Kyet

The marines already get armor. The LT already gets a telebaton. I don't plan to give them a unique vest, as it isn't worth it. I'll think about the helmet thing, but no helmet really springs to mind. Tay is correct regarding non-lethals.

Meh, I know I said I probably wouldn't do this myself, but I couldn't resist: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/8949 Note: my PR does not do everything as suggested in this thread. Instead, it is my take on what is required to make the solgov marines/etc viable as outfits.

Monkeys aren't even the cheesiest source of blood for vampires. A vamp who goes into some of the gateway missions (e.g: hotel) can use non-reactive NPCs (e.g: hotel guards) as an infinite blood supply. Walk in there, drain them all, come out as a fully-powered vamp without ever having to kill a player on the station, or even steal anything. Plus, no on-station evidence for sec to discover. You don't even have to worry about running out of them. In some places (e.g: hotel guard room) they respawn infinitely. All the blood you could ever ask for.

The issue with shadowlings is that a single shadowling can convert the entire sec team to their side. Traitors have mindslave implants, but those are expensive, require surgical removal of the mindshield first, etc. Changelings can impersonate sec, but that requires one changeling per impersonated officer. Shadowlings aren't stopped by mindshields, and a single shadowling can enthrall many officers. Once the slings thrall sec, they've not only eliminated their main opposition, they've converted a group of people with excellent stun/disable weapons (ideal for capture/conversion) to their side. At that point, the round balance is heavily in favor of the slings, and there's not much the crew can do to fight back beyond call an ERT. If you want shadowling rounds to be more interesting... alter mindshields so that shadowling enthrall doesn't work against mindshielded targets. Slings can still kill off sec. That should be possible. But subverting sec won't be possible anymore without using surgery to remove their mindshield first. That should restore some balance to the game mode.

If anyone wants to take on this project, it wouldn't be that hard to do: The list of equipment that TSF marines get is defined in https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/blob/master/code/datums/outfits/outfit_admin.dm#L639 You can find the item definitions by plugging the item into search, e.g: plugging in /obj/item/clothing/under/solgov finds https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/blob/f17e96c7967d2b92a945997077ada166df1150ce/code/modules/clothing/under/miscellaneous.dm#L70 Locating each item then lets you edit its name/description. Giving them all-access would be as simple as changing the get_centcom_access bit (perhaps to "get_all_accesses()") on https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/blob/master/code/datums/outfits/outfit_admin.dm#L664 You could look at my admin outfits PR to get an idea of how to change which items they have: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/8819/files#diff-ec2b562d7032e9456a2609e5a4c1b524 You could also use the old SIT PR as an example of how to add a new radio channel. I don't think this would get approved, but you could try: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4816/files For giving them blue IDs, you could perhaps use the 'lifetime' skin, currently unused. You can see an example of it in the admin room. For giving them sechud icons, you could use my old gateway explorer PR to see how that is done: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/6431 I don't think I will be doing this one myself, but if you want to do it, the above should help you get started.

IMHO, sleeping carp should not be in the game at all. Total immunity to ranged attacks is quite simply too strong. Most attacks in the game, certainly most of the higher-end ones, are ranged. It might as well be 'total immunity to a majority of all attacks in the game'. That's too strong. It is ridiculous. You can't parry a bullet. Even if you were fast enough to parry or dodge one bullet, there comes a point with enough bullets where it is physically impossible to dodge no matter how fast you are. This is even sillier in the case of lasers. How are you going to deflect a laser with your bare hands? It is impossible. It reaches new heights of absurdity when you talk about things like missiles, or x-ray lasers. How exactly are you going to parry an x-ray laser which is totally unaffected by solid matter, and will pass right through your hands even if you were magically fast enough to even catch it? It is cheesy as hell. The voice quips you do when you're using carp sound like they came out of a terrible and slightly racist kung fu movie. That said, I realize some people might like sleeping carp. If sleeping carp has to remain in the game: It should not be possible to use carp as a vampire. The combination is too strong. It forces everyone else to engage the vamp in melee range, where they are strongest, it negates the vamp's main weakness (ranged weapons), and its 'tradeoff' (inability to use ranged weapons) is irrelevant to vamps as they don't need ranged weapons anyway. It should not confer 100% invincibility to ranged weapons. Even 90% is probably too much. At most, it could give you total immunity to a narrow class of ranged attacks, like tasers. Or it could give you 75% immunity to all ranged attacks. Or it could give you the ability to dodge 1 projectile per second, but NOT more then that. Or it could only function against attacks from more than 3 tiles away. There should be *some* limit such that a full squadron of guys shooting you at point-blank range with assault weapons CAN kill you. Otherwise it just produces insane results like a full squad of ERT emptying their guns at one guy, three tiles away, and missing every single shot. That's just flat-out impossible, overpowered, and it breaks suspension of disbelief.

Event suggestions require more serious thought and effort than this. Closing.

Relevant: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/6431

I like the idea of a cream pie trap. Or even just making it possible to throw pies at people, and having them possibly start with pies. Car mechs (and clown mechs in general) are not a good idea (see: HONK mech). But a unicycle could be.

Absolutely not. Clowns are meant to tell jokes and amuse the crew. Slipping themselves is funny, and serves that. Slipping everyone else whilst being immune to slips themselves.... does not. Hell, I'd go as far as to say that the clown's slip abilities should be nerfed from what they are now - to make them focus on trying to amuse the crew in creative ways, rather than, as is all too common currently, simply being jerks and slipping everyone they can.

A similar argument could be made by the QM. We have to draw the line somewhere - currently its roughly drawn around members of Command.

If Sec wants to announce who they're looking for, the HoS can already do this with the console in their office. This is easier to use and more obvious to crew. Expanding the wanted poster system would be more technically complicated, and would not be as effective as regular HoS-made announcements. Not to mention, it is an open question as to what degree Security should ask crew for help tracking down wanted people. Validhunting is a problem, after all.

I'm going to answer anyway, because lots of people ask this question, and it deserves an answer. Ideas: Accept that competence comes with time, and as there will always be players who are new to the role, there will always be some incompetence. It is unavoidable, and actually a sign that the server is healthy (because we're still attracting new players). Help the more skilled players teach the less skilled, by, as a nuke op at round start, asking around about peoples' skill levels, and encouraging the idea that the most experienced operative takes team lead. Further, make a point to TELL new operatives how to do things, not just assume they know. I've lost count of the number of times that new operatives scream about their jetpack not working - but NOBODY tells them how to use it correctly. If all else fails, select strategies that minimize the impact of incompetence. For example, encourage newer operatives to take items like eshields and shielded suits, which make them last longer in a fight even if they're not robust. Encourage the team to stick together. Have a medic to heal those that inevitably get injured. Rehearse the plan on the ship before you actually try doing it. Etc.

They already do. You can read the settings here: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/blob/8ef41c45f6bd1ab804b2f37f47197e330d7cdbb5/code/game/jobs/job_exp.dm For example, "ROLE_CULTIST = 10" means that being a cultist requires 10 hours of playtime. All the team-based antag roles require 10+ hours of playtime. Partner-based antag roles (like guardian) require 5+ hours of playtime. Solo antag roles (like traitor) require 3+ hours of playtime. I set all this up specifically so that we were more likely to get competent players in antag roles that require teamwork.

That system would be exploitable. People could simply split their play between multiple accounts. Since each account is played less often, its also gone longer without being antag, and thus more likely to get special treatment than the player would be if they only played on one account. That system would also have bad incentive for players. Effectively, you'd be programming the game to prefer giving antag status to the people who play less often, at the expense of the people who play more often. That would create a disincentive against playing regularly. Effectively, you'd be punishing the people who play here most. There is a way to solve both of these problems. You could make it check how many play hours a player has since they were last antag. That at least eliminates those two problems. It makes it so that the system doesn't change players' odds over the long haul. It simply spaces out a player's antag rounds more evenly amongst their normal rounds, so they're less likely to have several rounds in a row where they're always antag, or always not antag. The issue with doing this, though, is that it introduces an entirely new problem: metagaming. If its very unlikely that the people who were antags last round will be antags this round, everyone can use that information to metagame, and decide who to trust. Worse, if you know which players have the antag preference enabled, and you know which players of those were antags last round, your odds of guessing this round's antags increase dramatically. To use the 60/40/20 example again (60 players on server, 40 in-round, 20 with antag role enabled), if you can eliminate 8 of those 20 (because they were antags last round) you are left with 12/20 candidates for being antag this round. If we're again picking 8 candidates, that means if you just guessed that everyone on that list is an antag, you'd be right in 8/12, or 2/3, of the cases. That's a dangerous level of predictability. Yeah, it relies on knowing who has preferences set which way, assumes no churn/replacement of players between the rounds, etc. Still, if you play a lot you'll start to recognize who plays as antags (who has the preference on) and from there its a very simple cross-check against the list of antags shown at the end of the last round. You won't always be right but its potentially a powerful new metagaming technique, and we don't want to introduce new opportunities for metagaming. The current dice-roll method for determining who gets antag is fair. It may sometimes produce streaks of rounds where you're always antag, or always not antag, but randomness sometimes does that. We can't mess with it without introducing more problems than we solve.

At any given moment, roughly half of the server population have their antag preference turned off. With 50-60 people connected, you can expect around 40 actual crew members. The rest are ghosts, players in lobby, etc. With 40 crew members, of which 20 are eligible to be antags, and maybe 8 antags are selected per round... that gives each player with the preference enabled a roughly 40% chance to be antag. The numbers don't always work out this favorably, but this should give you some idea. Overall, the chance for people who have the preference enabled to be antags is surprisingly high. We can't put a cooldown on being an antag, because if we did, there would not be enough antags. The better solution is for more people to turn their 'be antag' preferences on, so we're choosing from a broader pool.

Due to past feedback, there is no such thing as a promotion console. There are demotion consoles, but they can only swap people around between jobs within a department, or demote them out of it. They cannot hire in people from other departments. Nor can they promote civilians into the department. As such, it would not really be meaningful for demotion consoles to print headset keys, seeing as you can't actually use them to hire people from outside your department anyway.

Service ones... the HoP should probably have in his locker. Science ones.... are already in science lockers. Genetics is special. But you could in theory replicate it by combining a science one and a medbay one. Not sure if medbay ones spawn in medbay lockers, though.

Quick checklist: Did you start the fight? If not, claim self defense. If a witness backs you up that you were merely defending yourself, all charges should be dropped. Did you disarm them a bunch of times? If not, space Law says 1-3 disarms is NOT enough for a battery charge. Make sure the officer processing you knows this. Are you being arrested anyway? Be co-operative. At the very least, it will prevent them adding the resisting arrest modifier. At best, they'll believe you and let you go with no charges. Are you being sentenced? Ask for the exact reasoning for your sentence. If you get 20 minutes, ask how they got to 20. If there is no way the charges in your case add up to 20, request to see an IAA.

Any channels in particular?

Let's compare two cases. I notice a sec officer being bad. I make a complaint to the IAA. I notice a sec officer being bad. I tell the HoS. Which of these two is more likely to result in the issue being fixed? The HoS is supposedly the officer's boss. The IAA is not. The HoS has the actual, practical ability to fire said officer using the demotion console. The IAA does not. The HoS' main job is to manage their department. The IAA's is not. The HoS knows that if they don't take my complaint seriously, I may go to the Captain instead, which will reflect badly on them. The IAA doesn't care if I disagree with them, as they don't really report to the Captain, and won't care if I tell the Captain they failed to act. The Captain might actually laugh at me for saying that, as they wouldn't expect IAAs to do anything either. OK, looks like going to the head of staff is better on many counts. What about time requirement? HoS, I can reach over the radio, or PDA. IAA is going to want me to come to their office and spend several minutes filling out paperwork, taking a statement, etc. I have other things to be doing. Looks like talking with the HoS wins again. What about fallback? If the HoS doesn't listen to me, I can go straight to the Captain. If the IAA doesn't listen to me, I'll end up contacting the HoS anyway. Seems like I might as well just go straight to the HoS. Is there ANY scenario where going to the IAA is better? I can think of one: incompetent Captains. If the Captain is terrible, and Command isn't willing or able to impeach them, then getting a fax sent to CC is just about your only option for dealing with it. There are very few long-range fax machines. The IAA's is the most accessible. In this case, the IAA is useful. As useful as the NT Rep, in this capacity. Most of the time, though? You're better off contacting the head of that department, and everyone knows it. I tried to address the problem by giving them enough access that they could physically examine the station themselves, and detect/report on problems without having to rely on someone else informing them. Perhaps I should have given them radio access too. I don't know. I did know, however, that they needed more than they had.

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of poor-quality prayers. Want to be sure your prayer isn't one of them? Try following these tips. 1) Don't confuse prayers with ahelps, faxes, etc. Anything regarding rule violations or OOC problems belongs in an ahelp, not a prayer. Trial admins cannot see prayers, so putting your report of a rule violation in a prayer, rather than an ahelp, may prevent admins from helping you. Any question about game mechanics belongs in mentorhelp, not a prayer. Let the mentors help you. Do not decide your religion is 'The Syndicate' or 'Central Command' or similar, and act like praying to these 'gods' gives you a hotline to CC/Syndi/etc. It doesn't. CC/Syndi/etc are not mind-readers, and these types of prayers won't be heard. If your character has a religion, make it something at least vaguely sensible. Prayers should be messages intended for the gods - and nothing/nobody else. 2) In general, don't pray for obvious material aid, especially aid that compensates for your mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes in SS13. Sometimes, you die as a result. That's part of the game. We don't want to encourage people to pray every time they think they can get some material benefit out of it, and as a result, we can/do often send lightning bolts instead of healing when people ask for heals without a really good reason. Instead of asking the gods for material aid, ask your fellow crew members. There are entire departments (medical, sec, etc) that are there to help you. Use them. 3) Put effort into your prayer. For example, assembling some objects in a pattern and praying for something related. RP a little in your prayer. Make the prayer about something that would truly add to the round, and be fun for all - not just fun for you. Low-effort prayers, like 'help?' are typically ignored. Higher-effort prayers are more likely to be answered. 5) Understand that there are many gods, and they range from friendly, through hostile, to insane. You have no idea which god will get/answer your prayer. Prayer is like spinning a roulette wheel. You never know what the result will be. Even two identical prayers, by the same person, in the same round, can have opposite results. You simply never know. If you haven't figured this out yet, that means prayers are HIGHLY RISKY, and generally not something you want to do unless you have no other options left, or you're RPing a religious character. For example, someone recently prayed to be turned into a dangerous beast with a secret mission. They got turned into a crab, with the objective to snip their claws at every head of staff. They were shortly turned into crab soup by the crew. Making a prayer is rather like asking a genie for a wish - it can do amazing things, yes, but you have zero guarantee that the genie granting the wish isn't malicious, insane and/or dedicated to granting the letter of the wish but not the spirit. There's also a good chance that the god answering your prayer will be outright evil, or simply choose to answer it in the way most amusing for them. Gods normally stay out of mortal affairs, but if you pray to them, you invite them into your life, and that will, quite often, end badly for you. 6) Understand that praying "I am bored" will result in terrible things happening to you. In a shift yesterday, the head of security made the terrible mistake of praying "I am bored, I wish something would happen". Shortly thereafter, CC announced an unusual event: "Many tears in the fabric of time and space have opened. Expected location: EVERYWHERE". The HoS' office alone contained three tears, and thus three tears' worth of monsters. There were 50+ monsters on the station overall. The entire security team died fighting a horde of xenomorphs through the halls of the brig. I believe the HoS' last thoughts before passing away were "why oh why did I make that prayer?!?!?". Normally "I'm bored" prayers won't wreck the whole station, or even your department. But they often end very, very badly for you. A crew member praying "I am bored" is rather like a mouse standing atop a human-sized chair, squeaking "everything is perfect. Nothing can go wrong now!" - in an apartment with several cats. It is tempting fate to an astonishingly dangerous degree, so much so that even clowns would recognize it is a bad idea. Y'know how people in movies say "nothing can go wrong now!" and then they die horribly? Same idea. Do not tempt fate. 7) The gods do not care if you are a Chaplain, or Clown. No, Chaplains are not more likely to get their prayers answered than any other crew. Chaplains work for their gods, NOT the other way around. A Chaplain who treats their god like a free-stuff dispenser will end up on that god's bad side fast. Clowns aren't taken seriously by their fellow crew, let alone the gods. Indeed, sometimes the gods love to see clowns suffer just as much as crew do. Don't think that "because I'm a chaplain" or "because I'm a clown" is a good reason to get what you want out of prayers. It ISN'T. If anything, higher standards of prayer RP are expected from Chaplains. 8) Good results from prayers are not always obvious Suppose you make an awesome prayer, and the gods grant it. Will you notice? MAYBE. Gods tend to work in mysterious ways. If you pray for a light source while exploring dark maintenance tunnels, maybe you find one in the next room. Was that the result of your prayer, or just luck? You'll never know. If you pray that someone finds your dying, crippled body, and then someone does... was that luck? Or your prayer? You don't know. If you pray that the Captain suffer for their gross incompetence, and later on, their office is blown up... was that luck? You don't know. I'm sure you get the point by now. Much of the time, responses to prayers that are granted will not be obvious. You won't know if your prayer did anything, and if so, exactly what it did. 9) Watch out for hints after praying. If an admin decides to send you a message in response to your prayer, the two typical ways it might appear are SubtleMessage (SM) and DirectNarrate (DN). SMs are prefixed with "You hear a voice in your head...". If you get a message like that, especially shortly after praying, take it as a tip from the gods. You don't have to follow it, but in most cases, it would be extremely unwise not to. SMs are typically sent to people who pray for help with something they ought to know, but don't, like an engineer praying for help with engine setup, or a captain praying for guidance about what to do when the station has lots of antags. If your character gets a SubtleMessage, treat it as an extreme life protip. Often, people who fail to heed these suffer greatly as a result of their own actions. You can ignore subtle messages, but it is very unwise to. If the subtle message asks a question, the best way to reply is by praying again. Most subtle messages won't be questions, though. DirectNarrates are different. Personally, when I reply to prayers, I tend to use DN to produce messages like "The Communications Console catches your eye." which act like hints. They're so subtle, you may not be able to tell them apart from normal game messages (except by looking at the game source code, and realizing there's nothing in the code that could produce a message like that). These too are usually ultimate protips, intended to help you without obvious divine intervention. The exception is if you get a message like "You feel a terrible [something] wash over you". A message like that indicates the gods may be cursing you for your prayer. If everyone suddenly has a wave of dread wash over them, especially if the message stating so is in bold, red text, that indicates that either a singularity has consumed a supermatter shard, likely reaching stage 6 and turning into one of the most destructive forces of nature in the game... or the dark gods are about to make life very interesting for the Cyberiad's inhabitants. Or a good god is sending a mass-protip to everyone that they need to have their wits about them in the near future, if they want to survive. That message can mean multiple things, but it generally always results in an adventure. After praying, watch your screen carefully for subtle hints. Look around yourself carefully, too. Items may have moved, or appeared, while you were not paying attention. 10) Cookies are not always your friend, but you should eat them anyway One of the many standard options for admins responding to prayers is to spawn a cookie. While the cookie is usually just a normal cookie, and means "we heard you, but we aren't going to do anything about that", there are variations. Some of the cookies will kill you, or turn you into a monster, if you eat them. Others may give you super powers. There is no way to tell what a cookie will do, short of eating it. If the cookie is cursed, throwing it away, or making someone else eat it, won't help you. It will probably just make your curse stronger. The gods really hate it when mortals try to turn curses placed on them to their own advantage. Such mortals typically end up as cluwnes or worse. 11) Max one prayer per round Don't pray more than once per round. The more prayers you make in a round, the more likely you are to get a bad outcome. The gods get annoyed by repeated prayers from the same person in a short span of time. One prayer per round might seem like a low limit, but consider it an incentive to make your one prayer really good. 12) Don't treat prayers as get-out-of-jail-free cards The purpose of prayers is NOT to give you some advantage that helps you out of a difficult situation. The purpose of prayers is allowing your character to ask, ICly, for divine intervention that will make the round better for the crew at large. Now that you know what NOT to do, let's look at some good prayers... As crew, with a terrible Captain and no IAA: "Lord Istomar, I pray, see this fool Captain suffer for their incompetence. They run around in their suit, for no reason, brandishing the nuclear auth disk, on green alert. They are an embarrassment to Captains everywhere. Amen." As a mime, tending to your fallen comrade, with incompetent medbay: "Divine Light, please help my comrade, Maximillian Arcturus, for they have fallen in battle with the dread spiders. Their body is wracked with poison, and their chances look grim. Medbay is overwhelmed with the injured, and you are their only hope." As clown, in a dull shift: "Great Honkmother, I pray, grant me something harmless but amusing, that I might bring cheer and HONKs to this dreary station." As chef, after some greytider murders all your animals: "Lady, the vile ruffian Joe Schmoe has snuck into my workplace, and murdered all my beloved animals. I beseech you for aid in bringing them back to the land of the living, or seeing Joe cursed for his attacks on the defenseless farm animals." As HoP, after Ian goes missing: "Great God of Paperwork, I have served thee in filling thy forms and dotting thy divine i's. I ask: help me find my poor lost dog, Ian, who needs me." As Chef, after an hour of Botany not doing their job: "Spirit of Summer, bringer of bountiful harvests, I beg thee: help me acquire the produce I require to bake my great feast. Botany has made not a shred of food this shift, and I am despairing. At this rate, I will never be able to feed the crew." Lessons you can learn from the good prayers: If someone needs help, explain why, and mention why you can't get help from the regular mortal authorities. If someone really deserves to be smited, explain why. And mention why the regular mortal authorities cannot do it. Always focus on how your request helps someone else, or at least makes things more fun for the crew (ie: players). Never focus on how the request benefits you personally. Don't be afraid to use old-fashioned and descriptive language. Remember, this is meant to be a semi-formal request for your god. Not a throwaway line. Make it obvious which god you are praying to, both by name (e.g: Spirit of Summer), and function/portfolio (god of the harvest), so the admins have some context for which god they might pretend to be while they're replying.

If you want to know the exact tech levels of an item, the fastest way to find it is searching the Github: e.g: searching for pico manipulator gives you: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/blob/001abb61c44a49883a3b36e70031260c0ac0c63b/code/game/objects/items/weapons/stock_parts.dm#L182 If you want to know which items to put in to increase tech levels, there is a tool for that: https://kyep.github.io/paratools/rndtool/RDT.html You can see the levels of an item you've printed by putting it into the deconstructor. Yeah, it would be nice if the lathe showed you the tech levels of in-game items too.

A demotion is already much worse than a temporary brigging. Temporary briggings don't last for the rest of the shift. Demotions do. Temporary briggings don't result in you losing your access, department radio, other useful/job items, etc. Demotions do. Adding a brig sentence on top of demotion doesn't make it significantly worse. The demotion itself is serious enough already.

https://nanotrasen.se/wiki/index.php/Standard_Operating_Procedure#Causes_for_Demotion_and_Dismissal --- Causes for Demotion and Dismissal Refer to the above for dismissal authority. Ultimately, the decision to fire/demote any personnel falls to the relevant Head of Staff or Captain. This is merely a list of reasons to fire someone over. Any medium-severe breach of Standard Operating Procedure without proper cause; This looks like it covers your 3 / major breaking of SOP. Any medium crime or higher; Critical incompetence at a given job; This looks like it covers your point 2 / dereliction of duty. Refusal to follow legal and relevant orders by the respective Head of Staff. Legality and relevance of said orders are to be judged by the Captain or Head of Personnel; This looks like it covers your point 1 / insubordination. Creation of an abusive and/or unsafe work environment. Personnel consistently berating, insulting, belittling, or otherwise treating their coworkers like dirt, should be immediately disciplined ---