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When giving feedback to our staff, please: Cite Examples. E.g: if your issue is that two supposedly similar cases were handled differently, you need to cite both cases in enough detail for us to examine them. For forums, this means providing the URL of the threads. For stuff that's only in-game you need to provide the date it happened, and the name of the admin who handled it. "Sometime last week" is usually not enough for us to go on. Be Prompt. If you see something that you think is an issue, report it IMMEDIATELY. Do not wait! Reporting something in the round that it happens (via ahelp, typically) is better than waiting until next round to ahelp it. If it is serious enough to go to the forums (ban appeal, admin complaint, or whatnot) then do it as soon as possible after the round is over. The longer you wait, the less reliable everyone's memory gets, and the harder it becomes to gather all the relevant facts. Be Clear. E.g: if your issue is X, stick to talking about X in your report. Don't offhandedly bring in other things unrelated to X. Stay on topic. Be Concise. Most issues brought to our attention need no more than a paragraph to explain them. If you find yourself going much over a paragraph, you probably need to edit it down, summarize, and focus on the key thing. Be Direct. If you have an issue to raise, raise it directly with the relevant person. E.g. Hosting/backend issues should be sent to me, mentor issues should be sent to the CMs, code bugs should be logged as Github issues, etc. Don't ask a third party to deliver your feedback for you. Similarly, if someone complains to you about something, and you are not responsible for that thing, tell them to take it up with whoever is responsible for that thing. Don't Over-Generalize. Any comment like "most of the playerbase <insert anything here>" is probably over-generalizing. If you feel that other people agreeing with you is significant to your point, cite those people by name. Anyone can say "lots of people who I won't name agree with me" about virtually anything. As a result, such claims are meaningless. If you want someone's endorsement of your opinion/claim/etc to have weight, you must name them, and you must be prepared for us to ask them to confirm that they support what you said. Be Willing to Offline PM. It is better to leave the right person a message, even if they are offline, than it is to go asking other people because the right person wasn't online at that exact moment. Staff are used to signing on to a bunch of messages. It is okay. We'd rather you just contacted the right person at the start, even if they are not online at that second. For roles which commonly get a lot of feedback (like the Community Managers, who are in charge of everything related to Mentors) there are multiple people in that role, so there is usually at least one of them online who you can contact. Remember: Staff Are Volunteers. None of us get paid for this. While we work very hard to deliver you the best SS13 server out there, remember, we're volunteers, we have real lives, jobs, etc, and sometimes, ban appeals/etc can take a week or two to process. This is especially true for situations that are complex, require very specific people, etc. Those can take longer. Your patience is appreciated.

The following changes have been made to how our website integrates with Discord: You can now register on our forum directly using Discord. Registration no longer asks you for your discord nickname or name preferences.

Vox raiders just walk up to command, trade for what they want, and leave. They only require one person to deal with them (often the Captain or HoP). They're not engaging for anyone outside of Command, and they don't make a good event, let alone a good game mode.

Reminder: Our wiki is at: https://nanotrasen.se/wiki/index.php/Main_Page Anyone can edit it, just register a wiki account. Some good places to start editing: https://nanotrasen.se/wiki/index.php/Category:Work_in_Progress https://nanotrasen.se/wiki/index.php/Category:Revision_Requests Coordinate your changes with other editors using the #wiki_development channel on Discord. Changes Made Today: The "Wiki Curator" role and the "#wiki_curator" channel in public discord (restricted to wiki contributors) have been retired. They were almost never used, and anything posted in that channel would be better posted to the public #wiki_development channel. The "Wiki Contributor" role now has a special color in Discord, and is ranked above normal members. The idea is to encourage people to help out on the wiki by giving them a color for doing so. We will continue giving out this role to people who are actively helping out with the wiki.

Sept 19: freestylalt has returned from leave, and resumes his position as Game Admin

Exile implants don't kill the implanted upon return to the station. They block the person from being teleported back by the gateway.

Spoilers in the forums now display like this: The change is that you can now read them - no more light text on a light background. Credit @Rebel0 for the extensive spoiler use that made me first notice this issue, and @xProlithium for poking me enough that I fixed it.

Read more here: https://nanotrasen.se/forum/85-open-mentor-applications/ Apply here: https://nanotrasen.se/forum/106-pending/

Sept 11: eler00 (aka: TDS / Zix) has joined the team as a Trial Admin

@John_bigless I would like to update my https://kyep.github.io/paratools/rndtool/RDT.html# tool to use your list for its 'Recommended' status for items. Please contact me on Discord and we'll sort that out.

Aug 30: Kluys (Game Admin) has retired from the staff. Guiltybeans (Game Admin) has retired from the staff. TheSardele has joined the team as a Trial Admin. Sept 3: Harkness22 has left the staff team. Landerlow has become a Trial Admin. Sept 4: DaDman has unretired and is now a Game Admin again.

Cyborgs should be stronger than normal sec officers, but they don't need further buffs on top of their existing advantages.

Today, I discovered a bug in our Patreon integration system. The bug affects about 6 patrons who registered their forum accounts between May 6th and today, and caused them to not get all the patreon perks for their relevant Patreon tier. Thank you to @JamesShekelstein for helping me chase down this bug. All of the affected accounts have now been fixed, and now get all of their relevant patreon perks in-game automatically. You don't need to do anything to benefit from the fix. In addition, should any of these 6 contact me on Discord within the next week, I'll issue refunds for their June, July and August patreon donations. As a reminder to all other active patrons, here are the steps needed to claim your Patreon perks in-game: Register a forum account Activate your forum account by clicking the link in chat in-game Associate your forum and patreon accounts using: https://nanotrasen.se/forum/index.php?app=patreonintegration&module=system&controller=patreonconnect Assuming you have done all of these, you should get your perks in-game automatically within about an hour. If you don't, contact me on Discord and I will help troubleshoot your case. The new patron who did this today was the reason that I ultimately discovered the bug and fixed all affected accounts.

August 15: BrandonSacawv and FalseIncarnate have retired from the staff team. August 19: 25charactersorless (6thechamp9) has gone on leave from the staff team.

Having tested newcrit today: If you simply attack someone until they die, the amount of hits required to kill them seems excessive. 2-4 full stetchkin clips. 24 esword hits. 39 egun shots. 22 dual esword hits. 43 welder hits. However, only a fraction of that (e.g: one stetchkin clip) is enough to deal someone a mortal wound that will kill them in a minute or so. During that minute they can get back up temporarily, even grab a weapon and shoot you. The advantage of this is that it makes fights more interesting, gives people a chance after they're ambushed, etc. I think it is actually a net benefit to the game. The disadvantage is that the more damage you are applying, the longer it subjectively seems to take for the person to die. Because the more hits you're doing, the more damage you're dealing, and the more it seems like you SHOULD have exhausted their health a long time ago. I had a few times when I VV'ed someone after they died and they had >500 brute or burn damage before dying. As such the main tweak I suggest to newcrit is that the threshold at which someone simply dies from accumulated damage should be significantly lower. It shouldn't take >500 points of brute or burn to trigger instant death. If you're already in crit and you take say another 100 combined new damage beyond what put you in crit, you should probably just die at that point, without any RNG involved. That said, the system definitely has pros and cons. It makes fights more interesting (less one-sided) but it also strains immersion at times. It feels a little ridiculous the number of bullets I can pump into someone in a row before they die. But, equally, giving someone the ability to surprise you in combat may help keep the game fresh and make fights actually better.

August 10: Spartan and Shattaredcoyote/Dragonslayer932 are now On Leave from the staff team. August 13: Alffd has retired from the staff team. @Norwest @xProlithium @MysticLiger @Dovixx and @Abydos have been promoted to Game Admin.

My thoughts: Most notes are just a brief factual record of an admin's interaction with a player. e.g: "Warned for X", "Told they're not allowed to Y", etc. The idea is just to have a record that they were warned for something, so if they do it again, we know they were warned previously. There's really no reason to hide notes like this from the player. They don't contain anything the player doesn't already know. Some notes are the admin's personal impression of a player. "Has a really bad attitude towards admins" for example. These sort of notes might have bad consequences if revealed to players. For example, even a positive note like "did well in an event character role, consider for future event char roles" could have a bad consequence (player acting entitled to play event characters) if revealed. Conversely, they could help a player reform their attitude. Notes like this should probably be visible or invisible on a case-by-case basis. A very small number of notes relate to ongoing investigations or unproven concerns, e.g. "suspected of metacommunication with player X". These notes probably shouldn't be revealed. We can't make past notes public unless the admin who wrote them agrees, or (in exceptional cases) a head of staff approves it. To do otherwise is to betray the trust of the original note-writing admin who wrote the note with the expectation it would be secret. My proposal (requires a PR): All players get a new verb, 'Show Admin Notes' in the OOC tab. This verb would only show notes specifically set as 'player visible'. All notes added BEFORE this PR is merged are INVISIBLE, unless the issuing admin (or a head of staff) goes back and manually changes them. All notes added AFTER this PR is merged are VISIBLE, unless the admin who is issuing the note chooses to make it an invisible note. After the PR is merged, some admins (such as myself) might choose to retroactively make every note they've ever issued visible. Other admins might selectively make past notes visible if they come up again during an appeal or whatnot. Some admins might choose to keep all their past issued notes secret. All admins will, going forward, decide whether a note should be player-visible or not when its issued. Impact of my proposal: Already issued notes remain invisible unless the issuing admin (or a head of staff) decides to make them visible. Notes issued in future are visible by default, but admins can still set them as invisible when issued, or by changing the note's setting later, if they wish to do so.

Forums/calendar/etc have been updated from version 4.4.4 to 4.4.5. Changelog here:https://invisioncommunity.com/release-notes/ Discord integration software has been updated from v1.0.8b to v1.0.9. Both of these are minor bug-fix updates that don't add any notable new features. If you do notice anything suddenly stop working, contact me and tell me what it was, when it happened, and provide a link to this post.

Your spawn point should be hidden, and/or easily defensible. "Hidden" means "crew won't easily be able to find you if you spawn there". A good example is the Incinerator, which is a low traffic area that has atmos-only doors, and thus is very unlikely to get checked. "Easily defensible" means lots of narrow corridors with sharp turns that prevent the crew bringing all their weapons to bear against you at once. Science maint near solars is a good example of this. Above all, avoid bursting in large, extremely visible open areas like Chapel - those are just an invitation to get shot by a half-dozen crew at once. You should NOT be using the attack/expand button much. While you do have to use it to clear a path to a new area you can put a node in, it costs points to use, whereas blobs created by nodes are free. Thus, blobs created by nodes are VASTLY cheaper in the long run - attack/expand is very inefficient. There are some good uses of it in combat (see below) but the #1 most frequent error by blobs is wasting their points by over-using this ability to fight, instead of just creating factory blobs. While we're at it, don't create blobbernauts either. They're insanely expensive for how good they are. They're single use, and die quickly. Instead, offensively you should be looking to create resource nodes and factories - factories to produce blobs to defend you, and resource nodes to increase your production capacity. Splitting is also an option, if you can spare the points. Defensively, your best play is to detonate welding tanks. This does a great amount of damage to crew, lights them on fire, may create breaches, denies them the ability to refuel their welders, and stuns them, which makes it the perfect moment to follow up by ralling your blobs on top of them. Doubly so if they're dying, as the blobs will then turn the crew into blob zombies. Your second best play is to find the rechargers they're using to recharge their weapons, and eat those. It largely nullifies the effectiveness of their weapons. Reflective blobs can be created by ctrl-clicking a regular blob to upgrade it into strong, then again into reflective. Its best to do this on narrow chokepoints (see point 1) or when facing space pods. Remember: if the crew can get to the reflective blob, they can kill it. Make sure there's a blob in front of it to protect it from cheap welder attacks. Borgs are very dangerous, but thankfully also very easy to kill with a couple of attack/expand moves into their turf. Take them out early. Place resource/factory blobs as close as possible to your nodes to increase their effectiveness. If someone throws a flashbang at you, expand onto that tile to destroy the flashbang before it goes off. If there is a water or plasma tank nearby, attack it. Slipped crew are easy prey, and you can block off plasma floods using strong blobs. Crew are not so lucky. N2O is even better, as it is utterly harmless to you, but can be permanently disabling to crew. Use atmos to your advantage. Create a breach into space in a corridor just before your blobs. Anyone trying to attack them at close range will be sucked out by the breach. Feel free to add your own points below.

July 25: Shatterdcoyote has stepped down from Community Manager to Game Admin. Xerdies is now Community Manager. July 26: Normalyman has stepped down from Community Manager to Game Admin. Denthamos is now Community Manager.

Thoughts: Doubling the number of surgery rooms may be significant balance-wise. Placing viro next to toxins storage is likely to result in flaming monkeys. I am unsure if this is good or bad. It might almost be doable to connect genetics maint straight down south to medical maint. Viro seems really big. What are the two tiny rooms south of the CMO office? If they're patient rooms, is the glass intentional? The maint area west of OR1 is weird. Single tile corridor? This removes the secret medical rooms from medmaint, which were nice to have. What do you plan to put in that lone blank square of maint just east of secondary medical storage? I wonder if the CMO's office should have a window to viro.

I'm against making it a crime to merely criticize security. I'm for making it a crime or SOP violation to needlessly antagonize security. There is a difference. "Security confiscated my stuff when they shouldn't have" is a criticism, and fine. "SHITCURITY ABUSING ME IN PROCESSING HELP!" (when security are simply processing you without actually doing anything abusive) is needlessly antagonizing security. Basically, if your complaint is reasonable, and/or expressed in a constructive way, its fine. On the other hand, if you're going out of your way to make life as difficult as possible for security, and you are not an antag, you shouldn't be doing that. Nobody should. Even if security is bad at their job, making life extra difficult for them WON'T improve matters.

In general: I think we should look to code-based solutions, not simply admin-policy solutions. Admin-policy solutions exist to do things we cannot do with code, NOT to do things we could instead do with code. I think that any solutions we do implement should be carefully thought out and aimed at (A) making security more fun, so more people want to play it (B) making security more competent, so it has a better reputation, and (C) making the crew treat security better. Some specific ideas: I still think we should have a device in processing that automatically times how long suspects/prisoners are in there, and generates an alert on security radio when someone has been in there over 10 minutes. This would help cut down on people being left in processing far too long, which always results in a worse relationship between security and crew. I also think that batons should have an inbuilt sec radio, which generates a one-time message on sec comms the first time each baton is used on harm intent. This would help magistrate/HoS/Captain notice and stop shitty officers. I'm also inclined to believe that security should get automatic basic department access on red. This means security officers should be able to simply walk into medical, eng, science, etc on red. The airlocks should open for them. It doesn't make sense to me that security are supposed to have access to these areas... yet they usually don't. I believe that yelling 'shitcurity' over radio for no good reason, or otherwise needlessly antagonizing security, needs to be a crime under space law or a SOP violation. Security should feel like the crew will treat them with respect, and we should make whatever changes are needed to ensure that happens. I'm still keen on my idea of 'give the head of every department a medal in their locker that they can award to excellent crew from their department'. Something to reward players for being great at their jobs. In fact in this case I'd go further and I'd deem the magistrate a head for these purposes, allowing them to give out a 'Legal Excellence' medal to whoever they feel is the best at upholding space law each shift, including say IAAs who challenge unjust sentences. I am skeptical that security cadets would be a good idea, as I think they'd just end up as loot pinatas. Even with lesser gear, merely being able to get a stunprod, sec ID and sec comms from them is already reason enough for antags to kill them for their gear. However, I am willing to let the idea be testmerged and trialed, and willing to admit if the results of such a test prove me wrong.

As Alffd points out, this suggestion eliminates one of the biggest incentives we have for positive behavior towards other players. That is not a good thing.

June 30: DarkLordPyro (Game Admin) has retired from staff. July 1: Twinmold has unretired and is now a Game Admin again. July 2: Regen (Server Dev) has retired from staff. July 3: Ping has unretired and is now a Game Admin again.