mkenner
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Posts posted by mkenner
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Just an idea that occurred to me the other day. Briefly mentioned it to Neca, but thought I should maybe put it in the suggestions forum and see what people think.
As a very minor point of lore/cannon, I think it'd be good to establish that in universe between the wild Nuke Op Changeling Wizard rounds there are some very minor shifts where absolutely nothing happens that just never get played. I think this would help people view role-playing their characters a little differently, as they wouldn't necessarily need to be suspicious every time they arrive to work or imagine the station as being constantly under siege by the syndicate, etc.
This is something that I've had in my personal head-cannon for a while, but I think it might be good to consider whether we should add it to our lore just for roleplaying purposes and make it official.
What do people think? Or do you think that SS13 should be a wild and rough place where every single time there's a work shift people's lives are in the balance? Because that'd be a valid way to picture our lore as well. Alternatively is it better to have no official stance, and everyone can picture it how they like personally?
Cheers,
MKenner (Retired).
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There is no hope.
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Thankyou for your complaint.
I've read through this thread several times now and have to admit that I don't fully understand the substance of the complaint here. As I was not present for the round in question, I may be missing some key elements of context. Although I will comment on the current content of the thread, this post is not intended as being the final call on this complaint, but merely a request for clarification along with dealing with certain issues I've identified from the thread.
In regards to describing your behaviour as 'shit', in context this does appear to be a reference to the term shitcurity, I do think that it's best if our admin team avoids use of it in this way as it can cause offense. However I'm also troubled that in making this complaint Tristan you've referred to Kluys as being a 'prick'. I don't think either of these is entirely appropriate, even though they are fairly minor profanities but combined with your comment of "I don't really care about swearing. And I wouldn't care if he called me shit" it makes it hard to understand what your complaint is actually about.
In regards to the log that was brought up during this thread, your comments while observing another player character urinating are pretty clearly a double entendre to suggest sexual activity. Double entendres can be something of a grey area, in which subtle references could potentially be made as part of wordplay that doesn't cross the line. The language used here however is far more blatant, suggestive and potentially predatory. In my opinion it crosses the line of appropriate language to use on the server, going against both our ERP and our friendly and welcoming rules. Please avoid this sort of language in future.
Given that you appear relatively untroubled by profanity, could you please explain the substance of the complaint here, what has caused the problem and your desired resolution? Just judging from what I can see, this appears to be a heated emotional dispute that has continued between the two of you during the round and now been brought here. While our admin team can perhaps attempt to mediate between an interpersonal conflict if it cannot be resolved between the two of you, it would also be helpful to know if there are any substantive issues in policy, process or Kluy's execution of the above that are part of your complaint.
Regards,
M Kenner.
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Thankyou for your complaint. It was well formatted and communicated the situation well, unfortunately it also demonstrated that your behaviour was unacceptable and that Webster was fully justified in his actions.
Excerpt Rule 9:
Plain silly names are really only acceptable for the clown (and/or the wizard).
If you do any of these things, expect that an admin will most likely change your name for you, And we admins like names such as Gertrude, Mildred, Englebert, and Anthony (sorry if you are actually named any of these IRL).
So I had gone with the name "Hookerbot" for a character, and W3bster promptly messaged me informing the name was against the rules. He then renamed me to "B.E.R.T.H.A"Excerpt Rule 1:
Admins can and will mute you from a specific chat or all (ic, ooc etc) if you are being hostile, spammy or whatever the case may be.
I then retaliate by explaining the two were completely different, to which he threatens to disable OOC once again.Excerpt Rule 10:
If there’s a problem, let the staff know in a reasonable and mature fashion.
PM to-W3bster: Blowjob-bot.Excerpt Rule 10:
There is no need to complain in Out of Character, spread rumors, start politics or otherwise degenerate the situation.
OOC: Skarrj: Does anyone think the name "Hookerbot" constituates ERP?OOC: Skarrj: PM from-Trial AdminW3bster: Hi! Just a quick notice. Such a name is against our rules.#
Webster was correctly enforcing the rules, and as such, this is an invalid complaint as complaints cannot be made against admins who are enforcing the rules.
Next time, listen to the admin when they're instructing you about the rules.
Complaint Closed
As an additional note, you currently have a job-ban from therapist for the following reason:
"Repeated creepyness. Asking to be "The rapist", and not taking no for an answer."
I recently unbanned you myself based on an appeal for the following offense:
"Jokes about anal rape aren't appreciated."
In your appeal you stated: http://80.244.78.90/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1795&p=8917&hilit=skarrj#p8917
My intentions were just to do a funny, comedic character. I'm really sorry if anyone took it the wrong way, that wasn't my goal in the least and I apologize for it. I will try to not do something like this again in the future.You haven't lived up to your end of the bargain.
I'm not certain why you find such fulfillment and enjoyment in making sexual references, however our server is not the appropriate environment in which this should be done.
Any further instances of this will result in a permanent ban to which appeals will not be accepted.
Regards,
M Kenner.
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Honestly I think the biggest issue is that only one person on the team understand the core structure that controls all the servers data.
Our team only includes the people that we have. While it's an interesting subject that I would love to learn some day, I don't have time at present to learn MySQL programming. Necaladun has learned a lot of SQL, and has been able to handle many minor problems and even some major patching. This particular issue was far from simple though and no one else on our team was able to volunteer a solution. Access was never an issue, if a fix had been invented by any of our coders, Mel or Necaladun could have accessed the server to implement it.
Ponies has the position he does, because he's a qualified computer professional with coding experience. He can do more than we can in this field and it's been largely due to his singular efforts that the server exists in its current state. We'd be a lot more limited if he hadn't volunteered his time and efforts for free over the almost a year that this server has been running.
As this particular issue occurred within our security systems as part of safeguarding our data from the latest round of newly developed or discovered exploits, this particular system cannot be made open source or public access for obvious reasons.
Regards,
M Kenner.
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Thankyou to those providing this feedback. I'm sorry to be slow to respond, university has been keeping me incredibly busy recently.
Quoting from the 'what is an event' guide:
"The event planners are given authorization to intervene in the round to add to your play experience. Not to have fun at your expense. There are some seriously over-powered tools in our arsenal but they're there only to add to the narrative and story of the round. The enemies are there to allow you to be heroes by fighting them. The NPCs exist to prompt your own roleplaying and not to steal the spotlight. If the admins want things to be all about their characters, they have to join into the round with a normal character just like everyone else. Otherwise, we're props and extras to add to the story that unfolds from the actions of your characters."
There is nothing inherently wrong with an event coordinator creating an antagonist, the issue here is whether proper judgement was displayed and whether the actions undertaken were done to create an event or to further a personal play experience. The senior admin team will investigate this and determine any appropriate action to be taken.
Also for future reference, from a bureaucratic standpoint, intra-admin complaints should be handled via the admin forums as this particular forum is intended for players to lodge complaints.
Regards,
M Kenner
Senior Events Admin.
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Let's say you were a high-ranking commander in charge of extinguishing this threat, what would you do?
I'm always up for a spot of roleplay, but commander in which division of the U.S. government?
I mean, the realistic scenario is that some extreme action gets taken by the ISI in a middle-eastern country. John Kerry (Secretary of State) briefs Obama (President) on the foreign situation. Chuck Hagel (Secretary for Defense) passes on the reports co-ordinated by Michael Vickers (Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence) regarding their current status. Obama meets with the Joint Chiefs of Staff who advise him regarding the military situation. He then discusses the situation with his cabinet colleagues, where they discuss the fact that the population currently has a high disapproval rating for American foreign intervention and that any action is likely to be a vote loser. Then Josh Earnest (White House Press Secretary) reminds him that he should be especially carefully of mentioning the word 'Iraq' in any press releases.
Josh Earnest convenes a gathering of journalists for Obama, where the president delivers a generally worded statement condemning acts of terrorism and offering their support to (name of middle-eastern country affected) without every mentioning the terrorist group by name. The speech is full of good ten and thirty second soundbites that sound tough but have minimal information within them. Then, Josh Earnest takes over the podium and delivers a few more specific points in a lengthier fashion that cannot be used for soundbites, but provides more informed journalists with an idea of US foreign policy and might actually mention ISI by name. John Kerry instructs the diplomats in the US Department of State that are stationed in affected countries with stronger support for US foreign interests to show their counterparts in the affected country the parts of the press release where ISI is condemned so that they can make a bigger deal of it in their own media and governments.
Obama has a quiet word with Chuck Hagel, who has a quiet word with Michael Vickers and the US intelligence agencies (particularly National Reconnaissance Office and National Security Agency) are instructed to keep a closer eye on this group and monitor them for any particular dangers to U.S. foreign interests. Co-operative middle eastern countries will participate in occasional joint operations (probably for "training purposes") with a few members of special warfare divisions of the U.S. army in which the U.S. assists in a few actions against the group, keeping their involvement minimal to avoid reprisals and media attention.
Otherwise nothing changes until American opinion on foreign policy shifts to a more interventionist state, US interests are extremely threatened or some sort of domestic issue occurs requiring a distraction for the public from whatever press event is currently troubling the governing party. Nor would this situation (other than the names) be particularly different for a Republican government.
Regards,
M Kenner.
P.S. Also, hello to anyone from any intelligence departments drawn here by the key words in this conversion.
P.P.S. And all of the above people are probably much more worried about Russia's western annexations right now anyway.
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3 - Wouldn't the best way to stop them capturing military equipment of the US to be to stop leaving it behind after invasions on the other side of the world?
Actually, just as a quick note. The U.S. did this in the latest Iraq war, going to such extremes as demolishing their bases and shipping both concrete and steel rebar back with them. It was ridiculously difficult and expensive because none of the countries surrounding the area were particularly interested in co-operating. I saw some crazy photos of their piles of stuff they were sending home.
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Small sacrifices must be made to inch towards success. In this case the sacrifice was hours of work to restore everything so it wouldn't happen again.
While that's probably true, it's hard for me to see it that way. Up until now, not everything was perfect but every step we've taken has been a step forwards. Taking steps backwards isn't something we're used to. All the progress we've made, has been because of people contributing so much great work and it feels particularly wrong to lose or waste that work when we owe it so much.
I know when it first happened, that going through the appeals forum and trying to reconstruct everything from memory was the last thing I wanted to do. Fortunately that was only an hour or twos work for me. I know a lot of the people who put time and effort into the wikis and forums have much more work to do to get back what they managed and I know they're going to be demoralized by this too.
I just hope people like block1, the original poster here, don't give up on contributing to the community all together. I can't blame anyone who does, but I would really miss their contributions. Seeing the wiki updated with brilliant information just because people love the game, always brought a smile to my face.
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A lot of really great work by a lot of people was lost in this incident, along with just the regular daily activity of the server. I for one had been extremely impressed with all the wiki work you've done recently and I know many others were as well. There was also a lot of great development on the forums themselves by Regens that's just disappeared. Not to mention all the individual threads people contributed on the forums.
We're talking hundreds of hours of people's activity, contributing to the wiki, forum, their characters, receiving karma, bans, appeals, etc all just vanishing in instant. This was in no way deliberate and as you can tell by how all our work has been lost as well, not something we had any warning about before it happened. I'm not saying it wasn't our fault, because it was. However offering warning wasn't something we could do, because we had none ourselves.
The 'rollback' wasn't really a rollback, but rather a "F*ing hell, we've just lost all data. Reload the most recent unaffected backup".
After it happened we didn't really communicate with the users about this on an emotional level. This was because we were collectively pretty shocked ourselves. The post we put up on the forum explaining what had happened was something we did immediately after discovering our own work into the forum had just disappeared into the ether. I think the reason that post didn't go into the emotional nature of the situation for the people affected, was that if it hadn't been detached from our own emotions it would have consisted of pages of screaming.
If we gave the impression that we didn't care about this, or that our reaction was "oh well", it was because we were desperately trying to come to terms with this and remain professional despite being pretty overwhelmed ourselves. Our private reactions were much more emotional.
Absolutely the only good thing to come out of this, was fixing it so that it can't happen again. Small consolation I know.
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Sounds awesome, I look forward to reading it.
Although just one minor pedantry, is that unless you're changing it for your novel it should be "NCS Cyberiad".
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I had a permanent ban that got lifted a week ago get reapplied by the rollback.
Sorry. I've removed it again for you.
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Here's my personal stance (which does not necessarily represent the entire admin team).
If you want to side with the crew and not fight against them, then you should switch off the antag roles.
Antags are not balanced for playing as crew-members, their abilities are specifically selected to allow a small number of antags to effectively challenge the entire crew of the station. Someone doing their regular role with antag powers is powergaming. Taking a role, and then not playing it, is sabotaging the round design for everyone else and denying others who would play the role properly the chance to do so. I consider this self-unantagging to be as problematic as its inverse cousin.
Earlier on, I loved the subversion of expectations when you had a "good vampire" or whatever other antag who decides to peacefully co-operate. We got some great RP mileage out of it. This subversion has been done so many times now that it is becoming the cliche scenario though and lost the appeal it originally possessed. The HoP might as well have form 47-J 'Registration of peaceful vampiric intent' on standby ready for when, not if, they need it.
As an event co-ordinator, people chosing to play good vampires is a pain in the neck (forgive the pun). I either have to invent a custom round on the fly to make some challenge, hope that people self-antag to give the crew some challenges (which I should never have to hope for) or hope that people will be entertained by me throwing mini-things like space-vines at them because the base-round type has been shot to hell.
While I was typing this another thread was posted:
As a note I think Drizzt is a cool character, but I don't that doesn't mean every Dark Elf (or even anywhere close to most) should be Drizzt, what made him a cool character was his uniqueness. I hope the parallel here is not lost on you.My original closing line was: Not every Drow can be Drizzt Do'urden.
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It is an odd speciality of mine but I can add anything to them and they taste amazing.
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Now I see why your own coders have stolen your servers code and made another server.
I think you might be a little confused.
Our coders are all still with us, our only retirees have been several admins and an original 'head of staff' none of whom are currently running other servers. Nor is it possible to "steal" our code, since it's open-source. The other servers running Paracode are doing so, based only on our open-source code with our full blessing but otherwise have no connection to us, nor has their staff ever been employed here.
Here is the server rule that goes along with what I am getting at.Since you're keen on the rules, I'm surprised you somehow missed rules 1 and 10.
1. Listen to the admins and 10. Communicate openly and respectfully:
This increases the chance of a productive admin reading a message first about a server I won't be playing on.Actually you have a better chance on the complaints forum which is regularly reviewed by the senior administration staff, rather than the suggestions forum which gets viewed when I'm procrastinating from working on an assignment or I get a skype message to check on a post like this one.
Sorry I don't go to the same synagogue as you guys and am just a stupid goy.Well that's a racist metaphor to use to accuse us of being cliquish.
Fuck this server, there is too many other server to put up with this. I'm glad I didn't invest a lot of time here.There are many fine servers, which you can explore and enjoy. You are now however, banned from this one.
Regards,
M Kenner.
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To clarify.
Brig Physician is a doctor. At absolute most, they're probably a little more experienced in space law and more practised at restraining patients where necessary. They have no more business conducting searches than any other doctor aboard the station.
I'll see what we can do to get this across to the players in this role, but what you were told during that round was completely inaccurate and goes against the job role of the Brig Physician.
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Just to explain my reasons for voting no.
When I'm selecting events manually for rounds, I attempt to create a contrast with the previous rounds to keep things fresh and new. After lengthy rounds with multiple antags, I like to switch to blob round to give the players a shorter, more action filled round where they get to work together as a team. It's a bit of a palate cleanser and helps remind people that their fellow crew are sometimes their allies and not just syndicate changeling-vampire-wizards out to eat their souls.
These changes risk adding suspicion to blob rounds and bad security spacing folk for "eating too much" under blob meta-suspicion. While it sounds like on its own merits a good idea, I don't think it fits within our roster of rounds.
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Single blob lines. IE: How to meta as blob. I have seen this used to destroy the nuke. I have seen this used to destroy the AI. Needs to be changed.
Personally, I like the idea of a 'game of life' style system for the blob, where any blob square that doesn't have X number of blob squares nearby is 'unsupported' and dies. This should probably only apply once it's a certain distance from the blob core, or have the blob core count as multiple blobs for purposes of this calculation to stop it being too easy to reach the core.
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Sounds like awesome fun.
Timezones mean this wouldn't work out for me, otherwise I'd be tempted to give it a shot. All the best guys, good luck and good gaming.
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With the current sort of numbers we're experiencing and the related number of deaths, this could be a useful role to have on the station. In my experience surgeons rarely have the time to conduct autopsies and many geneticists don't seem to find handling the dead to be a primary concern. A role which combines these two functions could work extremely well.
Good idea.
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Leaving appeals that have already been decided open is not only impractical, but would be doing a disservice to new applicants to the appeals forum to have their posts buried under what has turned from an application into an argument.
In fact it would be doing the original applicant a disservice as well since without taking the time to reconsider and plan another appeal, they will continue with a strategy that was not going to result in them unbanned.
This post is an excellent example, as it shows that rather than committing to following the current rules and processes of the server, you feel that they must change for your benefit. This is the same attitude that made me change your ban from temporary to permanent, as your appeal indicated that a temporary ban would not change your behaviour.
Our admin staff already volunteer their time to read over the appeals forum to give people a second chance. They then frequently proceed to help prompt and educate people, whose original appeals were not strong enough to see them come back on their own basis. It is asking too much, both for me to ask them or for you to ask us, to also listen to people venting their frustrations over an unsuccessful appeal.
My original response to you was not an insult, nor is this post despite its overall critical content. It's an attempt to help you realize what actions are required to return to the community. Because you're continuing to post here I assume that's your intent. Because I haven't blocked your forum access, you can know that I still hope to see you return or at least get another chance. However I can not write your appeal for you, nor can I make the changes to your behaviour that are necessary. That's the part you have to manage for yourself and I can only try to help.
Regards,
M Kenner.
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Back when the server first started, Neca and I paid half the cost each and we bought hosting. That really didn't last very long before we had the server we're currently using donated to us. We are also receiving staggering amounts of monetary donations so far. While the donations do help, and open up our options, they're not something that we're actively chasing or promoting.
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I don't really see the need for this, especially with the prohibitive levels of coding and spriting required.
The players have been equipped with a station capable of producing robots, robotic exoskeletons and experimental weaponry. I'd rather see the players make the most of their resources to confront menaces and overcome challenges rather than coding in additional resources for their faction to call upon.
Most players have already been given additional chances at life whether respawning as xenos, ERT and DS or by being brought back to life by either robotics or genetics. If we're worried about players being left out of the round, then extending the game-time towards the end of such casualty heavy rounds is likely to be counter-productive rather than solving the problem even with a comparatively large respawn squad.
Especially since experience shows that the main thing we'd see would be people suiciding in the hopes of joining the marines.
A bit more admin involvement with xeno rounds would help.We don't really like taking sides between two player-controlled groups. We can choose who wins at any time in such a contest and I don't see how our involvement would make things more fun. We'll sometimes intervene to balance things out if the game seems so lopsided that it won't create any interesting play, but that's rare.
Also Centcomm exists as an in-game group, who you can contact via bluespace but they're only aware of what you tell them. If you want more admin intervention, send more bluespace faxes. Otherwise, it's the job of command staff to rally and organize their troops, not the admins.
The end-game drags out because people run off on their own, one at a time to robust a xeno with an oxygen canister (because they're thinking they'll either win and be awesome or die and get to play a xeno, so it's no loss either way). It's the horror-movie equivalent of the non protagonists wandering off to get a drink during the serial-killer slumber party. If everyone was rallied together with a unified goal, then the round would end one way or another much more quickly and we'd see more dramatic last stands.
I think it makes more sense to balance the existing weapons of both side (such as the aforementioned neurotoxin) to make things more equal than to introduce new factors to the game which will start off either underpowered or OP and take time to calibrate to work.
Also, sometimes the xenos are going to win and that's okay because it's a player controlled faction too. The xenos hunting down the last remaining crew-member is no less gameplay oriented then the survivors hunting down the last few wandering xenos. Since the Xenos don't get any admin reinforcements and the crew already have at least one, this seems reasonably balanced.
For the record: This is just my personal take, not the stance of the team as a whole.
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While I don't personally like nations rounds, we get a ridiculously large number of requests for it so it seems fairly popular.
When a nations round comes around, personally for me that's just my 'chat on OOC' time. Since I'm usually admining rather than playing, I don't have a character in the round to worry about so I realize that's easier for me than it is for other people. If I'm the only admin, I force-secret to get other round-types since I'm not comfortable running nations.
I can't really answer questions about the rules of nations rounds, since I let people more familiar with that round-type handle the ahelps and attack-logs during those rounds. My best guess would be that the rules are the same but everyone counts roughly as an antagonist to those of opposing factions with an objective of stealing flags, but I'm really not sure so take that with a grain of salt.
Still, with something so many people enjoy it's not too likely to be taken out of rotation (this isn't saying not to ask, since I'd like to see how people feel, I'm just saying that I don't see it as likely).
Minor lore suggestion, boring shifts exist but aren't played
in Suggestions
Posted
Hiya Regen
Well hearing screams, clown honks and explosions from Neca's computer recently lured me back to playing a bit, so that I can be the one screaming, being honked and dying in explosions rather than just enjoying it vicariously from across the room.
Having a lot of fun Janitoring about the station and waging a one sentient being war against litter, blood and viscera.