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Hi all, A number of people have expressed an interest in getting a new highpop map for us, once map rotation is in. CereStation fits this role nicely, and seems like a good fit for paradise. What I'm suggesting: Take TG's CereStation, give it some TLC, and bring it into paradise rotation. CereStation is a large map with departments spread across various asteroids, these asteroids are connected by walkways and by a quantum pad network. Each department has a small security office, with a large and spacious brig in the North West. The map is designed to evoke feelings of lonelyness and isolation, and can do this even on highpop, since the departments are so spread out and the map is quite large. Bridge hobos wont really have a place on this map, as its bridge design is quite unique (its on the east side of the NW asteroid, if you want to see) Why I'm suggesting this: We currently lack an up-to-date highpop map. We do have meta and delta, but they are severely outdated and broken currently. While work is being done to fix this, I think that time could be better spent maintaining CereStation. Issues that need solutions: So, the biggie. I've been able to port it over, and touch it up to be fully functional. An image of the map will be at the bottom of the post. HOWEVER, since it's a TG map, it has no facilities for our karma jobs, and its shuttle system is different to our current one. These things aren't the worst to remedy, but they require time that I dont want to committ unless I know people want this map. Main things that will need addressing are: Karma job locations; mechanic, secpod, barber, magi, blueshield, NTR, brigdoc, etc. Medbay remap SciChem Arrivals docking tweaks for ERT, medshuttle, etc. Brig remap for para culture, notably; perma expansion, processing room, better evidence, gamma armory. Move gateway out of maints More vending machines Click the image to expand and zoom in detail, its very large. (This image is taken from within a mapping tool, some things such as cables will not be visible. This map runs without issue on a test server currently)

Just a nice milestone for how much we have now.

me and @Peak made a fully functioning TRI-SM setup.... until it turned into a chernobyl recreation. it was even the fourth reactor to add to the realism! Thanks to @Denghis for the screenshots. Overall good fun, got some improvements to make with the design.......

CERESTATION IS THE FUCKING BEST. It's very unique and large enough to be well suited to very high pop. I like how it makes positioning security officers on different asteroids as opposed to having them do mindless maint patrolling a consideration. I absolutely LOVE the potential to make expansion projects and secret rooms there, aswell. It's perfect that way. Those corridors have a really cool atmosphere. And they won't be empty on highpop anyway. Yeah. Which is fine, not all maps have to have the same mechanics - you can disposals ride on box, meta, and delta, but that doesn't mean that it's necessary that it's also safe to do on Ceres. Mechanical differences keep the game varied. Atmos barely matters anymore so the consequences of any breach would be easily fixed. Plus crippling the station is reserved to hijack-level antags anyway and others will get bwoinked.

Alright, so after having some discussion in the wiki-dev portion of the discord(and learning that pinging headmins is a gamble that you don't often win) and mulling over this for a month beforehand, I wanted to make this forum post so we could have an official discussion over this(and so I can be specific in what I'm asking for). As of now there are only a few User Group rights on the wiki. Those are: Regular autoconfirmed users Game Admins Interface/Bureaucrats Sysops Admins. Currently there is no in-between role for Regular Users Vs. Fully fledged administrators on the staff team. While we have a large team of admins, their primarily role is on the server and interacting with the community on the forums. Headmins/Admins also have to deal with Ban Appeals and generally fixing the server when it goes to shit. Additionally, editing the wiki can be a boon for people that aren't interested in it. I'm content with pinging an admin to delete one page, however there's the issue with there being around 500+ unused files on the wiki. In order to remove those from the wiki, I'm supposed to mark them as Slated for Removal and then personally ask someone with wiki perms to delete them. That's not only inefficient but inconsiderate to ask for because those files would take over 2+ hours to fully delete all of them. What I'm proposing is a Wiki Admin of a sorts, they have slightly elevated permissions(as I've listed below). Issues on the wiki would be something that could be continually taken care of and prevent buildups. We have one of the best wiki's out of most SS13 servers, rivaled only by Baystation and Yogstation. I think it could be better by having people who's job on the server is to primarily maintain and improve the wiki. IF we made a Wiki Admin role this is the User Rights I am asking for (Specific rights listed under points) The Ability to delete things Delete, delete-redirect Be able to view deletion logs deleterevision, deletedhistory, deletedtext The Ability to Block Users (mostly for fighting vandalism and bots) Block, hideuser Merging/Moving of Certain Things mergehistory, suppressredirect Ability to Rollback Edits rollback General Administration Stuff autopatrol, noratelimit, unwatchedpages, patrol, browsearchive, suppressionlog, viewsuppressed IF we made a Wiki Admin role this is the User Rights I am specifically NOT asking for (but ill take if headmins want it) The Ability to Edit Protected Pages The Ability to alter protections on pages Anything that gives permissions to edit the CSS and JS files of users/pages/the site The ability to edit the interface, a.k.a the sidebar toolbox stuff Ability to delete logs The ability to edit user rights The ability to delete site change tags The ability to delete pages with large amounts of edits(see bigdelete) For this one specifically we may need to raise $wgDeleteRevisionsLimit if it is not above 20-30 to make this restriction work I highly encourage anyone who is interested or has a stake in this conversation(wiki contribs, Paradise staff) to discuss what user rights you think are ok for this kind of role below. These User rights that I have described gives people with those rights, significant power on the wiki. However, it is not enough to do irreversible damage or to touch the database, JSON, or CSS and while they can view the logs, they cannot edit them and attempt to erase their actions which makes it much easier for administrators to step in and be able to trace when problems arise(which they likely won't). What this does give these admins the power to do is be able to delete unnecessary item on the wiki, block vandals and bots, be able to view certain logs, and a few quality-of-life improvements. I propose that this kind of role, whatever it would be called, is given to Wiki-Contributors that fall under a certain criteria: Are active on the wiki Have a significant amount of wiki edits(think 250-500+ edits) Have a thorough understanding of mediawiki, for example: Templates Special Pages View Histories General Structure of the Wiki(think namespaces) Can thoughtfully create an application like we have for mentors, PR reviewers, and admins I realize this is a lot to ask from the Head Staff team because it would result in changes needing to be made in roles on the site, wiki, and the discord. However, I see this as something necessary and an overall positive improvement to the server. Thank you for your consideration and anyone who wants to chip in on this discussion.

Hi guys I just found this server and I am enjoying my time here!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway, yeah, I remembered this is a thing so might aswell. Hi, am Woj. I'm from Poland. I play pretty much only Fiona Phillips, though I do take breaks from her, but still that's the character you've probably seen me play. I've been here since, I wanna say, May of last year? Time flies. I play this game mostly for roleplay, though in absence of people willing to do so, I like to greytide, 'cause who doesn't. As far as my spessmen experience goes, I've played a bit of ss13 under different ckeys in 2015-2016, then kinda stopped, and made a new BYOND account in 2020 to play here (because a friend from outside ss13, @Jabronio, asked me to), since I obviously did not remember my login information for pretty much throwaway accounts I made five years ago for a random 2D spessmen game. Pretty much had to re-learn the game, but I think I'm pretty ok now. Even got a cool orange name. I like playing security, command, and engineering, though I prefer roles within those departments where the workload isn't too big, so I actually get to roleplay. HMU icly if you like to roleplay we'll have a good time. Hobbies, uh, I have a decade of experience with roleplaying, mostly in the form of Pathfinder (a D&D clone) and D&D 3.5e, I've played a slew of other tabletop games aswell, but Pathfinder's the one I play consistently. I love worldbuilding and have my own fantasy setting I use for my campaigns - I am my group's designated eternal GM, since only I can navigate the absolute maze of a system that Pathfinder is. So if you ever wondered why my characters' records are walls of text, yeah, here's why - I'm a nerd who likes to write lore. Other than that, I enjoy cooking. Dunno what to say about cooking. Food tasty. I like all of it as long as it's prepared well. Except bananas fuck bananas. Outside of spessmen and hobbies I'm currently doing a masters in biotechnology, my thesis is about kale (I am pretty much specialized in plants, even more so in specifically in vitro plant tissue cultures). Eat kale, it's good for you, and only tastes bad if you don't know what to do with it, otherwise it's actually pretty great. My undergrad thesis was about lemons so uh, when life gives you lemons amirite? As you can see from the utter chaos of this post, I am not a very organized person.

EMP tomatoes sound disgusting and i dont want that.

Absolutely yes

This might be a tad off base from the topic, as its mostly talking about mechanical ideas/issues around Vox, but I feel like out of everything a Vox has, its not their buffs/maluses that are the core part of Vox its the culture/lore/accents that they use for the most part. It might be me not giving a single flying hell about actual species traits (which is likely a minority), but the Lore and RP aspects of a race along with the general community that species has on the Station are 1000% the focus that a player should be having when deciding to play it or not. SS13 is an RP game with a focus on community, its not an MMORPG that requires you to pick the most OPTIMAL character to dunk on antags/dunk on sec/go tide with less issues. Sure the bonuses might make you more "unique" but a few traits dont mean jack if you arent putting the effort in to immerse yourself in the Lore or Culture of a species.

Allow me to state one specific situations regarding this. Whenever a PR, or some form of idea involving Vox that nerfs or touches stuff that affects them.. maintainers, the people coding it, the people supporting it, ect are bombarded by Vox players both in-game, discord and github. All purely because the PR touches Vox. Whenever a PR buffs them, all the Vox players come out of the woodwork to support it, no matter what it is. Because it affects their race. I play Vox... yet it's the community that makes me sick of playing Vox because they think being Vox allows them to do whatever they want, self-antag, act as if they are immune to all forms of punishment (Both IC and OOC, the amount of times I've seen "It's my nature as a Vox" or "That's how my Vox is"), aiding their "kins" when antag cause "Yaya kins helps kins", corruption (Such as refusing to arrest Vox, covering up for them, allowing them to escape or standing there and doing nothing for when a Vox antag is killing the Warden). The vox community is toxic in-game, and it's toxic out of game. Now, you want to know why the Vox players are feeling unrepresented? Because the Vox community outright refuses to work with the staff team (Except for a very very tiny amount), hold their private complaining in their own discord and whenever a staff member in that discord attempts to tell them to bring it up to the staff or talk to the people doing the PRs.. those staff members are removed. I was in the Vox discord, invited when I was originally a player. So I saw everything happening within that discord, from the general discussions.. to the calls of people throwing rants, demanding action and influencing other Vox players to continue where they picked up from being banned. When I became a staff member and tried to steer members of that community to go through proper channels, I find myself suddenly being banned from that discord for quote "Make people uncomfortable". If Vox players feel unrepresented, then perhaps they should stop acting like a cult of personality flocking around two members, and start actually talking to the staff.. instead of expecting banned players to speak for them as their "messiah". The EMP weakness was removed because it was more or less the only thing that could counter a Vox who did nothing but hang out in space all round. It had unintended side-effects that even Fox disliked it. Space proof along with other races (Such as plasma-man) was removed purely from a game view point. No race, right from the start, should be allowed to space walk with nothing effecting them / slowing them down, right from the get-go. A traitor plasma-man, vox, whatever steals the items he needs and then just sits in space the whole round. That's not engaging nor is it fun for either side.. Security side because there's only one person who can deal with em properly, and that's the pod pilot (Could argue security hardsuits, but they are slow compared to someone without one and no slow drawback). If there's no pod pilot, or the pod pilot was taken out already.. then it's a win for the traitor automatically. Traitor side, you're sitting in space for 2 hours.. it's not engaging, it's not amusing, it's not fun. You may as well AFK on an asteroid and watch netflix if you're going to do that. And the times a new player who rolls antag doesn't know about the space proof.. spaces the person, and they just come right back in 4 minutes screaming murder. No race should be pressure / cold resistance to/or have no draw back when in space. There were plenty of ideas on adding to Vox when the original rework was done, but trying to make it work was another thing completely. One thing I will point out from the document was the mention of Strange Reagent. SR works as intended.. there's 3 (4 if you include staff of resurrection) ways of bringing back the dead. You're within the time limit, manage to fix their damage and defib em. You clone them with the cloner. This includes removing their brain and putting them in a human/tajaran or such body. If neither are available, you fix the damage and pop em with SR. SR is effectively the effects of cloning without waiting or the proper process. It will bring you back to life, but at the cost of some of your organs needing surgery. This is to counter people just making 300 pills of SR and only using SR to revive the dead.. if there was no draw back, medical wouldn't have anything to do cloning wise or surgery wise when using SR. Just because Vox's organs are considered to immune getting sick, does not mean they should be immune to SR's effects.

im afraid balancing/reworking vox is impossible without a small riot. Regardless if you make a rework, a buff, a rework, you will always cause major amounts of unrest. Most of the community, staff included is extremely biased one way, or another. Touch anything and the same thing happens all over again. Buffs get shot down, reworks complained on, nerfs causing riots. Unless the talking field can be unpolarised (jesus crist its so polarising. so extremely polarising. people get into it so hard its crazy. I know, i was super pro vox once myself) nothing constructive or productive can be achieved. One side will push onto the other and the discussion will just boil down. I believe the latest PR craze is just a perfect example of it happening. And in the end. EVERYONE looses. everyone is frustrated. I just wish to appeal to everyone to think twice before they get super defensive. Sometimes criticism is helpful to grow. But also a plea to the other side. think twice if your criticism is constructive. People use "this is a buff to vox" as an argument in itself. But with that out of the way - ---------------------------------- My personal opinion on vox balance is, that the initial rework with EMP weakness removal and space proof removal etc. was inherently poorly designed. Vox unique features and perks were removed one by one without adequate replacement or rework. They are left in a very awkward place from what they once were. There were few ideas thrown around about reworks, but ultimately, all of it was shot down. There are two ways i would see it. A total rework, build it from the ground up. New ideas. new perks. New maluses. Bring them closer to bird than raptor people maybe? It would also detach them from the awkward connection to "purely antag species". Or go back to the original design. Give the fatal rework a second look. I personally think that the EMP weakness was a very unique and interesting quirk to have. I would very much like to see it readded. Get rid of the weird no decay thing, its effectively worthless given how SR code works. Synthetic chems are quite unique but ultimately worthless mechanics wise, as synthetic chems are in a very sad and poor state - but still it makes for unique RP scenarios where your vox co-worker downs fuel or solder in bar. In lieu of space proof being gone, maybe simply increased resistance to cold, to allow for some easier manoeuvring in cold space without a suit? (or remove the movement speed penality entirely due to temperature). They still die from vacum, but some form of "bioengineered space raptor" spirit would remain. Enough to dash out to grab the spaced colleague but not enough to evade security all round scot-free. While "no footsteps" gone is a sad thing to see. With knowing that its not possible for it to be back, I'd support the idea of replacing the sound they make to fit the raptory claws. I seen the idea float around as well.

I dunno what happened here but... I would like to see more fluff and quirks put into vox so they feel different from human or any other race. Smiles having no bones and using jelly as blood makes them feel very alien for example, perhaps something like that?

mentor do blob evoluate without oxigen??

I have something I'd like to state in regards to the current tensions between the 'vox metaclique' and the staff of paradise station currently. Neither of our behaviors have been acceptable, and only serve to feed one another into a circle of unending fighting. It's childish, and both sides need to stop. The vox players feel unrepresented and try to strike out, the admins refute such ideas. This isn't a case of one is right and the other is wrong, and it's not that both sides don't have good points either. The vox need to stop whining about misrepresentation and 'racism' and the admins need to keep a sharper ear out and an open mind for just what they might actually have an issue with. The vox players know what they don't like about current balance, and are ready to propose ideas. It's an obligation of the admins to make sure their new 'balance changes' are balanced for everyone buy the end of it (while still making changes). Work with each other and please stop arguing about events out of this thread. Thank you all for your feedback so far, and the comments about my apparent maturity. I am going to kindly ask we keep all discussion, argument, or griping about the other side having opinions out of this discussion. This discussion is about suggesting and discussing change for a race. Not arguing about it's community or anything of that likeness. Don't come here to fight people picking fights or pick a fight with vox, this is a public forum. Don't come here to fight people picking fights or pick a fight with non-vox, this is a public forum. If someone says something you don't like, ignore it. This isn't the place to 'duke it out' or argue with someone cause they said something you like. This is a discussion post about making balance changes.

It gets deflected by carp and activities the RDs armour

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.

First round as ascended sling, this is the result.

When you ask atmos if what they're doing is safe

that's a lot of ban appeals