Jack Fractal

All right, thank you everyone for clarifying. I apologize if I came off as hostile in this thread, I had a number of very stressful rounds involving this issue and I was not having the best week. If I encounter this as a problem again I'll make a poll about it.

So, to be clear, in order to allow people to relieve stress through in-game suicide, you're opposed to criminalizing graphic self-harm in-game or out of game? All right. Are you speaking for the entire administrative team when you tell me that there is no chance of this happening? Also if security is supposed to ignore self harm, could you point me to the section of the wiki that explains that? I'd like to have a link handy the next time that a brig physician/lawyer/captain/IAA/Magistrate gets upset about that. Thanks.

RE: Forced Cryo. Did you read my list? That's why. They can pick up where they left off, yes, but while they're out, they're actually out. RE: You should just let them do it If it's absolutely vital that suicide be available at all time to all players with no repercussions either in game or out of game (a stance I find baffling but whatever), then you need to clarify that, both in the rules of the server, and the rules of the station. I suggest a proviso in Space Law. Something like "Security is not responsible for the health or welfare of prisoners in any way. Should they try to hurt themselves, Security is under no obligation of any kind to assist them or to provide medical attention." That would work. RE: It being within the rules Fine, that's why I'm asking for the rules to be changed. That's what this whole thread is about. RE: It not being a burden. You seem to be missing the part where I mentioned the prolonged time-frame under which these self-harm incidents often take place. Your repeated statement's that you can just take them to the morgue or the Chaplain are not accurate. This is not "Goodbye cruel world! *stab* *stab* *stab* Bleurgh!" That's dumb, but at least it's over quickly. This is between ten and forty minutes of someone hurting themselves, begging for attention, screaming for help over the radio, fielding calls from concerned station crew about security murdering people, getting them healed, getting them surgery, them hurting themselves again, more screaming, more radio chatter, more screaming, escape attempts, attempts to dismember themselves, attacks on the brig physician, demands for a lawyer, attacks on the lawyer, and on and on and on. Like I said, this isn't "I don't want to play anymore," it's "I want to torture the people around me by making an absolute ass of myself in every way I can." If you don't consider that grief, I tremble to imagine the kind of things that actually make your list. RE: The Point Is there anything gained by this being allowed, in game or out of game? Nobody's answered that question. You've just said it's allowed, not why it's allowed. Is there some amazing reason I'm missing? Have I somehow missed out on the great secret of repeatedly electrocuting yourself and attacking the people who try to heal you? Is this some part of the game I've missed? I feel left out. Please explain.

It's not permabrig, it's "You're out for fifteen minutes". Also, you're trying to commit suicide... so your goals are pretty clear there. You want to leave the round. This would just speed up the process. If you don't want to leave the round then you are, by definition, griefing, and you should be banned. The infrastructure of the station is not equipped to handle the violently insane. Slow self-suicide is not something reasonable people do, and it's not something that can be prevented. Letting people slowly murder themselves is against any level of RP. If this were a no-rp server, that'd be fine, but someone slowly slitting their own wrists while wailing about it over public coms is awful to watch, and worse to try to prevent. I can't emphasize enough, people who do this ruin the round for people forced to interact with them.

/agree It's not particularly functional now, and it's a bore for prisoners. I love the idea of a main cell you toss people in, but you'd need to modify prisoner processing works. Hmm! Ideas... Leave as in SSD? Yeah, probably. I know I've been tempted the few times I've ended up in jail. Jail is boring. That's a problem, but it's a separate problem then this one. SSD isn't a problem though. It's quiet, it doesn't leave confusing corpses, it doesn't irritate everyone around you, and we've all pretty much figured out how to deal with it in character. Problem with this is people will specifically use cyrodorms as a way to cap sentences to 15 minutes. Got brigged for longer than 15 minutes? No problem; just cryodorm yourself and respawn as something else--especially if you're Pubbie McAssistant. Bay has Cryodorms only in permabrig. I don't think this would be as much of an issue though, even if it were an option for non-perma prisoners. I don't really like long brig sentences. It's dreadfully dull for the prisoners. Getting dunked for a long time (Like, say, resisting arrest (5 minutes) after getting caught stealing (10 minutes) something in a secure area (15 minutes) with a weapon (10 minutes))and then opting out like that? Makes sense. You can come back into the round and do something else. Of course, coming back into the round and doing exactly the same thing again... yeah ok. I could see some people doing that, but they'll just get dunked again, and while they're in cryo they're: quiet not taking up a cell not taking up a job slot not bleeding all over the place not screaming over the radio not destroying the brig not constantly trying to escape These are all bonuses in my book. Good for prisoners, good for jailors, good for everyone. So far the only argument I've heard for allowing suicide is "There was one person once who had a cool character built around inventive suicide," and fair enough. I never played with her, maybe she was awesome, but this is an omnipresent problem. This isn't something that happens once a week, this happens multiple times a round. If it's a bridge too far to have suicide be a bannable offence, can we at least make it a sign of major mental illness in game, and have standard procedure be to lock them in a cryo-chamber so that they can be sent to a proper mental health facility at Centcom?

I'm not sure if I'm communicating the situation clearly. Someone who strips themselves naked, and then slowly, over literally ten minutes, beats themselves to death with their own fists while screaming repeatedly over the radio... That isn't grief? And, on the flip side, what is gained by allowing that to happen? How does that in any way improve the community? Why are self mutilating naked prisoners cutting off their own limbs with shards of glass while yelling profanities, a good thing? I don't know about the rest of the people who play security, but I would much rather deal with a traitor or a changeling then someone doing this. At least if I get dunked it's over. It doesn't drag on for half the round. I am completely baffled by this perspective. How is the correct response to this, 'lets remove the restriction from the wiki'? Am I missing some vital piece of information here?

The issue isn't using the suicide verb, nor is it removing yourself from the round. SSD is quiet. I don't want people to stick around for a 25 minutes brig timer if that will bore them to tears. I wish I could RP with prisoners more, but I'm so run off my feet all the time as Warden that I really never get around to it. Go SSD all you want. SSD is fine, and if you're not in jail, we have Cryodorms for a reason. It's the slowly beating yourself to death with your own shoes that's really unpleasant. Or smashing the light, using it to break the window, and then repeatedly electrocuting yourself on the grill. Or stripping naked and shooting yourself in the head in the sec lobby. That's not 'I don't want to play anymore', that's "I want to cause the maximum amount of irritation, confusion, and frustration to everyone around me because I am an enormous asshole." There is no 'in universe' way to deal with it. It creates a corpse which raise ridiculous questions ("Why is the mime dead in Cell 3?" "Oh, he beat him to death with his shoes." *ten minutes later* "Why is the mime dead in the morgue?" "Oh! He beat himself to death with his shoes!"), and the Chaplains bible creates those immobile spooky bones that you can't ever get rid of. The 'prisoners are not allowed to suicide' thing may not be a rule, I don't know where those are specifically listed, but it IS on the wiki, under the section about "For the Prisoners."

What it says on the tin. Unless you're in extreme circumstances, such as trapped without oxygen, or a member of the syndicate, can we make self-harm and suicide illegal? Like, actually illegal? I've had a ridiculous number of prisoners try to off themselves, I now have to confiscate all criminal chaplains bibles because they WILL gib themselves on it (three this week), and I've had the same Head of Security go into the armory, strip naked, and shoot themselves in the head. They did this twice, on two separate rounds. I had a round this week where the Head of Security stripped naked and shot himself (a different one this time, seems to be a habit for them), and then the detective, who he had tried to appoint as the new head of Security, ALSO shot himself. The wiki says it's bannable for prisoners, but it doesn't look like it's being enforced very hard, because I see it almost every round.

All hail our glowing technicolor canine overlord.

Aww this is cute. The expressions are very nicely done, and I like your inking style, nice and scratchy.

Those are some good ideas Davidchan. Right now I'm thinking the main functions are going to be messages, map, records, and scanning. The scanner for the 'standard uses' is a cool idea, but it sounds like an enormous amount of work. We have a -lot- of items in SS13. Writing a scanner description for even a large fraction of them would be a huge amount of work.

The electrical map overlay will have a 'THE SINGULARITY IS ACTIVE' message, as well as info about the field-strength and the emitters. I'll consider giving them actual cam-access to the singularity. Not sure about that one. I can probably pull off chat-rooms, I don't think I want to program a full chan inside of SS13. That seems a bit much. Also the host would murder me from the bandwidth usage.

Aaah, I love the side pony-tail sprites. Those are great. Do you want to get these into the game any, or are you just spriting for fun?

True, but it might be interesting to test.

I'll keep that in mind! The existing scanners range from completely useless (engineering) to extremely useful (atmos, apparently). Usually ending up around the 'I don't really use it' level. Yes! Totally. That is a great idea. With a 'You are here' marker that moves as you walk around, so people can orient themselves. I'm thinking of giving people relevant overlay maps as well. So engineering would get a power-overlay, which would show which areas of the station are powered, whether the engine is online, whether the solars are wired, that kind of thing, while atmospherics would get a atmosphere alert overlay, to show where vented or contaminated areas are. That way, say, an atmos tech could guide people through unbreached areas, and engineers could figure out where damaged pipes and wires should get reconnected after a bomb. I think a lot of things that irritate people in SS13 and cause anger and drama are caused by incomplete information. Providing better ways of accessing information would probably help everyone get less stressed.

You could just make the antag-overlays visible to everyone after say an hour. At that point, everyone's loyalties are clear etc. etc.

Yeah, flavor text should be improved in general how it's handled. It would be nice to see, for example, if they're using a machine when you're looking at them. So if they're reading a computer, or updating records, or sending a pda message or something, it would say 'Bla bla bla is using [name_of_device].' I can't tell you the number of times someone's yelled at me for not listening to them when I've been watching the cameras, or sending a text.

OK, so I totally read this as 'the asteroid code is full of bugs', but this idea is actually a good one.

Even if some things are a bit pointless, COUGHNOTEKEEPERCOUGH, I don't really see the need to tear them out unless it effects other things. Yeah I don't intend on completely removing things. I'm considering making the PDA more of a messaging and record keeping device then then the weird hybrid thing it is today. So for the scanners, you'd be able to wirelessly link your handheld scanners to your PDA, and then your PDA would record a log of what you scanned with that device, as well as when, and where. So as a Doctor, you'd have a record of your interactions with a particular patient, or as an Atmos tech you'd have records of the cans and rooms that you scanned. For functionality that is rarely used, I might make them an optional module. Like, if you're the only person who uses the note functionality, then I might make a NoteKeeper module and stick it in the library or something.

Aww, this is really cute FoS! I love the sub-surface scattering you did on the milkshake. That's very well done.

What about a way to attach bombs to regular clothes? Like, you take your IED or whatever, and you wire it into a suit of clothes. Then, when you kidnap your victim, you force them into the clothes. Like improvised weapons or something, but with bombs, and also probably silly costumes. The clothes don't even have to look different, just put a message in Examine for ("Their clothing looks rumpled.") or something.

I like the cartridge idea because it lets you combine hard-ware and software into one object type. You can imagine that the flashlight is actually attached to the cartridge that controls it and sticks out. Same with the scanners. I'm going to make sure that the carts are tiny objects (like, they fit six to a box that is ALSO tiny and can be put in a cardboard box), so that someone carrying around a few of these things doesn't burn all their inventory space. Do you think that would alleviate their problem somewhat? Maybe! That's what I want to get the log info for. I don't know how often people are using them or for what. I suspect that it's used rarely if at all, with the exception of the messenger which is used only infrequently. But I don't know. Usage logs. This is a thing I want.

Logging pull request is up.

Right now I'm playing with the idea of having multiple cartridges per pda (max five? max depends on the build?). Each function would be a different cartridge. So by default they'd all have the messenger cartridge that would give you messenger/manifest/notes stuff. They'd all also have a crappy flashlight cartridge and the cartridge for their job. Then you insert extra cartridges for new stuff. So if you want a camera, you get a camera cartridge. If you want a video-game, you get a video-game cartridge. Cartridges are going to be removable by a screwdriver, and I think the HoP will start with either a vending machine for new cartridges or just a locker full of the common ones. This opens up a lot of options. Off the top of my head: A 'hacker' cartridge for syndies that lets them send faked messages. Cartridges buildable by research or orderable from cargo that upgrade or extend existing functionality. Better flashlights, secure coms, station-bounced messages, voice recorder, bomb trigger. Cursed cartridges on cult rounds. So there's a lotta things we can play with. The goal of the rewrite is to make it easy for other coders to add new cartridges when they come up with a good idea.

Thanks for the feedback everyone! Very interesting to hear that you steal cartridges johannhawk. Is it just the security one, or do you also steal from cargo? I do plan on adding newscaster functionality to the PDA's. It always hit me as a little silly that you couldn't do that. I think I'll build a logging change-list first, and try to get that merged. There's some things that I'm definitely doing like combining the manifest/messenger/records system into one page, but I do love me some real data when I can get it.