SpaceTimeNow

I can see that point, but currently being security means just running around and dragging lots of people in the cell. Which i consider not being fun at all, for for both sides. If i play security i want to be able to search evidence, question people, all that stuff and then making a meaningful arrest, but the server is way to fast for that. To many crimes, most of all the small ones, but how should you differenciate if it's just someone breaking into science for the lulz or because he really an antag. Probably half the people you serarch will have questionable stuff on them, how should you start any meaningful investigation if your enviroment is full of crime. The moment you understand security and "get good" at it, is probably the same moment where the player realisies how pointless it all is and will lose interesst. In short: If i play security i want quality over quantity and if that's not given then i simply won't play it.

Somehow i cannot believe that linda is as slow on other servers as it is by us. On paradise you have to use portable scrubbers and pumps like vacuum cleaner and drag them over all the tiles. Even with how linda works, it should equalize tiles a lot faster, i believe there are just some enormous bugs in the code. If an area needs like 20 minutes to equalize than there is something really fucked up. Edit: words

Yeah i agree, but that will not happen. But maybe better Linda?

Are there any updates for Linda that could be ported?

Twitch is the way i found this game, so i am acutally curious about this. Have you every tried contacting some youtuber or twitch streamer and invited them to the Server? I allways though that the few that know about this game would not show it because of the fear that server owners won't like it.

I cannot confirm this at all, my experience is way different. After years of playing SS13 i can probably safely say that basically know what i am doing. It's going so far that even other doctors grap people away from me without a single word and run them of to cryo or god knows where. Simply because i stood infront of the patient that approached me and was typing a greeting. This is not on single incedent people do that all the time, they see a bar that is not green and grab the person, throw them in a machine and force feed some meds and then drag them out of the medbay without a single word. This is the kind community you foster here. If you can move slowly away from RP why does it not work the other way around? It is not all about speed and efficiency, i can remember some extremly long rounds which were probably some of the best rounds i have ever played. SS13/ Paradise does not come with a ton of actual content out of the box. Research and mining are the only real real jobs that have some sort of built in progression and the end of this progression can also be reached fairly quickly. The actual content of the game is the RP and you don't need to be the best and most robust player in order to RP with other people. This git gud mentallity is nothing short but toxic, i mean just read this thread: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=8103. He or she is basically being told, here read the entire wiki until then, we don't really want to have to deal with you. Well, i just saw you comment in it so i guess you read it already and do you see anything wrong with that? I am not sure i can see the difference. What you are saying is that you changed the rules in order tailor them to the people who prefer powergaming. It is not suprising that RPers are a minority, it's like that in every game. Mostly because people are kinda scared of RP or they have been told that RPers are weirdos, many people just don't give it a fair chance. If you give people the freedom to completly ignore RP then they probably won't try, especially if the enviroment is so toxic to RPers.

For me It perfectly descripes the situation of paradise right now. I have been playing on this server since day one so if feel some kind of responsibility, but a lot has changed and this is sadly what the community has become. I really wish we could change again, but sadly i have not much hope for that.

So you are saying it's better to change the rules instead of enforcing them? You can't have RP without playing a role because that is literally what RP means. However you call it, hardcore, medium or low RP, you can't escape the fact that people need to have different defined roles and such roles come with certain skillsets, responsibilites and restrictions. The only roles on paradise that have at least some from of character left are the Head of Staff position, the rest ist just one grey mush of everyone doing everything. You were already allowed to change your role ingame pretty easy, you just need to head to the HoP, it is really not that difficult. It is not only unrealistic but most of all it is fucking disrespectful to run into medbay and go and heal yourself or your friend while there are like 4 Doctors waiting to do their job. It is kinda sad that admins on this server join more and more to the powergaming crowd. Edit: This is in my opinion the sane way to go, do stuff if there is actually nobody else who would do it and don't go over the top with it.

Every time you guys talk about metagaming you somehow ingore the fact that we indeed had knowledge limited and it worked fine. It was not to strict and nobody cared if a doctor did set up the engine because there was nobody in engineering, or if a civilian stepped in and helped in medbay when it was helplessly overcrowded, but those were exceptions in which those rules were bend in order to progress the round. A general knowledge of everything is just stupid, what's the point of being a doctor if everyone just runs passed you and picks the right medicine out of the fridge and leaves. It discourages interaction with other players, which is almost ever a bad thing! @Fox: I am kinda shocked, but mostly dissapointed to see this being posted by you.

Thumbs up for the great response! Very detailed and one can tell that you thought a great deal about the topics and that certain issues are already being addressed. Neat! One topics that i probably never can let go is LINDA, because for me atmos was one of "the" features that made ss13 special. I do understand that atmos code is difficult stuff and that Linda might be currently the best solution, at least code design and compatibility. Performance wise i feel it is so extremly slow that it just feels wrong and took all the "eviromental danger" from the rounds. What is the consensus on the current atmos situation, are you actually happy with where it is? I worked on a PR for this (https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4752) but it was not popular, so I moved on to other ideas. I don't think it is so much about that we need something new in medical, but rather that we have this abundance of really powerful options to heal every condition. I think a lot of the "difficulty" in medical is lost because Chemistry simply can but out way higher quantities than ever before. Additionally Cryo has become more effective, not only the actual healing amount or cooling down speed of patients but also the fact that it very effectivly only feeds small quantities of cryosoup and is not as wasteful as before. Not to mention the new instant healings that patches provide or that the sleepers can be upgraded to just generate almost every med. There were so many new features ported and mushed together, it simply lost all coherence.

Agreed

I think it should be possible to create any race by modifying the DNA in Genetics, i think that is still not a thing and i would assume that is also the problem why Vox can't propperly changeling morph into other people. Unless that has been fixed somewhere down the line, i haven't played that much lately.

What i am kinda interessted in is, did this thread get us somewhere? I mean there are like 50 replies and like 1500 views, can we pull something out of this or did we just state our opinions and then go on as if nothing happened? Since the only people that can effect real change are admins / coders i would like to pass that question to them specifically.

I never intended to imply that sec should not arrest those people but that we need to reduce the amount actual crimes going on in order to handle every arrest that is made with way more professionalism. That is not enough for me, it can't be a gamble if you actually get some justice solely based on the fact that maybe there is a magistrate and that he actually cares. We need strictly ingame punshiments and guidelines to what and what not to do. The moment a Admin has to be involved the system has already failed. Also i have respect for how the admins operate and i think they do a good job, the moment you need to involve a admin you are speaking in out of game terms. It is not fun for anyone involved. Adminhelp is not the place to argue over evidence and make deals or spin a clever alibi. Granted my suggestions is also depending on IAAs and Magistrate being peresent, but this is sort of the chicken or the egg dilemma. You will only have people play IAA and Magistrate if they are more than just ignored fluff positions. If they are made a integral part of the justice system, then i am sure they will be around way more regulary. Additionally currently prisoners are more ofthen than not completely stripped of everything and don't even have a way to communicate with such positions. And this only happens because there are no enforced rules as to how to treat a prisoner. I played Brig Physician for a few rounds just to observe what security is going inside the brig. And most rounds i simply felt ashamed that i was part of security. People were completely stripped of everything: clothes, PDAs and even the light bulbs were mandatory removed from the cells. I mean what the actual fuck is going on there? I stood near the prisioners speechless as to how fucked up they were treated for a petty theft. I am aware of that, but as i stated in my first post, they need to be more clearly defined and contain repercussions if they are not met, otherwise they are just a mostly ignored fluff piece in some wiki. So they are kind of irrelevant for this discussion, appart from being a foundation on which to write better / stricter guidelines. In practice it seems to be completly optional until it gets to far out of hand and you have to involve admins, at which point i already lost any desire to play. That's not true, probably the best evidence is observing the crime yourself, or maybe ask the hopefully impartial AI, or collect witness testimony, everyone can question a suspect and find discrepancies or find somethin incriminating on the suspect. Of course a detective can do more than that, but a normal officer has plenty of options which are just not utilized. Also nothing is stopping you from putting something in a evidence bag and hand it to the Detective to get some fingerprints. If a person can't be bothered to write a few lines then said persion simply is not fit to play security. Yes it might suck, but everyone is allowed to deal with it in their own special way. I can't really blame those people because being brigged is not engaging at all, most of the time you don't get the option to defend yourself legally. Best case everybody ignores you, worst case you are physically and mentally violated for stealing a golden pen. You yourself complain about the people suiciding in the cell, how can you not see the gains of giving people something to do while in prision. You might have found a solution for you and just tab out, but there are probably a lot of people that don't want this disconnect from the round. I for myself want to continue playing and interacting with people, but if you are simply ignored and denied everything while stuck in a 3x3 box, what the hell are you supposed to do?

Everyone and their mother is whining about how terrible security is but why don't we change any of this? The current problem i see is the following: We have way to many meaningless crimes on the station. People stealing stuff because they can't be bothered to wait or even ask, or people that just can't accept when they are told: No! So security is overburdened with this petty crimes and handing out rushed and false charges to anyone, since a security officer has effectively no real oversight, because the often HoS has to deal with more important stuff and can't monitor everyone. As an attempt to combat all this bullshit claims, which security is in a way forced to make (because they are rushed), we changed the rules and laws so the average timer is now way lower. I think this is a terrible way to go about that, you don't get anywhere by just treating symptoms. Here are my suggestions: - Make Sec Officers accountable for what they do. There needs to be a defined operating procedure and when it is not met then the suspect / prisoner has to be released, maybe the HoS or Captain may overrule the release in case of capital crimes. - The procedures clearly define how long a suspect might be held inside security without being charged of a crime. When and if someone can be searched, or that a prisoner has to be provided with a lightbulb (ffs), just clear guidelines and instructions what and what not to do. Maybe or maybe not we inculde certain loopholes into such security procedure, like reading equivalent of reading Miranda rights like in the US. - Such procedure also requires filing out some sort of short report before someone can be put into a cell, preferrably printed by a console that has yet not been invented. Basicly pick the charges, list your evidence (ohh yes, you need evidence! If it's physical it needs to be in evidence storage) and the resulting timer. Such report has to be attached to the Cell timer in some way for quick reference. - Evidence might range from eyewitnesses to a banana peel with pruple fibers on it. The amount of evidence needs to be relative to the charge. Tresspassing might be enough if two people or a single head of staff confirms that someone came into there department uninvited, while you might need hard evidence when trying to slam someone for murder. - If avaiable, the IAA or a not yet existing job has to be involved once a suspect is been brought into security. Said person is a "neutral thrid party" which is there to ensure that the corporate procedures and interests are met. In case the officer and IAA cannot come to an agreement the Magistrate will be involved to pass final judgement. - There needs to be a law against wrongful imprisonment, incase the officer and / or the IAA are deliberately acting outside their bounds. - Code Red will override such procedure and officers may have more leeway, but they still can be held accountable afterwards if they acted way out of line. Maybe code blue is somewhere inbetween, yay for alert levels having a meaning again. Some of those things might be found somewhere in wiki, but they are not enforced inside the game. Strict guidelines that are not just words in a wiki but also enforced are extremly important, otherewise people just do what they want, currently there is very little to no oversight. Threaten with or hand out job bans if nesseary. To facilitate all those processes and extra time spend inside security and gathering evidence, we have to reduce the overall amount of crime happening on the station. Thus we need to dial up the timers for crimes again and i think it's cirtical to make resisting arrest a way more serious crime again (like 15 minutes). Let me explain why i think that is so important: Security should be more about questioning, finding enough evidence and at the end of this: arresting someone. The actual arrest should only be a small part of the work and not your main activity of an officer. A 5 minute timer on resisting arrest invites anyone to just try and run away, because it's basically free. While i from time to time appriciate a good hunt, it's not really worth if you want to arrest someone for stealing stuff from the kitchen. I think the 15 minute timer for resisting arrest did just that, because why risk 20 minutes if you could just accept your crimes and wait for 5 or ten minutes. Also, with the changes i suggested a suspect now would have a more objective person (IAA) with him when he is being processed, which i think is way more worth then a free shot to run away, just to be captured later. The ultimate goal should be that being arrested should engaging and interessting for both sides. Maybe lawyer yourself out of it or maybe make a deal to rat out someone worse than you. Currently that is impossible because officers have no time for that and are not required to make the effort. Being arrested should be more than just being shot unanounced, dragged away, stripped and put in a cell until a timer runs out, while having no say in it at all. It's an RP game so there need to be words involved otherwise it's all meaningless. Change the cells: Last but not least we need something inbetween the cells and perma brig. A location where prisoners can interact with each other in some way, because the 3x3 single person cells are boring as fuck and not suitable for anything more than a 5-10 minute stay. The cells should be able to be opened up into some sort of yard/general area. Not everyone might agree but hopefully together we can find something that works and actually change how security is done on this server. I think a working security department and law is the foundation of every ss13 round and it could be so much better.

Very much this. We been trying to nudge it away from the Powergamer mentality and more to a Roleplay sense with the SoP and Space Law, but even then we have the issue of its entirely up to the community to actually be the change, and that more then likely won't happen due to how many people seem to very much think the game should be "Us versus Them". I think you make it yourself a little easy to say it's entirely up to the playerbase. There is pobably no successful RP community out there on the internet which is not sheltered in some way. By giving players all the freedom in the world you hurt everyone who wants to have a decent level of RP. Even a few players can disrupt the RP of many. Like a Captain that just drags all the antags to the crematorium because "lol changeling". What are you supposed to do, technically the captain can do that, but does he really have to do it every figgin time? To be blunt, I as a player cannot force anyone to maintain a reasonable amount of RP or gtfo, the admin team could. You changed the rules from "maintain a friendly and welcoming enviroment" and you "you should provide fun for everyone not just yourself" to "please just don't fuck up to much". While Paradise wanted to be Medium RP our rules only require what they call "Minior RP", and what can only be decriped as the very basic guidelines to even remotely be considered a RP server. The drive towards pure balance and nothing should ever be unbalanced is also a sign for players to throw RP out of the window and utilize ingame mechanics to circumvent RP. Maybe tasers should be totally overpowered, maybe that was by design and a good thing. I also didn't see it at the time, but i do see it now! Catching a bad guy was the easy part, but finding evidence and keep him locked up was the more important bit and now we got a totally overburdened security which barely has time to catch everyone. You even lowered the resist arrest charge and by doing that, you basicly told every player: "Run! Run every frikking time security wants to talk to you. Waste all this time that could be spend talking and RPing with a stupid chase driven by super clunky game mechanics" Conducting propper investigations is currently out of the question. If you have no investigation you have no evidence, without evidence you can have no trial or discussions, without discussions you have no RP. This is only further amplified by the all around weakned Space Law and reduced timers which are so low that investigations for most crimes are not feasable, why investiage and question like 3 people over 20 minutes if the resulting charge is 15 minutes? I don't think you can expect "the community" to make everything better if you drive away the RPers and invite all the powergamers.

Personally i would like it to be enforced by rules, because i still believe we are playing a RP based game and for me it's not about winning anything, it's just about having a good time for !everyone!. Sadly this is lost on many players, at which point i have to wonder: If they cannot hold themselfs back blatantly abusing their OOC knowledge, are they fit to be part of a RP community? Many people just don't care and see RP communites more like the perfect place to troll or powergame, because in an RP enviroment most players (should) hold themselfs back, making it very easy for someone to be the "best" at something and for some people that is very hard to resist. If you decide to keep those kind of players around and wish to maintain a somewhat RP driven enviroment then you have to minimize the amount of metagaming possible. Stuff like this: - Rarely spawn random traitor items on the map, so having a traitor item does not nessarily confirm you as a full blown antag. - Maybe every so often spawn a bloody rune at round start, which has not cleaned since the last crew left. - Let a dead nukie or alium drift towards the station every so often To make this stuff believable there has to be quite some coding to be done. I personally would rather enforce rules instead of coding all that. Even if you put in the effort and manage to minimize the amount of metagaming possible via game mechanics then you don't solve the real problem, because you are still left with a good part of your community not being willing to RP. That's what it boils down to me if you metagame. I don't think that SS13 has what it takes to be a mechanicly driven game! SS13 is a sandbox, which simply provides you with events and context to RP as a member of a fucked up corporate space station. Just imagine having no chatbox at all, what the hell would you do? SS13 is not a interessting game if you cut out the interaction between the players.

I mean it's true that the RD was allways more of the king of nerds instead of a supervisor and that worked fine for quite a while. Security and other department head of staff had more downtime where they could just do a quick check via cameras or in person so science did not get out of hand. Since the station is so chaotic and the resulting degredation of everything security, this balance kinda fell flat.

This descripes my point of view perfectly and is probably way more descriptive. Actually this is excatly what i was thinking of. What you descripe here puts a smile on my face and gives the atmos tech in me warm fuzzies. Where you just see a chaos and horrible day in adminville, i see a challenge to rebuilt and repair those areas. To a certain extend you are right, sometimes it went way overboard. But i think we are both right, because there were easily as many situations which were nothing but a awesome challenge for the entire station, opportinuties for people to work together or get creative with the resources they were left with. There should have been a middle ground, but we just switched from one extrem to the other and removed every threat that atmos/ gas /fire / breachs could ever pose to the station. What's wrong with that? We started a shift with a atmos configuration that could handle the normal station operation and a few breaches here and there. It was not pepared for a apocalypse and why would it be? That was exactly the reason why there is a job solely to maintain and improve those systems. And as far as i remember there were very few people that allways built the same setup, you allways were looking for ways to optimise your system or learn from what other atmos techs built. Nowadays there is the occasional one time pet project which is born out of sheer boredom and which is ultimately completely useless. EDIT: I kinda forgot to mention that i also think that "valid hunting" and "powergaming" is very much an issue and that problem like this very much exsist: But i think a big part of solving those problems is making peoples jobs more meaningful again so people are more focused on them selfs and their own jobs. This alone will greatly reduce the amount of chaos that is going on and if the whole station clams down than maybe (hopefully) the CMO comes in and helps or teaches, instead throwing insults at you and run to the next fire he has to put out.

As with many such problems, i think this lies in the community we created and not the game mechanics. Very few people take their job serious and thereby it's near to impossible to stop any antags without going on a validhunting spree or otherwise abuse game mechanics. It's not that i support those haviours but rather that i can understand them. Currently it is mostly impossible to be serious about your job, especially if you are head of staff, because you will be stone walled everywhere since you pretty much stand alone with your opinion. As long as doing what you want is generally accepted by the community you can nerf antags to hell, but you won't change anything. You can't propperly distinguish many "normal" players from an antag because they almost behave the same, the only difference is that one actually kills and the other doesn't.

Hey, due to the nature of the topic this is probably goint to be a lot of people with different opinons but i hope we can keep this civil. I have stated my discontent with a bunch of changes that have been made in the past and i just want to know how other people feel about this. I want to make clear that this topic is not about any individual change but the whole "design direction" of paradise. First I want to explain why i started playing SS13 in the first place. I will summarize it in 3 points: 1. The complexity of the game and how you can dive deep into all the different mechanics in the game. There has been no other game for me where i could say that i played the game for years and that there are still parts that i have still not fully explored. 2. The focus on surviving a shift in a very dangerous enviroment and all the awesome situations this created. 3. SS13 being a game that involves a good part of RP which allows you to play a divers character that works a touch shift on a space station. Now i want to address each point and explain why i am not happy with the direction Paradise took. 1. Complexity: It's not nessearily the case that features have been removed but there have been many additions which many people probably would call "ease of use" mechanics or something along those lines. Each one on it's own might not seem to bad, or might actually look like a good idea, but if you look at the bigger picture then all the deep dive mechanics have become pointless unnecessary clutter/fluff. Example Engineering I could make a case for most departments but in this case i choose Engineering/ Atmos as an example because i think the impact there has been the most severe. I think it all started with introducing Linda and the very strict rules against the use of atmos/ gases for traitors. The usecases for releasing plasma, N2O and the sorts are practically nonexistent. There are very few instances where you would not just be outright banned and even if the rules would allow you to, then you wouldn't use it anyway because atmospherics poses no real threat since linda is just atrociously slow. This basicly means that a atmos tech has no real value outside atmospherics because everyone can replace like 2 floortiles or a window, which is about the extent of damage that linda allows. So now you are supposed to watch over all this complicated atmos equipment in atmospherics, right? No, because atmospherics comes prebuilt in such a way that it in no point in time it requires any changes to the atmos systems. The default configuration is designed to handle everything (maybe there might still be a few valves you have to turn up once, but that's beside the point)! There is a active waste-vent to the outside of the station and a for all intense and purposes a unlimited amount of mixed air availiable. There is no point to optimise a system that is infinite. Your job as an Atmos Tech is one big lie, on paradise you have all those complicated mechanics which are ultimatly completely useless. The same idea basicly applies to Engineers, the engine is protected by sever rules so you set it and forget it. The engine also effectively supplies a infinite amount of energy so your job is done. Congratulations you are like 3 (extremly repeditive) minutes more useful as the atmos tech. I don't say it was perfect when atmos and engineering had to fix atmos griefer damage every other shift and rebuilt half the station, but engineering and atmos was acutally needed to maintain / rebuilt the station and thereby was a critical part of the station. I trade this any day for what we have right now. 2. Focus on survival: Applying what i said to the first point, when i enter a shift i no longer think about: will i manage to survive this shift? There might be the off chance of nukies or a specifc antag that has to kill you, but besides that there is nothing. You are protected by the server rules and since all enviromental danger we once had is now nonexistent, survival is practically a given! I think this is extremly boring and drags on many rounds much longer than they have any right to be. 3. RP: This ties in to my last point, the RP. The antags are either captured or complete their objective early in the round. Many rounds go by without me even taking note of their existance. You could argue that all the above supports a more RP friendly enviroment, because most round fizzle out of exitement rather quick. But since i feel like my presence in many departmens is not actually needed, like i explained in my engineering/atmos example, i have trouble giving myself a arbitrary purpose over and over again. I will just cut it here because i hope that i have made my point and the post is already way longer than i intended it to be. Now I am curious what you think about this topic.

That sounds kinda backwards to me, issnt' the RD the one supposed to check on Science?

I think we are good on stuff driven by game mechanics, why add forced pychos if we have enough running around already? Besides that, this could get old really quick.

Alright here is my point of view on that. I highly doupt any alt tilte of Assistant/ Civilian will be chosen to be actually useful. I mean that's why you play Civilian, to have no responsiblities and dick around. This change would probably only be used to aquire some access and get stuff. Can you imagine civilians running around with pepperspray, cuffs, meds, science goodies and so on, because that is basicly what you propose here. I understand that you have other intentions but currently there is very little in terms of "only a little medbay access" or "only a little bit of science access" same goes basicly for every department and all this stuff would have to be coded, we would have to craft new wiki pages and job descriptions, possible new rules and imbue all that concepts we have defined into every player. That is a huge effort and i honestly don't think the gains are worth the effort and risk involved with pushing something like this.

I will allways roll without armor unless i know serious shit is about to go down. I really liked the style of the webbing security once had, that went really well with the standard or black security jumpsuit. Game mechanic wise body armor doesn't really matter if you are not also wearing a helmet. Everyone who is out to harm you will go for the head anyway.