flimflamm

I'm actually interested to explore how exactly the behavior does change, and perhaps why. One possible upshot of this is that the problematic tendencies of larger groups of the same species can be more directly understood, addressed, and corrected. Gonna have to disagree here Humans have been giving groups of things collective nouns since time immemorial, including themselves! Convents, collectives, parliaments, packs, bands, battalions, armies, assemblies, gangs, and yes, groups!

Meta-buddying perhaps, but given that the race affinity changes every shift identities would naturally be obscured. Additionally, it will likely be players in the know who are actually participating, especially when it comes to karma species, so we can at least hope for some modicum of decency

What & How: An OOC button called "Shift Race Affinity" (or something like that) which when pressed reveals the name of a single alien species that was randomly (or sequentially) selected at the round start. Players who press this button will be given an automatic message revealing the racial affinity for the current round, and if they have that species available can of their own volition choose to play as that race (or not), knowing that there's a chance that a greater than average number of players may have also selected to play as that race for that shift. Why: The average spread of racial demographics each shift is too static and the culture and personality traits of each race are oft unexplored. By stimulating specific race populations in this way each shift, racially aligned group dynamics gain traction and specificity, and the mechanics, personality traits and culture of the inflated race will more or less have a spotlight put on them in a given shift. I am particularly interested to know how larger groups of specific aliens will tend to behave and what knock-on effects this could have on actual gameplay. For instance, what tends to happen when the IPC population reaches a critical mass? How would a thicket of Diona affect normal work flow of the station? What happens if a critical sub-population of Vox (on a vox affinity shift) are chosen as starting cultists? Vox cult? I don't know a whole lot about alien cultures and personality traits beyond a few races, but I would like to know, and really that's one of the main benefits of this sort of change. Not only does this incentivize (in the name of comradery) playing new characters and new races, including the less popular ones, it also will function as a mechanism for everyone to actually gain significant knowledge about them. Working in med-bay and having a sudden influx of Vox casualties for instance could be very educational regarding Vox physiology. Having a Plasma person laden command staff is sure to lean you something about their culture. Ever wonder which race fosters the highest degrees of moral bankruptcy (other than human of course)? Well you might just find out when the Vulpkanin (hint) security force shows up at your airlock. Furthermore, we will finally be able to figure out the proper nouns for groups of aliens: A "Skulk" of Vulpkanin? A "Volt" of Vox? A "Murmuration" of Greys? A "Cloud" of Plasma People? A "Colony" of Kidan? An "Ambush" of Tajaran? A "Swarm" of Slime People? A "Float of Unathi? A "Bask" of Drask? A "Rhumba" of Skrell? An "Assembly" of IPC? A "Posy" of Diona? We have all kinds of deep race lore but no great way to explore them in a more communal way. Thoughts?

Here is roughly what the edited newscaster looks like (made text white and photo's colored) http://i.imgur.com/JIldy0R.gif

So I re-sprited the newscasters (very simply and for the sake of being more visible), but I'm hesitant to attempt to make a PR because i don't want to mess it up. The path of the relevant sprite file is Paradise / icons / obj / terminals.dmi The sprite file is uploaded and attached to this post. I would appreciate it if someone could make a PR and have it reviewed or otherwise clarify the process of doing so for me. I created a fork of the main paradise repository. At this point to I modify my repository to contain my altered sprite and then make the PR by comparing the paradise repo to my forked repo? I would upload samples but since they are animated sprites you kinda need to view the file to see them.

People would probably abuse that by communicating on news channels when the coms network goes down, but possibly a purchasable PDA cartridge could give newscaster access. It would also make newspapers and newscasters obsolete. Oh. I didn't mean pdas should be able to be used as newscasters. Just reading things, not submitting or creating news. You'd still need to use a newscaster to submit stories and stuff. Yea that would help, but there still might be a lingering issue. When the coms go down the newscasters still work because they have their own network. Someone could upload a news story from a newscaster as soon as the coms go down, informing them of exactly who or what took them down. For instance if nuclear ops take out the coms satellite only to have their position constantly published by a journalist then the whole point of taking out the coms satellite is somewhat defeated. This would also defeat the purpose of newspapers. Maybe we could have a new item created called something like "digital newspaper" which itself functions as a mobile newscaster reading device. There are really a lot of options

I was making newspapers the other day and found them to be wanting. They have a dismal sprite and you are forced to include the standard RNG news, such that the player created news gets shunted to the third page. If the RNG news was deleted then two player feeds could go onto a single paper in addition to station announcements rather than just one. If a more visually appealing sprite were created (instead of shades of grey, white and black with a color headline or logo), then people might actually spot it as something possibly interesting to examine.

That is a good idea but might not be that impactful on how well journalism can be carried out. Perhaps if a journalist role were created their job objective could be to acquire a certain number of views on one of their channel feeds.

People would probably abuse that by communicating on news channels when the coms network goes down, but possibly a purchasable PDA cartridge could give newscaster access. It would also make newspapers and newscasters obsolete.

So I spent some time learning about repositories and branches and PR's and merges, but when the time finally came it turned out that Aurorablade already created a brand new cult communion ability which I think is now usable for all cult varieties (if indeed there is any variety yet). It's really quite the good ability.

To be honest since I've never done any coding in SS13 I was a bit weary of actually throwing novice code onto the github. will make a submission though since that seems the logical next step. I did not create the "Cult Viewpoint" no. In order to make this code I hobbled it together from the communication activation rune and the pray to nar'sie cult ability (I know how to code generally, just don't know the specifics of SS13 and it's language). One thing that strikes me off about it (and could use your input), perhaps the cult-viewpoint is related to ensuring that a cultist is near a rune before it activates?

If you truly put yourself on the front lines then there should be a pretty good chance of you being killed or captured and your news channel going dead. For instance, I was trying to get a photograph of a shadowling in maintenance which of course inexorably lead to me being a thrall. If I could have sent in a vidiographer and monitored his feed for good snap shots then between the two of us we could have done really solid and up to date reporting. Even if my camera man gets captured or killed, I would still get the most epic photographs unless the assailant turns off the camera. (anyone ever seen nightcrawler?) Like you I'm interested in publishing news while it's still new, and so toward that singular end a camera monitor would be absolutely perfect for getting snap shots for the more insignificant stories like what the chef is cooking, how RnD is doing, and how many people are dead in medbay. Enabling photos from video camera feeds would allow journalists to work together or for journalists to hire freelance vidiographers and really pump out a high volume of up to date and relevant news. If you can do a good job with no access, and old fashioned camera, and completely on your own, just imagine how much more epic you could make journalism if you had co-workers to pitch in. Ask yourself this question: after a long shift of news making, how much actual content have you produced? How long will it take a person to read through your entire news channel (on average?). Right now my news feeds run at about 1 - 2 minutes complete reading time; how about your feeds?. I would like that number to be higher (5 minutes of news from a 2 hour shift seems right to me). I will also say that after looking at the newscaster code, it seems like it is very sophisticated (thinking about my interactions with newscasters, the newscaster has zero lag and never bugs out; it's beautifully implemented). A heck of a lot of work went into the newscaster and it seems to be a serious chunk of code, so we really owe it to ourselves to make it as effective as possible.

Spent a few rounds *trying* to do hard information news (as opposed to very in-depth stories or periodicals) which consisted of me trying to get "scoops" and photographs to go along with them. The actual writing of the news comes quickly and easily to me, but the gathering of it not so straight forward. Running around the station with a digital camera so far has been my main method of gathering information and photos, and it works, but it is a lot of work. I found out that the detectives camera monitor has special ID-free access to all or most cameras. By convincing them to let me in to use it, I was able to collect photographs much more easily. I also learned that live video camera feeds (entertainment monitors) produces only an all black photograph if you try to take photos off of them. A team of two or three newsmen could really pump out a lot of stories if one pressman with a video camera could act as a mobile and live photo gathering unit while the other two monitor feeds, take photos from them, and produce the stories. During a nuclear invasion I was trying to get photographs of the nukies, and while I managed to get several perfectly framed photos several times it cost me quit a bit in damage. If I had access to the detectives camera feed, or could have taken pictures from the guy who decided to "live stream the invasion" with a video camera, then I could have given a steady stream of updates on the operatives and he would not have died in vain. Thinking about how most nuclear invasions feel for average crew, having a constant stream of news updates with photos would really make you feel immersed and actually be useful information. Here are the consolidated suggestions that I've now compiled in the interest of journalism - Create a "journalist" role or perhaps rework the library role by adding additional slots and "reporter" titles. - Give the library a duplicate of the detectives camera monitor, and place it behind a door secured with librarian ID access privileges - Give the library an entertainment monitor to go with the camera monitor - Enable or fix photographs being taken from the entertainment monitor console (live video camera broadcasts) - Re-sprite the newscaster to look something similar to the alert monitor (I.E flashing red or blue bold "NEWS" logo, possibly flashing when new content is available) -Get rid of the RNG news because I'm fairly certain nobody reads it and that many consider it so irrelevant that it actually is un-immersive. They distract from real news. - Add a "Header" field while submitting news stories so that individual articles can be more properly titled.

UPDATE!!!!! I don't know if my suggestion triggered someone or if this was already in the works, but I was incredibly lucky and was selected to play as !!NEW CULT!! https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4392. Aside from a slew of alterations made to cult magic, we were also given an innate communion ability which allows cult to communicate at will! For most of the round the cultists were still getting a grasp of the new ritual names and the new magical effects, but even given that setback the communion ability allowed us to organize and mobilize with fairly effective teamwork. (we still lost though heh) Rather than feeling like a lone magician (hard to communicate with other cultists, and also not want to because of widespread incompetence),you actually feel like a member of something; a real cultist! We bungled all our attempts at getting constructs, but in addition to this wonderful change a whole new cultist end-game now exists in the form of new constructs, cultist machines like healing pylons, gear manufacturing forges, and item sharpening altars. Summoning nar'sie is now an unlockable or last resort objective rather than an RNG one. They are now given objectives like to acquire a certain number of followers or to massacre a certain number of crew (aka, make constructs), and finally to hijack the shuttle! It was only one round and there were a few bugs, but it was really joyful and a lot of work and thought went into it. I really cannot wait to try it out again and I'm sure that cult is going to be everyone's favorite round once it's implemented.

It' awesome that cameras function over camera monitors! Didn't know! As far as giving a "journalist" role access to a "press vest" goes: yes! I would also give them access to the first security doors and the ability to pass police tape (maybe with something we could call a "press pass"?). Additional things like access to security and medical records could help too! To be honest though I truly think the main things holding news back are the fact that the newscasters A, look uninteresting and plain, and B, because they're always yelling about random fake news. We really need to put an end to all this fake news on the station and get a newscaster that actually pulls in readers!

Sometimes while cloistered in whichever department reading well written news feeds can be entertaining, informative, and immersive, but the amount of work that it can take to pull it off makes it too infrequent an occurance. Here are some suggestions of possible alterations that could make journalism great: - Change newscaster sprites to something that advertises "NEWS" rather than the dull green sprite -If possible, have the newscaster sprite flash depending on the available news feeds (to indicate existent content) -Get rid of the RNG news feeds which detract from the existence of player made news -Increase the prevalence of "entertainment monitors" and give them a more alluring (or a "now broadcasting") sprite (to encourage live broadcasting). Alternatively, combine entertainment monitors into an all in one newscaster. If there is a lot of interest in journalism, then perhaps a new role could be created ("Press") and extra journalism facilitating mechanics could be implemented. For instance (and this might be OP), the press could be given access to a security camera monitor console (with access to some but not all cameras) and additionally the monitor console could be given the power to take photographs. Other things, like some way to eaves drop on security channels could also be given in order to facilitate actual news production. On one hand keeping the crew informed through news is inherently immersive, and sometimes very entertaining depending on the quality of the content. But on the other hand if the journalists can spy too easily the, antagonists might wind up being caught too easily and too frequently. Ideally I would like to see several journalist or press role slots available so that on larger shifts an actual news team could swing into operation. If journalists could break evidence based (photographs, testimony, etc...) stories even ahead of security (or before security or command is willing to tell the station), then they would serve a pretty interesting function shift to shift. Thoughts?

The potential impact of the changes I'm about to suggest could be vast, but keep in mind any specific changes I propose will be hypothetical examples. The focus of my suggestion is a specific principle which I think is at core of how to increase diversity between races. The most unique humanoid race is by far the IPC due to the way they take damage, they way they get repaired, and the way they get revived. Diona are a possibly distant second because of their healing and damage system. Every other race is basically just a slight variation of the same meat sack that requires defib, cloning, or SR, and mostly or completely standard medicines. These mechanics are by far what make IPC and Diona stand out as different than other races, and so where appropriate these mechancis should be modified as much as possible for other applicable races (with race physiology and balance in mind) in order to better achieve diversity. As as aside, also keep in mind that by altering the mechanic required for revival (defib, cloning, and SR), the other damage and healing mechanics can be balanced based on whether or not reviving is made easier or more difficult by a given change. Human, Vulpkanin, Tajaran, Unathi, Vox, and perhaps Skrell & Grey are all familiar carbon based mammalian/lizard life not atypical of what we might find on earth. Plasmaman, Kidan, Slime people and Drask however are all drastically physiologically different than the other races, which means contextually there is a lot of room for believable and creative healing/damage/revival mechanics. Using slime people as an example, they are fairly robust when compared with the other races, but being unclonable makes them more difficult to revive (hard to kill, hard to revive compared to IPC being easy to kill and easy to revive). If we did things like make synthflesh not work on them (given they are water) and replaced it with a different harder to get substance that does the same thing for slimes, then we could give slimes an additional and unique revival mechanic that makes them inherently easier to revive (such as removing their core and injecting it with plasma dust (note: this is how grey slimes are created from slime cores)). Alternatively if healing mechanics are altered such that slimes can heal more easily, like regenerating broken bones at the cost of hunger bar, then we could drop defibbing on slimes, or core transfers, or SR, or all three, and possibly replace them with an inherently more convoluted process of revival. Personally I am for tying bone regeneration to the hunger bar and an increase in the hunger cost: this will make slime people ravenously hungry all the time just as they are in their natural environment: the xenobiologist's cell. Additionally we could cross off all traditional brute and burn healing chemicals (save things like omnizine) from functioning on slimes and make them also use their hunger bar to heal brute and burn. Other races I am not super familiar with in terms of capabilities and balance, but for Drask, putting them in a freezing temperature environment and defibbing them would be appropriate as a revival mechanic. For plasma people, eating plasma directly could act like a medicine of balancable strength, and in order to revive them some sort of fire or plasma related mechanic (like a phoenix?) could be contrived. Kidan are bugs, bugs lay eggs. Maybe they could have an ability to start gestating an egg (which could require them to fulfill certain conditions while gestating or have drawbacks like a need for consuming sugar, obesity, and or other things, and also take a very long period of time to complete, at which point they could lay an egg which roughly functions like an autocloner, rebirthing them into a new body if they should die (note the egg structure should be layed in a safe place lest it be destroyed). This could come at the cost of being unclonable and other nerfs, but something drastically different like this is exactly the sort of thing that would really make the races feel actually unique. There is potential for damage/healing/revival changes for the other races too, I'm just not creative enough to pick out the really good ideas from the many possibilities that changing these mechanics opens up. Hopefully this direction proves useful or insightful even though actually balancing these sorts of changes could prove too challenging.

It's deadlier than an esword. Give a tater version option to chaplains make it do massive brute like it does currently and or just nerf the brute.

A bloated egg sac organ is really the only troublesome one, which would be a 1/7 or 1/8 chance to get the queen from RNg, and then it still needs to be looted in space, brought back to station, and surgery done. I figured this would be so low a chance that it would not cause issues.

My suggestion is to pick a currently boring piece of space debris somewhere and to add an actual dead xeno corpse. Instead of it being the same corpse everytime, it should be randomized to be any corpse from beginning larva to xeno queen. The alien will be dead so there's almost no chance of a xeno round being triggered as a result, certainly less than currently exists, but what it does do is offer an interesting and sciency piece of space loot for those with refined taste. Whaddyas think?

Nothing is to stop them; I can already get all the runes within the first twenty minutes. If I have two words to start with then it takes me only about 15 minutes, with 3 words even less time. Then i just tell everyone. The trouble is not usually getting the words, but rather having people actually know how to use the words once they're gotten. Although, at the beginning of the round i like to spend time preparing for my future cult plans, which entails running around a fair bit, which means I can either prepare and then do research (putting all words at around 35 minutes) or I can instantly use coms runes or find a second cultist for their word and start doing research (putting words at around 15 minutes) if the other cultists reply quickly that is. I would spend much more time giving explicit instructions and explanations of cult magic to fellow cultists than I would getting them to tell me their words and helping in research. P.S: the starting talisman can already produce communicate runes, which achieves this function. And yet, cult still consistently under perform. I think the only thing that has caused cult to last this long in the rotation is that summoning nar'sie is actually achievable and acts like a station nuke to end the round. With cult communicate, summoning nar'sie could either be made more difficult as a balance, be made less impactful, or be exchanged for generally more ambitious objectives like station wide dominance or shuttle hijacking, or multiple sacrifices instead of just one. Cult CAN grow exponentially, but it can also grow in a linear fashion: when I'm the only one converting. Unless I were to meta my way into converting really capable cultists, there's no guarantee at all of exponential growth. Admittedly, 3 cultists vs 120 crew have their future balanced on the edge of a knife at the beginning of the round. Under normal circumstances I never see these cults be successful other than summoning nar'sie and ending the round ( I don't like the Narsie mechanic). Again here I think the real crux is competency. Given the increased difficulties 40 additional crew members brings with it, having a few extra starting cultists will increase the odds of a competent cultist, and having a coms network would enable them to organize such that no cultist bungles early on. When you think about it enabling a coms network inherent to cultists is one of the smallest mechanical changes that we could possibly make to them. I don't disagree that it is a buff because of the ramifications to organization and success it will have, but I also feel it is a strong change because the communication will open up possibility and dynamism to the cult. In the end all I want to see are interesting rounds. Right now everyone unanimously agrees cult is problematic because it consistently fails to produce interesting rounds. IT CAN produce interesting rounds, but it takes interesting cultists, and developing cult skill is one of the more tedious curves to climb. I mean, I can make a giant stack of coms talismans no problem, I can even hand them out to every cultist and force them to use them. I could go out of my way to put stacks of coms talismans into folders and distribute those so that important cultists can actually communicate efficiently, but that eats up most of my round, and out of the pool of all players signed up to be selected as cultists, most of them have probably never even attempted to do cult research before, let alone use advanced rune magic. The other antag groups which have coms are: syndicate, blob, changeling, S-ling, abductor, trader/raider, xeno, all strike teams, and probably more that I'm forgetting. Would it really be so powerful to give cult a coms network relative to the aforementioned antag groups?

Yea. I was reading the code and it turns out the Mask has a lot of abilities I've never seen before, like giving special names to acolytes. I've always wanted to mask but I feel like unless I put in the hard work as a cultist then it will all be futile. A high energy and knowledgeable mask really could make a big difference though

So I think that I've correctly modified the "pray to narsie" ability in order to create a "commune" cult ability that should function more or less like a communicate rune would, just without any actual runes. Here is the original code of the "pray to nar'sie" cult ability: As far as I can tell all this ability actually does is make a "cult_log" under "pray" (I'm guessing these are related to actual logs) and then delivers the pray message to all spirits, which I'm guessing includes the mask? Regardless, I've left those parts intact, and simply added a slightly modified line stolen directly from the communicate rune proc which can be found here: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradis ... es.dm#L525 Here is the modified code with the alterations highlighted in red: Basically I added the line that I believe checks to see if players are not cult in order determine whether or not they will recieve the message, along with renaming the ability itself along with the tag-lines that seem to go into the logs. Of course this is my first attempt at coding in SS13 so there's a hgh probability that I'm missing one or multiple things in order to have this work. I may try and figure out how to test it, but if any coders read this could you please point out my errors? Thanks!

Add maintenance contraband. Is xenoarch working BTW?

I was thinking about the ramifications that this might have. Summon cultist is a super powerful spell but seldom actually used. Since cultists cannot scream for help when captured to their fellow cultists there's a good chance they get deconverted before the cult can get around to freeing and summoning them. A really competent mask would order three cultists to always stay put in a remote base somewhere and give them the names of any cultists in need of rescue, but it's a lot of work for one ghost to manage. Organizing covert conversion attacks becomes easier. People who are good at converting can be given information on vulnerable targets, etc... More early conversion would be enabled by an inherent coms network Combating security in force becomes much easier, as now all cultists can be made aware of significant security movements, on the fly, and can therefore actually coordinate against them. It's actually entirely possible that this change will make cult OP. Interesting to think though, that changing nothing to the mechanics of cult magic and instead just giving them communication could make them decidedly OP (only one way to find out). Perhaps this is due to some intrinsic existing broken-ness of cult as they are. Cultists can either be expert and OP or novice and complete failures. As it stands now most cultists tend to be complete failures, and so we do not perceive cult to be OP overall. Maybe giving coms will make cult magic too easy to use for noobs and therefore OP overall, but there's only one way to find out! I really hope that this change would be easy enough code wise that one of the saint-like coders has the time to give it a shot. P.S: If any coder has interest in this, I reckon the simplest way to do this would be to take the existing "pray to narsie" cult ability and change the effect to produce whatever the effect of the communication rune is. The coms rune can just stay as it is and be superfluous. P.P.S: Imma probably scour the github and see how it looks