Easy Plays exclusively on Manuel for a month

[Itseasytosee2me]

I'm an ss13 player, and I've been playing almost only on Sybil for the time I've spent with TG station (I have a prior history with other servers of which I will not go into depth).
Sybil was probably once the best place to go for an RP experience in ss13 (perhaps I look at the past with rose-tinted glasses). But now the mighty have fallen.

This will be a journal and recounting of my experiences playing only on Manuel for an entire month. I have played on Manuel before, only in brief skirts just to see what it was like, and my opinion was not too high of it.
I plan to play about once a day (realistically less) participating in a different job as often as possible to get the full experience from every perspective.

I've reviewed the rules thoroughly and it is mostly stuff that I already abide by when playing on Sybil, Chain of command and security are important, Play as a coherent, believable character, not murderboning, but there are a few that I think are too harsh and against the spirit of roleplay in general. In addition, many of these rules are poorly defined and up to interpretation. The "The not-so-secret rule of sticky situations and mayhem" at the bottom seems to imply that you need in-character permission to instigate any conflict with another player as a non-antag, which somewhat contradicts rules 2 and 9. Generally, I'm unimpressed but doubt I'll eat a ban. If not for the fact that I follow them, for the fact that they are so vague that admins will have difficulty interpreting and applying them. But I've not seen any of these rules in action, so perhaps my complaints are baseless.

I'll be playing "Edgar Rohtin" as a static. A Human 31-year-old male with a ponytail, beard, and without dyed hair. Personality-wise, I will define him as an understimulated hedonist who takes much pride in his job and values the word of his employers above all others. This personality will likely adapt or change over time, and it's possible I might have to start anew on the off chance I piss off the wrong meta-clique. I don't intend to go out of my way to make friends or enemies with people, I'm hoping that comes naturally.

Edgar.png (9.57 KiB) Viewed 9918 times

I will have all antagonists enabled, and as an added challenge I will restrict myself from the 'suicide' and 'succumb' commands under all circumstances.

I can honestly say that I am not too optimistic. Not to say that people are going to hate me, or that I'll get banned, I'm just afraid that it's going to be really boring.
Somewhere inside me has hope that I will learn something important by doing this. Otherwise, I have no reason to.

[Super Aggro Crag]

i hope you have fun dude

[YBS]

You're a modern day inverse Prometheus, stepping from the fire and back into the darkness.

Good luck bud

[Timberpoes]

The "The not-so-secret rule of sticky situations and mayhem" at the bottom seems to imply that you need in-character permission to instigate any conflict with another player as a non-antag, which somewhat contradicts rules 2 and 9. Generally, I'm unimpressed but doubt I'll eat a ban. If not for the fact that I follow them, for the fact that they are so vague that admins will have difficulty interpreting and applying them. But I've not seen any of these rules in action, so perhaps my complaints are baseless.

This rule is a bit weird. It's meant to be like a counterpart to The Secret Rule, but can actually be used in an ahelp.

What it does is broadly allow you to break the other RP rules as long as all parties involved know enough to make an informed decision and consent ICly.

It lets you play out a hostage situation that ends in your hostage's death - As long as the hostage knows they might die and agrees to it. This one's pretty artificial since it's kinda dumb to go "Hey, can I use you as a hostage?" IC.

But I can give you an example of where it applies in a more organic way!

It lets you run a gameshow where you have 3 disposals loops.

One leads to a chamber filled with a ton of credits; one leads to space; and one leads to the SM.

As long as anyone who participates knows that one dusts, one leads to space and one wins, and they participate willingly, then if they get dusted you can get away with it.

If you want to make fun/cool/quirky/SS13 moment roleplay scenarios, as long as every quote "victim" unquote is informed about the potential consequences and willingly participates, that rule allows you to break the other rules within reason.

[Valorium]

You know, this is why LOOC would be a good addition for Manuel (or just in general, given we don't separate codebases it's probably gonna have to be for everyone) – it'd facilitate the asking permission process without it being weird IC or announced in OOC. I've been playing a MRP server with LOOC recently and it's been a lifesaver in these situations.

[Farquaar]

You know, this is why LOOC would be a good addition for Manuel (or just in general, given we don't separate codebases it's probably gonna have to be for everyone) – it'd facilitate the asking permission process without it being weird IC or announced in OOC. I've been playing a MRP server with LOOC recently and it's been a lifesaver in these situations.

LOOC is for HRP, not MRP.

[Rohen_Tahir]

6 months later: "Felinid players: a participant observation study"

[oranges]

You know, this is why LOOC would be a good addition for Manuel (or just in general, given we don't separate codebases it's probably gonna have to be for everyone) – it'd facilitate the asking permission process without it being weird IC or announced in OOC. I've been playing a MRP server with LOOC recently and it's been a lifesaver in these situations.

LOOC is for HRP, not MRP.

manuel is HRP, the codebase just doesn't cater for it.

[cacogen]

why does he keep saying this

[BONERMASTER]

Don't have too many good words for the manuel server. Honestly feels like a waste of time being there, but that's just my feeling about SS13 in general. I hope you'll be pleasantly surprised.


With warm regards
-BONERMASTER

[confused rock]

You know, this is why LOOC would be a good addition for Manuel (or just in general, given we don't separate codebases it's probably gonna have to be for everyone) – it'd facilitate the asking permission process without it being weird IC or announced in OOC. I've been playing a MRP server with LOOC recently and it's been a lifesaver in these situations.

I think it's more of a case of "the manuel rules are a frankenstein turd that don't know what they're talking about and the vast majority are completely ripped from another server with completely different code."

[Bawhoppennn]

Looking forward to hearing your chronicles, however positive/negative they may be

[Itseasytosee2me]

Day 1: Assistant/Assistant traitor

I started as a round start assistant on a relatively high pop round. I was very unsurprised to find none of the tools taken from tool storage round start, so I picked up a set.
I then began going around chatting up people, just speaking whatever was on my mind. I asked some boys in science if they needed any assistance but was turned down.

Medbay was pretty much a ghost town, there were a few doctors but they didn't seem to be doing anything other than numbing around the waiting room. I insulted the chef for not having any food prepared, only putting out low-effort doughnuts and donk pockets (it would later turn out this chef was a traitor, which made me feel quite righteous in calling him out for being a lazy bastard as he was probably more occupied with evil schemes and whatnot).

I was surprised by the frequency of people using borderline OOC terms, such as "ask the gods" in a completely non-religious sense and really just meant "ask the admins." I would expect players of manual to, you know, roleplay. And not use phrases such as "Its an objective item" instead of much better ways of speaking like "It's an item syndicate agents might try to steal" or even "It's designated a high-risk item." I legitimately think that the players on sybil are better at avoiding borderline occ talk like this. There was even a point where someone tried to use the custom emote menu as a substitute for LOOC, emoting something along the lines of "One second I don't think the interface is working I am going to reconnect." but I imagine this was a one-off instance.

People were constructing a rage cage of sorts outside the bar which somewhat surprised me, but instead of the classic and simple Sybil or Bagil design of a bunch of electrified grills in a square pattern, it was a larger construction with titanium walls and blast doors it was dubbed to me a "Thunderdome" perhaps after the Centcom area of the same name.

I started delivering paper bags of food to people just to fill the time, I got some praise but ultimately this task I put upon myself felt pretty unfulfilling. I then decided to help improve the Thunderdome by carving some statues of a giant blobbernaught that was just waltzing around* and putting them in the Thunderdome, in a decorative manner.

(*I find it mildly in violation of the "play a believable character" rule for everyone to just glance at a huge ass blob monster without explanation and then just go on with their shifts completely unphased, even with the meta-knowledge that the creature was a product of xenobio likely given the instruction "go do whatever but don't kill people")

After a while of doing jack shit, I was given the popup one hour and 30 minutes into the round that I decided to go postal. My uplink started with 20 tc and enough rep to buy me whatever the hell I wanted. I picked up the objectives to smuggle some shit, and behead the warden. The warden was brig bound, so I decided that if I was going to kill them I would need a sec ID (I thought about hacking in, but I thought the lengthy process would put me at a significant disadvantage when combat struck) I knew this would be pretty difficult considering the station was in practically no amount of disarray even one and a half hours into the round and the fact that the sec team outnumbered all of the other departments by a man or two (except maybe sci)

My plan was to ambush a lonesome sec officer, steal their ID. Cause a distraction, and break into the brig and kill the warden while all the other guys were busy with the distraction. I bought a syndie holster, a.357 revolver, throwing weapons, emp kit, and I stole a hatchet from botany.

My ambush was a somewhat embarrassing failure, but not a catastrophic one. My tactics were the largest problem, I think my kit was solid. (in hindsight I might have traded the throwing weapons and holster for something more close range, even an e-pen would have been better) I opened on the lone officer with the EMP kit to disable the equipment, headset, and cameras in the area. But at this point was too close as the flash went off close enough to blind me. Knowing the officer would not be blinded, but would probably be rattled by the EMP I momentarily retreated to regain my vision and to avoid the stun baton I knew was coming my way.

I Reinagaged and threw a throwing star at them (I at the time, had the notion that throwing stars' ability to embed was quite robust, and did not know how much armor reduced the chances of embedding.) All while being as careful as possible to stay out of range, I tossed multiple EMPs in an attempt to completely shut down the baton and disabler. I accomplished this, but I, unfortunately, could not overcome my instinct to get within one tile of a sec officer even though their baton was dead. The wisest thing to do would have been to rush down the officer with my hatchet the only thing they had on them to defend themselves was a depowered baton and pepper spray. But I did not, despite having speed advantage, I kept my distance and allowed them to retreat only taking some piss-poor potshots before retreating myself. I was far too concerned about the small chance countered and killed/captured now, that I failed to foresee how much harder my job would be if they escaped and told everyone. Terrified by this realization, I scavaged what throwing stars I could and fled into maint.

I was hunted in maint for a while. I have been in situations before like this in past, and I defiantly missed the makeshift militia that formed and scoured maint to find you on Sybil, if not for sentimental reasons, for the fact that they had no armor or stun batons and were much less threatening change of pace from avoiding sec (I had been in a position on Sybil before where I captured one such assailant and used him as leverage to get sec off my back a little). I warded off the hos multiple times with the bola from the throwing weapons kit which was very much effective (although this would come to bite me in the ass later)

After not too much time, I grew bored of stalking maint and tried to get a kill on an officer to continue with the plan and thin the herd of those hunting me. I ran into the hos again, the hos (although I would consider him reaction-wise unrobust by Sybil standards) was a clever cookie. He had switched out his baton for a baseball bat, perhaps because he understood that I had an EMP kit and could disable the baton in a shot or two, or perhaps because he just wanted to have a baseball bat. Whatever the reason, the baseball bat would prove an effective weapon against me. After a brief chase and expending the rest of my revolver ammo,** my own bola was used against me. I was without ammo, I had even expended those shitty and slow paper airplanes that come with the throwing kit. I was completely weaponless and had nowhere to run, the only choice I had in my mind was to surrender. (In hindsight, there was a chance I could have disarmed the hos and attempted to kill him with his own baseball bat, although this was an unlikely feat it might have at least scared him off.)

(** My precious .357 revolver, you are my most cherished item in the uplink, why did you betray me on this day? Was It because I was aiming for the legs? Do you perform that poorly against armor? I can only apologize for all the missed shots of potential I had with you. I should have killed that first security officer in three-point-blank shots, they were quite clearly too distracted to react in time.)

I was taken to the sec interrogation room, the AI was babbling about how I was a changeling but was ignored by everyone. I told the hos I wasn't gonna tell him shit, and that I only surrendered because if I was going to die I did not want to die by something as dishonorable as a baseball bat. They said they were in a rush, and would accept my offer of providing me with a quick death. They allowed me last words, and they were right against the wall holding their gun as I was working on breaking out of my handcuffs. Noticing the easy kill (I had actually done this once before as hivemind, so I knew it was possible) I began stalling by resiting some bastardized version of moby dick while I tried to break free. Unfortunately, my scheme was discovered and I was executed promptly, but not before complimenting my robustness, which gave me some degree of satisfaction.

And that was the end of my round.

Ultimately Manuel's experience as an assistant felt a lot like that of Sybil, except for a few things. There were few assistants (in fact I might have been the only one) so there were fewer people without responsibilities to interact with (conflicting or otherwise.) Feeling that you don't have a purpose is common for being an assistant, but on Sybil, I felt there was always another assistant who I could talk to and become involved in the story that was being played out. Manuel had a definite lack of that, and everyone was very dismissive about conflict. No one wanted to be a part of my action, and they didn't want me to be a part of theirs. Most of them were much more content doing their own thing without any outside contact, generally being polite and non-confrontational. This might just be the internal fate of an assistant on manual, you are expected to just do your own thing, and if you don't like that then you shouldn't have picked an assistant.

When I rolled traitor I felt a renewed sense of purpose, given motivation and directive. The dull idleness was replaced by rapid scheming. The sec team was more organized but individually less oppressive (My two biggest threats that round were a baseball bat, pepper spray, and my own goddamn weapon.) I have decided that I am fond of the people who search maint when they know there is a confirmed traitor, and they feel they have a responsibility to do something about it, I wouldn't call it validating, but I know many people have accused people of valid hunting for much much less (such as attacking a ling who is openly flesh-armored on the shuttle). But such actions are very explicitly banned by our current RP rules. It did not feel like me versus the station, it felt like me versus security.

I was only engaging with security. People did not involve themselves in my story because of rules against valid hunting, and I did not involve them in my story because of rules against murderboning. Sure, these rules do not explicitly disallow antag on crew action, but they set the expectation and implication that security should be the only ones interacting with antagonists.

And that's day 1, I will admit I had fun, although only really after I rolled traitor and was able to engage in some action. I expected more Roleplay to make up for the lack of physical conflict but it was ultimately underwhelming and bested in some cases by what I have seen in recent eras on Sybil. I do have so much more to say, but I also have the rest of the month to say it. I will end this log here.

[Itseasytosee2me]

Day 2
I lack the motivation to play tonight, think I'll do some project zomboid instead. I promise to play tomorrow, I'm thinking of rolling janitor.

[The Wrench]

See, Manuel is already sucking the soul of of their body. Keep at it buddy, you're doing an experience.

[cacogen]

The other day I saw a statue of your character in the bar and somehow recognised the name from this thread and it was grey so I dragged it into the hallway and renamed it 'statue of Edgar Rohtin (hard to see)' and I wasn't sure if you saw it or not

[Itseasytosee2me]

The other day I saw a statue of your character in the bar and somehow recognised the name from this thread and it was grey so I dragged it into the hallway and renamed it 'statue of Edgar Rohtin (hard to see)' and I wasn't sure if you saw it or not

That's pretty cool. I never saw that, and I don't remember ever being sculpted.

[Bawhoppennn]

I was surprised by the frequency of people using borderline OOC terms, such as "ask the gods" in a completely non-religious sense and really just meant "ask the admins." I would expect players of manual to, you know, roleplay. And not use phrases such as "Its an objective item" instead of much better ways of speaking like "It's an item syndicate agents might try to steal" or even "It's designated a high-risk item." I legitimately think that the players on sybil are better at avoiding borderline occ talk like this. There was even a point where someone tried to use the custom emote menu as a substitute for LOOC, emoting something along the lines of "One second I don't think the interface is working I am going to reconnect." but I imagine this was a one-off instance.

The interface thing was a one-off, but the whole "THE GODS WON'T ALLOW IT" thing does happen way too often, and it's very disappointing. There does seem to be an overly strong concern by people to make sure others are following the rules, rather than RPing off what someone does (and just ahelping if the other person is an actual shitter). It's an unfortunate element of contemporary Manuel.

(*I find it mildly in violation of the "play a believable character" rule for everyone to just glance at a huge ass blob monster without explanation and then just go on with their shifts completely unphased, even with the meta-knowledge that the creature was a product of xenobio likely given the instruction "go do whatever but don't kill people")

Yeah this always bugged me too. It's not the worst but when I'm captain I always order the RD to have xenobio kept their crap inside xenobio. Nobody seems to care much but me. Also relatedly, the whole 'sentient monster' thing bugs me as well. A sentient chaos magicarp? Yeah they can just wander around the station with nobody questioning it. I feel some of it is people wanting to play a supersnowflake (eg a special mob), and then they are obviously okay with others who do so as well as a result.

Ultimately Manuel's experience as an assistant felt a lot like that of Sybil, except for a few things. There were few assistants (in fact I might have been the only one) so there were fewer people without responsibilities to interact with (conflicting or otherwise.) Feeling that you don't have a purpose is common for being an assistant, but on Sybil, I felt there was always another assistant who I could talk to and become involved in the story that was being played out. Manuel had a definite lack of that, and everyone was very dismissive about conflict. No one wanted to be a part of my action, and they didn't want me to be a part of theirs. Most of them were much more content doing their own thing without any outside contact, generally being polite and non-confrontational. This might just be the internal fate of an assistant on manual, you are expected to just do your own thing, and if you don't like that then you shouldn't have picked an assistant.

Ah, well it's a mixed bag really. Something about the whole assistant tribe mentality is kind of fun & classic ss13, even if nonsensical. Some of the aversion to conflict & chaos by some of the pop on Manuel does though make people reluctant to get into any kinda adventures or craziness as well.

I was only engaging with security. People did not involve themselves in my story because of rules against valid hunting, and I did not involve them in my story because of rules against murderboning. Sure, these rules do not explicitly disallow antag on crew action, but they set the expectation and implication that security should be the only ones interacting with antagonists.

Yeah I'm not sure the best thing on this front. On one hand, everyone just trying to bunch up to defeat antags is pretty lame, and it would make sense from both an IC and a gameplay perspective for that to be mainly sec's job. However, there is a bit maybe too much of a divide between antags and regular crew interacting with each other on Manuel right now. Not sure...

And that's day 1, I will admit I had fun, although only really after I rolled traitor and was able to engage in some action. I expected more Roleplay to make up for the lack of physical conflict but it was ultimately underwhelming and bested in some cases by what I have seen in recent eras on Sybil. I do have so much more to say, but I also have the rest of the month to say it. I will end this log here.

I think this has been a balanced and good review of a single round. Look forward to more!

[Timberpoes]

If this continues to be a good-faith and fair series, I think it's definitely something the MRP side of the administration/policymaking should be reading.

These kind of views from outside of the echo chamber are exceptionally important, yet so rarely shared or documented in good-faith terms.

[Itseasytosee2me]

-snipped-

If this continues to be a good-faith and fair series, I think it's definitely something the MRP side of the administration/policymaking should be reading.

These kind of views from outside of the echo chamber are exceptionally important, yet so rarely shared or documented in good-faith terms.

I appreciate the support and that you find value in my posts. I intend to keep going.

[Itseasytosee2me]

Day 3: Janitor (of fire and felinids)

I've decided to keep the names of all characters anonymized to minimize any potential drama. Maybe I'll give recurring characters codenames or something.

The round I joined today was significantly more "high-pop" than last time, a difference of around 20 players. I rolled janitor, as last time I played I remember there not being one, and blood piling up over time.
Janitor, still being a role with few responsibilities, had a basic job that I could fall back on in the case of stagnation and gave an excuse to interact with people. You are less expected to have a gimmick as a janitor, your job is to clean.

There was another janitor on-station. I do not remember if they later joined or if I started with them. They took the cart, and I took the old reliable mop and bucket with some space cleaner as my sidearm. Janitor is a role that I hold close to my heart, easily top 3.

I shared a few words with my partner, and they had little for me. I don't see this as a failure in RP, what would we have said to each other?
"Boy oh boy I sure love cleaning, tell me all about YOUR favorite cleaning supplies" or maybe "Oh god I hate cleaning, another day another dollar"
The silence and perhaps a grunt or nod to start the shift is probably the most ideal and realistic scenario for two janitors to go through as they set up for the job ahead.

I went around cleaning up some of the shift-start dirt and had a brief interaction with a clown who was playing the piano (I blamed him for putting dust all over the bar and making my job harder). I also noticed quite an increase in the number of assistants running around the station. In fact, I even recognized someone do the fabled *flip *spin *clap technique seen so often on Sybil which is not something I expected. I think that these changes were not a result of more people entering and then defaulting to assistant, but rather a change in culture that Manuel goes through in its high-pop hours. For a brief moment, It felt like the old Sybil I longed for, but not quite.

There was something else I noticed. There was an incredibly dense population of felinids in the crew. I could have sworn there were not that many on manual the last time I played. It really was crazy to me. I can tell you for certain, that felinids made up the majority of the crew (besting humans) if not over half. If you were trying to sell Manuel to me, this probably would be a pretty sizable negative.

I won't go too in-depth on my views on the state of felinids button sum it up I see the reason people play them as "quirky for quirkiness sake." From what I gathered, most of the people playing felinid on Manuel were playing it because they wanted to be a catgirl (everyone I encountered was a girl) and add false depth to whatever character they had, and none of the ones I encountered had personalities that could not be replicated as a human (unlike certain lizard and plasmaman characters I have seen which really leaned into their heritage) but this is of course because felinids still remain humans with ears taped on (and no amount of quirky felinid nerf or buff PRs will change that.)

Anyways I got into a bit of a rant, what I was trying to say is that a significant amount of felinid players on Sybil play felinid for the reason of pissing people who are made uncomfortable by catgirls off, on Manuel people were more serious about their felinid persona. Could not tell you if that is a plus or a negative.

I decided that the sheer amount of felinids on this station would have confused my character as much as it did me. I went to the chef (who was a felinid) and asked them why the felinid population was so dense. I also told them to stop wagging their tail by the food and that she was going to make me vomit. I believe she then started talking about how rubbery and flexible her tail was, and how easy it could manipulate things. Out of character, I will give her player the benefit of the doubt that they were only trying to jokingly disgust me rather than anything else (although horrible thoughts did cross my mind). So I told her that I appreciate it but that I wasn't interested and hurried along after that.

I ran into an escaped felinid round start prisoner, who I reported to security without engaging (how very unvalidhunter-like of me) and went on with my shift.
I have been distasteful of the Sybil tradition of letting out round start prisoners for no reason, and was of the thought that there was no way that that also existed on the server of Manuel where security was supposed to take their job seriously.
This prisoner may or may not have been let out round-start, but it had been confirmed to me that it has happened commonly in the past.

I ran into the prisoner again a little while later, this time I would confront them. Not physically but with words. My questions and accusations were met by the prisoner with incredible vague threats (I'm not even sure they were threats looking back) and using the *stare emote. I could only describe it as weird, there was no one else around but them and me so it's not like they were putting on a show for anyone. If it was a joke, I didn't get it. Sorry if you are reading this.
I should also probably make it clear that I was using threatening language that would be grounds for escalation, but they didn't. Perhaps they wanted to avoid conflict, perhaps they wanted to make me through the first punch?
Whatever the case I disengaged, myself somewhat confused by the scenario, and my character awed by how weird everything on the station was.

A moth (who I assume was the meta-friend of the catgirl prisoner, due to later events) approached the hop and tried to get an assistant ID for the prisoner. Very explicitly stating that the prisoner was escaped and needed the ID to avoid sec. Watching the whole thing, I tried to be the angel on the HOP's shoulder telling them that it was wrong and against protocol to do such a thing, but I was brushed off again and again. The HOP seemed intent on issuing the prisoner an ID for seemingly no in-character reason at all. No bribe was given, the HOP knew nothing about the prisoner (unless they were meta-friends, possible), and they were even actively told that their actions would help a criminal escape from security.
My character was pissed.
I ranted for a while at the HOP for a while longer before they closed the shutters.

Cleaning for a little bit to clear my mind, I talked with a sec officer who was also a catgirl. I asked them if they knew why there were so many felinids on the station, and they seemed borderline offended.
From the conversation I had with them I gathered their primary personality trait was "I like to hit people with heavy objects." Truly Nanotrasen's finest. They were also unconcerned with the escaped prisoner because "The hos hasn't said anything about it yet."

At this point my character was a mess, I went around ranting to anyone who would listen how fucked up everything was. The captain did a *flapped her wings emote alongside a *flip and *spin and that pretty much just sent my character over the edge. If there was a psyche on the station, I probably would have attempted an appointment, but alas I had nothing to do but vent to passers-by

I ran into the prisoner again, who was now all dressed up in new clothes with their assistant ID. They attempted to apologize to me, standing alongside their moth friend and security officer. I immediately turned to the officer and said that the prisoner was indeed a prisoner, they responded in a very passive way as if to say "I just want to see what happens here I don't really want to do anything or get involved." I asked their moth friend why they wanted to assist a potentially dangerous prisoner who has been sentenced to life. Their response was that the prisoner was their friend.

The sec officer chimed in to say "round-start prisoners are usually harmless." When I asked him what round-start meant, he said "uh" and then ran away.
I took that as my signal to move on

If I had been paying closer attention to comms, I would have noticed that the AI had been hinting at being rogue for the last 5 minutes. Then the AI went delta.

My character was fed up with the station as a whole, so I decided the correct course of action was to take a pod. I died on lavaland 10 minutes later to an unfortunate ash drake.
The AI was killed by a traitor who pulled a syndicate bomb out directly on the AI's core

And that was the round.
Excuse me if you played and I left out any details. It was out of forgetfulness, not malice.

I engaged in very little action, but I definitely engaged in what some would call "roleplay." The quality of which, is up to interpretation.

I enjoyed playing the "crazy rambling character" especially with the added twist that everything around me was crazy and stupid, and I was the only one acting rationally by freaking out about it (arguably I was just crazy, but I would argue not).

I apologize if the debate over felinids is something you are not interested in or if it makes you uncomfortable. Not all of my logs will go so deeply into the subject.

I think janitor is a good role for Manuel, certainly better than an assistant. Next, I think I will try my hand as a bartender (RP focused indeed), with medical doctor as an alternative if it is already filled.

[Kendrickorium]

Day 1: Assistant/Assistant traitor

I was surprised by the frequency of people using borderline OOC terms, such as "ask the gods" in a completely non-religious sense and really just meant "ask the admins." I would expect players of manual to, you know, roleplay. And not use phrases such as "Its an objective item" instead of much better ways of speaking like "It's an item syndicate agents might try to steal" or even "It's designated a high-risk item." I legitimately think that the players on sybil are better at avoiding borderline occ talk like this. There was even a point where someone tried to use the custom emote menu as a substitute for LOOC, emoting something along the lines of "One second I don't think the interface is working I am going to reconnect." but I imagine this was a one-off instance.

My very first interaction with Vekter on bagil was him boinking me out of nowhere just say "please dont refer to the admins as gods thanks"

[Valorium]

Day 3: Janitor (of fire and felinids)

...A moth (who I assume was the meta-friend of the catgirl prisoner, due to later events) approached the hop and tried to get an assistant ID for the prisoner. Very explicitly stating that the prisoner was escaped and needed the ID to avoid sec. Watching the whole thing, I tried to be the angle on the HOP's shoulder telling them that it was wrong and against protocol to do such a thing, but I was brushed off again and again. The HOP seemed intent on issuing the prisoner an ID for seemingly no in-character reason at all. No bribe was given, the HOP knew nothing about the prisoner (unless they were meta-friends, possible), and they were even actively told that their actions would help a criminal escape from security.
My character was pissed.
I ranted for a while at the HOP for a while longer before they closed the shutters.

Cleaning for a little bit to clear my mind, I talked with a sec officer who was also a catgirl. I asked them if they knew why there were so many felinids on the station, and they seemed borderline offended.
From the conversation I had with them I gathered their primary personality trait was "I like to hit people with heavy objects." Truly Nanotrasen's finest. They were also unconcerned with the escaped prisoner because "The hos hasn't said anything about it yet."

At this point my character was a mess, I went around ranting to anyone who would listen how fucked up everything was. The captain did a *flapped her wings emote alongside a *flip and *spin and that pretty much just sent my character over the edge. If there was a psyche on the station, I probably would have attempted an appointment, but alas I had nothing to do but vent to passers-by

I ran into the prisoner again, who was now all dressed up in new clothes with their assistant ID. They attempted to apologize to me, standing alongside their moth friend and security officer. I immediately turned to the officer and said that the prisoner was indeed a prisoner, they responded in a very passive way as if to say "I just want to see what happens here I don't really want to do anything or get involved." I asked their moth friend why they wanted to assist a potentially dangerous prisoner who has been sentenced to life. Their response was that the prisoner was their friend.

The sec officer chimed in to say "round-start prisoners are usually harmless." When I asked him what round-start meant, he said "uh" and then ran away.
I took that as my signal to move on

Wow. Sounds like a shitshow, and I say that as a Manuel regular. That sort of practice definitely needs to be curbed on MRP considering how evidently widespread it is. I do my best when playing as a Warden or whatnot, but it's got a long way to go.

[Farquaar]

Day 3: Janitor (of fire and felinids)

► Show Spoiler

I've decided to keep the names of all characters anonymized to minimize any potential drama. Maybe I'll give recurring characters codenames or something.

The round I joined today was significantly more "high-pop" than last time, a difference of around 20 players. I rolled janitor, as last time I played I remember there not being one, and blood piling up over time.
Janitor, still being a role with few responsibilities, had a basic job that I could fall back on in the case of stagnation and gave an excuse to interact with people. You are less expected to have a gimmick as a janitor, your job is to clean.

There was another janitor on-station. I do not remember if they later joined or if I started with them. They took the cart, and I took the old reliable mop and bucket with some space cleaner as my sidearm. Janitor is a role that I hold close to my heart, easily top 3.

I shared a few words with my partner, and they had little for me. I don't see this as a failure in RP, what would we have said to each other?
"Boy oh boy I sure love cleaning, tell me all about YOUR favorite cleaning supplies" or maybe "Oh god I hate cleaning, another day another dollar"
The silence and perhaps a grunt or nod to start the shift is probably the most ideal and realistic scenario for two janitors to go through as they set up for the job ahead.

I went around cleaning up some of the shift-start dirt and had a brief interaction with a clown who was playing the piano (I blamed him for putting dust all over the bar and making my job harder). I also noticed quite an increase in the number of assistants running around the station. In fact, I even recognized someone do the fabled *flip *spin *clap technique seen so often on Sybil which is not something I expected. I think that these changes were not a result of more people entering and then defaulting to assistant, but rather a change in culture that Manuel goes through in its high-pop hours. For a brief moment, It felt like the old Sybil I longed for, but not quite.

There was something else I noticed. There was an incredibly dense population of felinids in the crew. I could have sworn there were not that many on manual the last time I played. It really was crazy to me. I can tell you for certain, that felinids made up the majority of the crew (besting humans) if not over half. If you were trying to sell Manuel to me, this probably would be a pretty sizable negative.

I won't go too in-depth on my views on the state of felinids button sum it up I see the reason people play them as "quirky for quirkiness sake." From what I gathered, most of the people playing felinid on Manuel were playing it because they wanted to be a catgirl (everyone I encountered was a girl) and add false depth to whatever character they had, and none of the ones I encountered had personalities that could not be replicated as a human (unlike certain lizard and plasmaman characters I have seen which really leaned into their heritage) but this is of course because felinids still remain humans with ears taped on (and no amount of quirky felinid nerf or buff PRs will change that.)

Anyways I got into a bit of a rant, what I was trying to say is that a significant amount of felinid players on Sybil play felinid for the reason of pissing people who are made uncomfortable by catgirls off, on Manuel people were more serious about their felinid persona. Could not tell you if that is a plus or a negative.

I decided that the sheer amount of felinids on this station would have confused my character as much as it did me. I went to the chef (who was a felinid) and asked them why the felinid population was so dense. I also told them to stop wagging their tail by the food and that she was going to make me vomit. I believe she then started talking about how rubbery and flexible her tail was, and how easy it could manipulate things. Out of character, I will give her player the benefit of the doubt that they were only trying to jokingly disgust me rather than anything else (although horrible thoughts did cross my mind). So I told her that I appreciate it but that I wasn't interested and hurried along after that.

I ran into an escaped felinid round start prisoner, who I reported to security without engaging (how very unvalidhunter-like of me) and went on with my shift.
I have been distasteful of the Sybil tradition of letting out round start prisoners for no reason, and was of the thought that there was no way that that also existed on the server of Manuel where security was supposed to take their job seriously.
This prisoner may or may not have been let out round-start, but it had been confirmed to me that it has happened commonly in the past.

I ran into the prisoner again a little while later, this time I would confront them. Not physically but with words. My questions and accusations were met by the prisoner with incredible vague threats (I'm not even sure they were threats looking back) and using the *stare emote. I could only describe it as weird, there was no one else around but them and me so it's not like they were putting on a show for anyone. If it was a joke, I didn't get it. Sorry if you are reading this.
I should also probably make it clear that I was using threatening language that would be grounds for escalation, but they didn't. Perhaps they wanted to avoid conflict, perhaps they wanted to make me through the first punch?
Whatever the case I disengaged, myself somewhat confused by the scenario, and my character awed by how weird everything on the station was.

A moth (who I assume was the meta-friend of the catgirl prisoner, due to later events) approached the hop and tried to get an assistant ID for the prisoner. Very explicitly stating that the prisoner was escaped and needed the ID to avoid sec. Watching the whole thing, I tried to be the angel on the HOP's shoulder telling them that it was wrong and against protocol to do such a thing, but I was brushed off again and again. The HOP seemed intent on issuing the prisoner an ID for seemingly no in-character reason at all. No bribe was given, the HOP knew nothing about the prisoner (unless they were meta-friends, possible), and they were even actively told that their actions would help a criminal escape from security.
My character was pissed.
I ranted for a while at the HOP for a while longer before they closed the shutters.

Cleaning for a little bit to clear my mind, I talked with a sec officer who was also a catgirl. I asked them if they knew why there were so many felinids on the station, and they seemed borderline offended.
From the conversation I had with them I gathered their primary personality trait was "I like to hit people with heavy objects." Truly Nanotrasen's finest. They were also unconcerned with the escaped prisoner because "The hos hasn't said anything about it yet."

At this point my character was a mess, I went around ranting to anyone who would listen how fucked up everything was. The captain did a *flapped her wings emote alongside a *flip and *spin and that pretty much just sent my character over the edge. If there was a psyche on the station, I probably would have attempted an appointment, but alas I had nothing to do but vent to passers-by

I ran into the prisoner again, who was now all dressed up in new clothes with their assistant ID. They attempted to apologize to me, standing alongside their moth friend and security officer. I immediately turned to the officer and said that the prisoner was indeed a prisoner, they responded in a very passive way as if to say "I just want to see what happens here I don't really want to do anything or get involved." I asked their moth friend why they wanted to assist a potentially dangerous prisoner who has been sentenced to life. Their response was that the prisoner was their friend.

The sec officer chimed in to say "round-start prisoners are usually harmless." When I asked him what round-start meant, he said "uh" and then ran away.
I took that as my signal to move on

If I had been paying closer attention to comms, I would have noticed that the AI had been hinting at being rogue for the last 5 minutes. Then the AI went delta.

My character was fed up with the station as a whole, so I decided the correct course of action was to take a pod. I died on lavaland 10 minutes later to an unfortunate ash drake.
The AI was killed by a traitor who pulled a syndicate bomb out directly on the AI's core

And that was the round.
Excuse me if you played and I left out any details. It was out of forgetfulness, not malice.

I engaged in very little action, but I definitely engaged in what some would call "roleplay." The quality of which, is up to interpretation.

I enjoyed playing the "crazy rambling character" especially with the added twist that everything around me was crazy and stupid, and I was the only one acting rationally by freaking out about it (arguably I was just crazy, but I would argue not).

I apologize if the debate over felinids is something you are not interested in or if it makes you uncomfortable. Not all of my logs will go so deeply into the subject.

I think janitor is a good role for Manuel, certainly better than an assistant. Next, I think I will try my hand as a bartender (RP focused indeed), with medical doctor as an alternative if it is already filled.

Now that's what I call the authentic Manuel experience.

[BONERMASTER]

Yeah.... people not giving a shit about integrity is what makes me fall asleep on manuel. It's why I said a while ago, it's practically indistinguishable from LRP, except for fewer random funny murders.
It's especially bad with security officers, I have observed that certain cat-girl personas gravitate towards this role, and just troll around without ever doing anything. What's the point of even playing then, if it's just a big chatroom? MIght as well just stay on discord, or only post on the forums like everyone else here. Definitely one of the worst qualities of manuel.


With warm regards
-BONERMASTER

[Super Aggro Crag]

felinid players dont have rights

[Itseasytosee2me]

Day 4 (another no play day)
I'm not gonna play tonight, I feel really burnt out after writing a 5-page research paper. I'm not going to make it a trend of only playing every other day.
My apologies and I hope to bring new and insightful reports with a fresher mind over the weekend.

[Super Aggro Crag]

Day 4 (another no play day)
I'm not gonna play tonight, I feel really burnt out after writing a 5-page research paper. I'm not going to make it a trend of only playing every other day.
My apologies and I hope to bring new and insightful reports with a fresher mind over the weekend.

only play when you feel up to it dont force yourself

[The Wrench]

Manny is a soul draining hellpit of LRPers in denial, take your time brother. You’re doing great

[Itseasytosee2me]

Day 5: Medical Doctor (Chaos and Paranoia)
A quick note that I am fallible and can not remember everything perfectly. Any inaccuracies about the events of this round were made out of personal error rather than anything malicious. Make corrections if you got em.

I rolled medical doctor today. I have heard stories in the past of Manuel having an extremely effective medical team, and that I might fall by the wayside in compassion to other members. This was not the case.
I was one of two doctors alongside the CMO, both of which would do little work throughout the shift, leaving me to carry a lot of weight.

Also of importance, we were playing on translation. Normally I would not feel the need to clarify the map, but tram tends to busy medbay in particular due to the large amounts of people getting hit by the massive metal death tram as it moves through the station.

The shift started off relatively slow, so I went around and briefly acquainted myself with who I would be working with in medbay. Surprisingly to me, there was a lack of felinids. Not just in medbay, I think I saw two felinids thought the entire round, which was in stark contrast from the potentially over 50% felinid population I had encountered last time I played. Perhaps felinid players prefer playing on weekdays and all the other spacemen prefer weekends? Whatever the reason I was somewhat relieved that not every highpop game of Manuel was catgirl hell.

I, while not a medical main, consider myself to be quite adept at medicine. A couple of tram-related injuries came in, and I handed out pills and fixed some broken bones. The CMO was not doing anything helpful which I found suspicious, and my other doctor friend was glued to the chem dispenser. I did some brain surgery on a patient and dispensed pills when needed. So far so good, not even a single dead body.

I have no idea what the other medical doctor had whipped up in the chem dispenser but whatever it was it gave people a lot of brain traumas and damage. People were gibbering outside of medbay like mad. I considered confronting the doctor, but I decided against it because I didn't really know what happened, and his victims all seemed to have voluntarily taken whatever he had given them. I worked on brain-damaged people, then tried my hand at whipping up some better healing chems in the off-hours.

It was at this point rumors of changelings were circulating over comms, and not too much longer till a husk turned up in medical. I wasn't paying much attention to the changeling accusations, but the RD's name got brought up a few times.

While I was working on a patient (a dead security officer), I heard sounds of combat in the medical hallway. The CMO and RD had just gunned down a sec officer in the middle of medbay.
A small crowd had gathered around, and the RD said allowed that the security officer was a changeling in disguise. There was something about the way he set it that set a wave of distrust through the crowd. Tension in the air was palpable.

My memory is somewhat hazy, but this is what I believe happened next: The HOP in the middle of being treated stood up and tried to tele-baton the CMO. The RD in retaliation stun batoned the hos and opened fire with the captain's laser gun. I picked up the HOP's baton and knocked down either the CMO or RD, I don't remember but I do remember it caused their very temporary retreat allowing me to try to shake the HOP up. The RD peaked out again to release another volley, leaving me with a severe burn on the hop's head, and a critical burn on mine.

Many other members of medical staff and patients had decided to take the initiative started assaulting the RD and CMO (opening up in a hospital with a laser gun is a good way to make a lot of enemies evidently.)I stabbed the CMO with a scalpel a few times before being scared off by more laser fire. I believe at one point the RD slipped and the captain's gun was seized from him, forcing his retreat but by that point, I was more concerned with the rapidly growing infection on my head. You can quote me on saying that of all of the wound types, burn wounds (at least bad burn wounds) suck the most.

I stumbled around for a bit trying to manage the large amounts of toxin damage coming my way until I was kindly put into cryo by the psychologist.

Fulled my paranoia and misinformation, I had a brief conflict with a chemist who had assisted an assistant in changing the name on an ID card (I belive the CMO's) that never escalated past words.
The RD was now a public figure on the comms, and everyone was talking about how he was an evil changeling who kicked puppies and inserted his proboscis into any passers-by. The RD, while not openly admitting, did not contest the fact he was a changeling. I believe he said, "Can I be held responsible for acting in accordance with my DNA?"

The CMO's body was taken into the medbay at some point, it was stripped naked. After I Identified it as the CMO the person who brought it in agreed they should not be revived. I started ranting about how I would make sure that the CMO would stay dead aloud when a borg offered to take the body to the morgue. I figured that this was the saner choice and told the borg that they should probably do that.

At this point it was late into the shift, the shuttle had been called, there were so many bodies in medbay that they were attended to by paramedics and friends of the deceased (A common sight on Sybil, I would imagine less so on Manuel.)
I had not eaten anything all shift, and the shuttle would be arriving soon, so I doffed my medical jacket and went to the chef. I grabbed some food and vented to the chef about what had happened so far. I had heard over comms that the RD was supposedly dead. I made my way to the shuttle

As I arrived at the shuttle I noticed that a felinid miner was attacking a borg with their PKA with a combat knife attached, they seemed pretty intent on finishing the job. The borg flashed the felinid and buckled them to a chair, which seemed like a pretty merciful action to me considering it was well within the borgs rights to start kicking the shit out of the felinid or toss them off the shuttle. I took the opportunity to grab the PKA and toss it off the shuttle right before we launched, leaving it behind.

I will relate the in-character conversation and escalation I had with the felinid according to the logs after I threw away her PKA.
(The name will be anonymized, but I can confirm it was some really "cutesy" and "fluffy" name, therefor I dub thee "Cutesy McFlufferpants")

Cutesy McFlufferpants:"YOU MORON"
Cutesy McFlufferpants: "WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU??"
Edgar Rohtin: "Beating up the equipment"
Edgar Rohtin: "Piece of shit"
Cutesy McFlufferpants: "ALL BORGS ARE ROGUE"
Cutesy McFlufferpants: "SUBVERTED BY ThE LING"
Edgar Rohtin: "Typical from a cat"
Edgar Rohtin: "Being non human"
(I will admit that these last two remarks were meant to provoke escalation, although I did genuinely believe that borgs were not rogue)

The felinid attacked me with their pickaxe as well as hitting an innocent bystander janitor. After a brief scuffle, the janitor pulled a flash on the felinid and sent her to the ground. I threw a kick, and then backed off. When she got back up she rushed me again, landing a few more pickaxe hits before she got flashed again. I tried to space her after that and succeeded in my endeavor. However, in the process, I underestimated space wind and accidentally spaced myself. With an O2 mask and an epi-pen, I held on to life just long enough to die right before the round ended.

In the end, it turned out that indeed the RD was a changeling, alongside my medical doctor friend handing out who was handing out candy that made your brain explode. Additionally, the CMO was a traitor, as suspected. The borgs did turn out to be subverted by a changeling, but I stand by my character's actions being realistic in the scenario with the miner although I might have felt a small pang of guilt out of character.

I did have a lot of fun this round, I felt a lot of existential paranoia and dread which I think is the best case scenario for any non-antagonist roll. I always had work to do and was hardly bored. This was probably the best round I've had on Manuel. I might attribute that to two of my coworkers being antagonists and an active battle going down in my place of work.

It is still very draining though, I don't think I can attribute it to one thing in specific, but that's probably just ss13 for you.

[Pandarsenic]

That round actually sounds like some pretty hype MRP. Big respect to the cyborg showing restraint with wrecking the Felinid.

... Do Felinids even HAVE lore here? Or are they just a Cat Meme

[Super Aggro Crag]

That round actually sounds like some pretty hype MRP. Big respect to the cyborg showing restraint with wrecking the Felinid.

... Do Felinids even HAVE lore here? Or are they just a Cat Meme

when being racist against felinids i generally refer to them as genetrash mutants who spliced themselves with cats because they're fucking weebs

[Itseasytosee2me]

That round actually sounds like some pretty hype MRP. Big respect to the cyborg showing restraint with wrecking the Felinid.

... Do Felinids even HAVE lore here? Or are they just a Cat Meme

The "official" lore is that they are a bunch of humans who went through genetic modification to get catlike features. Some were made via sabotage of cloning facilities (somewhat implied to be done by Interdyne and ARC branches of the syndicate)
https://github.com/tgstation/common_cor ... elinids.md

I don't think the cloning sabotage part of the article is very good, tying in the "in lore" removal of cloning clutters it up. It would be better if they were all just freaks who wanted to body mod themselves in pursuit (purr-suit?) of being catgirls, It would still be could to tie in the Animal Rights Cohletion because they seem like just the kind of nutjobs who would do something like that.

In original 40k lore where felinids (where the name "felinid" comes from) they exist as a very minor Abhuman.

Felinids are endemic to the Imperial world of Carlos McConell. Whether this is due to the particular biological requirements of that planet, prior genetic modifications made to a Human population during the Dark Age of Technology or prior Imperial regulation is unknown, but they are virtually unheard of in the Imperium at large. Felinids are Humans who have had their genomes spliced with genetic sequences derived from various species of Terran felines, and they possess many felinoid traits, including a light covering of fur over their entire body, extended canine teeth and superhuman agility and grace.

[YBS]

That round actually sounds like some pretty hype MRP. Big respect to the cyborg showing restraint with wrecking the Felinid.

... Do Felinids even HAVE lore here? Or are they just a Cat Meme

I agree with crag, they are probably voluntary genesplicers. That's how most anthros are described cross-server.

So calling them degenerate gene-trash is lore valid.

[oranges]

this is a suprisingly compelling diary.

[BONERMASTER]

Day 10: Infection
Day 20: Metamorphosis
Day 30: Static Cat Main


God give you strength for what is ahead, friend.


With the warmest possible regards
-BONERMASTER

[BlevRuz]

the sacrifices one makes for science... great thread altogether, your writing style is nice and the stories are entertaining.
definitely do take your time and avoid forcing yourself, but im looking forward to reading more!

[Itseasytosee2me]

Day 6,7 (Update)

I appreciate all the support and apologize for the lack of logs, there is more to come.

Cut to black, camera slowly fades in

A gloved hand fingers through a filing cabinet, suspenseful music plays

A card is removed

jimbo.png (7.3 KiB) Viewed 4507 times

Sharp music stinger, cut to credits.

[Itseasytosee2me]

Day 8 (Mime)

When I readied up today I had 3 roles selected: Clown, Bartender, and Mime. Mime is what I rolled (I suspect that clown and bartender are both quite popular choices on Manuel, which I why I got stuck with mime.)
Immediately the shift started with the captain declaring something about bugs over comms, it sounded like they were talking about a bug with the game but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they were talking about cockroaches or something.

After a brief and friendly interaction with my clown partner, I suited up from the autodrobe on a whim, picking out the referee's costume and a whistle. Otherwise, I was dressed as is standard for a mime. I've always been a fan of mime. In a social game, not being able to talk is like hard-mode and I can appreciate that.

Mime, having no real job, is tasked with finding its own fun much like an assistant. Generally, I went around trying to mime out being a referee, blowing my whistle, and pointing at people that did something I didn't like.
I had a minor scuffle with a moth assistant who apparently didn't like me blowing a super loud whistle in his ears. He pushed me onto a table, and then I tabled him and threw him into the kitchen.

After a few rounds, I feel somewhat qualified to speak on the robustness of Manuel's players versus those on Sybil. It will come as very little shock to most of you that I have seen far less combat ability in Manuel than in Sybil.
It is a very different change of pace for me because I don't see myself as that robust at least by Sybil standards.
With the potential exception of the head of security during my first traitor round (who outwitted me if nothing else), I feel like I have a much better sense of combat than pretty much everyone I've gone up against.

The round definitely was feeling slow at this point. After bumbling around and blowing my whistle some more I went to dorms and played around with the training toolbox bot for a while.

Because this round was so slow I will instead replace the middle part of this log with...

Brief Melee Combat Tip Interlude!

For all of my unrobust Manuel readers out there, (except Farquaar because he's cool )
I present 5 easy tips for excelling in melee combat!
(You probably already know a lot of these, but if you didn't, made ya learn)

1. Wall awareness - Most of you are aware that if you are shoved into a wall you will immediately get knocked down and disarmed. If you are carrying a combat-effective item (comment examples include a stun baton, flash, energy sword, even a toolbox or welding tool), avoid being in a scenario where you could be pushed into a wall at all times. It does not matter what weapon your opponent is holding, they can shove you all the same. Even if you are in an unarmed fight, it should be avoided if possible because being kicked deals 1.5 times more damage. This means they only need to kick you 2 times to get their investment on pushing you down back, plus it will be easier for them to kick you and harder for you to hit them because you will be slow and crawling.

2. Establish threat - Notice how strong your attacker's weapon is. If it is much better than your equipment or has some other aspect that warrants you avoiding you getting hit (such as a stun baton that will fuck up your day unless you have some specific counters or an energy sword which could leave you bleeding so bad you are unlikely to survive even if you get away.) you are not going to be able to win the encounter by charging head-on. If you are both largely immobile or locked in place, they will simply deal more damage and you will lose every time. A lesser MRP guide would then implore you to run away(probably the wise choice), I'm assuming you don't have the option. You will have to resort to hit-and-run tactics

3.Hit and Run Tactics - I'm not talking about landing a hit on someone and then running a screen or more away and then coming back, proper hit and run tactics involve never involve leaving the sight of your opponent. The basic premise is to quickly and sporadically approach your opponent, attack them, and back off. If done ideally, you will open a small window in which you will be able to hit your opponent, but they will not be able to react in time to hit you. This is the only way you are going to get the best of your opponent if you don't have any tricks in mind (see: soap in the pocket, cooked flashbang). It is much easier to do this if you have a speed advantage over your opponent.

4. Zone of control- An elaboration of hit and run fundamentals. I define "zone of control" as one tile in every direction away from your attacker, if you are in any of these spaces you have the potential to be hit. Because of the way hit registration works, you are only going to be hit if the tile you are traveling to is within your opponent's zone of control. Therefore, if you are ever in a position where you are in a tile that your opponent controls, and you move to another tile within your opponent's control, you are very likely to be hit. Keep your opponent moving into your zone of control, while staying out of theirs. Engaging people diagonally gives you the most options to maneuver out of their zone.

5. How to practice - I'm not asking you to boot up a private server and practice hitting spacemen. Mostly because it would make you a total dork, but also because it fails to replicate the time dilation that you will see on servers. The best way to practice is against other players. You don't need to over-escalate or look for conflict to do this. Challenge people to a boxing match, start a rage cage, whatever. If you want to take the opportunity to cut your teeth on some players as traitors as high stakes practice, corner a target, have some way to disable their headset(radio jammer or equivalent) and remember your walls so your weapon isn't stolen.

And thus concludes the interlude!

After this point, I got bored of messing around with the training bot, and kind of felt like I was forsaking Roleplay by not interacting with others.

I went to cargo and started doing bounties, got enough to privately buy a stingbang grenade (I had a coupon.) I kept doing bounties for a while, occasionally trying to interact with people. Including assisting the clown in a failed prank to give security a mousetrap lube grenade.

Eventually, I got a toolbox bounty, so after collecting a few I decided to print some at the auto lathe, at which point I had the following interaction with a pink lizard cargo tech who I will call "Gives-The-Rats" (though that was not her name)

Gives-The-Rats: "Hello mime."

Gives-The-Rats: "Would you like a fine rat in this trying time?" (Cargo Office (158,159,2))
(I said nothing)
(They offered me a box It was filled with rats)
(I assumed she had granted it to me to do with as I please)
(With little to do with a box of rats, I flushed it down disposals in front of her)
Gives-The-Rats: "What the fuck man." (Cargo Office (158,159,2))
(No immediate response)

At this point, she shoved me onto a table. The shoving match continued for a while until she ran off, I thought to retrieve their precious rats. She later came back in with a braindead assistant who she threw at me which I dodged.
Seeing how the situation had escalated, I believe I buzzed the door a few times to try to signal that I was cool with just leaving and did not need to fight. When she tried to toss the assistant at me again, I understood that this was a personal matter and that she would not be content until they had her revenge.

I attacked her with the toolbox I had printed. She responded in toe with a welding tool. I got a lot of good hits on her, and she was very wounded. I moved back to cargo entrance and buzzed the door a few more times as if to say "You lost man, open the door and I'll leave so I don't have to take your ID of your crumpled up bleeding body." before backing off, giving her space to open the door.

She moved to the door and grabbed the braindead assistant's body aggressively before opening it. I saw her deception for what it was and baited out the throwing of the body before downing her with the toolbox and walking out the open doors. She crawled out into the hall as I waltzed out.

And boom! Here comes officer detective to arrest me! (the situation was not called out on comms, he just happened to be in the area)
He hit me with his baton and dragged me further into the hall, I did not resist at all and tried to signal that I was being cooperative.

I was dragged to security, where apparently the detective was the only active member. Eventually, they told me to write what had happened on a piece of paper (I loath to do this as mimes, whats the point of not being able to talk if you can write?) which I did because I felt I needed to give my side of the story. The det seem pissed off that the situation was started by something as petty as rats, but I was released on the spot.

After this, I bought a hoverboard with my all my bounty cash, rode it done the halls a bit before having a brief interaction with the clown. During my rather one-sided "talk" with the clown Gives-The-Rats came up to us and shoved me (seemingly having learned nothing.) So I whacked her over the head with the hoverboard (which is surprisingly robust) which scared her off. I gave my hoverboard to the clown and I never saw Gives-The-Rats again.

I got my hands on one of the new thermal pistols which were being testmerged. (Great sound, bad sprites) (sorry Anne you shouldn't have made them look like revolvers, flavor them as long arms or something)

Got on the shuttle, which was bombed twice. I survived but lost an arm. Clown made it too, hoverboard intact.

This was probably one of the slowest rounds I have played on Manuel, and as a mime, I had nothing to fall back on as a job when I had nothing to do. I did manage to entertain myself, and I hope others (if only to a lesser extent.)
I don't think I'll be playing much mime in the future.

[The Wrench]

I'm surpised the lizard static didn't ahelp you for breaking being mean.

[CMDR_Gungnir]

Immediately the shift started with the captain declaring something about bugs over comms, it sounded like they were talking about a bug with the game but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they were talking about cockroaches or something.

Manuel has had a bit of an issue lately with a tide of new players, possibly caused by the streaming trials going on but noone really knows for sure, who uhh. I don't want to say "aren't up to our standards" because that's incredibly pretentious and makes us seem like snooty twats, but would probably be more at home on the LRP servers instead.

But then again there's always been a few people like that, so. /shrug

Enjoying the stories, though. It's interesting to hear about the server from an outsider's perspective.

[Farquaar]

In my experience people xenos on Manuel are notoriously sensitive to minor slights, but they'll usually run away unless they have a ranged weapon. Makes things difficult as an antagonist, but you can sometimes use their bravado to bait them until it's too late for them to run.

[Annihilite111]

Lowpop Manuel sounds like the kind of hellscape you get sentenced to. Not where you go willingly

[Annihilite111]

Immediately the shift started with the captain declaring something about bugs over comms, it sounded like they were talking about a bug with the game but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they were talking about cockroaches or something.

Manuel has had a bit of an issue lately with a tide of new players, possibly caused by the streaming trials going on but noone really knows for sure, who uhh. I don't want to say "aren't up to our standards" because that's incredibly pretentious and makes us seem like snooty twats, but would probably be more at home on the LRP servers instead.

But then again there's always been a few people like that, so. /shrug

Enjoying the stories, though. It's interesting to hear about the server from an outsider's perspective.

I played Manuel a few rounds and aside from that one time where me and a botanist discussed my religious worship of the eldritch forces of decay by the HOPline, it was identical to LRP except with much less fun chaos. This was a few months ago too.

[Super Aggro Crag]

I'm surpised the lizard static didn't ahelp you for breaking being mean.

More surprised he wasn't wordlessly chainstunned by 5 other lizard statics after messing with one

[cacogen]

Jon Riker and his consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

[oranges]

I'm surpised the lizard static didn't ahelp you for breaking being mean.

More surprised he wasn't wordlessly chainstunned by 5 other lizard statics after messing with one

most of them have gone

[RaveRadbury]

Pretty disappointed in the mime round. Putting on one costume for a noise spam gimmick and then dumping someone's stuff when they hand it to you definitely ain't good entertainer RP.

Do better next time, try being actually entertaining. Put some work into it.

All the other rounds have been very interesting reads, looking forward to future posts.

[Itseasytosee2me]

Pretty disappointed in the mime round. Putting on one costume for a noise spam gimmick and then dumping someone's stuff when they hand it to you definitely ain't good entertainer RP.

Do better next time, try being actually entertaining. Put some work into it.

All the other rounds have been very interesting reads, looking forward to future posts.

Yeah, accurate. Probably shouldn't have even had the change of mime enabled if I wasn't ready for it. I shouldn't have latched on to the first gimmick I saw.

That being said, what would you do if someone offered you a box of rats? What is the correct response? Start juggling? Maybe. I don't feel at fault for that, seemed like a reasonable recourse. (although I would expect your mime standards to be high)

The round was pretty slow all around, but that's just what you get sometimes.

[Annihilite111]

Expecting someone to perform at their best every single round is expecting way too much. You're ideally going to do this every day for a month, so don't feel pressured to spend an hour planning a gimmick beforehand when you're already writing up each round (and putting a fair amount of effort into the writing itself). That's how you get burnt out.