Wintermote

I mentioned this in my previous post on balance suggestions - remove neurotoxin. It was OP when it was first introduced and it is still OP. Aliens shouldn't be ranged, at all. Additionally: Remove their ability to acid doors/equipment Give them the ability to force open powered and unpowered doors, but not bolted or welded doors, as a trade-off for not being able to acid through everything; or give them some ability that allows them to bust down even a bolted door with some time. Barricading yourself somewhere should only buy you TIME, not immunity. Get rid of the sentinels - their gimmick is the neurotoxin spit and without that they might as well not be there. Aliens won't be suddenly unrobust without the spit. Buff up the drones and turn them into the new defenders of the hive as they should be. Have facehuggers supply people with air while they are hugged, like they did in the movies. Give xenos their resin doors back. They're the only way to make a makeshift airlock and without them you can't keep areas from being unpressurized due to alien players constantly leaving/entering from space. (You think walls and windows will do? Players just break them so they can leave/enter)

Could we add some sort of warning indicator to the UI so people can see when they're about to run out of oxygen (or nitrogen) and need to get some more? I'd recommend simply changing the color of the internals indicator: When it's off, it has no glow. When it's on, it glows green. Proposal: When it's low, it glows yellow. When it's at emergency level it glows red. (A minute or two of air remaining)

It's basically a situation where they're intended to be clonable, but the code to make it work isn't there.

Here's a draft design for the bridge that I put together awhile ago for an entirely different map. It wouldn't fit in the present station, but it's something that could be worked off of. The AI was intended to have blast doors only it could control, to close it off from the bridge if it wanted privacy. I also have a cool sprite for a holotable that never got used anywhere.

Xenos can't slip off into space, they can walk in space. Honestly as broken as it may seem, it actually helps keep xenos from accidentally going the wrong way and slipping off to the wrong z-levels. The only reason a xeno will end up on another z-level is if they literally choose to run off and do that, on purpose. And you're not meant to kill weeds one tile at a time. Destroy the glowing weeds and it'll despawn an entire area.

Buff bluespace crystals so they teleport people randomly like the hand teleporter does when it isn't locked onto a teleport hub location. As it is right now, it teleports you one, maybe two tiles. And that's useless.

Playing as a hunter, one of the things I felt was really needed was a way to get through doors. Only the sentinels spit acid. Changes I'd make: Aliens immune to falling over due to gravity changes or rushing air Remove sentinels, divide up and combine some of their effects into drones and hunters Buff up drones so that they're not weaklings - make them the new defenders of the hive Only allow one queen at a time, but any drone can evolve into a queen Increase hunter speed a little more Remove neurotoxin spit Give aliens nightvision AND thermal vision, with a toggle. (I believe only hunters have this right now) Shock aliens to the floor when they bust an APC and make it more time consuming for them to do it Instead of acid spitting, allow aliens to force open powered and unpowered doors, but not bolted doors, welded doors, or blast doors (possibly function like an emag, damaging a door and keeping it permanently open?) Allow hunters to ventcrawl (maybe they still can? I tried but it didn't seem to work) Allow aliens to take apart barricades and deployable barriers Possibly make: Decrease drone speed a little to go with their buffs and defensive nature Change spit acid so that it involves the alien clawing itself to apply acid blood to the door/wall/whatever instead, assuming it's not just removed Buff fire/flamethrowers against aliens somehow, without also buffing lasers Instead of a destroyed APC removing power, have it just sever the connection to the grid so the battery can't recharge

How about: Aiming at the chest still has a 'miss' chance, but any misses just transfer to an attached bodypart - legs, arms, head, groin. So it's always a hit, but you may hit other areas. Aiming at a limb or the head has a higher miss chance, with a possibility of also hitting an attached bodypart. Head - miss goes to body. Leg - miss goes to groin. If someone is stunned/resting on the floor, the hit chance should be 100% no matter where you aim.

Well, there's hearing damage in-game, but nothing actually makes loud noises that'll make you go deaf, except explosions. And for explosions to do that, you need to sit in more than one. The funny thing is, we have earmuffs today that not only have radios built into them, but also microphones that allow them to hear speech in spite of loud noises through electronic noise canceling. I even own a pair. Adding ear damage to lethal firearms when you're standing within a tile of the person shooting does not seem like a big issue to me. In any case, it'd be nice if pumps and other machinery would generate ear-damaging noise. We have ear damage that's never utilized when it could be great for engineering and atmos and give people an actual reason to wear earmuffs.

First of all, when looking at what differentiates vox, we have to first take a look at their lore. They're basically a hyper-advanced alien species that's going full-blown "transhumanist" and diving face first towards the singularity. Players play as the dregs of vox society: The labourer 'class' that apparently can hardly be considered "real" vox when compared to the hyper-augmented ones that live on their arkships and in bluespace. With that flavour in mind, some suggestions: -- - Breathe a 90/10 or 95/5 mixture of nitrogen:plasma This one I suggest mostly because I don't like the idea of something breathing an inert gas given that humans breathe oxygen to begin with because it's chemically reactive. So basically, switch the toxicity effects of oxygen and plasma around for vox. -- - More cybernetic parts Their brain's already implanted with a cortical stack, additional removable (and researchable) implants for vox may be something to look at. Possibly even EMP resistant, unlike IPC's. -- - Vox specific equipment From what I've seen, people playing vox don't really care about the removal of the vox magclaws so much as the fact that they lose one of the unique things vox had. It would've gone over better if they were just given magclaws that don't help them in space or when the gravity generator goes down. Likewise, having to wear a nitrogen tank on the bank was something more interesting for them. So here I'd like to suggest: >Vox specific nitrogen tank/backpack. Give them nitrogen AND let that backpack carry some large items. >Vox specific carrying belt that can hold most small items >Give vox a chest rig that allows them to carry more small items A small nitrogen tank they can put in a pocket solves some issues with vox players lacking in what they can carry, but it just smacks of "fine, shut up, here's your overpowered item that justifies your cost, now stop whining" rather than an honest attempt at making vox interesting. I don't think there's too much problem with having to use a nitrogen pack so long as there's something to help compensate for it. I'm just throwing some ideas out there to get the ball rolling on this, because vox do need something to make up for what's seriously hurting them as a choice to spend karma on. A race that is majority downsides that costs 45 karma is something nobody wants. I don't think anyone wants to powergame as vox, they just want a race that's got some interesting upsides and downsides, and right now it's pretty much all downsides.

Price: 45 karma Cons: - Must breathe nitrogen - Can't be cloned - Certain beneficial chemicals are apparently lethal to them Pros: - Immune to spess - Can claw people like tajarans - Spawn with a 2.5hr nitrogen tank that fits in a pocket Here's an idea, instead of nerfing vox to hell, and then giving them a 2.5hr nitrogen tank as if that somehow justifies the obscene nerfs, we come up with some ideas that'll actually make the race stand out and be worth the price. They're basically tajarans that can wear shoes and can't breathe oxygen right now. Tajarans apparently don't even cost any karma - I don't see them in the shop. Why are these nerfs being applied unilaterally by one person with no discussion and kept, when they are being universally regarded by vox and other players as awful? I can't even play vox and I think the nerfs are ridiculous. Edit: I also believe the greys got a recent nerf that made their telepathy nearly pointless (requires LOS now) That could've been handled far better by just reducing their range, rather than requiring LOS.

It does make it a bit of a pain for security - your lasers run out of ammo so quick and you also quickly run out of places to charge them. And once your lasers are out, you're toast.

From what I've seen of the last alien round, it's actually pretty well balanced. The big trouble is that the alien win-scenario is "kill all humans", which is actually pretty difficult and drawn out. You could have one guy sitting in a random locker the entire round preventing the game from ending.

It's a bit of a pain to have to download and install universal translating software to hear anyone from the start. What's the point of it? I mean, the software is pretty much mandatory for a PAI anyways, you might as well just give it automatically and take the points it costs out of the pool.

Would it be possible to increase the speed that vents can siphon/pump air for airlocks? Any airlock bigger than 3 tiles can take a bit, and airlocks that are 6+ can really take awhile to pressurize/depressurize.

Have a database that tracks the fastest speedrun on setting up the engine, which announces to the crew how quickly the engineers set up the engine and whether they made a new record.

Well, after giving the new telescience a shot, I can't say it's much different from old telescience. Takes slightly longer to get an item, but it's pretty much the same as the old, without the fun creature spawns and fire. The range nerf is honestly the biggest thing that effects how overpowered/underpowered it is. Frankly, if I were going to do a quickfix, I'd just keep the old telesci with the new requirement for bluespace telecrystals to extend range. Old telescience was more entertaining to use and set up. New telescience is basically: You're having fun with this? Well, Fuck your fun.

The alien gamemode's been removed from rotation due to massive bugs/problems with it. This thread's for suggesting some solutions. 1. The Alien Queen and Empress use massive multi-tile sprites. While they look cool, it's actually impossible to hit people who stand in certain directions from you, and you'll very often hit yourself trying to kill someone. The best solution for this would be to just give them an auto-target ability like firearms have. Target someone, and then you'll automatically hit them when you're close enough. This might even be worth trying on regular aliens to make them more lethal in hand to hand combat. 2. Another big issue is the Alien AI. (Frankly in my opinion, they shouldn't even have an alien AI or Alien cyborg.) Unfortunately for the player who gets saddled as the Alien AI, its APC isn't hooked up to an SMES battery, so it dies within about ten minutes. It's an easy enough solution - add an SMES battery. 3. The spawning system is also very problematic. If an Alien Queen is on the derelict somehow and starts laying eggs there, alien players who die on the station and respawn as an alien, will respawn as a facehugger on the derelict, inside an egg. Unable to commit suicide for a new spawn, or even hatch themselves to wander around. All things considered, I've found having players control facehuggers has actually been a large detriment to alien gameplay simply due to how clunky it is for a player to try and infect someone and the limited number of people around to play as facehuggers. It used to be that the facehuggers were AI controlled and would automatically launch themselves at humans or monkeys and infect them, when a chestburster spawned it automatically pulled a random player from those who were dead. Perhaps a better system would be to pull a player the moment someone's infected, have them wait through incubation and then choose when/where to burst out. If there are no players, the embryo simply remains dormant. (and removable via surgery) 4. Aliens have absolutely no idea where they are when they spawn or jump their ship into the z-level. There's a number of different ways this could be looked at. The aliens could simply not have their own ship at all, and spawn on the station, for example. (Perhaps some crewmembers begin infected) This does however, make it more difficult for the aliens. But if the aliens are going to be spawning on a spaceship - a mobile one or not - they need to be able to see where the station is. Even syndies have some trouble getting to the station at times, and they spawn with pinpointers telling them where to go. Something similar to this on the alien HUD might be a good idea. A compass of sorts to point to the center of the station. Alternatively or perhaps in addition, some way of sensing human players from beyond the visual range (ex. HUD icon pointing to closet non-alien player) I think that'll solve most of the game-breaking stuff. Balance discussion's another story.

Okay, you guys don't seem to understand. Getting a hardsuit is absolutely trivial for telescience. I can have one within three minutes of entering the room. The proposition is simply that instead of stealing a hardsuit from EVA for use in telescience, telescience either have a hardsuit to begin with, or the means to make the room safer, quickly. Thus obviating the need for a hard suit. If malfunctions are meant to be dangerous, then presently they aren't nearly dangerous enough, and in any case, would still warrant a hardsuit almost as a minimum. Additionally, I've had fires start in telescience even with proper calibration. So keeping it calibrated won't save you. Mostly decalibration just brings in easy-to-kill mobs.

I've noticed that after a bodypart is hacked off, if you've got that location targeted, all future damage does absolutely nothing. I'd like to suggest that damage to a non-existent part transfers to the next closest attached limb. e.g. - hands -> arm -> torso; head -> torso; Foot -> leg -> groin -> torso

I just, can't see it being like that, though. I asked around with a few other people, and everyone remembers intercoms having a 5+ tile range. Literally nobody remembers it having 2-tile range. And I played enough on /tg/ as an AI - I used to use intercom spying all over the place. There is no way that intercoms 'have always been this way' because my personal experience with it - and what other people remember - flies in direct contravention with it. Is there some other variable that might've been at work, which was simply bugfixed recently?

The scrubbers don't eat the hot air, they don't do anything to the air temperature or pressure, they just scrub out toxins/plasma. That's the problem. You can get rid of the plasma really quickly. Like, 5-10 seconds fast. But by then, the air's 400C and pressurized to 300kpa. Basically, I don't really care much about having a hardsuit as I do some way of making the room safe in a reasonably speedy timeframe. It's just that having a hardsuit from EVA right now is significantly easier and less time consuming than waiting for the room vents to clear the room on their own.

/mob/aiEye/show_message(msg, type, alt, alt_type) if(type != 1) return if(ai) ai.show_message(msg, type, alt, alt_type) Adding this code (in the AI eye file, iirc) allows the AI to see emotes in the specific location that it's looking at. Only problem with the code was that it worked regardless of whether the AI could actually see. If the lights were off, or the camera cut, the AI can still see emotes in that location. I'm not saavy enough with coding to fix it, but I figured this might be of interest to the coders anyways.

One of the problems with using telescience is that it'll constantly spark plasma fires, and this will severely wound or kill anyone without a hardsuit who opens the door into the telescience chamber. Since I've been using telescience for the last little while, I realized that it was way easier to just grab the medical hardsuits from EVA than to bother waiting minutes for the room to cool down. Any atmos problems are easily solved by just venting into maintenance - which quickly normalizes the pressure and temperature. An alternative option is a setup for telescience that allows the room to be more quickly 'normalized' so you don't have to wait an age before opening the doors. Some kind of airlock, like the ones around the supermatter, would also be nice, and would allow someone with a hardsuit to enter the chamber without flooding the rest of the room with superheated gas.

Thanks. This states the code change was made aug 8th of this year - not two years ago. So I'm not going crazy and /tg/station did have 7-8 tile range when I played there. I'm going to continue with the suggestion that the range be reinstated. I'm not the only player in favour of it, and after speaking with a few others who've played with the range set to a greater distance, they thought it was dumb that it'd be reduced - even here on the forums there seems to be some sentiment for returning it. Everything that happens in the game costs CPU resources, given the importance of AI's being able to listen to conversations through intercoms and the nerfing of the AI's lipreading ability (which it seems to me, was added to offset the problem with the AI no longer being able to hear through intercoms), as well as the player support regarding having it back, and the fact that several servers operated just fine with it the way it was before, I think we should be looking at the tradeoff more closely. Essentially, I don't think the increased range consumes enough resources to warrant its removal from the game for that reason.