Machofish

One more. Taking a break from stressing over job hunting. My old laptop finally suffered a hardware failure and I ended up losing a lot of my older work--thank goodness for Imgur. I'd make fresh work but frankly I'm out of practice and it'll take me a while to get back into it. NT Rep walking around shirtless, 2. Expressions. A screenshot sent to me quite a while ago from a user who has unfortunately since deleted their account. I'm still impressed by the amount of effort it must have taken to arrange the individual gummy bears like that. And now for some unrelated art:

I'll weigh in similarly to what I've said in the discord thread for xenos. Firstly, the thing with player-controlled xenomorph infestations is that the winner tends to be decided rather early on. I've both successfully coordinated the purging of Xeno infestations on Paradise playing as HoS and also led successful Paradise xeno hives as Xeno Queen before. In the initial 10-15 minutes of the xeno queen's nest being found, the big question is whether the crew are able to mount a competent response or not. In that early stage, security can count on a significant advantage in numbers that can usually outweigh any insta-stun cheesiness from the 2-3 xenomorphs defending the queen. Past that point, if security's first wave fails or if security is too braindead to organize a wave at all, then the xenos are basically guaranteed to spiral out of control. The way to win as Xeno Queen is to know how people behave and do things they won't expect: hiding facehuggers in maint far away from any weeds or other signs of xeno infestation can get you a few easy infections. As a starting hunter, you don't have to bother fully abducting crew into the nest, you can just run around medbay throwing facehuggers at everyone: medbay is rarely competent enough to perform embryo removal surgeries faster than you can spam out facehuggers. I agree xenomorph drones certainly don't have much use at present: they're backup builders but the thing is that the Queen is really the only one who needs to be building. Sentinels can already lay down nests to restrain facehugged victims and all xeno types can plant xenoweeds, so drones are a bit useless at present. One good suggestion I saw in the discord was that dragging/carrying/moving hatched facehuggers should be limited to the drones and the queen only, which could give drones a bit more use other than twiddling their fingers hoping that the current queen will die. However, implying that xenomorph hunters 'have nothing' is ridiculous: Hunters run faster than a crewmember at full nutrition. If you're playing a hunter and you see a crewmember who isn't armed to fight you, you've already won. They can't defend themselves, can't escape you, they can't run. Even if they have a gun, if you're in an open space like medbay then you can just zip around matrix-dodging their bullets or lasers and then pounce or one-click-stun their butts. I'd say this is also the major reason people find xeno instant stun to be 'unfun'. If a xeno knocks someone down and starts dragging them off, there's no way to save them: this is the case with all other speed boosted antags, too, as gun-armed crew only have a ridiculously tiny window of opportunity to intervene if they see a speedy xenomorph running by with a victim, and the vast majority of firearms are actually incapable of inflicting enough damage within that tiny window of opportunity to accomplish anything, even if you plant all shots on target. Basically, if a xenomorph hunter shows up on-screen and you're playing anything other than security, there's basically nothing you are anyone else can do to save you. Hunters have a leap, just in case you're too lazy to dodge bullets by frantically mashing arrow keys. The only hard counter to this is riot shields, but don't worry: even if the HoS is screaming for all officers to carry riot shields, I guarantee you there'll always be swarms of numbskull players who fail to heed this advice. If they have shields, just run up and click on them. It's easy. As if the high movement speed and leap weren't enough, hunters also have a stealth mode for ambushing attackers. Toggling 'walk' while standing on xenoweed tiles, as a xenomorph hunter, will make your sprite transparent and obnoxiously hard to spot so long as you've got plasma stored. I've seen hunters single-handedly wreck squads of security officers just by ambushing them from stealth—and I've done this myself as a hunter a couple of times. Ambushing works the best if you set up near other xenomorphs, using the principle of aggro so that approaching officers are too distracted chasing your other xenomorph buddies to notice you hiding around the corner. Given all of the above, I cannot endorse buffing the xenomorph even further. If players are doing poorly with xeno hunters that's because they're not playing it right. I do, however, want one change made to xenos overall: their melee stun shouldn't work on cyborgs. There's no explanation for why all xenomorphs can perform a fucking Vulcan nerve-pinch to a cyborg that's immune to the crushing pressures of space and immune to all other conventional stuns in the game. The xenomorph cyborg stun actually lasts significantly longer to cyborgs than it does to humans as well, which is monumentally stupid. If you have a security bot trying to harmbaton a xeno while the xeno fights back with harm intent, the xeno would still win. The only reason xenos have that ability to stun cyborgs is due to cyborgs getting a powerful lasergun if science unlocks their combat modules—the solution to that should've been to tone down the cyborg combat laser, not to give xenos a Vulcan nerve-pinch.

I could see this idea working to a limited degree: as it stands, permabrig tends to be treated as a form of extended death row—it's not a matter of "if" a permabrig prisoner escapes, it's a matter of "when", and security tends to treat them like that. A 'prisoner' role who has no malevolent intent towards the crew but is still in custody would encourage officers to be less spiteful towards everyone in perma. That said, there's a lot that would need to change with how perma exists before the prisoner role would make sense: This may sound strange, but roundstart prisoners would need permission to help their inmates escape and to potentially undermine security if they get the chance. Their role shouldn't be restricted to snitching on imprisoned EoCs. Permabrig would need to be expanded and sensibly-built. Firstly, permabrig itself would need to be relocated entirely so that escaping it takes actual preparation. At present, a prisoner in permabrig with no gear, no outside help, no incompetent sec to loot, and no preparation can still break out just using the stuff inside the permabrig itself. Basically the process is to use the permabrig stools to shatter a window, use the window debris to break some other things inside perma and eventually a prisoner can accumulate enough gear to make a spear to break through the airlocks without electrifying themselves on the window grilles. This is to say nothing of how laughably easy it is to break into perma from space and get the perma detainees safely into maintenance without needing to offer them any internals or EVA gear of their own. If EVA is somehow too much effort, someone from the outside need only falsewall or thermite their way into the execution wing. At present, the only way to keep someone in perma is if they want to be in perma. The brig does not have enough starting equipment to support any more than 5 perma detainees—and even that is pushing it. A high pop traitor round can have as many as fifteen traitors, and yet the brig only has enough uniforms and space to properly put 5 people in perma. Permanent sentences can also be done using the gulag (very risky to put any more than 3 people into permanent labor, since the gulag is designed so that officers have to exit the shuttle in single-file where the prisoners can set up a choke point on the other end), or exile (all it takes is 2 prisoners and a surgery kit and they can remove their exile implants. Gateway explorers will also help exile prisoners for free because sEcUrItY bAd.) During a round of traitors, security will start out in a position where they don't have enough space or equipment to manage any more than 5 detainees, and giving them perma prisoners to manage right from the offset would further reduce that number. If these issues were fixed, then I would be supportive of a dedicated 'prisoner' role.

While the staff seem to have come to a consensus already, I wish security had an easier time leaving/entering from space. As HoS I've frequently resorted to turning the labor shuttle dock into an improvised entry/exit point by sending the shuttle away and unbolting the airlocks. I'm not sure I see the harm in giving security a more formal cycling airlock in that same location. The airlock wouldn't need to be accessible to all of sec (if anything, it would be a liability if anyone with a stolen sec ID could enter there) but it should at least be there for convenience, even if sec has to get expanded access or the help of the AI to use it. Addressing the (extremely flippant) arguments that have been brought up: The Pod Pilot is a karma-locked role. Unless this changed recently, it's frowned upon for a player to take over pod pilot duties if they haven't unlocked that role through karma. If we're claiming that a security pod pilot should always be available, then the role should not be karma-locked. The security pod itself is also ridiculously vulnerable to being outmaneuvered and destroyed, but that's a discussion for another thread. The external access airlocks above the security pod are not accessible by security officers—not even the HoS. Security can't even ask the AI to operate those particular airlocks since those airlocks have no local cameras. There's also the problem that a player needs to break through a reinforced wall before they can even reach the button to open that airlock's interior doors, so it's not like EVA access is going to help with that. "But Antags need the head-start." I do agree... however, I think the difficulty of getting officers into the armory hardsuits in the first place already grants enough of a head-start. Even if security gets an actually convenient way to enter/exit the station from the brig (such as using the door remote to force open the gulag shuttle dock), escaping into space with EVA gear still remains a viable getaway tactic. It just shortens the head-start to maybe 5-15 minutes rather than the 15-20 minutes it takes to get the average HoP to grant extra access.

Yes. This is something that makes the cult particularly threatening in a way that other antag types aren't at present. Overall I suppose the game mode isn't awful, but the major problem is that the cult has a way of permanently removing players from that round's security. As HoS I've tried making up for the losses by demanding that deconverted cultists join security—particularly the more belligerent or violent cultists, or cultists directly responsible for soul-sharding—but this rarely works. I think the problem is that people are IC/OOC obliged to support the cult when they've been sharded or converted, but when you ask them to make up for any of the damage they inflicted after being deculted they're allowed to just fold their arms and do nothing. With regards to Flagellant Robes, this will be a very controversial suggestion with impacts outside of the cult, but I'd propose that pulling or dragging a person should limit their maximum movement speed to default running. This would apply to speed-boosts from Flagellant Robes, and from chemistry or adrenals. There have previous proposals to force people to walking speed while pulling (which were shot down because nobody likes walking speed) but I think limiting someone's maximum movement speed to default running speed while pulling another person would be a good way to let the flagellant robes (and other speed boosts that antags are so fond of) stay useful while getting rid of their worst aspects. The problem I understand with flagellant robes—and all speed boosts for antags—is that they let a cultist player pick apart much larger groups of players without any planning or any serious danger. Simply run up, stun a member of the group, and pull them away at high speed with the confidence that the rest of the players are too slow to follow. By forcing a default maximum movement speed while pulling, this means that abductions are still possible so long as the person pulling has a way to throw off pursuers (bananas, soap, lube, even just shooting a taser behind you as you run, they'll all work fine). Speed boosts will still be good for hit-and-run attacks or making speedy getaways, but a player isn't allowed to also capture and kill other characters while simultaneously escaping danger with a speed boost. Mirror Shield. If it actually works as-described, I don't think it's too bad. 50% block is a bit gross since it's so unpredictable, but that's the same block chance as the telescopic shield: sometimes it'll turn you into an unkillable terminator by letting you block 5 hits in a row or sometimes it'll fail to block a single hit and you'll curse yourself for bothering to carry it. Holding one is extremely obvious and, unlike other types of shields, the mirrorshield can be outright destroyed if certain weapons are used on it. RNG never feels good in a game that's already so unpredictable, but that's something about shields in general. One change I'd suggest is that the illusory copy shouldn't be usable as a meat shield. In cramped spaces the illusion can force you to break off a chase simply because it gets in the way. For Wraiths and the AI I think this is just a matter of the players being too lazy to adapt to an emerging meta-tactic, rather than an actual case of something being too powerful to counter. I had a recent round where I suggested that the chaplain spray holy water around the AI core once a cult was discovered. The chaplain did it. At the end of the round, the AI player said that a wraith tried to jaunt in, but was forced to materialize in a bad spot due to the holywater and the core turrets promptly dunked it. To make a comparison to another meta case: it was common practice for Nuke Ops to snipe the AI, so in response it became common practice for the AI to move its core into the upload whenever Nukies were discovered. If it's common practice for the cult to rush the AI using wraiths, I think it should just become common practice for the crew to spray holywater around the AI core to protect it from wraiths when a cult is discovered. This is a problem outside of cult, too, but just not used as frequently: a single emagged maint drone can easily assassinate the AI without much of a warning. By comparison, wraiths assassinating the AI doesn't seem like a huge problem because there's a straightforward in-game method of preventing it. Cult Ascension Threshold. I think it's less a matter of the halo appearing too late and more a matter that the crew don't react at all. You'll get a few "Unga" players who quickly arm up and start slipping into the survival-horror mentality when the cult halos show up (which by that point, is an appropriate mindset to have). Yet most players tend to react like this, when the cult swarms their department. Simply put, nobody outside of security has all that much interest in stopping a cult. It's not so much that the pentagram halo appears too late and more that nobody cares when they do appear. Stun spell mute duration. I'm not completely clear on how it works these days, but here's my two cents. Lone players should be very vulnerable to the cult. In fact, I think lone players should be vulnerable to most antag types as it is. What I think makes this spell feel too strong is when its paired with something like the flagellant robes and shadow shackles: in those cases it means the cultists need extremely little preparation or patience aside from having an escape route planned out. If we really wanted to 'tweak' this, I might suggest making the full mute shorter and instead let the victim speak with cult-slurring for longer (so instead of 6 seconds of mute and 20 seconds of cult-slur, it could be 3 seconds of true mute and 23 seconds of cult slurring.) This would still give newer cultists a highly forgiving window of time to cuff+convert or cuff+remove headset+convert a target without revealing their own identity, but it'll give the victim an actual chance to alert the crew that something is up—even if they can't state their location or the name of their attacker. I think the problem is also compounded by Shadow Shackles which inflict a frankly egregious 12 seconds of mute when they're applied. If someone really wants a cult conversion to go stealthily, they should have to supplement it with on-station materials to pull it off: Such as opening with the stun spell, removing the headset first, then using a stunprod to hold them still for the cuffs, or open with the stun spell, apply perfluorodecalin to prolong the mute duration, then cuffs+headset removal. Heck, the EMP spell would also have a use here in disabling headsets if a cultist wants to make sure the victim absolutely can't get the word out. Having a process where a cultist can stun, mute, and restrain a victim with no equipment preparation (aside from an empower rune) seems a little too forgiving.

Well they would, if it afforded any actual privacy (and it's close enough to a high-traffic area that there's always someone looking in) so at the moment, they don't.

This post is a bit older, but CMD is a discussion point that comes up on a regular basis so I'll weigh in. Riddle me this: if we do implement Clone Memory Disorder, exactly how much is the cloned character meant to forget? Everything about their killer in specific? Everything from the moment they started the shift? (A little too broad for my tastes, but at least it's something that can be consistent). If security (as I often do) sits down and asks, "What's the last thing you remember before waking up in the cloner?" exactly how far back is the cloned victim's memory supposed to be blank? We need a consistent line to be drawn where a cloned character's memory is lost, and what they're allowed to remember. If the rule ends up saying "cloned murder victims aren't allowed to say anything that would give security a hint as to the killer" that will open a whole new can of worms. The closest thing I can relate to as a 'successful' implementation of dividing IC/OOC knowledge is regarding the cult, as ex-cultists are supposed to forget anything relating to the cult's plans or activities if they're deconverted successfully. That said, cult rounds are still subject to a bizarre and blurred line if you ask an ex-cultist "What's the last thing you remember before ending up here?" On the topic of reworking assassination into assassination-but-not-really: I do not support this. Roles like 'traitor', 'changeling', and 'vampire' are called 'Antagonists' because they're supposed to cause trouble for the crew. Players are meant to be opposed to antagonists. We already have a strange phenomena where certain parts of the community have a sort of apathy or even sympathy towards antags, and I personally don't think it's going to help if that apathy is further encouraged by removing the risk of death from assassination objectives. This is particularly noteworthy with vampires already: certain players who I won't name here have developed an unofficial etiquette where it's apparently polite to not scream or draw attention when a vampire is sucking your character's blood, and the vampire in turn is expected to reciprocate by either leaving their victims at medbay or letting their victims go after taking a non-fatal quantity of blood. It's an attitude that has persisted for some time: looking up various keywords like 'give vampires free blood', or just 'give blood', in the server discord will turn up a significant number of conversations on the matter. Most of the debates I've found about vampires and free blood are fairly recent—2020 and 2021, but I'll give my assurances that this 'etiquette' has been entrenched for much longer than that. If we enforced CMD, I believe this would further encourage a sort of indifference and apathy that parts of the community have towards antags. I think this particular issue is quite important to me, because I had an IC argument with a regular over whether the "vampire victim etiquette" made sense, and that player chose to drag the argument into OOC. Who knows, maybe I'm the one who's wrong. I don't want to be entirely critical without offering something constructive, so here's my thought: nobody likes being removed from the round. However, I think antags should still have objectives that involve seriously, significantly inconveniencing other players or else that'll remove any actual conflict between antags and non-antags. I'd like to see more use of objectives like 'maroon' ("Ensure <XYZ> crewmember does not leave on the escape shuttle or escape pod") or other objectives that can be considered "harmful" without necessarily involving the removal of other players—I seem to recall seeing an admin test a "Sabotage" objective that went along the lines of "Disrupt <XYZ> department and prevent them from getting anything done" but I'm not sure if that was just a custom goal or if there was ever any plan to implement it on a larger scale. BYOND always seems to surprise me with what it can or can't do, so I don't know how feasible it would be to implement an objective like that. TL;DR: Present a plausible method to address the unofficial "correct and polite etiquette for being murdered" that already ruins the vampire gamemode—assure me that CMD will not generalize this attitude through the traitor and changeling gamemodes, and in return I'll support re-introducing CMD.

So, disclaimer: my understanding of contractor isn't that solid. I don't know how much potential bonus TC a contractor can earn, or how much TC is awarded per successful capture. I'll operate on the premise that Spark is being literal with the "almost 40+ TC" comment, but anyone is free to correct me if I'm wrong. I think the big problem here is that the two roles aren't designed to be combined: Contractors are supposed to have high TC, but their weakness is that they're strongly discouraged from going loud and lethal. For hijackers, they're given freedom to go for maximum lethality, but their weakness is supposed to be the fact that their TC pool is limited (as in, the default traitor budget of 20tcs normally doesn't allow a hijacker to get sleeping carp, a chainsaw/double-esword, and an adrenal implant all at once, whereas Contractors can feasibly afford all that gear if they complete enough contracts). Personally, I think the problem of "Hijackers getting stronger traitor gear than they're expected to" won't be solved by making Contractor and Hijacker mutually exclusive. I've seen numerous rounds where a Hijacker got hold of some ludicrously powerful combination of expensive traitor gear just due to Surplus crates or Super-Surplus crates. If anything, I'm less concerned by the idea of Hijackers breaking their 'normal' TC budget through becoming a contractor, because at least a contractor needs to make several moves while filling up the contracts, throughout which they might get caught before they can afford whatever unstoppable gear combo they're angling for. and the crew can anticipate what's about to happen if word gets around that a Contractor has completed several contracts, rather than just a surprise Carpsaw+adrenals hijacker jumping out and butchering sec without any advance warning. Basically, what I'm saying is that I think the problem is less specific than "Contractor+Hijack makes for miserable rounds" and is part of a larger issue, that "Hijackers allowed to go over the 20TC budget will make the round miserable." If we want to take another step back, we could say that the "20TC budget" problem is just a small part of the even larger problem, that "People just don't like having their entire round ended by hijackers." Because let's be honest, there's plenty of low-effort methods of murdering the entire station without ever touching a TC-related item: one hijacker scientist can destroy the entirety of the station by just hiding TTV bombs or remote chemistry grenades everywhere and setting them off at once. Since I don't think we can really cut at the root of the problem without removing some of that unpredictability and randomness that makes SS13 so appealing in the first place, I'd suggest making hijack a rarer objective overall: similar to how traitor-AIs have become so rare. That could leave the ridiculous murder sprees that I know some of the community looks forward to, but also ensure that the majority of traitor rounds don't inevitably get derailed by a hijacking attempt.

I think it would be interesting, but mind you it would need to be an ability that can be manually toggled on/off by the changeling host, or it'd be a (very risky and ethically dubious) way for security to verify whether or not a subject is a changeling.

Plasmamen and Vox being inherently spaceproof. Vox raiders, the gamemode. Mutiny, the gamemode. Shadowling enthrallment being entirely undetectable and irreversible. Shadowling thralls having their own glare ability with a lengthy stun duration. Changelings having a paralysis sting and needing to use proboscis absorption to get genomes. Gamma armory was attached to the station by default (albeit heavily fortified) so the crew could theoretically hack their way in and loot it outside of a Code Gamma situation. The old Bay chemistry system, emphasizing fictional chemicals like Tricordrazine. Xenobiology before the slime management console turned it into a snorefest. Not being able to get infinite liquid plasma from the chemical dispensers, therefore making xenobio actually relevant since certain slime species could be used as an alternate source of plasma and plasteel. Malfunctioning AI being its own gamemode. The AI core being located where the gravity generator is located now. The numerous different AI satellite layouts that were used before we settled on the current one. Grenade launchers in the security armory The Nuke Ops getting Syndicate softsuits and Cr-20's by default instead of hardsuits and bulldog shotguns. Characters having a chance of getting appendicitis at random, requiring surgery. Mindshield implants being "Loyalty Implants" that mandated absolute loyalty to NanoTrasen. Donuts used to be significantly more effective at healing. Being able to fax CentComm from any fax machine as any head of command. Giant Spider NPCs being able to kill with a single bite due to how venom worked. Being able to hide the nuke disk inside of a character's chest cavity using surgery. Yes, we did have those for a short period of time.

Wanted to try a couple of different perspectives. Basically I wanted to have one sketch of Cecilia at a high angle and another from a low angle. My idea was to make it look like she was being reflected in something like a pond or a window, but I'm not quite sure I got the angle right for that. It turns out you can gank one of the deadliest megafauna in the game by just swarming it with killer tomatoes. I admit I've sort of shelved Kirsten as a character (as it so happens, she shares a name with a server regular who's been around for longer so I prefer to avoid confusion), though I still like her design. Edit: Since this, I've elected to compromise with a name change. During a particularly slow round, the librarian swapped out the 'Space Law' book in the brig lobby with a satirically awful Star Wars fanfiction that had been retitled as 'Space Law'. Again, it was a very dull shift up to that point so everyone in security had a good laugh about it. Slaughterdemon. Laughterdemon. I sort of messed up with the blood splash pattern. Initially I'd drawn the bright-red puddle, but then added the darker tone which I thought looked a bit more convincingly like blood splatters, but I couldn't be bothered to blend the two together. Something interesting I've noticed is that antag roles and security both manage to feel like an uphill battle to the person playing them. I think it's because as an antag, the player only needs to consider success or failure in terms of their own individual experience while players in security tend to view 'success' and 'failure' as something that's measured across the entire department and shift. And some miscellaneous tabletop stuff:

The cargo drop pod tablet is a cool idea. There’s already the null crate system for traitors in cargo to try for extra gear, but I’ve noticed that with how crowded the station gets, it’s essentially impossible to pull off discretely—placing illicit orders is difficult enough since the QM, AI, HoP and other cargo techs can all see what orders are being queued and by who, and then of course actually retrieving a null crate from cargo when there’s so many other cargo techs around is a crapshoot at best. The supermatter sliver is an interesting idea. Permadeath is always a brutal business, but it’s already available to the chaplain, traitor chefs, and can be done through a few more complex means (splashing acid on a brain as a chemist or scientist, as one example). It’s also worth pointing out that the cult has a functionally similar ability with soul shards, which come in plentiful supply, and if a sec player dies to a cultist it’s almost a guarantee they’ll be soul sharded. If I was going to suggest anything, I’d recommend that disintegrating someone with an SM shard should require them to be dead or subdued for a lengthy period of time. For instance, it shouldn’t be possible to casually stun prod someone in public then have them disintegrated before anyone can even bother to type out “help sec”.

I admit, this prompted me to look up how MIG welding works. I never realized how inaccurate SS13's depiction of welding was until now. Alright, I'm responding specifically because you solicited advice here. If you do want to get better, my very first piece of advice would be to figure out a way to fix this. I know with social distancing rules it definitely doesn't make sense to pick up a sketchpad at this particular moment, but whenever you're comfortable, the way to become better is to just have a sketchbook out and to be working on it. I'm definitely not an elitist about art materials, and I think most artists aren't: I use standard school pencils for most of my sketching. That said, I still recommend against lined paper and newsprint paper as they're expressly made to be cheap and thin. It's not just that the lines are a bit distracting: sheets of paper have an upper limit on how much sketching they can take before the page begins warping, and since lined paper is designed to be thin and cheap it's usually not sturdy enough to hold a detailed pencil drawing without warping the image. Your sketch of this welder is fairly straightforward, yet I can already see the paper beginning to get crinkled. That isn't your fault: that's because lined paper is extremely thin and warps too easily. As for becoming "better" in the sense of linework, technique, proportion, etc... the best I can recommend is practice. There's no substitute for that. Practice sketching everywhere, all the time. Practice during short breaks, practice when you're bored, practice when you're procrastinating from more important work. I could try to provide pointers on style or technique, but practice is really the way all of that stuff develops in the first place.

I've never tried 4th edition, so I can't provide any sort of expert opinion there. That said, I'd say SR 5e's rules are written and organized poorly in the book, but make sense when they're put into practice. Between D&D and SR, it felt like Shadowrun's rules and character creation were thought-through a little better than D&D. One of my pet peeves with D&D 5e is that the races all follow Star Trek logic, in which the full gamut of dwarves, elves, etc. can be described as, "Just like humans, except considerably better in numerous ways with no real tradeoffs compared to humans" whereas Shadowrun's metatype system balances typically 'superior-than-human' fantasy species by forcing players to compromise on starting resources or attributes in order to select a fantasy species. There's also things like Shadowrun's authors have put a lot more time and consideration into how magic has influenced the development of their world from a lore perspective, while D&D just has world-breaking magic lying around that apparently nobody really thinks about. That said, it took me about a solid year of deciphering SR5e's rulebook before I finally understood enough to properly GM it, while in comparison I had D&D 5e figured out in about a week, so I might just be falling into a Sunken Cost fallacy. I hope everyone's staying safe and well-supplied these days. I actually ran out of sketch paper due to social isolation--while that was disappointing at first, I think you'll agree it was a net positive. You'll see what I mean. Just a practice picture. By this point I don't feel like I'm uploading a 'full' set of pictures unless at least one of them features Cecilia looking annoyed. Swarmers are annoying. Hostile wildlife. As I mentioned earlier, running out of paper to sketch on prompted me to dust off a tablet I'd left neglected for some time. I'd given tablet sketching a try quite a few years ago but I think I let myself get discouraged from it too easily. This first sheet just includes various SS13-related doodles that I made to get used to the tablet. A picture of Cecilia I made using ArtRage, a program intended to emulate markers and paints. I felt like I had to fight the software every step of the way, though I'm impressed by how the image looks convincingly like a crappy paint-and-markers art on canvas rather than something made using a program. "Does SoP say I can't use my desk as a footrest? No. No it doesn't." I give IAA a try whenever I want to play, but don't feel like I'm in the right headspace to try a 'proper' HoS round. I think the reason a lot of players have difficulty with IAA is that they approach it with no prior experience in security, and see their relationship to the security department as one based on conflict rather than cooperation. To get security to do anything as IAA, you need to have mutual respect. To have security respect your opinion as IAA, you need to know when it's practical to emphasize SoP and when it's not. The job is much more about earning security's trust that you've got common ground with them rather than trying to get officers fired for incompetence or reduce prison timers. Epic fight music of your choice goes here When the Nuke Ops get whittled down to their last squad member, don't get cocky. There's usually plenty of good reasons why that last man standing outlived all their squadmates, such as being an unstunnable sith lord with a shielded hardsuit who's been on a meth-fueled rampage since reaching the station. Something about the position of the Nukie's right arm is bothering me. I might have to fix that later. Command roles are not suitable for players with an inferiority complex or an easily-bruised sense of pride. There are plenty of AI players who seem to relish making new Command staff go utterly berserk over relatively minor slights or small acts of insubordination. Spark 5.5 has made it into an art form. This was meant to help setup the 'crazy captain' exchange above, though I felt having the context-less version there helped set up the joke better than leading with a sketch that 'gave away' the joke so to speak. I wanted to add dialogue here, but I think it would've taken away from the picture: this is the "I demand to speak to your manager" face, the "I'll get what I want if I just get angry enough" face, adding text would really just be reduntant. Cecilia's "I'm listening respectfully, but I still think your opinion is dumb" face. Like I said, I think giving the tablet a try was a net positive overall. Don't get me wrong, I was happy where I was before, but this feels like a whole new level.

I strongly agree here. As it is, Code Blue for 'suspected threats' barely, if ever, gets any use. If officers find a husked corpse with a missing ID in a locker, the response isn't "Oh, maybe this is a murder victim, maybe just a freak accident, Code Blue while we investigate," instead the sensible thing is to conclude "this person was murdered and looted, probably by a changeling. Code Red." Frequently even if I, as the HoS, only get partial reports and feel the alert should only be set to 'Blue' while the detective and security finish investigating, frequently the rest of command will go over my head and swipe for Red regardless of whether the threat has been properly confirmed or not. I'm not sure about the 'genesis' of the Code Blue/Code Red system, but I recall on older code builds, Code Blue was activated automatically about 5-10 minutes into the round, along with a small CC report that IC'ly listed all of the possible EoC types--this was primarily a RP facilitator when ignorance about antag types was enforced, just so the Captain could eventually announce "Yes, these are traitors" or "Yes, these are changelings" rather than the entire server being forced to feign incredulity for the entirety of the round. Now that things tend to stick at Code Green rather than escalating automatically to Blue, I find Blue barely ever gets used for it's intended role. Even then, the window of time between Security getting enough evidence to 'suspect' a threat and then calling for red because the evidence inevitably leads to a confirmation is extremely slim, so Code Blue is really going to waste as it's currently implemented. The value judgement between Blue and Red should be a judgement that command makes between security abuse versus antag activity, something like this: The overall goal for Nanotrasen is to maximize the station's efficiency. EoC activity and capital crimes reduce efficiency, as they generally threaten the crew. However, giving Security too much power ALSO reduces efficiency, as officers will waste the crew's valuable time by accosting them for random searches and department sweeps, sometimes detain crew over false positives or misapplied charges, and too much security meddling distracts the other departments from doing their job. Therefore, I suggest Code Blue should be for situations where EoCs are confirmed, but the inconvenience posed by EoC activity is still lesser than the inconvenience that would be caused by letting Security off the leash. Code Red should be for when the EoC activity has escalated to a point where the EoCs pose greater inconvenience than allowing Security to go full shitsec, or for a crisis like blob or xenos. Proposed Code Blue Changes I'd argue that blue should be for cases where evidence is confirmed that EoCs or capital crimes are being committed and investigated, but security is still expected to adhere to SoP and Space Law. The SoP permissions for blue are generally fine for this, but a slight edit to the armoury permissions: armoury gear should only be authorized for specific, singular situations, and with the expectation that officers will immediately return any checked out armory gear once the specific situation is resolved. The only time a shotgun or lasergun should leave the armory is if the HoS can, specifically, describe who or what the shotgun or laser is going to be fired at, after which point the shotgun or lasergun must be returned to the armory if it's still Code Blue. Officers should not be allowed to passively patrol with lethals during Code Blue or Code Green. Use of lethal force on a crewmember during Code Blue should prompt an investigation by IAA, possibly resulting in the demotion of the officer if it was determined that nonlethal force would have been sufficient, or the demotion of the HoS if they authorized lethal force for a situation that could have been clearly resolved by nonlethal force--especially so if the misuse of lethal force results in a fatality. Note that EoCs who demonstrate clear immunity to nonlethal force are, by definition, not definable as a threat that can be resolved with nonlethal force. This last part sounds so obnoxiously obvious but I've had players argue that sec should just keep pointlessly using nonlethals on a traitor who's going crazy with anti-stun stimulants or 500u of meth in patches while sprinting around maint stabbing officers with an esword, so I'm typing it down for posterity's sake. From the perspective of a Security main, tightening up SOP here will be a net positive: At present, distributing any lethals during Code Blue generally means the officers greedily squirrel their weapons away until they either get killed or jump into cryo without returning the weapon, making it very difficult to get everyone armed when an actual Code Red crisis occurs later and it turns out all of the equipment lent out during Code Blue is now missing. Proposed Code Red Changes Code Red should not be an automatic response to discovering EoCs. Instead, it should be reserved for situations where the overall safety and integrity of the station are at stake: Things like massive bombing sprees, vampires on a killing spree, or any infiltration antag who got enough meth patches to be basically immune to stun weapons. These are threats where security has a reasonable chance of failing even if they devote their full attention to confronting the threat, and therefore need permission to treat everything else as periphery until the threat is dealt with. Shadowlings, major biohazard infestations, or vamps/lings/traitors who either murder aggressively or render vast areas of the station inaccessible by bombing, and conditionally cultists due to the risk of a major summoning or they're using teleportation runes to evade nonlethal capture. On change I'd like to see in Code Red SoP is that crew should be obliged to carry and present their ID cards to security upon request, and failure to do so may result in detainment as it qualifies for "suspicious behaviour." If the crewmember has a plausible excuse for not having their ID (basically, if it was stolen. "I lost my ID somewhere" is a dumb excuse and shouldn't be accepted at face value,) then security may escort said individual immediately to the HoP in order to receive a replacement. I haven't seen anyone dispute this when it gets brought up in-game, but for the sake of posterity I'll point out it's not actually written down anywhere in SoP when it probably should be. During Code Red, officers do receive access to lethal armory gear, but there should be stipulations about how to use lethal equipment during a Code Red situation. Obvious threats like xenos and nukies don't really need a lot of instructions, but there need to be some rules if Code Red is used for a more murky situation like an extremely robust hijack traitor During Code Red, officers may use lethal force in self-defence (particularly if there is an attempt made to steal an officer's weaponry), or to confront an individual guilty of a crime at Exceptional severity or higher (The only crimes at 'Exceptional' severity are Murder, Manslaughter, Grand Sabotage, and Grand Theft, so repeatedly looting the hand teleporter on Red Alert as a joke might not end well). Officers should always attempt to use nonlethal force when resolving crimes of Major severity, but a crewman guilty of a Major crime who evades nonlethal detainment must either surrender willingly or, if they are worried about confronting security, surrender themselves to a member of command, at which point they will be transferred into security's custody. If a crewman commits a major crime on Code Red, evades nonlethal detainment, and refuses to surrender to custody, security should be permitted to use lethal force. Note that certainty is important here: if an officer's poor judgement or hubris leads to lethal force being used on an innocent, the offending officer should be demoted and charged with either aggravated assault, manslaughter, or murder. Medium crimes should always warrant nonlethal force. Repeated, consecutive Medium crimes during a Code Red situation may result in prolonged, conditional detainment until the Code Red alert is cleared. Minor crimes during Code Red should be noted in the crewmember's record, but security should refrain from prosecuting minor crimes during Code Red until the alert level is reduced to Blue or Green. Certain minor crimes may have their severity escalated based on context, especially if the crimes directly impede the crew's attempts to confront whatever crisis warranted Code Red. (e.g. A doctor hoarding surgical equipment and hiding it away from the wards on Code Green counts as petty theft; doing this during a Shadowling crisis could be charged as a major crime, or even as aiding and abetting the Shadowling if the crewmember demonstrates enough pettiness. A clown slipping officers trying to confront a blob situation should be thrown in a cell until the blob is dealt with, etc.) The intention here is to drastically reduce the number of distractions that security is forced to deal with during a crisis situation. While adherence to SoP is important for curbing shitcurity during calmer moments, it's a liability when dealing with a crisis. So for instance if I as a non-antag, slip and kidnap a shotgun-toting officer on Code Red, then try to use methpatches to make myself flashbang immune as a non-antag, well... firstly, I'd expect to be straight up banned since that's basically self-antagging, but otherwise if the admins are busy then security should be able to treat self-antagging players on Code Red as if the offending party were actual antags. Again, the intent here is that Code Red should be reserved only for exceptionally dangerous situations when security needs to work without distractions to deal with a primary threat. Code Red should not be the immediate go-to button for when any EoCs are identified at all, but only for situations where Security is at risk of losing control of the station. Wrapping Up Currently, the only appreciable difference between Code Blue and Code Red SoP is that Code Red permits officers to detain without warning (and even then, only when evidence connects the detainee to a crime), and officers can forcefully escort crew back to their departments (I have never seen this enforced without causing major griping about shitcurity from the crew). The HoS can technically authorize lethals on blue (generally there needs to be a good reason for it, but the same judgement applies when requesting Code Red). I argue that making the alert levels more varied gives Command more precision in controlling what Security is allowed to bring to bear.