Fox McCloud

well, actually you nerfed them right before the commit this topic is about, unless you reverted that. And somehow, those changes didn't stick, for whatever reason; even if they're re-nerfed, it's still a lot of free power without gameplay or real reason. Still find this odd; the vast vast majority of players I see who play Vox spawn in with their proper equipment, backpack, and the likes.

There needs to be some inherent risk to Xenobio, especially with the insane stuff they can make or do.

I absolutely do not want the magclaws coming back for on-station Vox (trade/raid is fine); it's a free pair of no-slipping booties that also makes you immune to atmos (that don't even slow you down); it's a whole lot of free power to give a race just because of lore. While lore is awesome, gameplay and game balance trumps it. If you want to take the effort to get the pair from EVA? Completely fine with that, but them starting off with a pair is no dice. If you want to start with the large N2 tank, that's fine, though it would be best if it started out in your hand as opposed to your back, so as to not mess up backpack item spawns (since a lot of unique items start in your backpack). For the appearance of shoes on Vox; this is largely just a matter of someone creating the custom on-mob sprites for them; as I said, the code for them to be able to wear shoes and use alternate sprites is already in place as we speak, it's just someone has to create the actual sprites (right now they're copy-pastes of the original). If people want to make custom on-mob sprites for Vox for shoes, I'm more than up for including them so they don't look so silly.

TG has PDA-IRCs--it wouldn't exactly be like this, but it would provide a more interactive environment to communicate in for PDAs.

More than fine with the ERT having one, but going to have to say no to the other two. Paramedic has medbay access and can very easily grab one from the medical doctor's locker if he would like to get one to carry around. I'd like these to rare as they're very very powerful; currently there's 3 (not going to count ERT since it's conditional); 1 in each of the two medical doctor's offices and one in the CMO's locker. You can also convince R&D to make one.

This, to an absolute T. People can't treat Xenos like they can taking down a changeling or vampire--that is to say, if you're really good/robust, you can beat them. People should treat Xenos more like Malf AI, Blob, or Nukes Ops; something to work together on to push against and not to delegate purely to one department to handle. Also, it's a game mode where you'll have to accept that you WILL die during it, eventually--even the most robust of the robust and tenacious of players who almost NEVER die will die during this game-mode, because Xenos have a natural 1v1 advantage. The great thing about this game mode though is it's marvelous for recycling players---Xenos can respawn...likewise, you can do surgery on Xenos to yank out their brains and shove those brains into humanized monkies or MMIs to have more personnel to combat the Xenos. There's a LOT of really potentially creative strategies that can be utilized here, but they're not--and I don't expect them to be; this mode literally just came out.--and, like the Nuke Ops rework, is for all intents and purposes a completely new game-mode.

They've received no further ways to destroy barricades than they currently have; the only thing they've received, mobility wise, is a 1 stage increase in their speed---for queens, sentinals, and drones, it's largely meaningless--still slower than a human. Hunters, however, are 1 stage faster than humans (same speed as someone on hyperzine). It's been a very very very long time since people have played against this style of Xenomorph; they're currently fairly used to the AI+Borg+facehug spam style since that's what we've had for...well, about 8-9 months now. Just like the nuke ops rework, people will have to adjust and develop new strategies to deal with them; the last round there were Xenos, the crew made some major major errors (not arming up+not welding vents as soon as Xenos were found); they let the Xeno threat come to them first before attempting to deal with them (despite the Xenos getting discovered 5 minutes in). This would be akin to someone saying "redsuits" 5 minutes in, then refusing to arm up, secure the disk, and keep on the lookout. That said, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on them; my concern is that our custom health crit threshold of -50 (normally 0) may be skewing things, in combat, towards Xenos as they have to hit a higher health thresh-hold before getting knocked unconscious. quick tip: Xenos take 2x the damage from all forms of fire, meaning lasers do 40 and welders do 30, also xeno weeds get slaughtered pretty easily by Plant-B-Gone.

A few of the above changed have been implemented (not all of course); check on the PR for exactly what was changed.

There's some tuning that needs to be done to the mode that I'll look into. Currently a lot of classes have abilities they shouldn't, primarily because they're leftovers from Ponies' version of Xenos.

"Coroner" sounds like an excellent title, in this case.

I'll check into this when I have the time--cycling airlocks have always been a pain in the ass.

Or terrible VG say code strikes yet again.

Vox has been able to wear shoes for a very very long time; it was added months ago, well prior to when I returned (there's a lot of snowflake code for spritesheets and the likes just so it works properly. Vox just simply chose never to wear shoes; why wear shoes when you start with a free pair of no slowdown no slip shoes that grant immunity to atmos, as well?

I don't think this is a good idea, personally. I'm never going to enforce lore for in game (meaning, if you want to play a spesscat who was born on earth, speaks perfect English, and has no known connections with other Tajaran culture, feel free to), but just having the lore up on the wiki doesn't hurt much; a number of players really like/enjoy it and want to base their characters off of a common archetype--if that's their choice and they want to follow a guideline (or put artificial limitations on themselves) according to said lore? I'm not going to stop them--but again, it should be the players choice (like clone memory disorder is a choice). So I'm generally fine with lore, so long as it's purely fluff.

It's not without price, Fox. Read carefully. Fair enough, I did miss that. I do think giving them just Sol/Common, from the start is better though, and it gives the players a choice to forego the translator in favor of other software.

I could easily see giving them Sol/Common, from start (this is the way it's supposed to be, anyway) but just flat out granting them a universal translator by default? That's a whole lot of power without price.

Dave has made a proc for this; he or I just need to go through and start adding this to a few high-damage items (fire-axe, cleavers, toolbox of robustness, etc)...I seriously doubt a fire-axe can get embedded in a wound. Thank goodness bullets don't cause dismemberment anymore, as well.

Are you sure about this? I'm almost positive I tried this at various point, but to no avail. In any event, if it was possible, 10 bucks says it's VG's ported say code that is preventing it from working (VG's say code reduces CPU usage but is otherwise horrendously atrocious, according to Mark).

I'll see what I can do about mapping this in below toxins. It means that toxins will have to be completely re-done, but I'm ok with; it's overly complex right now and takes up gigantic amounts of space.

Vox got their massive buff: they have a small nitrogen tank now that gives them ~2.5 hours of usage and can be stored in their pockets/suit storage/belt; this allows them to have their backpacks and assorted other spawned items.

I would have something to add that could restore that balance, it's actually a thing that bothered me for quite a while. A intercom has this interessting sprite with buttons and lights and stuff. I think this lights should totally display the settings of the microphone and speakers. So a skilled player could see the intercom state from just looking at the sprite. It needs to be small subtle change to the sprite that you only notice if you are consciously looking for it. Like the green light been shifted a few pixels to the right when the microphone is on. While a good idea, intercomms are just toooo small to noticed. Case in point (and the light is bigger/more obvious): you can tell if someone/something is in a disposal by the light on it, but in practice, it's just too difficult to notice/keep track and people who hide in them are nearly always in the category of "never found".

This, more or less. It would also be annoying as hell to have to walk to your job every single round and compete against the massive sea of people don't the same...not to mention this means common locations where loot is will be even more of a mad-dash-mob due to everyone being on the same playing field to get said items.

My opinion, is that most of Xenos need a revert to their pre-game mode status and balanced from there. The fact that players can control facehuggers dramatically impacts the way Xeno is played--they went from a co-ordinate+attack+drag back to nest playstyle to "kill everyone in sight and endlessly spam facehuggers"strategy--because facehuggers are able to be controlled by players people will literally just spam an area endlessly until something sticks. Hardly anyone ever attempts to capture individuals anymore for the hive--general strat is just to spam so many it overwhelms medbay's surgery capacity. Playing as a hugger isnt' particularly fun, either; it's just--hold down a key and run at someone (playing as the Xenos, themselves, however, is VERY fun). Xeno's being able to be taken over by players also generates a similar issue as it encourages spam as opposed to a co-ordinated, thought out strategy. In short: Respawn as NPC+Xeno I don't feel is good for the mode as it doesn't encourage a meaningful gameplay pattern and leads to a lot of balance issues that can't really be resolved. I'll all echo FJ's sentiments as well about the alien AI/borg; it's not logical from a lore/backstory standpoint and it fundamentally alters the way the way the mode is played (and unnecessarily buffs the binary encryption device by giving anyone who makes it a channel to talk on that can never be spied on but by someone with another binary encryption key). The station had xeno spawns all over for a reason... And yeah, the gigantic sprites have been problematic since day 1

Willing to give this a shot for a week or two, but I'd rather not upset the balance of a value that's been this way for literally 2 years now--especially considering this is a gigantic nerf to stealing headsets and effectively allows the AI to hear the entirety to the station again (minus maint). Edit: Because of how mapping works, a range of two is actually a range of three because the intercomm will invariably and always be on the tile below the wall its placed on, giving it a pseudo-range of 3.

No idea what's causing the issue, but you're literally the only person to complain of this; plenty of Vox have spawned in with their full backpack and gear. I did a test on spawning in as a Vox civvie, here was the result: Bag in one hand, internals in another, and backpack on the thing's back.