Machofish

I realize that inspiration comes and goes for me: I'll have months where I do nothing but crank out sketches in rapid succession, then dry spells where I can't even put a pencil to paper without being immediately bored. Not sure how long this particular wave of inspiration is going to last, but might as well make the most of it. From a wizard round: The wizard had a belt of soulstones and was turning crew into Wights everywhere. Sadly, the chaplain--the one player role that's basically dedicated to taking down constructs--was amongst the first victims of the wizard's soul shards, so Cecilia ended up salvaging the chaplain's chainsword and holding back the wights with Sec until the crew could corner the wizard properly and kill him. While I'm glad that I managed to get a hold of the chaplain's holy weapon at such a convenient moment, I still feel sorry for the chaplain: By all rights, it should've been him in this image, not Cecilia. Also large kudos to Nina Kurilyochov the brigphys for managing to apply Styptic Powder patches in the middle of a crazy melee fight with perfect timing: Cecilia very likely would have been knocked into crit multiple times over otherwise. For every badass moment I've had as Cecilia, there have been... not-so-badass moments. For instance, a traitor named "Abducty the Meth Clown" got a special objective to get a picture of Cecilia in a ridiculous costume and fax it to the Syndicate. He greentexted. Spectacularly. I'd like to say Cecilia took it fairly well, everything considered. While this wasn't exactly her finest moment, I've come to see these moments as a sort of 'memento mori': Regular reminders that popularity does not equal robustness. With that in mind, I felt it was a good idea to take a break from sec and get some experience in other departments. Empathy is a huge part of doing well in sec, and the best way to develop that empathy is of course to understand what it feels like to play outside of sec: Meet Kirsten. Playing as her taught me that while playing in security is stressful, playing outside of security can be honestly worse for different reasons. "I'm really sorry, but I'm gonna need you to give that back before you blow us all up." First round as Kirsten went remarkably well: I was planning on trying out a few different character concepts and names before settling on a new staticname, but Kirsten's first round in science was a War Ops round. With 15 minutes of prep in Science's chemistry lab, 2 grenades, and 6 units of azide, Kirsten did more damage to the nukeops than Cecilia's ever managed during a single round as HoS. Goonchem is some terrifying shit. Anyway, enough flexing. When throwing her first grenade, Kirsten took an LMG round in the leg and got a serious limp, so I thought she'd be better off giving her second grenade away to a security officer in the hopes he'd make good use of it. Immediate regret. Still, everything turned out alright in the end. Next couple of rounds, less so. Kirsten being ignored by her coworkers in science. I've often heard it remarked that the Sec department 'community' tends to show a little more integrity than the other departments. Science's community is definitely a mixed bag. If you play a 'staticname' character, I really do recommend trying a brand new character for a round or two if you haven't done it in a while, just to see how everyone's behavior changes the moment you're someone they don't recognize. You'll find a few good eggs who still talk to you if you're lucky, but overall it makes me appreciate all the remarks from new players about how this community is hard to warm up to. Tried a bit of Gateway Exploration, and salvaged some Hybrid Turret Guns that I didn't want to leave lying around. Now, being the helpful law-abiding nonantag I was, I thought that Security might appreciate getting some new toys in the armory, and brought the salvaged Hybrid Turret Guns up to the brig. What follows is a rant, so I've put it under a spoiler: Steve. From CentComm.

I've come to realize that my rate of producing sketches correlates to how much I'm procrastinating from doing important things, because what happens is that when I have something important on my plate I can't buckle in for a proper round of SS13 without feeling guilty about it, but with sketching I can stop whenever I want. Just this last batch and I'll go do the stuff I've been putting off, I swear. I think I'm going to start putting technical rambling (ie. Discussing challenges involved with creating the sketch, new techniques, lessons learned, etc.) into spoiler sections. I realize not everyone's interested in that but I also really do like talking about my work. It's with great regret that I admit I've never seen a Chaplain attempt this, let alone pull it off. Chaplains really should take a more direct role in fighting the cult, though. Trying to figure out how to draw animal snouts from a frontal profile, so I figured I'd draw @Furasian's sec main. I consider Fillmoore to be a fairly competent sec officer, though admittedly he and Cecilia rarely see eye-to-eye: Cecilia tends to push for more expedient, open-ended interpretations of Space Law, whereas Fillmoore tends to emphasize a no-nonsense, by-the-book approach. Upon occasion Cecilia has brought this up in a less-than-helpful manner. Of course, this is not to say that Fillmoore doesn't have a sense of humor. ...To be honest I'm not actually sure if it was Fillmoore who had the 'lick the microphone' gimmick or some other Vulpkanin sec main. Figuring out how to draw Unathi. Now that the more interesting stuff is out of the way. I usually don't upload studies (as they vastly outnumber the 'proper' drawings I create and would quickly overload the thread), but I saw @PhantasmicDream's studies in the forum art club and I found them quite helpful, so here goes: And of course, we leave the best for last. - Bane of Security Thread, again. Given @imsxz's rather "colorful" track record, part of me wonders if giving Ares fan art is encouraging the right behavior, but he kicked my ass fair and square multiple times, and he'd stick around and use his robustness to help out when he wasn't an antag instead of just antag fishing science, so he has my respect for that much. In regards to the sketch itself, it wasn't until I had finished scanning that I remembered that Ares had bright pink eyes but by that point the paper had already started warping from repeated eraser use and I didn't want to tear the page by trying to fix it.

I posted this batch at 4:00am so I'm probably going to have to edit the captions later. Trying to figure out how to break Same Face Syndrome. - Thread. Not sure where Alissa Bennett went, but before my most recent hiatus she had a gimmick of devoting an unnerving amount of energy into expressing how much she liked Cecilia and how much work she put into trying to emulate her habits and appearance -- which was immediately unusual and a little unnerving considering that Alissa was a bit of a bubbly socialite whilst Cecilia was, simply put, not. Supplementary. Cecilia hasn't had a lot of great interactions with plasmamen. There's been more than a few rounds where the Syndicate Comms agent decided to have a laugh at Cecilia's expense. I was also getting a bit bored of constantly drawing Cecilia's 'RBF' expression so I took a shot at drawing Cecilia in a more exaggerated style. Just so I'm not setting a precedent, if you want me to draw your SS13 character, please just message me on the forums or on discord. If you dedicate yourself to pestering me IC in the hopes I'll draw about it, I cannot guarantee consistent results. I think I've drawn Cecilia enough times by now in her default 'RBF' expression that I can start branching out. Particularly, I've found I've had a lot of trouble drawing shouting/yelling: Usually with drawing a face it's easy enough to just throw down the outline and add the features after, but once the jaw opens the underlying outline of the face has to change without making the face seem like someone else entirely. While security tends to have an uphill battle in most situations, they do have a handful of annoying tricks up their sleeve. Cecilia in particular has a fondness for overusing flashbang grenades since they're basically a "fuck you, I win" button (which tends to be the case for all area-of-effect stuns). Personally, I find not all greytiders are bad.

"Whatever's poking me back there had better be an unsecured stun baton or so help me..." Coders experimented with using TG's "Peacekeeper Borgs" for a while. Unfortunately it was less "amusing hugbots" and more "lag-inducing avalanche of cookies" and "can't hear anything because of harm alarm spam." Portrait of Cecilia for practice. I decided it looked way too serious for SS13 so I thought to myself, "what would lighten this up?" Cult regalia. We had a large cult update that came along with an number of unique and unusual bugs features: For instance, player-controlled mouse cultists. Another amusing bug feature was that cult knives inflicted a 1-hit kill through instant bloodloss. Well, amusing for the cultists I assume. Sec, not so much. COME ON AND SLAM!!!

As I understand it, the general issue we're talking about here is "The Security department doesn't have enough competent regular players; how do we change this?" I can't guarantee I have a great answer, but as someone who plays HoS on a regular basis and, as a player occasionally described as "competent" by members of the community, I'll offer my two cents. I'm going to start by saying something obvious: Playing in the Security Department is very tense and nerve-wracking by its very nature. Playing as Warden or Security Officer in the early round is tense and yet also very boring, as anyone in those roles essentially needs to wait for the antags to make their first move before the action can really start. Often times I'll see the security department start with 5-6 officers, only for 3-4 of those officers to jump into cryostorage before the first 30 minutes of the round have passed. This is why I love playing HoS but cannot stand playing as a regular officer and can barely stomach warden: the HoS almost always has something to keep them busy from the start of the round to the end, but regular officers are often stuck wandering around aimlessly until they get that call of "H-H-HA-A-LP M-M-A-A-IN-T-T-T!", or they run face-first into an antag. Since antags are packed to the gills with easy methods of killing someone without warning, the average sec officer will not survive the latter scenario. This isn't a situation that necessarily can be changed, nor am I certain that it even should be changed. But it's worth keeping in mind that the feeling of vulnerability and nervousness tends to make playing regular security a pain in the ass on its own. On top of that, nobody really expects much of you as a regular sec officer: You have access to basically nothing other than a few doors in the brig, your body armor is useful for essentially jack shit since EVA boots, area-of-effect stuns and stun resistance decide the outcome of more battles than a few points of reduced brute damage ever did, and default security officer uniforms are honestly pretty ugly to look at. These are conditions that, while unfortunate, can't really be changed without asking coders to invest exorbitant amounts of free time into designing new systems from scratch, so it's less stressful in the long run to just accept them as things that cannot be changed. I cannot speak to what other "competent sec regulars" think about the above conditions, but I personally get around it by playing as HoS. That said, there's still quite a few circumstances and situations that appear repeatedly, and whittle down my enthusiasm to continue playing and often contribute to my decisions to go on hiatus from SS13. I'll outline a few below, and in each case, I've put some thought into why they generally irritate me and how I think small adjustments could make those situations easier to handle: Situation 1: Unstoppable Space Assholes The first situation I'll describe is when security has simply become outclassed by one or more antags. Either sec has lost too many officers in a single really bad engagement, or an antag has a particularly brutal gimmick that they used to systematically kill off security officers (such as a gimmick combining spacelube with holo atmos barriers and several extremely well-placed holes in maint leading into the deadly vacuum of space). The armory is empty, pod pilot's dead. Bonus points if the antag(s) in question continuously taunt security over the security radio channel using bowman headsets looted from dead security officers, additional bonus points if the antag(s) have killed the pod pilot and are camped out in EVA knowing that security cannot follow them effectively due to all EVA suits being taken. Extra-Bonus Bonus Bonus points if the antag(s) set up a security records console offstation and uses their stolen security IDs to constantly set everyone on the station to arrest with cheeky messages left in their notes. There's a specific player or two I could name who absolutely love to pull this every time they're selected for an infiltration antag role, but it's by no means exclusive to a few individuals. This is annoying when it's just one player doing it, but sometimes there'll be a round where it's two or three extremely competent changelings working together or two or three vamps who've reached fullpower. I have yet to see a security player get trapped in this sort of a situation without getting extremely tilted over it. I have a suggestion on how these situations could be made more bearable, but I'll leave it to the end. Situation 2: Mary Sue Edgelord Antagonists Shadowlings Go to youtube, crank "In the End" (or any other Linkin Park song that puts a little too much work into being "dark and edgy") at full volume, and you have a summary of your average Security experience during a Shadowling round. Except the average Linkin Park song only makes you suffer for about three to four minutes while the suffering of a Shadowling round can last anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour and a half depending on how quickly the Shadowlings gather up thralls. More than anything else, Shadowling rounds in specific burn me out and turn me away from Paradise more than anything I've experienced in this game. (Yes, that includes rounds where I've been transform stung, cluwned, laughter demon'd, ganked by vindictive AIs moments away from the shuttle, and mindswapped by wizards who devote the rest of the round to doing the most embarrassing shit imagineable while mindswapped into my character's body). I list this as reason #2 as Shadowlings are considerably rarer than hyper-competent antagonists, but even one Shadowling round is more than any security player needs to put up with. I have had the intense misfortune of playing as HoS during multiple Shadowling rounds and not once have I ever had fun, even the few times where the Shadowlings didn't ascend and kill everyone, and not once have I ever seen a Shadowling round through to the end and seen, "OOC: Man, that shadowling round was so fun!". Nobody has ever said that. It's an antag type that, despite receiving several adjustments, was built upon horrendously and fundamentally flawed design principles. You want an example of these design principles? When Shadowlings were first added, they could use their area-of-effect stuns on people through walls with no direct line-of-sight (they still can if I'm not mistaken), Shadowling enthrallment not only skipped over mindshields completely, but was also impossible to detect and impossible to reverse, Shadowlings could use guns with no restrictions, stun and enthrall crew members without even hatching first, and even shadowling thralls used to have a single target stun+mute ability of their own that lasted several times longer than the average stun weapon or slip--this particular thrall stun worked even when the thralls were blindfolded and cuffed. Shadowlings were ported from another codebase, so our coders are not responsible for their initial state. However, while the coders have put an immense amount of work into making Shadowlings something that isn't, well, fucking bullshit, my experience of reading dchat and OOC after Shadowling rounds leads me to conclude that the only players who enjoy themselves during a Shadowling round are the Shadowlings themselves, and nobody else. My personal aversion to Shadowlings is enough that the simple possibility of being duped into playing sec during a Shadowling round often has me choosing to observe instead of play, or just to close BYOND altogether and find something off my Steam library rather than inflict a Shadowlings round on myself. Situation 3: Surprise Adminbus I initially really didn't want to make this its own entry for a few different reasons, but I still have faith that Paradise's admins prefer to hear feedback and criticism rather than let it fester silently until their players leave without a word, so I'll out and say it: Admin events often paint a giant crosshair on the security department that nobody in security is ready for, and having the department wiped out by admin-spawned or admin-controlled antags is not something that feels fun, ever. This has happened enough times in recent memory (as in, three times in one month) that I feel the need to point it out. This includes more than one situation where the admins have admitted to spawning in as Terror Spiders and giving themselves free breaks such as spawning in swarms of NPC Terrorspiders and forcing eggs to hatch instantly and mature into full-grown terrors without any delay, another round where a Syndicate Infiltration Team was spawned with the intention of assaulting the Brig in particular (and a Terrorspider batch spawned directly after the Syndicate Infiltration Team withdrew, and no ERT was called because fuck me for liking security I guess), and a round where a 'pirate raid' event basically degenerated into "five syndicate agents and five nukeops in pirate costumes are given a green light to murderbone all of sec without warning." I don't think tallying up grudges against individuals on the staff team is really worth the energy, and I don't want to burn bridges here, so I'll try to put this as directly as possible: I want to continue playing and enjoying Security. When Admin Events take that enjoyment away, I lose the desire to continue playing security. Situation 4: Greytide? To be honest, I don't actually find that I have a huge problem with greytide on the server at present. On an average shift, truly dedicated 'greytiders' never number more than 1-3 at most, and they're usually not coordinated with eachother, nor do they inflict undue harm. The admins, I find, are very active and effective when it comes to curbing more extreme and harmful Greytiders, while I perceive minor acts of Greytide as a sort of departmental inoculation, in which new officers learn how to avoid getting sucker-punched, blindsided and humiliated in safe non-catastrophic manner, without disastrous consequences for the rest of security. For instance, if an officer repeatedly refuses to listen to their HoS and fellow officers telling them that, "Dude, wandering around with a taser in one hand and your active stunbaton in your other hand on code green is a bad idea" then by all means that officer deserves to get robusted and dumpstered like the securitrash they are: Having a tolerated margin of greytide just means that when this robusting and dumpstering inevitably happens, the greytider will usually turn in their stolen gear afterwards or limit the amount of chaos that comes from testing security's weakest link. If not for Greytide, then that same officer would be getting dragged off and straight out killed by an antag without anyone in sec knowing, granting that antag free stun weapons, a sec headset and a sec ID which generally paves the way for Unstoppable Space Assholes to occur, as described above. For instance, I once had a warden who silently wandered off into maints on their own and tried to act like a security officer, silent and taser in-hand. A changeling promptly captured the warden, mindswapped into him, and nobody in sec knew until the Warden-changeling had already killed the detective and HoS, and released other lings from custody. Now if a casual greytider had intercepted the warden and given him a well-deserved asskicking before his fateful run-in with the changeling in maint, things probably wouldn't have descended into utter shit for the rest of security. It is the job of HoS to identify and deal with incompetence in sec: If I can't rely on an officer to save themselves from a literally unarmed civilian using nothing but disarm intent, that same officer is going to be nothing but a liability and a dead weight in a crisis situation where, for example, a traitor-changeling with sleeping carp, an armblade, and several beakers of meth decides they're going to give the brig a fresh coat of red paint. That situation is cancerous enough to deal with when there's a competent security team; you don't need a useless assclown Officer tasering you in the back of the head because they hadn't been tested and washed out by the greytide. Situation 5: Radio Abuse? Much like I don't have a huge problem with greytiders, I've never really had a significant issue with people screaming about shitcurity over the radio. Don't get me wrong: it can get risky if you try to simply ignore it without justifying yourself. Honestly? If someone's having trouble because they're getting yelled at by the crew the advice I give them is "suck it up, buttercup." Now, if someone is cussing you out on the comms, the worst thing you can do is lose your head over it. Nothing screams "I AM COMPLETELY IN THE WRONG AND FAIL TO JUSTIFY MYSELF" like responding to verbal criticism with physical force. It's just a pattern of human nature: How many oppressive regimes accidentally sparked violent rebellions because they tried to suppress non-violent protests using violence? If someone is accusing you of monstrous behaviour, the least useful thing you can do in that situation is gratify those accusations by acting like the monster they're accusing you of being. So, as arresting someone for screaming "shitsec" is off the table, the best thing is really to challenge and defeat them in their own arena: public debate. If someone accuses you of being shitsec, ask them to explain why with specific evidence. If they explain why and their reasons are valid then, well, unfortunately that's kind of your fault or the fault of someone in your department that you need to address. If they're just screaming shitsec because they're incompetent self-centred morons or they just want to stir shit up, then you calmly and systematically point out all the gaps and contradictions in their logic before dismissively telling them to stop embarrassing themselves. There may be a temptation to descend into ad hoc attacks or fabrications, but make sure you stick as close to objective fact as possible, and demand as much from whoever's trying to insult you. If you make your point and they don't respond for a few minutes, don't press the matter or you'll just look conceited; they'll probably resume their verbal abuse in a few minutes once they think you're distracted, but the important thing is to take them down a few pegs in the arena of public debate, which seriously hampers their ability to gather much support. If it's just a case that greytiders are causing shit and screaming verbal abuse at you and hurting your feelings because you stopped them from doing annoying stuff, just ignore them and process them in accordance to law. Do give them a chance to explain themselves. Speak calmly and politely, ask them for their side of the story. If they respond in kind or with any sort of eloquence or RP at all, then process them properly and maybe give them a few minutes off if they calm down and have any sort of plausible explanation for their behavior. If they give you an utterly shitty zero-RP response like "No U" or "FUCK YOUR MOM SHITCURITY CUNTS FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!" etc. then here's what you do: Laborcamp. Actually, laborcamp has a very unique quirk to it that you should keep secret until it gets patched, but I'll get to that in a moment. Making Security More Attractive So, enough of the kvetching about what situations make players feel punished for being security. What do I think could help Security players feel better about playing and less likely to say 'fuck it' and play another role or another server? Well I'm glad I asked me, because I've got a few suggestions. Laborcamp So, back to 'laborcamp'. You know how I said it had an unusual quirk to it? Well, here's the deal: It's broken. The Laborcamp is intended to be a system in which prisoners with temporary sentences are forced to do mining, meaning that the only way they can return to the station is if they contribute quantifiable repayment to the station in the form of mining materials. Most greytiders, when sent to the mining camp, will die. This is because greytiders have a deadly allergy to being anything other than useless pieces of shit and the sheer idea of being forced to do something that could be described as 'helpful' in order to go back to being a useless fuck is enough to make them alt+f4. Here's the rub, though: The laborcamp is literally broken. As in even if you give a prisoner a reasonable point quota, the laborcamp's shuttle airlocks are not set up properly to allow prisoners to return to the station even if they actually mine and gather minerals. It's basically a secret death sentence you can give to unrepentant greytiders, and I'll confess that if a greytider fails hard enough at RP'ing and has a clearly rule-violating name then I might end up sending them out there despite knowing full well that the laborcamp is in fact bugged and is literally impossible to complete a mining quota there in its current state without an officer actually going up to the labourcamp to tally the mineral stacks by-hand. I figure that the fact the laborcamp does not work properly is on the coder team and the admins, not me as a player, and I'll also send out an ahelp asking for permission to use the laborcamp for temporary sentences before sending anyone out there. So, that's the first item on my wishlist: Make the laborcamp actually work properly. It's a great way to separate the truly malevolent greytiders from players who just went a little too far but are willing to calm down and mine some materials for science in order to return to the round. That basically solves the more severe greytide problems right there. Note that Space Law NEEDS to be updated with a section that specifically states that laborcamp can be used for temporary sentences. Last time I tried to use the laborcamp to dispose of greytiders I got in an extremely pointless and frustrating argument with the HOP who insisted that the laborcamp could not be used for temporary sentences since spacelaw does not explicitly say so (despite the fact that prisoner IDs are supposed to have mineral quotas set for temporary labor sentences and why the fuck would the laborcamp be called the laborcamp if there is literally no incentive for the prisoners to do labor out there at all?) Reduced Powergaming Stigma in Crisis Situations So a few people have suggested giving security more special items and buffs to entice people to play: I strongly disagree. Not only are basically no coders willing to go through all that, but offering sec cool new guns, gadgets or mechanical bonuses is likely to attract exactly the wrong sort of players--namely, the ones running around with both their taser and baton in-hand on code green, ignoring radios, and wearing the default HoS armor. (As an aside, I'd love if donuts actually healed security like they used to before goonchem, but I know even that's asking for too much). Generally, security already can get access to some incredibly potent gear by the end of a productive shift: Genetics powers, RnD guns and implants, and of course robotics usually has at least 1 durand if mining wasn't spawncamped by a colossus or ashdrake. It's my opinion that durands ought to be a bit of a contentious topic, seeing as it's basically impossible for the average antag to actually take down a durand without breaking server rules regarding excessive destruction, let alone rounds where robotics just decides to crank out 5 durands in a row and give them all to sec because they've got nothing better to do (I'd actually be fine with durands being nerfed slightly or at least having a higher resource cost to prevent this sort of mass-production from ruining an antag's round, but that's for another thread). I'd prefer if security had to rely on the competency, cooperation and goodwill of other departments to obtain strong late-game gear, as it gives security a much greater incentive to protect those departments from danger, stay on good terms with the departments, and keep them operational. The main issue here is that there is a rather strong stigma discouraging security from 'powergaming' behaviour that means sec rarely gets their hands on this sort of lategame gear: genetics powers like x-ray, utilities like bags of holding, accelerator lasercannons, anti-stun tooth pills don't see very frequent use amongst security, even when the antags have availed themselves of many of these sorts of upgrades alongside their starting antag abilities and powers. Back all the way to "annoying situation 1", it'd be considerably easier to deal with a gang of fullpowered vamps or rampant changelings if security had more leeway to escalate by getting antistun dental implants or collaborate with the other departments to cook up a few nasty surprises of their own to respond to the powered antags with. TL;DR: People don't play in security because officers dumb; antags smart. Shadowlings dumber than sec most times but shadowlings win anyways because designed by edgelord coder who never wanted his precious creation to lose even when played by imbeciles. Greytide annoying but greytide can be dealt with using laborcamp. To fight smart antags officers should be allowed to escalate and meme it up just as hard as the antags with goonchem meth memes and genetics fuckery if things get far enough out of hand.

This is a bit of an "i ded, plz nerf" topic, so bear with me here. For those of you who are unaware, one of the plethora of powers that Shadowling get is called 'Icy Veins'. The Paradise Wiki describes it as follows: Now, I'm not fully familiar with the specifics, but getting affected by a single Icy Veins causes the affected targets to be dramatically slowed down, and receive full-body burn damages enough to take them nearly into crit unless they have a way to immediately raise their body temperature. I understand that Shadowlings are supposed to be formidable enemies, but the issue is that this specific ability goes from 'almost lethal' to 'lethal' the moment the Shadowlings start working together. Essentially, when a team of security show up, one Shadowling poofs in, uses Icy Veins, then when the fight starts turning against the first Shadowling, the second Shadowling tags in and uses their Icy Veins power which not only messes up the security team harder, but it also allows the first Shadowling to escape and heal. Then if the second Shadowling isn't able to wrap things up in about 12-15 seconds (assuming they gave the first shadowling some time), the first Shadowling's Icy Veins power finishes cooling down, so the first Shadowling tags back in and hits their opponents with a third Icy Veins--this process is able to be rinsed and repeated until all threats to the Shadowling have frozen to death. Keep in mind that Shadowlings can also throw in abilities such as blindness smoke and sonic screech to further impede their attackers--which are formidable powers as well. Other problems of the Icy Veins involve the fact that it eliminates any numerical advantage that the crew might have over the Shadowlings, since Icy Veins has a fairly large AoE and seems to affect everyone other than Draask, mechs, or Cyborgs. Keep in mind that Cyborgs are still stunned by Sonic Screech and Mechs take so long to research and produce that Shadowlings are entirely capable of ascending before robotics can even consider building a mech. Retreating after being caught by Icy Veins is also virtually impossible, since part of freezing to death is that the victims are also slowed down immensely--doubly or triply so when two or three Shadowlings coordinate the timing of their Icy Veins to continuously hit a group of Sec Officers between cooldowns. Even the unusual counters to freezing, such as Space Coffee, are more or less useless in this scenario, since the moment such a measure comes close to regulating a victim's body temperature, the next Icy Veins gets used and everyone is sent back to square 1 (just with more burn damage all around). I think this is a mixture of two major issues: 1. Shadowlings are capable of going on the offensive against a larger number of enemies even when they're alone; if they're in pairs, then they're capable of outright ignoring any numerical disadvantage as long as they coordinate their area-of-effect powers. 2. Shadowling Icy Veins inflicts high amounts of damage from a single use, slows enemies, and seems to provide too many different uses at once for an ability that only requires 25 seconds of cooldown. I understand that Shadowlings are meant to be abnormally difficult antagonists to fight. They are meant to be a great deal more deadly and fearsome than the average vampire, changeling, wizard or what-have-you. But at this point I feel like confronting a Shadowling is bland and predictable as there is very little that can be done to genuinely threaten a Shadowling aside from hoping that they'll teleport themselves into a hazard by accident. Flares and glowsticks are, to my knowledge, still finite resources that cannot be replaced once spent (and even less so as most of the time when Shadowlings are identified, I'll go for a flare only to discover that the vast majority of flares were already taken and burned off by the Shadowlings before they hatched), numerical advantages are meaningless if Shadowlings know how to use Icy Veins and Sonic Screech. As far as suggestions for changes go, I'm not 100% confident that any specific nerf would address the problem. Icy Veins itself could be nerfed, but that would do relatively little in perspective to confronting Shadowlings working together as a tag-team. My tentative proposal is to make Icy Veins a single-target ability, so that it can prevent a validhunter sec from trying to solo the shadowling, or it can be used to take an exceptionally dangerous opponent out of a larger fight. To accommodate, Sonic Screech could have its thrall requirement removed and cooldown lowered to 25 seconds so Shadowlings still have a nasty surprise for escaping situations where they're outnumbered and surrounded.

A while back, there was a jokey discussion on the discord about what a Tajaran-Human hybrid baby would look like. "Your mind begins to bubble and ooze as it tries to comprehend what it sees." I feel a little guilty over only having one sketch to show after neglecting this thread for so long, so I'm throwing in a bunch of non-SS13-related sketches I did for a D&D campaign I've been DM'ing:

Despite personal experiences of getting smacked around by the Telegun, I will admit it has a few weaknesses--most prominent of which is the fact that if the telegun's target is at least wearing EVA gear or is a plasman/vox, it is very likely that the target will survive and start shouting the traitor's name over comms. While this is scant consolation for the victim who may or may not be rescued it is a major concern for the telegun user, who (depending on whether the person they shot gets listened to) potentially has an entire station ready to chase their ass down. Even if they've been teleported into a hazardous area, there's still the possibility that the telegun victim will be able to shout the telegunner's name before passing out. Additionally, it's possible to refurbish the abandoned teleporter area if one has enough time and patience, meaning that eventually it'll get repaired and anyone sent out there will be able to return fairly easily. One adjustment I would like to see, however, is a longer delay between telegun shots. Last time I saw one in action it seemed like the user had a very easy time spraying out all 4 shots in rapid succession which made it effectively impossible to dodge them. Also it appeared to have a surprisingly fast recharge time (it's very easy for an RD traitor to just pull a weapon charger around with them in maint and wrench it down for recharging as necessary.) I'd argue an easy-to-implement change would be to the telegun much more similar to the taser in terms of fire rate and projectile behaviour--that way it's very good for quickly taking out isolated targets but can't be used to sweep away groups. I'll put it this way, the telegun is 1tc cheaper than the .357, it's less noisy, doesn't scatter shell casings everywhere when being reloaded, doesn't leave nearly as much of a mess as the .357, is potentially more lethal if your target is anyone other than a karma species, and doesn't require more TCs or an immobile console in order to print more ammo. While the .357 arguably fires faster/reloads faster in an emergency it doesn't remove the threat of an enemy as quickly as the telegun: a single .357 round will put most unarmored targets into soft crit, but the .357 requires an average of 2 shots to kill someone outright, which gives the target a split second to at least try to fire back or dodge the follow-up shot, and with 7 shots per magazine the .357 seems overall to be less forgiving than the telegun at present. The only persistent disadvantage of the telegun compared to a .357 (assuming that both are available to a traitor) is that the telegun requires the shooter to jump through more hoops if they want to loot equipment off of their victims. This may, perhaps, be a very unorthodox suggestion, but one other idea that comes to mind is to actually buff the telegun immensely to have a higher rate of fire, charge time, and battery, but to relegate it to being a hijack-only item, in the same vein as "His Grace"/The Artistic Toolbox. A buffed up telegun would be an exceptional way for a traitor to approach their hijack objective without needing to figure out clear out kill a shuttle full of angry spessmen using direct damage or emagging the shuttle console from space.

This is always something that disappointed. What's the point of having a console which can activate a killswitch on any maint drone on the station if it only works on the drones which don't need the killswitch, and never actually helps in the specific situation where a drone actually has been subverted? I think it was a good change to make it so that drones can longer attack while hiding their sprite under things (we ought to make it so that xeno larvae can't do this either, but that's a separate discussion), and it's a relief that they're no longer able to cause plasma venting mayhem or shock all doors in a department while safely hidden inside of air pipes. However, it does seem like a 5-minute life limit is a little stringent. I believe one of the other regulars recommended this to me, but I may suggest that instead of emagging maint drones, traitors get the ability to order a specially-designed Syndicate maint drone for a TC cost, a "Suspicious Maintenance Drone" if you will, with all the mixed combat and utility abilities that emagged drones previously had at their disposal (minus the ability to interfere with station systems while hiding in the vent systems and minus the ability to attack people while hiding). This way, players would only be playing as a hacked maint drone because they had signed up with the intention of being in an antag-assisting role, such as with holoparasites. Ultimately, I think it could be a much more predictably reliable asset for a traitor while sparing the headache for players who just wanted to play as regular drones without being Shanghaied into a temporary antagonist role that they may not be willing or creative enough to carry out.

The one condition that would make rev palatable would be if there was a round-start warning announcement that a revolution was in progress. The revheads can sprint around flashing groups of people, and generally the outcome of revolution hinges on how many people the Revheads convert within the first 5-10 minutes. From there, all the revolutions needs to do is have a single competent chemist or toxins researcher, suicide-bomb the brig, and they've pretty much won. Overall, there are things about Revolution that I miss: For one, revolution gave every department an excuse to come up with creative and violent ways to use their department tools on other people. Botanists get an opportunity to use their deathnettles, roboticists get an excuse to use their own combat mechs, atmostechs get a reason to flip out the fireaxe and start fires rather than extinguish them. The problem is that, due to how the rules are, security risks getting banned every time they want to test for revolution. Standard Operating Procedure does not have a section on how to acceptably identify a revolution, or what is an acceptable level of suspicion before someone can be tested with a mindshield. The mid and late phase of revolution--where security is desperately trying to distribute a limited supply of mindshields while trying to identify and assassinate the rev leaders, or all-out assaults when a ripley crashes through security's front door and a flood of angry crewmen swarms the brig while screaming lines from Braveheart and Les Miserables. The problem is that in order to get to those good moments there are a vast number of OOC rules that need to be stepped over, and often the inconsistent information means that not everybody on the server realizes that there's a revolution going or how the rules change in regards to one.

Respond to captain, outline in necessary detail that there are not enough diapers in the universe to deal with the amount of shit that the entire station is currently submerged in. Then get to work. Assuming that I'm starting this scenario in the brig: Set your 'priority threat', and ensure that fixing the smaller problems is part of solving the big problem. Keeping a Priority Threat in mind is a good thing, since it'll give you moral high-ground when paving over smaller insignificant issues, and it'll let you separate the officers into two groups: The BENCHWARMERS, and the TEAM MEMBERS. In this case, I'll assume the 'Priority Threat' is the Sith Lord Cargo vox. First thing's first is to double-check the reports: get the AI to spy on cargo to see if the hostage threat is real, then check the camera consoles yourself because the AI inevitably won't respond to you. If there are reports of the Cargo-Vox threat from more than two people, this means it's a REALLY big deal, and you should get a lot more elbow room in terms of rallying people to confront it. Ignore the warden for now; they're going to be more of a liability than a help, so give them a bucket of crayons and leave them in the corner where they won't cause too much trouble. Confront officer #1 and assess the situation - search the clown quickly and either shove them out the door if they're just doing average clown things, or leave them cuffed in processing if the clown is being a genuine shit (blocking security's doors, slipping and lockerwelding officers, stealing tasers and stunbatons). If Officer #1 does not accept the larger threat of the Vox Sith Lord, assign him to the Benchwarmers group and leave him for later. Otherwise, if Officer #1 understands the larger threat and accepts your ruling, levy him into your 'Team Members' group. Officer #1 has now joined your party. The Brig phys wearing riot gear sends a few mixed messages - but in this situation, it shows they're itching for a fight, which is good considering the crazy Sithlord Vox: Demand that, if the brig phys wants to keep that gear, they must follow you to cargo and help you confront the vox. Brig Phys has now joined your party. Officer #2's rage over the chaplain's arrest warrant shows that they might have management problems, but they might also be competent but making the mistake of addressing problems in the order they were given to him, rather than by the scale of the threat. Tell Officer #2 that the chaplain's charges are from a shit officer, and promise you'll deal with it after Officer #2 helps you take care of the Sith Lord cargo vox. Officer #2 has now joined your party. Officer #3 has proven his enormous incompetence: Thank the chaplain and the civilian for their services, ask them to hand Officer #3's equipment over to your warden and tell them to hang onto Officer #3 until you've dealt with the Sith Lord Vox (Note: This is doomed to get worse, but it'll create a 'slow-burn' situation where you can deal with it further down the line - the Benchwarmers can take care of it in the meantime). Officer #4 is probably the worst: Not only is that player wasting an officer slot, he/she has opted out of both the 'Benchwarmers' role and the 'Team Members', and so Officer #4 can stay in the bar. Express your overwhelming and explicit disapproval at Officer #4's lack of backbone and move on. They'll either stay on the bench or swallow their pride and join the ranks again. NOTE: #3 and #4 need to be dealt with as fast as possible or else your party members (Officer #1, Officer #2, and Brig Phys) will lose interest or get distracted. Optional Party members: Blueshield, any bored validhunters concerned crewmembers who are willing to join your posse. Lead your party to cargo bay and confront Sith Lord Vox. Presumably, either all four of you will be given the sweet, merciful release of death or you'll successfully take out the angry vox. If you successfully get Sith Lord Vox pacified (either in cuffs or dead if they're stun-resistant), announce your victory and remind Officer #4 that they're a dipshit for moping in the bar while the rest of sec were at least trying to make the situation better. It's cruel, but then again so is pissing around in the bar while your coworkers enter a life-and-death battle with a robust antagonist. Make it clear that they either need to put on their big boy pants and learn to persevere through SNAFU situations in Sec, or they should stop occupying the damn officer slots. If R&D's irritation was due to Officer #3 stirring up shit, demote Officer #3 and use his tears to wash away your department's sins. Science is still probably going to continue hating you on general principle so don't push the matter - sec should have everything they need in the brig to get the job done. R&D is fully within bounds to remind Sec that fancy science toys are a privilege, not a right. Note that demotion should always be a last-resort: When an officer gets demoted, they often start going full greytide which ties down a minimum of one Team Member to keep them under control. Rinse and repeat process for the botanist carrying the Detective's revolver (be sure to ask the botanist to return the revolver first before sending the posse at him). Return to the brig and deal with the problems that the Benchwarmers have inevitably failed to handle adequately while you were out. New and equally-dangerous issues will likely have risen in the time it took you to get to this point, so just continue to rinse and repeat until the shuttle arrives or you've gotten killed.

One of the inherent downsides of being a plasmaman antag is that there is no way for them to change their appearance or keep a low profile once they've been identified. As a frequent security player, I will remark security does not typically resort to chemical warfare for a number of different reasons - a shotgun is preferable to a syringe gun or gas bomb for multiple reasons. A shotgun slug might not have the same lethality as a syringegun full of hellchems, but shotguns have the unrivalled advantage of having easily replenished ammo, and inflicting injuries which are eventually lethal unless treated by surgery - this is particularly important since Security will almost always be welcome in the surgery ward while antags are not granted the same hospitality from Medbay. Note that vampires do get a number of timed-cooldown abilities that allow them to counteract being stunned, but they are certainly not immune. 'Glare' can be used while stunned, which sometimes allows vamps to punish attackers in melee combat, but Glare has a 30-second cooldown and does not guarantee results against any more than one attacker. 'Rejuvenate' removes all stuns, which is particularly dangerous when used simultaneously with 'Glare', but it has a 20-second cooldown and has no lasting stun resistance which, once again, means the ability can be wasted if the vampire gets stunned again after they Rejuvenate. Mistform is also a way to escape a stun, but consumes a small stipend of the vampire's blood supply each time they use it. In regards to the vulnerabilities of vampires, updates have continuously diminished the vulnerabilities of vampires to the point where they have little to use against a vampire in an active combat situation. Space inflicts barely any burn damage at all on any vampire, while holy water and the chapel are both nullified by a vampire reaching Full Power. What I'm trying to say here is that most of the dangers and problems pointed out here are common across all vampires, not just plasmapeople. Like changelings, vampires are meant to have overwhelming advantages in one-on-one combat that rapidly diminish as the vampire is outnumbered.

I'm surprised that I'm saying this, but I agree with the changes proposed in the OP. I would also propose that most of the items in the 'W' and 'E' categories should just be upgraded to 'S' status - with exceptions for certain items described in the OP, and the possible exception of the Stetchkin (I'll elaborate on that later). I can think of no situation where carrying a brick of tactical C4 would somehow not indicate sinister intent, same goes for a professionally-made garrote and 'W' or 'E' class items which fall under the description of "disguised murder tools". I also agree with downgrading the Voodoo doll's classification - using a voodoo doll requires quite a bit of luck, trust, and compliance on behalf of the intended victim, and higher-profile crew tend to be even more aloof and distracted and wear gloves as part of their uniform, making the voodoo doll even more difficult to use against high-profile targets like the heads of staff or the captain. A voice changer and an agent ID are capable of similar shenanigans for less personal effort. In regards to the Stetchkin, I think it should keep its classification as a 'W' level, and its description should be changed. From how it's treated in the game, I think the Stetchkin in SS13 is meant to be viewed as the 'McAfee Antivirus' of the firearms world: A product so unbelievably shitty that owners are actually worse-off due to being given a false sense of security, but the parent company mass-produces and markets the product so aggressively that it still turns a profit from the one or two chumps that get duped into relying on it. It would be a perfect fit for SS13's theme of heartless corporations, and it would be a good in-universe explanation for why simply owning a stetchkin specifically is not an instant EoC charge: "Yes, it's a gun. No, the Syndicate aren't the only people who use them."

So let me just, clear this up, because I think I'm not getting something here: 1. You're frustrated that there isn't more emphasis on RP in the server at present. 2. Yet you're actively speaking out against a stance that something should be changed to make RP easier for the server? Yeah, "The situation is bad and I don't like it so let's not change things and actively resist any attempt to make it any different"? What? I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume that I'm not understanding your point of view because I'm just not getting the point: What RP-mechanic relation do you want to see here? And what would you like to see happen to make more progress towards the balance you want? At the moment it sounds like you're arguing against yourself, and this confuses me.

I'll frame my opinion this way: The transformation sting may not be a particularly OP from a mechanical standpoint, but it is highly damaging to the RP level of the server. The bottom line of this ability is, that the less interested a player is in their character and the less invested they are in RP, the less annoying this ability will be to them. The high investment of transform sting means that a changeling who picks it will have a much tougher time grabbing their objectives, but often that's of little concern to the players who choose it in the first place. So this begs the question: Does this server want its players to care about RP? At present, transform sting delivers the answer as a resounding, "No. Stop caring about your stupid snowflake RP and let the shenanigans commence." As for how 'obvious' the ability is, there is little to no indication giving away who is responsible for stinging. From personal experience, the transformation has a slight delay after the sting has been delivered, or can be delivered from a distance, meaning it's entirely possible for someone to sting and mingle into a crowd before the victim realizes they've been stung. A generic baldy greytider is really not going to care what appearance their character takes so long as they can continue cruising for valids. On the other hand, the average server regular who actively tries to contribute to the community will be moderately more upset at having their character taken away from them. It's not a question of mechanical viability - because from a mechanical standpoint, transform sting is actually pretty terrible at bringing a changeling closer to their objectives - it's a question of what sort of community mindsets and behaviors the staff want to encourage or punish by abilities like these.

I can't speak for @Malphystoh, but I think it should go without saying why giving the cult (an antag type that should rely on versatility and speed) a concealable, low-investment melee weapon that ignores armour and kills in one hit is not conducive to engaging gameplay. There shouldn't even be a discussion about this. Instead, we should ask "Why is this not fixed already"?

Paper hats, traffic cones, cardboard cyborg masks and other salvaged maint gear instantly broadcasts that you're a source of trouble, and therefore are pretty effective: Pranksters will assume you're shitty but also unpredictable, and it's pretty much a constant reminder of "calm down, it's just a game". Personally, I find wearing the security helmet is also a continuous reminder to be upstanding and courteous to other crew - the crew don't owe anything to lowly officers, and the helmet serves as a gentle reminder of that whenever I play a standard officer. As HoS, I try to stay in the HoS's beret whenever possible - style is important, but I find it just looks vain if someone is giving up free armour in favour of appearances. It's the same argument for why I think anyone riding a bicycle without a helmet is a nominee for the Darwin Award.

As mentioned, the admins do force revolution from time to time (much to my chagrin). I think reviving "Do Not Clone"-tagged crew should certainly be grounds for being demoted to civilian, but execution may be a little over the top. Perhaps in charging people with 'aiding and abetting' for intentionally reviving dangerous individuals such as mass murderers or EoCs, there should be legally satisfactory proof that the body was clearly identifiable or marked with 'Do Not Clone', and that the individual responsible for cloning was taking deliberate steps to revive aforementioned EoCs against the wishes of command. This way there's a margin for error in the case of well-meaning geneticists or doctors who just plainly weren't paying attention or the bodies were delivered to cloning by someone else, unmarked.

What does Dreamy do when the chef tries to steal the cadavers from her morgue?

From personal experience, vampires have a unique quality in that they are arguably the weakest 'infiltration' antag in the roster (when compared to changelings, traitors and shadowlings), and yet also the most ridiculously powerful depending on who is playing them. Depending on who is asked, this massive range between starting ability and lategame ability makes Vampires either one of the best antags on the server or one of the most aggravating. New vampire players probably have the hardest time, since early-game vampires have almost no wiggle-space when it comes to recovering from mistakes or being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. What's worse is that oftentimes, new vamp players get wiped out mercilessly, as security players often deal with an antag based on their worst/most frustrating firsthand experience with an antag of that type. On the opposite end of the scale, experienced or well-practiced vampire players are - though I am loath to admit it - terrifying and salt-inducing to go up against; especially if there's two full-power vampires working in tandem. I'd prefer not to go into specific examples, but rest assured that, at present, it's more than possible for a vampire to easily wipe out vast swathes of a densely-populated shift and succeed. There might need to be 'buffs' to early-game vamps, but fully-powered vamps are already impossible to fight as long as the vampire player doesn't make any fatal errors. I agree vampires could benefit from more interesting mechanics, but I think that raising the 'ceiling' on fully-powered vampires is the last way I'd go about it. Personally, I feel that one of the worst qualities of playing against a cult or vampires is that they all rely on the chaplain's competency or presence, which often bottlenecks anyone who doesn't want to become a cultist or vampire-chow. Again, while I think it's undeniable that the dramatic difference between an early-game vampire and a late-game vampire makes them unique, I think a significant proportion of the community do not find that this uniqueness makes vampires a particularly fun experience in practice (save for the few people who know how to consistently reach full-power: I'll bring that up later). New vamp players find that it's nearly impossible to reach full power without getting caught, and on the other hand new and regular security players find that it's nearly impossible to survive the one or two experienced vamp players who know how to consistently reach full strength: it's a gamemode that rewards a very small group of highly experienced players over and over again, at the expense of whoever else happens to be playing at the time. To the specific ideas of staking/reviving vamps, I would be more open to the idea of vamps being more-or-less unkillable, if in return, their unique vulnerabilities were more severe. Currently, being exposed to starlight may deter newer vamps, but does absolutely nothing for actually blocking off spacefaring tactics - time and time again I've seen vampires escape pursuers by jaunting out into space with an EVA suit, which I think makes a lot of players feel cheated - since there's no significant punishment for doing so as a fully-powered vampire. Holy water, undeniably, is already a round-ender for vamps that have not reached full power: I would suggest that it be toned down in its' effects against unpowered vamps in return for keeping some effect on fully-powered vampires.

It ain't over 'till it's over! An assorted collage of Cecilias. Not the most interesting thing in the world, but I feel that it represents solid progress compared to my less defined style in the very first post. "So, do you plan on doing your job sometime this shift? Y'know, the one your department's been shouting at you to do for the past twenty minutes?" "D-uh, why's a civilian got a nitro tank?" I promised Mystery of Darkness that I'd take another crack at drawing his character. I think this might warrant a 'Round Three', since there's still a few details I'd probably do differently if I went at this again. I always wonder what goes through the minds of people who willingly dogpile Nuclear Operatives: Do they not know about the explosive implants, or are they aware of it, but persisting anyway to 'throw themselves on the grenade' so to speak? Dogfighting the nukies in the Security Pod may seem like a good idea at first. At first. Annoyingly, the sketchbook paper was larger than my flatbed scanner, so it's cropped a bit awkwardly on the left and right sides. From a round that happened a month or so ago. Not to hog the limelight (absolutely to hog the limelight), Cecilia managed to be the last survivor on-station of a terrorspiders infestation - discounting those who may have skipped to the outposts or out the gateway. It started well, the crew was armed to the keel with guns and ammo, but a stationwide power outtage event occured - lasting for about fifteen minutes, stuck in the starboard primary hallway, while the silence was punctuated by the occasional sounds of sporadic gunfire, screaming, and crunching as the terrorspiders honed in on stragglers and picked off isolated crew. By the time the lights came back on, the sec comms were completely silent. Then the rest of the round essentially became the 'House Escape' scene from "28 Weeks Later" - except with gigantic spiders instead of zombies and a security spacepod instead of a motorboat. The Prince of Terror even took a couple bites out of the pod as it was taking off, which was enough to light it on fire and force a bail the second it left the hangar. By the end the only crew left on the public radio were Cecilia and the AI, who regrettably got left behind as the Deathsquad had armed the nuke and booked it. While I wouldn't exactly call "People saved from terrorspiders: 0" to be the description of a 'successful' HoS round, it was still very memorable. Everyone always complains about how weak IPCs are to EMPs, yet here I am, still amazed at how IPCs can avoid death every time an antag incorrectly assumes that snapping off an IPC's limbs means they're actually down-and-out. Extreme People-Fishing: Cyberiad Edition Flight attendant IPC. Originally based on Peppy-bot's description. I always imagined her having a ridiculously bubbly personality and one of those annoying voices that squeaks the last syllable of every sentence and manages to make every sentence sound like a question.

I am hopelessly addicted to CK2. It's actually starting to become a problem, since I'm not burning out fast enough to spend time playing SS13. Personally, it felt like the 'graduation' of my obsession with Medieval 2: Total War and medieval history in general, though I haven't gotten to a point where I'm comfortable playing without excessive savescumming. Generally I like picking religions or cultures that are generally thought of as 'extinct' in modern times, and seeing how much I can 'break' the general progression of history by expanding and thriving as them. My favourite games so far have been taking over Egypt as the coptic christians to form the empire of Abyssinia, reforming Slavic Paganism as the Kingdom of Ruthenia, and I'm currently working on a Messalian Carpathian empire as the Avars. One of the most memorable characters I've seen so far was a duke from my dynasty who was a possessed, imbecile lunatic - likely due to his parents being from the same dynasty (AI-controlled family members have a weird fixation on inbreeding, I've found), yet he still had 30 points in martial skill and the 'holy warrior' trait due to a modifier declaring that he was receiving military advice from Jesus. I'd love to try out a multiplayer game, but unfortunately I've made some edits to the base game files which I believe disables the multiplayer feature unless I re-install. If anyone's reading this and interested, here's an idea I've always wanted to try: Have 5 players all play as different patrician families inside of the same merchant republic. See how quickly the republic either conquers europe or wipes itself out due to constant assassinations.

If the big thing this is meant to address is the ridiculousness of speedboosted antags using the tactic of "stun -> drag victim all the way across the station before the stun even wears off -> kill, dispose body -> rinse -> repeat", then make it specifically that pulling or dragging forces someone to run at default or the slightly reduced speed of being hungry/underfed, where it's feasibly possible to give chase, or at least force the antag to choose between keeping their victim/hostage or being able to make a speedy getaway instead of doing both. At present, any antag with a steady supply of meth and a stun weapon, or even one cultist with the flagellant robes and stun talismans have all they need to steadily, single-handedly grind down the entire sec department over time unless someone in security has a faster-than-light internet connection and the reflexes of a housefly hopped up on caffeine and redbull.

Make duct tape usable to repair damage to cyborgs and mechs within a certain threshold - perhaps a limit of 10% integrity. Make IPCs somewhat repairable along the same lines. Seconding FPK's idea to ducttape boxes. Make lockers and cargo crates ducttape compatible, too. Allow duct tape to be used in place of a cautery during ghetto surgery. Using enough pieces of duct tape and glass shards together should make a complete pane of glass. If you're an atmos tech and your welder is running out, or you're caught without your toolbelt, ducttape should be usable in place of most tools when it comes to laying sections of ventilation and disposals piping. Allow duct tape to repair damaged inflatable walls and inflatable doors. Duct tape should be usable to blind cameras - the AI should be notified whenever this happens, and who is responsible. Creating a duct-tape belt buckle on a chair should prevent you from being knocked out of the chair by most means: Best used for fire extinguisher+rollie chair joyrides. Duct tape flashbang grenades together to make bundled grenades. Get job banned from sec immediately after using one. Combining ducttape with wooden planks should make single-use medical splints. Ducttape with a pair of prescription glasses to make them into cliche nerd glasses with tape around the bridge.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure slimes and vox used to be exempt from changeling eligibility some time ago. As for why that was changed, I believe part of the problem is that gamemodes like Changeling rely on a certain, overall level of paranoia and distrust between living crew. Indirectly, having several species that were known to be ineligible for changelings made changelings more difficult to play, since there was a wider pool of players that could be fully trusted by other crew. IPCs somewhat fall into this category, but their EMP vulnerability means that they still have every reason to be afraid of changelings as well - even if they have no genomes that a changeling would be able to harvest.