flimflamm

All my gloves if you can make this happen!

I don't know how to add things to syndicate uplinks, heh, but if a coder wanted to do so there would be no protest from me. P.S between you and me, the syndicate box is the absolute most sexy of the bunch!

I do really love the notion of drastically different/non-humanoid races. One possible variation which comes to mind immediately is a 2-tile big (a fat worm which drags a tail?) creature, which would be instantly and completely (at least visually) distinct regardless of what mechanics we apply to it. Having at least one functional arm-type appendage and the ability to work consoles is about the only necessity to be employed by NT, and anything else beyond that I think is up for grabs. The other side of this conceptual coin would be some sort of tiny species. I can imagine a dwarf like race which is slow and unrobust in every way (maybe each tile for them has 4 quadrants they can move to, which would double their walking distance and effectively half their movement speed). Mechanically perhaps they could be picked up by other players and shoved into (bluespace) bags. The craziest Idea which I can come up with is for the creation of a pair of races which have a some kind of symbiotic relationship, maybe even with an ability to 'merge' and 'un-merge'. When merged both players would need to contribute to the control of the new combined entity, somehow, and the advantage would be that their previously flimsy races when combined form a much more robust entity (the disadvantage being shared control of a shared body). All three of these ideas would be nightmarish to code for, but they certainly would provide races which can be called "different".

Plasmamen also die to regular facehuggers because by the time you recover from the facehugger stun, you're well into oxyloss driven unconsciousness, and you lay there until death sans facemask.

Plasmamen don't need a buff, they need a change... Right now they are inherently fluff; you pay 100 karma for a permanent and sexy space-suit; a status symbol. Yes you get a working space suit, but they're honestly not hard to come by, and not at all necessary for station life. So when plasmamen first came out it was like a new fashion trend for those who could afford it, and it was great, like the original iPods!. The 2015 clothing lineup was really stellar.... Back in 2015.... The fact is that now plasmamen are failing as fluff/status symbols for the same reason that bell bottom jeans eventually did; they're no longer cool to look at. When I play my plasma-man I feel this constantly and it drives me to find ways to re-snowflake myself. Slime chill potion from xenobiology, which allows me to fireproof clothes so that I can take off my space-suit (but be permanently on fire) is the closest I can come to achieving this, but unfortunately being a ball of fire is only hot for so long. At this stage, the best thing about plasmamen is that you get a working space suit, and the worst thing about them is you always have to wear it So.... The fix is to change them in such a way that individual plasmamen can either escape the necessity of the suit, or be given some way of customizing the suit they load-out with. Idea the first: Give plasmamen an optional non-standard plasma-suit, which is translucent, and shows not only some animated gas circulating on the inside of the suit, but also the uniform the plasmeme is wearing underneath. This would be cool in and of itself because of newness and uniqueness, but it also partially solves the problem of stagnant fashion, because now plasmamen can actually show off what they wear underneath their suit. Idea the second: Make all burn damage to plasmeme occur as oxyloss damage. Unless this would cause some unfixable mega-weakness, this would be a very interesting change. Since plasmapeople emit plasma constantly, it's pretty believable that fire and plasmeme have a unique relationship. The plasma would burn, and as more plasma is emitted from the plasmeme, that would burn too. Since plasmemes breathe plasma, this is going to (via sheer heat transfer through suits), burn up the plasma that is currently being breathed/in their lungs. After they take oxyloss from a burn, they would regenerate that damage in the same way that breathing reduces oxyloss, as new plasma replaces that which was burned away. There is currently no race with burn immunity, and it's not a game breaking mechanic (see atmos suits/slime chill potion/and more). Creating this mechanic would mean (potentially) that plasmemes can get away with experiencing some burn damage, which will allow them to take off their suits for short periods of time and turn their general absolute fear of fire into something interesting. Plasmemes would also be able to "firewalk", which essentially means running into a highly pressurized plasmafire while only taking oxyloss. The only possible OPness i can envision from this could be related to oxyloss medication/prevention via genetics, which would effectively make plasmamen immune to all forms of burn damage (that said, a fire-proof suit and some insulated gloves basically does the same thing). In the original lore plasmamen were obsessed with fire itself, which seemed natural given that combustion seems to be it's nature. This is why plasmamen should had some sort of fire affinity... I'm for coming up with a slew of mechanics that could lead to interesting behavior. Maybe we could make plasmamen somehow explosive? If the death of a plasmeme fulfills certain conditions (is in oxygen environment, is on fire) then maybe they could give off a light explosion and create a 3x3 fireball (which would have around a 50-50 chance of stunning a by-stander, which could light them on fire and cause their death). Maybe we can make plasma-pistols, and other raw plasma substances like sheets and dust could be used as medicine for plasmemes (consumable/injectable). I have more ideas but they get crazier and crazier...

I might just be the most slimingest slime to ever have slimed. How can I join the discussion to contribute to the new lore?

Having played a slime person named "Ivan Ooze" for about three years now, I'm a bit iffy on this. (I'm pretty sure my name is an example of successfully lifting a name from a movie) The name comes from a D-list 90's kids movie (power rangers), and only handful of people have ever caught on and LOOC'd at me, and when they did they did not seem to be disappointed so much as pleasantly nostalgia struck (the actual character I'm referencing is so similar to slime people that the referense on some level "makes sense")... There's a fine line to be drawn though. If the power rangers movie was more popular and Ivan Ooze was a household name, it would obviously not be worth it. But because the name itself is pleasantly simple (and alliterative), AND is actually descriptive of my race, the fact that a few people might suddenly recall a power rangers villain upon reading my name isn't too hefty a price. In fact, I like to be associated with the original character, who was a purple man made of slime, a showman at heart, with grand aspirations and a flare for the dramatic. I will say that names taken from real life would be much more immersion breaking than my name, and so if we do make a rule, it should probably outright ban non-fictional names. Also, it would perhaps benefit us all greatly if we formalized naming conventions even more than they already are uniquely to each race. I would not mind having a list of "houses" or "family-names" for slime people which could be highly encouraged. IIRC the new lore states that slimes take human-esque names due to the un-pronounceability of slime names. It also states that slimes reproduce a-sexually, which means that everyone in a given slime family would share the exact same lineage and hence, last name. "Ooze" seems like the perfect last name to me for any slime and I would love it if slimes could begin to share in communal lore; having a list of suggested or "main slime family" last names I think would be great to jumpstart this. We could even associate family names with character personality traits. Example: - The Oozes are passionate intellectuals who tend to follow a strict moral code of causing no unnecessary harm. They ravenously absorb their career pursuits like so many monkeys, often to the chagrin of the less ambitious co-workers they work circles around. When a member of the Ooze family feels directly and seriously transgressed upon, their passion will tend to take over and render them to a state of mouth-foaming anger whose only catharsis comes in the form of what some have described as "radio broadcasted enhanced vitriol". Both helpful and arrogant to the end, the Ooze family brings to the crew a double edged sword of expertise and emotional baggage which depending on the shift can either be openly welcomed by the crew, or be inflicted upon them.

Oh yea!? Then why is "SS13" the name of the main camera network aboard the NSS Cyberiad? GOTCHYA!

We need to re-think every gateway mission save maybe the wild west, which is an actually fun and challenging mission and place to explore. Here are my suggestions: Xeno-Research facility: Make the xeno nest MUCH bigger or add several additional xeno nests (the one sealed away in the rocks). Randomize the loot inside the xeno nests to drive players mad with desire... Kitchen-ship: Enclose the ship in a new and massive open space, sealed by admin bricks at the extremeties (simulating it being (crash) landed on a planet), and populate the new terrain space with mobs, obstacles, structures, and loot-stuffs. If possible, this kind of mission would be ideal for some kind of randomization factor where the terrain type (I/E grass, snow, desert, water, etc...), mob types, loot types, )and maybe even boss types?) could be randomized to whatever degree possible to give the illusion that each time the explorers enter this mission, it seems like a brand new planet. It's a kitchen ship after-all, so killing, butchering and cooking the exotic random mobs of an RNG planet would overall fit in as it's niche) Wizards-place: This place is hard to add to directly, but there are some airlocks on the east side that point to an open space which could be used for the placement of additional content like a series of buildings, turrets, and monsters or even a boss. Wild West: Leave it as is, it's the only one I really like. Spooky-Hotel: Make it more spooky by adding a very dark and very ghost/zombie infested terrain surrounding the hotel or off to one side, ideally with more RNG outside in terms of placement and loot type. Plasma-Research Facility: This is practically a fully functioning station so I really don't know what this mission should be about. If it could share SS13 access (or somehow provide explorers with their own plasma-station-ID-console and an HOP/Captain ID) and have a working telecoms relay then it could be absorbed onto the station and become a part of it if the explorers decide to get everything up and running. If the AI can access cameras there and the doors worked with SS13 access then the crew could come to know it as "the gateway outpost"... These are the kinds of missions that warrant "exploration" and would keep people coming back, otherwise what you will have is a role where people get their free suit, their free loot, and then transfer out because usually the gateway offers nothing worth investing time in.

With the help of Alexshreds and a few others, I submitted a PR which implements these box decals via application of a box of crayons. I decided against a box painter object mainly because the associated code for a legit one would be pretty thick by comparison. Having already tested the sprites on my local machine, I've got plans to tweak them slightly and add a few I may have missed!

I like this idea a lot. We could also implement a written language function as well for applicable languages?

Some time last year I did something rather peculiar and created a rank specific box decal for each and every role I could think of. Having had the half baked idea that shadow-people could become an actual race, and getting some sort of grotesque and intrinsic enjoyment from the sprite work, I was left with the set sprites of that can be seen below. While the idea of shadow-people should pretty much never happen, perhaps these sprites can still be used for a bit of the old needlessly snow-flakey goodness: The concept is to make a crafting recipe for something not unlike a floor-painter, except it paints boxes, and in order to have it select a decal requires the swipe of an ID (one use per swipe). Then simply use it on a box and the relevant decal can be instantly applied. According to my sources, sprites in and of themselves aren't very resource costly. That said this number of them, which probably warrants a new .dmi file, might be a different story. I'm also looking to get into some sort of non-complex coding project in order to learn a bit about paracode (maybe this could be it?). If anyone knows of some coding resources that could help, pointing me in that direction would be much appreciated. Also, if having a box-painter along with these sprites would be problematic in any way, please let me know! Here is the .dmi file if anyone is interested boxes.7z boxes.7z

That's good to hear! Sometimes I come up with these half baked suggestions that would be totally awesome if it weren't for some obvious or glaring balance issue that I missed. I like to think I'm a clever boy, but so far the only SS13 related git experience I have is recoloring a few sprites and perusing the source code in order to discover it's secrets. I have some amateur coding skill with LUA and forth in particular, and para looks fairly straight forward, but it's really going to take me some time to get to a place where I could pull off Camera-PDA integration. I think my first attempt at coding will be relegated to adding a title header to newscaster stories and to bump player created news stations to the top of the feed list. Hopefully this won't be too difficult as a starting project. Also, would there be a more appropriate place to barf out my in-progress code work other than here in a suggestion thread? I was always one of those students who asks questions!

While trying to connive ways to easily improve journalism, it occurred to me that if PDAs had the ability to take, send, and receive photos, then a whole lot more would happen than just journalists getting the very best photographs... People would generally be able to send amusing or interesting photographs to each-other which in and of itself seems worth-while enough, but additionally security would be given an incentive to actually begin to care about substantive evidence rather than civilian hear-say given that they could theoretically be transformed into a kind of paparazzi. PDA communications can partially verified if one user asks another to send them a photograph of themselves to make sure they know who're they're talking to. The detective would surely be the recipient of a great many photographs of crime, which is a great starting point for conducting evidence based security work. In order to prevent the inevitable heat-death of a station who's crew are all suddenly given digital cameras and snapping pictures left and right, straight-forward limitations could easily be placed on photo storage capacity in order to prevent spam but keep the utility. 3 or 4 stored photos maximum would be appropriate, and would also help the actual digital camera stay relevant (it can do 15 stored photos). PDAs would have the ability to view and send stored photos (just like how normal photo viewing works) but not to print them. Some method of printing could be made available with existing machines if physical copies are desired. Story telling is inherently a part of SS13, and photographs in SS13 can tell approximately 50 words, which is definitely economical given the constant struggle for text space. Is there any reason why PDA's should not have some sort of digital camera functionality? If not by default, perhaps in some sort of tourism cartridge?

An emergency injector comes with Epinephrine. What Epi does well is cap your suffocation damage, which is the niche it fills. When a humanoid is suddenly exposed to a depressurized and oxygen-less environment, they can pop the auto-injector (they would not need to so badly if they wore internals) in order to avoid suffocation collapse, and when they hit critical (and before death phaze) the epi will basically make it so that they die slightly more slowly, which gives them just a few extra moments to exact an escape. That is basically the purpose of the emergency auto-injector; to give you a slightly increased chance of survival when (usually exposed to vacuum), not for self healing in any capacity beyond a niche way to stave off death for a few moments longer. In my mind the bulk of the difference that the autoinjector makes can be summed up in terms of the question: "How far can you make it if you are forced to run naked in space"? The auto-injector makes it so that you can cover more of a distance (ideally to safety), but how much more of a difference? A great way to get into the hard balance of the auto-injector would be to compare the existing travel distances (under cold and vacuum conditions) of IPC vs other races with and without the auto-injector. This would be a simple test to run for anyone who can host their own server or some admins interested in some in-game testing. Finally, if it turns out that IPC can only travel like one third of the distance as an epi injected human (or some appropriate fraction) then we could consider doing something like giving them a new chemical for their own auto-injector which slightly stabilizes IPC temperature. Other than that, I would still like to see medbay be given a formal med-kit like box for IPC, even if only one. Having a cyborg analyser, wire, screwdriver, crowbar, multitool, and welder (and maybe even a small note or emergency guide to IPC repair. This would at least point new medical staff in the right direction instead of the usual lack of response.

Yea that makes sense. I assumed that the package was 10 (stacks) of cable coil and a single emergency welder, and combined with the medkit sprite had me confused. As a replacement for an emergency auto-injector it's interesting. Not quite the same as an auto-injector but still interesting. IPC specific med-kits though would I think be useful for med-bay to have on hand.

I like the idea quite a bit, but the fact that it only has an emergency welder (very low fuel capacity) means that unless you have a fuel tank handy you won't get much repairing done. To solve this just replace it with a regular welder. The fact that there is no cyborg analyzer is also questionable. I think there should certainly be one in there. Finally, the two main tools used to repair severely damaged IPC's are the screwdriver and the crowbar, which when used alongside wires and a welder can repair everything but internal component and posi-brain damage. This really is a good idea. In fact I think we should have an equivalent for every race with distinct enough healing mechanics. But you should also take it further and make an IPC surgical duffle as well, which would contain nano-paste, wire, a good welder, crowbar, screwdriver, multitool, and perhaps some spare components or anything else I might be forgetting that is useful for IPC repair.

You might be right, but I do like the idea of the press having at least a modicum of consideration from the security team. The idea being that if and when the news team wants to get some information from the security team, or to interview prisoners, they might actually cooperate. I was considering the idea of making a newsroom near security itself instead of the library in order to emphasize closeness to security, but at the same time, it might be better entirely to keep the news and security wholly separate so that news persons can be free to be anti-establishment if they so choose (toeing the line of redaction). Toward that end, not giving them a "press-pass" into the tier 1 security doors would probably be the better decision. I don't like it that people are subconsciously trained to ignore newscaster alerts because the majority of them are for fake news (confusing), but my main issue with them are that they occupy the front page of newspapers. If I have a channel with 20 something stories on it and I print a bunch of newspapers, when people read them they have to scroll to the bottom of each page in order to find the "next page" button, until they get to the last page of the paper, which effectively hides the player produced content. Instead of deleting RNG news, how about this then: Shunt the RNG news and station announcements to the back pages when printing news papers (or enable selecting of individual channels or stories for inclusion when printing). If we keep RNG news while disabling newscasters from signaling an alert when the channels have new content, then people will begin to associate a news alert update with the existence of new player created content instead of with RNG content. Getting rid of the RNG alerts in and of itself is not an overly consequential change in terms of enhancing actual news, and I am not really too gung-ho about removing a feature which is so cleverly implemented (it's easier to remove than to re-work though I imagine), but that "bit of spice" you mentioned is exactly what I'm looking to develop and enhance. The hope is that through these changes dedicated news-work becomes much more common, and so the reduction of visibility on the RNG news network will serve to make room for a prevalence of new player generated content.

I agree, with the exception of access to a camera network. That DOES affect balance. A camera network is a great idea on paper for a journo, but it will cause people to become journos just to be valid hunters, which will block those who want to RP and write entertaining stories from getting the role. I was thinking that they could be given access to some but not all cameras; basically any camera visible from public places and certain departments (like medbay) could be accessible to the journalists, and maintenance cameras and cameras within certain restricted areas could not. The way this would affect balance is interesting though. Right now the AI and security can peruse the cameras at will, making the scope of the balance impact an increase in the likelihood of detection when committing crime on camera networks rather than adding something entirely novel. Also, if and when an antagonist is spotted over the camera network, the journalist has the option of screaming out over coms, but they could also take the Nightcrawler(2014) approach for the sake of ratings and wait until the actual story drops in order to force everyone, including security, to read their content. I would agree with you that scanning camera feeds looking for news (which includes crime) is on some level valid-hunting, but the impact that it has is somewhat different than someone who takes direct action themselves against antagonists. A journalist using cameras has to have their butt planted at their newscaster and camera monitor, and so the extent of their personal impact (ought to be) simply informing the station (so that security, the real valid hunters, can get to work). Valid hunting which results when people get informed about particular crime or criminal or antag-type could possibly be an issue, but the problem of valid-hunting is ever present and even camera monitor enhanced news doesn't add much power to antag detection over and above the existing camera monitors, the AI, and the old fashioned coms network. Even if there is a noticeable hit to balance it might not be a bad thing. Being more likely to be detected doing crime while on camera could lead to people valuing the deconstruction of cameras or camera bugs more, donning better disguises, and generally being more clever criminals. If someone makes a cult rune in plain view of camera in xenobiology, at least the cult having their cover blown via news article w/ photos is much cooler than someone hollering it out over coms which would have been bound to happen regardless. Also, if we give "Journalist" the right karma cost, hopefully we could exclude people who only want access to cameras in order to find antagonists to go fight. Security can already do that as it is I believe.

Title of Event: The Friendly Wizard and The Bad Minotaur // (any thing at all can be the name) Pretense: (from CC)Crew of NSS Cyberiad: Due to the need for co-operation against a mutual threat, we have formed a temporary alliance with the Wizard Federation. They will be sending a Nano Trasen sanctioned wizard to assist in the defense against the impending threats. The only information we have on these impending threats are that they could be anything. Be prepared and stick together. Equipment Necessary: One wizard with a healing staff, and whatever else they so choose Plot: A friendly/allied wizard helps the crew defend the station against constant admin provided !!FUN!! (IC'y identified as some sort of dark wizard) Prize for Completion?: No prize necessary, but maybe the crew gets to end the shift with a magical gift of "summon magic" once they defeat all the waves of admin shenaniganry Custom Sprites/OGG's?: Nothing special is required. A beautiful part of this event is all it takes is for the wizard death round end flag to be removed, a friendly wizard spawned and instructed to be helpful healing ally, and for the admins to do their awesome thing where they decide what and how much of something to inflict upon the crew. The "threat" the announcement refers to can be a powerful dark wizard which shows up as a final boss (ideally played by an admin) and concludes the event. The ongoing waves of enemies (or whatever obstacles) produced by the "dark wizard" can be tailored and balanced to how well or poor the wizard and the crew are performing.

You may have read my recent suggestion thread discussing ways to improve journalism. This is a follow-up thread intended to amalgamate my findings and gain feedback in a more organized way... JOURNALISM!!!! Journalism currently exists as an optional hobby for crew, a praiseworthy pastime for security, and as a fluff title for librarians. The main mechanics which facilitate journalism are already in place (photography, newscasters, and newspapers) but there are a host of limitations which make serious pursuits of journalism somewhat difficult to pull off. The questions of the poll represent the formal or drastic changes which would help to reduce these limitations, and the suggested changes below are minor by comparison. List of minor suggestions: - Re-sprite newscasters (check! https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/6211) - Re-sprite newspapers (gonna be checked by me in the near future) - Tier one security door access (press pass?) for the purpose of working with security - Remove "Nyx Daily" and other such RNG news because it confuses people and distracts from real news and hides player content on the back pages of newspapers - Increase slightly the number of newscasters across the station - Put some newscasters on the shuttle - Give journalists their own camera monitor - Enable or fix photography through entertainment monitors (live video camera feeds) and borgs similar to the regular camera network and photography - Add a "Header" field to news articles (bolded and left margin formatted) The above suggestions range in coding difficulty but are more or less straight-forward ways to drastically enhance the function of news aboard the station. Having been interested in doing hardcore news (covering every major event, trying to break important stories, including additional community/comedy/fluff pieces, with quality photos for every article) for a while, I've found it to be quite difficult in that unless I'm constantly on the ball and are given access to the detectives camera monitor (which can view all cameras with no ID access checks), then I will always do a less than satisfactory job. Right now the main hurtle is getting photographs while staying alive and writing the actual stories. The adding of a camera monitor to the library would instantly solve most of this issue (good luck photographing shadowlings) and actually empower a lone librarian with lots of energy and dedication to pull off worth-while news. If more librarian slots were opened (makes sense from a library perspective) then willing librarians/journalists could work together and form a news team to share leads and divide the news work in order to cover more ground and produce higher quality content. The main point of formalizing an actual "News/Journalist" role is to establish "The News" as the main job and prerogative of those who choose to play as one, and as an indication to everyone else that news-work actually exists (maybe security will actually let you interview a perma'd prisoner). Enhancing the existing capacity to perform the news via camera monitors and additional slots will have some possible impacts on balance (some antagonists might have to be more careful when operating in full camera view) but beyond that journalists would in the end still be a glorified kind of civilian (from a hard balance perspective). Why news? Everything about it is inherently role-play oriented. It facilitates immersion and community interaction by keeping people appraised of relevant or interesting information using a mechanic (newscasters) that are themselves immersive. Certain round-types would be instantly enhanced due to their otherwise lackluster tendencies because a majority of the crew either don't participate or are left almost entirely out of the loop (unable to observe what is even happening). Nuclear operative rounds, wizard rounds, and blob rounds are all sometimes disappointing because the round arc leads to one ultimate conclusion (the success or failure of the antagonist) and only those who directly participate get to actually witness it. This is where the news comes in and makes the round interesting for those who do not want to directly participate or who otherwise cannot. Intensive live news updates (and photographs via camera network) of invading nuclear operatives (and/or the preparations for war) would be insanely desirable for the average crew member to have access to. Photos of a blob are straightforward to get and could be great for showing the crew what needs doing or just generally keeping them entertained while they get drunk in the bar and wait for the shift to end. Wizarding + News speaks for itself. Photos of the wizard would be the golden prize on such rounds, while the wizard itself provides absolutely endless and absolutely hilarious sets of circumstances that would make for excellent news. On every shift where there are one or more actually dedicated news people, the stories that are naturally generated during each shift will have a chance to be documented and broadcasted. Arriving at 13:30 and having a dozen or two dozen news articles to read would directly serve to immerse you in the existing round and improve your own experience and the experience of people you interact with. At the end of the shift, journalists can haul printed newspapers onto the escape shuttle and actually give people something worth-while to read while they sit there waiting for a blood-bath. Maybe once they see how terrible things really went for everyone else, they will feel less of a need to vent their frustration at round end! The news really could be something special in this game. I know people really do enjoy quality news because of the downright karma factory hardcore news-work turned out to be. Paradise being as populated as it usually is may make it uniquely suited to having a formal and formally enhanced news role; the more people there are, the more stories there are to be told, and the more readers there are around to hear them. On very populated shifts when only security or civilian roles are available is where a formal news role and additional slots would really shine, and it is for this reason that the role should come with a karma cost to ensure that only people who actually want to do news (and are capable) get the slots. Feedback is highly desired because I'm very serious about serious news. It turns out I'm capable of doing re-sprites but beyond that it would take me quite awhile to learn enough para-code to submit the PR's required to fix photography from live cameras, or map changes, let alone role creation. I know for certain that most of these suggestions require a coder of some caliber to achieve, and also quite a bit of consideration and consent from those who maintain the server (stalwart in excellence as always!), but if even some of these suggestions could be worked out then I think that with minimal changes to the code journalism could become a whole new staple for those interested in the going-on of well populated shifts. Since I've had exactly zero negative feedback either on the news or my suggestions so far (except from those I have lampooned IC'y ), I beg for a coder to give this some consideration (any of the suggestions), and if you're a higher admin who knows why enhancing the news won't fly, please do me a favor and kill this idea in it's crib for me because of late I've really been obsessed with it.

-snip- Hope that rambling paragraph clarifies on what I'm talking about. Actually I find it quite interesting. Complexity science intrigues me to no end and I find what you are saying resonates with some of what I already know. Positive and negative reinforcement in terms of adherence to the lore indeed seems highly scarce right now. There's almost certainly no positive reinforcement given we do lave low lore-RP standards (nobody is around to RP back on the same level), but there is some negative reinforcement. Last night I was running a serious news channel as a Vox, but my articles were not written with Vox syntax, and my coms announcements were not either. A few Vox skrekked back at me on coms saying "Why is kin doing meat speak? "Yaya, is strange kin...". The social sanction they applied to me was one of shame (I RP'd my way out of it by explaining to them in Vox syntax that news broadcasts have to have certain vocabulary and syntax so everyone can understand). If i was a more hardcore RP'er I would have done the news in vox-speak despite how god-awful it would have felt, an the social sanction did actually make me reconsider taking such a drastic vox-leap. Hypothetically, if a large enough nucleus of a given race exists as a sub-group (the specific condition that creates kin-ship and social division), then social sanctions both good and bad will actually have a functional network to be transmitted over. I.E, if one specific player is behaving in an unorthodox manner, the more of their kin that are around, the more of a chance there is for someone to sanction or correct them. Regarding positive reinforcement, I think the very nature of an "affinity" round would appeal to people actually looking to get into something new (of course there will be outliers and exceptions). Given that hopefully a solid number of additional players will be also playing that race, it is possible that a desire to be well respected within that alien community will drive people to embrace the lore and work with it creatively. At the very least in-game cultural learning can take place much more often because more same-kin interactions will occur with a higher pop of a single race (an inexperienced player observing and interacting with an experienced one). In the end any kind of hard incentive is a bad idea in my opinion. What works well works because it is robust and adaptive to diversity rather than because it was forced or contrived to work a certain way. The knock on effect of more kin being around to shame you for poor RP is only one hypothetical of the many effects that simply twisting demographical knobs could give rise to. Additionally it is my hope that the nature of the "affinity" concept it would be most appealing to experienced players actually looking for a community to engage in rather than those who could care less about the actual stories behind it all. (they will be sticking to their favorite race and established chars I reckon). Personally, I could ramble about this stuff indefinitely , so I'll end it here

So as a lot of people have pointed out, in order to test this concept no code changes need occur whatsoever. One person it could be easily admin-bussed, another said it could be done via admin announcement, but really in the end it could even be done by myself just screaming once or twice in OOC pre-shift. All it would take it a message like "HEY EVERYONE WHO LIKES TO PLAY VOX, BE VOX THIS SHIFT!" in OOC preshift and there's a good chance a bunch of people would bite. I'm not planning on trying it out anytime soon (prerogative of (b)admins), but really that's all it would take. And admin making a hardcore announcement might be overkill (result in too many participants) especially if the species is karma and unlocked for that shift.

By snowflaking do you mean from a raw code perspective? (is that the standard usage in SS13?) Is there a "drunk" flag that we could tie these effects to? P.S If we can achieve this without marring the code too much, I'm all for radical debuffs if that meant balance wise we could get more unique mechanics on alien races.

Yes but how does convention emerge in the first place? My thinking is that even the unwilling will inexorably learn something about alien races because of the sort of spot-light that would be placed on them each shift if they had a bump in population. It also could be said that while the lore itself is indeed arbitrated by a single sweaty nerd (proverbial), actually getting down to role-playing and testing the traits/culture/mechanics is arguably a much more important discovery process for determining what works and what does not. This evolution over time is what I think actually produces the best standards, and if there was a nucleus of RP conscious players making the effort to play a new race each shift then I think this would only be accelerated (especially as of late given the revamped lores not too many people seem familiar with) "Large amounts" might be an over-estimate of the number of players who would actually participate. Firstly they're going to need a list of 12 saved characters and quite a few karma unlocks if they want to reliably play as the "shift racial affinity". Then they're also going to have to know that the OOC check affinity button is even a thing (this will automatically exclude over half an active player list I think). Between that and people just not being that interested in playing races they don't like I reckon that at most 20 players would reliably make use of the button on a 100 person shift (remember the button just tells you a species type, it's up to you to load a character of that race). Overtime people who do like to participate would likely lose interest and settle into their favorite races and so mostly would appeal only to people already looking for something new. If everyone or mostly everyone was playing the same race each on a given shift, I would agree with you that this would be fairly mundane and uninteresting (although it would still be somewhat interesting with certain races). But since most players will still be playing as human, it cannot possibly be more mundane than that, and since the race affinity would cycle through the entire list of aliens, the shift to shift demographics of the station would actually become more diverse. In the end it's not just possible development to culture mechanics and lore that think stands to gain from this suggestion, it's also something much harder to define: the unknown possibilities of action and reaction that comes along with a new sub-community or network within a complex system. For instance, say a community of Tajaran are communicating in tongues over the coms network during a nuclear invasion. Given their possible camaraderie, would they decide to group up for safety? Would they flee together or go hide somewhere? Would they (feeling a bout of war nostalgia) launch themselves claws first at the invading clan like so many pouncing kittens? If they tried would they win? I also wonder things like what would happen on a shift with 20 Diona during a shadow-ling outbreak. What would happen on a Vox shift when Vox Traders/Raiders show up? Exactly how useful does the Grey telepathy ability become when there are more and more Greys around to reply? Such events are just not possible right now because the racial demographics are too static and too human dominated. No single alien "community" is able to form and so we don't get to see what sorts of things they tend to get up to except microcosmically and on rare occasion (the rare instances that enough of a single non-human race are in the same room at the same time) Most of what appeals to me about SS13 comes from it's emergent complexity and it's dynamism. More dynamism and complexity injected into a system can be risky for the existing balance, but it can also stimulate the development of even more complex phenomenon. So it becomes a question of risk vs reward. I argue we could gain more than we are actually able to envision, so what's the worst that could happen?