JKJudgeX

This is yet another one of those "let's make someone else's job less interesting and more complicated because I don't like something that someone did once" kind of posts. I've seen this done elsewhere and it makes playing scientist annoying and far less interesting. You can nerf making toxin explosives, remove genetics, cripple R&D, all of that, but the question is why? If it's because someone is abusing it as a non-antag, that person can be fired ICly or adminhelped. If it's because you're upset that a revolution broke out and R&D armed revolutionaries with crazy awesome weapons... I'd say that's too bad, and that's a cool result that should happen sometimes. Security isn't supposed to win every single time. The game is very dry if every round has a completely predictable outcome. Also, getting that firing pin is going to be difficult, since half of all rounds lack a HoS to approve it, so, again, that makes R&D an even less interesting job than it already is, and I dunno if you've played it or not, but it's already pretty slow once you've done it a few times... most of the time lately you never even get materials from Cargo, so you can already only do half of your job. I think one of the reasons I quit messing around on Paradise altogether was because they made all of the weapons print in lockboxes that required HoS or Captain to unlock. With this change in, Research pretty much just becomes "the robotics department" and even that's questionable. Change suggestions should focus on bringing more capability and more RP to the game, not removing or super-complicating entire subcategories of jobs like "weapons testing".

While I'm not all about some "punishment" (as I've seen all too much how that can get out of hand) I do think that peace-antagging should at the very least be highly discouraged. In a mixed mode, one side of the antags deciding to be supportive or partially supportive of the crew seems alright, but in regular secret, someone should be causing conflict. In my view, RP without conflict has a definite limit with some people. YOU may want to play workplace simulator and be interested in whether Joey the Bartender has 3 ugly kids or if one of them is alright looking, but, other people wanted to roleplay characters in a non-mundane situation. For me, I never want to play extended because I feel like there is a 50% chance or so that any given round will BE extended for a given part of the crew. I've seen cult and rev rounds come and go without ever having to leave research or command because it all got wrapped up without me. I can't tell you how many times it's been wizard and I've never seen the wizard, or Malf and the only time I found out was when we switched to Delta and then everyone died. Extended will happen even without the mode... I think that since there is an extended mode, that gives people enough opportunity to RP mundane scenarios without antagonists "ruining" it, in all other cases, antagonists should antagonize. Uncheck the role if you don't want to antagonize.

Thank you! It felt pretty routine to me except for the whole mute thing.

I am 100% for ling and vamp captains and HoS's and think it would provide some pretty crazy rounds as the crew begins to question the motivations of top-level command. The power of command is not as absolute as it's being made to sound here. This isn't something that would even still happen very frequently. Just look at the probability of the captain or HoS actually being a ling even on a ling or vamp round? It's pretty slim, right? So if this were allowed it would be like, one out of every 4 or 5 vamp/ling rounds the captain would be a vamp or ling? And of those times, the number of captains that would actively abuse the role they had in massive ways like shutting down entire departments or demoting people? Probably not every time. I just don't see it as that big of a deal, and I do see it as something that would have the potential to create some pretty cool rounds where command begins to doubt each other because someone showed up dead in the captain's office and ... where is he?! As someone who very frequently plays antags and captains, I've wanted this for a long time. I'm sad that there's already a dismissal.

I don't like the idea of banning it completely, but maybe for certain antag types like Ninja and Wizard.... As an example, I played a round as RD Vyleon Black and was straight kidnapped by some raiders a month or two ago. The raiders proceeded to try to ransom me back to the station, and, well, Vyleon isn't really a very well liked character, so, a couple of people were just like "meh, we don't care" and they did very little to come up with any money and took forever doing so. Eventually, a couple members of command ponied up the cash and the captain decided to try to trick the raiders with a gas grenade or something like that, but, the situation backfired (somebody goofed) and the crew ended up injuring itself before even meeting with the raiders for the exchange. This made my character pretty upset, that his coworkers A) didn't care very much about him and B) would risk his life by trying to double-cross a hostage exchange with him in the middle... so... for the rest of that round, I played Vyleon as sympathetic to the raiders and willing to help them extract value from the station in order to pay for his own life, offering suggestions like "Steal their IDs and drain their accounts at ATMs", and "You could print this and that from R&D - I did the research myself!" and "Cargo's miners regularly carry processed minerals and even diamonds, uranium and phorn up to the station - cargo would be the place to rob for big money". I even offered to help them deceive the crew in order to earn my release. Eventually, they offered to let me just join their little crew, and I took them up on it as the round was concluding. Because of this round, I would like, occasionally when I roll Raider, to play as Vyleon-turned-raider, to sort of continue this non-canon narrative. I think that should be an okay thing to do so long as it isn't something that everyone starts doing all the time.

2) You were given some time before the absorption when I was typing a couple of lines to you. You chose to use it to shrug, again, before I had even started the absorption, which I went ahead and did because you shrugged, which to me, signified the end of our mime-like interactions. 3) Was the nursing intern mute? Did the nursing intern give you something to play off of? 4) As a rule, I don't give people a chance to run. Doing this, 9 times out of 10, will conclude your antagonist role within 5 minutes, as many people, given ANY opportunity, will spam your name, action, and location on radio almost instantly. I can't tell you the number of times i've pulled a guy's radio off JUST in time to see him say "Vyleon Black is killing me in R&D, Help!" after a quick flash and cuff, instead of any kind of realistic reaction or emote indicating the surprise of being suddenly attacked. I do things this way to prevent bad RP from ruining my round, and it proves to have been a good choice far more often than not. I absorbed 4 people that round, you got the least RP because you are a mute who didn't emote along with me. The most disappointing part of this is that the term "gank" was brought into it as if it was 100% wordless, as if our FIRST interaction in the round was me killing you when it really wasn't. I think that's at the very least a little bit dishonest and has caused me to have to come here and defend myself. It's not a "gank" just because there was no way out of it. Most antagonists leave very little way out of their attack on you, especially if they are alone. I gave you 5 minutes at least of interaction in having you build that Odysseus and explaining to you that I didn't know sign language in 3 separate meetings before our fatal encounter. I also gave you 2 lines of unrequited dialogue with opportunity for more before absorbing you. A "gank" would have been more like if we had not talked at all beforehand and I just ran into the room, flash-cuffed you, pulled you into maint, and ate you with zero words. I predict that with your definition of gank, playing a mute character, you will be "ganked" many times in the future. I'd advise being a little more conservative with those adminhelps, and honestly, being a little more honest and complete about situations that you choose to raise a flag on.

Oh, hi, Mystery, welcome to the server and the forums. Let me start out by saying I'm sorry that your interaction with me did not meet your standards of RP interaction before death, sincerely, I apologize for that. But, if I may, I'd like to offer some criticism regarding your own handling of the situation and general strategy: 1) Your decision to play a mute character will have some ramifications for your gameplay. It highly limits the amount of interaction you can have, when you are unable to communicate with people who don't know sign language. That's kind of on you and it would be nice if this would be acknowledged. Otherwise, playing a mute character, on Aurora, acts as a very strong anti-antagonist shield, forcing the burden of your condition onto another player in order to satisfy a rule. 2) If you are a mute character, you will need to depend heavily on emotes, which, you did not do here. You shrugged when told you were going to be food, and, contrary to your report here, that was before there was any kind of mutation to Vyleon Black's face. That shrug was a big part of why I went ahead and ate you without further exposition. It communicated to me that your character did not care about his fate or had no more will to struggle, at which point, you are food. 3) I hope that you acknowledged that we did have RP beforehand, my instructing you to build an Odysseus, our back and forth via PDA about cargo not providing you boards and my "attempt to sync the database" (which was faked because I wasn't yet ready to kill you, until a bit later, when I was). In the image that you linked, notice the underlined part that says a kill can be wordless at the scene. We even had a discussion regarding the fact that I didn't know sign language, long before I killed you. 4) Why would you expect that a murder would be escapable? That's nowhere in the rules. A calculating villain does not leave room to escape, he puts you exactly where he wants you and terminates you with as little chance as possible for him to be tripped up. I planned your demise down to the square you'd be standing on when you were flashed and which part of engineering I'd leave your body welded into. I took exactly the items from your corpse that I needed to perfectly imitate you in the event that I was caught eliminating my next target, which was Kunta X, because he had called me a nerd in the bar a few moments before. I think this was plenty of interaction with you, personally, and, perfectly in line with a plot that you might see in a horror movie, and I assure you, there would have been more interaction if your disability did not prevent me from understanding you or Had you bothered to meaningfully emote or otherwise cleverly communicate something other than a shrug, which gave me nothing to play off of and made me feel like you were already finished with our interaction and resigned to your fate. It just turns out that this time, you were one of the monster's first victims and not the main character (who was Kunta X, by the way, whose friend was eaten as a result of our conflict, and who was tormented by Vyleon Black all the way back to the Odin, he survived multiple attempts on his life), and because your own character had a disability (and a general disinterest in his own continued life, apparently), his death wasn't very interesting. Murder here: A) Served as a tool - you were an easy target and provided an identity to rely upon in the event that I was caught elsewhere. B) Drove a narrative - There's a changeling on board the Aurora, and it is murdering and eating people, able to transform into them as it gains power to feed on people more easily, hoping to eventually reach its ultimate form before being caught. C) Was not a gank, it was planned for at least 10 minutes in advance. I do not gank. Ever. I do kill people as collateral via bombs, resulting venting, and other science-y things when I play Vyleon Black on some occasions. You will likely be a victim of this at some point, but there will probably be at least a few clues as to who the badguy is leading up to the unfortunate detonation. I'll happily take notes and warnings for that when it happens if I do not satisfy some level of menace and story with my terrorism/vengeance/etc. I guess the bottom line here is that if antags get warned for killing mute people without "enough RP", it gives incentive to make mute characters, and maybe even a mute character with only one hand so, this way they couldn't be handcuffed, either, providing two layers of magical difficulty for antags who can't easily restrain/kill the person without an adminhelp flying out. I don't like this concept at all. It is already very difficult to be a successful antag as it is. Thanks for reading, and I hope our future interactions run a little bit more smoothly. Please use emotes to enhance the RP capability if you are going to remain mute.

I'm sorry, I wasn't sure if it was a note or a warning, turns out it was ACTUALLY a full on warning that I had to acknowledge. House_of_Synth said clearly that it was a warning but I for some reason was still assuming it was just a note (maybe because that would make a lot more sense but still be way, way out of line). I'll update the language of my post. And yes, this makes it much, much worse. Also, I disagree that notes are just notes. Notes get referenced and used against you when you get adminhelped again in the future, so, an improper or ill-considered note will be used as fuel to make further ill-considered decisions. People need to be EXTREMELY careful with notes an warnings, IMO. They don't go away. Warnings don't either and are even worse for this. And this is for a WARNING. I try to play a fair game and keep a fair record, here. I don't really understand how you guys could think after around 3 years of playing on Aurora (heavily into antags) that I'm out here murderboning or I don't know the rules and adhere to them. Hell, I LOOC up and remind people of the rules for their own good all the damn time. I'm not saying I'm infallible or that I won't slip up or have an off day and flub up a rule, but, this was in my view, in no way, worth a warning.

I probably would have if not for the shrug, tbh, I was launching into talking about him being a meal. The mute thing is kinda cool but I can personally name 3 regular characters that do it, and that's getting a bit excessive. I didn't *really* have unlimited time here, there were no distractions yet on station to busy security and random tunnel explorers, and I *did* hear someone in maint moving around only a couple of minutes beforehand who I was afraid might come back. Also, I felt that the setup and a couple of lines were sufficient and more than I am given by most lings, even when I'm actively talking and begging for my life. I have no problem with a mod investigating someone saying the RP was too short/etc, but I think in this case, given that the guy was mute, there was some RP with the character beforehand, and he shrugged mid-conversation, that the RP was clearly sufficient. If you act unrealistically disinterested in your death, perform zero emotes as a mute, etc, I'm not going to belabor you with further RP, especially when it's like RPing to an SSD character. This is a permanent note on my account, btw, 3 years of play and I get a warning from this is pretty disheartening, to be honest.

BYOND Key: JKJudgeX Staff BYOND Key: House_of_Synth Game ID: bP7-aheI Reason for complaint: I got a note that I probably should not have. Evidence/logs/etc: I was changeling. I started trying to isolate targets for consumption. One of whom was a mute roboticist named Jet Jorge. In order to busy him, I put him to the task of building an Odysseus. Later, after I had made ready by printing myself some cuffs, I found him in the room and asked him to go ahead and see if he could print the Odysseus boards. He went to the computers (more out of the way), I flashed him, cuffed him, and dragged him into maint. He was signing to me, I don't know sign language on Vyleon Black. Vyleon Black has put handcuffs on Jet Jorge! SeriousBee: Is there anything I have to do to be searched? I don't want to be shot over a misunderstanding. [Common] Jesse Noble says, "Something is going on outside my office, and two men are harassing me" Vyleon Black is trying to set Jet Jorge's sensors! [Common] Arrivals Shuttle Oversight states, "Central Command Arrivals shuttle inbound to NSS Aurora. ETA: one minute." [Common] Frankie Benford asks, "Hey, HoP around?" Vyleon Black disables Jet Jorge's remote sensing equipment. Vyleon Black has grabbed Jet Jorge passively! [Common] HK-47 states, "Unit's laws preserve law states for Command staff." Vyleon Black has grabbed Jet Jorge aggressively (now hands)! Vyleon Black says, "Sorry about this my friend" Jet Jorge shrugs Vyleon Black says, "But you are perfect food in your silence." And then I absorbed him while he used sign language to try and talk to me. So, why the shrug? I'll address that in additional remarks, below Additional remarks: I've played what, 50 changeling rounds as ling here, and never been written up for not RPing with a victim? And I hit between 2 and 5 victims at least each time? (4 in that round, nobody else complained). If you are going to play a mute character (there are too many by the way, it's getting kind of stupid), I think you should understand the amount of RP you're going to get out of people who can't understand your sign language is going to be extremely limited. I didn't see a point in doing classic villain exposition since I couldn't understand any of his responses, as he was handcuffed and mute (why can you sign while handcuffed btw? Strange). I explained this in detail to House_of_Synth and he told me he was going to WARN me. I asked if he thought it was appropriate to permanently WARN a person's account over such an incident, and, apparently he did. I'm 100% sure that I get less RP than was done here most of the time I get absorbed, there's no set up, no trap, and no more than 1 or 2 lines of "sorry I have to eat people, om nom nom nom" unless the ling has all the time in the world, which, I could have done more, admittedly, but this mute character couldn't respond, so, it was 100% pointless. I may as well have been talking to someone SSD and absorbing them. I think that if you are going to make a mute character, you forfeit the right to complain about the amount of RP you get when you are killed by a ling, since he can't respond to your sign language. This was really silly. I was specifically trying NOT to fail RP on this guy with my setup, but, there was no way I could think of to do more once he no longer had a PDA, other than to engage in a game of charades lol. Also, I bolded the part where I was trying to talk to him, and he *SHRUGGED* in the middle of being murdered after being cuffed, etc... This greatly helped to expediate my actions because I kinda thought a *shrug* meant "Get on with it, and also I'm really bad at RP, since no one in their right mind would shrug while being stripped down in maintenance after being flashed, cuffed, and dragged in." So, yeah, I was more than a little surprised to then get bwoinked after I was pretty sure this guy wanted our encounter over with. I'd like to see the WARNING expunged. Thanks for your time.

I tend to agree here, which is why I spent a large portion of my "Move Vampire/Less Ninja" post describing this and bringing it up. The way I've handled this in the past when security becomes super-aggressive over an ID and the manifest, is I repeatedly impose upon security the need to properly cite a regulation from the corporate regs that declares not having an ID trespassing. There isn't one, so, what happens is they start trying to wrangle the other regulations about trespassing and such into an interpretation that not having an ID means you are trespassing everywhere. This actually tends to end up working, but is often a lengthy back and forth with security that tends to result in people disliking or distrusting the person (usually captain in my case) who is pushing a strict reading of the regulations in favor of the visitor. My issue here is that this gets really old having to go through the same logic, often with the same people (who are revving up their validhunt/metagaming, btw), in multiple rounds, and I've found myself not bothering with it lately and just letting security do what it will while I handle the other issues that pop up, which is unfortunate, but, I don't have the time or energy to type up the same 13 responses over and over... so yeah, I'd love it if this would actually be addressed officially. I love the idea of a Blood Moon mixed round type, I'm 100% into that. I'd especially like it in conjunction with greatly reducing the likelihood of the "visitors" roundtype or the replacement of the ninja with some vampires. Vampires would seem to fit with a "paranoia" round type too. Oh, and... guess who is on the manifest and has a fully qualified ID? That's right, vampires.

There's no regulation that says a person has to be on the manifest or have an ID, by the way, nor does it say that in the SOP documents I've seen linked... just, as an addendum to this. When I'm captain, I try to discourage setting blue alert until something important has been stolen or someone has been seriously hurt or killed. Or bears or fully matured spiders or something like that where sec could use some extra authority and maybe weaponry to clear up the issue, then right back to green. If that was how the station was supposed to be, no airlocks should open, anywhere, for someone who has no ID... as is the case in an actual classified facility, where even "common" areas like the cafeteria or restrooms require ID access.

Playing a lot lately, I've noticed an absolute overload of ninjas and wizards. In my experience, these gamemodes are the most likely to result in a virtually unchallenged transfer vote at 2:00 because most people don't get involved. I'll talk about why I think that is, some alternative gameplay suggestions to help those modes, and then talk about why I think throwing in some more vampire might be appropriate and cool. What happens to ninjas and wizards Okay, so, ninjas and wizards are a bit more acceptable in mixed secret because there's a cult or other source of conflict involved, but, here's what I've seen happen in about 5 ninja/wizard scenarios recently. The ninja/wizard arrives, with or without a decent gimmick, and begins making quiet moves on the station. Nearly instantly, they are noticed for not having an ID. Today, a single antag being found on station with no ID was used as justification for blue alert. Blue alert pops up, boom, now we can search without a warrant. Incognito ninja or wizard is now about 1 minute from being fully discovered by security, and any items they have stolen will likely result in further escalation in a very negative way. The ninja or wizard is pushed into a fight or flight mode, and escalation ensues. This just becomes 2 or 3 security guards running down this antag and eventually killing him because he does something violent like trying to take a hostage, chucking a fireball, or whatever. I would like to suggest that we never elevate to blue just because there's a guy without an ID. He needs to have done something. We get this narrative of "It's a top secret super crazy research facility, not having an ID makes you an intruder, intruders are bad, blue alert, search him, book him." This, in my view, does not help with any gimmick ever, and is not fun because it's a window into valid-hunting by the players who absolutely despise ninja and wizard antics (which is understandable, because teleport/vanish at will is often, often, often abused. I'd also like to see us stop challenging people not having an ID on GREEN alert. There's no elevated suspicion, someone not having an ID, in common areas such as the bar, the hallways, the library, etc, should not be a problem. Yes, I know facilities exist in real life where not having a visitor tag gets you sent back to the gate to get one or sent home. I visit them myself all the time for work, but even in most of those places, it's just a nameless visitor tag, and no ID is checked (unless it's a government building). The station already has advanced, ID-required secure airlocks for all of the areas in which dangerous, high tech, or proprietary items can be procured. I'll also note that Standard Operating Procedure does not include anything about considering someone without an ID an "intruder", nor a mandatory search for said individual, but this is what security does. The other thing I've seen happening is that a ninja and wizard are both on station, and both choose to try to help the crew, against nothing, which is super boring. Mind you, I generally do not play as wizard or ninja, this is mostly from the perspective of captain, watching these antags get straight up processed and dismantled or forced into high-level conflict before even having a chance to try a gimmick. More Vampire, Less Ninja: Of the types between Ninja and Wizard, the Ninja is especially frustrating to crew. They bring very little by way of including more players in a gimmick, are nearly impossible to detain without killing or utterly neutering them, and abuse their ability to vanish routinely to the frustration of everyone aboard (often to the point that the overload on messages of "omg intruder in X location" make me really regret even joining the round). For this reason, I think that any mixed mode that includes a ninja should pretty much just remove the ninja and include a vampire or 3. For one, vampires are pretty much non-existent in the current rotation of mixed secret/secret/extended. Vampires include plenty of gimmick-fuel, from short time period domination to full on thralling to bring more people into the fold. They survive by being sneaky and taking advantage of crew via actual RP, and are nowhere near as murderbone as changeling on average. I would be happy to see Vampires sprinkled in to any gamemode, and the antag role widened to any position aboard being viable to get the role. I'd like to see more random events that spawn them in antag-light modes, and I'd like to see more admins give people vampirism to spice up a dull round... but ultimately, I'd like to see them replace ninjas most of the time, since nobody really seems to like ninjas except for the guy playing them, which usually goes south in the first hour of a round. Vampires fit well with the other mixed modes, as a blood-cult seems like the kind of thing that might attract vampires, wizards can be great vampire hunters, and they could even take advantage of revolution rounds as cover quite well. They blend with changelings and can throw blame and confusion into that mix, too. Sorry this is long-winded, but, I've been thinking about it for a while, and reflecting on recent rounds, and really wanted to put it all together. I'll close with a couple of questions... When was the last time you experienced a great ninja round where you weren't the ninja? What did the ninja do to make it fun? If you had a bit of trouble coming up with answers for those, or your answer is something from 2+ months ago, I think you should recognize the issue with ninja, and probably see how vampires would be a bit better alternative. Thanks for reading, or not.

I play captain a lot. A great deal of that time I spend as one of only a few heads. I have to listen on most channels to provide help where necessary due to missing heads and know where to go to keep things flowing. Many, many people are messaging me and I'm doing HoP work while directing security/etc. A great feature would be better arrivals notifications for heads. Larger font, different colored font, etc, and even better, a special sound for each head, like the captain whistle, when they arrive. All arrival notifications could be helped by being different, even for non-heads, so long as heads are easily distinguished when they arrive. This would be a great signal to start gracefully handing off responsibilities. Many times, a head arrives and kind of slinks into their department without saying anything, and I'm out here trying to manage engineering without knowing the CE arrived because his arrival announcement got buried in a torrent of requests/announcements/etc. I find myself checking the crew manifest over and over through the round hoping someone came aboard. So, yeah, just a little something here would be nice.

I like this idea a lot, not because I can't come up with my own gimmicks (I do a lot), but for a couple of other reasons. 1) Group antags (mercs and raiders, especially) sometimes have trouble agreeing to a gimmick. You get a really pushy player wanting to do a gimmick that other people don't really want to do or think is bad, and they keep pushing. I think a list like this would be great for those situations since instead of just having to kinda be mean and be like "your gimmick sucks" you could just say "when we can't agree on a gimmick, we pick one from this list or roll a die". Would be a handy tool, and speed things along. 2) Newer players who are just starting to antag often need some ideas, this solves that pretty well. 3) It could lead to a very creative repository that I think would grow pretty quickly with great ideas and combination ideas that might have some real gold. 4) Being kind of aware of some of the gimmicks people might be trying could be educational for never-antag types who main security and command, to see what to expect and allow some breathing room for the round to grow. Those guys that insta-search-arrest a wizard visitor might be a little easier to reason with if you can point them to a list of wizard gimmicks and see that a (for bad example) doctor who inspired gimmick might really be what the guy's going for and fireballs for everyone isn't on the agenda.

Richter always takes time to interact with me and RPs well. He's also a dependable sec team member. I could have sworn I already +1'd an app for him, but I'm gonna do it again anyway, he's one of my favorite people to interact with on the whole station, so, yeah, +1. I like his character's history and would like to see some new HoS blood, so, yes please.

Dawnguard is one of my favorite scientists to rely on as Interim RD and I've promoted them at least a couple of times, and relied on them as a liaison for the research department a few more times beyond that. Good about keeping command informed and being at the ready to assist when trouble arises. Beyond the functional side of playing the role, Dawnguard and Alexis Beck are both great characters to RP with, and have been around for a while. I think I've interacted with Centurion a few times as well, with me on the receiving end of security operations as crazy ol' Vyleon Black, and was satisfied with the RP effort put in with the physical routine of performing good security. I always assumed HunterRS had a head whitelist anyway, so, +1 for sure from me.

Schev: I don't think there was really time for you to even get back with me realistically, tbh, because I waited a few minutes after the fact before even adminhelping and it was close to the end of the round so I didn't really expect you to get back with me, you do fine on your responses. I wouldn't think this was worthy of a staff complaint unless you had responded with something like "what he did was okay", which until now I didn't really know if you had or not. I had an itching feeling that not even a warning or note had been doled out over this fiasco, which was going to become a wall of text from me illustrating my wonderful note, warning, and ban collection accrued for actions way, way less openly meta/dickish/poorly RP'ed than this... But, I guess I'm okay to drop the issue knowing that you were already warned for it, but it would have been nice to receive an apology and statement of understanding after the round last night so I wouldn't have had to come here. Hopefully the warning is enough to prevent characters like Riki from spontaneously deciding they are bored and it's time to murder their fellow crew/random station crew. I'd like for this to remain out here so that it can be referenced if I run into another "mad at the round" style excuse for murderboning me, though. In any event, thanks for your time, and ClearThoughts, thanks for approaching this reasonably. I hate to have to call a referee over, but I would want you to do the same to me if I fouled you somehow in order to improve my gameplay as well, so, don't think I'm perma "Salty" or anything .

The idea is that the Future Leader could be anyone and its up to the terminators to expand upon the clues they are given to determine the identity of the Future Leader. You could make the Future Leader spawn as a Rev or a Renegade which are pseudo-antags, giving them more leeway. You could also make the creator spawn with CC instructions from central about their soon-to-be creation such as: "Nanotrasen has hit an important research milestone with Creator, ensure that their work continues." This encourages command to work with the Creator, putting them at odds with the 'Good' terminator and possibly the Future Leader. It also creates interesting dilemmas with command in that they must balance the apparent threat of a killer robot from the future with station directives, making wide-ranging conflict. Ooh, future leader as antag of some sort is pretty juicy, I like this even more... I like both Rev and Renegade ideas, Rev because he's building the future resistance or something, Renegade because he has some kind of cool objective. Seriously tho, best idea in a while, any way that it would be implemented, I bet, would pretty much be awesome and very fitting with SS13, IMO.

BYOND Key: JKJudgex Accused Players Byond Key: ClearThoughts Time of Act: 12:20 AM EST or so. Reason for Ban: Really bad RP of Raider with fatal consequences for other Raider and some crew. Evidence: I don't have logs, sorry about that, but I did adminhelp. Sheveningen said he was looking into it for other reasons, but, never got back with me (it was towards round end). ClearThoughts' character was "Riki" (Rikitikitiki something like that, Vox) Background: Mercs and Raiders - we're Raiders Raiders find Merc ship, decide to infiltrate from above despite dangers of falling, believe that they can survive the fall and heal up. Raiders break in from above and are injured in fall, and move to medbay on Merc ship. Riki is least hurt because vox, so, spends majority of round healing injuries. I (Salty Jackson) am heavily wounded and cannot stay awake for very long, in crit, once in the medbay of merc ship. Riki attempts to fix everyone, I apparently am beyond meaningful repair, but stay in and out of consciousness, asking about my condition when I wake up to no response. The event: Finally, the emergency shuttle is called and on its way. Riki drags me out of the medbay, and puts a tank transfer bomb in my duffel, saying "Riki fix". I ask him what he is doing and why. Am told nothing but "Riki fix". I am thrown onto the station at departures with the duffel bag, and, a few moments later, inexplicably detonated, despite my asking not to be taken off of the merc ship multiple times. Aftermath: I was pretty confused by this, obviously, so, I asked around in deadchat for clues, and got none, and then tried to ask in OOC in the next round if Riki had a reason to do this. I was told I had 3 guesses, and guessed that he was frustrated that I was hurt. I ask him to elaborate, and he refuses, so, we take the discussion to discord. I ask him in discord why I would ever want to play antag with him again after something like that, and am really looking for a reasonable explanation here because I hate making posts like this and am trying to see if it was just for the lulz or what. I am told that this is how Vox are, that they get frustrated sometimes and kill fellow raiders. Why I'm requesting an antag ban: At least for a while to send the message that it's not okay for Raiders to kill other raiders without really, really good justification. My character was fine to lay there for a while longer and past round end, and survive this whole fiasco by flying away in the merc ship and finding real medical help elsewhere or a cryo tube somewhere else out in space or whatever. My character had said nothing to offend his character, and taken no incredibly foolish actions. In the Discord chat, I was told that he was going to do the same to anyone, I just happened to be the one laying there. He said "Read earlier: It's not about You in particular. I was angry. If it wasn't you, it was Snake. If it wasn't Snake, it was Dutch. If it wasn't Dutch, I'd probably bomb myself." I take it that Raiders are a small crew of criminals coming to steal things or accomplish some task together, and this action was basically killing one of his compatriots who could have easily otherwise survived albeit in an injured state. I just can't see a good story where one of the characters does this out of general frustration. If we had beef among our Raider crew or I had done something really bad he didn't approve of, or any other set of justifications for this action, I'm 100% okay with well-RP-ed antag on antag action. This was nowhere near that. My attempts to reason with him regarding his actions were largely ignored as he mechanically moved to detonate me. The other big problem I have with this action is I've been noted for bombing near departures (even banned a long while back) and the like, and when I had done it, I had legitimate beef with the crew. In this case, Riki had no beef with the crew whatsoever, as we had not interacted with them at all. His bomb vented the area near departures and I'm pretty sure resulted in at least 1 or 2 more rather griefy deaths. And here's the part that sealed the deal for me requesting this ban: He had also said.... "Whether it was gun, bomb, or knife, there was someone who was going to die for the sins of the round. Playing a Vox, I wanted to roleplay, I wanted to merch, I wanted to raid But because of RNG that was taken away from me" I consider this highly meta, and honestly, don't want to play Merc or Raider with this player again until he's had time to think about what he did here, and I think the best way for that message to be delivered would be via a temporary antagonist ban. He admitted to me that he did this because he was mad at the round itself, so for some reason, I and whoever else died in that explosion had to pay for it. At departures. Overall, 0/10 RP IMO, no apology or understanding of why this isn't a great way to play SS13 on an HRP server, and honestly a pretty bad OOC attitude about the whole ordeal despite my approaching it very diplomatically looking for answers. To ClearThoughts, please don't take this personally, we've played here together a long time, man. I am not holding any kind of grudge, I just want to see something done to communicate that this kind of play is out of bounds. I look forward to future rounds with you in different capacities. Much love, brother. Thank you for your time and consideration.

I'm really into this idea as an antagonist type, but I'm not sure a whole game mode with one good terminator and one bad terminator would be fun for the whole crew (just like ninja and wizard often aren't very satisfying), unless there were only around 20 players or so. A larger crew needs a few more antags, as evidenced by the station's recent preference for mixed secret over secret. Maybe terminators could somehow involve other synthetics/the AI? Maybe the Future Leaders and creators are given some kind of objective or tools or status that involves more crew? Terminator as antag type is my favorite idea I've seen in a long time, but I'm having trouble imagining it as a whole gamemode with a crew of 30+ without about 22 people just being bystanders (Future Leader/Creator, 2 terminators, and 5 or so security potentially involved).

Here we go back down the crazy nerf genetics hole. I'd like to see genetics made more useful without making it a boring unitasker medical job, please. It was perfect in the days of being inter-departmental between Research and Medbay, IMO. Abusing hulk or other powers in a disruptive way should be treated like any other form of self-antagging, though.

1) I always thought of it as being like a police/watch commander, which is the rank/role in many countries, including sometimes used in the USA. 2) I agree here, but, this security force does have swat gear and some pretty high tech weaponry, so, I understand the desire to behave like more than corporate security, albeit misplaced and often resulting in some serious garbage behavior. 3) My captain character is a military vet with combat experience and I try to play him realistically as one, trying to adjust to civilian corporate service often by over-exaggerating his casualness because I get this point and appreciate that you made it, because rambo is bad. 4) The commander title is very, very common in SS13 for the HoS. I don't mind it so much because see #1. 5) I reserve "chief" for the Chief Engineer unless I am in security, and then I use HoS or sometimes Commander. I will de-emphasize commander based on your post here because in general I agree with what you've said, although I think the "police commander" title is more where it comes from than a naval XO (British Navy). Good post. I'd like to see these kinds of things more formally handled by Lore and admin staff on the wiki and such, as well as more prominent interpretations of SoP and Corp Regs as per our lengthy discussion about Corp Regs in OOC today (talking about whether security should be detaining and searching anyone found without an ID, considering wizzy staff a weapon, etc, as this is really not clear in corp regs at all).

Earlier today I played as Captain and had a headless research staff, so, since I knew this character was trying for RD due to OOC conversation, I decided to lean on the character to adopt a semi-leadership role and keep an eye on the department. The character RPed well in our exchange and made an effort to keep an eye on things for me in a satisfactory manner. Mappel seems like a pretty good player and this is a well-written whitelist request. Based on this, and previous experiences with the player, I'm giving a big thumbs up for a whitelist for this player. +1

BYOND Key: JKJudgeX Character name: Nathan Corvo Item name: Vaporizer Pen or Vaporizer Why is your character carrying said item to work? Nathan Corvo smokes a lot and has a pretty strong nicotine addiction. He already starts with one pack of cigarettes as it is, but generally smokes them throughout a round until they are gone. In order to save himself some money, frustration, and have more fine control of his nicotine levels, as well as to appear more congenial with less harmful smoke and a less messy medium, when he is off duty, Nathan smokes vaporizers. If possible, I'd like him to be able to have one at work, because it goes with his aesthetic of being a little bit trendy and caring greatly about his hygiene and appearance. [/hr]Item function(s): Exactly like a normal cigarette, except you don't have to swap it out or light it, it just comes on like a pen light and then smoke comes out, and can even look just like a normal cigarette (or maybe silver). It could be funny to make it require recharging from time to time, or make juice for it, but, I don't think this is necessary, it could just be loaded and have a few hours of smoke in it. It should probably still be injectable like a normal cigarette, but, that's also not super important to me if it makes developing it harder. Even more extended function would be to make it flavorable with juice from dispensers, but again, these are all super cool things that are not necessary and can be added in some later time if the item is chosen for creation. Item description: This is a vaporizer pen. It is a tiny item. It is currently off/on. Item appearance: A single, slim, silver, electric, cigarette-shaped vaporizer. [/hr]How will you use this to better interact with crew and/or stimulate RP? Nathan Corvo accidentally gets dinged a lot for smoking in non-smoking areas (and generally discards his cigarette immediately upon realizing his mistake), a vaporizer is arguably acceptable in non-smoking areas, and might allow him to get his smoke on in more situations. It is a highly prized object for him, so, taking his vaporizer from him would be a great way to make him really angry (much like calling him "Nate", his other big peeve). Just like in real life, vaporizers are interesting little conversation pieces, as well as something that some people have strong opinions about either in favor or against, so some discussion, conflict, and interest could arise over it. I think the item might be popular enough that other people might request a vaporizer of their own, and vaping can be a thing (which is simultaneously awesome and annoying in my view, which makes me think it'd probably be a pretty fun thing in SS13). Additional comments: I wouldn't be surprised if someone had already asked for this, and if this is a repeat, I'm sorry, I did a search and didn't hit anything. Don't keel me if i missed it.