[Englishformula (Days the Grey) : An Introduction]

Hello there Paradise Station, I'm English; although at this point I'm a lot more comfortable going by the name "Calendar Days" then that old one. 

I've been playing since about 3 years and 3ish months ago, May of 2020 following the onset of Covid. Back then I played as characters like Rayner Milne ; a all-rounder but janitor human character who I pretty much started my entire journey with. I barely talk about this character despite having played months with them back in 2020 in order to unlock the karma necessary to play Grey and such. A second human character called Reiner Fuchs was played mainly on Scientist and Cargo. The third human character I ever used was Christa Richter, who I played in Medical Bay. 

Nowadays I mostly play the Grey Scientist Calendar Days, pink-eyed and clad in Hawaiian camouflage. Days is a risk-avoidant Researcher who is below average in physical attributes, which is why they would rather run, hide or work with a threat just long enough in-order to secure a safe passage long enough to fuck off and live forever. The skill they posses with weaponry leaves little to be desired though, and Days often relies on more immediate methods of neutralization like slimification or blue-space transposal, preferring them over more physical means of assassinations'. 

You can spot me often in the art-channel of the discord, or in the bar on station ordering a Syndicate Bomb! 

Happy 10 Year Anniversary Paradise Station, lets round off my 3 years with another 7 so I can catch up. 

[Admin Complaint: Necaladun]

Admin(s) Key: Necaladun
Your ckey (Byond username): EnglishFormula
Your Discord name (if applicable): English Formula#1383

Date(s) of incident (GMT preferred): January 25th 2021

Nature of complaint: Feedback, Clarification Required, Misapplication of rules, Misconduct 
 

 

Brief description (tl;dr here. Just the critical elements): Necaladun closed an admin complaint without discussion, consideration or merit regarding a rule that was stated by a Head of Staff. 

Full description of events: This is in response to the admin complaint I posted against Drakeven, as linked above. The merit of my complaint is that is that not only was I told that wording would be looked into, but that it would be made clearer. It's been almost a month, and despite this, I don't think it matters all too much. Necaladun, this admin complaint was closed without merit and resolved, but the very rule that was broken in the first place was admitted by you to have needed changing. So what? Was the rule written wrong? Are rules that have incredibly clear and concise meaning and purpose able to be changed by a Head of Staff in order to close an admin complaint without any further public discussion at all? 

Personally, I don't really care much about the rule break it's self, it was an admin complaint that needed to be seen and heard because that's what the admin complaint system is here for, just like the appeal system is for players. I thought the rule-break would be acknowledged, but instead I and by extension many people were served a heaping dose of gas-lighting as we struggle to understand how exactly this rule should be applied in game. 

Deliberately breaking the atmospherics network in order to hamper antagonists. ( E.g: Unwrenching pipes to stop terrors/xenos/borers/ect moving around) is now officially considered a violation of rule 0.

Deliberately, to intentionally do something. Correct.

Atmospherics Network. Pipe.

Hamper. Hinder or Impede movement. Check. 

Did the entire community just read the rule wrong? Everyone has specifically not been messing with pipes for the last year since this rule was posted because of how easily understood it was. 

What's the point in having this system if every single admin complaint is filed without merit and resolved to prevent further discussion? I file this out of concern for the larger system at place, which should be a fair and impartial place, not out of frustration with you. 

Thank you for your time and consideration. 

[Admin Complaint: Drakeven]

Admin(s) Key: Drakeven
Your ckey (Byond username): Englishformula
Your Discord name (if applicable): English Formula 

Date(s) of incident (GMT preferred): 2021/01/25 - 3:00 AM EST

Nature of complaint: Methodically and intentionally un-wrenched pipe preventing the movement of swarmer's. 
(miss-application of rules, misconduct)

TLDR: Drakeven broke Rule 0, but said he did not break Rule 0.

Myself and a 2 other swarmer's were doing our thing in perma-brig until Security came to crash the party. 2 of us vented and one seemingly got out, another stayed put for awhile but made a barrier to slow down Sec. Soon after he vented, but by that point, Jay Chase (Drakeven) had un-wrenched the only pipe leading out of the department. Because we vented while he unwrenched, we could neither see the unwrenched pipe, nor deal with it. This is generally something players don't do, as antagonists cannot fix pipes, and the sprites for broken pipes are barely distinguishable from a connected pipe. Often the pipe is hidden by the tile removed to get to it in the first place. I assume this is why we normally don't let people do this. Once I ahelped, I was instead told that "methodically" or "strategically" removing pipes to prevent vent crawling antags from escaping is in fact a strategy, and that you're perfectly able to unwrench pipes in the incredibly specific circumstances laid out in this situation. I should probably also mention that Drakeven acted like Jay was infact a random player, up until I straight up asked them if it was them; Referring to the individual who unwrenched the pipe as "they". Which admittingly comes off as a bit shady. In the end, I was told after admin deliberation, this was not a rule break. Though, I should not that this is against the rules as per Kyet. I have attached the appropriate file folder. I'd rather not get into a debate, but this rule does not mention any circumstances, it states that it's against the rules. 

Thank you for your time. 

 

 

[1st Survey Results Discussion]

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PRs can be left in limbo if a maint dislikes them, until the author eventually gets so discouraged they just give up in frustration.

Why is this? What can we do to prevent this?

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Lack of consulting the community with regards to planned changes, even when community objects no compromise seems to be made, if even one maint dislikes something it won’t be merged, even if the community loves it

This seems to be a pretty common thing. As an example, most of the server would agree that X-Ray Guns are too strong, but nothing is being done about them despite it being a weapon that can delete antags even when they are seemingly unstoppable. Paraphrasing Skyping here but he said that despite the community wanting something to be done about X-rays, it would take more time to convince him it needs changing. Why is this? The community at large agrees they are dumb. That's just one example, I am sure others and myself can find more. Why are we not listening to the community more? This is an open-source game and some of the players trying to offer changes have more hours logged in a week or month then all of the maintainers combined. 

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We’re massively behind other servers like TG in terms of features. E.g. map rotation, “old” cult.

Do you agree? Do you have plans to reach a parity with TG in-terms of features? TG is much smaller in comparison to Paradise. In comparison, TG servers are fragmented and have less than a 1/4 of the population we have more often than not. What are servers similar to TG in git-hub structure doing that we can emulate to help us improve?

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PRs can be left in limbo if a maint dislikes them, until the author eventually gets so discouraged they just give up in frustration 

Do you agree? I probably would. A good example is the Mech Painting PR. Putting aside all issues it might have had in coding grade, the feature was relatively fool-proof. Space-pods are paintable, why not mechs? One of the reasons given for not passing it was that people "Colored the mechs hot-pink for the two TMs." This is silly, and should have easily been identified as a case of players playing around with a fun new feature that was added, and should have been taken as good sign for the PR, not a reason for it to be turned down. Some PRs do not get any constructive feedback at all. People will not contribute to our server if they feel it is pointless. 

 

and finally

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Letting certain specific admins get away with too much. 

You didn't touch much on the response to admins, but it really should not have to be said that there is an issue when players have practically outlined a collection of issues with certain admins, without anything being done about it on the surface. As a new player, who started playing 4 months ago, I have come to agree with the community regarding certain admins behavior only within at least a month of playing actively. It's only really two names that are practically a meme in regards to behavior at this point, and its a damn shame, because I think its inaction like this that is preventing the admins from collectively agreeing on how rules should be applied. If anyone doesn't see what I mean, just go to the Decline and Accepted Ban Appeals page on the forum, the same names always show up, while some admins despite being active never show up. 

[A Guide to Prince of Terror]

 

A Guide to Prince of Terror 

Abilities -

* Can smash through normal walls in one hit, reinforced walls take a bit of smashing but will give way. Nowhere on station is difficult for you to get to, and this is the most important tool in your arsenal. There is NO cool-down for breaking through walls. 
* Webs can block line of sight. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t waste time with spinning webs unless I have some serious down-time. You’re not a Queen of Terror, and being stationary will not just hurt you, it will be the death of you.
* You cannot vent crawl. But you won’t have to. 
* A shit-ton of health (but not that much health) Don’t get cocky kid. Don’t tank hits. I would straight up recommend just not attacking people carrying multiple AEGs on them. They only want to kill you. 

Phase 1 - Mindset and Attitude. 

So you rolled for Prince of Terror and now you’ve found yourself spawned next to a vent randomly chosen on the station. You’re probably thinking of who you’re going to kill and who’s shift you’re going to ruin, but as PoT we can do a whole lot more damage to the station than a pile of bodies to be revived by Med-bay. 

Consider this; an antagonist in SS13 is meant to give excitement to the round, and how you decide to do this can make or break a round. If you die suddenly and without purpose as an antagonist, you’re not just hurting your own experience, you’re hurting the experience of other players too. It’s our responsibility as PoT or any other antagonist to give purpose to the crew through hardship and pain. Going out of your way to hunt down players and get yourself killed early is boring for everyone. Hopefully you understand the sort of message I wanna get across here.

Phase 2 - An actual plan.

Now that you’ve realized what the stakes are, it’s time to come up with a plan. This plan should be spear-headed by “Key-targets”. Key-targets are the points on the station that you should be visiting and doing critical damage to before moving on. 

Key-points in order of most important to least.

* R&D
* Robotics
* Engineering
* Cloning
* Cargo
* Bar 

The Science Department is crucial due to the fact that they spend the entire shift preparing for a problem like you to appear. As soon as you appear anywhere else on the station, command will be calling R&D and Robotics to mass-produce weaponry and Mech-suits to hand out like its Halloween. You want a fight, but you don’t want to straight up die, and you can’t expect the crew to hold themselves back from utterly annihilating  you via strength of armed massed. You can and should upon spawning immediately rush Toxins Storage and start smacking the first Plasma Container you see until it starts leaking. Once you've done that use the power of smashing walls to spread the plasma easily into the surrounding departments. For bonus points, leak all the containers. Just remember to finish the job, you need to make sure R&D has no more access to weaponry. 

Next stop on the list is Engineering. We’ll be visiting them so that we can have fun smashing stuff. It’s that simple, just smash every important piece of machinery you see, or just smash all of it. Don’t bother destroying engine containment; It's lame and will end up just making the damage you do pointless, we want the station to survive and experience the damage you have done. It’s also important to visit Engineering just to give them a fight or two. Some players have not interacted with an antagonist all round, and you’re an opportunity to make the round more interesting for them by showing up. 

Cloning is required in order to cause panic and to keep Med-bay on their toes. As we did with Engineering, smash it all to bits. I recommend smashing it from inside CMO’s Office, as people won’t have easy access to stopping you from inside it. It's up to you whether or not you should make a return trip to deal with the inevitable Cloning station they rebuild. Hitting it once is often enough to spice things up, hitting it a second time might turn things sour. 

Following all of that, let’s remember that SS13 is a very flexible game that often presents many variables to a round. If anything prohibits you from getting to any of these key-points, then feel free to steer away! Perhaps a blob has spawned and is eating Engineering! 

You might also notice that I have left AI Satellite and Telecoms out of the key-points. This is a matter of personal preference, but I think that it escalates the enjoyment for players to have a moment to moment report on the status of the station as you slowly dismantle it out from underneath them. You can always smash cameras that are a pain, and most of the time you’ll be running through maintenance anyways. 

Phase 3 - All good things must come to an end. 

At this point in your life, most of the station is on fire. People are panicking, Command is contemplating calling the departures shuttle. Everyone is blood-thirsty. Throughout the length of your tour through the station it would have been inevitable that you got nicked a few, or even quite a few times. That’s okay! Because it’s our job to give the station a fight to the death. It is incredibly important that you die in a direct confrontation with the station. This is important because the fact is, you were going to die at some point anyways, and you have nowhere to go besides towards bloodshed. So make the most of it and die to a fortunate crew-member so that the crew can properly digest the damage you’ve done to them. 

Tips, tricks, and things to keep in mind.  

* Smash and drag water-tanks for protection and as a weapon to slip up those who are hunting you. Water-tanks are one of your most important tools. 
* Because you will most likely be smashing through every wall in sight, it also comes with the penalty of crew being able to follow you practically wherever you run to. Try to minimize smashing through walls and open doors instead so that crew have to fight for access. 
* Don’t chase people, don’t even make it your mission to specifically kill people. You’re going to end up killing people, but don’t go out your way to kill people. 
* Do not nest. Nesting does not work as PoT. 
* Do not go into space. You’ll probably get stuck and look silly. 
* Do not be-friend crew. You’re a blood-thirsty spider. It’s not cute or funny to stop attacking people and start trying to be some sort of diplomat.