AzuleUtama

Ah my bad I misread the role list, updated it with a replacement if that's alright.

1. Librarian 2. 3. 4. Loved your previous animation work, so will be great seeing what you come out with next.

While my account was made sometimes around 2014-2016, that time period was essentially me playing about 4 rounds total and not really doing much of anything before shelving the game and coming back to properly begin playing it in 2018. I first heard about SS13 from someone in EVE Online, a game I played a huge amount of from around 2011-2018. I tried it but ultimately stuck with EVE until 2018, where I quit both due to the group I was part of disbanding and the game in general going into a decline (which still seems to be the case, sadly). I suddenly remembered SS13 some months later and decided to just hop into paradise since it was at the top of the BYOND server list at the time. The earliest round I remember playing during this time involved an admin setting up a lava rage cage in the bar and me just sitting and watching as player after player entered it and left completely roasted, after that I was hooked! I was playing pretty consistently until around the end of 2020, where I started getting burnout from everything SS13 related and took a long hiatus until only last month where I've finally come back to the game again and have been enjoying the many changes since I left to the maps and combat. I stick with Paradise over other servers mainly because of the people we have on the server, both players and staff - though I have played a fair amount on Goon's servers and a little on TG. Because don't forget - you're here forever...

Some updates based on feedback received: Agent 13 now has a regular and HP magazine, following advice on the HP rounds being difficult to use well, especially against security. Also adds a chameleon jumpsuit (but no voice changer) for "blending in" a bit easier. Infiltrator now includes a single-use autosurgeon with a mesons implanters loaded in following feedback on the teleporter really needing mesons to work well. The code for this exists already but is mostly unused - once the autosurgeon is used or the implant removed it cannot be re-used at all. Operative now uses a Bulldog shotgun instead of the APS due to balance concerns on the 3-shot 30 damage rounds being too strong for traitors. The bulldog comes with a magazine of each ammo type available for nukies; Slugs (Loaded in the gun), Buckshot, Dragonsbreath and most notably Meteorslug. This should keep the bulldog shotgun interesting to use in spite of the weaker options to reload it with.

They are still in Spy, did you mean Thief? I removed them since as said in the doc, they didn't really make you sneakier or anything - they used to mute footsteps but a rework ages ago redid the footstep noises and undid that, so they are just kind of "there" for the sake of it. Thief was one of the strongest bundles outside of implant before, so I'm hesitant to give it anymore than the 35TC it has. I wouldn't be against it, but I know a lot of people love the implant bundle as-is and would probably not like the implant uplink especially being removed from it. There aren't many other implants that would work in my eyes - mindslave without other gear wouldn't be too amazing and the unused krav maga implant would be alright, but we have another kit in the doc that has the gloves - so would repeat a bit. It seemed thematic and fun for traitors to use in the bundle - unless I'm forgetting you can still get instant summons on lavaland and traitors can technically get the 3*1 mime forcewall if they get the advanced mimery kit - so it didn't seem *too* absurd for both to be included. Is there a specific issue with instant summons that makes it broken? I was originally considering a bulldog shotgun with ammo; but it didn't seem too unique, is basically the same as the revolver if using slugs and with the changes to lethal shells is much harder to get ammo for barring rubber shot. Sniper is used in another bundle and I absolutely was not giving traitors a C20r or M90. If it's that overpowered for them, would removing other items in the kit balance out the power? Eh, it fit the theme of a hitman assassinating station staff pretty well, and I figured that if a traitor really hated the HP rounds that much, they can always get regular ones from a lathe to replace them.

Something I've been planning for a little while now, a new set of syndicate bundles as well as rebalancing the existing ones. These haven't really been touched since 2020 and I felt changing them up a bit would encourage people to take a gamble on buying them more. You can find a full design document I've made for this here - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ub1OMjx0yxr45YOqrBeWZycONnJRNbYPaBrM0Vezz-k/edit?usp=sharing The below is a summary of some of the information in the documents, though I would still recommend reading it for the full changelist. What's been changed at a glance? 7 reworked or modified bundles (Spy, Hacker, Bond, Thief, Bio-chip, Darklord, Professional) 3 new bundles (Agent 13, Infiltrator, Operative) 1 unchanged bundle (Payday) 1 removed bundle (Sabotage) Why change the existing ones? Mainly to change things up a bit since as mentioned prior, they haven't been really been touched since 2020 and the last new bundle added was back in 2019. Since then a lot of the things some bundles were balanced around (Sec borgs, instant stuns etc.) have been removed and more recently a fair number of syndie items had price reworks as well. Additionally, there were always certain bundles which I felt really needed a complete rework or removal, owing to them being very situational or not a long of fun for the traitor who received them (Hacker and Sabotage, specifically). Why remove Syndicate Encryption keys from most bundles? They were originally added to encourage multiple traitors who bought the bundles to team up with their specialized kits. Since codeword highlighting is now a thing it's easier and more common for traitors to use them instead, as well as some people not liking the encryption keys due to sec being able to use them if taken from a traitor. They're still in bundles where they fit the theme but no longer a freebie in every one, which frees up some TC in bundles for other more fitting items to take their place. If you have any feedback, criticism or further questions not covered above or in the design document, please post em below!

If this lag was experienced during a round yesterday where the blob pretty much covered the entire station, I can vouch for the lag and frame drops being unplayable - to the point where I was getting 1 frame a second. I know others were also experiencing similar issues trying to play. However, I think there was something more going on in that round which caused this since ever before the blob appeared I was getting a jumpy framerate trying to move around and from other experiences I've had with blobs reaching a similar size it never caused the same issues for me as last night.

Null crates were just a random syndicate bundle, which do still exist for people to buy normally via uplink. However, the one included in sniper bundle is actually a unique variant of the nuke ops sniper that comes pre-loaded with penetrator rounds and cannot be suppressed, rather than the awkward compact rifle. If I remember right, it was added to sort of resemble Goon's hunting rifle, though it differed in a lot of areas: The Goon version can't be bought via uplink, it's instead found randomly in surplus crates which have a chance to include unique items you can't normally buy amongst the random items you usually find. Our version is the opposite and can only be bought via uplink and never found in surplus crates or discounts. The one on Goon is MUCH stronger, doing more damage and throwing people backwards when hit alongside stunning them. It's also technically cheaper on Goon, having an equivalent value of (i think) 10TC when being picked for the crate. Given we have a rifle you can already find at random in Syndi bundles which also comes with gear to support it (namely thermals for the penetrator rounds), I don't see the need to include a fully buyable one with strange quirks to it personally, though opinions may differ there.

CQC was fine when it was just bundles, or even the brief period where it was a chef exclusive item. It's too strong for every traitor in the game to buy whenever they want even with the discount removal, as any player who knows the two sleep combos can (as mentioned above) curbstomp anyone in melee combat without them even being able to call for help. The carp-fu combos stun rather than sleep and even the sleepy pen gives a fair window for the victim to realize they've been injected and can only be used twice, so this infinite-use near instant sleep item that can't be disarmed just doesn't fit very well at all for standard traitor loadouts.

Unless this changed somewhere down the line, all antagonists require some amount of crew playtime rather than specific ones. Regarding the idea itself, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to force players to play security roles in order to unlock a role where in almost all cases they can't actually be an officer in the first place (Blob is the only antag where you can start as a mindshield role IIRC). While it might give them some idea of what to expect from the security team (and thus an idea of how to counter it themselves) should they be a traitor/cling/vamp or maybe early game cultists - it's not really going to do much of anything for when those players roll hijack-level antags such as Nukies, Wiz, Blob and End-game cultists and slings. Space law and Security SOP begin seeing a lot less use in those situations, yet they'd still be locked behind the same requirement. The only real way players will improve at playing antagonist roles and how they should approach security while antagging is by just... well... playing them. I can guarantee everyone's first few antag rounds were probably a disaster (mine included), but you eventually learn how not to get caught and generally be a better antagonist for everyone the more you do it. Locking it behind security playtime requirements won't make them any better to start with, they'll still have no idea how to play it or make the round more enjoyable for everyone besides maybe knowing more about space law.

If there was any one change / addition / deletion you could immediately implement into the codebase, what would it be and why? Ignoring factors like getting headmin approval or the development time / effort required.

This - TC scales to the number of players so they'll get more than enough to buy and arm a reinforcement during war ops if there's a lot of people in the round, same goes for buying a cyborg if they feel it would be a better use of TC. I've been an operative and had over 110TC after the declaration before, so you could easily have every operative buy and arm them in that case. The other benefit to keeping it as reinforcements is that it limits getting additional manpower to war ops alone (unless all the ops pitch in for a reinforcement during a non-war round though that's pretty unlikely given the more limited TC they get). If we went with scaling operatives then we'd end up with maybe 7 or 8 operatives right from the start being able to forgo war and just blitz to the bridge, which would be an almost guaranteed win for the ops and make blitz even less fun than it currently is.

Yeah, it has almost identical stats to the hardsuit as well - the main difference being the jetpack module and combat mode toggle. There was a PR a while back to nerf the armor of the softsuit which got closed since one of the reasons for the nerf was the fact it was NC-class contraband over the blood-red hardsuit's S-class, which is more an administrative issue. I still think it really should have less armor though - since it makes no sense that a suit that's twice the price has identical armor for the 3 major damage types in the game. The jetpack module and combat mode are nice, but not worth the extra 4TC. The contraband class is irrelevant, even if the hardsuit was C-class it still wouldn't get bought because of that.

Just a correction on the .38 revolver - it was recently nerfed to only deal 35 stamina damage per shot rather than stamina damage + 3 second instant stun. I'm personally not a fan of having a second version of every traitor gun just to come loaded with non-lethals. I get that some people might prefer to not have the initial lethal rounds when buying it should there be a non-lethal variation but to me it just seems like bloat for that uplink item category. The stechkin especially so since it's already a very cheap gun to start with. Alternative ammo types in general I do like the idea of though. With regards to each suggestion above: For the .357 Revolver Rubber Shot - From a less-lethal or stunning weapon standpoint, this seems like a worse version of the mini Ebow. It deals less overall damage (okay I get this isn't the main point of the ammo type but still), is limited to 7 shots per purchase and cannot have more printed from a lathe, doesn't regenerate ammo on its own, makes a very loud noise when fired and can't be concealed as easily. The only benefits I can see are that it fires faster and has the option to load much more lethal ammo (though switching between the two isn't as easy as a magazine-fed gun). I remember someone mentioning it would be neat if the revolver could chamber the .38 rounds somehow - that might be a better solution if it can be done given those can be printed instead though whether it would be too strong a buff is another matter. For the Stechkin Rubber Shot - This would work very well as a self-defence weapon from chasing sec, since a single shot will slow them down and disarm them at the same time. For stunning people you intend to kill/cuff I can't remember if stuns stack in the code, if they don't then unloading the whole clip into them won't even keep them down, and if they do stack you'd still need most of the clip to have long enough to do so. For 1TC I guess it does work, but I remember another codebase having soporific stechkin rounds that would KO people for a short while but only after enough shots were landed on them, which is stronger and more unique for an ammo type. Not sure if maybe something like that would be better? For the Sniper Soporific Rounds - These are pretty underused in nukies and are a rare sight in traitor rounds for now given they're exclusive to one of the uplink bundles. I wouldn't mind them being more available to traitors via the compact rifle, but at the same time I think the compact rifle needs a rework/reprice of it's own right now as I think i've seen it used just twice since it got merged last year - likely because it's very expensive compared to other powerful traitor items around the same price and completely barred from discounts and surplus crate rolls.

Immortal already makes some good points above as to why Slings has issues, but to add to that with my own views: The method for dethralling is awful - first you're reliant on medbay to be competent enough to know the surgery procedure necessary to remove the shadow tumor. Even if they do know what they're doing - the surgery can wind up taking a while since it's random as to whether the tumor will die when you use the flashlight on it, sometimes taking multiple attempts - coupled with the fact there are usually queues of people to dethrall and security need to keep them from escaping rather than helping the rest of the sec team in hunting down the sling. It's also easy to prevent dethralling entirely - just get a medical thrall to steal all the surgery tools. Compare this with cult where you just give them about 40 units of holy water and wait for the revelation message and even revs - where you just mindshield them or harmbaton their head. Rounds generally go one of three ways and none of them are a lot of fun. First the slings snowball most of sec and then sit back as they get new thralls hand delivered to them until ascendance, often ending the round in about 30 minutes. Second, the slings get found before they can do anything and every tile on the station gets covered in lights before security quickly kill all the slings. Third is similar to the second, but where 1 or more slings are more robust and just keep shadow walking over and over never getting caught but also never making any progress in getting thralls, dragging the round out for ages while everyone is just sitting around waiting for the round end screen to pop up. Adding to the last point above - having the round end once all the slings are dead or ascended means that most players just stop bothering to really do anything once they get confirmed, since the round is going to end early at some point so doing any big construction project or trying a rp event / activity often isn't worth the effort. This often leads to most of the crew just standing around waiting or just mindlessly doing their job since they also can't hunt the slings if they aren't sec (or possibly botany with glomshrooms). Wizard, Blob and technically Nuke Ops do have the same "early-end" issue - but it's negated by the fact that the entire crew is allowed to hunt those antags down and the rounds themselves (namely wiz) are often very short compared to slings. Pretty much any attempt at an ERT tends to fail with slings if they aren't Gamma level (and even then, sometimes gamma can fail). Either the slings ascend while they're still getting ready to hunt them down or they inevitably get caught by the masses of thralls and now the slings have ERT thralls too.

The top 5 (That doesn't include the E20) in that list are probably the only ones that are generally useful no matter what you need to do - the rest of the items are either not worth using if you don't have hijack (His grace, E20, Bee briefcase), are really situational in getting use out of them (Poison Pen, Ambrosia Cruc.), are more gimmicky than anything (Missionary Kit, Voodoo Doll, Trick Revolver) or are limited to a single job that rarely gets to use it (Tele-gun, Advanced Mimery). Most times I see such items used are when they are found in a surplus crate. I'm amazed it even got bought at all.

I went through the spreadsheet myself - here's a list of the top ten items (unless there's less than 10) bought under each category, keeping nuke-ops exclusive items separate (besides ammo): Job-Specific Pickpocket's Gloves - 32 Poison Bottle - 30 Radiation Laser & Contortionist's Suit - 11 (Each) Stimulants - 9 E20 - 8 Poison Pen - 7 Syndicate MMI - 4 Safety Scissors - 3 Viral Injector & Power Gloves & Telegun - 2 (Each) Banana Grenade & Clown Magboots & Boozey Shells & Bee Briefcase & Ambrosia Cruciatus - 1 (Each) Dangerous and Visible E-Sword - 231 Stechkin - 107 Holoparasites - 63 .357 Revolver - 28 Energy Crossbow - 27 Mind Batterer - 22 Chainsaw - 17 Gloves of the North Star - 16 Compact Sniper - 7 Power Fist - 5 Ammo 10mm Magazine - 106 Carbine 5.56 Toploader Magazine - 71 C-20r .45 Magazine - 36 Sniper .50 Magazine - 30 10mm Incendiary Magazine - 26 L6 SAW Box Magazine - 25 Sniper .50 Penetrator Magazine - 21 10mm Armor Piercing Magazine - 19 10mm Hollow Point Magazine - 13 Bulldog 12g Buckshot Magazine- 11 Stealth Weapons Sleepy pen - 92 Syndicate Soap - 86 Energy Dagger - 64 Suppressor - 32 Carp Fu Scroll - 31 Fiber Wire Garrote - 27 Dart Pistol Kit - 25 Box of Throwing Weapons - 14 Dehydrated Space Carp - 13 Camera Flash - 12 Grenades & Explosives Syndicate Minibomb - 76 EMP Kit - 74 C4 - 70 Pack of C4 - 41 Syndicate Bomb - 34 Pizza Bomb - 32 Detomatix Cartridge - 31 Knockout Gas Grenades - 18 Plasma Fire Grenades - 12 Stealth Weapons No-Slip Shoes - 79 Agent ID Card - 72 EMP Flashlight - 46 Chameleon Kit - 44 Smuggler's Satchel - 36 Thermal Chameleon Glasses - 31 Chameleon Sec HUD - 27 Chameleon Projector - 25 DNA Scrambler - 21 Chameleon Flag/Camera Bug - 17 (Each) Devices & Tools (& Spacesuits for some reason) Cryptographic Sequencer (EMAG) - 400 Syndicate Encryption Key - 216 Advanced Pinpointer - 80 Access Tuner - 43 Fully-Loaded Toolbox - 41 AI Detector - 38 Blood-Red Hardsuit - 35 Hacked AI Upload Board - 34 Black and Red Spacesuit - 25 Syndicate Surgery Duffelbag - 18 Implants Adrenal Implant - 151 Storage Implant - 145 Mindslave Implant - 61 Freedom Implant - 38 Uplink Implant - 9 Badassery Briefcase Full of Cash - 19 Syndicate Balloon - 11 Syndicate Smokes - 5 Plastic Bag - 5 Syndicate Cards - 3 Bundles and TC Surplus Crate (+Super) - 73 Raw TC - 67 5 Raw TC - 61 Syndicate Bundle - 49 20 Raw TC - 31 Nuke Ops Equipment (Excludes Ammo) Shielded Hardsuit - 56 Xray Implant - 26 CNS Rebooter Implant - 24 Elite Syndicate Hardsuit - 23 Blood Red Magboots - 20 Microbomb Implant - 18 L6 SAW Machine Gun & Thermal Implant - 15 (Each) M90 Carbine & Sniper Rifle & Viscerator Grenade - 14 (Each) Energy Shield - 13 Grenadier's Belt & Medibeam Gun - 11 (Each)

When you get to be the unholy combo - A vampire and a changeling at the same time: Also that action bar did prove to be a hindrance when trying to look up...

Damn, reaper sure is casual when directing his cultist minions these days -

When the stars align on a surplus crate...

I was chosen to cleanse the station of all Vampire corruption on this recent shift. Suffice to say, the rapid holy fists of justice helped me to slay 3 vampires so that they may never harm the crew ever again! (The other 2 died in prison):

This is more of a gameplay-based reasoning for Nuke Ops being restricted to humans-only. As with BeanOS's list above, many of the races have specific disadvantages which can cause them to hinder the Nuke Ops team if someone were to use them. Some examples of this are; IPCs due to instantly dying from EMP which makes armor near useless for them, Vox due to the increased brute damage and bonus chance for them to get broken bones and Slime people due to them leaking water onto floor tiles when bleeding, which will slip up their team-mates if they do not have no-slip protection of some sort. Humans don't have any kind of racial advantage/disadvantage - which is great for Nuke Ops since it means they don't need to pick or avoid certain kinds of Nuke Ops gear to work around their team. We did have a PR made to allow players to pick a race of their choice rather than playing human only, but this was rejected for the reasoning above - https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/10537.

As the station is slowly devoured by a blob and command scramble to arm the Nuke - A syndicate agent, his holoparasite and some dead prisoner they found slowly wait for the big fireworks show in space.