mkenner

Hiya Regen Well hearing screams, clown honks and explosions from Neca's computer recently lured me back to playing a bit, so that I can be the one screaming, being honked and dying in explosions rather than just enjoying it vicariously from across the room. Having a lot of fun Janitoring about the station and waging a one sentient being war against litter, blood and viscera.

Just an idea that occurred to me the other day. Briefly mentioned it to Neca, but thought I should maybe put it in the suggestions forum and see what people think. As a very minor point of lore/cannon, I think it'd be good to establish that in universe between the wild Nuke Op Changeling Wizard rounds there are some very minor shifts where absolutely nothing happens that just never get played. I think this would help people view role-playing their characters a little differently, as they wouldn't necessarily need to be suspicious every time they arrive to work or imagine the station as being constantly under siege by the syndicate, etc. This is something that I've had in my personal head-cannon for a while, but I think it might be good to consider whether we should add it to our lore just for roleplaying purposes and make it official. What do people think? Or do you think that SS13 should be a wild and rough place where every single time there's a work shift people's lives are in the balance? Because that'd be a valid way to picture our lore as well. Alternatively is it better to have no official stance, and everyone can picture it how they like personally? Cheers, MKenner (Retired).

There is no hope.

Sorry. I've removed it again for you.

I think you might be a little confused. Our coders are all still with us, our only retirees have been several admins and an original 'head of staff' none of whom are currently running other servers. Nor is it possible to "steal" our code, since it's open-source. The other servers running Paracode are doing so, based only on our open-source code with our full blessing but otherwise have no connection to us, nor has their staff ever been employed here. Since you're keen on the rules, I'm surprised you somehow missed rules 1 and 10. 1. Listen to the admins and 10. Communicate openly and respectfully: Actually you have a better chance on the complaints forum which is regularly reviewed by the senior administration staff, rather than the suggestions forum which gets viewed when I'm procrastinating from working on an assignment or I get a skype message to check on a post like this one. Well that's a racist metaphor to use to accuse us of being cliquish. There are many fine servers, which you can explore and enjoy. You are now however, banned from this one. Regards, M Kenner.

To clarify. Brig Physician is a doctor. At absolute most, they're probably a little more experienced in space law and more practised at restraining patients where necessary. They have no more business conducting searches than any other doctor aboard the station. I'll see what we can do to get this across to the players in this role, but what you were told during that round was completely inaccurate and goes against the job role of the Brig Physician.

Just to explain my reasons for voting no. When I'm selecting events manually for rounds, I attempt to create a contrast with the previous rounds to keep things fresh and new. After lengthy rounds with multiple antags, I like to switch to blob round to give the players a shorter, more action filled round where they get to work together as a team. It's a bit of a palate cleanser and helps remind people that their fellow crew are sometimes their allies and not just syndicate changeling-vampire-wizards out to eat their souls. These changes risk adding suspicion to blob rounds and bad security spacing folk for "eating too much" under blob meta-suspicion. While it sounds like on its own merits a good idea, I don't think it fits within our roster of rounds.

Personally, I like the idea of a 'game of life' style system for the blob, where any blob square that doesn't have X number of blob squares nearby is 'unsupported' and dies. This should probably only apply once it's a certain distance from the blob core, or have the blob core count as multiple blobs for purposes of this calculation to stop it being too easy to reach the core.

Sounds like awesome fun. Timezones mean this wouldn't work out for me, otherwise I'd be tempted to give it a shot. All the best guys, good luck and good gaming.

With the current sort of numbers we're experiencing and the related number of deaths, this could be a useful role to have on the station. In my experience surgeons rarely have the time to conduct autopsies and many geneticists don't seem to find handling the dead to be a primary concern. A role which combines these two functions could work extremely well. Good idea.

Leaving appeals that have already been decided open is not only impractical, but would be doing a disservice to new applicants to the appeals forum to have their posts buried under what has turned from an application into an argument. In fact it would be doing the original applicant a disservice as well since without taking the time to reconsider and plan another appeal, they will continue with a strategy that was not going to result in them unbanned. This post is an excellent example, as it shows that rather than committing to following the current rules and processes of the server, you feel that they must change for your benefit. This is the same attitude that made me change your ban from temporary to permanent, as your appeal indicated that a temporary ban would not change your behaviour. Our admin staff already volunteer their time to read over the appeals forum to give people a second chance. They then frequently proceed to help prompt and educate people, whose original appeals were not strong enough to see them come back on their own basis. It is asking too much, both for me to ask them or for you to ask us, to also listen to people venting their frustrations over an unsuccessful appeal. My original response to you was not an insult, nor is this post despite its overall critical content. It's an attempt to help you realize what actions are required to return to the community. Because you're continuing to post here I assume that's your intent. Because I haven't blocked your forum access, you can know that I still hope to see you return or at least get another chance. However I can not write your appeal for you, nor can I make the changes to your behaviour that are necessary. That's the part you have to manage for yourself and I can only try to help. Regards, M Kenner.

Back when the server first started, Neca and I paid half the cost each and we bought hosting. That really didn't last very long before we had the server we're currently using donated to us. We are also receiving staggering amounts of monetary donations so far. While the donations do help, and open up our options, they're not something that we're actively chasing or promoting.

I don't really see the need for this, especially with the prohibitive levels of coding and spriting required. The players have been equipped with a station capable of producing robots, robotic exoskeletons and experimental weaponry. I'd rather see the players make the most of their resources to confront menaces and overcome challenges rather than coding in additional resources for their faction to call upon. Most players have already been given additional chances at life whether respawning as xenos, ERT and DS or by being brought back to life by either robotics or genetics. If we're worried about players being left out of the round, then extending the game-time towards the end of such casualty heavy rounds is likely to be counter-productive rather than solving the problem even with a comparatively large respawn squad. Especially since experience shows that the main thing we'd see would be people suiciding in the hopes of joining the marines. We don't really like taking sides between two player-controlled groups. We can choose who wins at any time in such a contest and I don't see how our involvement would make things more fun. We'll sometimes intervene to balance things out if the game seems so lopsided that it won't create any interesting play, but that's rare. Also Centcomm exists as an in-game group, who you can contact via bluespace but they're only aware of what you tell them. If you want more admin intervention, send more bluespace faxes. Otherwise, it's the job of command staff to rally and organize their troops, not the admins. The end-game drags out because people run off on their own, one at a time to robust a xeno with an oxygen canister (because they're thinking they'll either win and be awesome or die and get to play a xeno, so it's no loss either way). It's the horror-movie equivalent of the non protagonists wandering off to get a drink during the serial-killer slumber party. If everyone was rallied together with a unified goal, then the round would end one way or another much more quickly and we'd see more dramatic last stands. I think it makes more sense to balance the existing weapons of both side (such as the aforementioned neurotoxin) to make things more equal than to introduce new factors to the game which will start off either underpowered or OP and take time to calibrate to work. Also, sometimes the xenos are going to win and that's okay because it's a player controlled faction too. The xenos hunting down the last remaining crew-member is no less gameplay oriented then the survivors hunting down the last few wandering xenos. Since the Xenos don't get any admin reinforcements and the crew already have at least one, this seems reasonably balanced. For the record: This is just my personal take, not the stance of the team as a whole.

While I don't personally like nations rounds, we get a ridiculously large number of requests for it so it seems fairly popular. When a nations round comes around, personally for me that's just my 'chat on OOC' time. Since I'm usually admining rather than playing, I don't have a character in the round to worry about so I realize that's easier for me than it is for other people. If I'm the only admin, I force-secret to get other round-types since I'm not comfortable running nations. I can't really answer questions about the rules of nations rounds, since I let people more familiar with that round-type handle the ahelps and attack-logs during those rounds. My best guess would be that the rules are the same but everyone counts roughly as an antagonist to those of opposing factions with an objective of stealing flags, but I'm really not sure so take that with a grain of salt. Still, with something so many people enjoy it's not too likely to be taken out of rotation (this isn't saying not to ask, since I'd like to see how people feel, I'm just saying that I don't see it as likely).

Hi Jaden, welcome aboard. I'm glad you're enjoying it so much here. You're definitely welcome to stream your gameplay from our server, make let's play videos and otherwise share it with other people. As an example, one of our other players has made a series of comedy videos on youtube about playing SS13. I've placed a link to one of the episodes below.