Nanako

Ballistics are pretty good against windows too you know. Yes they have a long range, but that's only an issue if you're dumb enough to charge at them down a long corridor. As mentioned, engineering has two side paths through maintenance You sneak up on them, or blind them and charge. Smoke bombs + fire axe will work pretty well This was my bad, i wasnt aware you couldn't order a ballistic rifle. Alberyk should be fixing that Exosuits can literally tunnel through walls now. You can definitely sneak up on them and bombard them with missiles, or automatic fire. And get the ranged armor booster. Yes. Problem? If you think its worth throwing away the lives of your men to save on damaging a room with a little explosion, your logic is a bit silly. breaches can be patched. Theres a whole lab in science dedicated to making bombs. And a chemistry lab that will be desperately happy to make some grenades for you too if you give them a chance. pylon lasers cannot empower pylons. If they're hit by their own reflected lasers it won't affect them.

They seriously didn't even call ERT? Thats exactly who you're supposed to call when you can't handle a situation. ERT will eat pylon fortresses for breakfast. They have frag grenades, grenade launchers, ballistic sniper rifles, a durand and a dark gygax with a heap of weapons, and hardsuit mounted grenade launchers too. If you get just one frag grenade into that room, most of those pylons are toast instantly.

Hello everyone. I'm here to tell you how to git gud. The pylons have a long list of strengths, as lord fowl points out. And they also have several notable weaknesses. Unless you've been bad enough to power them up with lasers (stop doing that), their damage is 4 per shot. If you wear an ablative vest that becomes pretty negligible. They are very vulnerable to brute damage and ballistic weapons. A fire axe or a baseball bat will kill one quickly. As will any ballistic guns. And quite importantly bombs. Bombs will devastate the area and wipe them out with ease. A power 2 explosion will always instantly shatter them, power 3 has an extremely high chance to do so as well. Basically cause an explosion anywhere in their general vicinity and you can wipe that room clean. If the cult is going to pack that many turrets into a tiny space, then you should deal with them using AOE tactics. They are also very vulnerable to exosuits, using crash to stomp on them will almost always smash them instantly, and generally crush any windows in the way too. But most critically, they cannot move, they only stand in one place and shoot at whatever they can see. This is your advantage and you should exploit it. As it happens, the engineering lobby is a pretty powerful place to build them, because it has a lot of windows and denies you cover. You are at a major disadvantage trying to assault through the front door. So don't. There's maintenance tunnels down both sides of engineering. If the cult is hiding deeper in there, you can easily just go around the turrets and never have to deal with them. But if you want to deal with them then use the terrain correctly. For the picture above, you start by getting the AI to close firelocks and tint the windows of the CE's office. If there's no AI then force an alarm by causing a nearby hull breach. A hull breach has the additional advantage of causing any cultists hiding in there to flee, because cult robes are not EVA capable. Once the firelocks are down, the pylons can't see you and you can work on destroying them methodically. Sneak down the west maintenance, get voidsuits on, enter CE office from space, and shoot from his front door where you only have to deal with some at a time. Security also has mobile barricades. Use them. Push them around as cover while you advance. You could even push vendors or lockers around for cover Also SMOKE BOMBS. Cargo often has some, chemistry can make them. Turrets cannot shoot you if they can't see you. blind them and break them. These pylons are designed for area denial. If you're finding it difficult to assault a cluster of them, i'd say they're doing their job. You need to work on tactics, formulate and coordinate an assault plan. I've seen it done before. Snipers in space, shock troopers teleporting in nearby, coordinated entry from multiple locations and deploying heavy weapons. The station has all the tools you need to fight even the heaviest cluster of turrets And most importantly, kill the artificier that built them. Artificiers are extremely weak, if you get one infront of your gun it's essentially dead before it can move. Pylons cannot be built or repaired without an artificier to do that. We had the same uproar when lordfowl released his blob overhaul, and half the community was crying for it to be nerfed every round. Some still do in fact. But very little rebalancing has been done to those blobs. People simply learned to fight them Key points to take away: 1. Don't power them up. 2. Cut off their vision, limit how many can fire at you 3. Use ballistic weapons, heavy melee, explosives and exosuits Some rebalancing will likely be done on the pylons, but they're not going to be nerfed into irrelevance. ill tweak them gradually over coming days

Apologies for documentation problems, it is being worked on. This is a major redesign of cooking and lots of stuff has changed. I'm happy to answer any questions about it

This is clearly a labour of love for you, but in this case thats not a good thing. This much effort, attention, and sheer quantity of features built into a single item, isn't likely to happen. A piece of traitor gear simply doesnt deserve this much work. Ive seen shorter posts used to design new gamemodes and departments. That unique special function for each machine is not going to happen. Most of these other features i feel, could perhaps be implemented as enhancements on the emag. Have you thought about directing your attention at the existing electromagnetic card? Its our defacto thing for assisted hacking.

Please make a seperate thread for this, i'd actually be interested in discussing defibs

RE: Genetics, i'm adding that back and reforming the disability/mutation system. More penalties through there are likely. As alberyk mentioned a couple pages back though, random disabilities do already exist and get treated with ryetalyn (i'm removing or heavily nerfing that drug soon) In the new map, the cloning facilities will be located inside the genetics lab, although the plan is to have half of the lab (the half the cloners are in) open to doctors. With regards to cloning, two major ideas come to mind that i'd like to see done: 1. Cloning insurance. Cloning someone is (or should be) a financially expensive process that not everyone can afford. Instead of having Do Not Clone orders, which is an opt-out mechanic, i'd like cloning to be opt-in. If your medical records don't state that you have cloning insurance, then cloning you would be done at cost to NT, which only certain command staff could authorise. This would all ideally be tied to an economy system in future. 2. Usage of a limited resource. In addition to upping biomatter costs, i'd like cloning to also involve cost in a secondary resource, something like Stem Cells. Which could only be obtained by ordering them from specialist medical suppliers via cargo, or in smaller amounts by harvesting from the spine of non-husked corpses Plus a few minor changes: Slightly longer duration of cloning procedure, longer recovery time, higher biomatter cost, and MUCH higher power costs

I agree with shadow that trying to make people not play certain roles after cloning will not work. I don't think any kind of IC regulation will work, because cloning often occurs in a crisis situation where regulations are tossed out of the window

This is actually what i'm doing, and have been doing gradually for months. In general i'd like to see combats last longer and killing people be more difficult. Coming next patch, lasers are getting nerfed. But i don't think thats necessarily a blocker to reforming cloning

this is not as easy to do as you think. Our clothing sprites are monolothic, made for a game that has no movement animations. And lying down rotates the whole sprite making someone crawl on all fours would cause their arms and legs to pop out of their clothing

i dont know how to feel about this. I'm in favour of anything that will make rounds longer, but i cant say whether or not this will cause that

what on earth is that UI? such garis colors, ugh... The problem here is that the sprinting overlay is made for a different UI style, the default midnight one

Hello. Lungs rupture with a 5% chance per proc if your pressure is too low or too high. if(check_pressure < ONE_ATMOSPHERE / 5 || check_pressure > ONE_ATMOSPHERE * 5) if(!is_lung_ruptured() && prob(5)) rupture_lung() Ill nerf this probability a little bit as a bandaid Edit: Added code tags

Here's a thought. As a small concession, how about reducing and randomising the wall damage rates/ So that blobs would take anywhere from 2-10 minutes to eat through a wall. This would mean that initially, they'd be confined to rooms and corridors, but eventually break out and expand as they do now. Critically, it would give people time to see that something is wrong and evacuate the area, so that we don't have mass civilian death by breaching.

We are not currently accepting suggestions for new races in any meaningful sense. We are not adding any new main/crew species for at least forseeable future, and we are not open to adding any at all at present due to other development commitments. The primary reason we're not adding new species is our approach to playable species. Each of the main playable species has a dedicated staff writer who creates lore for them and acts as a creative director for their mechanical design. Senpai jackboot, whom you've already spoken with, is the senior overseer of that team and the man with final veto power over decisions in that area. As a small volunteer organisation, managing six staff in one department is no easy feat, and i don't think he's keen to add more. In addition, every species brings with it a weight of development maintenance that we have to fill. I personally wrote most of our diona code and still maintain it. More species, especially if theyre significantly mechanically different, means more maintenance. Secondly, a critical reason we can't add this particular species, is that we lack meaningful mechanical support for dark vision. We've had a few developers take a crack at it, and our youngest member is working on it part time just now. But i can't say its something we'll have anytime soon. I'd say thats a critical feature for a bat species. Now all that aside. We are not removing resomi. They exist in the codebase for special events and admin intervention, they are not generally playable and do not have a writer. All of our existing species fill a niche, and satisfy most of the tropes, common archetypes and roles we want to promote. You profess a couple of times to "work on" this species, but unless you're applying as a coder, its us that'd be doing most of the work, this seems disingenuous. While i can appreciate the labour value of good design, the number of people who put studious effort into game design principles is relatively few. And the number of those who have the talents to realise their designs, fewer still. The world is full of people who think they have great ideas, but are wrong. I'm afraid you're one of those. The design is derivative, doesn't fit our community, and to a degree doesn't really fit the game at all. The whole darkvision/adapted to caves thing is a vaurca trait. They have that niche. There is no value in replicating it just to make it moreso. The trope is taken. The archetype is realised. If vaurca don't sufficiently satisfy your desire to play a troglodyte, your efforts would be better spent on thinking of ways to improve them, not replace them Brute weakness is tajaran. The leap ability is from the vox, you even realised that yourself. And a main crew species which can't fire guns is generally unsuitable for the game engine Most of it is your favourite bits and pieces cobbled together from other species into a configuration that you personally like. But that's not how species work A closing note: You're not the first person to suggest a new species, you won't be the last. All of them have been declined, even if some have heartbreakingly high levels of effort put into the design. We are simply not entertaining new crew species right now, and that's not likely to change

@butterrobber You may like my most recent cult feature https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/1870 Its not a portable ranged weapon, i dont think cult should be attacking, they're more of a defensive focus. This gives territorial advantage

Kaed, why not try making some of these yourself? Having a goal to work on can help with learning to code. Why not try coding a function for the Debugger tool to fix broken APCs. Its a thing that can occasionally spawn in cargo, but it could be added to engineering or science. We're all quite aware that these things need done but most of us are just too busy with other things. Most members of the dev team have 2-3 large scale projects we're backlogged on. Nobody seems to be getting around to malf AI stuff just now Anyone is allowed to submit Pull requests to our codebase, we can help with compile errors and getting stuff working

Here's a small thought that comes to mind. What if, once a construct is made, if its player ghosts, any other ghost can take over its body freely to inhabit the construct. This would mean you could ghost without feeling bad about sabotaging the round Perhaps this'd be some small consolation, as it'd allow you to eventually respawn, or to play as a mouse/drone/posibrain/nymph/pai/whatever. Your character would still be gone but at least you wouldn't be forced to play something you dont want to. I think a lot of observing ghosts would like to play as a construct, they're pretty powerful and fun.

It would not be hard to allow beepsky to wear hats. Should i do that? y/n

Oh hey this thread is still going. I thought you guys might like to know i've added a new cult feature for next patch: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/1870 It gives them the ability to sacrifice small animals in order to upgrade pylons into weak defensive turrets. In general, i see cult as the most defensive of our antags, and this is a step towards encouraging that kind of gameplay. I may take more in future. What i'd like is for cults to do less roaming the halls stabbing people, and a lot more taking over a section of the station, and turning it into a temple to nar'sie. Where possible, they should be capturing people - alive - and bringing them back for conversion or ritual sacrifice with lots of pomp and ceremony I'm open to ideas on how to reduce their ability to hunt down civilians for sport, and to shift towards a more defensive focus I definitely agree that random murderhobo'ing is not good antagging, and isn't fun for anyone.

I can see you've put a lot of thought into this, ill appraise the mechanical design, as thats really my specialty. Unfortunately, i find it derivative. There's strong elements of changeling and cult here, combined with some mechanics and themes from malf AI, maybe even a smidgen of traitor-y things. You've taken elements from all of them and combined it into something new, attempting to build a design out of the areas where they don't overlap. Personally though, i don't think this is the right approach. I feel that the more interesting mechanics here - such as the subtle hints that someone isn't human - would be better done as expansions on the aforementioned mode. Changelings should really have such signs. A lot of the mechanics mentioned here are repurposed things, changeling abilities, traitor items and some sec gear respectively. The only thing that stands out to me as really new and special, is the "Renew the Cycle" ability. That is a great idea, but i don't think its sufficient to build a gamemode on. What we have here is a team-based internal stealth antag. The problem is, that's already been done, twice. Cult and Malf AI respectively. On a macro scale, it doesn't add a new gameplay template to our repertoire, it's really just a new theme on an existing one. I might be more interested in the gameplay if the stealth was abandoned. If the synths were obviously inhuman and looked something like The Borg, converting the station into a geiger-esque labyrinth as they go. Defensive antags are something we only have one of, and the base building is a rarely seen aspect of cult. In its current form though, i'd say this design doesn't add anything mechanically different to gameplay. -------------------------- As for thematics and lore, which i'm less qualified on: Personally i heavily dislike the meta scale abilities, that are implied to affect the rest of the galaxy. While it doesn't make much difference to gameplay, it makes it harder to resolve cognitive dissonance from discarding everything for a new round, and forces a break of continuity. It would be disingenuous with our future plans for increased persistence in the world. And the whole "hidden enemy that looks like you slowly replacing your world leaders" lore angle, is a niche that changelings already have covered, very well. It is, after all, common knowledge that Miranda Trasen is a changeling :^) I'd also say being converted into a robot to serve a hivemind is rather restrictive to roleplay. And it is an RP opportunity we already have, thanks to borging and bound synthetics. But at least with that case there's still some room for flair, with MMIs often retaining their personality from life and having some degree of attitude. I don't see as much room for that here But lore concerns are less important and not my department. The bolded section above is what's most important, that's the single largest problem, and is an irreconcileable core flaw

i think you completely misunderstood what I said. The nuke disk is supposed to have the codes, thats why faxin ceentral for them is silly. Logically taking the nuke disk to the vault and doing some stuff there should be enough to trigger code delta. But garnascus seems to want to limit it to captains only, and have admin intervention involved. What im saying is that that is not mutually inclusive with faxing. We can still have the same admin oversight just by allowing a captain to use the nuke disk on the vault terminal, give admins some popup window. But as mentioned, i think requiring admin approval at all is unnecessary, Because captains, and any other command officer, already have the ability to trigger an emergency evac. Self destruct is not far off the same function, it will end the round either way. The only difference with self destruct is that the crew has justification to immediately mutiny, form a baying mob and go lynch the captain in order to get the destruct cancelled. Which is a bit more dramatic

Requesting the nuclear codes from central command is dumb imo. If you're in contact with them then you should theoretically be able to request large scale ERTs, destroyer support, artillery strikes, etc. Central command giving out the nuclear code over a fax is completely nonsensical If the captain is going to be able to destroy the station (and they should), that should be something they inherently have, and are trusted to use in isolation. A captain should be able to do that without any contact with central. Because if the station is in a situation where self destruct is an option on the table,it likely cannot make contact with HQ Self destruct really only makes sense in a few scenarios, like a rampant AI taking control, or narsie being summoned, or multiple senior officers being replaced with changelings. Situations that pose a risk to the galaxy at large and need to be contained at all costs. In any such situation its likely that either communication is impossible, or communication is untrustworthy; likely being monitored, intercepted, responded to by hostile parties, etc. Its still entirely possible to require admin authorisation while hooking it into normal systems. But i'd question why thats even needed, since afaik no such restriction exists for AI/mercs doing it.

To add, Nikov is a man ive spent a lot of time with over the past year. He mainly plays chief engineer and does a whole ton of remodelling constantly. He seems to pride himself on minute detail and intelligent design I can't recommend him strongly enough, i think. Not just as a mapper, but as a design voice in the development channel. His input and IRL engineering expertise would be invalueable, and i'd love to have him onhand as a bouncing point for ideas. I'd be honored to have him as a colleague, consider this a glowing recommendation

I'm really liking nikov's attention to detail.. The reasonings for layout changes seem pretty well explained, with reasoned deasigns behind them Also, RE Funerals. As the new map is multilayered (and the morgue is in the basement) it'd be entirely possible to install some kind of mini elevator in the chaplains office to uplift corpses