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When the ghost role is sus

Hey! Right now, the Psychologist has no purpose, mechanically speaking. If they were removed the game would not be different in the slightest. Compare this to other heavy RP roles like: Librarian: Some people really like reading the books, and I would personally miss the books. They have a unique mechanic, even if it's shallow. Removing them would remove a feature. Chaplain: Can bless people and are actually mechanically useful during some rounds (cultists and vampires). Removing them might actually affect balance in some modes. IAAs: Has a clear purpose on the station. Recently got their own comms channel which I love. When playing a command role, I always stay in touch with IAA to find any SOP breaches or direct them to stuff that needs investigating. If directed, they can be a great asset. If removed, SOP wouldn't be followed and adherence to Space Law might also suffer. Then we have the Psychologist. According to their SOP, there is no one who they can actually treat, without the permission of someone else. This makes sense, since their treatment doesn't actually do anything mechanically. Treating criminals is also, due to the nature of the gamemodes, useless. Traitors are working for the syndicate either willingly or forced and a good therapy session won't change that. The rest of the gamemodes force criminals that are impossible to help (vampires/changelings) for a psychologist. Even if they can be helped, they can't be released due to their status as EoC. The only criminals left are the small scale ones. The greytiders and shitters. I suppose the psychologists job could be to try to deal with those but as a psychologist you're coming at it from the wrong angle. They need information about rules of the server and how to act, not psychological help. Psychologist SOP for reference: In a short summary, they can't do anything assumed by their job without permission from someone else. Which would be fine, if they had some sort of dangerous or great power, but they don't. However, I don't think the psychiatrist should be able to force people into treatment against their will. I do think others should have that power though. So how do we solve this? Personally, I think features that lack purpose should be removed. By that logic, the Psychologist should be removed. On the other hand, I like the idea of the Psychologist so I wanted to bring some suggestions to make them able to do stuff. Here are some suggestions to give them a purpose: Positive Psychology. Some players will become angry playing this game. The Psychologist, could try to change their emotional state by offering encouragement and compliments. Their goal would be to turn those frowns upside down. This is hard in real life and doing it over a game might be harder. But using this type of psychology might actually make people feel a bit better. Treat it like a serious job. While a lot of beginners play IAA agents, people know when an IAA agent aren't living up to their standard. A psychologist should have a similar bar to reach for. They can't act however they want because then they would be worse than their patients. Psychiatric session/evaluation demanded: Any head can demand a psychiatric evaluation or session by any of their subordinates if they seem angry, sad or generally unhappy. If we base the Psychologists treatment on Positive Psychology, this sessions purpose would be to make them happy or calm down. IAA might also be able to demand that non-heads do a session. The Psychologist could also get access to the Procedures channel. The two outcomes I imagine for this would be the person demanded to do the session either flipping out completely and escalating their anger, which I would consider grounds for demotion OR accepting it, realizing they may not feel allright and do the session. If they feel better afterwards would depend on the psychiatrist. Research: The Psychologist can perform actual psychological research, just like in real life! CentComm, since they sometimes do odd stuff, might want to try some strange experiment. I assume this would be heavily based on the admins on at the shift start, but I'm also wondering how hard it would be to have a rotation of 10 different "experiments" similar to station goal that the Psychologist has to perform. Checking for completion would not be necessary, as long as they have a clear task. They could give their findings to the captain who could fax it to CentComm. Examples: Can (antagonist) be cured by 10 minute exposure to the clown? Will the happiness level of the station increase if the tiles are changed to wood? Will violence increase or decrease, based on the amount of flowers placed in the hallways? If a "calm area" is constructed near dorms, will people visit it to find inner peace? If the mime start acting out peaceful and happy scenarios, will the crew calmness increase? These are some thoughts I trew together in like half an hour so I'm sorry they're a bit confused. I'm sure there are plenty of better suggestions out there and I would love to see a job I love IRL get some more purpose in this game! So keep the suggestions coming!

Unofficial Lore and Headcanon Thread This thread is for the community to share and discuss Paradise Station's Space Station 13 lore, headcanon, and other community-made legends (including stories, encyclopedias, and more). All lore posts will be linked to the original post (this message) for easier and more organized viewing. The purpose of this thread is for the community to share each other's materials and take inspiration from others to craft their better-written characters for a higher quality of roleplay and immersion. #Unofficial Lore Thread is also a discord thread under #spacestation_13, join the conversation there! Universe Lore https://www.paradisestation.org/forum/topic/21432-unofficial-lore-thread/?do=findComment&comment=159844 Cyberiad (& Tajaran) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zUxgIDzY-YrqxlQFwur1rAGgzSRTemC87CWpzoX7XjM/edit Jäger Heavy Industries Species https://www.paradisestation.org/forum/topic/21432-unofficial-lore-thread/?do=findComment&comment=159806 Vox Arks https://www.paradisestation.org/forum/topic/21432-unofficial-lore-thread/?do=findComment&comment=159843 Vulpkanin (& Cyberiad) https://www.paradisestation.org/forum/topic/21432-unofficial-lore-thread/?do=findComment&comment=159829 Vampires & Their Soul https://www.paradisestation.org/forum/topic/21432-unofficial-lore-thread/?do=findComment&comment=159842 Cabal Vampires https://www.paradisestation.org/forum/topic/21432-unofficial-lore-thread/?do=findComment&comment=159820 Abductor Miscellaneous https://www.paradisestation.org/forum/topic/21432-unofficial-lore-thread/?tab=comments#comment-159796 Species, Factions, (& Misc) Be respectful to each other; enjoy literary work, story writing; and have fun!

doodled my self-insert wizard character from test server shenanigans. sadly did not get many screencaps before I was turned into a xenomorph

Here's Sizzle, who after getting gibbed and spending 15 minutes as a MMI captain, became a Vulpkanin with his original, slime person head, but with vulpkanin eyes and ears transplanted into it.

CQC was re-added to the Traitor Uplink in this PR: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/14474 Since then, it's seen its fair share of nerfs (unable to be discounted, unable to use as Vampire/Changeling). However, I don't think I'm alone in the belief that it is still an overwhelmingly strong purchase, and generally completely un-fun to play against. Is it rather fun to use? Of course, it's overpowered so it's rather fun. However, I cannot think of anything fun about being on the receiving end of many of the things CQC does. Putting aside the legsweep into an instant sleep, the instant grab sleep is also ridiculously strong, as well as all the other things CQC does. The most important thing about it, however, is that it's not an item - Sec can't detect it upon searching someone, and it can't be confiscated or disarmed in a fight. If sec does manage to catch the CQC user and perma them, they cannot remove the martial arts from them while they're in perma. CQC is balanced - for nukies, and it popping up in bundles is (generally) rare enough to make it not as much of a problem as it is now. As it stands, with certain traitors buying it every round and becoming near-unstoppable thanks to it, I would not say that CQC on traitors is a thing that benefits the general fun of most rounds, and think it should be restricted to nukies and the Bond bundle as a result. And hey - Sleeping Carp has been reworked to actually be both good (while not overpowered) and affordable, meaning it can honestly replace CQC as a martial arts choice for traitors. Now I wait for @Charliminator to tell me "it's a skill issue"

Gimmicks are funny once.

For anyone reading this in the future, the bug has been fixed a while ago.

CQC was fine when it was just bundles, or even the brief period where it was a chef exclusive item. It's too strong for every traitor in the game to buy whenever they want even with the discount removal, as any player who knows the two sleep combos can (as mentioned above) curbstomp anyone in melee combat without them even being able to call for help. The carp-fu combos stun rather than sleep and even the sleepy pen gives a fair window for the victim to realize they've been injected and can only be used twice, so this infinite-use near instant sleep item that can't be disarmed just doesn't fit very well at all for standard traitor loadouts.

It's true. CQC has two different instant win moves which don't even allow the victim to call for help. This is clearly for stealth nukie shenanigans but when given to crew it's just OP as hell. These two combos are in fact so powerful that the other CQC combos see absolutely no use, and most CQC users couldn't even tell you what they are or how to perform them.

One of the issues with nukies is that they have to fight a literal angry horde, often a very well armed one at that. As such, they need to have the ability to destroy anyone 1v1. The crew has power against them through numbers. Another thing to remember is that barely any armour available to the crew is even remotely decent at defending against physical bullets, most is geared towards lasers or melee. As such, if you are not wearing a bulletproof vest, nukie guns are gonna do a LOT of damage to you. I hope that helps with a bit of extra context.

I'm working on a replacement for the current chat UI that should allow optimize some things, including when you get a ton of messages at once

From an admin pov, my main concern with psych is the fact that a good chunk of the time, it is played by players who are absolutely bald, and decide to kidnap someone, straightjacket them, and force-feed them drugs. Because that's what they think is appropriate for a psych. I've had to ban more people from psych/medical for this than I care to remember. As such, any mechanic which psychs can abuse to detain people for long periods of time, or really at all, is probably not a good mechanic. If we're going to give psych a mechanic, something they can use to make the job more interesting/relevant, then I would suggest: something detection-based, like the ability to use an item to scan for abnormal brainwaves, which could reveal things like vampire thralling, mindslave implants, etc. This would require a unique neural scanner, them to hold still for 30-60 seconds, or something like that. Enough constraints that the psych can't mass-test everyone. something to do with curing psych abnormalities, like for example reversing abductor programming, or effectively giving someone a mindslave implant that makes them loyal to NT (OOCly, this is a reward for traitors, who get to be released 'on parole' rather than sitting out the rest of the round, as such this implant would be extremely limited supply, only one is available and only the psych can use it). have a system where people can opt to give their character mental disabilities, not just physical ones, during char creation (e.g. syndicate-induced PTSD) and have the psych able to dispense unique drugs to help with these... and have a unique HUD that lets them identify people whose medical records show they have these conditions (basically make it easier for them to find rp partners) Really, we should consider just removing the straightjacket from the psych, and giving it to sec's medical wing. Psych is meant to be treating patients on a voluntary basis. Patients sent to the psych against their will should come exclusively from security - not something the psych should be able to engineer themselves.