[Give Chaplain's Blessing a mechanical effect]

The original idea put forth had a mechanical benefit, but it had to be removed before being merged as a PR.

[New Crit Discussion:]

1 hour ago, BeanOS said:

just remove cloning

Solves nothing, causes even more problems and is a scapegoat people like to lean on for what they deem "Not skilled gameplay" as if we were some kinda Dark Souls experience.
It's fine.
It was fine.
It will continue to BE fine.

Cloning as a system continues to be used in almost every single codebase that SS13 has, with Baystation having removed it relatively recently, and even for a High RP station it pissed a lot of people off. So unless y'all are aiming to get in on the HIGH RP Perma-death action, maybe look at other codebases an put more thought into why the system exists as a whole an find ways to improve medical that don't involve pointlessly gutting entire systems because some people can't stand not getting specifically colored text for 10 seconds at the end of a round.
I was pretty sure games were meant to be fun, but sure, being dead for 5-10 minutes or more as every single corpse that doesn't die in medical has to be given SR an gone through that whole long proceadure, will be ever so fun.
I mean it's so fun NOW to be stuck in crit, right?

[New Crit Discussion:]

6 hours ago, Carbonknight666 said:

They should put a conveyor system into and out of the cloning pod because that's all med bay will be now.

It won't though.
Like I'm not saying that I agree with the changes, at all.
But that's just being a little disingenuous about the state of it, we both know that's not an accurate metaphor or equivalence at all, that there ARE systems at play and that doctors ARE doing those systems. They may not be systems we like, an the cloner will definitely be used more now, but to say medbay may as well be a conveyor to an from the cloner is just willfully misrepresenting the issue. Because I guess smaller injuries, surgery for things like broken bones, internal bleeding and limb reatattchment and the entire crit state just don't exist anymore, Paramedics don't exist and what is even that SR thing.
Like. Yes. The Cloner will be used more, too much in the eyes of many, it's less realistic, etc.
But god damn, y'all act like reviving dead people was your ONLY job and that with this change, all non-dead people will cease to exist, in a perpetuial state of being not quite dead, but also dead, a Schrodinger's Hellscape will overcome us all an doom will fall onto our station as Nar-sie nibbles on our meaty bits.

Yes. The system's got some serious problems. But let's stop playing pretend that dead people being revived was the ONLY thing Medical did and that removing defibs suddenly DELETED those other non-dead players.
It's exaggeration beyond the point of being worthwhile to the discussion. It adds nothing but noise at this, it just muddies the issue on both sides and makes it actively harder to debate and discuss. The strong emotional response has been noted, but now we need more then an emotional response, now we need more depth and criticism to be had about it.

[New Crit Discussion:]

15 minutes ago, Mitchs98 said:

Not really nice to have if it means advanced kits are being phased out entirely. Compared to them they're not that useful whatsoever. I don't even really understand why the advanced kits were phased out in fair of 'Neurological Kits' that are just some pills of mannitol.

I agree.
That's why my response on the neuro kits was
"If the Medivends have mannitol, I'm not sure why Neuro-kits would be necessary."
If Medical vendors already have mannitol pills in them, I am unsure why those kits are necessary.

[New Crit Discussion:]

https://i.imgur.com/KnNrnzL.png

The above is the image Fox put up on the PR in question of his medivend changes. I felt it was worth copying over here for people that may not check the git themselves all that much, and because a few things I wanna note about the tweaks made, an it's easier to have al ink here for reference then to ask people to go to the PR.

Healing/Burn patches: Nice to have, though with the sleepers giving saline-glucose and the medical vendor giving saline-glucose, unsure how needed it is. But still nice. *thumbs up
Diphenhydramine Bottle: Nice to have but not wholly sure how necessary it is, I personally don't see Histamine come up that much, but I know Fox mentioned that some chemicals were gonna be a lot more scary in the new system, like Sarin. So perhaps Histamine is one of those, but just putting it out there I don't run into it much.
Salicylic Acid Bottle: Nice to have.
Potassium Iodide Bottle: Not sure Radiation is a common enough occurance to need to be default in the medi-vend, but it's a brain dead chem recipe as it is an a chemist can make one in a couple seconds, so I suppose just having it by default won't change much.
Saline-Glucose bottle:  Not sure if needed, given sleepers produce the stuff. Though, I guess since it can be used to treat the first stages of shock, having a few bottles to carry around won't be remiss. Not sure if we need 5 though, 3 per medi-vend should be plenty given we have a LOT of medivends.
Atropine Bottle: Good to have in case there's no chem, such as low-pop rounds.
Oculine Bottle: Same as Atropine, good to have in case a total lack of chemistry, given Sleepers no longer produce the stuff. Small enough in quantity you could run out though, which will still give Chem incentive to make some, just nothing they need to rush out.
Calomel Pill: Given Fox's claim that chems can be a lot scarier in this new system, probably worth having. Though I for see a lot of toxin deaths the first few weeks after being merged (Calomel will rapidly fuck your day if over 20 HP)
Salbutomal pills: Not sure if needed because of sleepers, could just as easily put in some oxy-dep first aid kids into medical storage. Might lighten the load on them edivend, as the list of things it has is now pretty big.
Mannitol Pills: Probably necessary given Brain damage during critical condition is now a thing and is what dictates death.
Mutadone pills: I don't think this is necessary to have on hand in the medical vendor, unless it plays a new role in the system that I have overlooked somewhere.

Now to address some of the other changes:

Quote

advanced medkit replaeced with neurological damage kit; individuals who started with advanced medkit now start with a regular medkit, instead

If the Medivends have mannitol, I'm not sure why Neuro-kits would be necessary.
 

Quote

As this is now reagent-medbay, Fix O Vein now does the repair work for internal organs (as opposed to a bruise pack).

No real opinion on this. Having more use to Fix-O-Vein is nice, and it's something you can't run out of (I don't think it took a use of a trauma kit to heal an organ though.)  Not really any major medical changes here though, just swapping one tool for another. Could make ghetto surgery harder, as you could Trauma Kits here an there in maint.
 

Quote

 

Ideally plasmamen, slime people, and Diona will utilize this new system (I think IPCs are different enough they an be justified being different).

This would mean that Plasmamen lose their `NO_BLOOD` trait though (plasma for blood, I guess?), and it would mean that Slime people will have to have a heart (IMO, they should already, as they have blood), and breathe.

Diona would just lose their `NO_BREATHE` ability and acquire lungs, but I don't think that's a big deal; the entire species needs a rework, to be honest.

The trouble with this is giving them a "compensating differential", so to speak.

I probably wont' worry to much about that for _this_ PR.

 

This is a little more where I have problems.  Plasmemes have precious little going for them as it is (Aside a dope as fuck style.) and slimes having no organs and no breathing is a big deal. They were originally supposed to not have bones either, an that's already been compromised on, I'd really prefer not pulling back even more on that. Their blood is water, not because they have 'blood' like a circulatory system, but because they're made of slime, a gelatinous liquid substance. The 'skin' is just like a membrane holding the stuff inside. (And also for mechanical reasons.)

A grander scale rework of Diona is probably in the cards, yes, but until then, removing their no breathe ability I'm sketchy on, not without also pulling back on how much slowdown they suffer at least. That seems like sometihng that should happen WITH a diona rework, and not in this particular system overhaul, since there's grander balance concerns to be had.

Ultiamtely though, this stumbling point here is probably why this crit system is going to have a lot of issues. It's a goon-based system, and on Goon humans are the only species you can reliably play as.  This system has a lot of depth, could be very nice IF we were an all-human kind of server, but we're not. And the only solutions are to either snowflake the other species real hard to make it work/ignore the system; to dramatically alter those species just to fit this system in, and like Fox said, conjure up compensating buffs/changes, which isn't always easy; or to leave both of them alone.

[Blueshield Buff]

Validhunting is a problem with Blues, but I don't think that's a reason to deny the featurei n question.

However, the validhunt problem is real, but the thing is, in my mind anyway, the Blueshield is a 30 karma role.
Magistrate is 45 Karma, and it costs that much because it is a "Trusted" role. It's something you don't just give to randos because they'll abuse it, and it is held to a higher standard then other jobs, it's easy to get a ding dong bannu out of Magistrate if you abuse it's authority. But it's authority/power you are given out of trust since you got enough karma for it, you demonstrated you understand how Paradise works a little bit, the dos and don'ts.

Blueshield, IMO, should be similar. They can be trusted with things like Krav Maga or what have you, because it's a 30 karma role, you're being given a measure of trust that you won't abuse it. And if you do, then the job-bans will come swift and hard, harder then other jobs.  A blue has no reason to not be at the bridge or at a Head of Staff's side, if you are wandering maint on your own, and are not actively trying to find the captain's corpse to recover and take to medical, then you abused that trust you were given, full stop, and it can and should be rescinded via job ban.

[Community Poll - Medbay Changes]

17 minutes ago, Norwest said:

Newbie MDs would still be able to toss a dead character inside if defibrillation fails, and players would still be able to re-enter the round using it; the idea is to allow for a newbie to start there and to graduate up to knowing the different drugs, knowing how2SR, and so on.

Here is my problem with the suggestion of a permanent debuff or detriment to people who are cloned though.
The newbie doctor who does that?
Fired. Immediately.

Now, naturally, you're thinking "But they did nothing against any law, they'd never get fired for that."  And IDEALLY that would hold very true, but as Science department has taught me, people can frequently be horrendous to new players or people new to Science, because they're new and don't know things like how to be extremely efficient.  I have seen and experienced being thrown off the RnD console for not having it done by 30 minutes into a round. I was actively working on it, I was just bad. I spent the rest of the round without a job, cuz nobody else wanted me after that.
I have seen particularly rude RD's fire scientists outright for "Slacking off.  And this is just RnD, this is something that has no permanent detriment to the server if it isn't done at the 15 minute mark, it can very easily be rectified. And yet, the moment you choose an inefficient option, you are are absolutely dead to some people.

To suggest cloning give people permanent downsides, I can promise you with utter certainty, you will see CMO's scream and fire new doctors who don't know any better, or the cloned person themselves will scream at them and potentially get security to try and arrest them for permanently injuring them (And depending on if that sec team is competent or not, they may actually do it.)
We wanna nerf cloning, fine. I disagree with it, but I am open to the notion.
But permanent debuffs and long term affects will only serve as a newbie trap, they'll do it not really knowing better and get royally reamed for it, if not outright fired or brigged and it will skew their perception of the department from then on. It would effectively be punishing OTHER players, for someone being new and that's a recipe to set someone up to be a scapegoat/lynch target for the greytide.

I just REALLY want to address that point, and since @necaladun wants this to remain on topic, A new poll/thread should be opened to continue the conversation further or we'll just have to stop here.

[Community Poll - Medbay Changes]

A casual reminder to people that want to obliterate cloning:

You are not the only one who plays the game and the medical department.
Not everyone is a 7 year veteran of Space 'Nam where you did 32 consecutive duties in a medical tent patching people back together with staples and tomato juice as a blood substitute.
New people play the game.
People new to the medical department play the game.
Screwing new people over side ways is not fun, ensures nobody ever wants to learn/play the department, and helps ensure low-pop rounds are a god awful misery festival. An example of this is Atmospherics. Barely anyone knows how that system works beyond a very very basic level of understanding, and so you barely see anyone play it. They take the job slot to be a psuedo-engineer, but do nothing it Atmos itself. Because learning that system is painful and the consequences can be terrifying. (Leaking toxic gases, etc.)

I get why you guys want to destroy Cloning forever and make it atrocious. But you are looking at it from the eyes and perspectives of a long term veteran player who already knows all the mechanics and gets bored when not challenged or given a meatier task to handle, has memorized the procedures, knows what chems do what, what is the more efficient way to make those chems/surgery order and what makes species different from each other, like why Diona all have different names for their organs (Even though they are functionally identical to human organs) or that Vox/Slimes need special kinds of treatment.

You are not accounting for the new doctor who has no idea what in the ever loving fuck is going on around him, why the things he is doing doesn't work and what to do if the zappy paddles don't work.  Every department has simple tasks that even new players can do.  Engineers can wire up solars, etc.

And as a reminder: You can get yelled out of the Science department just for not being hyper efficient on doing RnD. I have seen people fired for not having it done fast enough by particularly grouchy RDs, something very easily and quickly fixed with no long term damaging effects (No damage effects at all really, just a lack of very desirable buffs.)  And now you're suggesting that cloning, the go to option for new doctors, leave permanent round-lasting effects of debuffs on people.  you can and will see doctors screamed at for cloning people and depending on the CMO fired outright for daring to not know things.

You must account for the fact that players that are not as skilled and well-versed as you can play the exact same jobs, an account for how badly these systems WILL fuck them up.  SS13 is not new player friendly, there's always going to be some rough learning processes to every system, but stacking the deck against them isn't cool either.

[Blueshield Buff]

I'm not opposed to the idea.
It'd be kinda strong, might upend balance a little bit, but I mean...
It's also fuckin cool, an that's what matters most, so.

[New Crit Discussion:]

1 hour ago, Ty Omaha said:

No the problem is the downsides to cloning is easily fixed via "throw in cryo tube with mutadone and mannitol"

Tell you what.
Let's do a test.
Do 1 day where Defibs/SR isn't available, an then you tell me how super duper fast cloning is and how it has no problems what so ever.
Especially when it gets bombed.
 

1 hour ago, EvadableMoxie said:

Or the downsides are non-existent once the cloner is upgraded. 

But I think saying "Cloning is the problem" and saying "Cloning's current mechanics are the problem" is functionally the same argument. I'm certainly not arguing that cloning couldn't be changed so it isn't a problem, I'm just saying as it exists now it's a problem.

You also did nothing to even slightly address any point my post brought up whatsoever, in favor of a massive passive-aggressive salt pit, which is super helpful and absolutely benefits a discussion and will in no way sabotage feedback at all and is SUPER professional coming from an administrator.

But yeah. You're right. Everyone else is the problem. TG, Bay, Goon, every other major codebase? Fools. Foolish fools who are foolishly believing their own foolishness as they seem to all agree a mechanic works across High, Medium and Low RP spectrums. They're all just to dumb to see the way, clearly, it could in no way be the minority opinion is wrong.

Y'all are gonna do what you want anyway, feedback or otherwise, an apparently get you meme'd on if you disagree, so just like... do whatever, man. I'm done puttin' in effort, lemme know when you're done ruining the medical department though.

[New Crit Discussion:]

I'm going to echo what I said before in response to the talks about Cloning.
Cloning is not the issue, has never been the issue and will continue to not be the issue.
cloning exists on TG, on Bay and Goon, it exists in almost every single codebase out there, but you think, for some reason, it's magically a problem on this one single codebase.

Cloning has clear and obvious downsides. That being, it is easily overwhelmed and tampered with. It works on one person at a time, when it was the only method of revival it very easily formed a queue.  The problem is that over the years we've added more and more alternatives to cloning, so those downsides are now null. You can Defib most people, clone them when that fails or if it's too inconvenient and SR things that can't be cloned at all, or just if you want a challenge mode, I guess.  The downsides of cloning were predicated on it being the primary source of revival, the more alternative methods of unkilling someone you make, the more you make cloning into a tool that can be used selectively when convenient, which is WHY so many doctors take the 'just clone them' mindset these days. Because these days it's almost always not in use so it's a massive time saver.
When you had conga lines of corpses in waiting, it was a lot more imperative to keep someone from dying at all, lest they be potentially dead for several minutes before their turn came up.

Times have changed. Something has to change to match it. Either Cloning needs a TOTAL overhaul, a complete remake, which in a personal opinion would be absolutely silly, given NO OTHER MAJOR CODEBASE agrees with that idea. (That sorta tells me this is a personal problem and not a problem with the mechanic as it remains, to this day, a baseline feature in all the major codebases. If Goon, TG and Bay can all agree on something, despite how disparate they all are, that carries some major weight.)
OR.
The other forms of revival need to be looked at, mostly the defib units. SR could do with a recipe tweak, but it's niche in being primarily targeted at Vox/Slimes is fine pretty much as is.
Defib units should not be able to revive a person who died ages ago, that's not how they work. They jump start a heart that has stopped within a very short time frame, they do not magically make a long cold body start living again. The body is already dead, the brain has died from lack of oxygen.  No amount of electrical impulses will change that the brain has suffocated.

Cloning might be easy if you don't attempt anything like Hypercloning, but it's straight forward and has clear downsides. A new doctor can pick up the role and, if nothing else, understand cloning. That's not a bad thing, not everyone in medical is gonna be a 16 year Space 'Nam veteran. The basics of the department should probably be relatively easy to grasp in short order.
 You can whack at it if you really, really want to, but I am telling you now, the more tedious and obnoxious you make death on the doctors themselves, the more you're gonna see people give up half way through when they get tired of handling it, especially in crisis situations where people are dying constantly. It's gonna get real fun real fast having to deal with hyper lethal war ops or blobs when you're gonna be dead for the next 5 minutes, along with a hefty chunk of crew/the entire sec team, as you're rebuilt like the bionic man, just so you can do it again. 

As for the PR feedback itself:

I don't think this fits Paradise. Goon crit is a system that is predicated on everyone being human, because on goon there's no alien races like we have and are known for. The fact we have to make snowflake exceptions to it so that it won't utterly break the system is a telling point of that.
I feel that we need to pick ONE system overhaul an focus on that.  We can't do both an SR/Revivability overhaul and a crit overhaul at the same time, that's too many major systems changes at once. If one of these gets merged, the other definitely shouldn't until we see how things shake up.

[SOP Suggestion: Departmental Tranverse]

1 hour ago, Sihsse Zsak said:

Lets say we remove the concept of the ORM and have a Silo in which everyone is able to access these resources. Instead of having Robotics, Research and Development, and Engineering competing for such things, we've now got a protolathe in every department that needs outfitted with all the possible resources that could allow them to print what they want/need. Now we have Medical, Security, Supply, Service, Science, along with Engineering vying for resources wholly dependent upon the experience and whim of the miners assigned to the asteroid.

 

I might ask, how is that a bad thing?
As it stand right now, Mining frequently hits a poitn where they can have the ORM so impossibly stocked for materials that at around the 1 hour mark, they can fuck about on station an never need do their job ever again, barring some massive catastrophe. ((I myself have hit a point where we had over 500 of every single mineral, several thousand metal, glass and plasma and well over a hundred diamonds.))

If more resources get used by more departments then just Science then that's a GOOD thing. It means mining actually has a job and is a boon to every department beyond just Science.  Medical can pull out gold/silver for possible viruses, Engineering can reliably print out sheets of plasteel, etc. And it means Science doesn't get to loot the ORM an fuck off with your ENTIRE haul moments after depositing, so people stop shrieking at miners to get them things because Science stole it all for themselves when they only needed maybe half of it.

Similarly, I've seen science man the RnD console, be perfectly capable of hearing me, an simply ignore me or tell me to fuck off. Even as a miner asking for mining upgrades so I can get them more ore.  With Departmental lathes, that possibility is entirely removed. You need something? go to the lathe for your department that is restricted to blueprints you need (The Cargo lathe can't make AEGs for example) and just make it.  You want machine upgrades, Science still has to do that, but now at least, medical could print additional huds or their own surgical tool upgrades,etc.

The pros to the Ore silo and Departmental Protolathes VASTLY outweigh the cons.

[Major Cloning and Revivability PR up on Github]

44 minutes ago, BugsBurn said:

Not a fan of forgetting who attacked you when cloned. If you remember who you are and your profession, why would you forget what hurt you? Especially what hurt you. Although if prescanned before the murder you should not remember at all who touched you or the events leading up to your murder. But what do i know that's just my thoughts on clone memory disorder.

Those are two very different memories, long term and short term.
Short term would be affecting the last few minutes. And the idea is that being cloned is a traumatic experience, it's why seeing your own dead body should PROBABLY freak you the fuck out. Realizing you're a copy of a dead guy, everything about yourself isn't "You", you're just a replication of someone else. It's kind of an existential nightmare.

The brain tends to handle trauma like this by locking it down, it represses intense trauma.  It makes physiological sense for there to be some memory loss, and more then making RP sense, there's a reason to do it in the form of helping to impair valid hunting (Can't scream BOB McMOP IS A LING the moment you revive) and it gives Antags some sort of reason to not perma kill everyone they meet, because you SHOULD forget who they are, so your being revived will frequently screw them over less often.

There's arguments for and against CMD.

[SOP Suggestion: Departmental Tranverse]

23 minutes ago, EvadableMoxie said:

Departmental lathes would solve this problem.  Instead of the protolathe being one all in one machine to all the best stuff, each department gets it's own protolathe that can only print things relevant to their department. Each lathe would be locked to an ID of that department, so even if engineering builds a science protolathe it won't do them any good without a science ID. 

It has the added bonus of decentralizing power away from science.  Part of the reason departments do this is because sometimes getting science to actually give other departments stuff is pulling teeth.  Half of science is usually traitors and you're lucky if you can find someone who will be nice enough to actually man the RnD window and not just print all the best stuff for themselves and go wander off blow up monkeys or something.

NGL this is one of my favorite features tg has. It makes life so goddamn convenient for everyone, Science isn't constant having to print shit out for people, more time for them to be massive nerds and do insane frankenstein shit.
The only thing you really have left to do is go upgrade people's machines an then you're good to fuck off unless something specific comes up.

Though it'd likely need the Ore Silo implemented alongside it to properly function.

[Major Cloning and Revivability PR up on Github]

1 hour ago, Allfd said:

Medbay used to be better.  I think this is a rise to the challenge type problem.  With cloning being so straight forward, a good amount of the knowledge needed to be a marginally successful doctor fell.  So along a difficulty scale of say 1 - 10

Yes and no.
As someone who used to make medical their main department of focus, cloning has always been easy, it's something that tg and bay style medical have had in common, so nothing has REALLY changed on that front.  Cloning is NOT the reason medical has problems.

However, back in ye olden day, cloning was the ONLY method of revival, there was no defibrillation and no SR, if someone was dead they were either cloned or they were SoL (I feel like I remember doing brain transplants into humanized monkeys so they could be cloned however...)
The amount of ways a person can come back from the dead has gone up over time with cloning being the easiest of those three for a new medical player to grasp and no room for errors. It works or it does not work.  Cloning is also simultaneously the most efficient and inefficient method. Depending on how someone died, using SR or Defib may require you to do extensive work and surgery to fully revive someone back to top shape, cloning doesn't have that issue.

However, cloning also can only get one person at a time, and takes time for each person to be cloned. This leads to a backlog of dead folks during a crisis and can lead to a spiral of problems as more people die, a bigger backlog forms, with people staying dead longer, they're less able to handle the crisis which causes more dead people. Additionally, cloning is one of the only methods of revival that can be reliably tampered with to make more difficult. Defib emagging is unreliable as there's multiple units and even if you managed to emag ALL of them, there's always SR which cannot be tampered with at all, unless you are the chemist in question and are misabeling the SR pills or are the doctor applying it to gib people.

  The game, for a very long time, was balanced around cloning being the one and only method of revival. It's not that cloning has made people complacent, it's that cloning is now one of multiple forms of revival and it's primary downside, that it took time and you had a queue of corpses form, is now entirely negated since it can be used selectively to bypass it. You can now reserve cloning for people who are SUPER fucked up an everyone else can be defibbed, so that you avoid having to do tons of surgical repair on them or loads of organ fuckery from SR.

Medical has issues, because, like Security, everyone likes to shit on medical for the most minimal errors which slightly inconvenience them, which is not exactly a quality environment for "I sure do wanna learn this job better". Similar to new sec officers being called Shitcurity and fucked with driving people out of the department or learning it, I see people leap on "Malpractice Bay" when it isn't even really that bad, a minor error was made, easily correctable, and yet everyone will happily tell new doctors how god awful they are, while Bob McMop the Janitor will shove them over to do surgery on their barkeep friend themselves.

And if the greytide doesn't do it, other doctors will, instead of explaining and teaching, they get frustrated watching new doctors make so many errors and just yank the patient away to do it themselves, thus denying any chance for new docs to learn better and helping keep the overall skill level of said docs on the decline as people either never learn or just stop trying. This ensures those more veteran players deal with new docs who know fuck all that much more, so they get frustrated so THEY leave an now it's just a cycle of fuck

As someone who played medical for a lot of years in SS13 on various codebases, I turned all preferences for medical roles off because I got tired of dealing with people's shit and having people jump on my ass because I made a single misclick or I took longer .3 nanoseconds to heal someone. It's not as bad as Security has it, but you're dealing with a similar issue.

TL;DR: Holy fuck this turned into a goddamn wall of text, I'm semi-sorry.
Medical has problems for a few reasons, cloning isn't really one of them.  Cloning was designed for a different era of SS13 and it's negative aspects are able to be bypassed entirely these days, it probably needs a more substantial change and refactor then what this PR tries to achieve. It needs am ore comprehensive alteration in the face of now being one among many forms of revival, as opposed to the one and only.

[Major Cloning and Revivability PR up on Github]

9 hours ago, ZN23X said:

Enforcing CMD would cause similar problems to what you describe. If it was against the rules to remember the events leading up to your death, antags would be more likely to kill people for the sake of getting rid of witness evidence. This could also lead to people doing more powergamey stuff in order to stay alive, because if they actually get killed then they aren't allowed to tell anyone who killed them.

Powergamey players also already jump through whatever hoops they need to in order to ensure their targets are perma dead already...spacing bodies, gibbing, hiding the brain, whatever. This will not change that either way.

I disagree with ... part of that.
It may lead to antags being more kill happy, I can see the train of thought you're puttin' down here. I don't entirely think that's a BAD thing myself, but I can see the logic here.  But it also means antags don't need to permakill everyone they bump into to keep below the radar, because CMD SHOULD keep that from happening, in most scenarios. There's always the edge case where you spent like 5 - 10 minutes killing someone so they still remember you, but a lot more cases can end in just killing someone to shut them up/keep them off you an leaving the body to be recovered.
That also gives antags more freedom to DO things like kill people and make shit happen, since now they can do it without it removing someone from a round for up to two hours.

Powergamers are gonna powergame regardless, I agree, but that doesn't mean we should just kind of throw up our hands an give up on enforcing some kind of bare minimum standard of roleplay. We're not heavy roleplay, we don't need to do a WHOLE lot, but CMD is real basic stuff, we already do similar around the server already, like how you're not supposed to remember being abducted when the ayy lmaos grab you. Or remembering cult things after being holy water'd  People do that anyway because... I mean it's not a standard. It is randomly important in some places and ignored entirely in others.

[Major Cloning and Revivability PR up on Github]

I'm lazy and sick so I'm just copy pasting my github response here:
If you're trying to make death impactful, this won't do it.
What this WILL do is cause an increase in power-gaming type behaviour as people look for every possible advantage to milk so that they don't get mega-death'd.

You want death to matter? You want more roleplay about death and for it to be this big deal?
Then you need to something most will consider a heretical sin, and actually enforce Clone Memory Disorder, or rather, bring back the rule when it WAS enforced a bit more. As a self-proclaimed Medium Roleplay server there should probably be some enforced roleplay rules, rather then crossing fingers an hope people do it. Sometimes you have to enforce a standard not just hope one comes up.

TL;DR: This won't solve your problem, this will create new problems while making existing problems even worse. Increased clone time isn't terrible, all the other stuff kind of is.

[Thoughts on an x-ray nerf?]

11 hours ago, davidchan said:

I'd prefer X-ray get removed all together save for the Orb of Scrying, no other antag that gets it has a good reason to have it over thermals, the genetics power was always cheesy and the implant was hard to get but equally necessary. I never really felt Nuke Ops deserved it, and definitely against vampires and other antags who don't explicitly have hijack level objectives by default.

If we're only going as far as nerfing it, hardcoding it so eyewear doesn't work (aka Kidan) and helmets don't offer eye protection (welding mask and Hardsuits) would be the way to go. Toggle just doesn't seem like a good enough debuff for a power that makes you almost completely aware of people through walls, even if it caused significant eyestrain if left on too long and could drain a person's nutriment level to starving in under minute.

On the overall Genetics needs a serious retune to put it in line with other departments such as needing RnD done to get high level powers and needing mining materials such as Uranium to create the SE injectors, or make all powers temporary to begin with the upgrades of the machines and materials used to craft the injector giving them longer durations before a person's SE reverts to default.

Honestly, I know how big of a request it is to make, it's a massive undertaking but, the most holistic option to reworking or fixing Genetics?
Probably to get Goon-style Genetics.

That is simultaneously, not nearly as RNGesus driven, has actual research that goes into it (Geneticists have to do genetics research to unlock the ability to make injectors at all for example, someone wants powers before that, they need to hop into the radiation machine.)
And the powers are more... defined.  Every preson has a random set of latent powers that can be unlocked.  These specific latent abilities will NOT fuck with your genetic stability to unlock but you never know what's in there, and it's on a person to person basis. Give someone powers NOT in that latent ability pool? That's what lowers your genetic stability.

All in all, it's a massive system, it;d be ... I would imagine hellish to try an make something like that over here in terms of code, but I will leave a link to Goon's wiki page so that people can read up on it for themselves, because it's a fascinating system.

https://wiki.ss13.co/Guide_to_Genetics

EDIT: On looking into it, I THINK TG may use a variation of this too, which might be less horrendous to port over, given we already have more parity with TG's code.

[Thoughts on an x-ray nerf?]

5 hours ago, Allfd said:

I am of mixed mind, X-Ray is kinda power gaming, but removing pressure from Antags I don't think will result in more creativity if only done in a few areas.  I think ultimately a change in incentives is needed to effect behavior.  A focus on RP, which means not just throwing antags into perma and forgetting about them, and a change in objectives would be needed. 

I think something important here is, I think you're right, I think that's gonna be needed too but I also feel that this will help. A change of mindset might also be needed, but this will still help, plus it frees up balance to possibly do more interesting mechanics in its place. And making X-ray rare, it makes it a lot more impactful and special and more of an "Oh shit." moment

But for me at least, when we talk about removing X-Ray, I don't necessarily just mean from just genetics.  I feel, as has been said by people before me, X-ray should be reserved for truly powerful entities or antags who can justify those crazy high power levels. Wizard with a scrying orb, I could see having it, a Vamp who got fully powered, maybe. X-ray is as close as you can get in SS13 to "Omnipresence" and that should be reflected in rarity or who attains it, in my opinion.

From my angle in all this, for what it counts, I don't necessarily think we should just make antag lives easier, I mean make EVERYONE'S lives easier an remove X-ray from most entities. Obviously not from the code, cuz there's lots of event style things you could do with it, but as a default, X-ray vision should be quite the rarity and a very potent motivator on both sides of the Antagonist aisle.

[Thoughts on an x-ray nerf?]

1 hour ago, Shina said:

I also think that xray is fine as it is. It is a powerful weapon, yes, and powerful weapons can turn the tides, if used well. I agree that it makes stealthplay harder, but removing it won't stop the bad habits of some antag players. You could as well then remove the forensic scanner, since that is a powerful weapon as well in the hands of a clever detective. Don't make security a tame cat without claws just to make playing antag more predictable.

In fairness, "Bad habits" has little bearing on X-ray vision. You can triple check yourself all you want, but if someone has X-rays what are you going to do? You made 3 layers of secret rooms to buy your illicit syndie-goods, you did your due diligence but... they can see through all those walls and you can never know they were there, hell you might not even know they have X-rays.
That's like finger wagging at a scientist for not maxing techs when the round had zero miners. It's not his fault.

Because bear in mind crew can get those 5 minutes into the round if RNG is on their side I've been the one doing that before. Round-start geneticist, first block I try, boom, X-ray.

That's not fun. The entire point of antagonists is to stir the pot and cause problems to give excitement to the round. Axing off every antag before 30 minutes even pass is not interesting, in fact it actively makes rounds more boring.  And worse it has **no counter-play** to it. You have no idea if the geneticist found it, you have no idea if he's over this wall or that wall and is seeing you shadowling hatch right now, You have no idea if Command gave permission to inject officers with it, per SoP,  you have no idea and thus can do nothing about it. The only thing you could do is beeline in an bomb Genetics before it even starts, an that can be a bwoinkable offense pending on your objectives and so, may not be an option.  Antags won't always win, I get that, I agree with that. But that doesn't mean certain things are not unfairly twisting their arms either.

The forensic scanner also does not give you night-vision and the ability to see through everything around you, it gives you vague information and leaves it to you to piece it together, things that take time to do. Will it tell you what happened? Yes, probably. But it will tell you after the fact, and after a while of scanning things down.  This is an apples to oranges comparison as even antags themselves rarely get X-ray out the gate an usually have to work towards it or something similar.

The thing is, Removing X-ray will not make playing antag more predictable, if anything it opens up more possibilities. you can afford to make riskier moves on-station because now X-ray is not a possibility. And without X-ray bogging everyone down, you can afford to re-balance in other ways, the looming concern of "Sec officer/Antag with X ray plus X? Too OP" is now taken out of the equation and drastically lowers power creep, so that different and actually interesting mechanics or things can be added, it opens up so many more possibilities in balancing and playstyles then having it does.

[Sentience potions should work on monkeys and slimes.]

On 12/29/2018 at 6:41 AM, EmanTheAlmighty said:

When you try to make a slime or a monkey sentient, it says they are too intelligent for it, but I think that if it were possible it would make for some really interesting situations.

What do you think?

Pretty sure it used to work on slimes, I'm not too sure why it doesn't. Half the point of sentience potion is to give exotic creatures over to ghosts to control, with restrictions to keep them from going nuts (Having to obey the one who gave you sentience)

[Thoughts on an x-ray nerf?]

3 hours ago, Slith-Skaar said:

I am also for making vampire fully powered nightvision toggle, plus heat receptors (Similar to changeling augmented eyes minus the flash protection). It sucks not being able to see the shadows and the lighting. Half the time I don't bother getting full powered due to this effect.

Almost anything that gets a nightvision effect should probably have that toggle, TBH.
It can actually be very annoying to not know where shadows are sometimes, you can't see light sources in the distance moving around in maintenance as an example.

[Thoughts on an x-ray nerf?]

1 hour ago, Slith-Skaar said:

I would be perfectly fine if X-ray (Genetics) was dumbed down to Nightvision

I'd also be okay if it was just removed in favor of/changed into to a Nightvision/Darksight sort of power as opposed to "I see through the everything".
That still leaves it as a nice, useful and powerful genetic power, but is significantly less round fucking.  It's something RnD can emulate if Genetics never finds it or there is no genetics, but it's never to the same potential AS Genetics which gives the power more weight when it's found, because it requires using a specific item on your eyes, where the power would leave your eyes free to use other, potentially more useful eyewear, but still have the nightvision.

I'd miss some non-antag uses of X-ray, but I'll live and a rework would have more pros then cons.

[Thoughts on an x-ray nerf?]

Personal opinion:
Have people with X-ray be unable to make use of flash/Welder protection. Yeah you can see the cosmos now, good for you, but you're also looking RIGHT through that welding mask/SecHUD, so maybe giving it to every officer ever is a bad idea. Unless they're robust, then maybe they wanna take the risk.

Thermals might leave you seeing less, but they don't leave you without eye protection either, and are significantly harder to get (As Crew)

[Getting IAAs to do their job]

On 12/14/2018 at 6:27 AM, ID404NotFound said:

there's also the difficulty of doing your job as an IAA anyway. One round I went to engineering as IAA to ask about the engine being started, as there were like two engineers. One had left to loot maints, and the second one turned out to have came in on arrivals round start. Instead of "oh, I just arrived, but I'll get to it", I was met with hostility and threats, to which I reported to security, in case they followed up on their threats and took my radio or anything, which they were beginning to do. It ended with a massive security confrontation with engineering, when it didn't need to (round start, so all of sec is bored and looking for the first sign of anything, foaming at the mouth) and it all started with just asking who is building the engine, since we had no CE, and no engineers actually in engineering.

much of the time, if you ever actually try to do anything related to SOP, or efficiency as an IAA, people will just get hostile, or ignore you.

Elaborating on this, the IAA also has no teeth to speak of when they are ignored UNLESS there are admins online and not embroiled in other matters enough to respond to a fax. If time comes you DO need to fax central an nothing comes back from it, well... congrats, you tried, except that attempt didn't just take 5 minutes, to do a proper job it takes more like a half an hour or more to be met with a resounding failure, through no fault of your own, just ... things were busy and more important stuff was going on.  Few other jobs have that kind of coin flip of how much power you have to back up your plays.