Machofish

[spoiler2]I'd be down with it![/spoiler2] Yes. This is going to be awesome

Clown Cult.zip

A shot at drawing an Unathi Sec, with a human for height comparison. This one was from a round a while ago where all of the vox in sec grabbed eachother and made a piggyback tower. Eventually they started grabbing other sec officers, reaching critical mass and becoming the ultimate securigularity. "Yeah? Well it sure as hell sez' so right 'ere, bub." Another one of Slade, this time trying to lean more heavily on a sort of "wandering desperado" kind of theme. I always imagined him as being slapped together using cyborg parts provided by various different corporations and interest groups from the Syndicate. Also some shitty attempts at logo type. "Nothing to see here yaya?"

I'm on board with this idea. I know the OP specifically indicated that this would be able to exist alongside the pre-existing Heist gamemode, but personally, I'd go as far as to support removing Heist and implementing this as an alternative, were that possible. The big grievances I keep hearing repeated about Heist mode is that it often results in RP that gets derailed by a sudden helping of validhunting, and/or a RP dynamic that generally only includes the heads of staff - and tends not to involve the rest of the crew as much. Having them appear alongside other antags would mean that they'd spice up the round without completely overshadowing whatever else has occurred during the round. On top of this, having the vox arrive in the middle of a round that includes other antags will make their objectives slightly easier, as sec's attention would be divided between the raiders' activities and other antags. Good thing about Vox is that while they usually do have some questionable end-goals, they never have objectives that include outright assassination or large-scale destruction. Their limited arsenal prevents them from wreaking too much havoc or posing too much of a threat on their own, which is better suited for this.

I might not be remembering this right, but I believe the detective's forensic scanner can analyze reagents (always 5 units of the puke reagent, as I recall) and DNA tags from puke already. If it's not coded in already, I think puking as a general mechanic ought to transfer a percentage of non-blood reagents ( or non-water reagents for slime people) from the puker's body to their vomit. Seeing as from a biological perspective, puking is meant to be a body's natural emergency reflex for rapidly purging disease or poison from itself. Of course just so someone can't puke themselves back to health, it would only affect non-processed reagents, and only 5% or 10% of any currently existing reagents. It would serve the dual functions of slightly alleviating the impact of extreme poisoning, and leave a method for identifying what someone was poisoned with even after the reagents ran their course. This might be a little gross, but it could also be introduced alongside a manual *puke verb, allowing players to attempt to force themselves to vomit if they realize they've just ingested a lethal chemical like cyanide or inidropil, or if a Kidan accidentally swallows a sentient diona nymph and they need to puke it up before it gutbursts them - needless to say players would have to have their hands free in order to start agitating their own tonsils, so no chance for incapacitated or restrained victims to save themselves this way. As a minor safeguard against spamming, the verb could take about 10 seconds to complete fully, and would instantly bring the user down to 'starving'; if they're not at normal nutrition, the verb will simply cause them to dry-heave with no effect. If possible, maybe vomiting more than three consecutive times would start causing oxyloss and short bouts of unconciousness - so that way Bulma an assistant can't casually hijack one of the vending machines and proceed to systematically paint the whole station with their own puke like some sort of vile space-monkey marking their territory. It would be especially good for allowing the codebase to simulate alchohol poisoning in greater detail - which is obviously the most important thing to consider here.

One problem with "die a glorious death" is that it often causes a -lot- of stupid, chaotic, poorly-planned and often ridiculously destructive things to happen. Things like a traitor deciding to systematically scatter c4 across the outside of the station or give the AI antimov and run off. I know the admins try to indicate that the glorious death objective isn't synonymous with "kill until killed" but it often pans out like that regardless. Especially when it comes to tracking or trying to counter traitors with 'die gloriously'. It becomes nearly impossible to discern what the 'endgame' is for a traitor rampage is when they don't have an endgame plan. It's extremely frustrating and frankly caustic to RP when you're dealing with an antag who has absolutely no self-preservation nor any concern for their own survival. I would equate it to trying to deal with a griefer in that regard. On the flip side, I can understand how 'die a glorious death' could work - I've often noticed that traitors with this objective tend to be much more audacious and reckless about their objectives since they're not obsessed with getting off the station alive and preferably without enough crew awareness to spark a lynching, which can result in quite a few interesting moments on its own. I think if 'die gloriously' was replaced with something less rigid such as "Do not allow yourself to be captured alive," or more directly "Complete your objectives above all else, no matter the costs," that would encourage less absurd and paradoxical behaviour from a traitor, while still encouraging that more ruthless, bold antag activity that shakes up the round on a large scale. Overall, a traitor hiding away in maint for the whole shift because of an "alive and free" objective is better than a traitor who quickly C4's themselves right after spacing their muder target's brain because of the "die gloriously" objective. What's even worse is the traitors who go on a rampage and then flat-out use the 'suicide' verb the second a pair of cuffs get on them. "Die a glorious death," ends up being re-interpreted by many as "Ruin the round for as many people as possible, then die like an irreconcilable piece of shit." As for the lore, I believe that the Competing Corporations section of the wiki lists "Cybersun Industries" as possessing "unchallenged" mind-manipulation technology - it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine them abducting and mentally warping NT personnel to their whim, à la the "Ludovico Technique" from Clockwork Orange. That being said, why they'd direct their agents to kill themselves after proving their worth by completing their other objectives is entirely beyond me.

For the record, here, This was probably during the absolute fiasco where sechuds were glitching like crazy, but I never heard of it giving false-negative or false-positive on implants, that part was always correct. May be related, sorry if it isn't. Carry on. From firsthand experience, I'm pretty sure Shadowlings need to perform a separate process to remove someone's loyalty implant, -then- they need to do the enthrallment process. I've been in a situation where a loyalty implant was removed by a shadowling, but they were stopped before they could properly follow through with enthrallment. Really, if you don't see the "their features are unnaturally tight and drawn" flavor text when you examine them while they're not wearing a mask, it's a safe bet that they're clean unless they've done something really suspicious.

On the topic of Undertale, I think it is a little too soon to be adding it into the SS13 universe - I personally don't believe enough time has passed to assess whether or not Undertale is really going to last as a cultural staple. Putting this in comparison to other cultural icons referenced in SS13's code, the 'Alien' franchise kicked off in 1979, and is still remembered as a staple of western sci-fi cinema - it's not just 'some movie' - I would personally argue that it enjoys similar cultural status to Jurrasic Park in terms of how it is remembered for its groundbreaking impact on western cinema. The station-AI is a scramble of different cultural references mashed together: Firstly, the Asimov Laws of Robotics came from sci-fi fiction author Isaac Asimov, all the way back in 1939. The default Shodan AI image is of course a reference to System Shock in 1994. There's also the CentComm Officer 'uniform', which is a reference to the Special Forces Commando outfits from Fifth Element (1997).(I might be wrong on that one - feel free to correct me) The most recently-dated cultural reference I can think of in the server is ponies* how SS13's engineering hardsuits are pretty much copies of the RIGsuits from Dead Space, released in 2008. Other than the much earlier System Shock franchise, there hasn't really been a sci fi horror game that quite matched Dead Space's theme. Furthermore, the use of the hardsuits fulfills a practical application in the game, and in terms of visual communication, it's easy for a newcomer to the game to take one look at the hardsuit and make the mental connection to sci-fi engineering. *I'll touch on that later. There are a hell of a lot of other references I've missed - including 2001: Space Odyssey, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Robocop, Portal, Terminator, Dr. Who, Star Wars, Soylent Green, and probably a dozen others that I haven't noticed yet. What these references have in common is that they're all from media that each of them satisfies at least one of the following: It maintains a sci-fi theme. It has stood the test of time and is generally accepted as a staple of western media culture. The reference is incorporated in such a way that it fulfils or is suited to enriching a niche or facet in the game. As a final example, Paradise has a surprisingly filled-out and fully sprited mob roster for essentially the entire cast of the "My Little Pony" franchise - but they only appear during rare displays of admin abuse. Right now, I'm willing to bet someone's going to quote this along the lines of "Oh boy, not THIS fucking whinebox again," and that reaction is exactly what I am talking about: MLP was a pop culture fad in the sense that it had its day, and now that day is done - references to it feel insipid and bland because its fandom it is no longer considered relevant in pop culture. This is not, of course, to downplay Undertale's popularity - I personally found the game brilliant, but it was also released in September of this very year. It's way too soon to make the call of whether Undertale will be remembered once it stops riding the wave of pop culture, and it's far too soon to determine whether or not it'll still be in good taste when that happens.

I write most of my faxes along these lines, and I tend to get a fax response rate somewhere in the ballpark of 80%, give or take. When I first started doing faxes as NT Rep, I figured that writing and eloquently revising a 3-4 paragraph short essay would show that you've put serious thought into the fax and also communicate that you're serious about the faxing process. I'm pretty sure this is a great way to have your faxes ignored. Structuring your faxes into 1-2 concise, objectively-worded paragraphs will usually get an idea across in a way that's clear without being droning and eye-straining. As said, the big mental checks to consider are whether or not a problem can be handled in-house before asking for CC's help, and if not, explain in the fax why it can't be handled on-station. As for IAA faxes, I like to -tell myself- that I a play a more even-handed HoS than most, but I still find it's often a very difficult decision to fire/suspend an officer based on a fax. More often than not, there's usually only 1-3 active officers during any given shift of 30-80 people, and guaranteed non-antag officers from arrivals or roundstart are almost always in short supply. I don't think there's a single, objective answer when asking the question of whether bad sec is better than no sec at all, but it's something that comes up whenever IAA investigations are launched. This gives me a few ideas - for another thread, though. One question - when we're starting a fax to CentComm in letter format, who do we write as the recipient? I'm guessing that it's not exactly professional to try and address Comms Officer Jenkins directly, but "NAS Trurl" feels like a little bit of a generalization. As long as we're on the topic of faxes, do you think there should be a forum guide on Syndicate Faxing using an e-magged communications device? Stuff like what's reasonable to request from the Syndibase, what the expected benefits are to contacting the Syndicate, etc. I think it's an option that opens a lot of unique possibilities, and an interesting dynamic that very few traitors ever attempt. Notwithstanding the fact that I've now put it on my SS13 bucket list to fax a butt to the Syndicate just to see what'll happen. It was my idea first don't steal it.

ALIVEWIZ.png[/attachment] This one was after a fairly long mid-round discussion about the legitimacy of validhunting antags. In short, friendly pink wizard IPC appeared, got captured, straight-jacketed, and sent back to CC.

Magus Robes. Not pictured: The wizard slipping on a banana peel and subsequently getting their face melted off with lasers. The trusty telescopic shield. Bah, I need to draw my own characters less. I need to work on drawing boots more, though. They're not very good. When the detective isn't busy getting drunk/ignoring the radio/dead in some godforsaken locker in maint, they can be pretty much one of Sec's most useful assets. Wear your gloves, antags - those fingerprints are gonna give you away. Funny thing about the shading technique here - I actually did the blurred shading on the coat using an HB pencil and a cheap low-quality eraser. One of my most memorable experiences in SS13 was growing a man-eater plant as a traitor botanist - I honestly wasn't expecting it to have dialogue when I grew it. I can't remember it world-for-word, but it was comedy gold -absolutely worth failing all my traitor objectives for that round. Fairly self-explanatory. Thankfully, I've never been in the situation where I could study an authentic chainsaw decapitation up close, so the detail on the foreground corpse is a bit limited.

Droo sum Nookawps Basic pose - deciding what they should look like when interpreted out of the pixel model I'm not happy unless I have a piece with extreme perspective/depth sketch in a set. I was trying to put the two foreground Nukies into a bobsled-team pose, but I couldn't find any good reference images to go by. I've been listening to music again. Working on the positioning for the e-swords was the tough part of this - not perfect posing, but kinda surprised the paper didn't burst into flames from all the erasing/redrawing I was doing. Briefly considered trying to convert it to vector - decided against it. Okay, let's not beat around the bush here: That's Alice. Enough said. Unfortunately I was only regaled with the story of an apparent "Dunk Ops" round this very night, or else I'd have done of a sketch of that to add to the set. I'll probably edit it into the set later - standby.

Heya. Some of you might know me as "That fucking spessman who keeps pissing people off." Over the last month or so I've been sketching a few of my experiences aboard Paradise station to procrastinate, and I thought I'd upload some of the results. Keep in mind that I have no formal applied art education, so most of this stuff is rough/poorly-cropped etc. "Kill them all; God will recognize his own." His Sergey senses are tingling. Another sketch of Sergey. Really, after reading all the praise on his crew-record thread, I couldn't help myself. Sergey Kurilyochov slams unknown into the reinforced window! "SkreeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" This is based on a round where the Vox warden got his legs blown off by a PDA bomb - medbay gave him a wheelchair, and due to a bug some sort of non-euclidian bluespace mumbo-jumbo, he gained the ability to move at ridiculously high speeds. Relevant. Everyone's favourite ramshackle Syndicate IPC. SLaDOS's favourite opening gimmick as AI was to misuse the announcement system. This dame here. One of the more excruciating things to deal with as HoS is when you get two people who continually level petty, stupidly vague accusations of criminal activity at each other and absolutely refuse to fucking let it go. It probably isn't a good thing that I've managed to get myself bwoinked in each HoS round I've played for a full week, with no bans. I have a feeling someone in management is getting real sick of my shit, but I don't know. Anyways, that's my art. Feel free to comment, move on, volley-fire your rotten vegetables, etc.

Name: Cecilia Fleming Age: 40 Gender: Female Race: Human Blood Type: B- General Occupational Role(s): Security. Biography: Qualifications: Employment Records: Security Records: Medical Records: Personnel Photo (Appearance text): 5-foot-11. Blonde, gaunt. She has deep creases under her eyes, an angular jaw, and slight frown lines. Commendations [only to be added by admin]: Reprimands [only to be added by admin]: Other Notes: Edited 2021-05-23

Overall, I feel as if our new space law is encouraging-- No, mandating the security department to act like shit. This realization came upon me when I was looking at an old post I put on our 'stories of shitcurity' thread, where I wrote something along the lines of: " officer tried to brig engineer for 15 minutes just for throwing a bag at him. That uncivilized troglodyte!" Yet now, 15 minutes would be considered a pretty average sentence, for our laws. The primary difference I'm seeing is that TGs law expects several charges to be laid for a single incident. Yet we are using Bay's brig times that expect officers to apply no more than one or two charges at the most for a single incident. To make a point, let me compare our current version of Space Law (as of March 13, 2015) to the TG space law that we've based it on: http://www.ss13.eu/wiki/index.php/Space_Law TG's Crime Sentencing: Minor charges: 1 minute. Medium charges: 2 minutes (+1 minute increase over a minor charge). Major charges: 5 minutes (+3 minute increase over a medium charge). "In the event of a sentence exceeding the 10 minute limit of the timer inform the Warden so he may add the rest of the time later." Paradise's Crime Sentencing: Minor charges: 5 minutes. Medium charges: 10 minutes (+5 minute increase over a minor charge). Major charges: 15 minutes (+5 minute increase over a medium charge). "In cases where the final sentence is more than 60 minutes, it is changed to a perma-brig sentence." I have the utmost respect for Paradise's staff. However, all things remaining equal, I am of a firm stance that the new laws essentially encourage and enforce shitcurity.

Just a spontaneous idea that's popped into my head. I'm not sure what the balancing details were behind removing the muzzle as a security-accessible item in the execution room, but I think a witty (and arguably functional) alternative would be to add a Hannibal Lecter-style bite mask. Individuals wearing this will still be able to speak, but this would have a few practical applications for dealing with captured antagonists. As should be apparent, vampires wearing this would not be capable of biting people, and Geneticists with the matter-eater ability will be unable to eat things. This would be a great precaution for security officers who want to safely interrogate or move an antagonist towards medbay, for example. Also SS13 is laden with references to media and cinema icons, and I think it might be a fun thing to try and code into the game. Again, I haven't seen the reason for why the original muzzle was removed, so I don't know if whatever balancing problems applied to that would apply to this.

I can't agree enough that medical borgs should be able to have the Crew Monitor enabled 24/7. I'm a bit weary of giving them a suite of regular surgical tools, as that would make them a little bit too robust. Like their mounted hypospray, which can only synthesize 3 chemicals, I propose giving them a miniature saw which can only be used for surgery. It would act as both a scalpel and a saw during surgery, but it would work much slower in either role: taking 5-10 seconds longer for being used in a scalpel's context, and 10-20 seconds longer when used in a sawblade's context. I'd be agreeable with adding the usual suite of the cautery, bone gel, bone setter, and hemostat clamps; their uses are too contextual to be practical outside of a surgery room.

The NT Rep should be allowed to send photos to CentComm via the fax machine - or have a separate system entirely for transmitting photos available on the bridge. If I'm correct, our current Security Overhaul thread says that the station can activate code gamma by using the fax machine to send photos of cultists or fully-suited Nuke Ops. This is made impossible by the minor fact that we have no official way of actually sending photos to CentComm. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but it also seems that the NT Rep's stamp icon is missing.

Wait, so what happens if/when the Customs Officer decides that "No, you're not allowed to enter the station"? Do you just get kicked from the server, or you're forced to screw around as much as possible in the arrivals area until you finally discover a way around the sec checkpoint?

I'll throw my lot in with the original post. Being able to shrug off damage like they do is a ridiculously powerful trait in itself. I understand that their ability to be space-worthy, fireproof and not need atmosphere is part of their 'canon' - which cites that the diona developed from giant, sentient masses of millions of tiny little organisms that survived by orbiting near stars. I think their speed should be heavily nerfed as the remaining option. As suggested earlier, they should move as slow as a malnourished crewmember all of the time.

As long as this thread is already made, I'm just going to mention a few tricks I've picked up during my own time playing as Sec. Some of you may be aware of some of these, but evidence in-game suggests that many more of you are not: Donuts. Seriously, these have saved my Sec Officer from spider bites, plasma toxin, carp attacks, you name it. If you entered the game as a security officer, eating a donut will have roughly the same effect as a tricordrazine injection. Consumption of one or two donuts will take care of light-to-moderate toxin or brute damage: This is perfect for those spider infestation rounds where Medbay has been overrun, or if you need a quick stitch-up before going back into that big, intimidating jungle of a station. I'm fairly certain it won't let you shake off more serious conditions such as collapsed lungs or broken bones, however. The Warden, the HoS, Detectives, and all Security Officers receive this benefit. The Security HUD. You can use this to adjust someone's criminal records without even needing to visit a console! This is a great way to increase Beepsky's reaction time. To set records via this method, simply EXAMINE* someone while you're wearing a pair of Security HUDglasses. At the bottom of their description, there should be the following: Criminal Status: [none] Records: [view][add comment] Now that you see these, click the [none] button that appears, and you can set them to the criminal status of your choice. Setting them to [*Arrest*] will mark them out to your fellow HUD-wearing officers, and Beepsky** will go into a fit should he catch sight of them. Important Note: If you set someone to 'arrest', remember to use [add comment], and write a quick summary of why they must be arrested. *You can immediately examine someone by holding down the SHIFT key and left-clicking on them. This removes the slight, sometimes lethal lag delay caused by right-clicking. You can thank me whenever you'd like. **Also note that you can summon Beepsky to your location by using the "Security Bot Records" function on your PDA. Beepsky will deviate from his normal route and move adjacent to you. Upon doing so you can drag Beepsky behind you with ctrl+click. This is perfect for if you need backup to investigate those bloody footprints leading in to that scary, dark maintenance shaft - and the rest of Security are too busy milking their snakes back at the brig to help you. The Warden I try to play the Warden mostly, and it can be a very rewarding job if Security is competent. One of the big things that Security forgets to acknowledge are the prisoner implants. Mostly everyone is aware of the rarely-used Loyalty Implants, which are a way of confirming the identity of the HoS and the Captain if someone attempts to impersonate them. Tracking Implants Easy to use, inject these little beauties into anybody and a bright red blinking dot will appear next to the implanted individual on your HUDglasses. Perfect for those highly suspicious or belligerent prisoners that you suspect of being an Antag - but can't be legally convicted. Make sure to prime each implant to a separate number, and the Warden can track their location on the prisoner console. If you see that the Medic you implanted earlier is hanging around in Bar Maintenance, have him dragged back in or find his probably emaciated body - because you injected the wrong guy. This has saved me during more than one Changeling round, where the changeling changed forms, but was easily identifiable seeing as the tracker can't be extracted without surgery. Chemical Implants Be much more cautious about when or when not to use these. You can/should prime the implant with up to 30 liquid units of whatever the hell you want, provided that the CMO*** or the Chemist can provide it. You can activate the implant via the prisoner console to release the chemical at any time - but be aware that the implantee should stay well-fed, or the chemical implant might activate on its own. Two uses for this are immediately present: 1.Implant a prisoner being readied for parole with a non-lethal sedative like soporific or a MINIMUM amount of chloral hydrate. (Seriously, don't do anything more than 5 units because it'll probably get you jobbanned.) OR 2.Fill it with tricordrazine and give it to your Officers, who'll need it because they forgot to eat their donuts. This tends not to work, seeing as a Sec Officer won't be able to scream "ACTIVATE MY IMPLANT" when they've been parapenned or mute-stung by a changeling.