JKJudgeX

It's hardly a statement in itself, as it proves nothing and makes no sense. I guess you're having a hard time understanding what I'm saying. Regurgitating lore isn't good RP. Reacting as though that lore has an appropriate amount of weight on your characters actions and decisions is good RP. The latter is not as common as the former, in my experience. This is not a criticism of the many good RPers of Aurora. This is a suggestion to curtail the attraction of more of the bad ones, and disable some avenues of powergaming. Lore regurgitation/reciting lore is a well-known Roleplaying crutch. People are tired of rum-swilling Scottish dwarves, and characters named after or stolen from book, comic, or movie characters.

That this is the reason why people apply for a whitelist. If this were indeed the case, would Diona, Vaurca, and IPCs not be the most popular races played? Well, let's investigate. Go here and see the stats for yourself: http://rsc.skullnet.me/workspace/phpPdoExample/test.php These are all of the different whitelists issued. Were your theory correct, one would see a lot more whitelists for Diona, IPC, and Vaurca. This is not the case, as you can see from the numbers. Then there's also the question of which races are most actively played on the server. There is no hardcoded way to get stats on that right now, though there will be soon, Scopes and I did investigate it back in August. The most played races at that time were Tajarans. Followed up very closely by IPCs and Unathi. Diona were, and are, as sparse as the Skrell and Vaurca. So your theory and claim lacks hard ground to stand on. This brings me to another point. The entire blight of the SS13 alien races is that they are all too close to humans. And yet, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to add a little, take a little. This is sort of why the Vaurca are glass cannons, same with IPCs, the Diona are ineffective in combat unless actually armed with a laser. They all have neat abilities yes, but also drawbacks that guide these abilities to be mostly utility based. And even then, and this is the main point, I still have enough faith in our playerbase to think that very few of them actually share your mentality, and believe that most of them are interested in a given species for other, more RP oriented reasons. Onto the second point in original post. This one: I don't even know what to say about this, tbh. Surely you understand that mechanics enable and make RP, right? Mechanics enforce lore, and create an environment in which to roleplay. I truly do hate to pull this card, but I've been on this server since the start. I have seen humans do the, "Examine how snowflake I am," routine a hundreds times worse than most alien characters. Ergo, it is not locked to aliens only, as you imply it is. And at the end, I have never seen lore, of all things, be used as a substitute for RP. I don't even see how that's possible? What do you mean by this? 1) For 1138: I didn't forget those "disadvantages"... they just aren't that bad. Oh no, I can be EMP'ed doesn't add up to a "but I'm immune to being drugged!" and very difficult to "kill". Diona moving slow is pretty bad, but the regeneration etc is more than ample buff to that nerf. 2) According to your numbers, IPCs (in my view clearly the most OP of the lot, and about 70% of what I'm talking abou there), have HUGE numbers. Is it that playing an IPC is super-duper fun because their lore causes gratification, or do you think that maybe SOME players threw in that whitelist app because it makes them tougher to kill or incapacitate? Vaurca are pretty crazy strongin a couple of ways, but they are also very new, so I think their numbers being low is likely temporary, and their inclusion was what prompted this post before they become an epidemic... already had a round where I interacted with 3 of them in the same shift... so... Robot-Cat-Bug-Station 13 is a go... and I wanted to slow that trend before it inflates to IPC levels of overplayedness. A limitation of "can't play a head" placed on a race should be a clear indicator that playing that race should come with the gravity and responsibility of playing a head, because that player is empowered, and allowing them to be a head while empowered would be overkill and unarguably OP... and that limitation should also come with a maximum population of players of that race on the Aurora at a given time, imo... or... we could just stop letting a hundred plus people play them. 3) Being different from humans isn't necessarily great or good. I preferred SS13 before the alien races were commonly played or even available on most servers. Not because I generally dislike aliens or other races in RPGs (I play halflings and monstrous races in D&D sometimes), but because their in-game implementation is not fun or necessarily balanced. 4) [7:40:15 PM] Meowness: IPCs really are OP. [7:40:20 PM] Meowness: And I love them for it. [7:40:28 PM] Meowness: I made Anwar so I didn't have to worry about being fucked by lings. At the height of the IPC tide, playing a changeling was pretty dry a few times. RPG gamers have been dealing with Mary-Sue/Snowflake/Unbalanced races for a very long time. "High Magic" vs. "Low Magic" campaigns and which is better and other disagreements exist among RPers who are entitled, at least, to a preference. I prefer "low magic" SS13, where "magic" is the availability of special abilities and immunities to the playerbase. This doesn't impact how much RP is expected, but it does take away the snowflake RP crutch or race-based lore-exposition, and highly limits meta-play and choosing overpowered things while pretending to want to RP those things. There are plenty of threads and discussions relating to how overpowered some of these races are, I thought I'd make one clearly outlining that I don't think that playing a special race makes you a good RPer by default just because you wrote up a ballin' whitelist app, either.

Whole-heartedly disagree. Great reasoning though. There's really not much for me to argue about here. It's another thread focused on axing some round types that somebody (you) has a beef against insofar as it is possible to do so, along with altering the voting norm. I don't really care for the regularity with which nuclear gets voted, but that doesn't mean its ability to turn up randomly should be reduced, or that it should be effectively axed. For that matter, I don't think Secret or Extended is really desirable. In summary: I disagree and don't care for your personal issues with certain game modes. There's barely anything for me to say. It wasn't about axing round types. It was about not knowing the round type from the start. The server probably plays secret or extended 90% of the time anyway, so why not include a few more gamemodes in secret, and leave the options just as secret and extended for the purposes of increasing immersion and decreasing meta-play. You'd probably see a lot less players beeline to cryo the instant they spawned in and weren't an antag or a desired role if they didn't know the roundtype at the beginning... There are a lot of advantages here, and I don't expect you to address every single one. I don't like extended mode, but as you can see in my post I included it as THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE to vote for because I know many players here enjoy extended... but I'd be willing to wager a great deal of money that the majority of people who voted for "secret" on a given round really didn't want "extended"... and I'd be willing to bet also that cult, vampire, and changeling rounds would all work better if no one knew the roundtype. This change PROMOTES RP. Knowing the roundtype PROMOTES Meta. Your call. My stance is clear.

meta-gaming for valids when you don't know if and when and where or what type of valids is significantly more difficult than specifically pre-building that backup A.I. against the malf-A.I. or mysteriously deciding to blood test changelings or check PDAs against traitors. I end up as antagonist a lot because I don't play heads. I know meta and valid-hunting when I see it, but it quite often cannot be easily proven. If you want a natural reduction in meta behaviors, you sacrifice getting to vote in and cherry-pick your favorite round-type. You could always ask an admin to force a gamemode as an event. It seems like you thought I was making the claim that there's no more meta or powergaming if we don't know the round type, but that's not at all what I said or implied... just that it would be reduced, and I think that's well-worth not getting to specifically choose "ninja". "Ninja" can be included in "secret", and what gamemodes belong in secret are something that a lasting consensus can be arrived upon, and also something that can be modified in the future by public vote on the forums.

Whole-heartedly disagree. Great reasoning though.

I think this is a decent idea. I don't think it's "shit" to just roleplay a standard round, but it's also not noteworthy. I can think of many noteworthy RP stories that other players have made amazing with their actions and dialogue, above and beyond the uninvolved side-character with a race-based speech impediment. People who react accordingly to hostage situations, both as the hostage and as the first responder... antagonists who set up really good situations for people and play a good villain while doing so... a captain actually mulling over a moral decision and discussing it... the security officer who isn't a hardass when dealing with the science department because he's got a casual interest in science... there's definitely an "above and beyond" to RPing SS13 that no player hits every single round, and instead of just saying good job in OOC, I think a few of those rounds i've played in I would have actually bothered to come to the forum and give a shoutout to the person or people who made my 3 hour round an unforgettable video gaming experience instead of just another shift pushing chems or devices over a desk.

In my view, knowing the roundtype in SS13 is something that many players can not handle correctly. The metagaming is amazing. In order to address this, I have a suggestion (this is ONE suggestion as I don't want any part of it to ever happen without the others): 1) Remove all gamemodes from gamemode vote except for secret and extended. 2) Remove extended from secret gamemode. And in order to handle the failed setup during round start problem, put a piece of code in that automatically chooses a different random gamemode on fail, and tries to start again, rather than resetting the entire lobby. Otherwise, problem gamemodes could go back on the list for specific voting, but I would much prefer to see as many of them included in secret as possible (except for malf AI, it really is a trash roundtype, but that's another topic). Please don't tell me to adminhelp when someone behaves in meta ways. We only detect meta-behavior when someone goofs up, but that doesn't mean that meta-behavior doesn't have a huge impact on the game at hand. That chemist that mysteriously wants Uranium at the beginning of a malf-AI round? Oh, wow, the Chaplain sure is active here in this cult round even though there wasn't even a chaplain for the past 8 rounds! Red alert? You saw a guy in a reddish spacesuit? Well, okay. "You PDA'd me to meet you in the library for some reason, but it's a traitor or vampire round? No thanks, normally I'd love to pop right in, but, no I have to finish up this all-important R&D right now"... and a million other "undetectable" meta-behaviors. "Yeah, too bad I had to shoot that guy to death with a laser instead of arresting him like every other antag, because it was 2 minutes til the shuttle arrived and he was home fre-- I mean, he was craaaaazy dangerous and I had no choice because I was ... uhh scared!" Anyway, I hate knowing the round type, and I really hate it when other people know the roundtype... if people want to play a specific kind of round here and there, that's what admins are for, IMO. This would also have the potential of letting us play a few different gamemodes here, from the ones that are very rarely selected due to the "extended gang" forcing everyone who doesn't want to play extended to agree to just throw "Secret" every time. Huge kudos to the players who are willing to RP their ignorance even into their own knowing doom, but these kinds of players seem to be the minority here.

Thanks, I've been here for a long time, and played on Aurora for much longer than I've been on the forums, but I appreciate the warm sentiment. I don't speak up often, but I'm a lot of those "views" on people's posts that aren't accompanied with a reply.

I did ask you specifically, not to reply to my forum posts. You're free to comment of course but I'm not going to engage you on this or any other topic by answering your questions.

I would like to suggest that no more alternative races be added to Aurora without removing/limiting applications to other races, and in conjunction with this rejecting the vast majority of race whitelist requests from here on out. Why? I find many of them to be OP and meta-enablers. Want free insulated gloves every round without being in a role that should have access to them? Put in a whitelist app. Want to be immune to chemicals and atmospheric attacks? Put in a whitelist app. Want self healing at the cost of walking slow? Put in a whitelist app. Now, go forth and abuse these powers as you see fit! And... Talking about lore and having a speech impediment isn't the gold standard of RP, and it sure is overdone. Not having an easy "go-to" RP Trope keeps people focused on the shift, which facilitates both meaningful SS13 gameplay AND Role-playing. "Let's examine how snowflake I am" takes away from "Is the Captain acting strange? Let's keep an eye out and ask around." And yeah, sorry to throw the term "snowflake" but to many of the players I see on Aurora, the continued exposition of race and lore elements is being used as a SUBSTITUTE for RP. Anyway, it's going to be an unpopular suggestion and everyone hates me anyway, but I wanted to throw that out there in an attempt to bring a little normalcy back to the server and shift some of the focus to the gamemode, which I believe FACILITATES RP instead of taking away from it, without going to the tired to death "OOC racism" that's super popular.

Another "nerf geneticists" thread. I've already stopped playing geneticist (which was one of my favorite roles) on Aurora because of the whining about powers (which really don't amount to much more than things other players can start with, minus the 30+ minute research time). It's used as a license to freak out and overreact, and treat the geneticist disrespectfully. Punish people individually who abuse the powers themselves... not geneticists as a whole.

If it has a brain, or something that works exactly like one, it should be able to be enthralled. Being enthralled is just really, really, really liking someone and not exactly knowing why or being able to control it... it's a magical psychological domination trick. It can and does give the vampire the ability to essentially dictate laws, that must be followed, just like the A.I. can with borgs. IPCs already have 9000 advantages and there are a lot of players who dislike them because of that. I really don't think suddenly deciding that they are immune to yet another thing is a good idea.

Does it still work on synthetics, though? I personally think it should if they are fully artificially intelligent, and it's implied that there's a sentient brain inside of them. Being highly injured physically and having some wires stuck in your brain shouldn't necessarily make you immune to a vampire's clearly metaphysical Enthrall (and neither should an implant, but we've been over that).

While it's really sad and an unnecessary nerf to make loyalty implants a free, magical, get-out-of-that-ability-free card that incentivizes vampires to leave heads and other loyalty implanted characters completely out of the round besides as murder targets, I appreciate the acknowledgement that I should have been informed of it "not working". The drama that arises from a PROPERLY enthralled head of staff is often a very interesting playthrough, as other heads and security come to realize that the HoS/Captain/HoP is behaving strangely, a lot of good and interesting RP emerges. I've seen it happen a few times and those have been what I considered "good" vampire rounds. There's good confusion and suspicion on which to play, and causing conflict within security and command is interesting and different. When you enthrall regular crew, the chances of it being really interesting and involving a lot more people diminish. This encourages me to enthrall a scientist and ask him for bombs/gas canisters, enthrall an engineer and ask him to destroy the engine, or enthrall a chemist and ask him for deadly chemicals, rather than enthralling a head and causing some actually well-RPable drama. I take the line that a traitor's responsibility is to make the round fun for more people, and I always feel bad when I'm a traitor and I can't make that happen (either through my own failing, bad luck, or in this case, awkward rules lawyering). So for what it's worth, count my vote for allowing enthrall to work on anyone and anything, or, reducing its blood cost/time to invoke now that it has been further reduced in effectiveness. Playing a vampire just became much less interesting... not sure I even want to play it anymore even though that round was really fun. I think the outright removal of loyalty implants from the game except for in revolution and MAYBE cult gamemodes would have been a step in a better direction, even. They are unnecessary "easy-mode" for already well-equipped and defended characters who have entire other crewmembers at their disposal. I hope the enthrall attempt doesn't even fire, because people who expect this to operate like a normal SS13 server will still blow their own cover in enthrall attempts, and that's potentially just as bad as it not working.

Why can't we just go by the assumption that the code and the lore are in congruence? That's the easiest, and most sensible way to do it. Maybe converting somebody to a cult isn't as strong as enthrall because [insert lore reasons of your favorite flavor]. Enthrall works by [insert lore explanation that makes it so your loyalty implant doesn't protect you enough to not give you a traitor overlay]. Either side of that means you're just arbitrarily choosing things, so, why arbitrarily prefer and insist upon lore that's counter to the way the game has been programmed when you could have just as easily chosen a sensible, logical reason that doesn't make SS13's programmers/interface "wrong"/confusing? And to address more of the above, there are fewer vampires and thralls than there are cultists, generally, since cult can very quickly, and essentially "freely" convert people, it makes sense for it to be easily defended against or dispelled. When a vampire has to drain a whole body of its blood to even attempt to convert you one single, breakable, non-refundable time, breaking out of that is highly destructive to the gamemode. By comparison, the cultists have to get their words together, draw a rune, and set up a cultist factory. Makes 100% gameplay balance sense, and usually in RPGs when we have "kinda weird" things like this, we explain them with lore, instead of contradicting them with lore.

Explain to me how this is consistent. I'm pretty sure it's an inconsistency within the code, but the rules drawn from it would be consistent. Basically: you get a message saying the implant makes you resist: you resist. You don't get anything/you get a regular conversion message: the implant has been subverted. I obviously hope nobody gets punished for this (it seems like a honest misunderstanding), but it would probably be easier to follow the actual code functions in the future rather than rely on unwritten conventions (and if needed for consistency, fix the code so implants always work?) I don't think it's an inconsistency within the code... I write code myself and I don't see why someone would have just forgotten, much less a community of coders neglected, for all this time, to go back and put the condition in for enthrall to not affect implanted people. But yes, I think we really should play to the code, and not override clear visual indicators arbitrarily. Pretty sure enthrall is supposed to work on borgs and such, too...

Loyalty implants override cult - SS13 stops you from being culted. Loyalty implants do not override Enthralling - SS13 allows you to be enthralled. The RP should fit what the game is configured to display. When that dude has a Vampire icon on him, players are going to trust him to play the role the game is telling him that he has. Nobody wants to have to know all the weird errata side rules that the game doesn't even consider... Your NT Implant makes you loyal to NT, it doesn't make you immune to being charmed by someone. At most, it should cause conflict if I instruct someone to murder a crewmember... "Help me get out of here" should have really worked, and no, when you really like someone you don't genie-twist their requests...

I agree that this is the way to do it if you really want to make goofy-assed loyalty implants so powerful that we consider NT implanted people actually ENTHRALLED by NT, which is never how they are actually played... Also, though, if someone is implanted it would be better if the enthrall attempt never even started, because you bite someone to do it... so it totally blows your cover if they aren't converted. I really think there should be at least something that overrides the loyalty implant. You guys are making it out to be way, way more powerful than it should be, imo... Even if enthralling doesn't wipe it out, it should result in the character having convoluted logic and twisting his anti-NT actions to seem pro-NT to himself, or having self-destructive conflict relating to it. I really think that killing the guy who enthralled you is way out of bounds, though.

Well, like I've said, if that's how it's to be played, there should be at a minimum, ample, and clear information about this given to the vampire player so that he doesn't blow his round when the HoS decides to murder him post-"enthralling". Most people who know anything about vampire lore understand a thrall to be somewhere between insanely devoted and a mindless, instruction-following automaton. You can enthrall synthetics and borgs and everything, but, no, the loyalty implant... I'm okay with the loyalty implant being strong, but if it's THIS strong, I think nobody should start with one and they should have to go through the trouble of getting one installed... otherwise, it's "easy mode", which is what logic gets thrown at any antag player seeking levity. Enthralling takes a good squirt of time. It isn't super long, but, it's long enough that I failed a couple of attempts last night even after my victim was knocked down by a screech... it's not like you can just fly in out of nowhere and enthrall someone. You have to be alone with them, and they need to be incapacitated. At that point, you could just as easily murder them, usually. I could have picked up the HoS's weapon and lasered his face after I screeched him... But instead I spent 240 blood and enthralled him hoping to make for something more interesting than getting my face blown off by him. I think allowing it to be played this way sets a pretty bad precedent for future vampire rounds. Only people privy to this thread know that he implant can not only override enthralling, but can override it so much that murdering the guy that tried to enthrall you is A-OK. When I first made this thread, I thought about asking for the HoS to lose his whitelist, because I really felt like he was valid-hunting more than anything else... I only changed my mind because he apparently had mod-permission to go straight to murder.

The loyalty implant was originally JUST for preventing revving. When rev stopped being a standard game mode, loyalty implants were even removed from the station fora while. Then it worked to prevent culting. If the person who invented the roundtype wanted to have the loyalty implant work against vampire enthralling, he/she would have just used the same logic as in either of those examples... so it's pretty clear to me that this kind of antag-ing is meant to be unblockable by loyalty implant. 1) It's metaphysical (culting is as well, but being done just by a person with a rune, not by a magical being) 2) It's unprecedented for a vampire's thrall to be able to abandon him without the destruction of the vampire in any literature/movie/comic/etc. 3) This effectively makes heads 100% un-antaggable. 4) it costs blood. It's not free or reusable, and you spend the blood if the person escapes the attempt, too. 5) It is one of the very few things that can skip eye protection, which the HoS and Captain get by default. 6) The coders could have very, very easily made the loyalty implant reject vampirism. 7) The chaplain has magical immunity to it, why would a loyalty implant work as well as being "Holy"? 8) And most importantly, thralling is fun, and it's a great RP opportunity curve-ball, that is in my opinion the primary power of the vampire that defines the mode... please don't let the stupid, freely obtained, boring loyalty implant overpower it, "just because". 9) The language. "Follow their every command" is absolute, as opposed to a loyalty implant which just makes you act towards the benefit of NT. I think it might be painful for a loyalty implanted person to "follow their every command", but it doesn't look like any kind of suggestion to me. I get it, you want to play the goodguy so you picked Head or Security... that's fine... but it shouldn't be across the board immunity to subversion and having to RP outside of that little box from time to time. Wrangling in mods to agree that you should shoot the guy that thralled you to death was not really good SS13 play, nor good RP, in my opinion.

Round Time: 6:53 AM (End) Characters: Sharp Max (HoS) Vyleon Black (Me, Vampire, Scientist) Mods: Garnascus AimlessAnalyst Serveris6 Round Type: Vampire Here goes: I was a vampire. We had a good round. I was captured, but escaped. I managed to Enthrall Sharp Max (HOS) with 300 of my very useful and needed blood points (he slipped out of the first attempt earlier). Apparently, the HoS asked the mods if he could just kill me instead of obeying me after he was enthralled, since he had a loyalty implant. They ruled that he could. So, when I tell him to fight on my behalf because they are coming for me, he just goes "you forgot one thing, I have a loyalty implant"... and lasered me to death on the spot while I was unarmed. BEFORE I asked him to fight them, I told him to "get me out of here", as I wanted him to just escort me to the shuttle. He said "hold on a minute", left, came back, and then the above took place. I only told him to fight on my behalf once I was cornered, after huge delays while I'm sure he was asking the mods if his implant overrode enthralling. There was no good RP. There's nowhere that says a loyalty implant overrides an enthralling, and on the subject, enthralling heads is listed as a good strategy on SS13 wikis talking about vampires. I used some language, but didn't call anyone a name when I reported this because I was upset, and further upset by all of the mods coming to this agreement, which is really garbage and further shackles vampires, making their awesome RP-enabling enthrall ability less useful. So a loyalty implant, then, is invulnerability to all forms of hypnotic suggestion? If this is how you guys want to play it, it's your server, that's fine, but it should at least be listed, and honestly, for a rule change that big, I would suggest modifying the code to PREVENT ENTHRALLING people with loyalty implants. Even if you want to say he can refuse my orders, that's one whole thing... "No, my implant won't let me do that." is a far cry different from murdering your master. Anyway, super lame conclusion to an otherwise fun round. I feel like there was heavy player favoritism going on here, and definitely some valid-hunting behavior. From another wiki (I couldn't find anything about this on Aurora's wiki)...: "Enthrall is a major investment, yet enthralling the captain or HoS can provide you with prisoners and access to guns without raising much suspicion, in other words repaying the blood cost many times over. Remember that enslaving somebody doesn't work instantly, so the target should be incapacitated and out of sight before you start the conversion." Further, it lists enthralled characters with the antagonist at the end of the round, and let's remember that the loyalty implants can and will stop culting and revving... if the intention of the enthrall ability was for it to be blocked or impeded by the loyalty implant, the player would have been informed or it would have been impossible to do. I'm not after any kind of punitive action for anyone involved, the mods told the guy it was okay, so, it's not his fault, but there needs to be a wiki page or a line of text somewhere that says "Hey vampires, don't enthrall loyalty implant dudes, they'll straight murder you"... or, preferably, this player and these mods need corrected and told that enthralling works on everyone (and it is usually amazingly fun RP if someone goes along with it instead of just shooting you with a laser while you're unarmed and talking to them). It also would have been fair and reasonable to tell the vampire in a private message that his hold over his subject was not as strong as usual due to the implant, or something, rather than just letting this go down like this.

Issues like this are exacerbated by a head whitelist. I can't tell you the number of times I've needed chemistry access with no CMO and no HoP... I feel like there should be clauses in the corporate regulations that state if no one is on board and alive with access to chemistry (or cloning, or other station resources locked behind nonexistent permissions), that a break-in by department staff is acceptable after some period of time waiting (like 20 minutes or something?)... with the RP caveat that after the break-in characters do reasonable things with the access, and not things the character would have no idea how to do. A geneticist that knows how to make hyronalin is not out of the question IMO, a geneticist making metal foam grenades and every medicine known to Medbay is pushing it...

Honestly, how many times have you been killed by a hulk, though? If you go back six months to a year, this was a semi-common problem. Non-regulars from low RP servers would show up messing about, get Hulk, and go on a rampage that required them to be put down by lethals. I eventually learned that while they can't get stunned normally, they can be blinded by flash to put them off their murder-game, which makes apprehending them feasible. I don't know how often people were killed, but it was pretty common to get knocked around pretty decently at the time. These days, random people don't show up as often causing problems as Geneticists. Key word, "As often." We recently had a round where a Geneticist hulked himself and a bunch of Assistants out with predictable results. I don't know if anybody got killed then, but I know those Hulks did hurt a few people during their short-lived rampage. On a more funny note, we had a xeno round where the Geneticist hulked himself out and punched an alien queen across a room. That was pretty great. Also, if your health goes below 25, you lose hulk-strength but retain the green color... so, subduing hulks isn't really that big of a deal.

I don't know that my opinion counts for anything, but, I think that SS13 was built with mass murder as a possible outcome because it expands the range of things that can happen in a round, and I support its implementation from time to time. My reasoning is pretty simple: Just about every malf AI round ends with everyone dead... either that round type needs to be removed/that outcome removed, or the other antags should have the option from time to time of killing everyone. The game has objectives built in that are "be the only person to escape on the shuttle" and "summon nar-sie" which both have pretty big potential to lead to mass murder. I don't think those things are necessarily outmoded or made impossible by this being a heavy RP server. Those things can be heavily RP'ed as well, and heavy RP can exist within those confines. The more antags are shackled, the less high drama there is to RP heavily, IMO. People getting killed is a big part of the fun, and there are tons of ways to bring people back. I do think certain methods of mass murder should be prohibited, but very few. I think station-wide fire is pretty much never fun simply because it takes so incredibly long to kill everyone and results in a big slow boring airlock-and-wait-fest. I think releasing the singularity is a bit lame because it's pretty much "round over because I said so", and while I appreciate shorter rounds, that's still taking a bit too much authority and is usually unnecessary. I don't think setting off a bomb or two should be frowned upon for antagonists that this makes sense for(a scientist/cultist, scientist/traitor, scientist/rev, or nuke ops, but not changeling, vampire, Vox, wizard, etc). Bombs are dramatic and sudden and upsetting, and their presence and their use can lead to some awesomely intense moments. They provide a unique challenge for security. I've been arrested numerous times on servers where bombs don't lead to ban-threats, and been able to create really fun scenarios for myself and security by running a madman bomb scheme from the brig... "you may have me, but my bombs are everywhere... comply with my demands and I'll tell you where, or else...time is ticking!" This is a better conclusion than "lol perma". One particular one when i first started on Aurora a long time ago, I told everyone their time was coming, and they didn't believe me... 30 minutes later the bombs started going off, and I did a maniacal laughter thing while the captain and HoS buckle-cuffed me to a chair and summarily executed me (which I found to be an awesome and appropriate response, and it was well RP'ed). The ensuing chaos was active and fun, and it ultimately only killed a couple of people. I don't think this kind of thing should be against the rules. The roundtype/antag combo that even enables it is not every time, and even when those types match up, it's not every time, so I don't expect you're going to get maxcap tt bombs every round by loosening restrictions there. Shooting sprees and disgruntled employee scenarios should be okay, too, for traitors... "you fired me? Oh yeah?" ... it's disturbing and dark, but I think memorable and exciting... and generally all of these things can be foiled or reversed... The things I really dislike the most are situations where antags behead people and take the head and such. Things that really kick a character out of the round and have little to no recourse of them coming back, while not incentivizing a shuttle call. If someone blows up medbay, the shuttle is probably getting called soon, so, you're only sitting out for 20 minutes or so. Anyway, just my thoughts. Interesting thread!

Honestly, how many times have you been killed by a hulk, though? I don't think I've ever been killed by one. Those rapid fire lasers and laser cannons though... And if it's just someone abusing hulk for the lols, I'd just report them for not RPing. If someone's actually RPing that they hulked out during a genetic experiment, maybe since the protohuman doesn't exhibit the mental and vocal modifications of hulk, injecting themselves to test it and then flipping out, that's not that hard to solve. I mean, it doesn't turn you into an antagonist or give you bloodlust or anything crazy, it just makes you angry and strong. If you damage station property with it, you should be arrested and charged with vandalism/etc, and the CMO should just clean your SEs, right? I don't think that's all that difficult, and gives people something to do, and I think can create some pretty fun/interesting RP scenarios. A security officer comes and says she wishes she could be stronger because the other officers are more effective, or she had a recent failing in the field, so the geneticist gives her access to hulk, and she uses it appropriately, cool... she uses it unwisely or RPs that it enrages her too much and maybe hurts someone a bit too much during an arrest... I dunno, I think stuff like this is fun and in combination with the thousands of other SS13 "things" can really add to the game. It certainly adds more to the game in my opinion that simply arresting someone for glowing in the hallway, which effectively makes the only things an entire job can do "illegal".