hole. You have telekinesis and we'll allow invincible IPC dudes to run around all day, but not you, guy who can move a screwdriver with his mind... oh no... not you. I'm not asking for unfettered access to just give out powers... I'm just saying i should be able to walk around with all powers but hulk without anyone batting an eye if I am the geneticist. If a roboticist or a miner can walk a Ripley down the hall, why can't I have a glowing body, head, and eyes as a geneticist, since it's my work? Why can't I empower the crew in responsible and reasonable ways so that we are all safer and more secure? If you're saying I can't use my injectors on myself and leave genetics, AND I can't hand out the injectors to help others, then what is the point of the DNA machine? You guys know there's no CMO a lot, right? If you are playing in a no CMO or a CMO who defaults to "no" situation, or hell, even just have a very busy CMO, WHY even play geneticist? It equates to: "Play with numbers on a screen for an hour and then remain in one room that nobody visits for the remainder of the round." I can't think of a worse job, and it's one of my favorites, but not the way it's played on Aurora.

There's also a HUGE problem IMO of security stacking when the roundtype is known. On Extended, you're lucky to see 3-5 security characters playing. However, when nuclear wins that vote, SUDDENLY, security is overflowing, 3 times the size of ANY other department. Cult won by vote one time and there were 9. NINE. NIIIIINE members of security within the first 5 minutes of play. Just about half of the non-cult starting station was security/Head/Borg. This resulted in us having to play super-secret quiet bore-cult, or just get insta-crushed, really. There wasn't much unobserved screenspace. I consider it power/meta-gamey to grab your security character as soon as you find out it's nuclear or cult. For this, I highly recommend throttling the security positions available, or alternatively, just making it so we never know the round-type. Either an admin can set it, or we can vote between secret and extended only. Also, secret should exclude extended. I think it's important to remember that when there are a LOT of players with security, you're going to have a higher chance of one or two of them being shitcurity, and shitcurity being poorly RP'ed by even just one or two players is enough to blow an entire otherwise well-played round. There's a critical mass, and I'm not sure what it is, but I'm gonna say 5 security officers/cadets and above starts to get pretty power-gamey.

There's also a HUGE problem IMO of security stacking when the roundtype is known. On Extended, you're lucky to see 3-5 security characters playing. However, when nuclear wins that vote, SUDDENLY, security is overflowing, 3 times the size of ANY other department. Cult won by vote one time and there were 9. NINE. NIIIIINE members of security within the first 5 minutes of play. Just about half of the non-cult starting station was security/Head/Borg. This resulted in us having to play super-secret quiet bore-cult, or just get insta-crushed, really. There wasn't much unobserved screenspace. I consider it power/meta-gamey to grab your security character as soon as you find out it's nuclear or cult. For this, I highly recommend throttling the security positions available, or alternatively, just making it so we never know the round-type. Either an admin can set it, or we can vote between secret and extended only. Also, secret should exclude extended. I think it's important to remember that when there are a LOT of players with security, you're going to have a higher chance of one or two of them being shitcurity, and shitcurity being poorly RP'ed by even just one or two players is enough to blow an entire otherwise well-played round. There's a critical mass, and I'm not sure what it is, but I'm gonna say 5 security officers/cadets and above starts to get pretty power-gamey.

Let's just simplify it like this: Antagonists that IPCs have an advantage against: Vampires (no charms, no screech, no bites, no diseases, etc). Changeling (No stings of any sort, no DNA to steal or eat or use as subterfuge, etc) Cult (Immune to most runes, conversion) Cortical Borer: Immune Aliums: That brute damage is especially handy here, can't be impregnated. Malf AI: Not under command, can't be vented, can't be flashed Traitor: Virtually no stealth methods of takedown work, 1 vulnerability here: crypto sequencer (if it even works on Aurora this way). All others: That half brute damage thing is ludicrous, no flashing, no poisoning, no syringes, no suffocation, no knockout gas, no epipen, no DNA injector damage and so on... and so on... and with the shells, you don't even know it's an IPC until it's way too late. Now... Antagonists that Humans have an advantage against: None. Everything works on humans except for EMPs. So then, omg we have "weaknesses" because EMP weapons! - no, you have a "vulnerability", like a werewolf or a vampire, but one that's even harder to obtain than the things you need to kill those usually. So how is this fixed? Some good suggestions already exist in this thread, getting rid of the brute damage thing would be good, but I think ultimately this SHOULD have been handled with EXTREMELY CAREFUL WHITELISTING. That's Long, LONG gone, as I've seen 4 IPCs in security/command in 1 shift, when with this power level it should be more like 1 or 2 IPCs on the whole station. Slow them down. Bump up their move speed coefficient in the game_options.txt. Alternatively, you could give each antag a given, starting special ability or free item (or enough telecrystals to purchase one more item) specifically for dealing with IPCs. A vampire might have a gaze that overloads an IPC and incapacitates it for a while, a changeling might have a mutation that allows him to drain all of the energy out of an IPC's battery, a handgun could be made that fires EMP bolts that a traitor could buy... Also, alternatively, they could be role-restricted right the hell out of security, which is exactly where their overpowered abilities usually land them, and put them directly against the antagonists they are seemingly meta-OP-designed to valid-hunt. But ultimately my primary suggestion would be to completely remove them from the game. No joke. Or redo everyone's whitelists and make it so that being whitelisted for IPC blacklists you from Command AND Security.

Let's just simplify it like this: Antagonists that IPCs have an advantage against: Vampires (no charms, no screech, no bites, no diseases, etc). Changeling (No stings of any sort, no DNA to steal or eat or use as subterfuge, etc) Cult (Immune to most runes, conversion) Cortical Borer: Immune Aliums: That brute damage is especially handy here, can't be impregnated. Malf AI: Not under command, can't be vented, can't be flashed Traitor: Virtually no stealth methods of takedown work, 1 vulnerability here: crypto sequencer (if it even works on Aurora this way). All others: That half brute damage thing is ludicrous, no flashing, no poisoning, no syringes, no suffocation, no knockout gas, no epipen, no DNA injector damage and so on... and so on... and with the shells, you don't even know it's an IPC until it's way too late. Now... Antagonists that Humans have an advantage against: None. Everything works on humans except for EMPs. So then, omg we have "weaknesses" because EMP weapons! - no, you have a "vulnerability", like a werewolf or a vampire, but one that's even harder to obtain than the things you need to kill those usually. So how is this fixed? Some good suggestions already exist in this thread, getting rid of the brute damage thing would be good, but I think ultimately this SHOULD have been handled with EXTREMELY CAREFUL WHITELISTING. That's Long, LONG gone, as I've seen 4 IPCs in security/command in 1 shift, when with this power level it should be more like 1 or 2 IPCs on the whole station. Slow them down. Bump up their move speed coefficient in the game_options.txt. Alternatively, you could give each antag a given, starting special ability or free item (or enough telecrystals to purchase one more item) specifically for dealing with IPCs. A vampire might have a gaze that overloads an IPC and incapacitates it for a while, a changeling might have a mutation that allows him to drain all of the energy out of an IPC's battery, a handgun could be made that fires EMP bolts that a traitor could buy... Also, alternatively, they could be role-restricted right the hell out of security, which is exactly where their overpowered abilities usually land them, and put them directly against the antagonists they are seemingly meta-OP-designed to valid-hunt. But ultimately my primary suggestion would be to completely remove them from the game. No joke. Or redo everyone's whitelists and make it so that being whitelisted for IPC blacklists you from Command AND Security.

I really like this idea, but, to be 100% honest, I prefer just having some objectives assigned. I got a traitor round last night, and I love playing traitors of any sort... I think they are fun to RP and fit my character concept, but I also like to have a "reason" to be a traitor that I don't self-create. When I self-create the objective of "kill the HoS" or "Steal the Nuke Auth Disk", I feel like I am putting upon certain players, and it feels unjustified and weak. I wouldn't even really want to choose from a list. What I'd like, honestly, is just the objectives back for traitor mode, at the very least. I feel like vampires and changelings without objectives still work because they are hungry for blood or genomes... I'd like to have objectives there, too, but they work. Traitor without objectives is just "uhhh, do something mean, but not too mean, just kinda mean-like, meanish, if-you-will." and that's pretty lame. This is a good suggestion for meeting somewhere in the middle, and I will gladly pop in here next time I'm a traitor and grab an objective and play to it... but also, I'm not coming back here to post an after-round report. EDIT: I just read all of the agencies, and while I like the lore and info provided there, I think there need to be maybe a couple more that are open to all races and include assassination/bombing tasks. The "steal stuff" thing is cute, but it's overdone now. Time for real antags again please. I just don't like forums and I don't think they should be incorporated into the game world this way. If it can't go into the BYOND client, I just don't care about it. 100% honesty. Why? Because all known forum software is trash and that's part of why Reddit happened.

I really like this idea, but, to be 100% honest, I prefer just having some objectives assigned. I got a traitor round last night, and I love playing traitors of any sort... I think they are fun to RP and fit my character concept, but I also like to have a "reason" to be a traitor that I don't self-create. When I self-create the objective of "kill the HoS" or "Steal the Nuke Auth Disk", I feel like I am putting upon certain players, and it feels unjustified and weak. I wouldn't even really want to choose from a list. What I'd like, honestly, is just the objectives back for traitor mode, at the very least. I feel like vampires and changelings without objectives still work because they are hungry for blood or genomes... I'd like to have objectives there, too, but they work. Traitor without objectives is just "uhhh, do something mean, but not too mean, just kinda mean-like, meanish, if-you-will." and that's pretty lame. This is a good suggestion for meeting somewhere in the middle, and I will gladly pop in here next time I'm a traitor and grab an objective and play to it... but also, I'm not coming back here to post an after-round report. EDIT: I just read all of the agencies, and while I like the lore and info provided there, I think there need to be maybe a couple more that are open to all races and include assassination/bombing tasks. The "steal stuff" thing is cute, but it's overdone now. Time for real antags again please. I just don't like forums and I don't think they should be incorporated into the game world this way. If it can't go into the BYOND client, I just don't care about it. 100% honesty. Why? Because all known forum software is trash and that's part of why Reddit happened.

This isn't an unban appeal, because I'm not interested in that. I was given a 3 day ban (during a 3 day weekend) because I built an A.I. core and did not activate it, when I suspected the A.I. might be bad. Why did I suspect this: 1) Power went down to my department 2 different times. 2) When I tried to report it, comms were down. 3) Comms came back, and then later, went down again fora nother minute, mysteriously. So I grabbed some dura and made an A.I. core in case I needed to A.I. someone. I disabled cameras in telescience in case it was watching, and then I got arrested. I thought this was pretty strange, given that I fully explained myself to the officers... so I tried to escape. I did not hurt anyone. I was run down and arrested, and told I'd be going to solitary. I resisted this. I disarmed the officer and took his stun baton and pepper spray. I stunned him, and the baton was out of charges so I dropped it. I was then shot (and so was he) by the detective until my leg blew off and I was put into crit. I was then bwoinked and explained to that I'd be banned for 3 days for "self-antagging" and "power-gaming". I didn't even make the A.I. or even have plans to. I had already completed all the research that I could, and there was no R.D. to talk to about any of this. Anyway, good job on messing up my weekend even though I didn't hurt anyone with any of the stuff I did as the only member of science for the round. I didn't even do anything that caused harm to anyone in my escape attempts. Oh, and before you decide this was meta, ask W3bster about the Changeling round last night where he used his A.I. powers to lock down all of science for a solid hour and question people about their age, with no evidence that anything like that was possible.

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[retracted] No longer interested in these positions on Aurora. Thank you for your consideration.