mkenner

Unless there has been a recent change on this, Deathsquad isn't a player role, nor does it have spawn points. Deathsquad are only created through adminbuse and are never usually played by players.

Greys do suffer clone damage over time, it's fairly light since it's only one power though.

*Ptump!*

Cool ideas. Fairly code intensive so they won't be quick to make, but could be very interesting. Personally these definitely strike me as something research should be able to produce and not something in the game to begin with.

Awesome! I love it. I'll bring it to the team.

That really is horrifying.

There have been three cases so far that I've been involved with where central command has fired/arrested the captain because of the NT Rep's reports. We even sent ERT in to take down a particularly problematic captain once. Just remember that admins roleplaying centcomm are ALWAYS unaware of anything going on aboard the station, unless we receive a bluespace fax. While yes the captain can do this too, the captain has the access level to do any job on the station what they lack is the time. As such the NT rep is responsible for keeping centcomm in the loop.

Yeah, I taught myself to play SS13 with the janitor role (as I think many do) so I always have a soft-spot for our purple-clad heroes. They're given an impossible job and then always blamed when the station ends up a mess. Meanwhile crew just drop things everywhere and do nothing to help out. It's a tough gig. I love that the system of SS13 is so detailed, that we can have a serious discussion over whether someone's ability to clean can be OP or not. Honestly the janiborg is a little OP in that regard. Still manual labour being eclipsed by modern technology does seem a valid theme to the setting and I'm not entirely sure it's out of place. However janiborgs usually have to spend their time acting as universal door remotes when there's no AI so it does keep them out of the competition half the time. Weird fact: Holy water doesn't slip, if the chaplain blesses your mop-bucket you can clean slip-free with the power of divine intervention. One idea I've been toying with that hasn't been cleared yet with everyone else, is the idea of adding an optional job-title for janitor of medical janitor who specifically focuses on keeping the medbay sterile. I think this is something that could be done far better by a human than a bot and would give janitor a more interesting, specific role for RP. Anyway, we'll take the idea into consideration and see if it's going to be workable for the janitor cart.

Oh sorry, didn't see that you'd already referenced that story Fathuran. Absolutely I think it was one of my favourite story-lines too, at least in TNG. We don't tend to enforce the lore too heavily, purely because we aim for a medium RP environment rather than a full on heavy RP. Sometimes people just want to play a dude with a tail, and putter around the research labs and that's cool with us. Personally, I try to build all of my Tajaran characters with the lore in mind and it's great to see other people doing so as well. I'll always encourage that, but I don't ever want to force it. It's a not so secret secret, that NT are kinda shady and aren't necessarily the good guys in the lore. I agree that it isn't going to be a matter of a single grand gesture to resolve, nor can it be completely done in a single round. Much like any oppressed groups in human history, it's likely to be a generational struggle with slow moves forwards fueled by the sacrifices and efforts of multiple people. That said, I think it's a worthy enough story element to justify devoting an entire round to the premise and while it won't change everything, it can move us either that step closer to equality or perhaps drive the opposition to stomp down more harshly (sometimes oddly enough both). Anyway, since I am a GM level admin, I can run these events myself. So I'll definitely work out a few ideas and try to get some of these happening in the near future.

The idea of the mutiny rounds is for unlawful, abhorrent and repulsive commands to be issued. It's what the RP is based upon. All of the mutiny rounds are fairly unpleasant examples of endorsed bigotry, violation of rights and people being pushed too far. As such it requires them to be objectionable, and nothing should be more objectionable than commanding the deaths of crew-members who have done nothing wrong. To provide variety there is a sliding scale of possible mutiny events, with the one you experienced being perhaps the most extreme and others regarding forcible job removal being the least extreme. Deaths, whether by accident, misadventure or round-type are a part of SS13 gameplay. We do provide respawn options to allow the player to continue in some fashion, but fighting for your character's life is sometimes a part of the high stakes involved in the narrative. While this being done randomly or capriciously is completely prohibited in our server rules, when done in service to the narrative of the round it's completely acceptable. From the perspective of the mutineers, the loyalists are antagonists and vice versa.

The omission of an IPC embassy wasn't an oversight, it was very deliberate in an attempt to match the lore. NT's treatment of synthetics is... well, not the best. They are practically slaves. Most humans still haven't realized that the IPC are sentient beings and treat them more like a piece of equipment. This isn't to say that this is fair or that they are correct, merely the current situation in game. The idea of changing this in game is awesome. It'll provide many rounds of great RP and I love having the lore progress as the game continues. For all you Star-trek fans out there, anyone else thinking "Measure of a man"?

Hmm... very interesting idea. It's damn good medicine that's for sure, I'm just not sure about the political and economic situation. The question is whether NT would provide such facilities exclusively for the Vox. With the development of the ambassadorial roles it might make more sense now on the station. I'll talk about it with Neca when he's doing the next map update.

About six months later it seems. It's a great idea, but... Twenty minutes in, the captain goes SSD. Security is more obsessed with arresting the guy who assaulted pun-pun in the bar. The roboticists are sitting around doing nothing because no-one's mining metals. The only competent staff went running off through the gateway, have died and no one is cloning them so all the departments are in chaos. The players we picked to come over as DS are still hanging around on centcomm station, trying to decide what equipment to pick up except their commander has already taken the shuttle and sent themselves alone to the station.

If it's just a petty crime, then there's probably no need for added restraints unless the prisoner has a history of escape attempts or is considered a risk to the station.

There are a lot of appeals that get processed through this forum. While a majority of them have been accepted this is often after a lot of posts back and forth. This results in players being unable to play the game for a longer time while they're waiting for their appeal to be processed and in the admin team spending a lot of time working with people to bring an appeal to the successful stage. This post is intended to help cut that time for everyone by telling you upfront what you'll need to include. 1) Use the template. As a policy, any appeal that doesn't follow the template will not be processed until you use the format from the template. This template covers all of the information we need to know to process your appeal and it keeps everything in a consistent format which is easy for the admins to read and respond to. 2) Read the rules. These will show the code of behaviour that you're expected to follow while on the server. Your appeal is a commitment to follow these rules in the future, something which you can't do without reading them. If your ban was legitimately based on breaking any of these rules, then you'll be expected to identify what rules were broken so that you can demonstrate that they won't be broken again. 3) Decide what sort of appeal you're writing. They'll generally fall into the following categories. Identifying a factual mistake of the admins: If you didn't break the rules, then let us know. While we investigate every ban, mistakes do happen. Sometimes we get the wrong person's ckey if multiple people were involved in an issue. Sometimes a situation that looks like one thing was actually something else. In these cases it's best to get straight to the point. Identify what the ban was for and what we thought was going on, then explain the actual situation. If we were wrong then your ban will be lifted. Apology and commitment to improve: If you've actually broken the rules then the ban was legitimate. Regaining the privilege to play on the server may require some work on your behalf but if you can demonstrate that you're going to be a valuable member of the community and able to follow the rules in the future, we will work with you to find a way to bring you back. The best way to show that you're genuine is to understand and identify what you did wrong, if you don't know then how can you change it. If you genuinely don't know, even after looking through the rules, then feel free to ask and we can explain. It also helps for us to know why you did the action you were banned for. This isn't a matter of making excuses, it's helping us to understand the situation you were in and perhaps provide better strategies for handling that situation. Finally if you are going to change your behaviour, then say it so that we can see the commitment that you've made. If you're not genuinely willing to commit to this, then don't bother with this form of appeal. You might pull the wool over our eyes and convince us, but what's the point if you'll get banned for the same thing in a week's time. Work with us and we'll work with you. 4) Avoid using arguments that aren't accepted for appeals. There are some arguments which aren't accepted as valid reasons, while it's impossible to be fully comprehensive here are the ones we see most often. I don't like your rules Your appeal isn't a place to question the current rules of the game. That would be the suggestion forum. We will only be granting appeals to people who will commit to following the current rules of the game. If the environment you want isn't what we provide then unbanning is a waste of everyone's time. My brother did it You are responsible for everyone who uses your Byond account. By giving someone your password, you're enabling them to perform whatever actions they want in your name. Now this does sometimes happen and we're not asking you to lie if this is what genuinely happened, but it's not a defense. Instead you'll need to follow the policy above and understand what went wrong (allowing other people to use your account) and letting us know how you intend to prevent it happening in the future. Abusing the admins It should go without saying that abusing the admins isn't a good way to get us to invite you back to our server. However sometimes in the heat of the moment things slip out, so I'll remind you here to avoid this method. While we'll try to look past this, it does send a signal that you're not looking to co-operate. It should be a temporary ban If you're going to do the right thing, why would we wait to bring you back instead of doing it straight away? If you're not going to do the right thing, why would we ever bring you back? We only use temporary bans when that seems like the best way to change someone's behaviour. If you think that some time away will be a strategy you can use to commit to following the rules, then that's fine. You're welcome to suggest a temporary ban as the best way to bring you back, but this isn't detention or a prison sentence, it's not about providing justice or "paying for your crime". It was good roleplaying You choose the character you play and all the consequences that follow. Your character isn't a real person and we can't hold them accountable for your actions, it has to be done the other way around. Someone else did something wrong first If you've broken the rules, then it doesn't matter what anyone else has done. This is your appeal and unless we've clicked on the wrong person's ban button, we're not going to ban other people based on what gets decided in your appeal. Letting us know what someone else did, at the time with an adminhelp is the best way to see that appropriate action is taken against them. Once you've taken vengeance into your own hands, the issue gets so muddied that it's hard to take any action against them. 5) Listen to what the admins reply. If we're asking you questions or trying to teach you something, then it's pretty clear that we intend on keeping you around. We rarely waste this sort of effort on someone we're kicking out forever. Usually we're telling you exactly how to get your appeal accepted. Regards, M Kenner. Senior Admin.

Sounds like good fun. I'd like to see more things people can do in game during extended/quiet rounds with self-motivated roleplaying. Plus I grew up watching star trek, so the officer's poker game is perpetually part of my vision of Sci-fi.

Technically this is actually the job of cargo, although it's rarely actually done. Many people don't seem to know about the corridor just above cargo that runs to the garbage room where the materials thrown out are recycled into new and reusable forms. WMT would be a good alternate title for cargo though, to emphasize someone whose job it is specifically to handle this (much like surgeon as an alternate title for doctor).

I've never really seen assistants as being the problem. I've seen just as much grief from rogue atmospheric technicians, authority abusing security officers or meglomaniacal captains as from our humble grey-shirts.

I find it a little hard to understand the general level of doom and gloom statements I've seen on this thread. These are the same rules we've enforced since the first day of Paradise station. Back when we founded this server, Kodos, Neca, Fox, Diabl0 and Myself all came from being admins on Abby Riley's best RP server where we followed the same standard, albeit with a less formal code of conduct. Throughout this time the servers we've run have been consistently at the top of the list. I find it hard to believe that the playerbase who have consistently come back to Paradise as their primary server, even continuing to log in directly when the server is removed from public listing, are doing so despite a constant fear and paranoia about being banned. Of those people who have used derogatory language on our server, they have received a simple PM from the admin saying the following: "racist (or homophobic or whatever) language is not permitted on this server". The vast majority then acknowledge the message and carry on about their business, with the issue never coming up again. We only ban those who ignore this contact or actively reject our server rules. Once a ban occurs sometimes people decide this server isn't for them and never come back, which is their free choice to do. Others post an unban appeal on our forum, where somewhere between 2/3rds and 3/4ths of the appeals are approved and that person is reinstated. I've had Russian players who barely speak English as a second language, who have avoided all use of derogatory terms after a single message. I haven't seen this form of self-censorship inhibit people's ability to communicate on this server or significantly slow their responses. We do understand that some people's speech patterns tend strongly to the vernacular. One of our players explained to us that they were used to using derogatory language within their home due to their family background, in this person's case we asked them to do their best with self-censorship and they managed it with only needing the occasional reminder every few weeks. They were never banned, just reminded when they slipped up and it wasn't long before we stopped needing to do this. Since this thread brought it to my attention, I have more carefully watched for ableist language on the server. This too has been responded to well by our population here, who have for the most part avoided using this sort of language after it was brought to their attention. We've had one ban for ableist language which you'll see in our appeals thread has been successfully appealed and that person has come back with a less offensive ckey. I certainly hope that no one is playing this game in a constant state of fear and apprehension, because that really doesn't sound like much fun. However I have confidence in the people who play here that they can moderate themselves and deal with others politely. Confidence that is constantly rewarded by people demonstrating exactly this sort of self-control. For anyone who is playing this game afraid of being banned, take a look through the track history I have covered above and see for yourself. Regards, M Kenner.

The alien hungry blob thing would be a lot of custom coding and I foresee a lot of grief occurring with it unfortunately. With it doing so many different things based on code alone, it would be difficult to implement without bugs. Pokemon... Uhh... seriously...? I like the serial killer idea. I might try it as a gamemaster run special-event at some point to test how it works before we implement it as a standard round-type. The slavers idea seems really good. Though I had the joking idea with SSD people that if you emag the cryo-chambers in the dorms then anyone SSD who gets deleted from the game gets sold into syndicate slavery.

Unfortunately I think our decision to allow players to persistently upload books to the library that remain between rounds was giving people too much credit for self-control. I suspect most people reading WGW are getting in from online sources, rather than the ingame sources anyway so sanitizing the in game books probably wouldn't do much good, although it would be good for a laugh.

I love the game paper's please, but I think the creators made many decisions about its gameplay under the assumption that the player plays the checkpoint inspector and not the people waiting in the line outside. Unfortunately for our uses the sheer majority of our players are the ones waiting in line, so we have to calibrate our gameplay accordingly.

Firstly, let me just say that I love what you've done with the bar and I've been really impressed every time I've seen you build it. However there's really no need for 2 bars on the station. Particularly since we already have a restaurant and a dance-hall. There are more civilian/roleplaying spots on the station then there are chances for people to use them. The more we add, the more chance anyone looking to go to a roleplaying spot will pick a spot where no one is. The rounds where you built it, the bar had purpose, it had story and it had the drawing appeal of seeing what you'd created. If we purely added it in via the map files, then it would become a trivial location fairly quickly I think. How often have you seen people make use of Mr Chang's? I don't want to doom your assembly line bar to the same fate. The problem is that xenoarcheology is currently boring, so no one learns how to do it (including me) and therefore no one comes up with ways to change or improve it. I don't even gamemaster any events with xenoarcheology (which is a pity because it's well suited to directly GMed events) because to be honest, I'm worried about showing my ignorance of the basic procedures of xeno-arch. This makes a lot of sense but it's hard to find a way to implement this, where it would still work just as well if no one played the custom's officer. Love your ideas and the way you're thinking. Just not sure how to implement them. Regards, M Kenner Senior Admin.

My phrasing was poorly chosen, if something was genuinely offensive to anyone with a study of historical linguistics then that would be worth enforcing. (Hard to imagine what that would be but perhaps an OOC chat comment of "anyone who spends their time studying historical linguistic patterns is a complete moron" would qualify). What I was attempting to communicate is that terms that were historically offensive and now unknown are matters of academic interest and not genuinely offensive. The lens of academia tends to rob things of their sting. If you read it in context the very next sentence was that if someone managed to make it offensive that it would be actionable. For example the phrase "Good Samaritan" in its original meaning two thousand years ago would be offensive to modern sensibilities being a racist backhanded compliment. However a millenia or so of idiomatic expression has robbed it of that meaning and is now perceived purely as someone helping a person in need. However anyone insulting the modern Samerim population living in Israel (not that I consider that likely) would attract action. Your desire to play a character so strongly prejudiced that it's discovered within a two hour time period, conflicts with the in universe assumption that you have remained employed in an equal-opportunity employer like Nanotrasen for the years of training required to be dispatched to an important plasma research facility without being fired. This prioritizing of your out of game preference for character type over in-universe reality is a form of metagaming and bad roleplaying. It is analogous to playing as a 5th century mongol raider, something which by all in-universe logic should not be found on the NSS Cyberiad. While our method of dealing with this is metagame, this is based on the "theory of the second best". This principle, described by the economists Richard Lipsey and Kelvin Lancaster, explains how in a situation where there is an enduring sub-optimal conditional the most effective solution often also violates the same ideal criteria. Like many economic models, this can be generalized to other fields through game-theory (at least in my opinion). Handling this through IC methods, will purely result in the player creating a different character the next shift to do the same thing. This would not resolve the situation and is not a practical workable solution. Handling it through OOC methods, does however result in creating a more realistic corporate environment IC. I can't speak for other admins here, since I've never been online while you've played this AI character you're describing. However I would recommend that you not play this character in future as based on your description above it violates our server rules. Alternatively find a way to play this character concept without drawing upon prejudicial or insulting language. I draw your attention to the following rule. 1. Maintain a friendly and welcoming environment: Hate speech, bigoted language, discrimination or harassment will not be tolerated at all and may at admins discretion be considered grounds for immediate banning. OOC Profanity should be kept to a minimum and must be stopped if directed to do so by a member of staff, or if it appears that it is upsetting other players. Some people are going to be new to the game. If you teach them and make them feel welcome, then you’ll still have other people to game with down the line. Terms like faggot, nigger, and the variations on them, are neither acceptable IC or OOC. This does not apply to discrimination against non-existent species. Discrimination against non-existent species (or humans as a whole) is an IC matter. I'm sorry that the rules were unevenly enforced in the cases that you describe. We'll attempt to keep a closer eye on this in future. Our administration staff are players of the game. If you're offending our staff then that's a statement reported by a player. This appears to contradict your earlier argument. Players being uncomfortable reporting their issues is a reason the administration staff need to act without player reports. Precisely because administration staff are not omniscient (as you pointed out earlier), we are often forced to ban all usage of this language regardless of intent to prevent this being an unjust case of selective enforcement based on admin perception. I disagree with this argument for the reasons I've gone into above. It's a sad truth of the world that any attempt to provide law requires a balance between Justice and Praxis (the legal concept of what can practically be done). While all use of prejudicial language is banned by our rules (as I've quoted above), our administration staff perceive the game in a way no player realizes. When Aghosting, the text-box on a server of 50-60 players displays all conversation and emotes. This is something you can see when observing and it's already a chaotic mess. Combine in the attack logs, administration messages, discussion about the round on Msay and Asay (admin/mod OOC chat), viewing all of deadchat and adminhelps it becomes even worse. The entire chat window fills up and scrolls within 1-2 seconds. For approximately half of our administration staff english is a second language. Expecting us to be able to speed-read every line of conversation and to perceive every possible use of prejudicial language is unrealistic. Particularly while we're busy responding to adminhelps, watching action occurring in the game-window or potentially leaving the screen minimized while working on mapping/code updates and waiting for adminhelp burps. As such we can only act on things we notice ourself (which are usually issues we're biased towards because the emotional reaction draws the attention of our conscious mind more quickly) or things which are reported to us. Regards, M Kenner

There are times when I'm so grateful for know your meme. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/intensifies Otherwise I don't think I'd understand half of what the "kids these days" are talking about.