Guest Marlon Phoenix Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 (edited) Here's a TL;DR: Suggestions: 1) permadead full stop. 2) Cloning is harder/clones are genetic fuck-ups. 3) Cloning is same but you're a spoopy bald albino. 4) Permadeath/spoopy albino with option to ship body to CC for "proper" cloning for CC and DO RP. Just as it says on the tin. I have a theory that's seen growing support amongst people I pester with it at 2 in the morning: permadeath (or making death more of a pain in the ass) could gut the level of rambo behaviour we see currently. What is given cheaply is cheap in value, and on SS13 life is incredibly cheap. Death is only an inconvenience, in which someone with Alkysine and genetics access can circumvent. For antagonists, it makes objectives involving death harder. No matter how you kill someone, you have to completely destroy the corpse or space them, or they'll just be cloned. Usually while you're in the brig for it. It's like a bitchslap, really. For the crew, it's as I said in the intro to this: death is cheap. Charging at a nuke-ops and trying to tase them before getting gunned down in SMG fire? As long as medbay is safe and your body recovered, s'all good. An event that forces you to sacrifice crew to live? Just clone someone over and over to loophole the entire basis of the event, s'all good. Faced with death in general? Oh that's fine, medbay is active, s'all good. The alternatives I have two of: 1. Remove cloning on the station entirely. We would have permadeath for specific rounds, with all cloning being done "on CC" after the round ends, with the justification that Odin is the place with the equipment necessary to ensure everyone is taken care of at every step of the cloning process - including counseling. 2. Make death a pain in the ass. Cloning is supes easysauce, with nothing needed beyond access to the cloner, your intact brain, and Alkysine. This one would be work for the coders beyond deleting the cloning equipment in genetics. It could be: Requiring you to get a genetic-back up made to be cloned. So if you want to do something crazy, you gotta first go through the trouble of making a back-up; only Odin can clone the dead. The second is that being a clone itself has severe, chronic symptoms that persist "until we reach CC". These could be in the form of random genetic problems activating at random times, or if we want the least-invasive thing: incurable baldness and white eyes as the trade-off for not waiting for Odin to clone you properly. Edited March 21, 2015 by Marlon Phoenix
Rusty Shackleford Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 I am wholeheartedly against removing cloning. I like cloning, and removing it basically removes one of my favorite jobs from the game, reducing it to simply dicking around with enzymes that do the same damn things and simply serve as a momentary diversion with no results. I think that instead cloning should involve more steps, have higher chances of failure/mutations, and require extensive care afterwards. The "wait until you get to CC" and "makes the game too easy" arguments frankly annoy the crap out of me.
Guest Marlon Phoenix Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 (edited) I am wholeheartedly against removing cloning. I like cloning, and removing it basically removes one of my favorite jobs from the game, reducing it to simply dicking around with enzymes that do the same damn things and simply serve as a momentary diversion with no results. I think that instead cloning should involve more steps, have higher chances of failure/mutations, and require extensive care afterwards. The "wait until you get to CC" and "makes the game too easy" arguments frankly annoy the crap out of me. I literally suggested that in the second half of the post. EDIT: Genetics' cloning jurisdiction, from what I have observed, would do extremely little to inconvenience the genetics lab. Actually cloning people always seems to be a mild annoyance on their part, when they'd rather be doing their experiments transplanting unathi brains into human or giving people telekinesis. Edited March 21, 2015 by Marlon Phoenix
Susan Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 No. This is a terrible idea that was tossed around on Bay and led to the biomass restrictions we currently have. The nature of SS13 is a game where death can come at any point and at any time, and that is why cloning exists. Going to permadeath round per round basis will lead to more shallow characters because investing time into them is mostly pointless when you die and go 'welp gg go be a mouse or a random character now until round end' which will lead to most people having one mildly developed character and a bunch of fillers just so they can play again. Why even be HRP if you're forced to play one-offs because telescience accidentally'd you. Death already is a pain in the ass. You have to not only rely on being found but medical being competent enough to handle you and have enough biomass for it to begin with. Taking people out of the round for no reason is always a bad idea. Making things artificially difficult with extra steps or bullshit mutations lead to a less enjoyable experience because sitting in medical for 30 minutes staring at a black screen while they fuck around trying to fix you is the epitome of unfun.
Jamini Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 If you remove cloning, you need to make playermobs much, much more resiliant. SS13 was designed with life, and death, being extremely cheap, easy to lose, and easy to replace. Removing one of those tenants totally changes one of those founding principals, but also cheapens and removes several avenues of RP needlessly. This is a bad idea. Keep cloning cheap and easy (which it really isn't if you are doing it right), just like killing is.
Guest Marlon Phoenix Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 Making things artificially difficult with extra steps or bullshit mutations lead to a less enjoyable experience because sitting in medical for 30 minutes staring at a black screen while they fuck around trying to fix you is the epitome of unfun. This is completely true, and a big reason I love playing medbay but am extremely self-conscious when playing in it: I hate it when people are stuck with wounds that render them impeded in an OOC'ly frustrating way. Greg Ryan is basically a personification of my medbay mania. But my retort: this whole situation is before you're fully dead. Once you're dead, you actually have an easier time getting fixed because grab-grab-insert into the cloning tube is far easier than fixing your 12 broken bones, internal bleeding, and removing the quintillion pieces of shrapnel from your ass. Alkysine and access to genetics are the only things needed to completely revert death, which means there's no incentive to actually preserve your own life in any meaningful way. And again, I suggested more alternatives than complete removal.
Susan Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 Leave it as it is. Yes, it's easy to grab cloner cryo, but it's also easy to revolver revolver dead. Losing your life is just as easy as getting it back. You can't complicate one and leave the other cheap.
Guest Marlon Phoenix Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 If you remove cloning, you need to make playermobs much, much more resiliant. SS13 was designed with life, and death, being extremely cheap, easy to lose, and easy to replace. Removing one of those tenants totally changes one of those founding principals, but also cheapens and removes several avenues of RP needlessly. This is a bad idea. Keep cloning cheap and easy (which it really isn't if you are doing it right), just like killing is. I have seen "i've been cloned" used as good RP as many times as I have fingers. I've seen it used as "Ha, stupid antag, I'm not dead anymore ur dum" more times than I have socks in my dresser right now. (there's a lot of socks) I counter that death being permanent or carrying round-long deficiencies would carry more rp. You died, and now you're either gone forever until the round ends (leaving the crew with your loss, who understand that you can't come back that round) or you become a clone with a myriad of problems - assuming we go with my least invasive method if we go with it at all, you're a bald person with white eyes. There's no way to justify yourself being anything other than a malformed copy of the actual person who came before you, because the crew couldn't wait to transport you to CC for a proper cloning. That carries with it far more emotional weight than "I died? I'M FILLED WITH RAGE AND OR SADNESS BUT OTHERWISE AND COMPLETELY IDENTICAL TO WHO I WAS BEFORE!" Edit: "but it's also easy to revolver revolver dead." The biggest point of this is to keep people from running into situations where they'd be revolver'd, or at least work damn hard to protect their lives and not confront the revolver with a sense of "meh, I'll be cloned". This is a specific example, but it cuts through the whole idea to something specific.
Susan Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 Players are not the only thing that can kill you in this game, Jackboot. It is played hard and fast with mechanics that can and will mercilessly kill you in under 20 seconds no matter if you ran into it or not. It is not fair to force people into playing a cheap one off character just because space carp decided to spawn next to them while they were fixing a breach. The system is fine as it is. Cloning is not as easy as you make it out to be, I've seen it take significant periods of time to get anything done. SS13 is a whacky space simulator where dying can come often and easy with no input on your end. We shouldn't punish people for that.
Guest Marlon Phoenix Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 I play the game too, Sue. Thinking more on it, I do see how this can punish people for what amounts to random chance. But this leaves us with two options that I see: We carry on with that it happened, everyone hears of Eva Carp's death. If she was at least moderately well liked, the station would react to the loss in their own ways. There's a funeral on station, and when it's over the body is stored in the morgue for transport to CC. Maybe if we spoil ourselves we get blue coloured bodybags to tell at a glance who needs to be transported. The second is that all this still happens, but instead of never cloning them until round-end at CC, we just clone them immediately. Eva Carp is now bald, and her eyes are white. She lives, but she's "a clone" instead of Eva. She can do everything as was, but there's the stigma. A third sub-option now that we have DO's, actually, is to send a fax and have the body sent to CC to be cloned properly. then sent back. This would be a higher 'cost' in the cost-benefit ratio of these things.
ZipZero Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 What about brain death? While dead, if your body is not being preserved (such as, say, in the morgue), your brain will slowly decay. If you're dead for too long, it is impossible to clone the body if a backup had not been made previously. This could also be done using a a decreased chance to clone, as opposed to simply can clone/can't clone, or maybe a more complex system to calculate how much of your memory has been lost (so if you're dead for longer, you may lose whole years of your life). Any of these would encourage people to get backups more often, which would also serve to give genetics something to do besides injecting themselves with random enzymes.
Guest Marlon Phoenix Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 I hadn't thought about the brain-death. It does seem like a good viable alternative, though we'd need an actual coder to tell us how much work it would be to code in such a thing. A way to follow the trend of making death a more serious affair while also giving genetics something more to do would be great in my book. The biggest issue that I see is that this depends on one big variable: Genetics being staffed with a non-chuckle geneticist, which seems to be a 50/50 affair.
Susan Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 Or we could just not change it at all. That is probably the best option. Have you ever actually seen anyone react when anyone dies? Dalton held his funeral on station and no one really gave a shit. Dying does not create the godly amounts of roleplay you would have us believe because every single instance I have seen it was just 'oh no they ded' and then go back to what was going on. People don't have the luxury of extended grief because whatever killed them is still a threat and rounds are short enough where it doesn't mean anything. So you die, everyone cries for like five seconds, and you have to spend the other twenty nine minutes and fifty five seconds waiting to create a shitty one off character so you can keep playing. There is literally no reason to mess with how cloning works. Staring at a black screen isn't fun. Being forced to be a blind, bald albino for no other reason that 'Jackboot wants you to' isn't fun. Cloning hinges on so many players working together that it is a great undertaking, and if any of those people in the chain of custody are idiots you're going to be fucked up. People don't want to sit in a medical bed for the rest of the round because Jackboots wants them to be crippled. People don't want to have their main dead for two hours because Jackboot wants them. People want to roleplay, which, consequently you can't do while dead, or while unconscious, or while in permablackscreen mode.
Guest Marlon Phoenix Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 The way you're wording your posts you're making me sound like a bad guy. Ad hominems are bad and you should feel bad. My suggesting this doesn't make it magically coded in or happen, so you really shouldn't be so fervorous about this. Have you ever actually seen anyone react when anyone dies? Dalton held his funeral on station and no one really gave a shit. I didn't know Dalton, so during that round I just helped set up the funeral and popped in a few times. There was a sizable congregation, so I'm going to disagree with you there. So you die, everyone cries for like five seconds, and you have to spend the other twenty nine minutes and fifty five seconds waiting to create a shitty one off character so you can keep playing. Other possibilities: Play as a mouse. Play as a drone. Play as a spoopy ghost and observe.Or use it as a break and: Get up and go get a snack. Check your e-mail. Practice a new yogo position. Study for a test. Overthrow the government of Sudan. Being forced to be a blind, bald albino for no other reason that 'Jackboot wants you to' isn't fun. Being blind or stuck in a medical bed is separate from the bald albino proposal, specifically to give different elevations of severity. I already said I hate it when players are stuck in medbay, so your ad hominem isn't really relevant here. Cloning hinges on so many players working together that it is a great undertaking, and if any of those people in the chain of custody are idiots you're going to be fucked up. Really? Because from my position as a career CMO and general Head that spies in on medical channels, there's a big problem with 'unqualified' (from rp perspective) staff just casually chucking people in and popping out a clone like it's no big deal. Which, as we see, it isn't. There are three things you need to clone someone which I will repeat: Alkysine, genetics access, and the body. People don't want to have their main dead for two hours because Jackboot wants them. People want to roleplay, I don't mind my main dying, so your 'people' reference should be changed to 'I'; you're projecting your own protectiveness and ideas about your main (and the fact you don't seem to play anyone else so this idea would be a huge blow to you from a gameplaying standpoint) onto this unnamed amorphous 'people' which is actually a bunch of people with radically different ideas and philosophies on playstyles.
Susan Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 You're not the first person to put up this idea, Jackboot. It was tossed around on Baystation so many times. Were you even here when Genetics used to be easy? It wasn't always the way it was now. You actually need 4 things in order to clone people. Alkysine, genetics access, the cloner, and biomass. Yes, that's right. At one point in the code's history the cloner could machine clone people with no issue. But then someone suggested this dumb idea and Baystation, rightfully so, shot it to utter pieces and compromised, putting a limit on how many clones can be made.The cloner can only clone up to four people currently, and then after that you have to find biomass to fill it with, requiring you to either go to hydroponics to get synthmeat or to the chef. No biomass, no clones. No clones, permadead. Playing as a mouse or a drone, or saying 'observe' isn't a legitimate response. You can't roleplay as any of those. Mice are a tool to be stupid, drones aren't supposed to interact with crew at all as it explicitly states in their laws, and observing only lets you see how much fun everyone else is having while you rot away 6noraisins. I've had this argument as many times on Bay as I have had about people whinging about security. Bay was smart enough never to consider this, and I say 'people' because I speak from experience. This is the way people on Bay felt. Jamini was there for several of these discussions, too. So I hope Aurora doesn't consider this either. The game is cheap. Life is cheap, dying is cheap. That is SS13. Stick to Lifeweb if you want cheap unfulfilling permadeath.
Rusty Shackleford Posted March 21, 2015 Posted March 21, 2015 I say, that if you want to make cloning a bigger deal, that it should be made an even more convoluted process. That way, less time is spent dicking around with genetic powers, and more time is spent preparing the lab just in case someone bites the dust. It might also create a better sense of urgency when the dead are piling up and you need to keep the preparations going in order to get to them all. Also, there should be considerable recovery time related with dying and coming back to life. Also, it would be awesome if different methods (inb4 "pod people") were introduced, so there's not just one piece of equipment that's one size fits all, so even people with decayed brains/destroyed heads can be put back into a round in (relatively) short order. TL;DR, I like cloning and genetics, and want more to do in that department because science.
Flamingo Posted March 23, 2015 Posted March 23, 2015 I'd like to see cloning remain free of breaking people's RP in a mechanical way, and simply leave it to the character to roleplay a deformity or something if they wish. I could go with memory loss, but I think that should already be something people are considering. I agree with Rusty though; I would like to see some sort of setup required to keep cloning running other than "bug chemist for alkysine" and "steal meat from kitchen".
Recommended Posts