quintaessentia

While i appreciate your enthusiasm about necaladun's suggestion and commitment towards the improvement of IPC, please start a seperate suggestion if you want to discuss further oil tanks on station. This suggestion started nearly three and a half months ago and had its last post before today was made nearly three months ago in addition of it originally not being about oil tanks. Everyone stated their opinion and reasonable suggestions were made, and for my part it also changed my opinion on the whole matter. So while this may sound cynical or whatever a proper adjective to describe it is, it would be much more beneficial to have a seperate suggestion discussing it, as it would avoid confusion and raise the possability of an actual change being made.

I am kind of conflicted on this one, Zeke's expression is so genuinely happy (and a bit innocent) warming my heart and making me smile, but on the other side there are these suggestive symbols..., i am just unsure what to feel. The seashell buildings are my faveroite of your concepts so far, they look ancient and modern at the same time and fit perfectly into the theme of an underwater city.

You seem to have descended into the deepest depths of hallownest. Exploring these old ruins is a real joy and i love the melancholic atmosphere, one experiences while stumbling through this fallen kingdom. Nice attention to detail by the way, with the moth wings, kings brand and charm.

So, @John_bigless said he wanted his character drawn. As we knew us for some time, I just asked him if he would be willing to give me this opportunity. With the input of him i didn't have to think too much about the setting and details and it was therefore overall fairly relaxing. I am more than happy that i've done this and he seems to be pleased with the result too. Nathan chilling at home with a can of synthanol.

A chain of improbable events lead me to this point, where i am actually drawing something and posting it in this threat. I got no fancy programs or tools to make anything digital (except if you count a mouse and paint into this category), nor the skill required to do so. All i got are some pens and pieces of paper, so this thread will only include hand drawn art garbage. I only started to try the day before yesterday to seriously draw, so please don't hit me if i am not able to get up to the Graphics Sections standards. Without further ado i present to you my first drawing of a humanoid person: Just James in his typical outfit. (He is an IPC and therefore allowed to only have four fingers, while hiding one of his hands in a pocket.) Here i tried to draw something more exciting than the standard front perspective, however something seems off about this one and i don't know what it is. I am still learning how to actually portrait certain three dimensional things in a two dimensional fashion (how to draw), therefore i would appreciate any kind of feedback on how to improve my work. Thank you for your attention required to read this far.

Some possible location i can think of are Electrical Maint and Tech Storage. Personally i would also like a publicly accessible tank, somewhere near arrivals, but i am not sure how highly flammable oil is, along with welding fuel this could prove to be a problem. Now, IPC players could possibly get some kind of container to transport the oil with them, or to even consume it, coming back to the emergency box. I am pretty sure that discussing oil tanks goes beyond the scope of this suggestion, so i may be tempted to make a new suggestion on how to fix the problem with IPC and oil.

One could still smash the girder with the emergency welding tool, which would take, along with removing the outer plating, about 70 seconds. Which is probably the same time it would take one to run all the way to the YouTool near arrivals and back from engineering, along with using a crowbar/ wrench to get through the wall instead of smashing it to debris.

It may not save anyones live, but will make some players rounds more relaxed. IPC players which joined late wouldn't have to worry about getting a welding tool and IPC are so fragile and their limbs so easily decapitated, that every little damage could decide wether one looses one's last arm while taking brute damage in crit or not. I totally agree with Eight, and as i already stated, and will probably need to again, it was about the oil in the first place and the rest just a side idea. Besides those two aspects i can agree with you on your other arguments. Some kind of emergency injectore would be great, however i heard the code for IPC is already 'noodles'/ a 'snowflake' code and this could just make things worse. On the part with the brute and burn packs i was certainly wrong, i didn't seriously play any organics for half a year now, making me not better than people arguing against IPC getting buffed without having ever played them.

I don't think it would be the same, and i got a number of reasons on why i think so: 1. Burn packs have a lot more healing potential for organics then 15 cable coils have for IPC. 2. While emergency welding tools can be easily refilled, they are only able to contain 10u of fuel at once, making the brute pack in emergencies more useful (it is called emergency box). 3. Brute and burn packs can be instantly applied, making it possible for you to heal faster than an IPC and making you able to do it while in motion. 4. IPC take 50% more brute and burn damage. 5. To not repeat myself on the oil, here you go: 6. Organics can easily heal the same brute and burn damage an IPC can with an emergency welding tool and 15 cable coils by eating something [I am not too sure about that one, correct me if i am wrong].

Yeah, that's more efficient, i got it in a similiare fashion, but a bit more distributed on each of the eight segments. You forgot the Machine Board (MRSPACMAN-type Generator) by the way.

This suggestion was never about welding tools and cable coils in the first place, the original thought was to give every IPC a bit of oil. I just wrote it down as a side idea, a possibility. Furthermore as already stated, those two are so easily acquired, it doesn't matter if they would be added or not. In my opinion 50 to 100u of oil, or even less, are not game changing at all, as the moment an IPC really needs oil is when they can't move a finger anymore. Furthermore there is only one oil tank on the whole station and IPC don't regenerate blood in comparison to most other races. Squishes being the only exception i can think of, but how many water tanks are there, more than twenty? Oil is next to EMPs the greatest weakness to IPC, and the only way to compensate for it is to use this one tank in robotics, which blows up regularly, or to hope someone with access to chem dispensers is nice enough to make you some oil, in small quantities of course.

As the title already states, i want to suggest customized starter kits (those boxes everyone starts out with) for IPC, like Vox and Plasmamen have. Those would contain instead of the small oxygen tank and breathing mask an oil can, containing 50 to 100u of oil. This would fix some problems with the IPC race in general, would take little coding (could be just these red oil containing vessels in robotics) and would only make sense from a lore perspective. Also an emergency welding tool and a cable coil could be possible, but those two, or better, are so easily acquired that it doesn't really matter. The glowsticks should just stay for the hell of it, even though they are pretty useless as fast as they expire, as well as the injectors, for those flimsy organics.

Normally such stories start like any other shift, not this one however. As James, who served the NSS Cyberiad once again as the Research Director, went to his closet to get the science door remote he noticed something odd. Besides the science SoP was also a copy of Space Law. As he despites these regulations known as Space Law, because of its often miss interpretation and abuse, he took it and threw it in the nearest disposal bin he could find, after making a comment to this on the command channel. Sadly as he stepped through the airlock into the science hallway he noticed something that displeased him even more. Whole science was filled with Space Law books. As any sane person, in his mind, would have acted, he took all of them and threw them into disposals, complaining over and over about this incident over all channels avaiable to him. After other people noticed this in their respective departments too, James was already on the move. With a trusty science closet and a lot of courage he made it his divine mission to eliminate as many copies as possible. But not everyone was pleased by this..... After he piled all books of Space law he could find before science, he went back to check on his coworkers. There it struck him, that this won't be as easy as he first thought. They were back... no, even worse... it were more! Three of them covered his whole front desk. Going on with his work one of them came to live. While getting hurt badly he managed to close the airlock behind him before running to the opposite wall to lean against it, recovering from this incident. While he repaired his dents the book kept smashing against the window of his office, after it eventually realized this had no sense it vanished. Collecting the rest of the new series of Space Law and piling them also on the pile the furious copy came back and took the locker with most of the other books. It must have looked silly as a copy of Space Law dragging a closet was chased by a man, capable enough to be promoted to a head. What followed was a bloody, well no one actually bleeded (figures) fist fight between the book and the Research Director, ending before the office of the Internal Afairs Agents, two of which sitting in the office watching this (non) epic battle come to its climax. After the unrobust Research Director was nearly beaten to death by this bundle of paper, the IAAs came out of their office and tamed the beast, holding it as a pet afterwards. As James, happy with his accomplishment, took the rest of the books back to science to burn them all, the IAAs mentioned over comms that the paper bundle crawled into a vent (explaining the events of earlier too),never to be seen again by James. Coming back into science one of his coworkers seemed upset or excited about something. They told James they had tried to reach him over the science channel, which he didn't notice in the middle of the fight. Dragging him into the science hallway, James set priotities. First he burned the already gathered books, before taking a closet the collect the books............... covering each square meter of the Research Directors office. [I wished i had made a screenshot to have evidence for this. If you have pictures of any of the events mentioned in this story, please feel free to post them here.] The rest of science was also refilled with the newest copies of Space Law, so James brought them all to sci-chem. Hearing screams near science, the Research Director decided to investigate those further. With nothing more equipped then a lit experimental welding tool, he made his way into science maintenance following a blood trail to the source of the scream, finding a dead Security Officer. Soon after his discovery, another one came to the corpse, overwhelmed with the situation James managed nothing more then to point energetic to the disfigured corpse. The officier staying calm opened a closed closet right next to the victim, revealing a human with brown or black hair and beard. This person immediately stunbatoned the Officer dropping the stun baton and carrying the stunned officier away. James was not sure why this men ignored him, maybe it was because he was in the dark and was therefore not seen (he wore a night vision security HUD) or for whatever reason, but it didn't matter to him at this moment. He just followed his instincts, leading to one of the rare occasions where he actually did something right. James grabbed the stun baton, activated it, ran after the mysterious person and stunned him, leading to him falling on the ground. Probably hitting him more then necessary, he kept him on the ground till the Officer was able to handle the offender herself. Trying to get this changeling, as it turned out, cremated, he escaped more then once. The first time James being able to help again, the other time the changeling managing to bring James with two swift hits of his armblade on the ground and with another two managing to behead him. Luckily IPC are easily repaired and it so only took thirty minutes to get James to function normally again. The rest of the space law copies he gathered were destryoed by him with foam acid. Back on his own feet the Research Director found a cortical borer under a table, dragging it first to the bridge, where a Cyborg and the HoS attacked the borer repeatedly, which hid under the reinforced tables and afterwards to his office, which was luckily not filled to the brim again. Realizing the borer was not even there save, after the cyborg tried attacking it again, James let it go. Later on the transfer shuttle he thought to see the same quitter looking up to him while he sat in his green comfy chair. Then it was stomped to death.

I just wanted to give some examples on the the mechanics of an IPC Dinarzad explained, just for the sake of making them more understandable, and there typicall effects on a standard round to non-IPC players and to give those arguements more emphasis. I am protected from the cold and don't have to drink orange juice. Yeah! Now really quick an comment on comms to this level 7 biohazard: J.4M. E. E.2 (Scientist) says, "Not my problem." I don't play geneticist as it's in my opinion the most boring job anyway and because this game mechanic was taken from me and so can't play this role effeciently. And seriously, when was the last time you had to stick with a dissabilty from genetics that wasnt fixed in five minutes?! No telecineses, no hulk, no chameleon, none! Taking the possability for a player to enjoy one of the common accesable game mechanics just because they choose to play a certain game style and giving them no substitute is a sign of bad game design. No annoying messages in the chat box. I don't collapse if my arm is cut off, but if it doesn't only affected the arm i am still on the ground due to my legs popping of too. I don't need to prepare myself for a space flight as much and i am always prepared if i should get near a breach, atleast partially. I love chemistry, it is my faveriote system in the game. My faveriote chem? Stable mutagene, the perfect disguise chem. But i will never be able to use it again as long as i am a loyal IPC player. But you can change your appereance as IPC too. Well, yes. I just need to debrain another IPC (you will need a good reasons to convince the admins to allow you to ruin another players round) or build an IRC and then get someone to put your brain in them. (I am still working on finding out what differenciates an IPC from an IRC, so the IRC may not be possible without a person you can trust or a loyal servant, as you still need to get on the shuttle or whatever your objective is) But i am getting of the subject here. The effects it has on one: no capulettium plus, no adrenalin. no fliptonium, no easily made drugs, no morphine, no strange reagent, no chems to skip normally required surgery (there is actually Liquid Solder, but for genetic damage its true), no pills, no hairgronium, no easy whole body affecting healing and no stable mutagene! But look at the positive sides: nobody will poisen you and knock you out with chems! How many chemicals actually can knock you out that don't affect IPCs? Seven, three of which are only accesable by traitors, one only knocks you out after 2 minutes and half of the recipees to them are not easily made. Furthermore good luck injecting someone, if someone wears an armor or hardsuit you have lost anyways (and i believe there are multiple species immune to those too). I don't need to go into maints if the station passes through a radiation field. You and a greytide ran into each other and pushed each other back and forth, till he decided to hit you half a dozen time with his bare fists into your chest? He is after ten minutes (including processing) free again, while you are waiting since twenty minutes for the roboticists to figure out how nanopaste or the simpliest surgery ingame works. First of all you need to have these tools to make the magic work. Then you need to select every single body part to repair it (if your whole body is effected and you are efficient you will 'only' have to select only 5 then 11). If your arms are heavily damaged you will drop those tools during the procedure too. Helpful if you are a perfectionist and can't see this slightly yellow arm on your doll after somebody threw something accedantily at you. No need for a welding mask or goggles, you still get blinded though. This arguement is one of the reasons why it takes so long to repair a dead IPC. You can't put them back on yourself, so you need somebody to do it for you. However as only 2/3 of the crew know that this is a thing and only 2/3 of these 2/3 know that tables are enough for it: Good luck. Shot by the bartender with beanslugs? Some styptic powder and you are fine again. While as an IPC you try to find your head while stumbling blind along the tables. Incurse stamina damage if you dont have enough. There is only one tank on the whole station. One could make more with chemistry. Nothing to really add, negates the statement with repairing yourself. Also means you can't make spacewalks combined with the needed selections of the affected body part. It just doesnt heal enough and you need to select all body parts. A major con that is too add. IPCs actually take extra damage while in crit, meaning it takes longer and you may loose the nearly dead IPC again. Another factor causing the time consumption it takes to bring a dead IPC back from the dead. Partially a con. Is disturbing if you repair yourself as stated before, however just fixing the damage on the arm will stop it from malfunctioning. If you plan on playing as an IPC expect to get your round ruined every second. You know how many possabilities there are to cause an EMP?! Yellow slime core Chemistry (really easy to make too) Being a cultist (if many are involved it could affect nearly the whole station) Being a revenant (Malfunction ability i think it is) Traitor flashlight Traitor EMP grenade Traitor EMP implant Wizard EMP spell Changeling EMP screech Tell me if you got more. It is also fun if the roboticists forget that they need to put the sensors in your new head they made for you. Ignorance of non-IPC players about the mechanics of IPCs With that i mean being dragged to medbay, being put in certain machines to heal organics and being in the clonescanner for half an hour as IPC. Furthermore there are often new players playing roboticists as it is an easy job, interresting and because it doesnt leaves much room for improvment, causing experienced roboticists to not play this job so often. Another factor which causes IPCs to not be easily revived. As a organic 5 to 10 minutes or less if you are the only dead person. As an IPC 20 seconds to the rest of the round, with a tendency of 10 to 35 min with heavier injuries. With this i am getting of the topic again. IPCs have some interresting mechanics and are unique under all the races to play as, however they also loose many game mechanics. Here is a visuall demostration what IPC players loose when it comes to health ingame. And here what IPC players gain when it come to health ingame. Furthermore IPC players only get to enjoy 16 of the 18 available antags and loose a lot of they could end up with situation. The problem being there is no substitute for this. So why do i play IPCs then? It isn't about the game mechanics. I don't play IPCs to win. I play for the roleplay and IPCs are best suited for the personality i want to show ingame! However if i could loose the ability to enjoy the game, with the personality another role/species wouldn't allow me to play, any second, then this is unbalanced. Paradise is the perfect mix between RP and action they say. Where is the RP then if get instantly killed by an antag without even looking them in the eye?! You encourage RP, but yet where is this perfect mix you are talking about? Where is this balance every game should seek to have?! Space Station 13 was never and will never be a balanced game and we all kind of know that. It's the reasons there even are admins. But by the universe! This doesn't mean we should stop seeking perfectness. We should always try to get closer to it! One should never accept things like they are just because they are this way! And IPCs are currently the weakest species of all. If you never saw an EMP, play ten rounds as an IPC and you will see one. If you are arguing against the point this discussion wants to make and havn't played as an IPC yet, do it. One needs to experience it to truelly understand it, as it is with most things. I don't want and will never accept this fact, that EMPs, Ions and what not can instantly kill you as an IPC. There aren't even real methods to negate this problem! The only one i know is hiding in a mech, but this won't prevent you from dying fairly long, as mechs are also vulnerable to Ions and EMPs! Instant kills shouldn't be possible without a lot of preparations and situational factors.

I would like to state, suggest and ask you one thing each. First of all, you are a much bigger nerd then i originally thought and i am a bigger nerd then i thought i would be for finding this. Furthermore i am flattered to have the longest text of all your personal relationsships, but i think he and him would fit better. And for the end what do you mean with this section of your Biography?