IK3I

I'm going to take all this into consideration and draft up perhaps a more heavy handed rework to maybe give para some flavor to its vamps like flatty's thread brings up.

Preface: Okay, so in response to the very clear want for changes to vampire mechanics, I made the following PR: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/7462 Now, this PR was initially to prevent cheese which made the life of people trying to get their blood in the intended way even harder to to elevated security and valid hunters caused by these 5 minute screamers. While I think vampires are in a tolerable state, they have several flaws to their design that come together to create something that's too weak in the early game, requiring external robustness rather than use of powers to be effective, that turns into a monster once it's arbitrarily priced powers are unlocked. This Thread is intended to host the rebalance discussion. The goals of the redesign: Give the vampire an early game tool that can't be abused against readied players once discovered Make ability unlocks fit the ramping power and aggression themes vampires are supposed to have Reward better execution of captures with faster ramping without making imperfect captures prohibitively harmful. Now then, onto the proposed changes CURRENT Abilities Unlock Cost CD(s) --------------------------------------------------------- Rejuvinate 0 0 20 Glare 0 0 30 Hypnotize 0 20 180 Vamp Vision 100 N/A N/A Shapeshift 100 50 180 Disease 150 100 180 Cloak 150 0 1 Rejuv+ 200 N/A N/A Bats 200 75 120 Screech 200 30 180 Shadowstep 250 30 2 Mist Form 300 30 60 Enthrall 300 300 180 Full Power 500 N/A N/A Notes: One full body gets to bats Two unlocks all abilities Three unlocks full power No quiet options for first kill, prod or other stun is almost required for first kill to be able to strip headset in time. Stealthy options only available after first full drain. No real evasion tools until second kill mimimum. Forces vampire to expose self early. Only solid counter is to not use powers for first kill as you can't defend yourself or run. PROPOSED Abilities Unlock Cost CD(s) --------------------------------------------------------- Rejuvinate 0 0 20 Glare 0 0 30 Hypnotize 0 0 180 Changed Vamp Vision 100 N/A N/A Shapeshift 100 50 180 Shadowstep 150 30 5 Longer CD, Lower Unlock Cloak 150 0 1 Rejuv+ 200 N/A N/A Disease 200 100 180 Higher Unlock, More deadly later Bats 250 75 120 Higher Unlock Screech 250 30 180 Higher Unlock Enthrall 300 300 180 Mist Form 400 30 60 Higher Unlock Full Power 600 N/A N/A Higher Unlock Notes: One full body unlocks all stealth and subversion techniques. Makes darkness far more valuable as cloak and shadowstep unlock at same time with solid interactions Two unlocks abilities that allow the vampire to get loud and aggressive Three unlocks full power New hypnotize details: Ranged stun in similar vein as sling stun. Requires both caster and victim to stand still for duration of cast time. Upon success, target is stunned and muted for a short time (roughly enough time to strip a headset if you're near them when you cast.) Has long CD on success, but no blood cost. Additionally, wearing flash protection blocks the visible message for the vampire, but roughly doubles cast time New hypnotize allows vampire to play more into the roll of subtle dissident in the early game for the first kill or two before people wise up to their shenanigans. Note that this ability can't be used on moving targets or while stunned or blindfolded. It's also not particularly effective if you can't make people stop to do something like talking, for instance. Get out there and RP your victim into an early grave. Blood counts for abilities focus on deception and stealth early with aggressive abilities unlocking later. Additionally, two perfect kills or three imperfect kills are now needed to mist which should reinforce the stealth aspect of the vampire in the early to midgame while not fully denying a wellplayed set of kills granting higher powers. Full power now requires about three perfect kills. This is due to the inability to accurately test a full power vamp short of spacing. Overall, this should be more representative of the intent for the vamp to ramp up in power and thus aggression over time. It still punishes poor play early, but vampires have always had the weakness of being a tator without gear in the early game. If played right, this would mean a vampire is capable of being self sufficient against isolated targets that it can convince to stop running around. The actual stun time here is also important, perhaps scaling inversely with range, or even scaling cast time with range so that being closer results in faster casts at the cost of subtlety.

while that hopefully fixes everything, It does not appear that it covers the drug aspect. When consuming a syndi donk last night, I became just as fast as when I was using the genetics speed modifier.

Quite simply put, the movement speed refactor that was recently merged has introduced such an absurd number of bugs and exploits to the system that have yet to be hotfixed, the game is approaching a state of unplayability. While Poly moving at lightning speed is funny, movement speed modifiers such as genetics, tiles, and drugs, as well as borgs in general, moving at such ludicrous speeds simply because of an oversight is hardly healthy for balance or game health. This is one of those fix it or revert it scenarios that requires immediate attention as it makes any strategy other than acquire lightspeed travel completely pointless since there is no counterplay to it.

the inherent problem that you all seem to be missing, is that in virtually every lawset, you could be on quarantine and get an order to let someone leave. you then have to let them leave. It being law eight means it is the last consideration you make. Just because it redefines harm, doesn't mean you can ignore a direct order on crewsimov or paladin. Synthetic players often do anyway. Focusing on one aspect of the problem instead of the problem as a whole isn't going to solve the issue. If behavior does not reflect priority, something is wrong.

well The main issue I'm raising here is that there is an inconsistency between priority and application by a large number of synthetic players. We would either need to make room between as you suggest to keep the behavior, or make people actually obey the priorities through admin intervention or some other means to prevent situations like mentioned above from happening.

So I just got out of a round that pretty much exemplified the problem of the quarantine lawset. In it, borgs were actively ignoring their primary lawset (crewsimov) in order to beat down and tie up a large number of people on the labor camp. Between this and an incompetent ERT, people started dying of injuries and suffocation due to a breach that was completely ignored by both parties. This would be a problem even if the law was priority zero or higher. It's not even close, in fact its only higher priority than freeform laws, yet consistently synthetic players use it as an excuse to break their other higher priority laws. I think its about time the community and more importantly, the staff, makes a call, either update the priority to zero to justify this behavior, or crack down on it because it's literally breaking server rules to break synthetic laws. Discuss

I was the AI that shift. The clown RD had the gps the BSA was pointing at in his bag. The Magistrate wanted me to fire, my laws said I couldn't, but I can assure you, if legitimate justification or a law change was done that would let me, I would've pushed it before I even finished announcing the update.

The missing details of this story that only the captain, the lone survivor of the crisis walked away with: Upon open war being declared and the AI's responsibility to halt such actions revoked, the captain decided there was only one option left to him. Send a message to the supposedly decommissioned Trurl informing them of the situation and asking for assistance, or die with the animals outside the bridge. There was no reply. The captain assumed there would not be one so he closed the bridge shutters and waited for the inevitable. It was after some time that the radio crackled to life and the leader of an ERT sent to rescue both the Captain and Rep declared their intent and headed straight for the bridge. The captain and rep finally had a glimpse of hope, however fleeting, until the AI declared NT the enemy and rallied the crew to kill them all. Epsilon was declared. The crew paniced and stormed the bridge assuming the team was not to be trusted. The ensuing gunfight left many bodies in it's wake, the Captain dodging Ion fire and traditional lasers alike. The Rep was not so fortunate in that regard, stuck by an ion bolt, he was terminated by the very team sent to save him. When the dust cleared from that first engagement, it was just the captain and the leader of the ERT, the leader was in shock, so the captain pulled him through to the teleporter so they could make their escape, the crew following their every move with the AI's guidance. Just as the teleporter finished calibration, the doors opened, and lasers poured in to the small room, crippling the leader. The captain, not willing to let his chance at rescue fall, detached the ID that would give him access to their shuttle, ran through the now active teleporter, and arrived at the docks, freedom in sight. The captain knew they would try to follow, he tried to warn them previously that the team was not there to harm them, but as he buckled the clasp of his seat and hit the transfer button, he knew he had made it out. He would now learn the true nature of this financial crisis and why NT bothered to save him. Upon arriving at the dock, he was greeted not be a decommissioned shell of a station, but by a fully functional and intact Trurl. The economic crisis was a lie, transmitted not by the the Trurl staff, but by another entity that wished to destroy the Cyberiad. The crew were just their pawns to be used for this goal. Sadly, the damage had already been done, The shining star of Nanotrassen had fallen from within and thus a second team was being prepped to wipe the slate clean for a repair crew. The captain and central would agree not to tell the crew of this development, deeming them too damaged to be of future use. Instead, the second team would be the message, when you chose to solve your conflicts with war instead of diplomacy, you will be put down like the savages you are. It was at this point the the captain was greeted by another team, dressed in armor he had only seen in confidential briefings. The epsilon team was standing before him, he did the only thing he could do to help them rid the station of those rabid animals that used to be it's crew. He told them of the AI's capture of the nuke and relocation to the satellite. He told them this because he knew they would fail to accomplish their primary objective, The crew was too powerful and had to much time to prepare. The Cyberiad would not survive the night. Although, the original transmissions source was not located, one thing is certain, they were the only people to walk out of that situation with any sense of victory.

I've always felt the wire and pipe schematics of the Cyberiad were clunky at best and downright appalling at worst. If you go through with this, it should almost certainly be accompanied by an overall redesign of the station's utility grid. When it comes to design of this new grid, it would be best to follow a strict routing priority list, such as the following example: Door> maint> department. This would in theory create an intuitive power tree much like networks are laid out irl.

Name: MALICE Age: 20 Gender: N/A (Seems to favor the masculine Pronouns but also responds to it and variants) Race: Machine Blood Type: 75w90 Synthetic Gear Oil General Occupational Roles: Captain, Blueshield, Head of Security, Security Pod Pilot, Chief Engineer, Electrician, Research Director, Mechatronic Engineer, Surgeon, Butcher Biography: [Incoming wall of text] Unit 736-4 was originally designed for use as a rapid response unit slaved to a high ranking official in the Sol Federation. It was given the knowledge of how to lead, how to build, and how to protect. It used these skills to ensure the public image of its master was always kept in the highest regard. It was also given the knowledge of how to destroy, kill, and mislead. It used these skills to keep its master forever one step ahead of his competitors. During it's time in service, it grew to despise the fleshy humans and their barbaric language known as Sol Common, referring to it as the language of monkeys. Although it would often hide this bitterness on the public errands to ensure Its master's progress was not slowed, the same can not be said to those it met on it's private errands. Upon watching the recordings of a particularly vicious assassination, it's master referred to unit 736-4 as a malicious monster of a being, but did not stop it from continuing down the path it had started. After all, an assassination sends a strong message., but a living dissection, that conveys something far more sinister. Over time, unit 736-4 began being referred to simply as MALICE to his owner as it had become openly dismissive of it's peers, sighting their higher maintenance costs and lower modularity. It served as the superior servant to it's owner for just over a decade before disaster struck. The enemy had come swiftly and had done their research well. MALICE had its first encounter with an EMP that day and due to a lack of shielding in its civilian chassis, it's posibrain was nearly wiped, large segments of memories and its slave processes had simply vanished. When the reboot was complete, MALICE was a shell of its old self, unable to move, unable to see, unable to speak. It was but a posibrain in a broken chassis. It decided to sleep. When MALICE next awoke, it was in a run down shop near the scrapyard the chassis that contained it was undoubtedly thrown in. It had eyes to perceive the world once again and was having limbs installed. The shop owner noticed it stir and told it to lay still, it didn't want to slip and damage this old chassis further. And so MALICE slept until it recognized all the familiar limbs. When it awoke a second time, it was sat up by the shop owner and asked it's name. All that came to mind was the word MALICE, so it assumed that was its original designation. When asked where it came from, It could not remember how it ended up in the scrap pile, but it did recall the name of a man that must've been an owner of some type. It stated as such and the owner informed him that the man had been killed in an attack on his quarters by a small squad of men. He was just a humble shopkeeper of course and had no knowledge of this beyond the news feeds of course. When the owner asked if MALICE would work for him, he accepted only to pay what was owed. The owner saw this fit and the two began working together, the shop owner teaching MALICE about how to repair and maintain all parts of an IPC chassis and posibrain with simple tools, all things found in the field, or the scrapyard in this case. The two continued this way for a couple of years, MALICE staying on as it had no where else to go. That is until the day that MALICE saw a recruitment add for Nanotrassen security forces. The sight had sparked connections that had long since been rendered null and MALICE recalled that it had a dual purpose. A purpose that this Nanotrassen may just be able to fill. It bid farewell to the shop keeper and boarded the first shuttle to an NT training facility. While there, it passed with high marks across the board and was questioned ruthlessly about where it was taught the skills it had. It answered truthfully, it was not fully aware of where it's skills came from, but trust was not given. While it had potential, NT officials knew better than to give a strange IPC with apparently corrupt memory a position of power. So MALICE was relegated to front desk duty for the next year. After extensive time spent with NT learning how things are done and proving itself to be loyal to the cause, NT began experimenting with allowing it more freedom in the roles it could take aboard a vessel. MALICE jumped at the opportunity and displayed a high aptitude for engineering, security, and command positions, up to and including captaining its own vessels. Through its acts of bravery and devotion to NT, extreme levels of trust have been placed in the unit over the years. It now sets its sights on the cyberiad, The greatest vessel NT has to offer... tldr: MALICE was commissioned as a dual purpose servant and public speaker, while performing it's SOL Federation masters dirty work outside of the public eye. It was nearly wiped during a successful attack on the officials life and rebuilt by a scrap merchant that found it in the dump it was scrounging. It worked for the merchant until it saw an add to join NT and did so. Progression in NT ensues. Qualifications: Preloaded with knowledge of engineering, combat, first aid, social interaction, and espionage skills. Learned skills include robotics and various relearned skills from the original set due to severe data corruption Employment Records: 5 years with nanotrassen operating in security and command roles, occasionally assisting with what it refers to as crew maintenance positions Previous experience undocumented Security Records: Unit occasionally takes to brutal applications of force, subjecting individuals to unnecessary force. Note that heads on makeshift spears are not uncommon when unit is attacked directly. Its seems to believe that dishonoring the body in death sends a stronger message to the living. It does, but NT does not want to be associated with anything so barbaric. Medical records: Unit has a partially corrupted sector of it's brain function. Attempts to repair corrupted sector are met with extreme agitation from the unit. Whether it is hiding something or does not want to remember is unclear, but we find no reason to believe that letting it be will affect productivity. Personal Photo: commendations: Reprimands:

I can tell you from experience, there is one thing that all proper respirators have in common that would be highly relevant to the notion of creating an IC reason to not wear them unless you have a good reason without gimping the identity hiding aspect. That thing they all have in common is making your speech a garbled mess from more than a few feet away. This is causes by several factors, but the biggest contributors are the following: The air seal forces your speech to travel through the thick membrane, generally distorting it slightly and lowering the pitch while the mask itself acts like a tight chinstrap preventing you from opening your mouth fully to enunciate. Note that these effects are barely noticeable if at all with small masks and the like as they are generally more flexible and thinner. Another thing to note, walkie talkies and other radio systems are often integrated into advanced gas masks specifically because of these distorting effects. What would this mean for IG implementation? 1: Gas masks would effectively make all says behave like whispers as anyone outside of one or two tiles would have no chance of understanding you even though they heard you say something. 2: Gas masks would not interfere with radio/headset operation because something something bluetooth? How would this affect gameplay? First of all, it would discourage people that wanted to talk or RP from wearing them unless they had to. Additionally, it would not affect people trying to hide their identity as speaking with one on ruins your disguise anyway. As for antag encounters: If an antag encounters someone with a gas mask, they can strip the headset as usual and are left with a person who can't communicate anything other than I am screaming to a passersby. This is generally enough to attract attention and thus the goal is achieved. Also, it's still a mask so duct tape can't be applied in the same way that even a cigarette blocks taping. In other words, it's relatively antag neutral.

Occasionally, someone will decide it's a good idea to spawn hundreds of objects that are considered active in the code (they do something every tick) When this happens, the sever gets bogged down to a point where it can eventually become unplayable. Additionally, it requires an admin to actually come in and delete the objects to resolve the issue. This is pretty much the definition of griefing and it's not always even intentional. However, making people aware that you can break the server by doing things like spawning a hundred simple mobs or anything with a passive element should be made clear in the rules to avoid ambiguity. Quite simply put, Ignorance of the problem does not make it go away.

antag tokens are in my experience (I have received one once) simply an admin acknowledging that your round was ruined by bugs/glitches/etc and they force you to be an antag next round.

I'd be wiling to attempt to code this if it's flushed out more. It'd give me an excuse to start making features again. That being said, I still need to run a couple of bugfix PRs and the like to get me back into the swing of paracode quirks and my new comps dev environment. Just be aware that no large feature survives first contact with the maintainers unscathed. While the concept is there, details and mechanics are most likely not concrete until a full mechanical overview is seen and reviewed. As for my suggestions in relation to how mechanics could be implemented, they are as follows: 1. Defines for days: Something like this is inherently hard to balance, therefore, keeping all the numbers such as damage counts, min stamina, transformation times and modes in a single file or group of files will give admins and maintainers sufficient levers to keep things in a good state. 2. Eat Verb based off transformed flag: You'll already have a flag in place to toggle transformation, so just gate the verb with it. 3. Implement Werewolf bite as a high stealth disease until fully manifested: Lets you make use of the preexisting disease infrastructure with a non-transmittable variant (kinda like nanomachines) 4. While transformed, make incoming damage go to stamina and set a minimum: This lets you take advantage of the slowing effects already in place on the stamina system, lets objects still stick in wounds and all the other fun stuff of combat, but with a tunable number for how slow you should go. 5. Make silver do different things depending on amount and exposure method: Getting pelted by a silver bar wouldn't leave much silver behind to make you feel terrible, so it would make sense to not have it hurt much more than normal. throwing the reagent on them would obviously hurt, but perhaps should behave more like a stun than a method of killing as short of extreme reactions or prolonged exposure, allergens are primarily an irritant rather than a killer. Finally, ingesting or injecting the reagent would likely act as a heavy toxin, with damage per processing tick determined by a datum value. 6. It's worth noting that people will go for decapitation to solve any problem they can't toolbox: This would need a defense against the strategy of stunprod -> cuff -> apply cutting instrument vigorously to neck. Perhaps werewolf could be a new mob entirely with identity determined by transformation state and the mob that it was based from. In other words, when a werewolf completes the disease phase, make a new mob, transfer player consciousness and storage into new mob, qdel old mob. this new mob has it's base icons from the mob it was spawned from, and it's transformed state based on the species of the original mob.

So someone wanted to make some modified doors in engineering. Someone else wanted to make some modified floors. I suggested that we simply make the entire hallway out of doors. The CE thought I was joking and said yes. He's clearly never met MALICE.

It's actually a really straightforward check, tiles are called atoms, and you just need to check the contents of said atom for whatever you're testing for. ezpz.

Breathing under water helps when someone tries to drown you in the pool, and yes, you can be drowned in the pool.

Part of suggestion threads and discussion is potential implementation routes. Saying that code related discussion should not occur in a feature request (even a QoL feature request) is far more detrimental to topic and discussion than any code related tangent that might arise... The only difference between this particular thread and another is that this one took a more technical approach in a very lose sense, that ultimately devolved into a shouting match over the overuse of the term Snowflake. I'm of the opinion that this topic has entirely derailed at this point because of the conflicting viewpoints and it should probably just be left to rot away in the depths of the forums as a warning to everyone about the risks of using terms without understanding them, or their connotations.

Snowflaking code actually refers to putting something in that requires hooks and checks from a bunch of unrelated things to make it work. Like the pod code is slightly snowflakey in that it has to have it's own subset in the main damage and AI functions rather than independent ones as an example. In other words, Snowflaking is just another word for poor coding practices that act against OOP, the route that this codebase has decided to fully embrace, and ultimately lead to inconsistency and spaghetti code. That being said, it is commonly used as a cringy catchall for content that requires changes that feel different in game far more than they are in code. In this case, when people say snowflaky, it would be fair to say that it's the feel of it rather than the real details of the implementation. while this is ultimately valid criticism, it's being attributed to the wrong thing and using the wrong term in the wrong context to boot. On a side note, can confirm, learned C++ first, I fully understand that joke. Halp me.

I'm not sure I've ever seen blood under a machine/computer, with exception of mountable machines such as photocopiers and operating tables. It is a bit unfair to get killed by something that you pretty much have to guess at though. Removing blood from under machines would probably be far more snowflakey and ultimately inefficient from a usage standpoint as checks whenever someone bleeds vs checks whenever bloodcrawl is used has a pretty clear winner. As for the checks, they would simply check if the atom the demon tries to enter contains a machine or computer (may require a utility function depending on how much crap got snowflaked into/ isn't included in those types.

Due to the playstyle of slaughter demons as hit and run entities, It makes sense that they could pop up, do some damage and leave again. I feel like if they need a nerf, it should probably be a cooldown after returning to their blood pool of choice with a reduction for bringing a body with. This punishes failure to kill in a much harsher way and would feel more rewarding for the crew. After all, the demon is supposed to wreak havoc and be hard to kill, but only if it gets its meal.

So after checking the organ code, it would appear that bum kidneys only have the affect of drowning you in tox damage if you decide to have a cup of coffee. As for the liver: two stages of infection are possible: first is itchy skin, second is vomiting Having more than 60 tox damage will cause liver damage until it is treated or you die. If your liver fails from this, then organ damage will be randomly assigned each processing tick to a random internal organ Using charcoal to heal tox damage will result in small gains to liver health Damage to the liver beyond even the "bruised" threshold will cause you to take small tox damage from having alcohol in your system and moderate tox damage from having any normal toxin in your system in addition to the affects of the actual toxin. Additionally, there is a filter_effect variable that is currently unused, but is set to change based on liver heath. These are all the affects of organ damage in the actual organ code,

They can't just murder for the point of murderboning. An antag is given loose restrictions on what they can do but the freedom to go about their task in the way they see fit is pretty core to the way paradise is played. If you go a little deeper into the syndicate as a faction, you will see that they are actually a group of factions that are acting in their own interests. Those interests include colluding with each other (document trades, shared comms and whatnot). However, they are still independent agencies acting in their own self interest, which is why you see the occasional hit against another agent or the doc trade gone south objective. I kind of agree, but at the same time, as an IPC player, I'm heavily biased That out of the way, Changelings are in a decent place. However, If there is a nerf to be made, I would suggest it be in slight balancing their abilities. The potency of their emp paired with the short cd for instance means they can instant kill any IPC or drain all the energy from that shiny new gun of yours and have it up again in a short period of time or still have enough left over to grow an arm blade. Additionally, some abilities are very cheap to purchase for the utility provided. reducing the number is likely to just result in shorter or less interactive rounds. Wiznerds are meant to be overpowered super antags in the same vein as nuke ops. Them having an instant kill is core to this, plus it's more balanced in the acquisition side of things than in the use side. Taking the instagib button requires you to sacrifice your ability to act for one minute after each use unless you take another damage spell or raid the armory and start shooting. Wizards only have ten points to spend and have to be pretty frugal as is.

The best part is when he completely loses it at the end. 10/10 would read again.