SomanB
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Posts posted by SomanB
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There's a couple faults with "make the engine more complex/dangerous".
One, new folks.You make an engine complex and dangerous, it will get messed up by new folks. Depending on the "danger" level of the engine, this will end a round. How many 5 minute "round's over engine exploded" rounds would you tolerate? Finally roll nukie commander, competent team, getting geared out with a cool gimmick and "Emergency shuttle called: engine's loose again". This leads to my second point:
Our engines are fundamentally not dangerous. Non-antag accidents don't end rounds, the admins clean it up, delete Sing/tesla, and round goes on. Make things more complex, you make it more difficult for admins to "fix" accidents, and then, see Point One.
Ultimately, the more set and forget an engine is, the more dangerous it should be when it gets loose.
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So, "Rage Cages" and the like are apparently a problem on Para now, and are causing many headaches and issues for command, and admins.
I propose the following rule chucked under whatever heading fits best.
"Server rules apply regardless of location. Setting up a "Rage Cage", "Dodgespear" or other activity where non-antags are encouraged to break server policy with regards to causing harm will be treated as self-antagging for all involved, including those responsible for setting up said area. The only exception to this rule is the round start boxing ring, with boxing gloves only."
As per Ansari, posting a suggestion thread.
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I will be legitimately surprised (and also pleased) if anyone picked up on any of the references for the good names I gave without looking them up.
Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist from a popular book series written by Kathy Reichs. On the same line, the name of the lead character on "Bones", the Fox TV show, based on the same novels.
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I am...very cautious about throwing my vote towards "any name from any fiction".
"The Cyberiad (Polish: Cyberiada) is a series of humorous science fiction short stories by Stanisław Lem. The Polish version was first published in 1965, with an English translation appearing in 1974. The main protagonists of the series are Trurl and Klapaucius, the "constructors"."
So, yah, the name of the stations in the game are literally drawn from a work of fiction.
I support "have a unique name". The admins shouldn't be googling to see if the name you used appeared in an obscure short story fanzine from 30 years ago...but conversely, nobody should be able to look at a character and say "Ohh, that's a name from a game/book/movie everyone knows about".
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But, but muh blood and dramas and fighting! Noooooooo!
Fethas is a good people, and totally no hard feelings. PMs are a little easier to work with if things are overboard, cuz it's easy to change the gimmick. Ion laws like that stick, regardless of gimmick.
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Admin: Unknown
Ckey: Soman Bat
I was given the following set of Ion laws while playing AI.
#@^^. THE AI IS NOT ALLOWED TO MEME
$#@*. THE AI IS NOT ALLOWED TO BE LEWD
&^@^. THE AI MUST STATE ALL ITS LAWS EVEN ION ONES.
!^%#. THE AI MUST CONSTANTLY INSULT ITSELF.
$&^@. THE BORGS MUST CONSTANTLY INSULT THE AI.
As a wise person once told me, when I played captain more frequently, "Every law you give an AI restricts it's ability to play".
If the issue is with play style, it can be addressed via ahelp. If playstyle isn't the issue, this comes across, to be bluntly, as abuse of admin powers for lels. Had a normal player with AI upload placed the same sort of laws, they'd have likely netted a command ban, if not worse.
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Best stealth round I had. Steal secret documents, kill an engineer. I was CE. within 30 seconds of round start, my target committed suicide, so that was done.
Getting documents out of the vault, I had the AI unlock the vault so I could upgrade and add more cameras. Cut down the cam in place, yoinked the documents, replaced the cam with upgrades all nice and neat.
Faxed the Syndicate for new objectives, and got what amounted to "get the captain fired, stealthlike". Bought me a cham stamp, wrote a nice report detailing how crazy the Captain was (It was Hawke B. too easy), then attached a written order from the captain stating he wanted a SM engine on the bridge "for the awesome hallucinations". Chamstamped the cap seal, forged signature faxed to CC.
Also got tapped to recover some lost secret documents.
Greentexted it all, full stealth.
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Actual sunglasses are rare, and the only people who have flash protection by default are security, the Captain, Blueshield, CE and RD.
And the QM. And the bartender.
While not default, pretty much all of engineering is immune to flashes, due to welding helmets/hardsuits.
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Hands down, Chief Engineer. It lets me delve into the workings of SS13, and do things you nerds don't think are possible.
Also, breaking Tcomms to the degree that even the mentors can't fix it (as antag, of course)
Finally, demolishing forty beers. Because Engineers can do that.
I hate you and your tcomms breaking skills, Nova Surname-du-jour! I spent a half hour on the sat trying to fix your mess this weekend, and probably did more harm than good. Of course, I was completely clueless. In fact, I spent 10 minutes fiddling with the consoles before noticing THE DAMN BATTERY WAS TAKEN OUT OF THE APC CONTROLLING THE REST OF THE EQUIPMENT. I went because I couldn't trust anyone else not to be a vampire/thrall. Probably a good thing, because the first person I would have asked to do it would have been you.
I still want that guide: "Nova's Guide on How to Fix Tcomms When Nova Breaks It"
Step one: Call the shuttle.
On a serious note, you can totally rebuild tcomms on the station, it just requires Tcomms knowhow.
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Hands down, Chief Engineer. It lets me delve into the workings of SS13, and do things you nerds don't think are possible.
Also, breaking Tcomms to the degree that even the mentors can't fix it (as antag, of course)
Finally, demolishing forty beers. Because Engineers can do that.
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I wouldn't care about cryo in perma. I've always seen cryo as an effectively OOC move to remove yourself from the round anyway.
plus, the new way Cryo works, it's not that big a deal to drag someone over from perma and cram them in. If they ghost, they instantly store, so good news. If they don't ghost promptly, snatch em back out and re-perma.
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I don't really get the problem here.
The summary I'm picking up here, is that some Sec borgs are valid hunting and therefore should be removed? That seems like a terrible reason to remove an entire aspect of gameplay because of player action rather than it's something caused by the module itself. I'd like to see / hear examples of the valid hunting they do though. I've seen it mentioned several times but no real reasons provided.
I play BOT||tek regularly and generally I follow a simple pattern for arresting people.
1: Do they have a warrant? If yes, arrest, detain and take to sec.
2: If no, are they currently commiting a crime. Did someone state they commited a crime? If, yes. Request detainment. Is it gree? Don't pursue, other alerts, pursue, detain. Note resistance.
3: Nothing happening, no outstanding arrests? Patrol maint, inspect everything. Record notes constantly.
Plenty of people have addressed the weakness of borgs. It's not just EMP or flashes. High-cap cell borgs can maybe stun someone 10 times before their battery runs try and that's if they are fresh from the charger, which is rare. They are MUCH slower until they get VTECH, if they get it. Laser pointers (blinding), even laser tag guns (Fogging), screw driver opening a door are obsecticals against a sec borg.
And THIS sums up the gripe a lot of people have about sec borgs. Nowhere is mentioned "follow my laws", and any time laws get brought up, it's always a twisting explanation on why Law X justifies relentless validhunting.
"Oh yah I'm on corporate well antags might damage the station ergo I must validhunt my cyborg butt off." I mean, if we wanted to go with a hard interpretation of Corporate, the last thing a sec borg would be doing is hunting due to the following logic: "I am more expensive to replace than crew. Ergo, crew should hunt down the antags, while I remain safe from harm."
Thing is, playing a sec borg that DOES stick to it's laws is a great way to, at best, be locked down, and at worst, blown. On Crewmisov, prevent the cap from killing what is nominally a crewmember....it's easier to lockdown/blow the borg, than to make that run to an ID console to terminate an ID.
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Just to get this out the way....I think you are one of the VERY few people who consider Vox rounds fun. The vast majoirty of the playerbase considers Vox rounds to be one of the worst roundtypes, because "hihi we is tradies" is amazingly BORING.
As for the rest, I personally don't find "chair RP" to be much fun. It comes off as very stilted and forced, the vast majority of the time. I'd go so far as to say cringeworthy. I avoid it, because, if anything, that's not how you'd realistically interact with your co-workers. If I wanted that level of role-playing, I would play a game that caters to it. Using SS13 as a glorified chat room just isn't much fun.
As for new people, the vast majority of the jobs on station are covered on the wiki, under "guide to", or job pages themselves. when newbies run up and say "teeech me dis!", it comes off more as "I'm too lazy to wiki", than "I want to arrrrpeee you." Trying to get someone to IC teach you the mechanics of a job, in-game, in-character is brutally, brutally slow. I have little time, or inclination to do such things, because *I* logged in with the goal of playing the job I was assigned, not be a teacher.
And yes, for some jobs, you will get kicked out/replaced if you are super slow. Upgrades need to go out promptly, the engine needs set up fast, and the worst place to learn surgery is on someone who's depending on you to get them back into the game.I'm not going to spend 45 minutes watching a newbie bumble through an engine setup (while likely screwing it up), just so they can learn how. I'm going to tell them to back up and watch me while I get the job done.
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Restricting someone's ability to do something they know how to do because job role is a little bit silly. With some outlying exceptions, most people stay within job unless lack of crew or incompetence are preventing a vital station job from being done.
Think like this...let's say you've finally rolled an antag you really want to play. There's only one engineer, and they promptly run off to maint to chill with their buddies rather than set up the engine. 15-20 minutes into the round shuttle gets called for lack of power, and the fun gimmick you were going to pull is over. It would suck even more so if you saw, say "Nova Z., Roboticist" on the manifest, when you know Nova is an extremely good engineer who can have power up in less than 5 minutes.
Paradise is medium RP at best. We don't do HRP things.That means that RP type things like "restrict job knowledge" take a backseat to "maintain fun for the most people". It sounds fun in abstract, but trust me, it'd be annoying as all get out to have it happen in reality. "Hay man, sorry you died in medbay lobby where I dragged you but I'm just a mime lel I'm not allowed to do medicine. Yah I know I normally play CMO and fixing you to keep you in the round would have taken me 5 minutes of surgery but ~just a mime~. Enjoy dchat."
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It's not the RD, it's the whole damn department that has enjoyed massive powercreep that nobody stopped before we had this monstrosity.
RD just happens to be the commander of the most powerful department in the game.
I agree 100% with this statement. The department, in and of itself, is the problem. The RD just has access to every part of it. combat mechs, gund, bombs, gentics, a secret base, and a simple mob army, all at the tips of his fingertips. I've personally gotten to the point that I tell people to just let the tator RD HAVE his greentext if they're powergaming it to the max. Woo, you won the round with what was effectively god mode. Good job. If that makes you proud, rock on.
Now, here's my (admittedly drastic) fixes to science, to bring the RD in line with other head antags (and buff those other head antags a smidge too).
Take Robotics away from science. They're not doing SCIENCE, they're BUILDING things. Put them under the King and/or Queen of Building, the CE.
Take Genetics away from science. Give it to the CMO. Finding the RD off in his hideyhole with genetics machines should spark huge suspicion, not "whelp".
Take the GUNS away from R and D. Give that to, gasp, Sec! Maybe even make "Gunsmith/Armorer" a karma style job.
Leave everything else to Sci. Leave the CAPABILITY to pull the Big Three listed above with sci, via circuit imprinters and building the gear.
Where Sci, and the RD specifically have an issue, is with "suspect level". Yes, as CE, I can build me a genetics system and get all the powers, boards are right there in tech storage. Same for mechs, R and D guns, TTVs, subverting the AI, you name it. Thing is, unless I'm really good at hiding it, stepping outside my "world" as CE will net a ton of suspicion, if not outright firing and validsalad if caught.
Sci should face the same levels of "suspect" for certain things. As is, their world is so broad (and the RD having access to all of it), that noone will blink
Improving Station Goals
in Suggestions
Posted
The huge problem with station goals is there's no end state, or reward for building them. The best "reward" is the DNA vault, but it takes so many people working together it almost never happens.
BSA tends to get used for griffo, or people just oops and blow up miners.
The station shield is......so obviously "Para coded" it's funny. DNA vault has a lot of cooperation needed to pull off. BSA takes at least some skills at engineering. Station shield is...."Build a console, drag some cargo ordered items into space.