JKJudgeX

SS13 is a simulation system that has game modes in which to use the simulation. Some of those game modes include concepts like elimination and unwilling team switching. That's just the nature of the game. If you don't like it, you can always get out of it by disconnecting on death. I know that sucks, but it also sucks to get absorbed, or spaced, or gibbed, or borged, or permabrigged for something you didn't do and left with no form of communication... elimination and uncomfortable things are meant to happen within SS13. I'd go so far as to say that if every once in a while you were not made fundamentally unhappy by a round of SS13, that the game didn't do its special thing. You are MEANT to be punished and put into uncomfortable hellscapes by the game, in my opinion. That's a huge part of its charm that many other games lack. When I play the board game Betrayal at House on the Hill, I don't *want* to suddenly become a vampire/ghost/werewolf/murderer/plant monster that has to kill my friends/loved ones at the board game... I was hoping it was my buddy Joe, but sometimes it's me and now I have to begrudgingly play the part... but, then sometimes you learn to enjoy the mechanics and emergent gameplay that you didn't look forward to, anyway. And maybe you never like it, but the risk of that happening to you should have made your investment in the game much stronger beforehand. Maybe try to focus on assisting the remainder of other people's roleplay when something like this happens to you, rather than focusing on how fundamentally unhappy you are about what happened to you? I dunno, just some thoughts. It's an opportunity to explore if you work to drop your cynicism and disappointment, and to me that's a big part of the charm of a game like this.

In the round I was referring to, that's what we tried to do, but the syndicate borg, without EMP weapons to confront it, was easily capable of murderboning all of security and command with grenade launcher before further response could be mounted. I didn't find it adminhelp worthy, even though I was grenade-launchered mid-sentence and all of the EMP weapons had been stolen pre-emptively... just found it to be one of those "lol look how robust we are" as when people bee-line to the AI chamber with thermite the instant they see a blue screen and various other slightly too clever strats that I'm sure we all take part in from time to time. Not a big deal tho.

This was a great post and suggestion. I agree with it almost 100%. I would put changeling/vampire etc above malf and ninja and wizard though. I am not a fan of single antagonist round-types as they are far too dependent on one player, who could disconnect, be incompetent, not really care about other's enjoyment, etc. I've always thought wizard could be fun if there were 3 wizards by default, assuming a crew population over 25 or so, but, as it stands, I wouldn't mind seeing ninja, malf, and wizard dead last. I love revolution rounds, and would like to see them, far, far more than the single antag types, and even more than cult. Thinking in terms of what made me end up becoming an SS13 fanatic, it was playing Revolution and Traitor rounds as non-antag and then as antag. Many of the other roundtypes I feel push people out/away from boredom or early elimination with no chance of participation. Malf is interesting but the AI gets subverted enough during other modes that it seems superfluous. Anyway, again, great post and I agree completely with what you said about Malf.

Generally, antagonists are outnumbered by security alone, much less the various superheroes who strangely look like scientists and cargo techs, so, I don't have a problem with them having some powerful kit with which to abuse the crew. Honestly, asking for pretty much anything to be nerfed while ninja, wizard, and malf AI exist as they do is a little bit weird, IMO... the game is not supposed to be "fair" on a 1 to 1 basis. That syndicate borg with the grenade launchers is stupid overpowered, too, like, kill all of security by itself powerful... especially when we apparently don't consider it metagaming for the syndicate players to pre-emptively steal ion-based countermeasures before revealing their new super construct.

I think the main problem with ninja is that it's a single-antag round type with no expansion options. Same problem for Wizard and malfAI, but wizard has more gimmicks available and the AI has borgs. So, maybe ninja could include more ninjas, or, maybe the ninja knows who the traitors are and has been sent to take them out or something? Out of all of the rounds I've played, and I've played a lot of SS13, I have never seen a single good round of ninja that was fun for anyone outside of the ninja and maybe 1 or 2 other players. I've seen quite a few interesting wizard and malf rounds, but never ninja. To be honest, I'd be happy if ninja was just out of the rotation, or if a ninja was just a type of traitor/random event that can spawn. It's a highly annoying antag type. I think its one that suffers especially from not having built in objectives, but, I think the objectives should be available (maybe optional, but available) to all antag types, tbh. It really does need help, I hope effective suggestions show up and are implemented.

It literally requires dead cultists. That means that the counter is don't kill cultists. You have a brig available to you for a reason, as well as a chaplain who can fix cultists. You've got borgification options, you've got chemical coma options, straightjackets, and all sorts of other non-lethal ways to pin down a known cultist without killing them. Cultists are just the only antagonist that has the *honestly rarely used* ability to become more powerful in death. I think I've only seen it used once, and very shortly, in the past 5 cult rounds I've been in, even when using it would have been wise because multiple cultist ghosts were ready to roll.

This. I like the no-nerf ideas that you brought to the table, but if they are all going to be shot down, then maybe it's time to look at the alternative of nerfing some of the xenos. I've always thought that on a "Heavy RP" server IPCs and xenos should really just be skins more than anything, as the mechanical advantages are altogether unnecessary, and in some cases, out of line. Yes, I know, EMP grenades/it's hard to find a hardsuit sometimes, etc etc etc. I get it. It's just a consideration that shouldn't have to be made, and it's pretty annoying. I say either give humans something or cut some of the bonuses way down on the other races.

Maybe the reset AI module could be used without special ID, but Freeform would require multiple command-level swipes?

I'm not totally against the 2 ID cards idea, but, what do you do in a situation where the HoP is a traitor or is otherwise compromised, kills the captain, uses their IDs to subvert the AI, and only one other head is playing at the time. Only having 2 or 3 heads online is fairly common lately. He could even go as far as to space the IDs, knowing that this makes fixing the AI pretty much impossible... I dunno, something to consider.

I would like to see something done about this for sure, as AI subversion happens way, way too often. Between malf AI as a possibility and antags targeting the AI pretty much every round, I've grown really hate the AI altogether as a role, and would even go so far as to support turning it completely off if something like this *isn't* done, as I feel that half the time the role is abused (valid-hunting) or played poorly (being argumentative with command staff even when not subverted). I'm not sure that the correct approach is necessarily involving the creation of AI uploads or authentication, as another way to accomplish similar goals would be to make hiding objectives from a state laws command impossible or actually require AI Chamber access to do. In general, the AI needs to be nerfed in either its subversion or in avoiding detection of its subversion. Remember that by requiring additional authentication, undoing a traitor or killed head's subversion of the AI becomes incredibly more difficult and unlikely.

If you don't like cultists using this ability, don't valid-hunt cultists. In most of the rounds where I've seen it get heavy use, it's because somebody started lasering the faces off of cultists instead of going through the trouble of arresting them. As dead cultists pile up, the reward of creating a rune and reanimating ghosts increases. It shouldn't be a surprise that an insane death cult has a means of gaining power as you kill them. I've noticed a pretty strong uptick in the use of lethal force by security on Aurora lately. This ability acts as a good counter that IMO and I'd like to see it remain. I actually wish revs got something similar, but that wouldn't make any sense.

There's a 1/3 per step chance when doing ghetto surgery to injure the patient. This is because you don't have good tools/anesthetic. From the bay wiki: "you have a 1/3 chance per step to make a mistake and injure the patient rather than advancing the procedure". There's no need to make this any more difficult or punishing. What's a better story? "Steve died because we didn't have enough pain medicine because nobody was playing chemist. That's why the round ended." or "We rescued Steve using what few tools we had, though it was a bloody procedure! Then the round was good." ... I generally prefer the latter. The "chance" of failure on a normal surgery step would indicate something out of the ordinary happening. A piece of metal randomly inserted into the body makes a lot of sense to cause this, right? "Yep, boomerang tangled up in the intestines this time" or "142 paperclips in the lungs, this might take a while" as opposed to "Oops, I killed him because I accidentally forgot how to replace a heart this time for no discernible reason. " I dunno, just saying, mechanically, it makes sense and seems to have accommodated for ghetto surgery being fail-tastic, as well as regular surgery having complications with randomly inserted objects. No change needed.

This can be solved as easily as: say ;I ran out of power, can someone please help me recharge? I'm in maint near the janitor closet. Borgs have advantages and disadvantages. Their battery is one such, and not being able to move when it runs out is one of those disadvantages that makes it so they aren't pretty much always better. I prefer them becoming more helpless without power.

I've been playing with the IRC features on laptops and terminals a bit lately and I have to say I really enjoy the system that's been put in place for it, but, unfortunately in visiting in across 4 or 5 rounds, I've been the only person there for any length of time. The ability to create channels and key them and such is really useful... I'd like to see more use of it, so, would it be possible to add this to PDAs, as a messaging system that is possible to secure and manage by players? I think this, or any other way to promote its use would be great for antagonists to be able to coordinate ICly as well as a fun, out of the way place for crew to chat about (potentially non-essential) things in a group-like fashion without being yelled at for "abusing comms". I'm not sure the best way to go about it, but I'd like to see some ideas related to this as the system as it stands is actually great, just underutilized.

1) Again, unnecessary. Many surgeries can be successfully completed without anesthetic IRL. Surgery was invented a long time before anesthetic, and the ghetto surgery already has a large risk of failure... so this is already factored in enough without the need to make it even more difficult without extra preparation. Makes perfect sense the way it is. 2) I already acknowledged this. Every bullet wound isn't the same. The RNG failure could be there to represent that one bullet/shrapnel wound was exceptionally bad, while the other was not without adding extra mechanical steps. Flattening this would make it seem like every bullet wound was exactly the same. I don't care how great a person is at surgery, some bullets/shrapnel penetrate more deeply or in more complicated ways. Makes perfect sense the way it is.

1) I understand this. Thinking from an antag perspective, the tools of medbay and medicines may not be available. There is already a much higher chance of failure in this kind of surgery to begin with, why make it further difficult or impossible without a chemical that may not be had? The way it's described in the OP, not having tramadol/etc on hand would make something like removing a bullet in the field pretty much impossible, which it shouldn't be, and it's already difficult in-game as is. Just seems like arbitrarily ranking up a difficulty of something that's already a 6 or 7 to an 8 or 9, when no one is really complaining that ghetto surgery is too easily done. 2) Time is often a measure of difficulty, it makes removal take fewer steps... the game simulation seems pretty decent to me here... sometimes you get shot and it *is* an easy extraction in real life... other times, complications come in or the bullet is harder to find... I wouldn't want to diminish that. In other words, though the game doesn't simulate a bone shattering into 42 fragments, or your stomach contents leaking into your abdomen, which are things that might happen from a real gunshot, it can provide randomized complications that in a way simulate this being the case. I appreciate that. This is why there should really be one idea or concept per post, though, because here, I really disagree with #1, but #2 I'm not completely dead-set against some kind of change. I think both are things that should have been suggested in some capacity, though I don't really like the approaches given for each.

Thank you, arrow. Sorry it got out of hand. I think your post summarizes it well, though I think even in low pressure it happens too quickly.

Let's simplify: 1) Generally makes many surgeries more difficult. I'm not a fan of big changes like this. 2) Flattens a type of surgery that has variable difficulty. I'm not a fan of just making things easier without a rational justification. I like a balance of simulation and gameplay, myself, but making all extractions a rote, identical surgery seems heavy handed, too.

I like this idea, with mechanical parts or not. It would be another interesting thing to add to character sheets that would distinguish characters from one another, and also serve, at the very least, as a stub from which to hang eventual mechanical changes. Maybe a full system for this would do things like: Martial Art X decreases the time it takes to grab someone and makes it more difficult to break free. Martial Art Y increases fist strike damage and increases the percentage chance of a critical. Martial Art Z gives bonuses to using weapons and decreases chances of being disarmed. Martial Art A gives bonuses to absorbing brute damage. All of these should probably be very tiny bonuses, but something nonetheless... Or, the purely aesthetic option is still nice, too... I dunno, I was just thinking.

I like these ideas because they don't add unneeded complexity, but they let the bartender invest more time in his craft for a different, deeper result. The glass labeler would be pretty nice for allowing fully custom drinks. I think one of the reasons I no longer play bartender is because it's a less useful, less complicated version of chef that has a very short horizon on learning and very little access to the station. I think the bartender is definitely due at least a little attention.

One thread per suggestion, this is two distinct suggestions. 1) This is a bad idea because it will just produce situations where needed surgery can't be done because a needed chemical is not available. It also would impact pretty much every surgery. How does it make the game better or more interesting? Surgery can be done now without a chemist. There's only a chemist or willing CMO half the time. Borgs who can self-trespass I guess could still perform surgery, but as someone who usually plays a human with a specific role, I'd say no thanks to this for sure. 2) Sometimes things get stuck in bodies in more deadly or hard to remove ways than other times, this is part of the simulation. As someone who just derailed another thread on the platform that you just don't want hazards to be easier to deal with, I'm not sure how you can in good conscience make this argument. This is a situation where a job is made difficult and more enriched by the difficulty involved, and a chance of failure or running out of time is introduced.

The point here, is, Dreamix, that your lungs don't burst when you run out of air, but they do on this codebase, leading to lots of very lame things happening that are fun for literally no one. The only time my lungs should be able to burst from air-related issues would be also when I'm in a low-pressure situation, and I should see the indicator for that and be given time to react... but that's not how it works, and it feels cheap and broken, and means that there are many, many situations where you can not be aware that lung damage is about to happen and it will. I don't care about suffocation. It works fine on its own. It's the terminal lung-burst-for-no-logical-reason issue that's being addressed here.

It sounds like you don't play very often, or not in roles that are required to intervene with or work near places that are frequently vented by station events and antagonists. This happens if you expend your tank, which happens, frequently. There's not enough time between "Oh, I'm out of air." and "Oh, my lung is burst and now I will literally die, even if I do get air"... especially when you consider that your lung should have never popped in that scenario. It should have been "Oh, I'm out of air. I guess I'll hold my breath for 30-80 seconds and grab an air tank." You should be able to run out of air, completely suffocate to the literal last possible instant before you can be recovered, and still not have a popped lung. Even with exposure to vacuum, your lungs only burst if you try to hold your breath... in any case where suffocation is already taking place, you have no breath to hold, so, even being spaced with no suit shouldn't burst your lungs. You're a space man, in kindergarten you learned that if you are ever spaced the first thing you do is exhale so your lungs don't pop. If you're unconscious, the difference in pressure would exhale for you. The more I look into it, the more stupid it is that your lungs burst at all in this game... especially from simple suffocation. And again, it should definitely never happen while you have a space suit on, and it. definitely. does. My question is... is there suffocation that happens WITHOUT a bursting of the lungs? Lungs bursting should be pretty rare.

I just did a quick test. Your lungs literally burst from just running out of air in a space suit. That's not what should happen. That should just be plain old suffocation, no permanent lung damage required. This test was done in the library, which had plenty of air. There was no sudden change in pressure, I just ran out an emergency air tank in the suit. I think fixing that issue would go a long way to making the lung damage reasonable. From the first message of "You feel a stabbing pain in your chest!" (after 2 gasps... so, try to breathe where there isn't air twice, and then *pop* lung)... To being in crit from the untreated lung damage was about 7-8 in-game minutes. That's pretty damned lethal for running out of air and then immediately fixing the situation as soon as the stabbing pain hit, IMO. The lung should have never popped to begin with, obviously, but, there was no bad pressure situation at all and I was able to put myself in a near death situation just by running out of air for like 15 seconds. Go try it yourself.

I'm glad some sensible people replied with something other than "get good" in addressing this annoyance. I've had my lungs ruptured a lot of times on this codebase, and I'm not complaining about the times that obviously make sense (teleported into space, dragged into a breached room by antag, shot in the lungs, etc). Reading comprehension is cool. I made it very obvious that those are not the things I'm talking about. I'm pretty sure that in this codebase, using a straw to try and drink out of an empty bottle would blow out your lungs.