necaladun

Overall this is a pretty solid idea and has good merits. Allowing people to RP without exposing their identity has def RP benefits. Having them craftable is great so that it doesn't guarantee they're an antag. Along with the lack of destructive potential, it seems solidly a C class contraband. It's not grief that's my worry here per-se - the item isn't going to hide you from admins! - it's being generally low-RP and memey that's my worry. Anonymously shouting about shitcurity over comms, and general low-grade greytide behaviour that is not by itself prohibited, but not something we want to encourage. Usually the social-shaming is enough to help curb a lot of this behaviour. Anonymity seems to very much allow people to act like dickwads. It might be worth considering making them harder to craft for general crew. The goal is to allow antags to RP without exposing themselves, not to give the crew anonymity. As long as it is technically craftable by crew, then it means you can't guarantee unknown=antag.

Lies. My true alignment is the same as my current Arcanist. https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/wizard/arcane-discoveries/arcane-discoveries-paizo/beyond-morality-su/

I utterly disagree here. You and I have discussed possible changes, you've created a shared place for discussion on it, and we're working together with numerous other players and admins to make some positive changes. Your actions and mine I see as more than acceptable. But in the case of those choosing to "strike out", it is very much a case of one being right and the other being wrong. This is not a "both sides are to blame" issue. "Vox players" are not a monolith for a start, but there is one side that is very much to blame. Let me be absolutely clear: Threatening to disrupt the github and server is wrong. Those who support such actions, or think they are at all justified, I invite to find another server ASAP. They are not welcome here. Those already banned who continue to disrupt us, I ask to please just move on with your life and stop obsessing over a fictional race in niche video game on a niche server who has kicked you out for your behaviour. Please, just grow up. If there are vox players feeling unrepresented, that is because there is no "representation" for racial cliques in how we make decisions on the server. It's basically a meaningless term. Choosing to associate your personal identity with a certain fictional race of aliens does not give you say on what PRs we merge. We don't engage in politics with voting blocs when we look at PRs. We merge or close them based on the merits of the PR for our vision of the server. If players want to feel represented, then they need to represent themselves. This is quite easy to do - send me a message. Don't expect others to do this for you or assume other people represent you. When I have the time I often enjoy discussing the merits and flaws of proposed PRs. You will be heard, you will be listened to, and I will judge how your ideas fit in with the vision the staff team has for the server. We may refute ideas that don't fit in. If you take that personally, and think that at all justifies striking out, you need to take a step back. In regards to the specific things mentioned here: @procdrone - The problem I see in short-term-space-resistance, is stacking it with the other forms of achieving that can make spacewalk trivial, and I'm not a big fan of hot coffee and a heavy coat being enough for a trip through the vacuum of space. Natural temperature preferences, ala taj and unathi, is a great minor-tweak to give flavour to a race. I'm not sure if that would really apply to Vox however, their physiology suggests a fairly temperate preference to me. Currently Vox breath different gasses, have a vastly different culture and speech method, use cortical stacks that change their cloning/reproduction, and react differently to a substances. I'd say they're one of the more alien of all of the races, it seems to me overkill to make more changes simply for the sake of making them even more different. That doesn't mean I'm against it, but they should be fairly simple code wise - Vox already have a fair bit of code behind them compared to other species. Not as bad as IPCs, but still enough to have to account for. The maints are better for more specific examples I love this image. Something special perhaps with caffeine would also seem appropriate to me, although I very much want it to be a purely RP thing. Diet in general is a great way of establishing a species lore through game mechanics. Something that breathes, eats, and drinks different substances, is undoubtably alien. I've talked with @SteelSlayer a bit about the organ decay thing and there's perhaps some tweaks there to make it interesting possible. It's so niche though, I generally completely forget it exists. Also, if anyone's willing to work on armarlis things, there was a few little tweaks I'd like there...

This is just flatly untrue, and an example of the kind of sniping I'm sick of. We take community feedback into account with all PRs. Sometimes we don't agree with it and make changes that are unpopular to 14 people who downvoted it. I'm in this thread, right now, talking to people and taking community feedback into account, for when I vote on future PRs that result from this. We're not an emojiocricy on the github. If you want to influence the decision process, you'll have to talk to the people involved in a constructive fashion and with good faith - OP is an excellent example of that. PRs being merged or not will never be determined by 14 people giving a thumbs up or down, however, and claiming because of that that feedback isn't taken into account is just disingenuous.

TBH this seems the simplest and quickest solution.

In my experience here, the "racial cliques" are a very poor source for balance, due to the bias inherent. Of all the racial cliques I've seen, the current main Vox clique is one of the most toxic, hence the sheer number of bans handed out. I don't particularly care what the self-appointed gatekeepers of the Vox think, based on how myself and the staff team have been treated by them, the lies spread, accusations of "promoting racism", and other such nonsense. Our most recent overhaul of Vox (when spaceproof was removed) resulting in a pretty disappointing reaction from the "community". Being that I'm being told of efforts to brigade and mass-downvote PRs on the github and protest OOC while in the IC environment, I'm not really eager to enable people for acting in such bad-faith. This is further complicated by the numbers of people who see themselves as "vox mains" and thus take anything against Vox - mechanics or lore etc - personally. I'm frankly too old to care about the opinions of people who can't separate their own identity from that of a fictional race in a niche online game. I'm not a therapist. On top of that, there's this false-solidarity, as if every member of the "vox community" agrees here. It's certainly not a monolith, based purely on the amount of people I have messaging me about their issues with said community and disagreements that they uncomfortable voicing around such toxic elements. People don't get any extra weight leant to their opinions because they've joined a discord full of banned players - quite the opposite, in fact. I'd like to assess each PR on it's own merits, rather than because of an active campaign by a vocal minority to push for it. This is not to say I don't think we should be continually trying to make every race - including Vox - better for the server. Thank you very much @Djvoid225 for bringing this up in a productive manner - a forum post and google doc is actually something solid and concrete I can work with, as opposed to random sniping on PRs and on discord. I'm hoping a shared space like this for people to work on, and see what ideas come about, will lead to some productive brainstorming and ideas. This is the correct way to do things that makes us take you seriously and listen to you. Feel free to DM me for any further discussion on this. Protesting ICly in front of the bridge or mass-downvoting other PRs in protest means that we will actively stop caring about your opinion. I'd love to have more unique, RP oriented features for all of the races is possible, without overly affecting game balance. But you shouldn't need mechanical features to RP. How drunk you act is up to you, you don't need mechanics for that. Following the Inviolate would be a very easy way to make vox more unique than they already are on the station, but that would require people actually RPing species lore and not just being generic shitbirds. The Organ thing @SteelSlayer mentioned could do with work for sure, it's so stupidly niche I think I've only ever had it be relevant once. I'm not at all attached to it as a mechanic. Brute damage, etc, is used as our easiest representation of "small and not good at combat". With us looking at various upcoming changes to combat, that kind of thing would be best to leave alone for now, as any tweaks would have to be retweaked again. Overall they could likely use some kind of buff to make up for the above malus, but by all indication Vox are a very popular race, and the priority on changing them is quite low compared to other areas. Small tweaks and additions would be best suited, rather than a complete overhaul akin to the removal of leap/spaceproof/etc.

Unwanted sexual advances and threats of violence seem a pretty good thing to crack down on. Any workplace in reality wouldn't allow that. A security officer roleplaying as a security officer in a workplace and cracking down on threats of violence isn't "abuse", it's them properly role playing - even if space law doesn't specifically list threat, it's common sense that security would involve themselves in it. Someone going around blowing kisses and threatening violence isn't the kind of roleplay I'd like to see here. The kiss blowing is cringey, and the violent threats are just insanity.

I'd happily go a step further and make it instant grounds for dismissal as well, as is exactly the same in every single job I've ever been in.

I'd like to be able to do gamma without the armoury for sure. That and the borgs is a huge reason why I have avoided sending it on multiple occasions, so I'd hugely support this. If it was able to be called by players.....I'm hesitant to let that be a player decision. Gamma should really be only for event-level chaos, or a true clusterfuck of RNG. Authorisation to throw SoP out the window really should come from on high.

This. Something already being overpowered is not a good reason to make it even worse. Sure, killer tomatos could be more interesting and deadly - but the overall effect on the game would be another fairly silly gimmick botany have to be overpowered with. It's just not worth it when you look at the cost compared to benefit.

Perhaps a chance to vomit every 10 seconds or so? Not so much it's crippling, but enough that it's something you really, really, don't want to happen in the middle of a fight.

Preach it

Another quick thing I'd like to add to a good guide - if you are having trouble with sleeping due to staying up all night on ss13, we can ban you if needed, and have done this plenty of times for people. Sometimes for a 8 hours so they can get some sleep, sometimes over christmas so they can spend time with family, sometimes for a month or two so they can focus on their finals or some other IRL thing. Thanks @das bread for posting this, as I know for sure it's a problem for numerous players.

Clickbait title woo. So let's talk about shaming culture. Shame is an important social tool to indicate a societal attitude towards behaviour. Go look up sociology shit on wiki. As crew, comments on your coworkers shape their actions. As admins, it can be our job to shame people for their behaviour. This can be done appropriately some times - but someone shouldn't feel too ashamed over a simple mistake, especially newbies. This needs to be done carefully and correctly to ensure that it stops the behaviour, and teaches people the correct action. You should avoid direct insults to the persons intelligence. This can cross IC/OOC boundaries, where your IC insults are being reflected at the person behind the screen. Several people have talked to me recently about how they've been shamed by admins OOCly and ICly in a variety of circumstances. Some of these times have been appropriate to shame someone for their behaviour. The degree to which this has been done and ways has not always been to my liking - I'd like to take this opportunity to remind admins that even a minor comment from someone with the power of a banhammer, comes across very strongly. Calling them an idiot in front of the entire station can be mortifying, and totally turn a new player off the game. This is something that should be remembered when you play the game too. Everyone has off days, and abusing the CE for messing up the singularity isn't going to stop anyone getting sucked into it or make the shuttle arrive faster. When you criticise someone's actions, try to do it in a way that teaches them what the correct thing to do is, and doesn't humiliate the person behind the screen too much. Over this weekend especially I'll be collecting various feedback etc on this, so feel free to message me. If you're reading old forum posts a year from now, also feel free to message me. It's literally my job to talk to players and the community about things like this.

Oh and here's the work of (a whooole bunch of people) that we use now

Shazbot!

McRamon!

So it seems asking for an entire room is a bit much, and a grand total of 2 people made it to the final entrance - although I did a bunch of discussion with people about sprite styles and learnt all about art things like room perspectives. We'll be using the discussion from this to inform our decisions a bit more, and hopefully give people some idea of the kind of sprites we're looking for. Without further ado, I present McRamon as the winner of the 2020 PAASC as voted by heads and maints. For the popular vote, feel free to thumbsup the posts below I guess?

NT defines it as when a medhud registers them as dead. This is for insurance reasons.

Uhhh kinda think we have enough -6

The 2020 PAASC! As teased in the Discord, I'm proud to announce the start of 2020 Paradise Art And Spriting Competition! The goal of this competition is for the staff to be able to see a whole bunch of different styles of spriting, the the aim in mind of getting the chosen style spread throughout many of our sprites. The winner will be chosen by a vote of the Heads and Maints, and chosen on the mixed grounds of subjective personal taste, how identifiable items are, and how they mesh with the current look of the station sprites. The Prize, Details and Disclaimers: The intent of this competition is for us to see a whole bunch of sprite styles, and hopefully select one to use as an overall style for the server. The prize will be limited, as we don't want people trying extra hard for the competition. We want the work to be reflective of what you'd do if given the chance to redesign the sprites on the server - not what you'd do to show off your best art on a few pieces. Given that, the prizes will be limited to accolades and bragging rights, with winner(s) seeing their sprites used in game and as a guide for future design. We're also going to be using this process to help us select a Sprite Team, including an Art Lead. The winner will not necessarily be in charge of the team - great spriting ability =/= great leading ability. But we're going to use this as an opportunity to see the portfolios of people and help make our selection. Competition End Date: 14 days from time of this post appearing in announcements. The Actual Competition: The following room has 27 sprites to redesign. You are not expected to necessarily redesign them all! Part of what we'll be looking for is people who know when not to redesign a sprite, either because it already works well or due to time constraints. We're looking for people who are going to be good at many of the practical aspects of sprite design in ss13. Number 20 can be any form of poster that NT would allow. Number 6, Monitor 1, Can be any monitor. Number 10, Monitor 2, must be an operation computer. You'll have to find those sprites in the game files yourself - that's a qualification you'll absolutely need! Once you've recreated it, send me (necaladun#4908 on discord) all the seperate files in a zip or something, and a screenshot of the whole room together. I'll place them in this thread so everyone can see. Disclaimer Parts: Any sprites submitted to us for this competition are for Paradise to use, with attribution and credit - we might really like your jetpack sprite, but the rest of it might not work. In the rare likelihood we don't like any of the designs, we reserve the right to declare no winner. Best of luck to all entrants!

If people can't play against each other in a competitive game without taking it personally, then fuck'm. We shouldn't change the server because some people can't handle getting killed in a video game.

This also assumes it's a bad thing. Imo, and Us vs Them mentality between the security for a corporation and a group of agents trying to destroy said corporation seems utterly appropriate to the setting and RP. I don't get why we'd want to remove this.

I think this whole idea makes some assumptions that just don't hold. For a start, there are plenty of people who want to go down guns blazing when caught by sec. This means sec will still be afraid when confronting an antag that they'll be turned on and killed, thus handle them as such. I don't think we'll see more talking because of this change at all before the stun and cuff. If it's not guaranteed that they'll get parole, then giving themselves up to sec is a huge risk. Secondly, it assumes that the RP of parole is the kind we want. And there's a few issues with it, being that the players, OOCly, know the person they're paroling is an antag with objectives. ICly, they're a known member of a terrorist organisation. Granting them parole because they didn't manage their objectives makes NT look incredibly naive at best, or willingly complicit at the least. If a member of Al-Queada is found with bomb making equipment, they don't sieze the equipment and let them go. The fact they have to convince the magistrate - who, if they have two brain cells, will know they're a syndicate agent with objectives and all - that they won't reoffend is ripe for abuse too. It puts magistrates/captains in the position to choose whether or not an antag gets a second chance based purely on something subjective. The potential for metafriendship to come into play here is huge. Even if every magistrate is 100% above board and acts without bias, I would be shocked if we didn't get multiple accusations of magistrate bias. Finally, there's asking whether we want to give antags a second shot. Lessening the risk generally makes for less exciting gameplay. Generally speaking, being caught out as an antag should be game over - which is quite fair, considering you're more than willing to end someone else's round by playing an antag. Having someones round ended isn't something we should be implicitly trying to avoid - it adds risk and danger and excitement to the players.

I'd be quite fine with something like this being added - if people want to kill themselves I don't see any need to bring them back into the round, they made their choice. Actual wording of SoP I haven't had enough coffee to do yet though