[Repeat Offender, Combat Implants, A-Helping About Objectives, Mentor Voice]

The following changes have been made as a result of head discussion of items brought up in the 2nd community survey:

1. The "Repeat Offender" space law modifier is now +10 minutes, instead of the old +5 minutes.
2. Combat implants (anti-drop, CNS rebooter) are now considered "restricted weapons" under space law, which means that scientists giving themselves or other people such implants without authorization is grounds for the person who gets the implant to be charged with major crime 304 possession of a restricted weapon (10-15 minutes). The person who did the surgery may also be charged as an accomplice.
3. Admin policy is generally that if you are an antag, you can ahelp and ask for easier objectives, and admins will generally grant this. However, exactly which objectives you get is entirely up to the admin. Notably, if you want harder or more objectives, you generally have to emag a fax machine, fax the syndicate, and ask.
4. Mentors and admins are now allowed to use the new #Help voice chat channel to teach newer players the basics of the game. This includes answering "how do I X?" or "what does Y mean?" questions over voicechat. We trust mentors/admins not to use this to metagame. Newer players are allowed to join this voicechat and ask questions if any mentor or admin is present. Please don't use this channel for general chit-chat, keep it reserved for its intended use. The ability to get game help over voicechat has been proven helpful for many games, so we're adding it here for a trial period to see if its helpful for Paradise.

[Made an ID Card for SS13 [Baldur Sauer]]

I wasn't going to butt in, but wow, you really goat me there.

[Kyet's Tier Guide for Captain]

9 hours ago, procdrone said:

Lack of mention about cooperating with IAA to receive reports and request reviews of departments trouble me on this one.

Captain doesn't necessarily needs to go to a department to check up on it if Internal Affairs is on board and the job can be delegated to them. Thats what they live for anyway.

EDIT:
@SchalkguyIn my personal opinion if all of the points listed by Kyet on reaching a head fail and they remain / continue being inaccesible, simply demote them and replace with an acting that is actually there.

heads are there to be part of command and if they do all the work they could otherwise delegate... they can do that while not being a head.

I can't recount the number of times RD locked himself in Xenobio making slimes while captain has issues reaching them for consulting law changes to AI and other AI/borg related emergencies. 

IAAs should usually deliver their reports to the department heads, not to the Captain. If an IAA feels a department head is ignoring their concern without good cause, then they can go to the Captain, but at that point the Captain's concern is the department head not managing their department. Not the original issue.
Captains can ask NTR or IAA to investigate something, but they're more likely to ask the NTR (if its serious enough to warrant the Captain's attention, it almost certainly involves a department head, so asking the NTR to look into it is appropriate). The one case where a Captain should be referring matters to an IAA is if a regular crew member comes to them with something that's sub-head-level, e.g. Chemistry isn't making medicine. In that situation they can tell the person to inform the IAAs and/or CMO.

While the Captain can in theory check up on a department remotely, simply walking around it and checking it out in person is vastly faster and more efficient.

If faced with an unresponsive head, first step is to ask the AI to locate them. They might be dead somewhere. Or SSD. Or just busy with a crisis. Or AFK. If they're alive/etc and active, but ignoring the Captain, send them a couple of messages to give them the chance to respond. If they still fail to respond to an order from the Captain, then order them demoted under the "refusal to follow orders" clause. The key thing here is that it has to be deliberate - getting distracted by your work is not generally enough to get demoted, by deliberately ignoring orders from your boss is.

[2nd Survey Action Proposals]

Here is the proposed TO-DO list for Paradise, based on the 2nd survey.

The goal here is to provide a list of practical, helpful proposals for improvements to Paradise based community feedback.

This is based on the second survey discussion notes and data.

[Fulpstations Service corridors]

Obviously, in our version they'd be separate offices. They'd just be connected to the same "service" corridor.

[Giving the Psychologist a purpose]

From an admin pov, my main concern with psych is the fact that a good chunk of the time, it is played by players who are absolutely bald, and decide to kidnap someone, straightjacket them, and force-feed them drugs. Because that's what they think is appropriate for a psych.
I've had to ban more people from psych/medical for this than I care to remember.

As such, any mechanic which psychs can abuse to detain people for long periods of time, or really at all, is probably not a good mechanic.

If we're going to give psych a mechanic, something they can use to make the job more interesting/relevant, then I would suggest:

• something detection-based, like the ability to use an item to scan for abnormal brainwaves, which could reveal things like vampire thralling, mindslave implants, etc. This would require a unique neural scanner, them to hold still for 30-60 seconds, or something like that. Enough constraints that the psych can't mass-test everyone.
• something to do with curing psych abnormalities, like for example reversing abductor programming, or effectively giving someone a mindslave implant that makes them loyal to NT (OOCly, this is a reward for traitors, who get to be released 'on parole' rather than sitting out the rest of the round, as such this implant would be extremely limited supply, only one is available and only the psych can use it).
• have a system where people can opt to give their character mental disabilities, not just physical ones, during char creation (e.g. syndicate-induced PTSD) and have the psych able to dispense unique drugs to help with these... and have a unique HUD that lets them identify people whose medical records show they have these conditions (basically make it easier for them to find rp partners)

Really, we should consider just removing the straightjacket from the psych, and giving it to sec's medical wing. Psych is meant to be treating patients on a voluntary basis. Patients sent to the psych against their will should come exclusively from security - not something the psych should be able to engineer themselves.

 

[Take off the false medium RP description.]

Abydos is correct.
I would also add:

1. If you think a ban appeal was handled unfairly, the correct way to deal with that is via admin complaint, NOT making a suggestion to change the server's description.
2. This ban only lasted two hours. Are you really going to create multiple forum threads for a single ban that only lasted 2 hours? It wasn't even your first ban for shuttle grief. You should most definitely know better by this point.
3. You cannot, in general, kill people as a non-antag. Even if they start a fight with you. Self defense is allowed, but self defense requires that the force you use be limited and reasonable. Hitting someone on the ground is NEVER self defense. Killing someone is never self defense if you have any other option at all. Chasing someone down is not self defense. Etc. What you did does not in any way qualify as self-defense, and you have been told so repeatedly.
4. Don't use the phrase "smh". Generally, it is a phrase used by children to make a fuss when they don't get what they want. It doesn't come across well. It suggests a childish attitude of "I know I am right, I am just going to ignore everything you say". As a player who got banned, taking that sort of attitude when dealing with an admin is a sure-fire way to get nowhere.

I'm going to move this thread to the resolved complaints forum, since it is essentially an admin complaint that was posted in the wrong section and fails to follow the required template.

[Retake the Station!]

I've been thinking about a terror spider game mode for ~3+? years since they were added.
Right now, I think they're better as a late-round event. We already have enough team-deathmatch game modes (nukies, blob, shadowlings, etc).
SS13 is at its best when its about mistrust, paranoia, suspicion, and only a minority of gameplay is team deathmatch (after everything goes to hell).
So, terrors are really best suited to be a late-round event which dramatically ups the difficulty, not a round-start thing.

Also, from a development point of view... I've put an enormous amount of work into getting terrors to the standard they're at now.

I'm really not keen on trying to balance them for BOTH roundstart, AND late-round event spawns. Its complicated enough to balance them as-is.

[Patreon Paused, Nov & Dec, For Charity]

Hello everyone.

Back in April, we paused our Patreon for a month, and instead encouraged our patrons to donate towards real-world charities aimed at helping the victims of COVID-19.

Now, with COVID-19 on the rise again, and winter expected to be difficult in many countries, we're pausing our patreon again.
Only this time, we're pausing our patreon for the remainder of 2020: November and December.

During this time, existing patrons will continue to get their perks, but won't be charged anything.
We hope that our existing patrons will consider donating to charity instead.
We suggest charities related to helping tackle COVID-19, or help its victims, but there are plenty of lists of good charities online, such as this one by CharityWatch.org, or this one by GiveWell.org. We're sure you can find a worthy cause to donate to.

Note that due to the way Patreon works, any new patron who signs up during the pause will still be charged for at least one month. This is an unavoidable consequence of patreon handles pausing.

Remember, the coming months may be stressful for many people, but you can help.
You can help by donating money to charitable causes.
Even if you don't do that, though, you can still help by remembering this is a difficult time for many, so making an extra effort to be nice to others goes a long way.

[Internal Affairs Update]

 I've rewritten much of the IAA job page:

https://www.paradisestation.org/wiki/index.php/Internal_Affairs

 

The major differences are:

1. Now covers new mechanics, like the recently added procedure radio channel.
2. Now has much easier-to-read format, with bullet points.
3. Now explains that IAAs are perfectly encouraged to wander the station and check up on the various departments, notifying that department's head if the department's jobs are violating SOP/etc. IAAs shouldn't be sitting in their office all shift.
4. Now provides more/better guidance on various special (but common) situations, like working with the Magistrate, NTR, etc. Also about things like faxing CentCom.
5. Now gives much clearer guidance on what constitutes misconduct for an IAA (acting against NT's interests), when you can ignore them (major emergencies, if necessary) and who can demote them for misconduct (Magi and Captain).

I'm now volunteering to maintain the page, so if there is anything I have missed, please message me and tell me.

[Runechat]

Runechat is now merged, and in the game.

For more information, see the Guide to Runechat.

 

[1st Survey: Action Proposals]

Here is the proposed TO-DO list for Paradise, based on the 1st survey and subsequent threads/voicemeetings.

The goal here is to provide a list of practical, helpful proposals for improvements to Paradise based community feedback.
 

[Kyet's Tier Guide for Captain]

47 minutes ago, Schalkguy said:

When I play command I do often have trouble completely understanding what is going on in the station. Not to mention getting heads to actually report in timely. I'm not sure what I should do to improve though other than practice.

Some tips:

1. Verify command is actually alive. During hectic rounds, they might be dead before you notice. You can check via suit sensors.
2. Think for a moment about how busy the department is. If the brig is under attack, the HOS is probably in a firefight, and not even looking at their chat window. So they won't hear anything you say. In these situations, try again in a few mins.
3. If you need to get the heads to report in, station-wide announcement is best. Partly for the 'ding' it makes. Partly as it appears in large font. You can also PDA message them, which has a 'ding' as well, no large font, but it will stay on their PDA until they look at it.
4. As a last resort, you can send the Blueshield on a mission to find and check on a head if they aren't responding.
5. Another option is PDAing the IAAs or other roles that provide oversight (IAA, Magi, NTR) and ask them to help you check on the heads in person.

[About administration and how to understand them.]

I'm not sure this guide is helpful.
There are lots of things it says that are just not accurate, at least for Paradise.
For example,

29 minutes ago, robveelben said:

it comes down to everyone who break the rules are griefers and those who do not are good players this is a simple way how most admins will look at complains that have been made.

This is not at all how we look at rule-breaking.
Most people who break the rules do so for one of three reasons:

1. They're a new player who never read the rules, possibly just assuming the rules are the same as the last game/server they played
2. They're a less new player who is trying out more serious roles (like command) for the first time, and haven't yet learned the ins and outs of what is expected of these higher seriousness roles
3. They're a veteran who just had a really bad day, was drunk, or otherwise had a lapse in judgement and did something that, in hindsight, they recognize they should not have done.

Griefers make up an incredibly small proportion of rule-breakers.

I could cover a lot of other things in this guide to a similar level of detail... but suffice it to say this guide says a lot of things that are inaccurate, at least for Paradise.

[Official Staff List]

August 10th:

• Esenno, Friality, Doc, and Tourte have graduated from TA to full Game Admin

Sept 5th:

• Vargh has unretired and is once again a Game Admin

Sept 9th:

• BryanR has stepped down from the position of Game Admin

Sept 22nd:

• SteelSlayer has joined the staff as a PR Reviewer.

[2nd Survey Results Discussion Notes]

Here is the writeup of the notes from the meeting on Saturday (9/12), where we covered the results of the 2nd survey (Special Issue Paradise 2020 Community Survey).

Goals were figuring out:

1. What the survey told us
2. What it means
3. What we can learn from it / improve based on the results

This meeting ran from 1:45pm to 6:20pm, or about 5.5 hours total. Notes are from the voice meeting plus editing a day later to reflect opinions in the survey's freeform answers.

Please post your commentary/etc here.

This thread will run for one week, to enable everyone to have their input, before I look to try to consolidate it into a list of TO-DOs.

This time, the meeting notes are color-coded, with various colors standing in for potential to-do items (e.g: green means something we can address with a PR). A legend for what the colors mean is included at the top.

[2nd Survey Discussion]

Survey data: here

Announcement:  here

Doc discussing results: here

Post your commentary/suggestions/etc in this thread please.

 

[4.5 Forum Upgrade Announcement]

Quick update:

1. New forum skin is now applied for everyone. Old skin is disabled.
2. Discord integration has been patched, confirmed to work, and is now re-enabled.

[4.5 Forum Upgrade Announcement]

Update:

1. I've replaced our old custom skin with a new one.
2. The new custom skin should have almost all the same colors and features as the old one, but is from-scratch redone to be 4.5 compatible, and is vastly easier for me to maintain. You might not notice any difference. Extremely observant people might notice some subtle color or styling differences.
3. Discord integration remains disabled for the moment, as fixing that requires an update from the plugin author.

[4.5 Forum Issues Thread]

I ended up building a new skin for the forums, based on IPB defaults, but with our colors, and manually importing each of our major changes.
With a few CSS overrides, this should solve 99% of issues with forum colors/templates.

[test]

test test test

[4.5 Forum Issues Thread]

The following issues have been addressed:

1. Logo is cut off
2. Navbar is unreadable
3. When creating a thread, title input box text is unreadable
4. Hidden posts are unreadable

[4.5 Forum Issues Thread]

Post your issues here.

[4.5 Forum Upgrade Announcement]

The forum has had a major update today. Here's what you need to know.

1. For the next few days, take backups in notepad of any post you are about to make. While I don't anticipate having to revert the forums, it is possible, and I don't want you all to risk losing any posts.
2. For the next few days, Discord integration will be disabled.
3. Due to the new forum software not being compatible with old templates/CSS, you may notice a lot of weird visual artifacts on the forums. Report these (or any other forum-specific bugs) in the 4.5 report thread here.

 

[Space Law Parole Change]

I don't think Magi+HoS+Captain=>Parole is a viable system. Its hard enough to convince even ONE of those people to grant parole, let alone ALL of them.

The reason for parole going off the Magi alone is that Magi is supposed to be the final authority on space law on station... and unlike the HOS, the magi is there to ensure justic/fairness for all, including prisoners. The HOS should in theory do this, but in practice they often fall into the "play 2 win" mentality whereby they'd just never grant parole to anyone ever.