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This time I drew Fiona and Jade

Look, I've seen the announcement in development news stating that we would be "updating" our sprite-set to TG, so I've known this was coming for a long time. However, I also happen to know that my opinion is not alone in preferring the present sprites over the TG sprites. So I'd really like to know what's the cause of this shift in sprite direction to the 3/4's perspective - and what the opinion of other community members is. Because I gotta be honest: Some of these sprites are questionable. Some of our old isometric-y sprites seemed to fit these a lot better. But maybe it's just me.

What it says on the tin. Xenobiology as a subdepartment is valuable when it wants to be, creating many quite unique and useful things, but at the same time, it is not really related to anything else going on in science. What follows is that there's a certain subset of xenobiology mains who refuse to do R&D, and scientists who have no care for Xenobiology. This causes some friction, because there can be too many people who wanted to be a xenobiologist but did not get to, or - especially on low pop - the only active scientists might not be interested in R&D. By splitting xenobio off (two slots?) and reducing science slots, a lot of this could be avoided. It becomes more clear what isn't being done for latejoiners, as well. Also reduces Scientists' powergaming potential by making it harder to access every single part of the research department with just one ID.

New sprites will always feel odd and out of place when newly implemented - but in a month nobody will notice anymore. Remember the old toolbox ? I don't. Besides when everything'll be done, it'll be much more natural - and quite a few of those new sprites look really awesome, Imo ! My only gripe is the sprites that are the straight downgrades from what we had - the recharger for example, which now feel even more 2d than the nice perspective'd one that we had, and that's a shame.

hmmm yes...... i shall make her deal with idiots

I do

These sprites will be much better once @McRamon finishes the 3/4 walls and doors he's been working on. Also a lot of this is you not being used to it.

Drew. :^)

I'm a sentimental person so I'm probably prone to this, but to me SS13 and this server in particular is a game of moments. Fleeting and ephemeral. Awkward moments of social interaction. Conflicting interests and misunderstandings. Bravery, cowardice, and malice. Mentorship and menace. When the round is over its all gone forever. Mostly. You had to be there. I'm not adding anything new here, just dropping a note of thanks for rounds well played. Hope I dropped it in the right place. I also hope in the long run I can keep up. Big thanks to those of you who have helped me acclimate.

Local IPC makes borgs, people inhabit borgs, people don't stop inhabiting borgs. The round ended with fourteen borgs, and four that cryoed, all of which made by me. I also did speed borgings with a plasma cutter. Robotics on highpop is an experience

As the title suggests I am here to discuss the issues with our current station goals. I will be presenting my arguments in a mostly organized list going over each station goal, afterwards I will attempt to provide some potential solutions to the issues I've mentioned, so let's get started then. General Issues This section will cover a couple topics that affect multiple station goal, in particular the BSA (Bluespace Artillery), BSH (Bluespace Harvester), and Station Shields. Lack Of Tangible Impact On The Round The BSA, BSH, and Station Shields all lack a tangible impact on the round, with all the fanfare and name of "Station Goal" one would think that said goal would have a tangible impact on the round, when in reality the aforementioned station goals have a number of issues unique to themselves which prevent them from being interesting and impactful, I will go into further detail in each of their dedicated segments. Station Goal? More Like Engineering Goal Once again the BSA, BSH, and Station Shields fall short in their purpose, this time in the fact that these goals are all essentially limited to just Engineering. The name STATION Goal implies that they'd be a station wide effort, however the 3 mentioned goals outside of ordering from cargo or getting some parts from science have no other departmental aid. Solutions In regards to impact on the round I will go over in their own segments. In regards to involvement the three involved departments are currently Engineering, Cargo, and Science, this leaves out Security, and Medbay, these two departments could be implemented easily enough. Security could have interaction with the station goal by giving antags a new objective in the form of sabotaging the station goal in some form (note these would also succeed if the goal was never built in the first place), maybe to their own benefit similar to what happens if you emag the BSH, to implement Medbay involvement perhaps the various station goals could have more intense operational hazards for Medbay to treat. The Bluespace Artillery This section will cover my issues with the BSA in particular and some potential fixes, generally the BSA is not that bad of a station goal and can be fixed with some effort This Thing Is Too Niche The BSA while interesting on paper has very few actual use cases due to our ruleset, this isn't implying we should change the ruleset and is more so an issue with the BSA itself. Anything off station is either too durable or pointless to target to make actual use of the BSA on, while using it to fire upon a station based target would be a violation of our rules barring a select few niche cases and also requires far more effort to setup than it's worth. Solutions The BSA's general use case of "explode stuff" is hard to work with considering our ruleset, a potential implementation I can think of that would at least make the BSA more useable would be to have it produce low power targeting grenades as a secondary function, these would function very similar to what was proposed in PR#16275 albeit with a smaller blast radius than a standard BSA shot. Having the BSA be more useable in particular against mid-rounds would help make it matter in a typical round. Station Shields Station Shields, oh boy where to start with these things, if I were in a position to say so I'd say to just outright replace these with something else and let you order them through cargo at any time. The Opposite Of A Station Goal These things are so detached from being a station goal it's disgusting, unlike every other goal you just slam these things down randomly in space around the station then press a button on a console. How is this a STATION goal when it's literally just Engineering doing some minor EVA they were probably already going to do when wiring the solars. Extremely Underwhelming Function Station Shields serve one purpose and no other, blocking meteors, on paper this doesn't sound that bad BUT, meteors are both uncommon and underwhelming as an event, opinion incoming but I personally find that the meteors hitting the station is actually more interesting than just being deleted as it gives engineering something to do on a potentially slow round, okay opinion over. The ONE case where these would actually be useful would be during a Meteor round, funny thing about that? Meteors as a round-type are not in rotation meaning that these things are even less useful than one would think. And you want to know something extra funny? A meteor event isn't even guaranteed when you get the shields as an objective meaning they can be completely and utterly useless based off of pure RnG. Solutions As I said above I personally don't think these are salvageable but I'll still try to give some input. Shields could be upgraded to provide a larger coverage area with stock parts, and to give security some interaction perhaps these could either "upgrade" meteors or attack the station itself if sabotaged by an antagonist. And to make them more useful they could perhaps guard against more than just meteors attacking space carp and the like. DNA Vault Ah the DNA Vault my personal favorite of the four goals I'd say this one is actually what a station goal should be, it involves multiple departments, is generally accessible, and also has a proper impact on the round. I'll discuss the elephant in the room that is the actual balance of this thing below. Boy This Thing Is Busted The actual balance of the vault is at 2 extremes, half the genes are super busted and the other half are basically useless. In particular two egregious genes are Leg Muscle Stimuli (base movement speed increase) and Neural Repathing (halves all stun times) while on the other end of the spectrum we have Toxin Adaptation (no damage from breathing plasma) and Lung Reinforcement (can breathe regardless). Solution Simple enough on this one, balance out the various traits you can get, I have nothing in mind myself so if you have an idea leave it down below. Bluespace Harvester To be honest, I was very disappointed by this when it finally got in, first it was too hard to get the higher levels which was fine, it was better to be like that than to have it be baby mode where it is now. An Underwhelming Project The Harvester is in a bit of a weird spot and I guess this could be more of a critique of our current power system rather than the goal itself but regardless it is both A. Nigh impossible to reach higher levels with the SM due to the very low power output, and B. Far too easy to crank up to a very high level with an easy to make TEG setup. An Underwhelming Reward The earnings from this could've been so interesting considering that it's supposed to be tapping into an alternate universe, but in truth the rewards are all already obtainable for the most part barring the scarab eggs, the hat option is just a renamed crate from cargo, pretty much the only unique list of items on the payouts list is from the cultural artifact but even then there's a solid chance you just get some brass which to be fair at the time couldn't be made but is now just as easy as throwing some chems together. Incredibly Isolated Due to the nature of the BSH essentially requiring its own private powernet there's very little room to try building it in different places, this results in the BSH only ever being interacted with by Engineering/Atmos, for a Station Goal this is once again missing the point of a station goal. Solutions As I said earlier the power criteria on the BSH isn't so much an issue with the harvester itself and moreso the current power generation methods available to the crew, fixing this should be relatively easy, make the SM actually generate power, nerf the TEG or just nerf the TEG and reduce the power threshold on the BSH as the TEG is busted. In regards to making it more rewarding to use. And a way to encourage building it somewhere that isn't just engineering the addition of a remote power input device could solve the issue of it needing its own private powernet. Conclusions All in all I love the concept of Station Goals and only want to see them improved, I've had these issues with the station goals for a while and a lot of them leave me lacking any real motivation to do them only further draining the limited amount things that Engineering has to do in the first place. I'm up for discussion of things and would like to hear your opinion's down below.

Attempts at Drawing some friends; Bubblegum, Malo and Phoebe Dean!

Feel free to use https://www.tweetgen.com/create/tweet-classic.html to make funny in-character tweets.

I played for a bit on other servers with this sprite set. For me it's not really a matter of adjustment; I'm just not a fan of them to begin with. I don't really see why we have to change our sprites, they really looked fine as is.

How many engineers does it take to fix a broken APC? And no, I am still not sorry for eating that APC. Cloning bad :]

Now all we need is a flashbang

I second this question. Don't really know why changing to tg sprites is a priority when—while still good sprites—they aren't necessarily an upgrade. In many ways they look quite strange, and the sprites we have currently are fine. The real question I have is just—why?

A journey I am grateful to share with you. With you all, I cannot state how much I appreciate this community. Thank you.

I talk about Space Transylvannia a lot.

Chiki posting Soy Latte addiction Pat the Vox!

(( Bit of forewards for explaining this. B.O.O.P. is been hack by the syndicates only three time! :D Jason Jedd I am looks at you when I am count one of those time. For shames. For shaaaames. :D Okay, I am making this for I thinking I wanting to see what is actual happen to a borg when they is get hacks to the syndicate. This is being tooooo big of a file though, so I am having to insert a links! )) !!WARNINGS FOR YOU! THIS IS HAVE FLASHING LIGHT! Please not look it if you having sensitivity to them!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Glory to Nanotrasen NAS Trurl ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <<WARNING>> <<UNAUTHORIZED REDISTRIBUTION OF COMMUNIQUES MAY RESULT IN DISCIPLINARY ACTION>> <<WARNING>> <SYSADMIN PRIVILEDGES OVERRIDE> <SPECIAL OPERATIONS OFFICER OVERRIDE REQUIRED> <AUTHORIZATION> <NT.DESIGNATION=SOO=*#(*&$&(*#(*888+/97(#**($(&Omega###> <CLEARANCE VERIFIED> <SECURE DATA STREAM INTERCEPTED> //ERROR// //ERROR// <IFF NOT DETECTED> <SEARCHING...> <SEARCHING...> <HANDSHAKE PROTOCOL FOUND> <ERROR> <SYNDICATE PROTOCOLS DETECTED> <PACKAGE INTERCEPT> <QUARANTINING FILE> <PLAY FILE?> <Y/N> -Y- <<DATA FILE TRANSCODED>> <ISOLATING PATTERN> <LOCKDOWN INITIATED>

That sound... you sometimes hear... When Jay is around... That Ocelot meow. This... this is where it comes from.

Zven is a good bugg. *click *clack