davidchan

I openly admit I know next to nothing about the coding that goes into byond. But I do know what I have seen, and aside from Singuloth chewing it's way through the station and Atmos somehow not getting hit and thus struggling to compensate, the infinite hellmixes, megabombs and what ever ludicrious things happen on the shuttle that effect 30+ mobs at once in 5-15 ways at once have crashed the server, not my client. In other cases, the final moments of the game are lagged out so bad it takes nearly a minute for the server to process 3-5 seconds of game time, so those final 60 after the bomb goes off can be lagged out and extended well past the 15 minute mark if the reaction/effect is still going on.

This is, for me, is less about how being blown up, poisoned or hit with a lethal hellmix makes it impossible to fight back, and more about how our code/byond just can't possibly handle it all and it invariably lags out the server if not does a hard crash, making for what should have been a 10 second funny moment turning into nobody getting play on the server for a good 2-6 hours, depending on how long it takes for Mel to be contacted/realize the server overloaded and shutdown.

If these things put as much load on the server as I've been lead to believe, scrap them. Pretty much nobody outside of botany sees or uses thems, and botanists are supposed to grow food, not apply mutagen to plants until they create space-time dilatation like they are growing some kind of blackhole.

As entertaining as this sounds, the score isn't calculated until after the shuttle docks. Several variables of the score also directly relate to who is on the shuttle and in how (cuffed and in the brig, alive and free, wounded, dead, ect...)

I respectfully disagree, highlander at most has lagged the server for me in rounds with 50 or mored people at roundstart for 15 seconds, which is a hell of a lot more tolerable than the 5-10 minte lag fests that happen when vince or some other sekrit kem acolyte decides to male a self sustaining bomb that throws chocolate, gibs and dozens of toxins around the room forcing and admin restart and/or the server gets overloaded and requires Mel to do a hardware reset. We've had easily avoidable downtime of the server for hours because some decided to grief test a bomb. As for highlander being special... its rarity isn't what makes it fun, its the semiunique mechanic and chance to test out your robustness against others in a no holds bar battle royale. And as I alreadysaid this doesn't have to be kilts and claymores, it can be basicaly anything that grants a mostly even playing field to the entire surviving crew. Greysuts and toolboxes, stun prods, spears, syndi smgs or xray guns. There could be random events, xenos or monsters on the station, shuttle breking down and attacked by pirates(randomly selected from ghost players) or slamming into a diona gestalt ship like in the lore. There is a decent reason to extend the reset and let people go nuts and have fun while giving incentive to stay in the round and not spend the last 10 minutes of a shift making boms, chems and gathering weapons or mech suits for that damn brawl.

Vox can survive quite a while without their N2 tank, I spawned as a scientist in a highlander round and managed to kill 5 people while working my way to the bridge, slugging through the random events thrown at me. Towards the end I was relying heavily upon the RNG items the admins kept spawning, but I had a good 10-15 minutes of life, much longer than the 60 seconds we usually get. Plasmamen, I don't know how long they can last, I haven't seen a naked plasma in so long, last time I saw one they seemed quite capable of short bursts without their plasma suit. In addition to removing hellmixes and bombs from science, it would remove the armor and weapons of security and various command staff, putting everyone on an even playing field, it doesn't HAVE to be highlanders, but just about anything that removes your backpack and replaces it with something else works, from an 'Everyone is ERT' to force wizards to everyone gets a black jumpsuit and loses everything else and spawns with a toolbox in their hand that has 2-5 random combat applicable items. I can't count the number of Warden's or Heads of Security I've seen waltz onto the Shuttle with an Ion rifle in hand and a 4-6 guns in their satchel, for no other reason than to anticipate the FFA upon docking.

The end of round stuff usually pretty fun, and sometimes is the most fun of the round. Amazingly, some people continue to try and RP through, it others just go fucking nuts. Disabling or removing bombs, grenades and hellmixes would actually be pretty nice, since there is no reason for people to be carrying these items in the first place aside from the end of round FFA. An auto highlander would probably clear this up, as 10-20 people in a close space would give them the bloodbath they desire, and prevent the explosions and stockpiling of dangerous items, as highlander replaces your inventory anyways. Throwing or utilizing these items before the shuttle docks would constitute as shuttle greif anyways, so this seems like a win-win for everyone except those who intentionally stockpile crap to use at the end of the round.

More options for the ghosts to interact with the round and possible get back into? Very good. Making a side area for the ghosts to go and completely separate them self from the round? Not so good. I like the idea of being able to go somewhere and vent some steam or faf about, but I forsee this causing a number of problems from cloning bugs to lots of people deciding that the current round is boring and migrating to the ghost area to see whats going on. Incentive's for ghosts to stay in the area of their body would be better, I'd rather see ghosts being able to haunt specific areas of the ship to manifest their spirit a bit more than sending them off to some far flung place completely separate from the station and round.

If by lockbox you mean move to the admin-only verb tab.

Telescopic shield != Energy shield. If there is one thing a Teleshield should block its bullets. They don't. Far as I can tell the shields only stop melees, and its very selective about that too.

That would be the dumbest thing ever. Once a weapon has been armed/activated, it should work for everyone unless it's been manually deactivated/magazine is emptied. My biggest problem with lockboxes it they make it hard for legit antags to get a hold of weapons WITHOUT targeting the Captain/HoP/HoS/Warden. Revolutions, Changelings, Vampires, Cults. All of them have legit reasons to want a gun to kill a person, especially if they are going loud/nonstealth. Rev miner that spent 30 minutes getting uranium, gold, silver and diamonds? HA HA, can't make that advanced energy gun, have fun with this worthless shield and syringe gun. Rev's are allowed to kill anyone who is loyalty implanted, and have to kill the command staff. Cults similarly have the option to kill security officers and other loyalty implanted crew if they interfere with their work, changelings seem to do what ever they want, and vampires certainly could benefit from having a stun revolver in their posession. But the only people who don't have Securities permission to get into weapon boxes are the one people who shouldn't need them. Traitors. Unless you have a hijack objective, it's counter intuitive to get these weapons, and risk exposing your traitor status if you leave a lock box somewhere or caught with an RnD weapon in your possession, so why the hell are they the only antags that get this privilege?

I don't like the lockboxes at all but if the RnD ones are here to stay, the robotics ones should be too. To include the mech taser, if the stun revolver is in a lockbox, the mech version should be too. As for this constant firing pins idea people keep coming up with... I'm sorry but it's just the dumbest, and probably laziest way, I imagine to try and curb rambo science. RP/In character wise, why the hell does a laser weapon have a firing pin, OOC/Mechanics wise, it'd make more sense to require an ID swipe from an armory access ID card or emag to overload the safety lock, there is no reason the pins couldn't be printed from a hacked lathe save for 'MUH BALANCE' cries.

In my expierence, shields don't defend against head shots at all. Had a nuke ops headshot me through a telescopic shield before, while I was shooting at him with my own energy gun as ERT. Given that it was in the telecoms airlock, I can safely say the bullets came form the front and gave no fucks about my deployed shield.

I'm curious how many people have actually seen this abused. Since, every time I see someone try to aim, their target runs around a corner or disarm/attacks them down before they can usually get shots off. Maybe when I'm not online we have people making heavy use of this, but I've never had someone use this on me and succeed under circumstances where just clicking near/past me wouldn't work either, especially since aiming delays your shot begin. But, that's just the devils advocate, I don't care if the autoaim feature stays or goes, about the only time I use aim mode is when I'm trying to get a point across and don't really want to shoot my target but am putting it flat on the table that I will if they don't cooperate.

My 2 Cents: Aim mode isn't a problem. It's useful to 'get the message' across, show someone you mean business, can and will fire upon them if they don't cooperate with you, be it the clown to stop drawing on the floor or slipping people, or an NT crew to lay on the floor so the big scary man in the blood red hardsuit won't pull the trigger. Aim mode in my opinion hasn't been infallible when it comes to landing shots, as you can always find cover. The problem with Aim mode has always been the force walk/slow down. I've seen this exploited in the past, no where near as much as it's done today, but you could aim a laser tag gun at a borg and force walk them to slow them to a crawl for the remainder of the shift unless someone popped their Positron/MMI out. Not only this, it was entirely possible for mr 'Unknown' to telepathically state his intent for you to walk or be allowed to run without ever saying a word, and thus keeping his disguise even without a voice changer. That, an nearby microphones sent to transmit wouldn't pick up this apparent lack of screaming either. TL;DR, remove the Icon from the HUD if you must, at least while weapons aren't in hand that can be aimed, but the ability to point a weapon at someone definitely has use in Roleplay and standard gameplay. The autofire/autoaim feature can go if the majority of the community wants it to, I don't honestly care. Just please, for the love of god don't let the clown force people to walk at a crawl because he had a toy gun in his hand. Especially not without it saying a damn word.

DNA scambler or fail Changling has failed

This is the only server I play on that allows anyone to play Tajaran or Unathi but restricts IPCs, so the point in them being Karma locked at all is a hot topic for debate. And I already said there should be a check, it should be no different than Synthetic Ban checks that are supposed to happen every time someone becomes an MMI, and as I also said, there is no way to build an IPC body right now to begin with so this would require another IPC be debrained. IPCs need a complete repass when it comes to how they are coded and how they fit into the current code, the number of bugs, mishaps and general trend of things not working how they are supposed to is getting out of hand. IPCs aren't balanced at all right now, the only people who play them are the ones who have always played IPCs or just really want to be a robot; they can't self repair, there is literally no way to revive them if you lose their torso for any reason since they can't be cloned. They literally fall apart if you hit them 5 times, they apparently still take damage from low/high pressure even though they are supposed to be vacuum proof, all for not needed to eat food or breathe air, or need welding goggles. The coders/staff need to sit down and rethink this race and compare it with the other race.

If I'm correct, there was an IPC (P.I.N., I believe, was their name) who had their groin asploded by an EMP artifact. Somehow he lived after I put him together. Sadly, he lost his shiny metal ass. I put together an IPC a while back who lost his groin, we found his torso and burnt out arms and legs, I couldn't put his legs back on because his groin/lower body was missing. So, we had an IPC in a wheel chair for the rest of the round. IPC bodies should be fully re-printable from Robotics, can't we add a line of code that checks Positron's for Karma unlocks? Otherwise, Science rarely gets the diamonds needed to make more Postiron brains and if we just make it so IPCs can't take Organic Brains/MMI's I don't see much problem with people circumventing an IPC Karma lock, which would still require the body of an IPC to begin with since you can't build IPC Torso's or Lower bodies either.

FTFY Also, we need more Multi-AI rounds, everyone in command gets a huge stick up their ass anytime they see an AI core in Robotics or science being built.

So, something I've noticed since playing (Medical) Chemist again, aside from the MedChem lab being cramped enough to induce claustrophobia in even the hardiest of peoples, is that Chemistry has a poorly placed Holopad. Two of them, infact, right next to each other. One Holopad is located south of the Welding Fuel Tank, next to one of the chem dispenser, not exactly in an aesthetically pleasing area nor central location. The second pad is underneath the Welding Tank, partially hidden. This position makes it bad for a number of reasons, the AI has to spam click to get it to work, or alt click to find it. Secondly, this pad seems to overrule the welding tank in some cases, as I've splashed this AI Pad many of times trying to fill my beaker up with more fuel for Acetone, even though I was clicking squarely on the upper middle section of the tank. So, here is my suggested. Remove/Relocate both pads from their current position, and place one to the right of the welding tank, directly above the door and in the natural position for the tank. That, or shunt the Welding tank and disposal chute one tile left (removing the middle glass table)

If we wanted to make the stamp realistic, it would have a 30-40% chance to eat the paper every time it's used, just consuming it all and irradiating everyone nearby.

I'm gonna remember this the next time I reassemble you.

How to survive a round as an IPC. Find a dark, isolated room, such as the asteroid outposts or fire storage closet. Find or drag a closet into this lonely corner and hide inside. Step out every 15 minutes or so to steal power from an APC Hide in your closet for 2 and a half hours, wait for crew transfer. Get blasted apart on your way to the shuttle. Typically do to some harmless item being lobbed in your direction such as a discarded bag of beef jerky. Cry robot tears as your disabled body is abondoned 3 tiles from the escape shuttle and you are left behind. [in all seriousness. Why can some chucklefuck who got his Prosthetic arm or leg 5 minutes ago safely and fully rewire the damn thing after shocking it on a door, but an IPC can't fix itself?]

Sec pod needs flashing lights. I know nobody will ever see them, but plz.

Chaplains aren't really required to destroy vampires, the Chapel does it by itself. Holy Water only denies the Vampire their power, and can be made a chemist who gets a hold of some wine.