Leaderboard

This has been totally dead for a while and I'm way behind. *awkward laugh*

Issues: 1. Station goals are a neat idea, but with only three different goals, they get pretty boring in practice. Once you've seen one station shield, you've seen them all. 1(a). More complicated station goals aren't easily implemented due to the extensive coding involved. You can't code a way to evaluate "put on a play" without human involvement in the loop. 2. Station goals require the entire station, which leaves you screwed over if/when Botany some other department fails to come through and renders all your hard work pointless. 3. Station goals also only involve a few departments; when the station's job is "haul some satellites into space," the entire Service department can't do much more than Advanced Thumb-Twiddling. Design Goals: 1. I'm looking to make a flexible system which provides a goal which both departments and individual jobs can strive for. 2. I want to avoid consistency: the system should have a lot of different goals, which ideally challenge people's playstyles in some way. 3. The system should reward both departments and individuals in a way which provides some bragging rights, without incentivizing them enough to make them want to game the system. Design: 1. Each department (Security, Cargo, Engineering, Medical, Science, Service) receives a specific goal from a pre-determined list. Similarly to the station goal form, the paper with the departmental goal would appear in the head's office (HoP, HoS, CMO, etc.). The departmental goal is intended to involve the primary job of the department (Engineers, Cargo Techs, etc.), with a goal such as "send back at least 20 empty crates" or "hold a pizza party." Suggestions for goals to complete are definitely appreciated (see below). 2. Individual jobs which are different from the primary department's job in some way (Geneticist, Chemist, Botanist, Mime/Clown, etc.) receive a role-specific goal which they're intended to implement. A Coroner, for instance, could receive a goal like "hold a funeral for at least one deceased individual this shift, complete with a eulogy." 3. Goal completion is evaluated by IA Agents, who can mark a department's or individual's goal as completed (I'd suggest having a particular form to fax to CentComm or something similar, to avoid complicating things). While this system could certainly be gamed, the low reward potential should keep people from gaming it for actual powergame-y reasons. And if someone wants to bribe or coerce an IA Agent into claiming they've done something good...well, that seems like perfectly decent RP, no? 4. Departments would be rewarded with a plaque or some other commendation that goes on a wall (either shipped in or stocked in the IA's office), and a minor greentext at the end under the Station Goal section ("Science Department Goal: 'Create multiple maximum-capacity bombs' - completed!"). Individuals who completed their role-specific task or contributed strongly in some other way would be rewarded with a commendation from their Head of Staff. Each Head of Staff would spawn with their own medal box in their closet, with up to three relevant medals inside (distinguished conduct for the HoP, nobel sciences award for the RD, etc.) Obviously, some medals like the 'medal for exceptional heroism' would still be Captain-only. This: a) allows for many more goals to be implemented, ranging from more conventional goals like "Engineering: repair and re-open the Med-Maint Bar" to off-the-wall stuff like "Service: serve a full-scale feast in the Bar, complete with a reconstruction of an ancient Viking longship" or "Mime/Clown: act out a scene from a Shakespearean play"), b) gives IA Agents more stuff to do and a reason to visit other departments rather than the usual interaction of "You're doing your job? Cool, keep doing that," c) improves IA's interaction with other departments, since now they can provide something good rather than just being the bearer of bad news, and d) Gives both recognition and reward to a particular department for the work they've done. Expected issues: a) People gaming the system for kicks (IA Agent being a shitter, Head of Staff pinning all their medals on themselves, etc.). I see this issue as a largely self-resolving one, since people being shitheads like this should invite enough public condemnation to limit it. b) People simply ignoring their goals. This is also a fairly self-resolving issue, since the goals themselves don't provide any major risk or reward other than a shiny plaque or medal. c) People mocking a weird goal they're given. This could be addressed by making the goal papers themselves fairly humorous ("Hey Atmos Techs, Comms Officer Steve here. So I know it's normally banned for being 'suicidally dangerous' and similar stuff, but here's what: how about you make a special room for plasmamen? I'm sure the Chief Engineer would commend you for that!"). This should hopefully provide the right tone for the goals, without detracting from the fact that they're a new and interesting thing to try on some slow round. Suggestions for departmental goals: General: -Educate new members of the team / provide public education to anyone who wants to learn about your job Medical: -Remove at least ten appendixes / install at least five MedHUD implants -Get half the crew to maximize their suit sensors / ensure the front desk is staffed during the shift Science: -Destroy the Toxins Testing Range with toxins bombs -Build a quantum-pad network connecting the station -Build and install two additional AIs / build a secondary comms array Engineering: -Complete and pressurize the Construction Site (the one east of the Engineering Outpost) -Build a new room in the Assembly Line area (theater, lounge, etc.) -Repair and re-furnish the Old Bar or Medical Maintenance restaurant Cargo: -Send at least twenty crates on the supply shuttle -Ensure that every order submitted has properly stamped paperwork -Provide every Civilian on station with a Station-Bounced Radio Role-Specific Tasks: Chemistry: Provide every other department with healing grenades / provide Engineering with at least five metal-foam grenades Coroner: Ensure all corpses are disposed of via cremation or mass-driver once autopsied Roboticist: Ensure the station has at least one 'borg with every module type before the shift ends / Build at least two Odysseus Mechs Chaplain: Provide a service dedicating the station to your god / hold at least one funeral service for any person or thing, complete with firing them out the mass driver Librarian: Create a role-playing game in the Library / provide books to all other departments Atmos Tech: Destroy at least one dangerous item in the Incinerator / create a vox-specific (or plasmaman-specific) room this shift (etc. etc. etc.) I'd appreciate any other suggestions you have to offer, especially suggestions for additional goals to complete. I'd like a large number of goals to avoid people seeing the same ones too often, so if you can think of anything else, lemme know! If the maintainers are willing to go forward with this suggestion then I'll be happy to provide the fluff for it like the department/job papers, IA's new SOP regarding inspecting and completing goals, assessing and suggesting new goals, and so on.

So i was observing a round when i got a prompt asking if i wanted to play a sentient creature. Having no idea what that meant i decided to accept and suddenly i am a Space Koi. I breach an area that wouldn't cause very much damage, it got fixed quickly. After running around saying hello to everyone trying to RP as a koi, which i felt was a simple minded friendly kinda personality. Eventually A Blob gets announced and I'm chilling in front of the bridge saying that i would like to find it but i can't without maint access (Which i don't think there was anyway to get me said access). Conner Elder who was also just hanging out said that he would search with me. So we go off on a huge blob hunting spree and eventually find it (We started in the exact wrong direction, Sec had already killed it when we got there). Afterwards we just hung out and chilled. Its a lot to say so I've some screenshots here. The first few are in the beach gateway where we complentated life and such, soon afterwards cultists were about to summon their god and we ran back to hide. I had the idea of escaping into space with Conner, so we got him an eva suit and just left the station, me serving as a kind of jetpack dragging him along. While exploring space we found tcomms and boarded. Teleported back onto the station because we saw the shuttle was about to leave. Arrived at arrivals beacon, went to the pods and escaped! Very tender and emotional fun within a round. Oh and i was named Hobbes the Koi at the end. Hobbes out

I don't even know if its worth justifying a response to 'Low RP system' in a game where the lore is about a mega corporation sabotaging their competition to secure a monopoly on plasma and development of such technologies for the sole purpose of making one hell of a profit... and the employees of said station operate in some socialist dystopia where they can afford just about anything they'd ever want and receive services for no work on their part? Back on topic, one possible iteration for if/after economy gets ported would be accruing debt. Just showing up for a round and doing nothing shouldn't even break even, people who sit in the bar and drink all shift digging themselves into a whole, cloning and complex medical care charging a fair penny, and if a player ends a round dead they are deducted even more as NT pulls up an offsite back up, force clowns and sends them in on the next shift to make up for productivity, each death then carry round to round penalties where you need to take out loans just to be able to eat some rounds and failing to show up for work (not logging in to a character for 3+ days) could have a penalty tossed on as well, these of course would need to be capped. And dare I suggest running the risk of putting yourself into debt and not being able to legally afford most services the station offers, the Syndicate or other nefarious organizations might prioritize such a candidate for work over mr money bags who always works the high paying jobs and never has less than 8 digits in their ATM balance (or, alternatively if the Syndicate made the loan to you in the first place a rival agent being tasked with harvesting your organs and shipping them out for sale to cover the debt)

Sell insulated gloves for 6000 credits at cargo. BAM, money is now desired by the greytides.

I like how you all try to change Communist Space Station to Capitalist Space Station. Maybe finally somebody would bother to pay me for mercenary things. Too many times I've heard "Why do you need credits?"

Bumping this, since absolutely nothing has changed in regards to shadowling balance so far, as much as I can tell, and I just had the displeasure of playing through another shadowling round. Now, I enjoyed it more than usual because security went murderbone earlier, which made it more interesting and heightened the chances of actually beating the slings, given that dethralling people is still a huge pain (and I think still a major headache even with the current PR). I don't want to sound knee-jerky but according to the community poll there are significant concerns about shadowling balance and we haven't taken any steps yet. I think from what I gathered in this thread the following would be acceptable: 1. Causing damage to shadowlings to be propagated among thralls. As mentioned earlier this allows attrition to help slow down the slings. 2. Making thralling permanent. Conversion gamemodes can be ass because of the fact that people get attached to their sides and get salty when they get converted. Now, this could mostly be chalked off as a player issue, and I'll admit sometimes when I'm thralled I'll just go sit in the bar and drink until the round ends, but I think the gamemode would be improved if deconversion was just removed completely. This accomplishes: 1) Giving security a fighting chance. Usually they only start murderboning when it is too late. 2) Prevents people from getting rethralled or people running into maint to begin with because they want to be thralled. If it turns out the slings are bad / incompetent, there is no going back, which adds a small amount of personal investment. Does anyone else have any ideas to add? Can we reach any sort of consensus about what will make this gamemode better? I'm going to keep pushing for action here because, again, I love paradise and all other antags / gamemodes, but everytime a sling round comes up I just want to cryo, and I think there might be shared resentment. If consensus can't be reached I think a better course of action is to remove the gamemode from rotation entirely for a complete rework.