Fox McCloud

This is my opinion as a player, not a coder: I hate the vamp UI with an absolute passion--I hate the designs, elements, and layout--even more so than I'm forced to use it over the UI I actively selected at startup. I'd much rather have the OPTION to use an antag custom UI (or turn it off) if there is one.

I'll be re-evaluating the research outpost soon and will likely clear off some of the more powergamey elements/features (like the monkey cubes, spray bottles, etc). Chem master will require further thought, but giving them a beaker of water, sulfuric acid, welding fuel, and toxin---with a spare beaker and dropper will more than suffice for Xenoarch to do Xenoarch things (and this is reflected in the current map even, with all those pre-filled beakers); afterall, science can make their own chem-masters now.

Just checked on this; you're absolutely right that the multitool works---had I known this, I would have removed the baton a long time ago. Funny you bring this up, too, as I was thinking about just this the other day, as the whole research station is kind a powergamers dreamland (looking at you, chem dispenser)....for a department that already has the largest array of powergamey tools available to it.

Don't dis Skittle's doodles; her doodles are pretty damn awesome. I really enjoy her interpretation of Vox.

Yeah no, please don't make lewd posts like this; it won't be tolerated.

Would be better to fix the config/SQL issue rather than just axing it; a lot of people love ship ambience and thematic music.

That's exactly what Spark is insinuating it would be, with one additional caveat; it would paint the reticle on you as well to make it a bit more obvious than just a red flavortext message of "YOU'RE BEING TARGETED".

Definitely agreed, as I've discussed this with you before. It allows you to get someone's attention without being an "I don't have to aim--I win!" button.

It's annoying, admittedly, but it's partly there because of how durable humanoids are on our server; normally you go into crit at 0 health (100 damage)---here, you go into soft crit at 0 health, which has a chance to make you fall over "in too much pain to keep going!" You don't go into crit until -50 health (150 damage). This used to be stronger than it was (if you were stunned you couldn't use the radio either), but I kept the "soft-crit = unuseful radio" in place so traitors wouldn't be completely screwed over when they were assaulting someone ";traitor science!" since it effectively meant extra shots with a revolver, esword, or other such thing to stop them from talking. Could eliminate the additional pain that broken bones/organs causes to reduce this from occurring so soon, but this does reduce realism a bit. Or could go hardcore SS13 and make you go into crit right at 0 health.

...What. Defib unit can be used offensively as a traitor item if you have access to an emag---it's basically a makeshift stun baton (that ALSO deals stamina damage) when emagged; I'd really rather not give doctors easy access to three insta-stun weapons from literally 2 seconds into the round when they're non-traitors; the days of medcurity with their insta-knock out Chloral are long over; I don't intend to ever bring that.

Which makes mining even more mind numbingly boring--no exploration, no risk, and a complete RNG reliance on what is pulled in for ores. It was hard enough to find some ores on Goon before the magnet, but once that magnet was the only way, sometimes you'd spend 30 minutes trying to pull in something that had the ore you wanted (and that's half a Goon round). I'll make a more detailed post about TG mining a bit later this evening to explain how it works mechanically just in case people have any misconceptions as to how things work.

Both of these have been added in.

Pretty much this. The more snowflake a race is, the more of a pain it is to balance and the more problems it causes for future features. Perfect example of this is IPCs; there's tons of snowflake here and there because they're synthetic to prevent X, Y, and Z from happening when every other race is impacted by it. Much easier, code wise (and balance wise!) to make small passive abilities here and there. More fragility/robustness to a particular damage type, slower movement speed, increased/decreased melee damage, etc. When you start involving active abilities, it's not only a lot of snowflake, but makes balancing an absolute nightmare. That's recipe for powercreep.

I'm not saying either. I'm saying cold space+ZAS is recipe for dying 99% of the time if an area is depressurized. FEA or FEA-like+space being cold is manageable. Keep in mind space being cold isn't JUST another damage layer; it means you're slowed to a halt as well because of being ...well..cold....which indirectly amplifies the pressure and oxygen damage you take. If there was some way to make space tiles cold without it making the entire room cold, then it would probably be alright, but last I tested this, nothing happened to the mob to cool it.

Space being cold actually makes the cold protection on nearly half the clothing actually mean something--it means you can cool a room more efficiently with cool , and properly allows firesuits to protect against pressure without acting as space suits--not to mention as FJ said, it means heaters have an actual purpose. Needless to say, it'll be difficult to get space and airflow to be cold again; making space tiles cold is easy, so is making mobs take cold damage from space...but gas interaction with cold/space is dramatically changed compared to 1.5 years ago (when Bay axed space being cold). I will warn you though---space being cold combined with ZAS will make depressurization horrendously devastating to anyone without access to a hardsuit or spacesuit (ie: nearly everyone). With FEA or FEA-like systems (LINDA), there's time to react, but with ZAS? It'll be a normal temperature room one moment, then literally freezing cold the next.

That's correct. This was done to give them an actual meaningful downside to the power they currently have. Being able to see super well in the dark AND the ability to communicate to anyone, regardless of z-level, without a radio is a very powerful asset in many ways, both antag and non-antag--making them take a little extra brute actually gives the player a reason to stop and think "is this race's upsides and downsides something I want to utilize?" as opposed to "It's a human with extra abilities and a non-weakness, hell ya, I'll play that!". Yes, I do realize that some people play greys/kidan/tajaran/human because they want to play that race, but in this case--it doesn't matter how overpowered or underpowered they area; if someone enjoys a race for the sake of a race, they're going to play it anyway. That said, I strongly suspect a lot of people play races for their strengths/differences rather than aesthetics, in a number of cases; afterall, how many Skrell and Unathi players do you really see? (and yes, I do realize there are still a large amount of people who play a race for the sake of playing that race; not saying those players don't exist).

This is very easily avoided as Bone White said. If you don't want to get caught, don't reveal your identity or even talk over hive-mind. Afterall, there's absolutely nothing wrong with one changeling gaining the trust of another, then backstabbing him and absorbing him for the genomes HE harvested. If a ling gets an implant voluntarily or forcibly, it doesn't really matter; if you don't use hivemind or don't reveal yourself, you're never at risk. Yes, an implanted ling can ask for the other lings real names, but they are by NO means obliged to reply to a fellow ling about anything.

This was very intentionally removed; it's not a bug and was done for balance reasons. When you could change out cells, it effectively meant anyone with science access had umlimited shots--just print off a bunch super cells and carry them around--it nearly completely alienates the cap's laser gun and the advanced energy gun, which have the selling point of being self-recharging (which is an upside that becomes pointless when you can fire 30 shots). It would also contribute to permastunning and keeping entire crowds down with the hybrid taser as you could just spam it around like no tomorrow and end up stunning everyone with it. The current balance issues that secborgs have? That's what officers and traitor scientists will turn into.

Greys are effectively humans with telepathy and increased darksight---all with a virtually non-existent weakness to make up for it; this race is not in need of buffs in any way, shape or form. While this is a neat idea, in theory, I do agree that it's just going to lead a lot of abusive long-range buddying and antag-ruining. Effectively you're giving a changeling power to a regular race. There's been an ongoing effort to normalize races so they're balanced against each other; having one race be the standard go-to powergamey race that all the robust players want to play as (example being old slimes) is not healthy for game balance and is something that is to be actively avoided.

Absolutely not. If anything we need to bring the Crab+Gibbing rule back.

"Rawwrrk! OH GOSH CALL THE SHUTTLE, IT'S FREE!"

There's a couple of reasons why these were removed -Inconsistent Theme -Poor/no visual communication -You're not as cool as Adam Jensen The trenchcoat and dermal armor patch have always kinda been out there pieces of materials; they don't really match anything else the entire security force has; it stood apart from the usual wear uniforms sharply without any really specific reason for it to do so other than "I want to cosplay as Adam Jensen". The whole reason these pieces even existed was...well, exactly for that purpose, as noted in the code. Expanding on this a bit further, there was a bit of security cleanup a while back that attempted to reduce the amount of sec-clothing spam we had; basically security had a whole bunch of different uniforms and armors, but none of them were really unified or consistent with each other---and some jobs (HoSin particular) had nearly half a dozen uniforms/armors to pick from. Once things were cut down, a second full set of security clothing was added--you now can choose from one of two complete sets; classic (red jumpsuits with sec caps and the traditional hats you see on the warden/HoS) and tactical/formal (more formalized jumpsuits with red accents and berets, with Warden and HoS receiving distinctive armors to match). The secondary problem it has, particularly for the dermal armor patch, is that it had no visual communication to the player that "hey, he has armor on". Yes, I realize that the current hats the HoS hats don't scream "super armor", but they do visually demonstrate whether or not the HoS is equipped or not. This wasn't just for the HoS either; if the HoS decided to wear his regular hat, but pass along the dermal piece to someone else (or Captain wanted it), this obscured the line even more so. You're not as cool as Adam Jensen. Sorry, get over yourself, you'll never be as cool as he is, so stop giving that million-mile stare, 'cause you're still not as cool as Adam Jensen.

I'm disappointed you forgot the most important step. 4. Drink yourself to death at the bar (or at least try with your genes of insane alcohol metabolism).

There's already a mining bot, it's just not in-game yet--we used TG mining at one point on Para, but it got overwritten, sadly, by Bay's inferior mining update which meant a lot of the fun aspects of mining were removed (loot, goodies, tools, etc). There was a hydroponics bot, but it caused runtimes out the butt and was so much of an issue to work with it was cut.

Space Law, in general.