Nanako

this isn't going to be a global, easily accessible thing. its a xenobio database that you have to unlock during a round. that aspect of fun isnt going to be compromised

Since the content submisssion thread is getting sidetracked, i'm splitting it in two, this thread is for feedback and discussion of the system. The creature scanner (name subject to change) is a new mechanic i'm adding to xenobiology. It will initially be for flavour and roleplay, but its also a preliminary step in a larger and much-desired system i'm working on. The basic idea is, the scanner works like a destructive analyser, but for biological lifeforms. You insert specimens and decompile their corpses in order to learn more about them. This learning comes in the form of a bestiary, which will unlock various useful and helpful information about the creature in threee parts. The bestiary needs a lot of content, and i have a sort of creative writing contest for submitting your own entries here: http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7349 I will be in close consultation with the lore writing team about submitted content. Communication between departments is important, the aurora dev team doesn't work in a vacuum in order to learn all the possible information about a creature, you must sacrifice three specimens of its species, to the machine. And at least one of those three, must be put in while its still alive. I plan to add a tool for live capture to aid in this process. Each different colour of slimes will count as a seperate creature for this purpose, to farther encourage breeding a wide rainbow of slime hues, and give some incentive to do anything besides just farming one colour. The gameplay objectives here are several - it gives xenobio more to do, and more interactions with creatures that aren't simply slimes. It also gives the crew a bit more purpose - people can drag dead carp, spiders, bears, etc down there for research, making creatures a bit more valueable. Capturing a hostile creature alive will be somewhat dangerous and encourages a bit of risk and reward. In future, it will also tie into a larger meta-research system, acting as Feedback about the system, its objectives and content, are welcome

This is a duplicate of nikov's oxygen candles idea, see his link above. And its one we'll probably implement at some point. This thread serves no purpose though

I like ninja far better than wizard. its a more interesting antagonist overall, who has more tools, and a purpose (draining power) that brings them into conflict. It could do with some work, but its better and more complete than a few others imo

this is possible to do. I've already removed quite a few things, i'd rather not remove anymore stuff if they can be altered to fit instead.

This seems like a no-fun policy that harms more than helps RP, i dont like it

I believe the cost outweighs the benefits That is, i believe the benefits are nil. And the costs, while minor, are still annoying and unhelpful for a few edge cases. Chief among them though is retconning. Many have decided to overhaul a character, being unhappy with it, and often its something you want to quietly and with as little notice as possible, because you were unhappy with the former state and want it forgotten People having CCIA records on them is fairly uncommon afaik, and i believe we should only have special case code to account for that case, rather than a blanket measure which will inconvenience everyone. As mentioned, we have a character ID which is persistent, and thats all we need for coding just about any character-specific features. I can't see how name permamanance would do anything for developers, because coding based on name - or any kind of user-inputted information - as a primary key, is really bad form. I vote no.

it is a bit late. but about half of those items are in

nikov's ideas pretty much align with how i'd like to see it done too

i approve of this message. Getting more people working in mining is good

lack of icons. We don't have a sufficient stock of sprites for synthetics, nor the spriting staff to create them

From me, No. Lets start with the age old point, nobody comes to work for body augmentation. Farther to that, most of these are some combination of antag powers given to non antags, and in general ways to be more robust and thus more of a problem for security. Why would NT allow anyone with any of these augments onto the station? they are a walking weapon and thus a security risk

Actually, i'd say thats undesireable. If the station has no power, then you die. Well, at least go to sleep for a while. Because you are a complex machine which requires a complex support network, this is the reason engineering exists. I argue similarly against making cyborgs less dependant on chargers, and i've personally implemented steps to do the opposite in the past.

'find' an APC? They're literally in every room. I don't have an objection, but it seems unnecessary. More importantly though, no work is likely to be done on IPCs while their future is undecided. Bedshaped may be taking over their developement, or they might get scrapped

I spent a month working to give you that. Now you have diona nymphs, the cat-sized, bloodsucking, food-devouring monstrosities that can easily defeat an unarmed human. There's your small invasive alien species. Re: Cockroaches, those are also a nice idea, and maybe worth doing, although they wouldn't replace mice. I think we already have a decent equivilant in the form of yithians, they're pretty much alien cockroaches iirc.

finding food is also a core instinct, and giving food to animals has been a tried and tested way of taming them for millenia. mice learn pretty quickly

FYI, this complaint is about muncorn, not myself, and also you werent involved My actions are criticised on a several-times-daily basis among the development staff, and by the playerbase whenever i go on server, i try to only take issue with it when its seriously likely to affect me, as here where my access to a mechanic is in danger Read through my PRs sometime and you'll find multiple instances on almost every one where skull criticises something i've done, and i go whoops and redo things according to his specification that's great! Your 'serious doubt' can replace judicial process entirely, I already tried taking this issue to a head administrator, he told me to make a staff complaint, and not to ignore instructions from a moderator, so here we are What exactly makes my defense any less valid or more silly than the original judgement? This is a silly topic, i do not want to have this argument, i have been dragged into this mess. I made the main post with a glaring foreword that it was silly and the need to argue such things was silly. I'm not the one who started this argument, a moderator brought it up. the point was to establish basis for the RP standards i'm accused of breaking. Because someone in the administrative team has decided that mice have RP standards

hello Please leave me alone, thats really all ive ever wanted for a mouse UM has shot me plenty of times, and i usually took that as a cue to leave, and find other places to mouse around in getting worked up about this is silly. I had a disagreement with a moderator who suddenly wanted to police mouse RP. I haven't even coded any new mouse features in like, a month. I'm too busy coding other nice things for you guys, like a sprinting system. I just drop into the server for an hour or two in the evenings, mouse around and see what's going on, meet people, get cheese, and stamped on a lot. I'm not affecting your rounds and i'm generally RPing a mouse to the best of my abilities One of the biggest complaints about our alien races is that they're too human. Mice are one of the most alien playable things we actually have, it'd be bad to take away gameplay variety And just because you don't like mice, doesnt mean much. Some people find them cute and cheerful to have around. And some people, likely including several in this thread, hate them, but also like having them around for target practise

I am aware that this is silly, and i expressed as much in the OP. But this thread was necessary because i was threatened with moderator action. If someone's going to accuse me of bad conduct as a mouse, as strange as that is. Then my only recourse is to defend my conduct as a mouse, and i was quite surprised that things had to come to this point Of course there are limits to reasonable behaviour, but i'm not abusing such mechanics to affect the round. It's not like i'm leading crewmembers to where corpses are hidden, or informing everyone who the changeling is. Generally the only time ill use a mouse to point at someone, is if that person has already tried to kill me. Any animal will remember a human who beat it I'd be very happy for everyone to agree that this is silly and drop the subject. But as shadow pointed out, ignoring directions from staff will escalate things badly, and until this is sorted out i have the sword of damocles hanging over my head ready to strike the next time i point at a piece of cheese.

Your language in those PMs was not specific about this. As far as i could tell, your intention was to decree that a mouse shouldn't point at anything at all, under any circumstance, and warned me against doing that. I may be pointing out some incongruous things, and i'm happy to adjust behaviour in such regards. My problem here is with you trying to ban pointing on the whole. If that isn't what you intended to do, then i'd say you failed to communicate the specificity of your instructions Shooting a mouse is a temporary measure, but putting a mousetrap on a vent, or welding said vent, is pretty permanant, they are easy to kill. And I am happy to make adjustments if a specific usage of mechanics is immersion breaking. Ill be happy to keep my pointing under control and consider things more carefully within a a more simple frame of mind, and less about higher concepts The point of this thread is to object to your apparent assertion that any and all pointing is unbelievable or unrealistic, by demonstrating that they do have the capacity for such action, and entirely refraining from pointing at anything isnt a reasonable expectation

BYOND Key: NanakoAC Staff BYOND Key:The_Muncorn, moderator Reason for complaint: Policing Mouse RP Evidence/logs/etc: As a foreword i will say that this is silly. The fact that i need to make this thread is silly. It is going to contain lots of pictures of mice, videos of mice, and links to the aforementioned./. if you don't like mice i suggest not reading TL;DR: Just leave me alone to play with my mice However, largely for muncorn's sake, i am forced to make this. A couple of days ago, while i was playing a mouse, as i always do. Muncorn bwoinked me and started lecturing me on mouse RP, though he apparently hadn't witnessed the rather long extended round and what i'd been doing up til that moment, somone seems to have complained about the pointing. He tries telling me that pointing at things is not proper mouse behaviour, and after having a seemingly friwendly discussion about it, he got all condescending, demanded that i never point at things again, and threatened me with a mouse-ban if i didn't comply. So i must now make this thread in order to defend mouse access. Woe for the times we live in. Lets start with: 1. How can a mouse point at things? The answer? Using their hands. Don't i mean paws? No, hands. Mice literally have hands Mice have very articulate front pawhand thingies with several fingers and a great deal of dexterity in them. They are capable of using them to grasp tiny objects like nuts, seeds, and thin bars. They don't have a lot of strength in those hands - their neck is stronger, and they'll often use their mouth in heavy lifting Here is a mouse using its hands and mouth in combination, to put coins into a piggy bank: In addition, there is the head. Mice use their head for a lot of things in much the same way as dogs, and they will use it to indicate towards things they want. A mouse can 'point' with its nose as surely as with fingers, it has the appendages to do either. 2. Mice are too dumb to point at things Mice are in fact, pretty smart little animals, its one of the things that's made them so suitable for scientific experimentation over the years.. They have a similar brain to body ratio as humans, 1:40, and thus a proportionally larger mind than the likes of cats and dogs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio They're as smart as rats, a significantly larger animal: http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/9717/20141020/rats-arent-smarter-mice-surprise-researchers.htm They are social animals which live in familial structures, and can be tamed, recognise and appreciate their owner, and learn tricks. They're curious and love learning about their environment: Mice can be taught new things at a surprisingly rapid rate. Learning a new trick in under a minute is impressive: Now pointing at objects, its not exactly a complex behaviour. Indicating things is a basic instinctual response for any creature that has any concept of its environment. Pointing out food and dangers is a means of communication, and as mentioned mice are social animals and have plenty of reasons to communicate with others 3. You're a 'wild mouse', you should be interacting with people Not true, mice on a space station are not wild creatures, and a space station is not a forest, nor a grassy field. They are urbanised mice, having adapted to living in close proximity with humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_wildlife Urbanisation exerts some interesting selective pressures on animals, including a tendancy towards higher intelligence, and a necessary to become more accustomed to human contact, as stealing food from humans is often necessary for survival Additional remarks: In short, i posit that mice have the ability/physical appendages needed for pointing and indicating objects, the intelligence to do so and ability to recognise when such might be useful, and live in an environment where it is often a beneficial behaviour. A blanket ban on mice pointing at things does not make sense. My Mouse RP is very varied, since its 90-95% of what i play these days, i enjoy being a pseudo-background observer. Sometimes i;m a tame mouse that stays with someone as a pet all shift, sometimes i'm a mercurial creature that just uses humans for long enough to be fed and then leaves, sometimes i'm a starving vermin, scurrying around dark places and trying to find food to steal while fleeing from a horde of people and robots that want to stamp/shoot/decompile me. SS13 has a broad content base and appeals to everyone in some way, everyone finds their own little niche. Banning me from mouse would be like banning sierra or SoT from playing synthetics, pretty crushing. I asked shadow about this issue, and his words, i quote were 'I'm not going to police mouse RP' in a rather sarcastic tone. He obviously thinks this topic is silly. I agree with that, there's no need to argue over proper mouse RP. The bottom line, as has been established repeatedly, is that if you have a problem with a mouse, you can administer IC punishment, by murdering it. I recently buffed mousetraps for this purpose. Staff intervention should only be needed for particular cases of abusing mechanics, like mice that used to strip people naked TL;DR: policing mouse RP is silly, pls leave me alone

As a means of helping towards server costs, i believe aurora should charge for custom items. This is, by no means, 'perks for donations'. It is not a donation, it is straight up, payment for a service. Entirely seperate from donations. The service being paid for, is the time for our administration to look over and handle these applications, time for our artists to make these items and time for coders to do the necessary work implementing them. This does not mean any change in standards. Exactly the same standards about mechanical benefits, believability and server activity would apply to custom item applications. No money would change hands before an app is approved, and payment could be made as one-off payments to patreon. There would be a small terms of service to agree to, specifically including a clause that your items may cease to be personal, and become publically available, after some period of no server activity The simple fact is, people will pay for customised, personal things to show off in a multiplayer environment. This has been proven time and time again, and now a very large portion of the gaming industry is sustained entirely on this business model A fair price would be $10-20 USD for a custom item. At these rates, i expect custom item applications would cover most or all of the server costs, with little need for donations Another factor worth considering, is the sunk-cost effect. When people have paid for something, there is a mental compulsion to 'get their money's worth' out of it, which would result in a higher rate of player engagement, and likely longer time spent in the community Those in charge of the current standards (Tishina i believe) would remain in charge of approvals, and continue to enforce the same high standards on applications. All proceeds would go to the server hosting to ensure continuation of the community. Literally nothing needs to be sacrificed, and no extra work needs to be done, as payment channels are already being setup. We already provide custom items. It fits well

As delta pointed out, at no point did the AI ever enter a public area. Theres a single-tile wall seperating the cyborg upload from the telecomms teleporter This only happened due to a combination of another borg being suspicious enough to get security's attention, and delta being attentive enough to observe borgs on camera at that time

as you've said, it wasnt your choice to be placed there, so i'd blame the borg that did it instead Should we wait until someone does use the unassailable position to murder everyone without repercussions, before dealing with it? only because of luck, someone was monitoring a borg, i don't think its relevant Most borgs and locations are not monitored most of the time, you got caught by a fluke here. Wasn't there some doublebracketed OOC in IC chat in the binary channel about this subject during the round? I don't recall all of it, perhaps you could tell us what was discussed

The reason I posit is, it's an uncounterable strategy. If properly implemented (and it only failed here due to a combination of incompetence and bad luck) its an unassailable safe place from which you can still fully control everything. and metagaming the location only goes so far, there are plenty of other locations to hide on other Zlevels. Like the outposts and derelict. Hiding in other places isn't inherently wrong, if you're setting up a suitable location - ie, a room, to contain the AI Hiding ina tiny crawlspace between walls is nonsensical and prone to exploiting. The fact that it failed in this case doesn't discount the attempt