Tayswift

For mentors the follow button isn't very useful. Not sure how complex this would be, but what if the follow button for mentors allowed an observing mentor to use the ghost follow command to follow them instead?

When were golems not valid? Plenty of times when there's an antagonist in xenobio there's been golem purges.

Also, if people try cloning as the first thing, and it rejects you for "mental interface failure", then they might not try other methods like SR or brain transplantation.

I laughed here and then disregarded your suggestion. I don't think it's that absurd to be personally against cloning. Maybe you're skeptical that your soul actually transfers upon death, so you'd rather stick to your original brain and body. It's the problem of personal identity.

Welcome! Yay, roleplaying!

Only just finished your (1)st day and you've already betrayed us! Shame! :P

Sort of like borers. The shadowling tumor should act like a borer...when it gets removed, you gain control of your body back, which would solve the problem @imsxz mentioned. This sounds really interesting, actually. The facial recognition thing for thralls should be removed since slings will have a harder time once civilians aren't running into maintenance. This would increase the paranoia and uncertainty of the station, since you wouldn't know who's actually in control of their own mind. I feel like this would be able to create the feeling that changelings were intended to evoke. It would probably bring new life to a game mode that is relatively stale for the most part.

This is a great idea, but the original player wouldn't be able to do anything till dethrallment. Also, there could be a situation where there's not enough ghosts to take over the thralls.

Maybe doctors start with implants that let them do surgery slightly faster or with less failure rate or something. And CMO can have a few spare in the locker for HoP recruits.

This is really cool. My only concern is that they might be confused with the Unathi.

In some cases it might not be possible, eg if you save someone and they karma you for saving them. Though I suppose it's not really that big of a deal since a lot of times you can sort of guess why you got karma. So as long as that's the case I think it should be fine. You know me too well :)

Feedback would also endanger the anonymity of the karma system. You might feel compelled to give karma back to whoever gave you the karma. I think it's better if you don't know the reason, otherwise people will be driven to farm karma based on their feedback. I think the karma system does favor certain people, but there's not much you can do to police the giving of karma. There can often be more than 100 people in the round. That's over 100 karma exchanges for a handful of admins to check, especially if karma is mandatory. They'd have to go through the logs to make sure that no powergamers got karma. Seems a little ridiculous to implement.

Here's the PR revert discussion.

During my first round, I managed to get my emergency box open. I thought "whoa, this game is pretty complex. Let's see if this will let me survive in space". So I put on my oxygen mask and oxygen tank and somehow managed to find my way out the one airlock that's always open in arrivals. As I floated out into space I realized that was dying of pressure, temperature, and suffocation (I hadn't turned on my internals). At that point I was pretty impressed by the depth of the simulation. I somehow found my way back to the airlock and died right outside of it. I asked on mentorhelp what to do, and they basically said I was fucked since I had no idea what suit sensors were and that I'd have to wait for someone to stumble on my corpse. Unfortunately the only person that passed by my corpse didn't bother to bring it back inside. Thankfully the emergency shuttle was called so I didn't have to wait around for too long staring at my corpse.

What if you had a page that you could send people to read where the sentence with the code words dynamically changes? The sentence would be randomly inserted into one of the rules in the middle and the words would be randomly generated. You could seed the RNG with the banned user's CKEY so each user gets a unique page. Or seed it with the number of their forum topic so every ban gets a unique rules page.

Why not just make this version of the PAI a syndicate uplink only thing? That'd probably handle all the balance issues. It would be like a different flavor of holoparasite.

This is the crux of the issue. Yes, the more levels you have, the more precisely your in-game preferences can correspond to your in-brain preferences. But at some point, there's diminishing returns to increasing the resolution of job preference selection. I think most people agree that 3 levels is fine. High is the job you really really want, medium is jobs you like, and low is jobs you don't mind getting.

Keep in mind the sounds also need to have some form of free license that allows Paradise to use it. Also, fart noises were removed for a reason. They're juvenile and serve only to bring the RP level of the server down.

PR is up

Mid round blob isn't supposed to have a good shot at winning. It's supposed to just make the round a bit more interesting. Another game mode is probably active alongside blob, so the blob wrecking everything might not be a satisfying end to the shift.

Psychiatrist has so much potential when played right. I remember one round a long time ago where we caught and brigged a greytider. Though the greytider was a little insane and suicidal at first, the psychiatrist came in and talked with him for almost the rest of the shift about how the greytider had lost his girlfriend in a tragic accident back on Earth etc. They'd become besties by the end. It was a very heartwarming, wholesome shift

So what you're saying is that there are balance implications. Okay, so basically you could tell who is an antag and who's not by seeing if you can see their ID. I'd also argue that the ideal changling should impersonate their target so well that it causes paranoia, horror, and confusion. This is the point of changeling, to basically recreate The Thing. Your argument for this is that antags should be stealthy. So then this affects balance heavily because you MUST remain stealthy now, or when you mess up and go loud, your ID will be disabled. Stealthy antags are not necessarily fun or interesting antags. Remember, antags are supposed to make things more interesting, so if you force people to accomplish objectives without being seen or heard by anyone, then it won't be as interesting. Especially when the antag becomes functionally marooned after they're discovered. I'm really confused by this. How is an ID useful if you can't use it? How is this supposed to work? What happens when a changeling takes over someone else and uses their identity? You can still figure out who's an antag by checking if their ID can be disabled or not. This basically provides a flawless syndicate, vampire, ling, sling, and cultist(?) test. Which reminds me, you forgot to account for slings and cultists. Now, whenever someone's been kidnapped by slings or cultists, disable their ID. Sling thralls and cultists would have a much harder time. Unless their ID gets magically protected upon being captured or something, but then it just gets way too complicated. Heads can already demote people out of their department so I don't see why this massively balance affecting change is necessary when the only benefit it'll provide is slightly faster demoting.

I agree that the upload circuitboard should be more secure. It's more interesting to have to break into secure tech storage and creates room for people to notice that the board is gone. It's already really hard to find a random upload console somewhere on the station, and people who are fast at constructing and deconstructing can be very mobile with the upload. I don't know if it's necessary to put the AI upload board in a lockbox too. That may be overkill. I'm not sure you have to be paranoid about scientists changing your laws. IC, none of the current default lawsets really care that much about the AI being tampered with, and OOC, subversion isn't all that common and when it is, it's usually decently interesting. Though if you really hate being subverted for some reason you can just keep the protolathe open on your screen and monitor what scientists are making at all times.

I don't understand this part. How would a real antag get around this? Once security knows you're an antag, they're going to have your ID disabled. This seems like it would affect balance.

The issue with gating captain behind playtime in all departments is that good leaders aren't defined by knowing every little thing about what they're managing. Good leaders make smart, well-informed decisions by listening carefully to their subordinates that specialize in certain areas. That's why, for example, the president of a country doesn't need to know how to be a doctor, engineer, businessperson, etc at the same time. CMO is a different story of course, since often you're the only one who has any idea how medbay works. Captains should ideally have some leadership experience, and have played on the server for a while. Job bans can probably handle the rest.