Dinarzad

I find that compromise agreeable, I'd be really okay with that if that ended up implemented.

Okay. See. I recognize the intent of this post and message. Btu this is going to the opposite extreme and it is equal as unhelpful as the opposite extreme of just being like 'YALL CODERS JUST MEAN'. Neither is true, both are somewhat antagonistic. This is clearly a very tense topic to touch on because of the nature of what it is. Touching Atmos is touching basically the ENTIRETY of SS13 in some fashion and touching the entire server (Because if done improperly, the server will die to lag.) That said. We've established just about everyone would like it if we could push LINDA to do a little more. The problem for the Maintainers/Coders is, doing that without gutting performance or causing drastically increased CPU usage. (At least if I am grasping that correctly.) The problem for people that WANT to touch Atmos is, those restrictions are felt to be somewhat draconian and nebulous. (Must have Parity AND not effect performance AND not increase CPU cycles.) ((PS: Not saying they ARE, just that this is what is clearly coming across.)) Now. Someone has an idea that only touches 2 lines of Code in LINDA, hooks to make some totally seperate shit work. And yet Mainters are saying otherwise. Whether there is a disconnect here, or what they mean by 'don't tamper much with LINDA' is just not matching up with that description, I don't know. The final say DOES belong with the Maintainers who know this code very well, they've been with it for a lot longer and can kinda get a feel for it. On the OTHER side we have statements like: That's BASICALLY saying ' Even if you get the -original system creator- to implement this as a better solution, we might not do it anyway cuz of reasons.' Which is basically shooting a GIANT "Why even bother" Message all over -ANY- effort to even TRY and sort out a better Atmos system. Why TRY if even the original developer saying 'yeah this is better' is not enough to get it implemented? It's not entirely fair to say "Asking coders to do all this work is a big deal" when you have someone who WANTS to do that work but is being told "Even if you do all this work and even if the creator says it's better, we might ignore all that work it was originally intended for in the first place." Because clearly we're not here to upgrade TG station, we're here to upgrade Paradise Station, and we're sharing/offering to give it to TG in the process, if they want it. Doing al lthat work jsut for a 'maybe' is not a fair ask either. That might contribute to -why- nobody wants to do it. It feels like we've hit a point where both sides are exasperated, everyone is frustrated, it's been argued and now it's gotten tempers kinda risen. Going back and forth on what -has- happened isn't gonna benefit anyone here. Just locking the topic and sweeping under the rug to pretend it doesn't exist, ALSO doesn't help anyone, and both ways are not gonna fix the problem. There's GOT to be a sit-down somewhere. Maybe all the Maintainers can get together to work out -exactly- what their criteria is for a change to the LINDA/Atmos system. Exactly WHAT bullet points need to be met for serious consideration, because right now it seems like nobody has that. They have what they DON'T want, but not what they WANT from a PR on this subject. And once people have THAT, then they know the tools they can work with, they know what their parameters even are.

While true, they also have to hide that satchel and return to it at a late date to retrieve the items within. It's not a permanent secret stash that is undetectable but accessible at will. It's a secret stash that you have to actually stash away and walk away from. Because there's no reason NOT to get that particular item if implants are almost wholly undetectable. If you need to assassinate someone, stuff your tools in there, if you need to steal an item, stuff it in there and it's genuinely impossible to ever find, unless you do exploratory surgery on random body parts to find the implant. Basically, the problem I have with it is that there's... no counter-play to it. The 'counter play' being surgery means Sec just starts randomly cutting traitors open to check for implants, which will go over like a fart in church, or they just sorta give up. They can't carve open every suspect when the CE's blueprints go missing etc. There's gotta be SOME sort of middle ground between "Lol body scanner found it" and "I hid the Captain's Laser in a pocket dimension."

Because the department that can do almost anything, at any time, without ever having to talk or cooperate with anyone outside their department, needs to be reigned in. Let's take a brief over view of the Research Department and what it does and does not have going for it. Basically, let's look at WHY it's a problem. In theory, science is meant to be sort of gated by Mining and Time/Effort. They need Miners to do their job, so they can make the fancy mechs and the bitchin' toys. and when Research makes bitchin toys, everybody tends to prosper in someway. Gygax/Durands and super guns an shit for Security, Odysseus and upgraded machines for Medical along with better surgical tools, Engineering (Sometimes) gets a Firefighter model Ripley mech. And they need time/effort to get RnD done, to get those super powers (Genetics is half in and half out of Research dept. after all) Science can make everyone else's day just that much better when they do their thing and when people help them help you. The problem: Science doesn't need any of that at all right now. This is because of the old Xeno-archeology outpost. Why? Because it has space worthy suits just fuckin laying there, along side ore satchels and pick-axes. Science, with what they have to start with, can even easily make mining drills and mesons. 'S not hard. You get drills, you get to the outpost, snag some mineral satchels and get to work. They can build themselves an ore reclaimer and print out everything they need without even GLANCING at Cargo. Which also means that 'Time and effort' to doing RnD is completely null and void. They can effectively hit max Research within 15 minutes or less, and there's been a series of tools/guides/lists on maxing RnD and a lot of Scientists make it a competition to get there and set a record (Hell, I took my time one round and everyone was MAD I didn't have it maxed in 20 minutes.) This means, Science can hit full potential, on their own and all within their own department like NO ONE else can. There is no other department capable of this, Medical cannot upgrade all their own machines or make themselves better tools, Cargo can't order Ready-made RIPLY mechs, Sec can't just wish a Durand into existance or get X-ray lasers or anything. If Medbay is lacking any chemists and there's no CMO to pitch in, what do you do? You fucking live with it, or you get the HoP to give you access. (Or I guess break in a window.) If Research is totally empty and you need to upgrade the Sleepers... well. Again. Live with it or get access from the HoP. This becomes a -massive problem- when Science is the subject of being an antag, or they go on a valid hunt crusade. If Shadowlings convert science, well... what do you do? They have an immense number of tools that have minimal responses with. Even an ERT can struggle against them. And let's not even START on Nations... (Mostly cuz it isn't done yet lel) This is a problem. No one in this game has that much power, even Cyborgs who get tools for days and a lot of power, but take massive hits to their free will and an assortment of other vulnerabilities are not allowed to just 'replace their department'. TL;DR: Science should NOT be able to mine their own minerals. That is HUGE portion of the problem right there. What should be their throttle point from keepign them from just flying off the rails as a runaway train, has effectively been removed. The Mining supplies form Xeno arch need to poof until whatever day comes that brings it back, and drills/sonic hammers should probably be cargo/mining locked boxed.

As I see it, if you did that, you'd have the exact same problem as the supermatter, in that nobody is going to order it. "Why not just work with Singulo, it's free, powers the station and it's what everyone is used to anyway." Same issue as supermatter, which can be more fun/efficient, but it takes work to set up and so long to do that work that the station is already outta power. 'S a problem with engines having to go up ASAP really, you need to get one up -now-, no time to build fancy shit.

Not to mention it's all really easily avoided by PDA-ing the CMO/Coroner "Dunt cloen that fuking caorpse, I am spr srs" If Sec doesn't want their Taitor-tot cloned then Sec can be assed to at LEAST send a PDA, because at that point a DECENT Coroner/CMO will probably go mark that body bag as "Leave it the fuck alone" in giant red marker.

Not that this has anything to do with the issue you're trying to address, but Botany can also make plastic. wait botany can make plastic? Plastellium shrooms. The reagent you get from grinding those up can be turned into plastic via chemistry. (IIIIII forget the recipe though.)

I could swear that I had buffed spaceacillin to 6x intensity - how recent is your experience of treating infections with it? Not very recent, admittedly, after my first expierence I pretty religiously wash hands between surgeries and clean the OR rooms like a hypochondriac now. I take as much effort as I can to prevent it from even popping up and Medi-borgs don't have that worry at all. If it HAS been buffed then you can kinda disregard that point entirely.

The problem with this is, Infections are Satan. Which, sure it makes it more imposing, but keep in mind any time an organ gets infected, it takes so much Spacecilin to treat the infected organ, it can sometimes be factually IMPOSSIBLE to cure without a medical cyborg to infinitely synthesize and inject Spacecilin into someone for a duration sometimes going into 20-30 minutes. Infected organs make a completely shattered skeleton look like a breeze in comparison in terms of time spent in medbay. And if you have no infinite spacecilin, congrats you're fucked, go to cloning. There is not enough of the stuff in medical to cure it at times, especially more then one case and sometimes even chemistry can't make enough using the space fungus there is only so much fungus on the station period. It can take easily 50 units to cure MINOR infections, acute infections, well god have mery on your soul. And with how common Burn damage can be (Electrical burns from hacking, E-guns, fire, etc.) If those all led to massive infection outbreaks, nobody is ever going to survive them unless infections are DRASTICALLY nerfed/brought in line in terms of meds required to cure them. ON TOPIC PORTION: I think Broken bones need a threshold before there's a CHANCE to break, and maybe a high enough damage point will finally be a sure fire thing. Breaking a bone in sometimes lultastically easy, even beanbag shells break bones. AS for embedding, Iunno. I mean it makes SENSE for the most part, but it's also pretty fuckin strong as a mechanic.

If I recall, back when Phoenix wasn't so shit and I frequented the place. IPC posibrains were not actual Posibrains but "Cyber-brains" Child of the normal brain items but they look all sleek an metal an shit, so they acted like normal brains just with robotic fluff an flare. No Binary, no talk ability, none of it. Could try that route?

The problem is, how can you move your core, if x-ray lasers annihilate all blob tiles? You move it to somewhere the crew, and especially the AI, doesn't know. You're not dodging xrays, you're relocating, so that, by the very least, you buy time. Something you can't do without nodes/resources (A lot of them, 100 to relocate) Which is extremely hard to gather up, considering nodes have to be X distance from core to be grown. And if the crew has spotted you at this point, expansion is somewhat of a trial since they're shooting you in all your gooey bits at once with an X-ray laser rifle. Relocating is not an easy option to do unless you're already very established or the crew is understaffed.

Not only it's availabilty, but it doesn't even take any serious materials to create, just gold and uranium. Even the top tier stock parts take a little diamond to make.

IT'd be nice if we could like... divvy up ghosts somehow. Like instead of EVERY ghost having all the knowledge, forever you could be able to choose to be much more limited in sight and hearing to being local only or whatever, and getting more spooky shit in return. Sorta like an IC ghost and an OOC Ghost But I really doubt that'll come to pass.

I can assure you, RnD is almost always maxxed out within 20-30 minutes of round start. It's actually, shockingly easy, there's I believe a third-party tool for it in General Discussion somewhere, and if not I know there's a spreadsheet someone made of the exact list of items you need to deconstruct, twoin fact, one if you have Robotics help and one if you do not. And actually just after I made that post, there was another blob round, A Game Mode type blob. Sure enough, in 20 minutes RnD Had X-ray lasers available. The only reason the crew never got to use them was a lack of uranium because science was too lazy to go mine it themselves and most the miners had left to go fight the blob (And died.) Even WITHOUT MINING, they STILL Got X-ray lasers in roughly 25 minutes. and in the end the Crew didn't even NEED them anyway, the Blob was shit fucked because it got spotted relatively early, it couldn't expand because the crew basically penned it in and it's resources were not enough to let it rebuild and expand, and it HAS to expand a certain distance from the core to be able to build a node to get more resource blobs. Killing someone with an X-ray gun emptying the Cell out is not really a downside, when you can fire the weapon, safely, from an infinite distance away. There's no counter measure to it, no real DANGER to yourself in using the weapon. To use an E-gun, you have to be a visible threat, you have be RELATIVELY close (At least on screen, to aim it.) To use an X-ray, you can safely be behind two walls and still empty that clip and what is anyone gonna do about it? And make no mistake, I don't BLAME the crew for doing their job and starting in late generally means you're gonna have a hard time. But at the same time, what is the point of the random event if it is LESS impactful then Revenant spawns, Swarmer Spawns, Virus outbreaks, Vine outbreaks, spiders or radiation. Spiderlings and Radiation storms have more chance to kill crew then a late round blob, because the blob can't even get started and even if it DOES get started, you have the X-rays. There's ZERO danger, ZERO threat. People flip the fuck out more over non-lethal Swarmers, because at least Swarmers have a meaningful impact on stuff by nom nom nomming their departments.

MAY AS WELL PREFACE THIS With yes this is kind of an 'i ded pls nurf' in that I just got done being a random event blob where my salad was thoroughly tossed by about 4 X-rays. Also dis gon b long I'm sorry for that. Sort of. But. That aside. Let's kind of do a small review here of the X-ray laser and why this is a lot of shitting bulls in one location. What does it take to MAKE said weapons. It takes 5 Material, 5 Biological and 6 Combat research to unlock the X-ray laser. The hardest part here is the bio research, honestly. It takes only Gold and Uranium to print them. Stuff's common as cookies to anyone who spends 5 minutes on an asteroid. What do X-ray Lasers DO (AKA: Why are you taking the time to even type this shit up?) X-ray lasers fire a nigh infinite (If not infinite) traveling projectile that travels through all the things. Walls. Entities/Mobs. Blob tiles. IF you knew the exact compass direction, you could fire an X-ray from RnD and hit a blob over in the turbine. You'd also hit a lot of OTHER people, but you absolutely CAN do it. An X-ray fired from the Bridge, can reach Arrivals at the very least (Seen it happen.). See the problem? Almost infinite distance, goes through EVERYTHING, and the only partial limiting factor is, they take charge and eventually have to be recharged. Not that that EVER comes into play because unless your have a hard time clicking on a thing, you're not going to miss because you can just shoot people/the blob through a wall, from down the hall or from back at Sol Central. Especially a blob, because it can't move, it is a stationary entity. They deal regular laser based damage in addition so just a few shots and you're in a bad, BAD way. So my question here is: What REALLY limits these things? Why are these still untouched, when we just got done having people go up and down about how BS Phazons are at being able to just lol through walls and go wherever you please and destroy people whenever you please, to the point they now take an anomaly core to make? What defense -is- there to this? And don't just say "lol suk less and blob" because it doesn't matter what you do, or what you play, there is NOTHING you can do to defend against this, unless you kill the people shooting you. Which. They can do through walls. And down the hall. and through your blob spores. Doesn't precisely seem entirely fair for something you can get in 20 minutes of round start. "But wait! this take the help of a lot of crew to make!" I hear many Scientists cry. No. It doesn't. It takes someone to go out into Xeno-Arch, Which can be the RnD person themselves, To get ore. Which they have supplies to do at the old Xeno-arch labs. That's it. Robotics helps speed it way up, mostly in the biological research with mech syringe guns. Actual miners means it gets sped up cuz Science can focus on the RnD part while miners mine. Science -can- and -does- do it all itself on a regular basis if the "Cooperation" is inconvenient or unavailable. Hell, you can get the stuff to print mining drills with the bare starting equipment to Research if you really want. I've USED those drills to GET Research levels before, without mining. Science can, all by itself, make unholy death weapons, with zero effort that the only counter-play TO said weapons is "Don't let them get those weapons." And if you're a blob spawned in engineering or the turbine, good fucking luck doing anything to inhibit them in that goal. So. My proposal is this. Don't REMOVE X-rays. I think they're a valid weapon and a vital counter play to blob (Which can end a round in record time sometimes due to a low win requirement and the fact that once they hit a certain size there's so many spores it gets to be fuckin hard to fight back at all.). But for the love of Cthulhu balance them, please. They either need a short range, short enough a blob has a chance to at least smack people around and defend itself, or it needs to have A LOT of Damage fall off when it goes into those obscene long range, maybe doing less damage everytime it penetrates something. Because right now, any random event blob is just a neat side note that is instantly annihilated, and any round start blob has to win in 20-ish minutes or just ghost, because they got those 3 x-rays printed, you lose. It's not interesting or fun, for any party involved and it encourages ALL KINDS of shitty gameplay. (And let's be honest X-rays are -only- used for the blob and rarely at best for anything else)

I kinda agree with Fox. I've done a LOT of Chemistry rounds and aside a few special occurances of soem Grade A dicks. Most people are pretty content to lemme do my Pharmacist thing. I've never even had anyone ask me for drugs, I feel somewhat insulted by that notion. What are my drugs just not fucking good enough for you people?!

Spoopy noises, yes. Or put Spoopy Noises into the Boo Spell and only if you are the same tile as someone when you use the spell. Anything more then that, I feel, is too much for Ghosts.

They're a Head of a Department. And one who works in a medical wing that has a psychiatrist/handles Psychotic patients in a sector of space known to have syndicate operatives, changelings, vampires, blobs, Wizard Federation activities and so on. Baton and Flash is not that much when you consider that.

If it's a bug then there's no reason NOT to snuff it out, really. PLUS I know, much to my annoyance, Paradise has a "Don't circumvent the Karma Shop for races an stuff" Rule. And plonking your meat brain into an IPC is a method of circumventing that, so for consistencies sake it prolly should be axed anyway.

I sorta like that idea, actually. Given how high profile T-sci is, it does fit to put it on the bridge and if it's related to teleporting would make sense to put it next to the Teleporter, as one would assume the two systems are somewhat related.

Why not put it in Engineering? They have a total of 3 Non-karma jobs (Engie, Atmos Tech an CE.) And if they can make a fuckin contained singularity for the purposes of generating power, I dare say they are probably smart enough to know how to work bluespace a little. Can even dump that where the assembly line is. Main problem putting it outside science is really just proximity to Bridge and Armory, you need less upgrades to reach that far. Bridge would probably even be available at round start unless you REALLY crippled it.

Personally speaking, T-sci is a problem right now on many fronts and this is gonna be a Wall o' Text, so... apologies. Prefacing this thing with I really like T-sci, but it is a balancing nightmare You can't have it at round start because then people just steal whatever with it. You can't just lock it off like this either because then it may as well be removed, frankly, it BARELY sees the light of day. I Can count on one hand the amount of times I have seen T-sci rebuilt. It's a pain in the ass just to USE, almost requiring a seperate tool to make the calculations in any kind of decent time. It's not fun. It's gotta change on a more core level and I'm not wholly sure how, but this is just an idea I had. The idea I always had was it was more of an engineering thing then a science thing and it was more 'Star Trek'-ish. By that I mean, currently teleporting something is pretty much instant. It takes a moment and then the Teleport happens which is instant. What if instead it took time, again like a Star Trek transporter? A channeled effect that is very visible, like when Swarmers are eating an item. If the object/person moves form the very obviously being Teleported coordinates, then congrats you get empty air. To make sure T-sci doesn't just "Lol rob the bridge" at round start, could make an alternative version of the bluespace beacons, that interrupt the Teleport in an area around it. Dump one on the bridge and congrats, you cannot teleport into or out of the bridge using T-sci. On the FLIP side though, you could maybe, finally make those bluespace beacons not totally worthless and give RnD a REASON to make them, make it so T-sci machines can "Lock onto" them for a Destination. Right now, you have to do asinine calculations or drudge through a third party tool to make said calculations just to teleport one item. And if you're trying to be helpful and teleport that Miner's corpse/dying frame to medical bay, you then have to make a SECOND set of calculations to plonk him into medbay, which is something you can't really do unless you have a coordinate map of the station. If he wasn't dead before, he probably is now. By making T-sci take a channel time to teleport AND making it incredibly obvious it's happening, I feel it's not that bad of a crime to make teleporting to a location a bit easier to off-set the loss. You could additionally make T-sci able to lock onto GPS units in the same way, I'm sure miners would be thrilled. TL;DR: Give T-sci a channel time instead of insta-ports. Make it super obvious T-sci is trying to teleport stuff when it's being channeled. Anti-Bluespace Beacons that can put a stop to T-sci shenanigans in an area around them. Probably put them on bridge and armory at round start. RnD can make more for people that want them, like in brig cells probably. Bluespace Beacons get a lot more use, can become easy lock on points for T-sci to be a destination. Maybe do it for GPS units also, or maybe special bluespace GPS units, fuck if I know. It's an idea. Probably bad. Maybe put T-sci into Engineering (Under a new name) to not give Science all the power of the universe. (Or not, I mean I don't really care, people just said they don't want Science to have all the things.) Again sorry for wall of text, buuuuuut. There it is. Probably a nightmare to code, but I honestly think Telescience needs more in-depth changes to make it more possible to balance, because as it is exists in it's current state, it's not only overpowered but it isn't fun either having to use third party tools to just slog through shit on every single fucking teleport, even when you're not being a shitter.

Pretty much. I don't play Security all that much. Stressful as fuck and I don't enjoy spending my free time being stressed out, I gotta be in a tolerant mood to do Sec. I've played as IAA and Warden mostly, but most my personal expierence of !FUN! people comes from my Warden go arounds. In one particular instance a guy was brought in for some really minor shit, Vandalism I think, petty theft at most. He was a nice guy. He cooperated with me the entire way, he didn't try to brain the arresting officer with something, didn't scream an run around. He even freely admitted he did the deed (Mostly cuz the Officer SAW HIM do it, so he was red-handed but whatever.) I cut his sentence for it. Dropped it down to 5 minutes. I got him all tucked away in a brig and you know what he started doing as soon as I left line of sight? He tried to fucking break out. Another instance. Guy comes in, who assaulted someone and he is being a raging fucklord. We get him squared off in the Brig and the FIRST thing he does is start screaming over the radio about wrongful arrest and Shitcurity. He demands to see the IAA, who I call over an we discuss everything by the dude's cell for most his brig timer actually, so he never really has a chance to try an breakout. The first thing he does when he DOES get out? Trying to punch the shit out of me in a screaming rage, and the MOMENT I Baton stun him back onto the ground, he screams police brutality. I don't get this fucking awe-struck fascination a lot of people have with trying to break out of the brig for miniscule sentence timers (5 minutes is not even the length of some fucking youtube videos, al tab, it's your fucking friend) or trying to be the absolute biggest cock you possibly can be, just because THAT GUY PLAYED THAT ONE JOB, HE MUST BE A BASTARD FUCK HIM.

To be fair, from someone who has done Genetics, you can't see into the cloning room worth a damn, especially if you're at the console closest to the door. You can only see the top-most part of the room through the airlock, but people usually drop off bodies by the machine itself, so unless someone says "Body here pls clone" you have no real way to know anyone is waiting for cloning. If just one wall underneath said airlock was a window, it'd be no problems. BACK TO TOPIC AT HAND THO. I agree the radum to totally bypass Virology is kinda fucked up, and there's really no other job where that can happen QUITE as much as Viro. It's one of the few times you get to do some bone-fide medical work an some random botanist just runs in an force feeds everyone glowshrooms, wasn't that !!FUN!!. It's like trying to spend time as a roboticist to build a fancy military mech for a xeno outbreak or something, just for cargo to end up ordering one and the xenos being murder-fucked before you can even half complete yours. ((Note, Cargo can't do that, but it's the same sorta 'Wind taken out of your sails, why the fuck do I bother with this again?' kind of feeling.))

Nah. Like. I love Undertale as much as the next guy, and minor references are amusing buuuuut this seems a bit too far for me personally. A line of dialogue in an Examine description or something, absolutely but... Out right having Sans shows up feels eh to me.