by Arbon » Fri Aug 14, 2015 4:58 pm
My take on this as someone who plays security, in a mechanical system where any criminal at any time can pretty much effortlessly snatch me off the ground in a single click, in which there is one, ONE!!! way to prevent this that Ace claimed was a bug and worked to remove because a half chance at preventing one of the two auto-loose scenario in a mechanical fight was too overpowered … it’s just not a problem. No one ever abuses this even when I explicitly mention that people are allowed to robust me in the flavor text. The only person who’s actually really tried to get robust while I was typing out posts and waiting for an in-character response was Rosharkie during an unannounced event that I happened to stumble onto while setting up. The only person. Ever. In my entire time playing, the vast majority of which I’ve been either detective or HoS.
Giving players access to more options for initiating vore scenes mechanically, especially if those mechanics support the roleplay, is a good thing. Any potential abuse might be a concern at some point, but given my experience with existing methods of potential abuse its just not something to worry about. The people who would, also go abusive in other ways, and end up banned for it or smacked down. And the people who don’t would use para-pens and cloaking devices maturely.
Two things to point out, any illegal tech that cargo is capable of ordering would go to powering science, given any scientist could hack into cargo, order a few illegal crates, and then start deconstructing. If such devices are common enough to use reliably, and thus worth ordering, then science will have a much greater advantage in the number of useful things they can hand out. And This can likewise affect away missions and testing, if say someone wants to see what happens when you para-pen a xenomorph or see how NPC mobs handle cloaking devices. Likewise the counters security has for dealing with things should be balanced accordingly.
… and I do mean balanced. Because we don’t want security to always catch any criminal no matter what they do, especially for a vore scene, at the same time we don’t want security being completely useless because any sneakypred has ways around all of security’s tricks. Biggest thing, if security doesn’t prevent a scene from happening because they didn’t get x-ray and thermals and then rush around scanning the asteroid and maintinence, DO NOT MOCK THEM FOR FAILURE. Because it isn’t really failure if the pred and the prey get to have their scene together. Don’t go pushing to make security more encouraged to scene-stomp. Which again isn’t really an issue at the moment, but something to keep in mind if or when we have a number of sneakypreds.
Having cool toys ready for use in-game is not a bad thing, and people actually getting to use the toys instead of just sitting there being useless in the code isn’t really a thing that should be punished. On that same token, making it so that ONLY cargo ever has these options, and ONLY cargo can distribute them, makes the fact cargo is already powerful enough to be every other job at once that much more pronounced. No idea how you’d handle this beyond putting some toys into vending machines and making buying stuff from a vending machine more common, but cargo getting more of a monopoly than it already has just seems strange.
Onto the actual suggestions, multiple different options for crates seems better than one standard “Predator” kit, split them up into multiple different packs.
Para-pens
Cloaking rigs
^ I don’t know if Para-pens show an announcement to everyone around if you stab someone with them, because if so then they aren’t quite a sneaky weapon on the level of the CMO’s auto-injector, which you can use to walk up to someone and prick them in the middle of a bar. But if they aren’t sneaky then it is at least still a weapon and a viable paralytic, giving more players options for such than just chemistry with their needles and cups. I like the idea of them being something to worry about, and making preds who go after an unwilling victim more liable to snatch and run away, then to just stand in the center of the hallway gulping people down. On cloaking rigs, we really need to decide what the balance for them should be before they become more standard. Thus far only mature players (that I’ve seen) who got lucky at cargo really use them, and then Admins who appear with some unknown character trying to be a ninja and show off how they have extra perks. To include dancing around security and boasting that we can’t catch them.
That huge argument between what can and what can’t detect a cloaking device will pop up again, between Scree and nightwing whom I know want to make it so that only Thermals and maybe the T-scanner tool can ping an invisible person, and the current balance where any medical or security can spot someone by noticing the tiny little HuD that pops up over the person’s head. If cloaking devices are an issue I don’t see why security would deliberately take away that capacity from their Sec-huds, and it gives the invisible person a very good reason to avoid going near security and to run when sec shows up in the room. But the other options means any single greifer with a cloaking rig, or really /any/ player at all, can just make themselves invincible because the only option to catch them is either rare or difficult. Fine regardless, but its an argument you’ll have to sort through.
Wolf pack kit:
^ I don’t see how this idea would help catching prey. Coordinating sure, but that seems more like a private chat feature that can’t be spied on than something to help with scenes. You’d have less people working together, and more people banding into small Niches, or the occasional annoyance that uses this to spy on people like they would with the communications hug. Then again … its not like other people couldn’t just take the syndicate chips or headsets and then use these to spy on the syndicate during events, or as a means to know more of whats going on. It’s a boost in power, but a boost to anyone who can hack cargo. Over-all I’d say its worth it and a viable feature, but it won’t have much to do with vore and roleplay.
Diamondback kit: Auto-injectors, suspicious looking thermals.
^ I rather like this option, mostly because … again its things people could actually use. Throw in muzzles and cable cuffs so that you have something to actually restrain a victim with while they are paralyzed. I forget, does paralyzation prevent the player from HEARING posts as well as making them? As in knock them unconscious? If so, for how long? You want it to be long enough to run away and restrain and maybe post in LOOC, but not long enough that you have to have a boring wait for the victim to hear posts again. No idea what the proper amount is. But Muzzles man. We need more of them available. I can imagine this being a good thing as some extra option to get thermals from in an emergency when we don’t have science and mining, which is often, and I can see this being a boon to science given you can deconstruct the things for more tech levels. Worth it. Please implement this.
Giantess starter kit:
^ Add in shrink mushrooms, so you can apply that to your victims if you don’t want to stomp around as an actual giantess. The advantage here mechanically is that we’d have one more IC option to turn to for size changing if there isn’t a captain, RD and mining, or a hydrophonics who knows how to hack. Worth it over-all, a bit silly, and could probably be the backstory for people who just start out that way from arrivals.
____
On an off-topic semi-rant, if you want there to be sneakier preds, then the biggest thing is you need some way for the pred and prey to roleplay out posts together without other people right next to them being aware. If a prey whispers from inside the stomach, the predator cannot hear it, which has screwed over a number of scenes. Right now the solution is to turn off your PDA’s messenger ringtone and then send PDA messeges back and forth, and just hope there isn’t an AI and that RD doesn’t look at the messeges and assume these roleplay posts were /actually/ typed into a PDA.
But some option, some toggle, to make it where anything a prey posts is only heard by someone in the predator’s square. And make it so the pred and prey both have to have this option toggled on, or just make it prey-side only. While I’d personally prefer muffleing the prey to be a predator only option so they have control of how well hidden the prey is, and allow them to still be walking around and talking to people and doing their job even while simultaneously roleplaying, I’ve heard a /lot/ of backlash for that. As it can put people into a ‘no fun corner’ of no one responding.
Minor notes: If a someone is inside the body part of a person 2 sizes (or more) larger than them, they shouldn’t show up as a bulge or a wriggly movement. That’s just silly.
Blindfolds: While they are nice thematically and in theory, especially as a way to make it so prey can’t see out of the stomach and just announce their location, if you have a blindfold on you cannot hear emotes. Which is exceptionally annoying and makes them useless for roleplaying purposes. If this were fixed I’d have suggested putting blindfolds into one of these options, but as it stands there isn’t any point.
here is a base image.
