/tg/Station 13

Posted: **Sun Jan 12, 2020 6:21 am**

Bottom post of the previous page:

The_Silver_Nuke wrote: Now if we summarize the feedback given by players and observers alike, filtering out all the flame and non contributing feedback, there have been the following suggestions:

1. Make cloning longer.
2. Make cloning locked at round start and unlockable via techweb.
3. Have cloning require a cost of some sort, preferably synthflesh.
4. Make cloning a person require management through some form of simple interaction.
5. Have cloning pods require a rare resources cost to reduce scaleability.
6. Ensure that if a person is husked you cannot clone despite debraining.
7. Remove cloning but keep the experimental cloner.
*8. Delay removal until medical is better equipped or antags have been nerfed to be less murderbone capable.
*9. Add more rules to crack down on murderboning.
10. Add a transition period where content is removed piecemeal instead of all at once.
11. Add cloning memory loss.
*12. Add a respawn system that triggers after a set period of time, ideally 30 minutes.
13. Make cloning skill based
*14. Hold an official poll.

1: This doesn't scale well, and more cloners solve most of this issue. Even if we scale up cost, materials are pretty much free after miners come back.

2: Been a proponent for this for the longest time, but it isnt a great idea. Techwebs aren't well enough balanced for it, and there are currently several ways of completing techwebs way earlier than intended. The worst cases sees techwebs done between 10-15 minutes into the round. Medical is also a very short line of research, and it would just require jumbling it in with "the rest" of lategame tech.

3: Chemicals are free, this is effectively not a cost. Also doesn't solve the issue of apply tons of magic chem, cure any ailment.

4: This is like requiring doctors to revive people, but without the gameplay aspect of it. We already have interactions through the rest of the medical system.

5: See 1. Materials are essentially free.

6: This one doesnt make sense. Husks isnt the main reason cloning should go.

7: Probably not, it requires a fair bit of dead code to keep in. If anything, a very simplified version as most of the cloner code is pointless here. This isn't something I am willing to commit to doing at this point though, maybe once removal is in.

8: We are making some improvements where we see the existing systems lacking, but we wont be able to find all the issues before testing. This is a move to at least test removal, and get a better feel for how if looks like.

9: This is mainly an admin issue, but the general goal of increasing average round time may include adjustments.

10: We are only getting rid of one thing, cloning. Imo, its not enough to warrant a piecemeal removal.

11: Policy issue. Also pretty unfun, there are servers that do this already.

12: Respawn is a bit shit, and would become an admin issue. Some people already cant even behave as posibrains and ghost roles, imagine if respawn was on.

13: Or, we could make revival skill based. By removing cloning. Gotchas aside, see 4.

Posted: **Sun Jan 12, 2020 7:05 am**

Thanks for the reply, though in regards to your cost response, there is a significant cost: time and effort. I can't count on my fingers the number of times we've run out of resources for various reasons, but the most contributing factors are either laziness, distraction, or an inability to do your job. There are a significant amount of things that can happen in any given round, which is one of the reasons I love the game, and not everything is always going to plan. Sometimes it takes me all day to roll the "perfect round." That said I do agree with points 9, 11, 12. They certainly aren't feasable, nor are they enforceable.

I'd like to advocate for points 3, 4, and 5. I did mention this in a prior post but I believe that cloning can actually be made fun to do. Fun? In medbay? What is this nonsense? When I think of cloning I always think of a couple of dudes in labcoats peering over a clipboard and a computer, monitoring vitals and statistics. In a fashion, it may be similar to genetics. In fact, I'm also of the opinion that cloning should be categorized under genetics as it has been for years. Imagine the following:

Someone comes in with a dead body on a wheeler and it's your responsibility to create a new one. You get off your genetics console (yes genetics) and put the body in the scanner. You notice that you are low on synthflesh. You put in a request to chemistry to stop making krokodil and meth, and to send a couple of beakers of synthflesh your way. After some time you receive them and you begin cloning. One problem occurs immediately, the DNA of the clone is destabilizing, and without intervention will fall part completely. You hit the "suspend cloning" button and begin working. You need to unravel the DNA patterns much like you already do to monkeys to uncover mutations and swiftly. You aren't a traitor so you don't tamper with the DNA and instead complete it without error. You select the "resume cloning" button. If you were a traitor you could have unlocked your PDA and spent the 30TC+ necessary to purchase the experimental cloning program, and create a clone army loyal to you. Or you could have sabotaged the cloning process and now the newly formed clone looks a little too much like Ugor the henchman. Either way the cloning is complete and what's this? Out of synthflesh again? God damn it chemistry.

That's my take on cloning, and it uses mechanics we already have. In order to build cloning pod you'll need a certain amount of rare minerals to construct (diamond or bluespace I imagine, as those run out quickly in any round), and a large amount of synthflesh to clone a person, probably around 300u or more. That takes a significant amount of time and effort to make assuming you aren't using the new chem factories. These two previous factors in addition to the genetics mini-game would make it a significant obstacle to create clones. I don't believe errors should pop up every time but they should happen frequently enough to warrant checking on the pod and checking the indicator lights to see if anything is wrong. If it runs out of synthflesh mid-cloning it automatically will suspend it. Plus with the traitor interactivity provided by the ability to sabotage cloning or create an army given enough time, would make it very appealing to play as a geneticist if people don't already. Cloning is a sci-fi element and deserves to have a spotlight in SS13, with the new features I and others suggest it would make creating cloning pods difficult enough to be a well balanced challenge for any given round.

I do have a question though, if even after hearing all the voices and opinions of all the players who are passionate enough about the subject to give you feed back you still aren't convinced, I have to ask; what makes removing cloning so much better of an alternative to reworking it?

Posted: **Sun Jan 12, 2020 12:32 pm**

The_Silver_Nuke wrote:...if even after hearing all the voices and opinions of all the players who are passionate enough about the subject to give you feed back you still aren't convinced, I have to ask; what makes removing cloning so much better of an alternative to reworking it?

Because reworking it takes effort and isn't guaranteed to work, whereas removing it ALSO doesn't work, but we can pretend it does long enough for everyone to stop bitching about it and claim a long-term victory.

Posted: **Sun Jan 12, 2020 12:34 pm**

@skoglol:

I would like you to consider 2 amendments before the PR goes through.

The cloning ruin should remain. We still have things like sleepers, the old medkit etc in ruins (space or lavaland). They are meant to be rare finds that can be very useful to the round and a reward for the dangerous exploration. Keeping the cloning ruin is consistent with that!

You should definitely remove shiftstart podclone in this same PR if we go ahead with entirely removing cloning. It will absolutely replace cloning as it is currently.

I want to at least try the "entire removal" to see how it goes. My opinion (as outlined in the first page) is that cloning should remain as a late game tech, but I accept I might be wrong. Just please consider the 2 above points.

Cheers.

Posted: **Sun Jan 12, 2020 4:53 pm**

I give up on trying to be wordy.

Removing cloning code entirely doesn't match the way sleepers were removed.

Are you just removing the code for cloning because you want to make this PR harder to reverse or try to work against, skoglol? Because that's the reason that jumps out at me.

Because if the testmerge goes ~amazingly~, then I guess this is fine, and clearly you don't seem to intend to respond to me asking direct questions about justifications, but I at least want to know why you seem to think cloning removal shouldn't be the same as sleeper removal.

Posted: **Sun Jan 12, 2020 4:59 pm**

code is never fully deleted, it's in the git history. Leaving it in master has an active maintenance cost.

also

Timonk wrote:Wow I can't believe arathian just fucking died

Posted: **Sun Jan 12, 2020 5:08 pm**

4dplanner wrote:code is never fully deleted, it's in the git history. Leaving it in master has an active maintenance cost.

We left sleepers in despite them generally not being relevant; additionally, the only maintenance cost here is if we reintroduce cloners at some point down the line.

The only piece that would still run the code, hopefully, is the ruin, which - all things being equal - I don't think anyone would mind if it was a bit glitchy or undermaintained. It's already a ruin, those things happen.

But I did also just mean that it's going to be harder for some ass-backwards newbie to try and make a restoration PR down the line without knowing when this change happened, and trying to make changes to cloning code to bring it back in a new form would be next to impossible from a PR perspective if all the code is removed entirely. Deleting the code reads more as a way of preventing those two things rather than actually saving maintenance time.

Posted: **Sun Jan 12, 2020 6:20 pm**

Sleepers were left in because we still use them, although really it's just the syndicate ones now. We could remove other forms if we wanted but :shrug:.

"Ass-backwards" newbies shouldn't bite off more than they can chew for their sake (would hate to see people lose interest in developing because they took on a larger project than they could handle) and ours (we DO have to read this stuff). You can see history and when things occurred, it won't be an issue. It may not be as easy as a revert button, but it wouldn't be hard if you know what you're doing.

I don't really care if it's removed or if it's locked behind "late-game" tech. There's pros/cons to both inside and outside the game.

Posted: **Sun Jan 12, 2020 9:11 pm**

Re: criticism that removed code should be commented or whatever

I've worked in a place that does this, and the result is disgusting. have faith in git

Posted: **Sun Jan 12, 2020 9:33 pm**

I cannot see how MDs are gonna do their job properly without stasis beds and the ability to make ones. Medbay is too reliant on stasis beds unless you account for strange reagent which isn't always there

Posted: **Sun Jan 12, 2020 9:46 pm**

I don't understand why people attack skoglol like he has some nefarious plan tbh.

What is his master plan? Step 1: removing cloning step 2: remove cloning code entirely step 3: ??? step 4: world domination. Something like that?

I mean, I disagree also but take it down a notch.

Posted: **Sun Jan 12, 2020 10:23 pm**

RobustAndRun wrote:Re: criticism that removed code should be commented or whatever

I've worked in a place that does this, and the result is disgusting. have faith in git

non coders have no idea how git works so yeah

Arathian wrote:I don't understand why people attack skoglol like he has some nefarious plan tbh.

What is his master plan? Step 1: removing cloning step 2: remove cloning code entirely step 3: ??? step 4: world domination. Something like that?

I mean, I disagree also but take it down a notch.

yeah this debate is just getting insane

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 8:17 am**

We have plenty of deprecated features that haven't had their entire code deleted, and yet aren't really maintained. All the different "antag" races come to mind.

With that in mind - regardless of if we're going to remove cloning from player access or not - it just doesn't make sense to remove all the associated code relating to the ruin. The common defense I'm seeing is "why should we keep this unused code just to keep the ruin?" when the real question we should be asking is "why are we getting rid of the ruin?" when it'd be much easier to simply remove player access to the feature you want to remove.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 9:58 am**

Features that were "removed" by being simply disabled but with their code left intact found their way back into the game eventually (gang, clockult) because there's always some coder who says "I revamped it and fixed all the issues that caused its removal, you're gonna love it this time guys!" which only brings misery and suffering until the feature is permanently removed (OR IS IT??)

So I can understand why they want to eradicate it completely to squash any chance of it coming back from the grave.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:10 am**

deedubya wrote:We have plenty of deprecated features that haven't had their entire code deleted, and yet aren't really maintained.

They should have been removed. If something isn't being maintained and isn't properly enabled it rots, and gradually becomes less and less functional while also getting in the way of future refactors.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:22 am**

devil mode

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:35 am**

Will this mark the end of the antag freeze so that certain things can be nerfed?

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 4:11 pm**

Doesn't the "we had to balance everything around cloning" argument cancel out the "cloning is unbalanced" argument?

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 4:40 pm**

Heh it's probably still faster to put dead brain into humanized monkey body and CPR it. It's just more work compered to cloning and causes confusion. Poding even more powerful since you don't need brain. It's basically some agrarian necromancy voodoo BS. So removing cloner changes nothing I guess.

Spoiler:

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 4:42 pm**

Cobby wrote:I don't really care if it's removed or if it's locked behind "late-game" tech. There's pros/cons to both inside and outside the game.

Good idea:
-Remove roundstart cloners
-Cloner research costs 25000 and requires alien surgery as a prereq

Effectively removed unless you really want it. It becomes far more rare in short rounds. Inevitable in long rounds.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 4:46 pm**

Ziiro wrote:
Cobby wrote:I don't really care if it's removed or if it's locked behind "late-game" tech. There's pros/cons to both inside and outside the game.
Good idea:
-Remove roundstart cloners
-Cloner research costs 25000 and requires alien surgery as a prereq

Effectively removed unless you really want it. It becomes far more rare in short rounds. Inevitable in long rounds.

alien surgery is not eventual, and is impossible to get sometimes. the ruins with alien tools may never spawn.

and skoglol already said that he doesn't want it to be locked behind techwebs because they are unbalanced. there are people capable of generating hypernob 15-25 mins into the round, the hypernob reaction generates a fuckton of research points(unless it was nerfed in the last three weeks)

but i think that full removal is idiotic, we can always remove cloning for good later. its better to wait for rnd rework imo so we can consider locking the fucking cloning behind techs.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 4:48 pm**

Why not just give cloning every suggested downside? At that point, it would be the objectively inferior option and leave it as your last resort.

Make T4 cloning as good as T1
Lock behind tech webs
Require bluespace crystals to make the boards
Make cloning require a complicated chemical
Make the clone braindead and require re-sleeving the brain.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 5:01 pm**

Flatulent wrote: alien surgery is not eventual, and is impossible to get sometimes. the ruins with alien tools may never spawn.

That's fine. Keeps it rare. I also said "eventual" on the premise that abductors is a pretty common antag spawn, and watching them eat shit and the crew getting cloning tech might happen too.

Flatulent wrote: and skoglol already said that he doesn't want it to be locked behind techwebs because they are unbalanced. there are people capable of generating hypernob 15-25 mins into the round, the hypernob reaction generates a fuckton of research points(unless it was nerfed in the last three weeks)

It would take 50k points exactly to pick up cloning and nothing else if you managed to get the alien tools. You get the one bomb per shift for that bonus.

Flatulent wrote: its better to wait for rnd rework imo so we can consider locking the fucking cloning behind techs.

bruh techwebs are a fairly recent rework and it's far better and more balanced than deconstructing items ever was. I'm not sure what "rnd rework" is in the pipe but it's probably gonna be worse. If you mean the consistent tuning it's currently undergoing (a la experimentor, BEPIS) then that's fine.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 7:17 pm**

Ziiro wrote: It would take 50k points exactly to pick up cloning and nothing else if you managed to get the alien tools. You get the one bomb per shift for that bonus..

im not talking about bombs im talking about hypernobilium. while i have zero fucking clue how many rpoints does one mole exactly create, but a ok size canister can pretty much unlock half, if not all of fucking techweb.

rnd being a relatively new rework compared to some other code we have doesn't matter since codeman is unhappy with it's current state

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 8:54 pm**

Anonmare wrote:Why not just give cloning every suggested downside? At that point, it would be the objectively inferior option and leave it as your last resort.

Make T4 cloning as good as T1
Lock behind tech webs
Require bluespace crystals to make the boards
Make cloning require a complicated chemical
Make the clone braindead and require re-sleeving the brain.

This just annoys all sides of the argument

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 12:47 am**

I was on the fence about cloning removal before but as long as they add enough BEFORE removing cloning and are READY then i'm perfectly fine with cloning removed.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 12:49 am**

oranges wrote:
Anonmare wrote:Why not just give cloning every suggested downside? At that point, it would be the objectively inferior option and leave it as your last resort.

Make T4 cloning as good as T1
Lock behind tech webs
Require bluespace crystals to make the boards
Make cloning require a complicated chemical
Make the clone braindead and require re-sleeving the brain.
This just annoys all sides of the argument

That's why it's perfect, nobody is happy and everyone is frustrated.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 1:42 am**

What is the real reasoning for the complete dissolution of Cloning instead of re-working it? Without even bothering to do so shows that no attempt was made to re-balance it like everything else in /tg/ medical? Why would you allow the write-off of an iconic feature such as Cloning in the first place? The main arguments for removal have been:

-To "lengthen" rounds: How? Irregardless of Cloning, rounds will be fast on /tg/ unless your playing on the new "RP" oriented server. Removing Cloning for this apparent reason makes no sense, as shuttle calling is a IC judgment call by the Command authorities, AI, or the crew at large. If anything Cloning ENSURES a good pathway back into a longstanding round. If the coders who devised this wanted longer rounds, make extended an option for /tg/. All this talk of raising the RP standards, why not go that route if the "demand" for such a thing is that high? The fact that this is one of the reasons its on the grinder for removal is asinine to begin with.

-Medical personnel aren't engaged enough: What does this even mean? I thought the whole point of the new medical re-balancing was to ensure THEY are engaged in healing. To consider the average /tg/ round, medical is around the clock engaged already healing crew-members left and right. Cloning was part of the devised method to answer death medicinally, but part of being a Doctor regardless is to ensure they don't even get to the point of death. Leaving now to the gimmick methods of revival isn't logical when their already was a system in place. Like I said and many others said before, it'd just be better if you'd make Cloning interesting and more engaged than just being a "button press". Make a new system similar to Genetics where you input certain procedures to activate the desired result like how they try to get powers.

-Medical Doctors don't feel useful and it isn't fun to play: What...? They literally specialize in healing and other advance surgeries. Wasn't the new medical change already an answer to this purported problem? What else are they supposed to do? I'd figure that the people who want to Doctor roles are fine considering the usual load medical goes ("The Ride Never Ends"). How do you know that being a Medical Doctor with Cloning isn't fun? If the patient is dead before the Doctor even got the chance to fix'em up (say person who got lasered to death) or died in the process of healing, Cloning is the sure way to revive without tedium. Just merely leaving it to gimmicks past that point isn't logical. Next the coders are going to remove Cryogenics for an equally nebulous reason. There isn't even a set realistic replacement.

-The motion to remove Cloning was part of the balancing to make Medicine less magical in practice: Okay? So why not make it more Science oriented with more features to keep it operational and ensure the Genetist or the general Medical team has to maintain its complex functions? ADD more things to make Cloning worth it, instead of butchering it completely. There wasn't even an attempt to change up how it worked- just a flat a removal. This PR mostly all hinges that the moon aligns appropriately and the right players are on to ensure they can competently do the "alternate" methods. This alternative methods within themselves don't even justify the removal to Cloning since their supposed to be mere side pieces to supplement the main dish of revival.

-Its LRP aspected and not a core of Revival Mechanics: Wut? Where do you think the basis for "revival" in the first place came from? Cloning.. How can this even be said? There is no other iconic and classic method of revival- all others were just tacked on later. It IS the baseline core of revival mechanics and its laughable that its even denied. Also why would a state of the art Research Facility with the largest most influential human Megacorporation in the galaxy want to degrade their market/medical edge by scrapping Cloning? If /tg/ wants to begin ascending to the MRP/HRP route, you have to sensical lore consistencies too if you want to gut it. There is no basis for NT to rely on the other methods over the efficiency of Cloning compared to the other "methods" at all. Even when the HRP servers (namely Bay) removed Cloning, they ensured to enable respawn so you have a chance to get back in the long rounds. To note even largely, most of the /tg/ playerbase is LRP, you really believe such a heavy-handed motion is the right decision? Putting to plainly: /tg/'s feel and codebase at large isn't HRP. It isn't meant for these changes since its inherently faster paced than Baycode. Bay is built around HRP mechanics, not /tg/. Slowly edging it this way is going to put a big divide in your playerbase.

Overall I'd say that removing Cloning without atleast "nerfing" or changing it around is ridiculous. How could this even be thought of the first place..? Its generally a bad, bad, bad idea.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 3:29 am**

Total time on /tg/, 80 minutes, total connections 9, living minutes, 70

Do you mind if I ask what server most of your gameplay experience comes from?

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 3:52 am**

To note, this is a new account from my age old non-used one; (addendum): I've played on /tg/ for years on that old account. I mostly main Bay/SEV Torch or play a little Goon. Regardless of that though, why not build upon Cloning? If the mean argument is that it is simplistic compared to the other "methods" and too easy, just streamline it to actually have features other than a "button" press.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 3:58 am**

that would be the opposite of streamlining it fyi.

I'm not opposed to that either, but only one side has put up anything approaching a working code and approach.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 4:03 am**

But removing a mechanic isn't "working code". Its just taking it out from the game at large, nothing is added. Isn't suggestions and drawing board part of the process? Numerous people have said its better to just re-work it than eliminate it entirely, but it seems like the entire /tg/ team want it gone for good without a new mainstay replacement.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 4:15 am**

their plan is to replace it with surgery, specifically revival surgery.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 11:43 am**

Why is it needing to be replaced in the first place? Nobody has answered this question in the week that this PR has been open. Why it's better to remove cloning instead of reworking it, and it seems that we won't get an answer. When it comes down to it it seems the tough questions are the ones that will get ignored.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 1:17 pm**

Maybe could have the cloner work similarily to CEV Eris.

In that server it requires a cruciform implant (which gets rid of all your cybernetics cause religion) and the cloner requires biomass.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 3:01 pm**

The_Silver_Nuke wrote:Why is it needing to be replaced in the first place? Nobody has answered this question in the week that this PR has been open. Why it's better to remove cloning instead of reworking it, and it seems that we won't get an answer. When it comes down to it it seems the tough questions are the ones that will get ignored.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 8:35 pm**

It doesn't matter, the outcome is the same either way, and only one PR has actually done the work.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 11:13 pm**

Bringing people back into the round should be an active process, so a rework that just requires the doctors to stock the cloner with synthflesh / saline / biomass doesn't solve that issue it just makes the doctors to spend two seconds at the chem dispenser pushing a macro button.

Revival surgery / defib is much a better mechanic because you actually have to fix the patient up in order to revive them.

If you had a set of corpses who died from toolboxing, bungotoxin, baccus blessing, plasma fire, rads and heparin, they will each need an individualised treatment plan, which is more fun than the one size fits all cloner.

I am in favour of cloning removal because of the same reason i was in favour of sleeper removal, magic machines that fixes everything and require no thought to operate dumbs down medical gameplay.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 11:25 pm**

Kryson wrote:Bringing people back into the round should be an active process, so a rework that just requires the doctors to stock the cloner with synthflesh / saline / biomass doesn't solve that issue it just makes the doctors to spend two seconds at the chem dispenser pushing a macro button.

Revival surgery / defib is much a better mechanic because you actually have to fix the patient up in order to revive them.

If you had a set of corpses who died from toolboxing, bungotoxin, baccus blessing, plasma fire, rads and heparin, they will each need an individualised treatment plan, which is more fun than the one size fits all cloner.

I am in favour of cloning removal because of the same reason i was in favour of sleeper removal, magic machines that fixes everything and require no thought to operate dumbs down medical gameplay.

They all will need a fresh humanized monkey body and defib

It will also fix nerds that got culturally enriched (sec found their head in the maints) - without some kind of a body factory you won't be able to help them. And if you add body grower machine it will be the new cloner - simply cut corpse's head off and put it inside so all organs/limbs will be autofixed.

Posted: **Wed Jan 15, 2020 12:16 am**

OFQ wrote:They all will need a fresh humanized monkey body and defib It will also fix nerds that got culturally enriched (sec found their head in the maints) - without some kind of a body factory you won't be able to help them. And if you add body grower machine it will be the new cloner - simply cut corpse's head off and put it inside so all organs/limbs will be autofixed.

If head swapping with a monkey man becomes a too easy we could make brain and head transplant require a complicated surgery(with possible complications) to reattach the nerves. Maybe we give the patient meningitis if central nervous system surgery is performed without adequate surgical hygiene.

The medbay's collective level of competence should affect how well they are able to revive people.

I have no problem potentially adjusting the alternative revival methods if we decide that they too brain dead, but cloning is the biggest offender and needs to go first.

Posted: **Wed Jan 15, 2020 5:33 am**

Kryson that sounds like an awful system

I don't wanna stay dead after a brawl because medical is incompetent and no one gives more than 1 shit about medical bodies

Posted: **Wed Jan 15, 2020 12:51 pm**

The_Silver_Nuke wrote:Why is it needing to be replaced in the first place? Nobody has answered this question in the week that this PR has been open. Why it's better to remove cloning instead of reworking it, and it seems that we won't get an answer. When it comes down to it it seems the tough questions are the ones that will get ignored.

I mean this as nicely as possible, but this is a failure of reading comprehension. Just because you're incapable of parsing an answer doesn't mean it wasn't given.

Posted: **Wed Jan 15, 2020 8:37 pm**

I don't see even the reason for the removal of Cloning, it's a feature that worked fine for the server for the longest time but in the past four years it has been a subject of changes by itself and in medical in general in an attempt to 'balance' it. The 'problems' of Cloning is all from the constant meddling by the same coderbus that seeks to remove it because they don't have a clue on what a fun game is meant to look like. I am more shocked about the discussions related to cloning and medical which repeatedly get shut down by coderbus with the same excuse of "Well if you don't like it, then code a better alternative" and then going ahead and doing the changes and getting shocked at the balance results and the community response. It seems like a recurring problem where coderbus forgets that they are maintaining and coding for a game with an established community as a group and not for their own individual tastes.

I say go ahead and add other ways to clone and revive people and find ways to make medbay a fun experience that warrants the removal of Cloning but don't just straight up remove Cloning in one fell swoop and hope all your problems are resolved like it is the only problem when it is not.

Posted: **Wed Jan 15, 2020 9:12 pm**

I enjoy doing revivals without cloning but I'll miss the access to spare living bodies.

Posted: **Wed Jan 15, 2020 11:35 pm**

Lazengann wrote:I enjoy doing revivals without cloning but I'll miss the access to spare living bodies.

You can make monkey powder with chemistry (requires bananas though). Then just inject them with mutadone and you got yourself a braindead buddy

Posted: **Thu Jan 16, 2020 12:56 am**

On the subject of changeling succ, we could make it so that getting the succ from a ling doesn't make you unrevivable - but make it so that you need a huge blood transfusion (husk gain could be added to being totally exsanguinated and removed with blood replacement - assuming your burns aren't also severe enough to cause husking) ontop of whatever repairs/transplants the body/organs need.

Cloning could be replaced with a bunch of organ/limb growers without too much loss, might need a way to manufacture articial blood but should obviously be ineffcient compared to getting donations. Maybe have organs/limbs be able to be "deconstructed" into the machinery to add non-standard parts such as slime based organs.

It's probably fine if there isn't an answer for everything, at a certain point if someone's put enough effort into making sure you stay dead - you ought to stay dead.

Posted: **Thu Jan 16, 2020 2:08 am**

I want to predate this post by saying a few things: it is my first post in quite a while (whilst I've played SS13 for a long, long time now and tg for a while, my only other posts were arguing *against* oranges in the anti war ops thread) and that Manuel has rekindled my passion for the game. It's been my first time playing since mid of last year, and my first time playing substantially since 2017.

We are absolutely ready to get rid of cloning.

I don't know why... oranges acts the way he does. It's always been a mystery. The aloof and downright hostile attitude is like a less funny goof, and it just makes people naturally opposed to what he wants or is supporting because you wanna say that orange man is bad. Hell, I wanted to, as my original kneejerk reaction. So know all this feedback is laced with a good amount of 'what the fuck oranges you are literally hurting your own case here'.

I mostly main Sec, but Medical is probably my most played non-Command, non-Sec and non-Engineering role and after playing around with it and the current modern systems we are in a good spot to remove or at least heavily rework cloning. It isn't about whether it is too easy or too hard to come back into the round, it's about making every facet of the game fun, and currently Medical isn't fun to play. This is why this has had overwhelming support from Medical mains, whilst I get why all players are confused. But let me put it front, as well argued as I can, a few reasons why I think it is ok.

1. Players will adapt.
This was the biggest one I disagreed with originally, and after playing with revival surgery a bit I can say it won't be a problem. People will no longer pick Medical because all the jobs they actually wanted were taken, and the people that take it will learn revival surgery - it is no more complex than most of the job functions of an engineer or a xenobiologist. The game is full of complex systems people learn, and you really think this is the line? I remember when people originally wanted to switch to the SM, whilst it was agreed it was safer and would result in less "singulo loose lol" scenarios early on, it was thought the setup was too complex and easy to accidentally mess up and that it'd end up with a lot of accidental delams. They still happen, but the game balanced itself out. Experienced players learned how to deal with it, and taught less experienced players how to do it. Go ahead and play Medical for a few days, and try and commit to not cloning unless absolutely necessary - you'll realize it is easier than you'd think.

2. This is good for the game's potential to grow.
Cloning currently holds large swathes of the game hostage if not directly contradicts investing in some parts of it. Is Cobbychem and medical reworks not perfect? Absolutely. Is there any real incentive to rework it if medical is basically bypassed by players breaking into lockers for brute kits and cloning? Absolutely not. Removing cloning as our mainstay revival option opens a plethora of reasons to make the surrounding systems more fun. It reminds me a lot of when the early basics of engineering were being properly setup, building and the like, and the game flourished under the possibilities and creativity - or, hell, the process of evolving Mining from the boring ass Asteroid into the downright minigame that is Lavaland. All your complaints about the lack of cloning can be addressed and will have incentive to be addressed in a world in which it is no longer the default roundstart option - organ farms would keep that wacky scifi tone, medicine would likely be tweaked and reworked so there's more of a skill gap between good and ok surgeons that makes the surgery time vary, and maybe doctors will no longer be yelled at for having the gall of doing their jobs rather than dragging to cloning.

(Also reducing the geneticist role to just superpower findign might finally give us the push to completely wipe how genetics currently works and redo the role from the ground up. Wait, genetics got moved to science, too, fuck. It literally is just less interesting Viro and Viro isn't even that good. God, rework this shitty fucking job, this is the perfect opportunity to do it.)

3. The coder argument
I've never been that much of a fan of how the coderbase could be, since the days of goofball. Whilst the guy could be funny, I feel he immortalized this attitude of 'this is my idea and you WILL run with it because I'm a coder and you gotta DEAL with it", and that's probably why there's so many kneejerk reactions to this proposed change. And whilst I don't personally believe "if you have another idea code it", specially when suggesting a *removal* of features... they are right in the front that a lot of these suggested alternatives would take code, whilst this change with potentially huge benefits doesn't. And if this change goes through, your changes have an actual reason to be made, if not by you by someone who cares - reworked cloning so it is either an alternate technology or rare ruin, the organ and body farms, all that good shit will happen if the change is actually THAT bad. And if none of them work, it can always be reverted. The code isn't going anywhere, and it's happened before.

I strongly urge you to play Doctor and try and revive instead of clone for a bit to see how viable it really is, and how much more engaging you'll find it than the current click and forget system in place. I get the tendency to jerk away from how coders deal with this stuff, but try to analyze things from a player's perspective - and if your take is only that the community doesn't like it, remember Secborgs were only barely voted out on a poll that was deliberately kept here because a server poll would never ever approve getting taken off, and that was probably one of the best changes in the history of this game.

Posted: **Fri Jan 17, 2020 1:37 am**

Sheodir wrote: And if this change goes through, your changes have an actual reason to be made, if not by you by someone who cares - reworked cloning so it is either an alternate technology or rare ruin

But it already is a fucking rare ruin. They're removing it too.

Posted: **Fri Jan 17, 2020 1:52 am**

Ayy Lemoh wrote:
Sheodir wrote: And if this change goes through, your changes have an actual reason to be made, if not by you by someone who cares - reworked cloning so it is either an alternate technology or rare ruin
But it already is a fucking rare ruin. They're removing it too.

The experimental cloner is a rare ruin, not the normal cloner. By what I understand it is being removed because the whole code is being uprooted? I don't understand the logic here, perhaps the PR's author can explain, but I believe the cloning code is some major spaghetti anyhow.

Posted: **Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:40 am**

4dplanner wrote:I mean this as nicely as possible, but this is a failure of reading comprehension. Just because you're incapable of parsing an answer doesn't mean it wasn't given.

I mean this as nicely as possible, but this is a failure of thread comprehension. Just because you're incapable of reading the thread and seeing everyone who's ever tried to directly ask this question has been completely ignored or otherwise had their question not fully answered or even addressed doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Protip: Pretty much all of the justifications so far are that cloning needs to change. Nobody with more than two brain cells is arguing cloning should not change.

There just haven't really been direct arguments as to why removal is the correct path forward. Anytime this question is 'answered', it is providing evidence cloning as it is now is bad, not that removal is good. Sometimes there's a hint of an argument for removal, but I really haven't seen a post where skog actually explains & supports removal rather than says that cloning is bad. A lot of the reasons provided against specific suggestions are provided as "I want this to be like this" without arguing the merits of the reason, or "It would fail to fix the problem of cloning", which is a perfectly fair argument, but it isn't as if it actually answers why removal is good, it just answers why the idea suggested is bad.

Also, let me be clear here: I don't particularly believe skog is behaving like some kind of ~evil mastermind~, but I do feel like some of the parts of this PR that feel like an overreach feel like a coder not wanting his work to be reverted and preferring the idea of complete removal over something he'd potentially have to do additive maintenance to. I totally agree that making the removal because of code bloat and obsolescence are perfectly valid reasons to remove the cloning code if removal is the angle we choose, but I dislike that these reasons are reasons I'm hearing from third parties, and I don't really even recall skog talking about code bloat or obsolescence? Those are some super obvious answers, especially considering it's been used repeatedly as a great justification for removing garbage nobody maintained anymore.

Like. Normally, I would ask said coder to justify decisions like this by saying why the solution they chose is correct over other solutions to the same problem.

skog, as noted above, hasn't really done that. It seems like the question is being avoided because multiple people have repeated it and it hasn't been directly answered, to the point the people who ask it directly are being talked around rather than actually spoken at by the person who's supposed to be justifying why his PR should be merged. If this is because he wants the opportunity to really shift the meta towards revival surgery and he feels that can never happen while cloning exists in any form, okay.

Do I know that's his reason? No. Do I honestly think that's his only reason? Also probably not. It's half-formed guesswork because skog hasn't been terribly transparent about the exact feelings he has on why removal is the only way forward for cloning. And that is the problem I have with this entire conversation. I don't really mind talking around the people who are going to ride or die for cloning to exist and spout the same old garbage, and I'm happy to talk about reasonable points here, but there's no way anyone can argue with skog if it's not even clear why he thinks the path he's taking is correct.

It just ends up being fundamentally pointless.

Posted: **Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:48 am**

Noka wrote:
4dplanner wrote:snip

Please respond with your thoughts on my feedback on the last post of the third page. Curious what you think of them.

/tg/Station 13

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