[Dumb ideas and suggestions]

Put a soft suit locker in the head of personnel's office. With the caveat that it's actually a Corgi space suit. The HoP can wear it, but if he does he looks like a large misshapen blue corgi walking around on two legs.

[What would you trade for?]

Anything that could be classified as unique or difficult to obtain under normal circumstances would be a start. Bananium/Tranquilite and items made there of comes to mind.

(Sentient?) Pets and exotic friendly/passive animals might also be a thing (I can see a Warden trading away what ever he can get away with for a space bear just to one up HoS's pet spider.)

NTSoft crates or even their Riot foam dart equivalents for nonlethal ranged fun.

New Implants that NT can't reproduce (bionic legs that make you run faster, Bionic Arm that can extend to grab something 2 tiles or more away, a synthetic liver that rapidly purges or nullifies alcohol and/or toxins, or one that can produce it on demand. Bionic Hand for HoP/IAA that has a different color pen in each finger)

A barrel of monkeys that is Inquisitor approved.

New jumpsuits, outfits and clothing apparel that may or may not be branded to non NT affiliated companies. (Shirts with Logos for the various food products, Mascot uniforms, and the ever classic 'SPORTS' and 'HONK' t-shirts and alumni gear.)

PDA 3000s that can play lite versions of arcade games but offer no prizes.

Tribbles.

Clown Car and other vehicles for those too rich to walk around the station on foot.

Mech and Space Pod equipment or even unique versions not reproducible on station.

A large crate with a random assortment of books. Perhaps some DIY books that unlock/allow for new crafting recipes. 

A speshul blanket that when used drops to the ground in a heap and renders the user invisible for 2 seconds (unless they run into a closed door)

IRCs (active or awaiting activation)

[AI Minisat Change]

The turret blind spots are a problem, the turrets being against the wall is another major flaw. Having them against the wall makes it possible to smash one of them in melee by hopping back and forth before it can open. If there is one space between them and the outerwall (like old sat had) then its harder to get in and take your swing before it's ready to fire.

Turrets could use an overhaul in general, from taking reduced damage when undeployed (or opening) to having a 'hot' setting where they deploy and have their first shot charged and waiting for when someone gets in range, maybe with a larger power passive power draw when in this mode.

Why the AI APC hasn't been made EMP proof like engineering SMES is similarly beyond me, EMPs have been given to almost all antags for negligible costs or otherwise easy to access (anyone with ORM access can make an EMP grenade if Mining is the least bit competent.) and Ion Carbines backpack storable and printable for cheap.

[Species Specific Emergency Kits]

Why not replace the IPC's epipen with a non refillable oil injector? Off topic but I'd also like to see duct tape be able to make  temporary repairs to IPCs as well as hobo rig up casts for broken limbs in general.

[Interesting thought's]

TBH wouldn't be much of a fight. Drones aren't hurt by disabler beams so its just the Swarmer trap and TP if they can hold a drone still for 3~ seconds. Drones would kill Swarmers in 2 or 3 clicks of their welders.

[Interesting thought's]

Last I checked, Maintenance Drones don't care so much if something is Organic as much as it is an entity, hence why Borgs, AI, IPCs and non-crew are off limits for them. Swarmers fall under entity and Drones are not allowed to directly engage them. Drones may improve or repair the station in the wake of Swarmers eating everything in the area though I would highly discourage it as it could be interpeted as metagaming if a Drone(s) was to repeatedly rebuild for a swarmer to consume and feed.

 

As an unofficial rule if a Drone player realizes they are in the same area as an antagonist they would be best to leave the area and come back to repair when things have died down. (This coming from a Drone player who got bwoinked while following it's laws to the letter and repairing windows as Xenos were hilariously trying to create a breach and moving about their hive repairing all the damaged walls and furniture while ignoring the eggs and nested hosts.)

[Fixing War Rounds. Some suggestions.]

Nukes winning or losing pretty is determined before they leave their hangar. If all nukes are working together, formulating a plan and gearing up in a way to synergize, they'll dominate. If everyone just buys what ever toy they wanted to use and equip to solo or cause mass chaos with little to no care if anyone grabs the disk or nuke, nukes fail. Veteran ops who like winning know the best way to do that is to work closely with others who know what they are doing and try to minimize the screw ups rookies will do. Problem is most rookies don't read the chat window and spend the entire prep time browsing the uplink then walk out the air lock with their suit in combat mode or their internals off and die of exposure.

In the long run the actions of the crew are pretty much irrelevant. If the ops are working together and being smart, no amount of preparation by the crew will help them since the nukes always know the general direction of the disk. If the nukes are solo ramboing then the crew will pick them off one by one till the shuttle arrives. The solution isn't to make it harder or less time for the crew to coordinate and resist, but better emphasize to the nukes they need to work together and not act like agents carrying out personal goals and vendettas.

Its one of the many reasons I've been pushing for months for VR consoles to get ported and one of the minigames being a nuke mode so people can get a chance to use nuke gear. Nuke is a role that I feel everyone should get a chance at playing sooner or later, but the occurrence of getting it is rare enough that throwing people in blind isn't really fun or fair.

[Add an overdose limit to saline]

Seems like a knee jerk reaction. If there is an OD it needs be very high (+100) as its meant to be used in massive quantities. Lowering the amount of chems a body can hold or just making it so having a combined total of 500 or more chems can have other side effects. Even if you put an OD threshold on SGS people will just drink a ton of water and pop salt/sugar pills to regularly top off.

IMO SGS is too ineffective at healing anything to make it worth abusing, I regularly pump monkeys full of it to harvest blood for synth flesh and after 15 minutes the monkey will still won't be fully regen'd. Justifying SGS to get an OD level would require it to be more effective.

[Genetics rework ideas]

5 hours ago, Scrat said:

I don't think that getting 500 blood as a vamp should punish you by making you permanently unable to use huds or flash protection..

Vamps having xray at all is ridiculous, especially given that it comes bundled with immunity to holy water and the chapel (their only weaknesses), they already get thermals to begin with.

2 hours ago, Corocan said:

Not only is this an awful reward for reaching full power as a vampire, but this works both ways where this is just a terrible power for security to get because they're now subject to their own flashbangs/flashers which makes the power just dreadful. Overall, I think your proposed changes for XRay combine the worst aspects of Kidan, where you can't wear eyegear, and Vulpkanin, where someone can give you literal eye damage with a laser pointer, and IPC, where someone can rail you from beyond a wall. Generally the objective of a nerf is to bring balance to a feature of the game that would be considered unbalanced. I don't think the listed pros are worth the cons.

I can understand people wanting to maybe make xray harder to obtain (which is debatable but I think it's worth conversation), but pretty much every suggestion I've read that involves changing how the power functions usually just ends up rendering it such a pain in the ass to have, that I'm starting to think that they truthfully just want it removed but they know that's a very extreme decision so they think that adding these unbalanced disadvantages will discourage people from using it to the point of obsolescence and that's just not a viable solution unless you want the power just straight up gone.

X Ray has been a no risk, high level power for years. Even with the listed cons (which if you read the whole suggestion can still be avoided by just getting the eye implants stalled) you still gain a huge tactical advantage over everyone else. Xray has no downsides for its power, nor does it have any visual tells that it is active, unlike TK or Hulk which both make your sprite very noticeable.

A PR was thrown up to remove Xray from the genetics list, and despite popular support from the community it was closed by maintainers. My suggestion is a compromise to keep an overused power in the game and stopping it from making Thermals redundant. That in itself is the very definition of balance.

[Genetics rework ideas]

My proposed changes (and overall nerf) to X-ray would be as follows.
 

Quote

 

Pros:

• Can see through all walls and objects (effective same vision a ghost on your tile might have)
• Can see through all masks and identity blocking objects (never see someone as UNKNOWN again unless they've suffered severe anatomical damage.)

Cons:

• Eyewear no longer functions (you see through walls, you no longer benefit from MedHUD, SecHUD, Diagnostic HUD. HUD Implants would still provide this information.)
• Flash and welding protection no longer functions. (Welding Goggles, Welding Masks, Welding Gas Masks and Sunglasses no longer offer their protection, if you are welding or standing adjacent to someone who is you will take eye damage. Flashbangs and flashes will always blind you and potentially deal eye damage. Welding Shield Implant still protects against these.)

 

In short, if you want to see everything, you will see EVERYTHING and only science/medical implants have a hope of countering the draw backs. If everyone in security gets X-ray then they do so at the risk of their own flashbangs hitting them and without their HUDs without implants from robotics. If Vampires are still going to get Xray as a bonus for their true form power, then the meta of harass sec and jaunt away, then smart security gets to pop a flashbang quickly and stun the vamp through walls if they know the little turd is there.

[So why exactly did IPCs have to be nerfed massively?]

So is oil blood and oil injectors but that didn't stop them.

[So why exactly did IPCs have to be nerfed massively?]

IPCs have always been cardboard tubes held together by tinfoil. Giving them blood was a solution looking for a problem. Last I checked they are air cooled which is why they aren't vacuum or temperature proof, making the oil even more nonsensical to add except solely to nerf a race the coder apparently doesn't have much experience with. A year ago vulps had their darksight tied to colorblindness and that got reverted in a hurry with the infamous 'You don't take balance as a whole' quote and yet here we add more debuffs to a species that was bursting at the seams with debuffs. So when are IPCs getting their virology equivalent if blood oil is deemed even remotely necessary?

[Guide to securing DA FUKEN DISC]

29 minutes ago, xeroxide said:

Just thought of a new thing

Put it inside the tesla

queue admemes spawning blobs and xenos once its clear nobody can activate a nuke now.

[Which department makes the most money?]

Botany can make a shiny nickel selling their surplus food (I.E. 90% of what they grow.) Though Mining are the true money makes, figuratively and literally. Miner McDigs flips his Diamond Coin.

[So why exactly did IPCs have to be nerfed massively?]

Adding a Biomechanical/Prosthesis specialist as a Karma role to medbay might be a solution. With prosthetics and artificial organs creatable in their workshop/OR might be an option, slap it in somewhere down by Surgery and Virology. Roboticists would be able to focus on Borgs and Mechs and not get screamed at when they have to leave their lab for one reason or another.

[So why exactly did IPCs have to be nerfed massively?]

Honestly I'd rather they just shut down and die at 0 hp. Easier to kill but then at least easier to repair, throwing 100 brute or burn onto the corpse for being left in crit just makes it that much more annoying to repair when all the internals need to be touched up or replaced.

[Syndicate Item Purchase Stats]

Holoparas are ridiculously powerful, I'm shocked they aren't higher than Eswords. The fact that you can get a Holo + Esword or Holo+Emag+Skey/Emp Flashlight/Edagger or no slips is an insanely powerful combination. Up to me Holos would cost 16 since they are nearly as good as deswords and depending on which flavor you get you  can infinitely heal yourself or kill your targets before they ever have a hope of typing 'help maint'.

[Syndicate Item Purchase Stats]

I think I always buy an emag on the principal that its overpowered in how damn near everything has an interaction with it. Locker? Emagged. Locked console? Emag. Gibber? EMAG! Convinced a borg you'll install that vtec if they unlock? EEEEE MAAAAAAG

[Syndicate Item Purchase Stats]

Just now, Splgrk said:

Am I missing something about the Syndie Soap? It seems quite high on the list for what it does.

Several reasons, largely comes down to it being cheap and bought soley because the TC was left over, it's an effective slip item that fits in a pocket, it's quicker than regular soap so can clean entire rooms and crime scenes in short order, and if a Traitor gets caught with their uplink open some jokesters will buy as much soap as they can with it to grief and deny the traitor a chance to buy actually dangerous gear.

[On the topic of Encryption Keys]

You're failing to see my argument. Your examples are "If someone drops this in a scuffle, it can be used to apprehend or counter them", not "If found this can be kept for personal or long term use", which an encryption key or any other 'stealth' item certainly would be used for. It's also extremely hypocritical for security not to be held to the same standard or higher than the crew, something you've personally raised concerns about in the past about loose or vague wordings of Space Law allowing for security players to freely abuse their position to ruin other peoples' rounds without any IC repercussions from the Magistrate and IAA, roles whose explicit purpose is to help curbing such bad behavior. There is no merit for a security officer getting to keep an encryption key, it's abuse of their position that should be treated no different than a security officer keeping a departmental headset or lost ID for personal use if found at a crime scene.
 

So again I ask, why is it acceptable for an officer to use a piece of equipment flagged as being so dangerous or detrimental to NT and the station as a whole that to be found in possession of such equipment is immediate grounds for permanent incarceration or even execution in some cases. IC use of these keys is not only a violation of the privacy of comms for other departments but can strongly be made that NT wants these items in mint condition for study, an officer walking around with one in their headset could be lost or damaged irrevocably, same how you cite NT would want unused TCs in an uplink unused and ready for study at Central or elsewhere. 

1 hour ago, necaladun said:

That can be easily changed. The labeling there is to do with sentencing for people being caught with them, and whether or not the item could be found in maint. The label itself doesn't actually make it dangerous - you'd be hard pressed to kill anyone with an encryption key.  We can of course look at moving it off of S class, making a new class for "acceptable with captain permission", etc.

Then change it before making heavy handed changes to the mechanics of how players interact with them, not after. This changed the balance of how agents and Security interacts, and if nothing else is sending a message to officers that other crew and players are loot pinatas and all they need is some excuse to search and confiscate an item before it becomes their own property. If security is being given excuses to use contraband, then it has no reason to be contraband in the first place and should be taken off the lists entirely.

[On the topic of Encryption Keys]

Just now, necaladun said:

Again, if we allow slippery slope arguments to sway us, next we'll be allowing ad-hominem arguments to sway us. 

And you're completely ignoring that if you open the door the for one exception there is a dozen others that are just waiting to get their foot in the door.

Just now, necaladun said:

Not sure what you mean by values here? 

Currently sec can already use things that normal crew get a brig sentence for having, such as...pretty much all sec gear.

Sec gear that is standard issue to Security. Syndicate items are not. Encryption keys are explicitly labeled as dangerous contraband, more so than 10mm pistols, EMP flashlights and anti-stun stims and implants. Hand waving this for security as an exception is not acceptable and is just going to slide us back into powergaming sec who goes out of their way to confiscate anything they can for personal use. Anything on the S class list, under no circumstances, should be acceptable for any loyal NT crew to use, security or otherwise.

[On the topic of Encryption Keys]

And I garuntee you sec will argue since they are allowed to use SyndiKeys anyways there is no IC reason they should be prevented from getting their hands upon them when the opportunity arises. Slippery slope. You absolutely need to adjust space law/contraband values if security is allowed to use "Dangerous Contraband" they find that carries a 10-15 minute brig sentence for any non-sec crew caught with it.

[On the topic of Encryption Keys]

Quote

Boss we caught some inexperienced agent trying to kill someone with an e-sword. Oh hey he left his PDA unlocked, he's got 12 TC left. Guess we'll just buy 6 encryption keys and arm security with contrand!

 

[Let's talk about shadowlings]

29 minutes ago, Pennwick said:

I haven't played a Shadowling round recently enough to be fully confident in my critique but one way I always thought might be a good way to balance mindshields to give them a tiny buff is to make them scream over the security/common channel than a mindshield implant has burnt out. This means the Shadowling still gets the thrall but they've also gone loud and the ID of that thrall is also known. A security pick is still strong for the access and gear but now its something that maybe would get avoided for a little while.

I have no idea how you're going to manage to stop people from throwing themselves to the antags though. I'm assuming its hard for Admins to catch and no amount of detriment is going to make people shy away from free antag status.

This isn't really needed because once the mindshield is gone anyone with a security HUD can see the green block missing from the person's overlay. Security can and absolutely should be detaining members of the security force roaming the station without implants anyways, at least those not already known to have been recently cloned or had their implant destroyed through some rare and unusual means. And it only further reinforces that goodcurity patrols in pairs for this very situation that if one loses their headset or gets knocked out the other can call for backup and alert the rest of the force.

[On the topic of Encryption Keys]

Abuse of evidence should apply to all equipment bar none. I don't know why this decision was made the way it was but it's a very bad step towards a slippery slope of Security deciding that sleepy pens and ebows are more useful than their own standard equipment. Coder definitely needs to change it so attempting to remove a syndi key after it's been installed from the original headset destroys the key. If Sec or command wants to use a confiscated syndi key then it needs to come with the vulnerability of flashbanging themselves.

46 minutes ago, necaladun said:

rather than an incredibly heavy-handed OOC manner of intervention. People shouldn't be stopped from using it because of a bwoink.

How is this any different from how antags are expected to behave with escape alone objectives, or damaging the primary hallway? IC an agent might find the easiest way to draw out a security officer marked for death is to start openly killing people in a trapped hallway, or destroying the main the corridor through the station and forcing their target into claustrophobic tunnels.. The only reason not to do these things as an escape free or die gloriously traitor is the OOC bwoink and ban hammer that typically follows it.