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Posted

Greetings everyone!
Recently i was thinking about karma unlocks and what else could we add to the game. While I understand that there are a lot of things which are
more important and have a higher priority, i decided it would not hurt to throw in my ideas, so here they are.
It was quiet a big list of ideas, however i cut the least interesting ones, because the list was too big, and left the best of what I have, and made it as short as possible.

First thing that comes to mind of everyone who thinks about new karma unlocks is fluff items.
I have one idea for that - Medal of loyalty. 3 verions - for 10 years, for 25 and for 50 years of service. I think it would be cool
to have each one being unlockable only if you have unlocked the previous one, so, if for example they cost like 5-10-20 karma, the 50 years medal 
would cost total of 35 karma, that way we wont see many of them around. I also imagine that if you add somehow a medal of loyalty to a specific character, that 
character would have his ingame crew record automatically updated to represent the fact that this person in fact is working for NT for over 10-25-50 years already.
18 years old catgirls with 50 years of NT work experience inbound

Lets not linger for a long time on fluff items and move forward to my first big idea - the karma locked borg module.

Spoiler

 

Karma locked borg module - Transcriber/archivarius/stenographer.

The idea behind this borg is simple. Its paperwork cyborg. But not just paperwork. Its a special NT manufactored cyborg that serves as a sort of a blackbox on station,
and also helps with paperwork. I will explain everything by talking about its tools:
1 - multicolor pen
2 - dispenser (like service borg one, but only paper and pens)
3 - magnetic gripper (can hold papers, stamps and pens)
4 - hand labeler
5 - universal recorder (saves the record to the harddrive)
6 - chameleon stamp (no syndi or CC)

Now the fun stuff
6 - Internal fax machine
7 - internal document editing device (with scanning and printing options)
8 - "harddrive"
9 - sign copy device

Those three work in tandem. The "harddrive" (i dont have a better name for it) is where all the documents are stored. This borg stores every document from security brigging records, every fax ever sent (unless it was sent to syndi fax machines),
every announcement ever made (AI, from announcement computer, from those gren things on the wall or Admin announcements), all the documents made by document editing device or documents scanned by it. 
Now, the document editing device can be used to create a paper you would normally create, but with the ability to edit or erase. After you create any document it is stored on a harddrive. Scanning tool just scans documents or photos, simple. Printer cant take
any document from the harddrive and print them.
Internal fax machine is like a normal fax, can send any document from the harddrive.
Sign copy device - when clicked on a person, the person is offered to add their sign to the cyborg database. Now the cyborg can use this person's sign on the documents.

This cyborg will be never linked to AI, never show up on a cyborg upload, it can be only locked or exploded from the cyborg console. It would have its own set of laws.
Basically, this type of cyborg function is: to help with paperwork. Create froms, do the paperwork for other people, help other bureaucrats. While it has access to private conversations, it should keep confedential and private things in secret from others,
unless it will help with catching a criminal or something. He also should encourage paperwork and transcrypt everything that happens on station.

While it can not be subverted by upload console, it still can be emagged. When emagged, borg gets this updates:
Fax becomes emagged fax.
Sign copy machine can now just scan the paper with sign to be able to copy it, without authorisation from a person.
Chameleon stamp gets CC and Syndicate options. 
Maybe add some new tool like poisoned pen knife.

I imagine it to look like this (rough sketches)
transcrypt-borgo.png

 

Now we move to another thing - secondary jobs.

Spoiler

 

Secondary jobs.
Ok, those are not like normal or karma jobs. Those dont show up on a list when you use ID computer or try to join the round. You get them as an addition to your regular job.
You can not get this secondary job by any means other than to have it active when you join round. Some sort of certificate is added to your inventory, which tells your name when examined and provides necessary access.
It will be easy to understand with examples i have:
1 - Fire safety officer.
Fire safety officer - is an additional responsiability you get along with imaginary addition to the paycheck. You are here as a normal crewmember, but has additional responsibility - to make sure station follows fire safety rules, like
all the fire safety closets are filled and no plamsa tankes are left insecured, etc.
We could probably add a small cabinet for them with paperwork tools and one or two sets of fire safety closet stuff, in case any requires replacement, or no cabinet at all. If they see any problems with fire safety, they should at first try
to fix the problem themselves, and if that didn't work, report to IAAs, Captain and NT Rep so they could take additional actions. 
Heads of Staff are probably excempt from it. Normally each department should have their own fire safety officer or two, including civillian fire safety officers, so you dont have to run around all station, but rather look over your own department.

2 - First Aid Expert.
You sart with a certificate and a some sort of first aid kit. Your job is, if you see anyone in critical condition, provide the help necessary to stop them from dying. So the first aid kit should contain some sort of emergency autoinjectors, not advanced burn and brute kits to heal someone who got a finger cut.
The thing is, you have given an oath of some sort, so you must provide help (or get brigged if you were the only one who can do it and didnt). Ofc it is hard to tell if the person is following the oath (i am not talking about antags ofc), so its basically an RP thing for yourslef. Also your certificate should
somehow give medbay external doors access, but no vendors access. Mebay should be probably excempt from this secondary job.

 

And the last thing is - new karma locked job.

Spoiler

 

Spiritualist.
A person with paranormal abilities to contact the dead.
Has civillian-level access and two unique things - ouija board and a special ability to "feel".
Ouija board is a device that can be placed on a floor or a table, and people on the next to it tiles can join the spiritual seance. Ouija board wont work without the spiritualist and without at least one additional person (except for chaplain, chaplain wont work).
Now, how the seance works. When after people join (like, by clikcing on a board) spiritualist can summon a ghost. Ghosts after that are offered to join the seance, like they are offerd to be the ghost of a chaplain sword or for a midround event. Only one ghost at a time can join it.
If no ghosts accept the offer, the spiritualist gets a notification that he doesn't feel any paranormal presence. Also the board can not be lighted up by electronic light sources. After the seance is over, or if the summon of ghost was unsuccesful, there is a cooldown for the next seance, to avoid the spam and to balance it.
Now, if a ghost is summoned, spiritualist can ask the question. Anyone around can suggest the question, but spiritualist types the question in a special box, so the ghost can know on which question to answer. After ghost gets the question he starts to answer it by selecting letters, yes/no and number buttons on a ouija
board interface. Only one button each, lets say, five seconds can be pressed, so you better keep those questions short and simple. When ghost presses the letter, ouija board announces it to everyone nearby it (*planchette moved to the letter H!*). If anyone who joined the seance leaves it, its stops. Seance is limited by time.
Now, with time limited seance and cooldown between each seance, (and also a delay before you can start your first seance, like 20 mins), i imagine there would be like 8-10 seances maximum during a shift, each with like 3-4 questions asked.
Delay is there to avoid spoiling blob and slings.
Antags could use spiritualist to know the location of their targets or security plans, security could use it to know about antags. Maybe your friend-coworker left to get some food and never returned (got killed by vamp) and you know if he is alright or not and where he is? Spiritualist can help you.
Also, ghosts are with no obligations to tell the truth. They can lie, they can tell the truth, they can hate the person who speaks to them, whey might love them. I think might be a cool feature.

Another thing that spiritualist have is the ability to feel. Its here to add some immersion to spiritualism gameplay. When something bad happens, like someone dies, cult completing objective or nuclear explosion being activated, with some chance about 20% they get a chat message, like *You suddenly feel a great sadness* or something.
Spiritualist can also have a deck of tarot cards, without any extra game mechanics.

I imagine them to look like this:

spiritualist.png

 

Here are my suggestions. I hope someone (especially coders and heads) likes them. You can post your suggestions or discuss mine.
P.S. Sorry for all the grammar mistakes.

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Posted

The spiritualist sounds really cool. I'm a bit concerned it could be abused for meta knowledge but as you said, the ghosts are under no obligation to tell the truth. But I think it has a lot of potential for some cool RP (and in my opinion karma jobs should be RP focused), I can just see a group of assistants and the spiritualist gathering in the library with the lights down low debating what they should ask the ghosts. Plus I don't know if it was intentional or not but the first thing I thought of when I saw your example picture was that they looked like Mulder and Scully ha ha. 

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Posted

Seems like you put a lot of thought into these, but I'm not sure they're a good idea.

 

Paperwork borg: That sounds like a lot of snowflakey code and effort, more than it may appear on first glance. I'd be surprised if a coder takes this. I'm also very unsure why it should be not linked to an AI, or why its laws should be unable to be changed with an upload console. Feels like snowflaking for the sake of snowflaking. Also, if people want paperwork they usually just go IAA. You're probably better off just letting pAIs edit documents and get a printer, if they don't have one already.

Fire safety: This will be like playing IAA except people listen to you even less and ignore you even more.

First aid: All powergames will unlock this for the free medkit "just in case" then only use it on themselves. If you want to, you can just...request some first aid supplies from cargo or medbay.

 

Spiritualist: A neat idea, but it feels to me like this could be folded into the librarian (god knows he needs it) or the chaplain.

 

 

 

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Posted

I must honestly say that I don't feel anything for the paperwork job. 

However, for the secondary jobs (for example medbay hygiene specialist or w/e) is something I would really like. It could make for some great roleplay. 

 

Spiritualist sounds really cool. While it /could/ be abused, there are rules against metagaming and also the cooldown/mechanics could make it so that it would be simply too tedious to make long sessions. Also, in addition, there could be a limit as to how long a seance can last. 

For example, after some time, the spiritualits (I do agree that this could be integrated into chaplain/librarian), would get a message saying "You begin to feel tired and lose your connection to the spiritual plane of existence" ... or something along those lines. 

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Posted

I like the spiritualist, though yes it could be abused. Perhaps severely limiting the number of letters they can signal... Certainly, I think if it was folded into the librarian that would make them a TON more playable and useful.

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Posted

I agree that Spiritualist should get added to the Librarian. It could be set up so the Chaplain is for combating paranormal entities, while the librarian/spiritualist is for gaining knowledge on the entities (Think of the codex they use for getting information on Devils)

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